Finding the humor and the outright hilarity in public records
Curtis Raye makes his living putting on comedy shows about public records he's obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
Curtis Raye makes his living putting on comedy shows about public records he’s obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Given the state of politics and the uncertainty over what the Trump administration will bring, it’s important to have some humor. Raye, the creator of FOIA Comedy, joined The Federal Drive with Tom Temin for more.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin: And what exactly is FOIA Comedy? I’m chuckling over the idea here.
Curtis Raye: Well, all comedians need to have source material. For some people, it’s their wacky family or their love life. My family’s normal and my love life nonexistent. So I turn to the public records to find stories of everyday Americans interacting with their government. And there’s plenty of humorous things you can find if you researched enough.
Tom Temin: And what caused you to even realize there might be something in there in the first place?
Curtis Raye: Well, I’ve always enjoyed all my legal classes and in my research I just didn’t want to go to law school. And so the more you study for hours and hours and hours, these interesting things emerge and these patterns. That’s what I enjoy: finding patterns, whether it’s in a puzzle or in the public records. So if you’re reading applications for nonprofit organizations, the first 100 could be very boring. And then No. 101, you find someone trying to declare themselves a church and you’re like, ‘I don’t think you can do that.’ So it’s the moment of discovery that I love and I love sharing with people, too.
Tom Temin: And tell us more about the format in which you share these things.
Curtis Raye: So the comedy comes from two parts: people reading these documents word for word. Sometimes the American citizen who wrote this, it’s funny enough to read it word for word, or I’ll put it up on the big screen like John Oliver or The Daily Show and will make jokes and have commentary about what we’re looking at. There’s also another element, which is bluegrass music, which is a whole other way of breaking up the show a little bit. I don’t think anybody wants to hear me talk, Tom, for 90 minutes about public records. So I wanted to find some way to go back and forth in the entertainment.
Tom Temin: Interesting. And so this is a way you make a living is putting on shows and you sell tickets and you find enough audience that would find FOIA records funny or you make them funny.
Curtis Raye: Yeah, we sell tickets very well because there’s something for everybody. I decided to put the bluegrass music in there because it helps bring out a bigger crowd and it really is the perfect complement to public records. When I was trying to figure out how to break up the show a little bit, I could have gone with really any other art form. I could have gone with tap dance, which didn’t seem to make any sense. I could have done punk rock music, but punk rock is very anarchic. Whereas this show is very establishment, a comedy show about the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 is really within the establishment. And so bluegrass feels like that really American thing that people who like public records, probably like banjos and fiddles do. And that’s why we sell out and I can make a living.
Tom Temin: And your bluegrass back up. These are not just any old pluckers, are they?
Curtis Raye: No, these are not my comedian buddies playing music. It includes three Grammy nominations. Tristan Scroggins on mandolin, Frank Sullivan on the fiddle. These are professionals from Nashville and North Carolina.
Tom Temin: And how did you get into this work? You mentioned possible legal research. Were you planning to be a lawyer?
Curtis Raye: I have enjoyed law classes but I received wise advice from people who went to law school, which is don’t go to law school. And I listened to them. I got into this because I’ve been doing comedy a long time. I’ve done comedy in Washington, D.C. and in New York City at the Upright Citizens Brigade. But this show combines both my passions: comedy and journalism. I was a journalist in Washington, D.C. for a long time at a company called Bisnow and I was able to combine those two passions into one show. This show is exactly who I am as a person. Nerdy research and comedy.
Tom Temin: So you could be the next Capitol Steps. May they rest in peace.
Curtis Raye: When they went down in COVID. I was sad for the end of an era, but I saw an opportunity. I love the Capitol Steps, by the way. I don’t want to insult them because I know they know a lot of people on the inside.
Tom Temin: All right. We’re speaking with Curtis Raye. He is the creator and host of FOIA Comedy. And let’s go through some of the records you found particularly funny and how do you find them and give us some samples.
Curtis Raye: So a lot of journalists use the Freedom of Information Act to find records of national importance. For example, documents about torture at Guantanamo or the names of every single White House or Watergate co-conspirator. I use public records laws to get the names of every single dog in my hometown. Because when you buy a dog, you have to register it and that becomes a public record. So I know the name of every dog and I read them all and I look for patterns. Turns out my hometown lacks creativity because there are 40 dogs named Buddy in my very, very small hometown.
Tom Temin: So Buddy has replaced Fido?
Curtis Raye: Yes. There is not a lot of Fidos, which is a shame, because Fido is a much more refined name in my mind.
Tom Temin: All right. What about the federal records?
Curtis Raye: In the federal records? The halls of the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation have lots of material because there’s information about everybody: activists, athletes, private citizens, politicians, serial killers. So I found a lot about the notorious train robber Jesse James, which is odd because he died in 1883, and suddenly, 50 years later, his name starts popping up in letters to J. Edgar Hoover. So if you come to the show, you can hear all these letters, read word for word about the notorious train robber, Jesse James.
Tom Temin: All right. And have you ever found anything on Elvis Presley, for example? It’s kind of a related field.
Curtis Raye: Are you a big Elvis fan? Where does this question come from?
Tom Temin: Just curious, because I think of Jesse James and turning up 50 years later, Elvis still figures prominently in the popular psyche.
Curtis Raye: I’ll have to look into that. It’s been about 50 years since we lost the King. So I bet there’s probably a lot of people writing to FBI Director Christopher Wray, no relation to me, asking him about Elvis. I’m going to get on that right now.
Tom Temin: All right. What else comes to mind? Anything else besides dog names and Jesse James? Anything contemporary? What are some of the agencies that are particularly rich and comical for you?
Curtis Raye: The Federal Communications Commission. The FCC is a gold mine of letters people write to the government because they’re complaining about small things like Sheldon on Big Bang Theory being mean to a bird or bigger things, people exposing themselves during Super Bowls. Obviously that basically broke the FCC for a while there. So that’s a good place to get started. If you’ve never done public records research, the FCC is a good place because there’s all this pop culture stuff, TV shows you’re familiar with that are upsetting people.
Tom Temin: And do you launch your own FOIA requests or you simply go through those that are on record as being requests at the moment for agencies?
Curtis Raye: Both. I absolutely piggyback on other journalists who have made requests, and I look them over and see the results that they got. And then if it inspires me to go down a particular line of research, I’ll then go down that particular area. So reading about Big Bang Theory through somebody else’s research led me to do research on MythBusters, the TV show where they do scientific research. Somehow that very innocuous show has a lot of complaints against it. People who look at the explosions on MythBusters and see phallic symbols in them.
Tom Temin: All right. Well, yeah, I guess they see what they bring to it, maybe. And a final question on response. Agencies often get dinged for how slowly they respond to FOIA requests. What’s been your experience?
Curtis Raye: I’ve had the same experience. I’ve had requests that have taken 18 months to get back. And then when you do, they’re all redacted. So I do because I need to do this show regularly, I will tailor my requests to things I know I can get a response on. And most importantly, I know that this is a hard job for government employees to do. They want to help out. And so I work with them as best I can to tell them specifically what I want.
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Tom Temin
Tom Temin is host of the Federal Drive and has been providing insight on federal technology and management issues for more than 30 years.
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