Lifestyle
'I have more say': Why Kathryn Hahn feels more powerful than ever
Kathryn Hahn says she feels more powerful now than when she was in her twenties.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
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Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: I have developed affinities for certain actors to the point where it doesn’t matter what they’re in. If their name is attached to it, a leading role or cameo, I’m watching it. Kathryn Hahn is one of those actors. I first saw her in Transparent. She played Rabbi Raquel and stole every scene she was in.
But that’s the beauty of a Kathryn Hahn performance. She sneaks up on you, whether she’s playing a best friend, sidekick or a leading role. Her characters, in everything from Parks and Recreation to Step Brothers, often start small. But before you know it, they are center stage. And you can’t remember when it wasn’t so.
Hahn is now starring as Agatha Harkness in the newest Marvel show, Agatha All Along.
The trailer for ‘Agatha All Along.’
YouTube
This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.
Question 1: What period of your life do you often daydream about?
Kathryn Hahn: Right now, as my son is turning 18 on Friday, I think it is that period of his preschool and before. I’m back in that place of just playing with him until dinner. Like, that weird post-nap, before-dinner, the sun’s kind of going down, you’re trying to find things to do. But, like, you also can’t believe it’s another night you have to go through.
Rachel Martin: I know. Those hours were really hard for me, and, when I think about them, beautiful.
Hahn: Yeah. Literally the witching hour. Like, the sun would go down and we’d be like, “No. No! We have to do it again!” But that little time before dinner, sometimes you would walk into it dreading it. But now, of course, I’m so nostalgic.
Martin: What was the thing that you would do? What was your go-to?
Hahn: We would look for bugs in the front yard. We made a little fairy village by the tree in the back. We would try to play catch, but we were on one of those deep Silver Lake houses, so we lost maybe two out of three balls.
It was just the best. And again, when you’re in the middle of it, you’re like, “Ugh.” But those moments now are coming to the surface. And it gets so weepy because you cannot believe you’re not going to hear him, like, running down the stairs late in the morning and all that stuff. It’s just – that noise is going to become like memory, which is – you can’t believe it.
Question 2: What life transition has been challenging?
Hahn: Oof! Well, I was going to say the one I’m in right now. This particular chapter in a woman’s life through the next portal where, you know, she’s not as fertile in the literal sense has been a very unexpectedly challenging time.
Martin: We’re talking about menopause.
Hahn: Yes. No one talks about it, so you kind of walk into it blind. And I was in perimenopause — this is a hilarious thing to talk about — for a very long time. So I was like, “Oof. Do I feel like myself? Like, who is this? Like, who’s coming through right now?” Like, my moods, my like, everything —
Rachel: Right. And how much of it is you and how much is the thing —
Kathryn: Is the hormones! And I think somewhat [Agatha All Along] is also kind of a metaphor for that. Of like, breaking through as a woman to find your power, looking for your power at the end of the road. Not that menopause is the end of the road, but the end of the road of what we —
Martin: One version of you.
Hahn: One version.
Martin: I imagine for actors in Hollywood, it is doubly complicated because you start getting people — the producers — see you in a different light. And, to them, you’re losing your power, you’re losing your virility, your sexuality or charisma or something. And this doesn’t feel like that. This role feels like an affirmation of those things.
Hahn: 100%. All the women are over 40. So it does feel like a really radical thing that we’ve been able to pull off. Though, because my currency in this business wasn’t my sex appeal, I feel like I’ve been able to just kind of walk into more complicated parts, and I am eternally grateful for that.
I really don’t feel powerless. I feel actually more powerful than I did in my twenties or early thirties in this business. I definitely feel I have more control over my choices. I have more say. I’m definitely not as afraid to say it, which is really freeing.
Kathryn Hahn appears at the Disney Entertainment Showcase in California in August.
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Araya Doheny/Getty Images
Question 3: Have you ever had a premonition about something that came true?
Hahn: I definitely have had them. There have been times where the phone rings and I know what it’s about before I pick it up. Like, my dad passed away this spring, and it was a random phone call on, like, a Monday night. And I saw a 216 number, which is the area code from Cleveland. I didn’t recognize it as my uncle’s. And I was like, “Mm hmm. OK.”
And he’d been doing OK. It wasn’t like I was always expecting this call. I mean, I guess you, in a sense, always do when your parents are getting up there and you’re not living with them. But I just had a feeling.
Martin: Yeah. It’s definitely happened to me before. But it always, strangely — even when they’re hard things — it makes me feel, I don’t know, more … more connected.
Hahn: That is exactly the word I was going to say. I took it as our, like, higher powers were connected. I was able to be there when he passed, which meant so much. And he passed away like three hours after we got there. So it was all supposed to unfold exactly as it was. But I think those moments do reveal that subconscious connection you have to a loved one.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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