BONUS The Friday Show - Pay (Some) Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain
Guest:fuck this okay hang on no hang on hang on hang on hang on hang on i'm switching the internet yeah you're uh you switch internet fucking horse shit uh okay ponders yeah it's like i you buy you buy things and you expect that they fucking work i know
Marc:Hey, Chris.
Marc:BMAC.
Marc:How you doing, man?
Marc:I did something kind of fun recently.
Marc:Do you ever watch Wheel of Fortune at your house?
Guest:Well, of course.
Guest:Not in years, but, you know, I've watched Wheel of Fortune many a time.
Marc:Gotcha.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, I was hoping you and your family, like, sit around, like, eating or just, like, finishing up eating and you watch it, but...
Marc:What happened to me is a contestant was on the show and that contestant was telling Pat that in her household, everyone picks a contestant on the show and they root for that contestant.
Marc:And whoever wins, then that person doesn't have to clean up the kitchen after dinner.
Guest:Oh, all right.
Guest:I like that.
Guest:Yeah, it's nice.
Guest:So we did this.
Guest:I mean, you could do it with any show.
Marc:It doesn't have to just be Wheel of Fortune.
Marc:It could be Jeopardy.
Marc:Oh, absolutely.
Marc:Which got me thinking.
Marc:So my wife and I did this.
Marc:Aaron's contestant fucking won, of course.
Marc:So my ass is in the kitchen cleaning up shit.
Marc:But when I was cleaning, I was like, you know, this is something that I can do and you can do.
Marc:But also, you know, for you, there's three of you.
Marc:So like...
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And like, it's kind of fun, you know, so you can all watch like Owen cleaning up the kitchen and everything.
Marc:No problem.
Guest:Now I know what you were talking about, about why you avoid gambling.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:This is like some degenerate behavior right here.
Marc:So.
Marc:My gambling addict brain kicked in and now I'm doing the dishes and I'm thinking, well, I can do this for Jeopardy too.
Marc:We just pick a contestant and if our contestant loses, I can go double or nothing during a wheel.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I don't know what the double would be.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:One person has to go down on the other, but I don't know.
Marc:It kind of works out.
Marc:But yeah, my gambling brain kicks in right away.
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, Double, you could just basically, like, you know, put the cleanup on the weekends when there's no Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy, you know?
Marc:Yeah, that's true.
Guest:You're like, I will go into a day where there's no show.
Guest:True, true.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I can't, like, Wheel of Fortune was one of those shows, though, like, once I hit a certain age, I just couldn't watch it anymore.
Guest:It was just too dumb.
Marc:Well, for me, for us, it's like Jeopardy and then, like, Wheel of Fortune's a nice cool down.
Marc:It comes on right after and everything.
Guest:That was always the Dennis Miller joke.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I actually think I almost used it as my yearbook quote.
Guest:No.
Guest:This was it.
Guest:This was the Dennis Miller quote.
Guest:There's a reason Wheel of Fortune is on right after Jeopardy.
Guest:Once you've been forced to choke down the foul-tasting tequila shot of your own abject ignorance, it's always nice to be able to bite into the refreshing lime wedge of other people's incredible fucking stupidity.
Marc:That is so goddamn true.
Marc:I have screamed at my television saying, what is this person thinking?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Have you ever watched that Desus and Mero clip of them watching the guy who just kept getting everything wrong?
Guest:Like, there is this one sad fucking guy who, like...
Guest:it's it is the most brutal like losing streak on wheel of fortune i think it was the college week so he was like representing i think like indiana state yeah so they're like oh this is the worst ad for that school ever like it was just like three in a row of like the puzzle is finished and he got it wrong no
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like it was done.
Guest:There was one, like it was, it was something about like a Greek.
Guest:It was the, the answer was Greek hero Achilles.
Guest:And he, it's had the whole thing on the screen, like no more letters to pick.
Guest:And he said, Greek hero Achilles.
Guest:Oh,
Guest:And they wouldn't give it to him.
Guest:Because they're like, you have to solve the puzzle.
Guest:You can't just read the thing and not know what you've solved.
Guest:You have to solve it properly.
Marc:I will say, pronouncing things correctly is kind of hard.
Marc:But Achilles, you should know what the Achilles is.
Marc:Well, also, he said it with his whole ass chest.
Guest:Like, he was like, Greek hero Achilles.
Guest:And they're...
Guest:That buzzer man is just like, especially like once is bad enough to get that buzzer on Wheel of Fortune.
Guest:You keep getting it three times and then like the woman next to you just takes the prize every time because it's just so clearly wrong like what you've done.
Guest:You know, they do the thing that's like the very quick one where they're like, nobody's asking.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But there's no requested letters.
Guest:They're just popping the letters on the puzzle.
Guest:So it was like, you could see that it was like working out to split second on the top.
Guest:And then there was a word at the bottom that had began with a D and like eight letters long.
Guest:And he goes split.
Guest:Split second dice spin.
Marc:He lives a very different life, Brendan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think the other one, man, I'm remembering all of these because they're so amazing.
Guest:The other one he got wrong was, it was, it was, the clue was person.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he got it down to world's fastest blank A blank.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Like there was an A in there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it was like a blank and a blank.
Guest:And he goes, world's fastest car.
Yeah.
Guest:And Jesus and Mera are screaming at the TV.
Guest:It says person!
Marc:It says a person!
Marc:Oh, that's great.
Marc:Transformers are people too, Brendan.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:He was thinking three-dimensionally.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So no, I did not get to play any Wheel of Fortune this week or ever in the last probably 20 years.
Guest:But no, I'm glad you did.
Guest:That's a good suggestion for our listeners.
Guest:What else?
Guest:What else is on your mind?
Marc:Well, when you're having fun, I like man Malcolm McDowell.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Him ending that conversation with Mark.
Marc:was a delight.
Marc:Like you, I mean, I knew by listening to it, I'm like, oh, this is great.
Marc:This guy is talking about his whole life.
Marc:Yes, he's talking about a show, but man, it's all encompassing.
Marc:It's just like, you know, I probably said it a whole bunch of times, but just like two people talking in a room and where happened to be like eavesdropping in on it.
Guest:And one of those guys happens to be like awesome at his life story.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I mean, the stories are just in fucking credible.
Marc:I mean, there's all this Beatles tea that he's fucking dropping.
Marc:Like Eric Burton was the Eggman.
Marc:And he was just throwing eggs.
Marc:That is wild.
Marc:Did you know that?
Guest:Also, just the fact that the very first thing, he's like, oh, yeah, me and Mick aren't talking anymore.
Guest:It was immediately like, oh, this guy's ready to go.
Guest:He's going to ditch.
Marc:He's going to empty the chamber.
Marc:There's no fucks about it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I also love that, oh, got to keep your TV queue up by being on Instagram.
Yeah.
Marc:Your Q zone.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:By the way, I looked, and he has 86,000 followers.
Marc:He said he had 75,000 followers.
Guest:Oh, it's creeping up.
Marc:Yeah, it's creeping up for sure.
Marc:And interesting that Malcolm would talk about Newfoundland and talk about this place, and it's not that pretty, and he mentioned all this stuff.
Marc:He didn't mention that they made a whole musical about this place called Come From Away.
Marc:It's the 90s.
Marc:Oh, that's Newfoundland.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's the 9-11 musical.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's a whole opening number about, you know, welcome to the rock.
Marc:And it's a, it's all about Newfoundland and everything.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So the, the idea of that was the, that's a musical about where people got diverted to on 9-11 when the planes got ground.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:And it's great.
Marc:I think you can watch it still on Apple TV.
Marc:I think so.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Fantastic.
Marc:Musical.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also they mentioned Macabre and Mrs. Miller.
Marc:Yeah, McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
Marc:Excuse me, I can't pronounce shit.
Marc:But I love that he asked, oh, was it a good print?
Marc:And like, right away, he quickly wanted to know that.
Marc:I love it.
Marc:I love it because, of course, it was probably not a good print.
Marc:What did Mark say?
Marc:He's like, oh, yeah, some film nerds were telling me something about the print and everything.
Marc:Dude, I bought this fucking movie from the Criterion Collection on 4K.
Marc:I'm pretty sure it's going to be a good fucking print for the rest of my life.
Marc:Like, what?
Guest:Yeah, you're going to look at it in the greatest way possible.
Guest:There's some people that you're never going to shake them with the film stock.
Guest:And I do admit that sometimes it's a great experience, but it's so hard to get a great print these days because unless you're dealing with a true archivist, someone who has taken care of these things,
Guest:You know, I think Tarantino, who we're going to speak about later, like has made that part of his life's work is to, you know, get these old prints and keep them in good condition.
Guest:Martin Scorsese is the same.
Guest:But like, oh, when you're relying on like these studios who don't give a shit about this stuff, it's just terrible.
Guest:I can't tell you how many bad experiences I've had going to, you know, revival house movie theaters where they're just using a terrible print that they have no options for.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's the one they're given.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And, you know, I'll actually steer away from it.
Marc:Like, oh, it's a 35 millimeter print.
Marc:Maybe, maybe I sit this one out.
Marc:Like, I just don't want to bother with it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I get angry because I sit there and I'm like, I really want to enjoy this experience.
Guest:And without, you know, this thing being all scratched up and jumping every, you know, 20 minutes or whatever.
Guest:And meanwhile, I could go, it's not a new movie.
Guest:It's a movie I could go put on the Blu-ray and it would look great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Also, Mark is starring in a Apple TV television show.
Marc:That's awesome.
Marc:Yeah, wait, we didn't talk about that yet?
Marc:No, it dropped like the day we were recording.
Marc:So, yeah.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:That's very exciting.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:people at Apple TV, whatever it is, were like, hey, we can just set you up with a room so you could do your podcast.
Marc:Was that like an actual thing that was being discussed by Apple?
Guest:Well, I don't know how much of a discussion it was.
Guest:I think it was a negotiation point of like, listen, if you want me to do this thing, I got to be able to do my show.
Guest:We have a commitment to this show.
Guest:that needs to get new episodes twice a week.
Guest:And I think they just thought, okay, so go do your show anywhere on the set or near the set or whatever.
Guest:And I just think they don't understand...
Guest:We have a very specific way of doing this, and part of it is making sure that people are in person with Mark, and it becomes harder to do that in Vancouver.
Guest:So he had to have the time built into his schedule so that he can, while shooting this thing, get back to LA every once in a while where we can book the show out during that time that he's scheduled to be back, and we'll stay on schedule with our production.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So Vancouver is where it's being filmed.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Cool.
Marc:I feel like a lot of shows get shot.
Guest:Well, that's the thing.
Guest:We'll be able to utilize some of that, but we don't want to be a slave to just what's going on in Vancouver.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:You got to be able to have the flexibility to say, all right, well, we're going to be back in LA for these two weeks in the summer.
Marc:Especially in the summer when there are a lot of people out doing publicity.
Marc:Gotcha.
Marc:Gotcha.
Marc:So were you involved in these discussions or was like Mark?
Guest:Not discussions, but just, you know, in terms of advice or what can work.
Guest:You know, I think Mark wanted to know from me.
Guest:Can we get this done if, you know, we have these restraints on us?
Guest:So, like, I would have to just, you know, do the kind of analysis of how long it's going to take and whether or not we can make it work.
Guest:And we absolutely can make it work.
Guest:We've done this before.
Guest:He's done it when he's shot.
Guest:glow now the difference is these things shoot in la so he's near home but it's also much more involving right uh but we've done stuff when he's been on long tours before we've done stuff when he's been shooting movies you shot the uh you know aretha franklin movie in atlanta so we had to get stuff done ahead of time there you know there's always things this might be the longest time commitment because it'll probably take five months four or five months for him to shoot 10 episodes wow
Guest:Yeah, I think that's what they're talking is four months at least.
Guest:So that's principal photography.
Guest:Gotcha.
Guest:Yeah, it'll be fine.
Guest:As far as I am concerned, it's not going to impact the production of the show at all.
Guest:And it's always good to have Mark doing things so that he can talk about them on the show.
Marc:I guess you guys have a contract with, uh, a cast and like you guys, was there ever like an idea of like, well, maybe we'll just end the show or like, okay, cool.
Guest:Just, just, just figure out.
Guest:Not like the opposite.
Guest:Well, if, if I can't make this work, like from Mark's perspective, if I can't make this work with the podcast, I won't take this.
Marc:Gotcha.
Guest:Gotcha.
Marc:Uh, dude, this Jimmy Carr episode, I personally have never heard of a Jimmy Carr.
Marc:No, no, no, uh, no shade.
Marc:Uh, I found him to be delightful and I found that episode to be such an adult episode of WTF.
Marc:Like I absolutely love it.
Marc:How did, how did you feel about it?
Guest:Well, that's interesting that you didn't know him because, I mean, I obviously know Jimmy Carr, you know, from his persona.
Guest:I don't think I've ever watched any of his standup.
Guest:And the interesting thing is, like, he takes these hits online as, like, a Ricky Gervais type of controversial figure for the sake of controversy.
Guest:At least that's how I've always seen him present it.
Guest:uh that like oh he's a guy who's gonna just try to say edgy things and just to try to poke at you which i've heard ricky gervais say that like absolutely that's why he does it like i've seen him in interviews saying like oh i just want to get people riled up or i want to get a reaction out of people and i found it was interesting to hear jimmy like if i had never heard that before about jimmy carr
Guest:Just listening to him explain to Mark like his philosophy about things, I would never have even predicted that there's a slight controversy around the type of jokes he does and says.
Guest:Like it sounded so well thought out and so well reasoned in terms of like he's saying I wouldn't like the joke that I was saying if it was accurate.
Guest:And I would make an attempt to change it.
Guest:And I'm listening to an audience and how they receive it and go, oh, that wasn't, that actually didn't land.
Guest:So let me try it again.
Guest:Like, I did get the feeling that it was all in the service of comedy and that he's willing to move and he's willing to...
Guest:make adjustments if something isn't working.
Guest:I never had any sense of the Jimmy Carr that I've seen projected out there by people who feel like he's one of these guys who goes after wokeness.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I didn't get that sense of it at all.
Guest:And maybe we're wrong.
Guest:Maybe that is out there and it's just he's presenting differently on the show when he's talking to Mark.
Guest:But I don't know.
Guest:I think usually Mark's a pretty good judge of character.
Guest:Mark had the same thought.
Marc:Yeah, I really appreciated that Jimmy said that he wasn't ready to be on WTF until now.
Marc:Oh, totally.
Marc:Like, you kind of have to be kind of mature and, like, to, you know, you kind of have to know yourself.
Marc:That's it.
Guest:It's the, you know, one million percent because...
Guest:The episodes where we have people on when they are kind of talking around who they are, those are the hardest ones for Mark.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Those are the ones where he's got to really work and drag something across the finish line.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and I'm not an Eckhart Tolle fan or ever bought into that sort of stuff, but I liked Jimmy Carr saying what he got from those, I think it's called Al-Anon meanings.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:When you detach with love.
Marc:I wish you the best, but I can't have you in my life.
Marc:Oh, I feel like you've said similar things.
Marc:Yes, I've never been to a meeting, but I have definitely been right on target with that.
Marc:So yeah, I felt seen in that moment.
Guest:I've never read any Eckhart Tolle either.
Guest:In fact, my only exposure to him is people on this show talking about it.
Guest:And the only one I always go back to, we just replayed it on the bonus material, was when Mark and Eddie Pepitone went on the road.
Guest:And they were talking about being on the airplane and Mark thought a guy was going to like...
Guest:suicide bomb the airplane because he was like chanting behind them and eddie was like i was just trying to listen to my eckhart tolle tapes and uh that's where i'm with the at with this and mark keeps interrupting me saying i think we're gonna die
Marc:Perfect contrast.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I was like, well, now I never want to listen to Eckhart Tolle because it won't have that yin and yang.
Marc:You need that other part while you're listening to it.
Marc:Yeah, you need the devil on your shoulder.
Marc:Yeah, totally.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:And then we got the Break Room Live bonus episode.
Marc:And those are always, I mean, these origins are great.
Marc:They are hard to listen to for me just because I knew of you guys and, you know, I knew you guys during this time.
Marc:So, yeah, it's always hard to hear, like, when Mark was, like, talking about his divorce and
Marc:That was hard stuff.
Marc:I mean, when he didn't want to sell his house because Boomer lived outside, that like tugged on my heart, man.
Marc:But yeah, like it was, it definitely got me.
Marc:I definitely have some questions for you.
Marc:So if, you know, whenever you want, I want.
Marc:You have questions for me about break room?
Guest:about well just your origin and well yes because we did this before when you when we did the uh wtf origins and i i made you provide your origin to our listeners because i feel like in a lot of ways people you know they just know you from being brought in here as you know the uh
Guest:the guy from Morning Sedition that we worked with.
Guest:And then we've talked with you on here a few times in the past, but it wasn't until getting you on the Friday show that I thought people really need to get to know you.
Guest:And yes, the last time we did this, it kind of put you on the spot and made you tell your origin story, which you did very graciously, but also said it wasn't the easiest thing in the world.
Guest:You said there was some things revisiting were somewhat difficult.
Guest:And so to reciprocate, yes, I said that the next time we did an origin episode, I would be happy to kind of meet you all the way with whatever it is about me that maybe I haven't revealed or talked about.
Guest:And I don't know what that is, to be perfectly honest, because it's been for a long time.
Guest:I have not ever really been
Guest:at the forefront of this show or any of our enterprises, but I do feel the amount of me that's out there has like a kind of slow and steady drip of revelations that especially people who are listening to Full Marin here,
Guest:And have either been listening for a long time or have been subscribed and listened to all these Friday shows.
Guest:I think you probably do have a good sense of, you know, at least what I've been doing with Mark and what I've been doing in a professional capacity as the producer of this show and leading up to this show.
Guest:So, yeah, other than that, I wouldn't know necessarily where to start with that.
Guest:And I guess that goes to the balls in your court.
Guest:Then where do we start?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I guess we should start the earliest that I have a question for you.
Marc:So, you know, I didn't know you in college.
Marc:You went to Fordham.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And your major there is theology.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Were you like a big Christ guy?
Marc:Why theology?
Guest:I was not a big Christ guy, although big Christ guy is like, that would be like an awesome band name.
Yeah.
Marc:Also, nothing wrong with being a big Christ guy.
Marc:I'm just asking.
Guest:No, I was not a big Christ guy.
Guest:I was a typical Irish Roman Catholic and raised in church and with all the accoutrements, but not really fully understanding what...
Guest:That was other than kind of like, you know, culturally and traditionally for within the family.
Guest:And so it's interesting.
Guest:I go to Fordham University in the Bronx, which is a Jesuit university.
Guest:Jesuits being a kind of liberal order organization.
Guest:of Catholic priests going back to the 1800s.
Guest:Very, very social justice-oriented order of Catholic priests.
Guest:So not diocesan priests, but Jesuits.
Guest:And the Jesuit schools, you know, there's a bunch of famous Jesuit schools around, and they...
Guest:They lean heavily on scholarship and academics as a kind of means to advancement, right?
Guest:That's another big hallmark of the Jesuits.
Guest:They are educators.
Guest:And so you go to a school that's like, oh, it's a Jesuit school, and that becomes like a badge, right?
Guest:You're like, ah, well, I'm at a Jesuit school.
Guest:I'm going to get a good education.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, that wasn't why I went to Fordham.
Guest:I went there.
Guest:I actually, in high school, I wanted to get into broadcast journalism.
Guest:That was my goal.
Guest:And I applied to a lot of schools that were the kind of famous schools for broadcast journalists.
Guest:Syracuse being the big one in the Northeast.
Guest:That has a big communication school.
Guest:And a lot of the people who, you know, at the time were known for becoming public journalists
Guest:broadcast journalists, a lot of them sports-related, Bob Costas, people like that, they went to the Syracuse School.
Guest:Newhouse School of Communications, that was called.
Guest:Fordham was like, that was like the end of the list.
Guest:I was like, I guess if I don't get into these other places, I'll go there.
Guest:And the other places all did not give me financial help, and Fordham did.
Guest:Gave me a lot of financial help on the basis of grades, too.
Guest:So it was an academic scholarship.
Guest:And I thought, well, that's something.
Guest:That's a leg up.
Guest:And then I went and visited the place and loved it and thought, all right, well, listen, I don't care what I'm doing here in terms of...
Guest:the, what I'm majoring in or my schooling, I'm in New York.
Guest:Like I'll be in New York.
Guest:I can go to school in New York and that's the center of the media universe generally.
Guest:And so I got there and I had the idea to major in like what you would consider communications or media studies, but they didn't let you declare a major for a year and a half.
Guest:That was another like big Jesuit thing was like,
Marc:That's so smart.
Guest:You can't come in here saying, I'm doing this.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think unless you were pre-med.
Guest:But if you were in there and you were like, I'm going to be an economics major or something, they're like, great, take the core curriculum first and then declare what you want to be and see if you change your mind, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Um, and so, yeah, it was by, by the, and like, I was like telling people who I was friends with, oh yeah, well, I guess when I declare my major, I'll be like a communications major.
Guest:And these were like people I was getting to know, they're smart people, people I thought were, were good, uh, role models and people to emulate.
Guest:And they were like, that's a stupid thing to do for you.
Guest:Like you're, you shouldn't be a communications major.
Guest:Like think of just anything else that's interesting to you and it's probably a better fit.
Guest:And it just wound up being like, I thought by that point in time that I was there, I want to get the most out of this education from an education standpoint, from the standpoint of, am I filling my brain with the humanities, right?
Guest:And so I think I just narrowed it down to...
Guest:All the main liberal arts there—English, language arts, I think putting history on that list, philosophy, and theology.
Guest:And it was just a combination of the courses I had already taken at that time.
Guest:Of them, the most interesting ones and the best teachers were in the theology department—
Guest:Also, you're at a Jesuit school.
Guest:So it's like it's like going to the place and doing the thing they specialize in.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's like you're at the restaurant where they are like, well, we do have cows outside.
Guest:So like if you want a steak here, this is like the best place to get the steak.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, I just thought like, look, if all things are equal, this is going to be like the most bang for my buck.
Guest:And I'm still just going to do all the things I wanted to do in terms of getting into broadcasting, which I did.
Guest:And actually wound up ending with a double major because I just took so many courses across both things and wound up having a media studies major as well.
Guest:And so that was it.
Guest:And, you know, I think the slight connection to my upbringing was like I was starting to feel alienated from the idea of religion and Catholicism in general and almost feeling resentful toward it.
Guest:Like, why was I raised with this thing that I don't even know I believe any of it?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And there was some aspect of wanting to major in it and study it that was like, this might give me some answers.
Guest:I don't mean answers into Jesus or divinity or any kind of spiritualism, but some answers in like, why did this happen?
Guest:Why was this thing foisted upon me?
Guest:And was it okay for that to happen?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is religion in the study of it, if you're studying theology, the study of religion, is there some answer you can pull from that that you're like, okay, I get it now.
Guest:I get why for thousands of years people have been teaching each other these things and adhering to these principles, and here's why it makes sense.
Guest:And I found that, in general, the best thing I've been able to take away from my theology education was applying it to interpersonal stuff.
Guest:It's probably a reason why I do a decent job working with talent.
Guest:It would be a similar thing if you were a psychology major.
Guest:Just understanding what people's wants and needs are, their fears, why they worry about things, why certain things can pacify them, why the earliest people writing religious texts were trying to make sure that people didn't kill each other or kill themselves or all of that.
Guest:So, you know, I definitely have been able to take that stuff away and incorporate it into my life.
Guest:And that wasn't an intention.
Guest:The intention was just get a good education.
Marc:And throughout this entire time, you're big into movies, right?
Marc:You are one of your college's, like, film critics, right?
Yeah.
Guest:I definitely did write for the school paper.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Me and Chris Rosen, our friend, were doing movie reviews for the paper.
Guest:I was, yeah, there wasn't a strong film community there.
Guest:No.
Guest:But yeah, if there was anything that, you know, if you were going to movies, I was going with you.
Guest:Or yes, I was big into movies.
Marc:Gotcha.
Marc:So like the last temptation of Christ, that movie comes out and like, did you watch that as a kid or, you know, no, no, I had never seen it when it came out.
Guest:I didn't even, I knew vaguely of it because of the controversy, but I didn't know why it was controversial or, or what the deal was.
Guest:And I remember in college, uh, freshman year of college, uh,
Guest:It was on Bravo.
Guest:Bravo made a big deal that they were going to show fully and unedited The Last Temptation of Christ.
Guest:And this was when Bravo was an arts network.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That was the whole thing.
Guest:That's why it's called Bravo, because it was like, you know, oh, we'll show operas and shit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Let's say Bravo.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Coming up after the Real Housewives of Jerusalem is the Passion of the Christ.
Guest:So far away from that.
Guest:But I just remember, you know, turning it on like out of, oh, yeah, I remember this, Last Temptation of Christ.
Guest:And it's as close to a life-changing movie as I had ever seen.
Guest:And I don't mean like life-changing because it made me major in theology or made me more or less religious.
Guest:I would say that it was...
Guest:portal into so many things at the same time.
Guest:It was an understanding of my Catholicism and the questions I had around it and how I always wished for someone to speak about it plainly and to kind of...
Guest:Deal with it like, oh, these guys are, you know, in biblical times, but they're using their just New York voices and they're not trying to, you know, put on some type of temporal air about it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's not supposed to exist in the in ancient time.
Guest:And it made me... A guy who I had been an admirer of, Martin Scorsese, it made me start to fully understand him and understand his aesthetic and understand where he was coming from in all his movies.
Guest:And to then do the tracing back in my mind and going like, oh, all of those movies that I love, Goodfellas and Taxi Driver, they're all religious.
Guest:There's a...
Guest:Strong religious underpinning to all of them because of this guy's Catholicism.
Guest:And so I just started to connect all that stuff.
Guest:And it was it's like I wouldn't say it's like my favorite movie, but it's definitely the movie that I can point to to be like, yeah, that's the one that made me start to think like you can get things out of this.
Guest:the same way you're getting things out of the greatest literature ever written, the same way you can get out of the greatest piece of classical music.
Guest:This is a more modern art form in that it had existed for less than 100 years at the time, but it was still worthy of deep, critical analysis that will help you apply the things you're learning from this to the rest of the world and how things operate.
Guest:if I had any real takeaway from four years of undergraduate school, which is the highest education I had, I never got my master's or anything.
Guest:It was, I spent that time learning how to think.
Guest:Like, I don't think I was, I always had good grades.
Guest:I always was a good student, you know, going back to high school, but it was that time in my life where I was like learning how to think, which probably became the most important aspect of my life.
Guest:you know, development as a person.
Guest:You know, it was only recently when I, I would say within the last five years, when I mentally moved away from this idea that, like, intelligence is the most important human attribute, right?
Guest:Like, I think...
Guest:And the way most people probably think, like, oh, you know, when you kind of measure the hierarchy of people, one of the things you're always looking up to is like, well, who's the smartest in the room?
Guest:Right?
Guest:Who's the person who is just like the biggest brain here?
Guest:It's, you know, it's why we revere Einstein, right?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And I think more recently in my life, I've started to disbelieve that, and I believe that the most important human attribute is judgment, which doesn't necessarily need intelligence, right?
Guest:It needs intelligence up to a point.
Guest:But I've seen some of the smartest people I know have terrible, terrible judgment.
Guest:And I always go back to the fact that there were people all around me at all times during my college years who were smarter than I was.
Guest:But I think what I was always trying to do was make sure I understood the score, right?
Guest:I'm thinking about things in an analytical way where even if I don't have the largest brain capacity, I'm going to be able to get through this by making the proper decisions.
Guest:And I think that's the kind of thing that has guided me in my professional career for sure.
Guest:Like I remember Jeff Ulrich, who was the head of Earwolf, founded Earwolf and Midroll and a bunch of podcasting companies.
Guest:And he said to me, you're the Barry Bonds of podcasting.
Guest:And I was like, what are you talking about?
Guest:Is he taking steroids?
Guest:And he was like, no, no, no.
Guest:You only swing at the pitches that you can hit.
Guest:And I was like, oh, huh.
Guest:Like I had never thought about that before.
Guest:And I was like,
Guest:That makes sense.
Guest:I guess that is my MO.
Guest:I only want to do something when I've properly thought it out and made the right call.
Guest:And it might be a bad call, might not work, but I can at least know that when I did it, I was 100% sure that's the lever to pull.
Guest:I'm going to pull that lever.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, you are probably the most thoughtful person I can think of and that I know.
Marc:And I will say just in contrast to me, I was just all reactive when I was a kid.
Marc:So, you know, to see the difference and like you are very thoughtful and you got this education.
Marc:And yeah, it shows with how, you know, just how good you are at your job and how successful you are.
Marc:So you're in college, you intern at WNYC, and you then hear about Air America, and then you start working at Air America.
Marc:Is that the timeline?
Guest:Generally, yeah.
Guest:I mean, the internship came out of college, and then the job came out of having that internship.
Guest:And I worked there through 2004, which was when we started Air America.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:right and so air america happens and you and mark get linked up and when does your time at air america end what's the point where air america said goodbye to you and you started working at sirius ah so i it was actually my own uh choice it was uh i i left to go to sirius and it was because when i came back from doing the mark maron show yeah uh
Guest:Air America was smart enough to know that I wasn't a guy to axe, right?
Guest:It would be good to keep me around.
Guest:But they didn't necessarily have anything for me to do.
Guest:The initial thing that they put me on was the Randy Rhoades show.
Guest:And I was totally...
Guest:wasted there because she had an executive producer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:His name was John Manzo and he, he, he knew the show front and back.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He didn't need me and he was happy to have me cause I was like a coffee break for him.
Guest:You know, like I, he just plugged me in and then, but it,
Guest:it left me feeling like I was in a no man's land.
Guest:Like I, what, what did my, what is even my job here?
Guest:So I started inquiring around and I don't know if you remember this, remember that air America started one of the ways they were staying afloat is they started licensing their airtime to outside groups.
Guest:And,
Guest:And it would seem like they were Air America shows, but they were not.
Guest:They were, like, fully paid for by other groups.
Guest:And so, like, our friend Dan Pashman, he started producing one called Workin' It that was, like, being paid for by one of the labor unions.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's a labor-oriented show.
Guest:So I started doing the same thing.
Guest:I started working with this group out of Washington, a think tank called Interfaith Alliance.
Guest:They were like a faith and freedom group that was pushing back on the religious right.
Guest:They wanted to be like a group that was more pluralistic and open to all groups and also very strong First Amendment defense.
Guest:It was very much a...
Guest:lefty civil liberties organization, but with a religious bent.
Guest:And so I thought, hey, I got a lot of, I got some bona fides for this, right?
Guest:And I started working with that, with the host, it was a guy by the name of Reverend Welton Gaddy, great guy, he passed away a couple years ago.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I had a really good time with that, but it was like so small bore.
Guest:Like it was just like, I just basically worked by myself.
Guest:Like I did this show once a week.
Guest:You and I would see each other at work there.
Guest:We barely ever talked about work because we were doing such different things.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it definitely felt like me, like for me, like it was just a place where I could kind of spin my wheels until I was ready to go somewhere else.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I got at this time, I also started getting these consulting gigs, which I could take because the job was a one one hour a week show.
Guest:So I had plenty of time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I was getting recommended to places by, you know, people I'd been working with at Air America or just whatever through the grapevine.
Guest:That people would be like, you know who you should have come listen to this show is this guy, McDonald.
Guest:And so like I'd get hired for a day or two to go into a place if they were like putting up a new show and I'd listen to it and watch them do it live or whatever and then give them notes on like what you could do to fix it.
Guest:And I remember I got brought in to do that for Martha Stewart Radio, which was on Sirius.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Guest:And it was for, oh, my God, it was a show hosted by Martha Stewart's daughter.
Guest:So I'm like, oh, my God, I'm going to touch the third rail here.
Marc:Show's great.
Marc:Just a different host.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, everything was good.
Guest:It was there, you know, it's really great, which you might want to do is fire Martha Stewart's daughter.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But no, it was, you know, it was fine.
Guest:I had no problem doing it.
Guest:And it was through that, that I got like referred to Jeremy Coleman, your old boss from WNEW.
Guest:who was there at Sirius.
Guest:And he brings me in to be a producer for some new channel that they were going to launch called Indie Talk.
Guest:And the way it was pitched to me was, this is going to be like YouTube for radio.
Guest:We're going to get involved in like, this is going to be like pirate radio, independent.
Guest:It's not bound by anything.
Guest:And we're coming up on an election year.
Guest:And so it's going to, we're going to just get, we get in the streets.
Guest:It's going to be with people.
Marc:Oh my God, you had to sit there with a straight face and be like, yeah, sounds good.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Well, I thought, you know, hey, let's try something different.
Guest:It's satellite radio.
Guest:Who cares?
Guest:Try whatever you want.
Guest:I get in there and they had already hired, before I walked in the door, a program director from like, you know, whatever random Detroit FM station he was from.
Guest:He had like just every bit of like...
Guest:buy the book structured radio brain that you could get.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, and so he loaded this channel up with like, he took it as Indie, the name of the channel was Indie Talk.
Guest:He took that as, we're just going to hire people who are not conservative and not liberal.
Guest:So this is going to be like centrist radio.
Guest:You know what that usually means?
Guest:What?
Guest:That it's going to be right wing.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:Because everyone who pretends I'm a centrist is a Republican.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so they hired as their flagship host, Ron Silver, who was a rabid neocon.
Guest:Jesus.
Guest:And yet he tried to present himself as above it all.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:I'm just looking at both sides.
Guest:I'm just asking questions.
Guest:I'm just asking questions, yeah.
Guest:Exactly, exactly.
Guest:I had a good relationship with Ron.
Guest:He was dying of cancer as he took the job.
Guest:So it was like...
Guest:It was very hard for me to push back on the idea that, A, he wasn't the right host for this.
Guest:B, he did have a political agenda.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it wasn't, you know, what the channel was purported to be.
Guest:And C, that, like, his skills were never going to improve, mostly because he wasn't going to live very long.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He knew this.
Guest:He had terminal cancer.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:So I took this job and immediately was like, well, this sucks.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I could do, put me where you want to play on me and I'll bloom.
Guest:That was always my mentality with it, right?
Guest:And so I just worked with Ron and I worked with a guy named Pete Dominick who went on to actually do, he now has a show himself called Stand Up With Pete.
Guest:And he had much more promise as a radio host and I was able to kind of do more creative things with him.
Guest:But those were the shows I was producing and then largely just helping out with the staff in general and
Guest:And my general feeling was this is a waste of my time.
Guest:Like I need to get out of this.
Guest:So as soon as Mark contacted me about the idea that they were asking him to come back to do break room, I just started maneuvering however I could to get back there and do it.
Marc:But so let's just hang on one second.
Marc:So Mark calls you up and says, hey, Air America, we're doing this again.
Marc:So here you are, you're newly married, right?
Marc:You've been married for like two years.
Marc:I want to say two and a half years.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I wasn't invited to the wedding, but it's fine.
Guest:But you here, no one from work was, that was very important.
Marc:We didn't invite anybody from work.
Marc:Gotcha.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So here you are, you're married, you're, you're making a life with your wife.
Marc:And this company that you've dealt with for years and know very well is this as fledgling as fledgling could be.
Marc:And here you're gayfully employed at Sirius Radio.
Marc:And this rat hole of a company calls you out of the fucking blue to come back.
Marc:Like...
Marc:And were you like, did you did that give you pause?
Marc:Be like, do I want to go back on this sinking ship when I have this shiny new, you know, position over here at Sirius for you?
Marc:Like, like, like, was there any pause that you and Don discuss it?
Marc:And like you but or were you just like, no, that that guy, that Marin guy, you know, he's my guy.
Guest:Yeah, it was instantaneous.
Guest:I would say I was orchestrating it.
Guest:Like, when he told me about it, I was like, oh, well, get me over there.
Guest:Like, I'd like to do that.
Guest:I mean, I made sure, like, financially, it would be worth my while.
Guest:And that was the other thing.
Guest:We knew, like, this guy is a money mark.
Guest:Right.
Guest:if it's not going to last he's at least going to pay for it we're not going to like be bouncing checks like the last time right right and you know uh that was what was important to me was just like if you can assure me that i'll come back and i'll get paid what i'm making now it's serious here and like so this won't be a financial risk to me might be a a security risk right like in terms of future job security yeah
Guest:I didn't have any hesitation to do it, mostly because it had been what I was trying to do for the last two years, find a place to do something with Mark that I thought made us do our best work.
Guest:And I did not know that Sam was going to be pulled into it.
Guest:I did not know that...
Guest:You know, all the all the restrictions that we were going to be under just on the nature of how Air America was limited at the time.
Guest:But I also don't think that stuff would have mattered if I did know I wanted to do it.
Guest:So I went back and did it.
Marc:Gotcha.
Marc:So.
Guest:air america parts ways with you and mark and i know and and this happened fired me fired fired not fire mark yeah i mean like i was i was you know i i never say the term laid off i hate that term i think it's bullshit but i was fired um you know in and had no contract or anything mark was under a contract for a year so i was just on you know what do you whatever you call that voluntary employment
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they, they, you know, they terminated me because the position was over.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, uh, and they didn't give me anything else within the company.
Guest:So I just knew I'm done, but Mark's got another month plus in the building.
Guest:And that was, and we had already been thinking of starting a podcast when we saw the writing on the wall, you know, in the last final weeks of doing break room, that was when I started to gather the, the info that I needed, the Intel on doing a podcast.
Guest:By the time I was fired, did the last show of Break Room, I just hit the ground running with like, let's build this podcast out.
Marc:And that last show was July 17th, I want to say, 2009.
Marc:And I know this because you sent an email to your friends where on Wednesday, July 15th of 2009.
Marc:And this email, I'm just going to read it because I dug it up.
Marc:And it's, hi, friends.com.
Marc:My show got canceled today, so I'm out of work as of Friday afternoon.
Marc:If you hear of any jobs opening up in any places of business, please give me a shout.
Marc:Since I have no other marketable skills beyond broadcasting, I can also come and read you bedtime stories and things like that.
Marc:Thanks all.
Marc:So...
Guest:i i remember getting that email and i i were we friends then like we're like would i sure yeah and like i hope i consoled you and everything but oh everybody we we you know the best thing about that was every friend that i probably sent that to reached out and i actually for the first time in probably five years got to go like hang out with people because i wasn't working like there was a month where i was able to finally see folks and socialize so that was great
Marc:Gotcha.
Marc:So at this point, when you got fired, what happens to you?
Marc:You, I know that you start the seed of this podcast and it gets, by the way, 30,000 listeners right off the bat.
Marc:It's amazing.
Marc:But you also work, you go back to work at Sirius?
Guest:Yeah, because that email that you just read, I didn't remember this until you read it.
Guest:One of the people that's on that email is the guy I mentioned, Pete Dominick, who worked over at Sirius.
Guest:An hour later, I got an email from Jeremy Coleman.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:After sending that email.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:So Pete got it.
Guest:Pete forwarded it right to Jeremy.
Guest:And Jeremy contacted me within an hour.
Guest:I remember saying basically as part of my story when I got this next job that like, oh yeah, I was really only unemployed for an hour.
Guest:Because I got this email from Jeremy and Jeremy has me come in to interview as Rosie O'Donnell's producer for this new radio show that she's going to start up on Sirius.
Guest:So, yeah, I spent maybe about a month and a half or so doing interviews and meeting with the people that were going to be.
Guest:Doing production on Rosie.
Guest:It was like Rosie's producer, Jeanette Barber, from her TV days and Rosie herself.
Guest:And I think I got like officially hired there maybe in like the end of August, like probably a week before we started WTF.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:I'm working with The Rosie Show, getting that off the ground, and in the meantime, getting WTF off the ground at the same time.
Guest:And I think The Rosie Show launched on November 1st of that year, 2009.
Guest:So it was like WTF, September 1st, Rosie Show, November 1st.
Guest:And I was always doing both.
Guest:That because the podcast wasn't a job.
Guest:It wasn't something you could do to make a living off of.
Marc:So...
Guest:you're at Sirius you're now producing Rosie's show was were you ever tempted to try to rope Mark into Sirius like was that I had been trying that in that time period where I was working with Ron Silver like and I got zero reception to specifically from Jeremy like Jeremy told me like why basically like yeah well what you're pitching has never worked on radio so why would we do it
Guest:Basically, he was saying like, you know, this idea of like a left style comedy show, you know, that's driven around this comedian's personality, but it's not like a morning zoo style thing like Howard Stern was.
Guest:He was like that.
Guest:There's no there's no market for that.
Guest:So I wouldn't want it.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So you're now doing WTF and producing the Rosie O'Donnell show.
Marc:What was your life during, like, what was your day to day, you know, doing that?
Marc:Were you working in the morning at Rosie and then working, you know, on the podcast at night?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Rosie was a morning gig.
Guest:I think I would get up around 5.30, 6, something like that.
Guest:We'd go to Rosie's house.
Guest:She lived in upstate New York, so we'd drive up there.
Marc:Wait, upstate?
Marc:Wait, and you live in Brooklyn at the point, right?
Marc:At this point?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't want to give away exactly where she lived.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, right, right.
Guest:It wasn't that far upstate.
Guest:I think it's safe to say Rockland County, which is, if you know New York, it's not that far.
Guest:It's the opposite side of Westchester on the other side of the river.
Marc:You weren't going to Albany every morning.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Correct.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:It was going up to Rockland County.
Guest:So yeah, we'd get there probably maybe around eight o'clock or so.
Guest:And I would, I think the show was, if I'm remembering right, 10 to 12.
Guest:So I do a live show from 10 to 12 and then, you know, work for the rest of the day, go back to the serious offices, do other work that was needed to be done for the show.
Guest:And yeah, I think I'd probably generally be done at like four or five o'clock, like a normal time.
Guest:and anytime i needed to do podcast work i just did it then and that was the way it was for about four and a half years four and a half years well yeah because it wasn't just rosie it was like once i left rosie i went to msnbc and i was doing that was even more restrictive because when i signed with msnbc in 2010 uh you had to sign a non-compete oh that's working elsewhere oh
Marc:Okay, so I thought it was Rosie and Sirius that said you had to non-compete, but okay, it was MSNBC.
Guest:Gotcha.
Guest:And when I was doing with Rosie, nobody even knew what the podcast was yet.
Guest:It was so small.
Guest:When I got hired at MSNBC, they knew about it, and they said, you can't keep doing that.
Guest:It's one or the other.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:So I was like,
Guest:I was like, well, I'm not stopping the podcast, but I just don't have to publicly be a part of it.
Marc:Oh, I see.
Guest:So that was why I told Mark, you know, you essentially don't have a producer.
Guest:You just don't do... You do this by yourself, and that's that.
Guest:Don't talk about me.
Guest:Don't put me in any articles.
Guest:Nothing like that.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:It's kind of shitty of MSNBC, but I guess I understand.
Guest:Yeah, no, I actually fully understood it.
Guest:I didn't complain because it's like...
Guest:Especially, look, any news organization, but especially one that's doing kind of, in some ways, advocacy journalism.
Guest:They're presenting a particular ideological point of view, and they're not shying away from that.
Guest:That if you have some type of... You basically paint a target on yourself by doing this.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So if I'm representing them as a company, but I'm doing work elsewhere that's outside of their control, that could be terrible trouble for them, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Let's say, let's say something happens and it's like, becomes a headline in somewhere that wants to knock them down.
Guest:Right.
Guest:MSNBC producer does XYZ on crazy ass show.
Guest:So, um, yeah, I fully got it.
Marc:So you snuck around for four years doing this podcast.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was 20, 2013 was the end of 2013 was when I,
Guest:uh, stopped doing the MSNBC show.
Guest:I went from doing Keith Olbermann's show to Ed Schultz's show.
Guest:And then my last stint there was with Chris Hayes.
Guest:Uh, and then, but I kept in contact with them and did consulting work with them afterwards and actually, uh, helped Chris start up his podcast, uh, which is still going today.
Guest:Why is this happening?
Yeah.
Marc:Oh, that's great.
Marc:That's a good podcast.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, that fills in some blanks, I think, for me and for everyone else.
Marc:But if you have a question for Brendan about his origin, please feel free to click on the link that is in this episode.
Guest:Listen to that.
Guest:You didn't even have to go to school for it.
Guest:You are becoming a broadcaster, Chris LaPresta.
Marc:I mean, you hear it enough times.
Marc:It just gets ingrained in your veins.
Marc:There you go.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, the one thing we don't have to do here is toss to commercial.
Guest:Otherwise, I would feel like you'd be very good at that, too.
Guest:We're resetting.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Although I do think we should reset right here in the sense that if you haven't been listening to past months and maybe you're a new subscriber or you just haven't checked in with the Friday show, we have been doing a monthly look at Quentin Tarantino's films.
Guest:And next week we will do the movie Jackie Brown.
Guest:which is the third film in the third month that we're doing this.
Guest:And before we get into the movie of Jackie Brown next week, I want to talk about what was happening with Quentin Tarantino in between the time that he was the new director of Pulp Fiction that nobody had really heard about, and when Jackie Brown came out.
Guest:Because those are some very substantial years that I think...
Guest:tell a lot about not just Quentin Tarantino as a person in the culture, but about how his movies were received then and are received now.
Guest:So if you're interested in that, go back and look into some of the things that Quentin Tarantino was doing in the mid 90s.
Guest:But definitely, if you want to be right in the thick of the conversation Chris and I are going to have, go watch Jackie Brown.
Guest:It's on Peacock right now.
Guest:You can watch it whenever you want.
Guest:And that's what we will talk about next week.
Guest:And until then, I'm Brendan, and that's Chris.
Guest:Peace.