BONUS Good Morning, Geniuses! - Kris Lo Presto
Marc:Good morning, geniuses.
Marc:Philosopher kings and queens.
Marc:Working class heroes, progressive utopians.
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:It's six past the hour here on Air America Radio.
Marc:And this is Morning Sedition.
Morning Sedition.
Guest:Hey, man.
Marc:How's it going?
Guest:It's going good.
Guest:You know, we've been spending some time revisiting our past, talking about Air America, morning sedition.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We've done a lot, but I think it's probably helpful to have other people's perspectives on this as well.
Guest:And so, you know, I've asked people who worked with us back then or otherwise had some interaction with us if they'd be willing to come on.
Guest:A lot of people said yes.
Guest:Actually, I mean, I shouldn't make it sound like anyone said no.
Guest:Everyone said yes based on who I asked.
Guest:Let's invite into the conversation someone who said yes right away.
Marc:It's like this is your life.
Marc:K-Lo.
Marc:Chris Wapresto.
Marc:What's happening, Mark?
Marc:K-Lo the Costco-ho.
Marc:Back in the day.
Marc:Explain that.
Marc:What does that mean?
Marc:That was the nickname I gave to him.
Marc:I don't remember what it was based on.
Marc:But look at you.
Marc:You're all grown up now.
Marc:What are you, 28 now?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Just turned 28.
Guest:No, I used to come in every day with a cup of noodle soup.
Guest:Yeah, all right.
Guest:And you'd be like, what the fuck?
Guest:What is this?
Guest:Like, are we not paying you enough?
Guest:And it was just because I went to Costco a whole bunch.
Marc:And you bought it by the box, like 100 soups?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, my lunch for three months.
Marc:Yeah, I just remember, mostly I remember you in, I don't know if it was a mild state of anger and panic or it was just your style of board hopping, but it always seemed to be, we always seem to be on the edge of something.
Guest:Well, I mean, you weren't exactly the easiest of hosts that I've ever encountered.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You were like the Tasmanian devil every morning.
Guest:You would pop into the studio like the Kool-Aid man with your Dunkin' Donuts in one hand, your stool and papers in the other, and be like, what the fuck?
Guest:What are you doing?
Yeah.
Guest:And I just had to try to hold it all together.
Guest:And all your other producers, they would all leave.
Guest:And the door would shut.
Guest:And I'm in the room with you, a caged animal.
Guest:And I was just trying to survive.
Marc:So that was it?
Marc:You were like just managing my insanity?
Marc:I was causing you that panic?
Guest:No, I mean, you know, we had a producer that was like trying to micromanage me.
Guest:Oh, that's right.
Guest:You know, let's put down, I want you to write down all the music you're going to be using for today.
Guest:And I'm just like, I'm not going to do that.
Guest:Like, thanks.
Guest:Well, let's explain what Chris's actual job was.
Guest:You know, I think we would say your title was Bored Up, but it was, what were you hired as?
Guest:Like, was it like
Guest:technical operations or something.
Guest:Do you have any memory of that?
Guest:I think technical producer.
Guest:I think my resume, my resume says producer.
Guest:So, well, I mean, that is a producer and that's the thing.
Guest:That's the funny thing of you bringing up like Jonathan, who is our EP, who came from television.
Guest:And if, you know, I've, I've had experience in both.
Guest:And if you're in a television control room, like everything is, is programmed to the minute.
Guest:You have a line producer that's literally like, everybody, you have 60 seconds right now and I can't spare a second.
Guest:So all of these things are, as Chris said, micromanaged.
Guest:In radio, a board op specifically is a producer because you're vibing with the show.
Guest:You have to judge on the fly what works here, what works there.
Guest:OK, we're coming up against a hard break.
Guest:I should start to bring music up now and get these guys out of the segment.
Guest:Like, I think that that's probably where you came from.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like you were working at WNEW on a on a show that basically needed you to work that way.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a it was a show called Ron and Fez.
Guest:And I was the board up.
Guest:I was a sidekick, all those things.
Guest:And so that was the radio that I came from.
Guest:And when I came to Air America, it's like the CNN people are like, all right, well, this is going to be like like NPR and CNN.
Guest:I was like, all right, cool.
Guest:I've never listened to NPR in my entire life.
Guest:So this is going to go great, guys.
Guest:Yeah, Ron and Fez was basically a programming block that went along with Opie and Anthony, who were in the mornings, right?
Guest:Ron and Fez were in the afternoons.
Guest:Ron Bennington, who people listening to this now, you can still hear him.
Guest:He's over at Sirius, and he does interview shows that people like.
Guest:Yeah, he's interviewed me.
Guest:Yeah, you've been on with Ron.
Marc:Yeah, I've been on with Ron a couple times.
Marc:But yeah, but Chris brought the, you know, he brought that whole world in.
Marc:That was what we needed.
Marc:He balanced it out.
Marc:He sort of eventually defined the tone of the show because he gave us a window into being able to do that when he started picking his own musical cues and get on the mic occasionally.
Marc:And we all started to gang up on our producer who was like, and it just became, it rounded off the whole Boys Club morning show environment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Chris, you didn't have to wind up boxing strippers or whatever you were doing on any W. That's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Boxing strippers.
Guest:That was not fun.
Marc:You never knew.
Marc:That's why I hated doing ONA.
Marc:It's just sort of like, what am I going to be part of?
Marc:How is this?
Marc:What kind of crime is going to happen here?
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, but when we first got there, Jonathan had those sheets with minute to minute, every minute.
Marc:Remember the pieces of paper that had minute one, minute two, minute three?
Guest:I was honestly floored by that.
Guest:I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.
Guest:That just sounds like a real bad time.
Marc:Well, it was because of you two that I came up with that great joke that I've used for other people.
Marc:When you...
Guest:when you and larson used to have those horrible arguments i said those two have been fighting for centuries since the beginning of time yeah from the beginning of time i remember that it's just the two types of dude well chris i remember you i remember you coming in like if it wasn't the very first thing you said to us it was maybe the second that you were like hey you know hey i'm chris i uh i come from staten island across the guinea gangplank
Guest:And I was like, oh, I know who this guy is.
Guest:But I think what's also – it's interesting.
Guest:It's like we knew you came from WNEW.
Guest:We knew what they were doing over there.
Guest:Like it wasn't exactly the same as what we were planning to do.
Guest:But the interesting thing was like you – I guess I wonder like –
Guest:Where did you feel you fit in with our crew and with what our sensibility was?
Guest:Because you and I are still friends.
Guest:We share a lot of the same interests and that.
Guest:I guess I wonder, when did you notice, oh, I can work with these guys.
Guest:This isn't a bunch of stuffy NPR news stuff.
Guest:There were there were hints of that when like, do you guys remember when Reagan died and we did dead Reagan Monday?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:That that was like a window to to what the show would become.
Guest:And I loved it.
Guest:We were taking calls and we were like celebrating it.
Guest:And then we got a call from the higher ups being like, hey, yeah, you know, you guys got to shut it down.
Guest:It was interesting.
Guest:It was like it was we had done a few weeks with the three of us, you know, three hosts, rather Mark and Sue and Mark Riley.
Guest:And it was, you know, we all didn't like it.
Guest:But she was not there for the Reagan thing, which I think kind of really opened our eyes to what the show would be like if it was just the, you know, Mark and Mark as the hosts.
Marc:But that was the day, man.
Marc:I mean, you remember that day, Chris, because it was like she had to go back to England for something.
Marc:And I just looked at everybody.
Marc:I'm like, this is it, guys.
Guest:I remember you saying this so much.
Guest:Again, the producers would leave and it would just be Mark and Mark and myself.
Guest:And Mark, you'd be like, dude, this is it.
Guest:This is the show, man.
Guest:And it would just be two of us talking.
Guest:I'd be like, yeah, yeah, I guess.
Guest:I mean, I just started here.
Guest:But yeah, let's do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when did Mark the Shark come into play?
Guest:Because that was, for me, my favorite bit that we've ever done.
Guest:That was our idea of what Mark would sound like if he was a conservative radio host.
Guest:And it would be that the way we'd set it up is someone would call in, I think it was usually Kent Jones, and would say something that triggered Mark the Shark, who was the alternative personality of Marin, that would come out and just do a kind of stereotypical rah-rah conservative radio show.
Guest:34 Papillon, Mark Maron here with Mark Riley.
Guest:Good morning.
Guest:Air America Radio's morning sedition program.
Guest:Shortly we'll be talking to David Halberstam, the author, journalist, historian.
Guest:But let's just take this quick call from Ted, Nebraska.
Guest:Ted.
Guest:Good morning.
Guest:The left's continued attacks on Tom DeLay are despicable.
Guest:I can't believe you would assault him, this great man.
Guest:Oh, no, it's happening.
Guest:Oh, no, I hate when... Help me, Riley.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:Oh, no, it's happening.
Guest:My thoughts are starting to change.
Guest:I'm becoming him.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:And now, live from Radio Halliburton, it's right and early.
Guest:The conservative's way to wake up with Mark the Shark, Marin.
Guest:Good morning, neocons.
Guest:That's right, it's ten past the hour here on Radio Halliburton.
Guest:Halliburton submitting to the iron will of a corporation never felt so good.
Guest:Hello.
Guest:So the neocons are meeting in Washington to get rid of those activist judges.
Guest:Look out, liberals.
Guest:Here comes the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration.
Guest:Oh, oh, oh, yeah.
Guest:It's good to pound the gavel.
Guest:Case dismissed.
Guest:So the JCCR has got judicial tyranny in the crosshairs.
Guest:Say your prayers, Judge Pinko.
Guest:and i think you had to run a lot of the board on that right chris like there were there was like a script with sound effects and cues and you just have to like go down and and and do it in real time like we did it live yeah we did it live which was honestly when you listen to them it's kind of amazing that we did it live i mean mark you you went to two different characters uh at times that was like kent jones wrote those and
Marc:And, and I just, I just remember like we were doing so much stuff live because how much time did we have?
Marc:We weren't producing not much.
Marc:I don't remember us really producing that much for like the next day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Chris was not a part of that process because what we should tell people here was that you would come in for our show, which started at 6 a.m., but you stayed on as the producer.
Guest:And refresh my memory for this.
Guest:I don't think it was like this the whole time, but you started producing Unfiltered, which was the show that came on after us initially with Liz Winstead, Rachel Maddow, and Chuck D. And then it just became Rachel's show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you were producing those six hours as the board op straight, right?
Guest:And it wasn't supposed to be that way at first, right?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:At first, they had their own board op, and they were just not great.
Guest:So they wanted me to come over to their show.
Guest:And at the time, you know, I had met you all.
Guest:I liked you all.
Guest:And I didn't want to jump ship.
Guest:So we brokered a deal where I would just come in.
Guest:I would slide in at like 530 and just be on the air until noon.
Guest:And that was my day.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's the trade-off I did.
Guest:And it was bittersweet because, A, I got to have a semi-normal life.
Guest:I wasn't waking up at 3 a.m.
Guest:like the rest of you.
Guest:But I wasn't there to really be in the process of writing bits and just shooting the shit.
Guest:So I kind of missed out on all of that.
Marc:It was so fun, man.
Marc:I cannot imagine the almost drug-like crash
Marc:of like heading into unfiltered like just after three hours with that loony bin that we were making just even when we were doing serious shit it was so amped up and then just kind of like then liz winstead walks into the room
Guest:Well, Liz was I mean, I didn't really know Liz.
Guest:I mean, I understood that she created, you know, The Daily Show.
Guest:But like Chuck D is like royalty, like he's a Hall of Famer and stuff.
Guest:But like there would be times where, you know, I would be, my back is turned to all of you as I'm manning the board.
Guest:And I hear just like some envelopes opening.
Guest:And I'm like, what is this?
Guest:And it's Chuck opening his mail while doing radio.
Guest:And like, I'm like, can you...
Guest:Can you maybe wait for that?
Guest:And then Rachel is there doing like the hard lifting.
Guest:And God bless her.
Guest:Rachel is the best.
Guest:But yeah, just the most focused and most professional person.
Guest:And the difference between your two shows was night and day.
Guest:You're one of the rare people on Earth, Chris, who got to know Rachel Maddow.
Guest:Most people don't know her.
Guest:I don't even mean just the people who watch her on TV and that.
Guest:People who work with her, who love her.
Guest:I'm not denigrating her in any way.
Guest:But she's a very private, very kind of Spock-like presence in most people's lives who work with her.
Guest:And like, I feel like you had a very close relationship with her just from a position of trust.
Guest:Like she trusted you as the person bringing her mic up and down and making sure things were happening on cue.
Guest:Like, oh my God, once that show became her own show, she produced it like a television show.
Guest:That's how she got her TV show.
Guest:she prepped it through the radio show.
Marc:Like that was her training ground for it.
Marc:You just used to see her like hours before, you know, with all the stacks of paper laid out, all the pieces of the show laid out, you know, and then she was putting it together for hours, for hours.
Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was a perfectionist even back then.
Guest:And yeah, when Morning Sedition got canceled, her show moved to like, I want to say like 5 a.m.
Guest:to like 7.
Guest:5 to 7.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she like, she was so sweet.
Guest:She like brought me like a bottle of like some booze and was like, would you please be my, you know, board op for this?
Guest:And I was like, absolutely.
Guest:Like, yeah.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And yeah, we've yeah, we had a great working relationship.
Guest:She's just hardcore into the news and like just wants to get shit really perfect.
Guest:And if it's not perfect, man, she bums her out.
Guest:And I'm kind of the same way.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:So it was just the two of you, basically?
Guest:No, there was Vanessa Peel.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I remember her.
Guest:And at some point, there was Nazanin Rafsanjani.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, she was great.
Guest:I think she was married to someone at This American Life or something.
Guest:Yeah, she still is.
Guest:Alex Bloomberg.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he went on to do to start for all the connections out there that people are making.
Guest:He started Gimlet, the podcast network.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And she has a TV show, a failed TV show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There was a TV show about her life.
Guest:About him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Zach Braff played him.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And some Iranian woman.
Guest:We were like, that's Dazanin.
Guest:Some weird, weird thing where an actor is playing a person we know.
Guest:That's so strange.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What the hell was that even called?
Guest:It was like his name was like Alex, I think.
Guest:And it was called like Smart Alex or something like it was.
Guest:It was not great.
Guest:Michael Imperioli was on it.
Guest:Oh, well.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's a weird side tangent.
Guest:Yes.
Yeah.
Guest:Nazanin, former producer of The Rachel Matter Show.
Guest:But yeah, you stuck with it.
Guest:And, you know, it was never going to be the same for us, like, you know, to go on and move on to some other type of venue, whether it was when we did the show out in L.A.,
Guest:or when we did the Break Room Live show on video, and then even this podcast, we knew that the end of Morning's Edition meant the end of a certain type of thing we were producing.
Guest:And we never really had it again of this studio crew where you and anyone else that was involved with the show was a big part of that.
Guest:I mean, Mark, you tried to kind of manufacture that a little bit when we did the show out in LA, and we had to record it at that Burbank studio.
Guest:And, you know, you called the guy Laughing Andy, who was running the board.
Marc:I saw him the other day.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:He owns the place now, right?
Marc:Laughing Andy got straight, got wise and bought the place.
Marc:And Mark Grau works for him sometimes now.
Guest:Oh, no kidding?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The guy whose name is on the building is like one of his employees?
Guest:Oh, that's funny.
Marc:Yeah, it's just like, you know, but when I knew Andy, he was just like high all the time.
Marc:He was kind of chubby.
Marc:And now he's this lean fucker, clear-headed, on top of shit.
Marc:Just like you, Chris.
Guest:Everybody grew up.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:Being called fat by you was super fun.
Guest:You would make fun of me going bald every day.
Guest:I was the total bully.
Guest:I gave everyone nicknames.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Big Goliath, little Goliath.
Guest:You know, what's great about it is Chris would react back then as he is right now where he would just laugh at it.
Guest:And like, you know, it's so funny, Chris, you have said to me multiple times that like, we'll listen to some old clip of the show and you're like, oh, I hear my bad laugh there.
Guest:And it's like, you have no idea then how invaluable that was.
Guest:Like, just like a guy with a laugh
Guest:No matter what that laugh is, is the lifeblood of a show, as long as it's authentic.
Guest:And yours was authentic.
Marc:But was there a moment there where you wouldn't laugh on the mic and we had to make you laugh on the mic?
Marc:I feel like there was.
Marc:Where you were like hiding your laughter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm definitely muffling it.
Guest:And you guys were like, Hey, no, no, like, please.
Guest:Like if you want to laugh, just laugh.
Guest:Well, then, then there was a situation where we moved to another building and Chris was no longer in the room with you guys.
Guest:He was in the control room with us.
Guest:And what we had to do is make sure we left the mics on in the, in the control room, which made it harder to produce the show.
Guest:I think we did a lot of like on the fly.
Guest:You know, I, I had a,
Guest:a button that i could turn on and off my own mics and that but you know we really wanted chris's mic to be open and yet i still had to be taking you know phone calls and getting guests on the line and stuff and producing the show out of the control room so it got a little trickier well that way i know why all that happened because i couldn't adjust and i needed i you know i was always playing to chris or playing to the guys in the booth who i couldn't really hear you
Marc:You know, but I would see Pashman.
Marc:I could see Pashman and Brendan laughing, but I was always playing to the room.
Marc:So I think the issue when we moved to the new place was literally like, I got to hear something or how am I going to pace myself?
Marc:I mean, this is a collective here and that's what we're doing.
Marc:So we've got to fix this.
Marc:I was really, the loyalty thing was this, like I was very protective or maybe too attached to,
Marc:to the nature of the whole situation.
Marc:I did not like when things changed or people came and went, you know.
Guest:I don't love those days of sitting around the cubicle and having people like Mark Green's assistant.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:Mark Green.
Guest:I got to tell you the story because you were not around, Mark.
Guest:You had already left or, you know, it was when you were out in L.A.,
Guest:And, yeah, this it had become this very sterile cubicle farm and all the kind of fun shows were gone.
Guest:It was, you know, this was now the Mark Green era where where Mark Green, Mark Green's brother, Steve Green, was a real estate magnate, a kind of a Trump light guy in New York City.
Guest:He bought the station when after its third round of Troubles.
Marc:I don't even remember that.
Guest:He basically bought it as a toy for Mark Green to use to try to get himself back into politics.
Guest:Mark Green was a failed mayoral candidate after being a city government guy in New York City.
Guest:And he gave Mark Green a show.
Guest:Do you remember when Danny Goldberg was in charge of Air America?
Guest:He forced Mark Green on us.
Guest:We had to put him on every Wednesday or something.
Guest:And so then we made.
Guest:And he sucked.
Guest:Oh, he was the worst.
Guest:He was so boring.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And we were forced with him and we put him on and then we were like, OK, that was fine.
Guest:We'll do him once a month or something.
Guest:And Goldberg was like, no, it has to be every week.
Guest:So we were like, OK, fine.
Guest:And we pushed him to the last segment of the show and gave him like maybe three minutes or something.
Guest:And he called up and complained.
Yeah.
Guest:And was like, to the bosses, was like, you didn't give me enough time.
Guest:We're like, all right, fuck, well, what do we do about this?
Guest:And then he emailed in a list of credits of how he wanted us to introduce him every time that he was on.
Guest:And it was Pashman, I'm going to give this full credit to Pashman, took that thing and was like, all right, fine, you fucker.
Guest:You want to get introduced every time you're on?
Guest:Oh, yeah, man.
Guest:he made he made this intro bumper that was supposed to sound like a monster truck rally and he loved it yes well the entire intention was to to play it to like piss him first piss him off and make it so that he didn't come around anymore but also to eat up time because the intro took like two minutes and it
Guest:And it was like, you know, each and every Wednesday, Wednesday, it's Mark Green.
Guest:And it had like Welcome to the Jungle playing in it and cannons going off and shit.
Guest:And when it first started playing, we were like, oh, here it is.
Guest:He's in the studio.
Guest:And it's like, all right, we're going to come back from break and we're going to play your intro, Mark Green.
Guest:And it plays.
Guest:And we're just sitting there like putting our heads.
Guest:a head and a hand, like faces away from the window so that he wouldn't see us.
Guest:And then it starts playing like, oh, he's the Goliath of Gotham, the monster of Midtown.
Guest:And we look in through the glass and he's sitting there listening to it.
Guest:He's got this like look on his face and then he starts nodding and like a slight grin comes over his face.
Guest:And he's like, yeah, yeah, I'm Mark Green, man.
Yeah.
Guest:I think he even gave us a thumbs up.
Guest:Yeah, gave a thumbs up through the glass.
Guest:And then the next week he came back, we did it again.
Guest:And he's like, you know, my wife is turned on by that.
Guest:He was still the most boring guy ever, but we at least had turned him for two minutes of whatever eight minutes we were stuck with him into a character.
Guest:And it was fun.
Guest:Mornings Edition with Mark Merritt and Mark Reilly in conjunction with Air America Radio Productions is pleased to present the following guest.
Guest:He's president of the New Democracy Project and the co-author of the book on Bush.
Guest:In 2001, he was the Democratic nominee for New York City Mayor.
Mayor!
Guest:Make some noise for the monster of Midtown, the Goliath of Gotham, Mark Green!
Guest:Then he went on to his brother buys the place and he gets his own show.
Guest:He went on to use that intro on his own radio show.
Guest:Like his producer came to us and was like, oh, Mark said that you have some intro that you made for him.
Guest:Oh, yeah, sure.
Guest:Here it is.
Guest:But anyway, this is the actual story that I was trying to get to about this, that we are sitting in the cubicles.
Guest:And it was really shitty.
Guest:Everybody, you know, the company was heading downward.
Guest:And this email comes around.
Guest:I think it was like this time of year, end of year, December or something.
Guest:And you guys have done a great job.
Guest:This is an email from Mark Green to the whole company.
Guest:all goes out mass email all at once.
Guest:So everybody's sitting there in their cubicles reading the same thing.
Guest:And it's like the company's struggling.
Guest:There have been cuts, budget cuts.
Guest:Nobody get it.
Guest:No salary increases whatsoever.
Guest:But we get this email from Mark Green, who's in charge now.
Guest:And it says, you guys have done a great job and really keeping us on the air during a tough time as a show of appreciation.
Guest:I would like to give all of you a copy of my book, something about like, you know, Defending Democracy by Mark Green.
Guest:And if you bring it by, I will sign it for you.
Guest:Literally.
Guest:And it was like there was silence in the entire floor of this building where there are all these cubicles because everyone's reading this at the same time.
Guest:And I'm sure with the same reaction, just like jaw dropped and like...
Guest:Like, that's what you hear, just air conditioner going, because nobody can believe what they're reading.
Guest:And through that silence, up from a cubicle, like halfway through the room, loud enough that with Mark Green with his office door open, certainly heard it, you hear Chris's voice go, hey, guys, I'm going to wait until the line dies down.
Yeah.
Guest:That was the most perfect moment of timing against a CEO of a company I've ever seen.
Guest:And it was this huge catharsis because everyone laughed.
Guest:We could have all been fired for bullying, for laughing at the guy the way we did in that moment.
Guest:Oh, it's a great moment.
Guest:Great moment.
Guest:We just had all kinds of bad owners.
Guest:Like we had that guy, Evan, was a total fraud.
Marc:Well, he was there at the very beginning.
Guest:The very first guy, the whole company was started on a lie, was this guy saying he had all this money, Evan Cohen, who you can listen to this now, you can Google, that guy is in jail.
Guest:He was convicted of fraud in Guam and is in jail now.
Guest:And like his family even wrote a letter to the judge being like, please do not let him out of jail.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No leniency.
Guest:This guy is bad, like from my wife and kids.
Marc:But I think that we at the beginning that but there was Doug Krieger, who was, you know, a very rich guy.
Marc:And somehow or another, he became the ally of the show because I just think he was kind of like he didn't have a lot of juice.
Guest:But he did have a lot of money.
Guest:Oh, no, he wound up having juice because the backstory of Doug Krieger was that when when the money went away, the fake money that Evan Cohen had promised and it didn't materialize.
Guest:And then all of a sudden, all we were bouncing checks and creditors were freaking out.
Guest:And Doug Krieger, whose wife is a Durst, as in the Durst family, like Bob Durst's sister, the kooky guy's sister.
Marc:The murderer's sister.
Marc:Jinxie.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:The Jinx.
Guest:Jinxie.
Guest:So yes, Doug Krieger is the brother-in-law of the Jinx.
Guest:But he was a funder.
Guest:He was somebody who just had dumped money into Air America.
Guest:And they went to the Kriegers.
Guest:when there was no more money.
Guest:And he was just like, fine, I'll make up the shortfall.
Guest:And they made him CEO.
Guest:But because he was not like a, he had no designs on being CEO.
Guest:He was just there to kind of manage the place and make sure that the lights stayed on.
Guest:And he kind of entrusted the people who were there, the radio people, to run the show, which was good.
Guest:And I would say those were the most successful years of Air America.
Guest:And he was just a
Guest:a fan of what we were doing.
Guest:He was a fan of yours, Mark.
Guest:He like very much liked you.
Guest:And so he just kind of, you know, supported the show that once Danny Goldberg came in as the CEO, we lost that defense, which was, which was Doug Krieger.
Marc:Krieger was the best.
Marc:And I think that then the family owned City Bakery and we'd always want those good baked goods.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:He would send them.
Guest:He would send them every week.
Guest:We were mad if they didn't send them.
Guest:Like, where the fuck is the City Bakery?
Marc:Well, they used to make like a croissant that was so good.
Marc:It was just like I wanted the perks.
Marc:We were there in the morning.
Marc:you know doing the thing it was a no-brainer perk too like if you're if you're Doug Krieger like yeah well send these guys some some baked goods well that but you know but you know from doing real morning radio Chris it's like there's always guys hanging around with food because they want you to talk about it and that was one of the things we didn't get and I'm like how do we miss out on that all we got a city bakery if you Ron and Fez they probably had every pizza guy in the fucking city hanging around with a slice you know here's a sandwich right yeah they got two boots
Marc:Yeah, in the morning, like at 5.30, they're sort of like, there's a buffet out there from the guys downtown.
Marc:You're like, that's great.
Marc:We didn't get, we got croissants, but they were good, but I really wanted them.
Guest:Yeah, those leechy nuts were great.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Well, Chris, you know, going back to Evan Cohen, I don't know if Mark knows this either, but...
Guest:But you were a kind of cult hero.
Guest:This is before your Mark Green situation.
Guest:You were a kind of cult hero in the Air America offices for when that news broke and it was very clear that this guy was a fraud and he had lied about this position in starting the company.
Guest:You literally just called him on his cell phone.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:How did you have the number?
Guest:You just saw it like on a list of numbers or something?
Guest:There was like a directory for the entire company and his phone number was there.
Guest:And one of my biggest regrets was not recording this phone call that I made to him.
Guest:Do you remember what you said to him?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I was like, hey.
Guest:And he picked up the phone.
Guest:I called from the studio and I was like, hey, Evan.
Guest:What's up, man?
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:You just ruined a whole bunch of people's lives.
Guest:Fuck you.
Guest:And he's like, who is this?
Guest:Who is this?
Guest:I'm like, fuck you.
Guest:That's who I am.
Guest:It's a little Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross.
Guest:Yeah, I just wanted to curse him.
Guest:Oh, and it felt so good to curse him.
Guest:Well, it's awesome, too, that he definitely picked up because he saw that it was the studio.
Guest:He must have thought it was an emergency.
Guest:Like, oh, there's something happening in the studio that they need me, the boss, to come deal with.
Marc:But do you remember, like, I was not, you know, I was barely awake half the time when I was there.
Marc:But I, you know, it's all happened in a sort of waking consciousness.
Marc:But it just felt like, I remember when everything started to come unglued, it really turned out that there was nobody really could do anything.
Marc:You know, because, you know, it's sort of like, well, what about Franken?
Marc:Franken had other plans.
Guest:Well, he also at that point, he didn't want any of this shit to touch him because the entire reason he was doing Air America was so that he could run for Senate.
Guest:Like he I mean, it was all part of his larger plan to to to become a senator, which he did.
Guest:I remember Franken would constantly think that Wayne Gellman was Mark Riley.
Guest:And then at times, I was perusing the archives.
Guest:We were on the air talking about it.
Guest:Wayne was saying that, yeah, once he thought I was Mark, then once he thought I was Al Sharton.
No!
Guest:And there's a bit in our archives where Wayne's talking about it.
Marc:Wayne Gilman's even sitting in here enjoying the comedy.
Guest:The Redoubtable News Daddy himself.
Guest:And I'm honored that I was actually mentioning that bit.
Guest:I'm so glad Al Franken's on here.
Guest:You did like that, Trumark.
Guest:Are you interviewing Al Sharpton?
Guest:He's like, Tukey Williams survived.
Guest:And there's two of them.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:What's with Franken with that?
Guest:I don't know, but we need to get him that book, Facts About Blacks.
Guest:What is that book about?
Guest:I don't think that would help him either.
Guest:I don't know, man.
Guest:Well, there was also, do you remember, do you remember, Chris, the time that Wayne hosted in Mark's absence?
Guest:Like, Marin was out on vacation and we had Wayne Gelman, who was the newsman and had a history with Mark Riley.
Guest:Like, we just were like, all right, why don't you co-host today, Wayne?
Guest:And they started beefing on the air.
Guest:Until then, this is Wayne Gelman saying, keep on fornicating, fornicators.
Guest:In hell.
Guest:So, Cardinal?
Guest:Yes?
Guest:No lines for the other black man, huh?
Guest:Like I said before, you know, you're colorless to me.
Guest:You're beyond the racial barrier.
Guest:His wife says the same thing.
Guest:Yeah, wait a minute, man.
Guest:At least I got a wife cream.
Guest:Hey, listen, you know, I gave up on that.
Guest:You gave up on what?
Guest:Sex?
Guest:No, no, no, never mind.
Guest:Marriage?
Guest:No, why you got to personalize things here?
Guest:You don't do this with the white guy.
Guest:You don't do it.
Guest:You wait for me to come in here to get personal.
Guest:Because we got history.
Guest:When I get to know Marriott for 30 years, I'll do the same thing again.
Guest:Yeah, okay, well, let's wait 30 years.
Guest:The show is still on another year.
Guest:Wait, wait, wait.
Guest:We don't even try it.
Guest:You should be thankful you got a job, Mark Ryan.
Guest:Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Guest:Wayne's not married because he's got more to give to the ladies.
Guest:That's right, you know?
Guest:More to give to the ladies.
Guest:What do you know about giving to the ladies over there, Mark?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Did you take a vow of celibacy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm into prenuptial agreements.
Guest:Let's talk about that.
Guest:That's where I'm coming from.
Guest:Until I can find someone willing to understand what a prenuptial agreement's about, then we'll wait until we get married.
Guest:I'll stay single.
Guest:I can do bad all by myself.
Guest:The Gilman estate.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:They ain't losing nothing at this point.
Guest:I paid enough the last time.
Guest:Send it back to our country.
Guest:back to her country?
Guest:I did.
Guest:What, Hartford?
Guest:No, the Dominican Republic.
Guest:Oh, that one.
Guest:You weren't married to her.
Guest:It was like a marriage.
Guest:It cost me $40,000.
Guest:Why are we talking about me?
Guest:You took that deduction off your last apartment house.
Guest:We are doing a network program, Mark Riley.
Guest:I know, man.
Guest:Why are you talking about me?
Guest:But this is all about news, Danny.
Guest:You don't do this with the white guy.
Guest:It's about you.
Guest:You see, you get black on me.
Guest:You got too many lines in the last bit.
Guest:That's why I did it, if you want to know.
Guest:You know, you can finish the show by yourself.
Guest:Guys, don't be hating on each other.
Guest:I'll tell you what.
Guest:I'll stop hating on him.
Guest:I'll start hating on you.
Guest:Get out.
Guest:Have a nice trip right if you get work, all right?
All right.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Those two, when we started using Gelman in bits, it was like such a great day.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And he loved it.
Guest:Like he was, you know, I think Riley had some hesitation about it.
Guest:He didn't like being portrayed as, you know, somewhat unserious.
Guest:And we would always try to, we always tried to like convince him that like, no, look, we're trying to take care of you here, buddy.
Guest:Like make you a part of the show the way we are.
Guest:And Wayne knew that and he loved it.
Guest:The hosts made him, the writers rather, made him a character called News Daddy at one point, where he was like Shaft.
Guest:The best.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is Wayne Gilman, better known to the hard-bodied mamas of the greater New York metropolitan area as News Daddy.
Guest:When I'm not busting a cap in some jive cat's ass for hogging the printer when I'm on deadline, I'm having a funky good time with Morning's Edition on Air America Radio.
Guest:Ooh, News Daddy.
Guest:Well, look who's awake.
Guest:Ready for another taste of Wayne?
Guest:Well, Chris, was was there anything else that you wanted to, you know, recall or bring up to us that we hadn't talked about yet?
Guest:Bruce Cherry's pitch of the week always was a gas and he always tried to rope me into it, which was super fun.
Guest:Yes, you were involved in that.
Guest:That's definitely true.
Guest:Bruce Cherry's Pitch of the Week was based on Bruce being one of our writers who did not have a recurring bit.
Guest:And so the recurring bit we made was that every week he would try a character who would fail.
Guest:Like, you know, he would come on and here's my pitch for this character and it would be a failure.
Marc:One of our writers, Bruce Cherry, has been trying to get a regular character on the show.
Marc:His presentations have delighted the staff and listeners alike.
Marc:What can I say, people?
Marc:His pieces come from the heart, and they aim for the gut, passing through the funny bone on the way.
Marc:You sound a little dorky, but I like that.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:I'm just your puppet right now.
Marc:Now it's time for my favorite part of the week.
Marc:Please welcome my dear friend, Bruce Cherry, for Bruce Cherry's Pitch of the Week.
Guest:Well, thank you very much, Mark, for that very kind intro.
Marc:Hey, it came right from my heart, man.
Guest:This week, we're going to tackle the debate over evolution with a character who actually evolves.
Guest:Oh, great, great.
Guest:As you know, as most of the people know here, I'm something of an amateur zoologist.
Guest:Mankind's closest relatives, I'm sure you knew this, chimpanzees, share 97%.
Guest:of our genetic heritage.
Guest:But there is a subspecies of chimp called the bonobo that lives in Central Africa.
Guest:And that has a, well, a method of conflict resolution that lends itself to comedic extrapolation.
Guest:So no more need be said.
Guest:Let's just go to script.
Guest:Are you ready?
Guest:Them some fancy words, mister.
Guest:All right.
Guest:I'm known for my vocabulary.
Marc:It's not my humor.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I'm going to go ahead and read the script you prepared.
Marc:The religious right can't accept evolution.
Marc:Our next guest should make it even harder for them to deny it.
Marc:He's a living, breathing example of primate evolution.
Marc:Please welcome Trevor, the ever-evolving bonobo.
Marc:Thank you, Mr. Marin.
Marc:May I call you Mark?
Marc:I'm simply delighted to be here.
Marc:Now, Trevor, it's apparent that you are very highly evolved.
Marc:You're a monkey who talks with perfect diction, I might add, plus the smoking jacket, the cravat, and the brandy snifter.
Marc:Well, it's simply a matter of breeding, don't you think?
Marc:Now, you are a bonobo, Trevor, and I believe your species has a unique approach to conflict resolution.
Marc:Why don't you tell us about that?
Marc:I'd be happy to enlighten your listeners.
Guest:You see, bonobos don't use violence to settle our differences, like, dare I say it, humans.
Guest:Bonobos, myself included, resolve conflicts by, well, to phrase it delicately, by making love.
Marc:Okay, so when you have a conflict with someone, you just have sex with them.
Marc:Indubitably.
And...
Guest:I might add we have a large number of conflicts.
Guest:To phrase it in the vernacular, we're doing it all the time.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Now, see, I disagree with that approach.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Tell me more.
Marc:Well, I'm no fan of violence, but I question the use of sex to settle arguments.
Guest:Well, if we've reached an impasse, there's only one thing I can do.
Guest:Uh-oh.
Guest:Prepare yourself, Mr. Marin.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:What just happened?
Marc:Everything was a blur of pleasure.
Marc:I feel like I need a cigarette.
Guest:Well, let's just say I won the debate, my friend.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I'm gonna take a step back just for a second.
Guest:You know what, the sound effect of a man being sexually assaulted by a bonobo was me just playing with, doing a little hand thing.
Guest:I went to Dan Pashman before this, two days ago, and I said, I need the sound of someone being assaulted by a monkey.
Guest:Not the actual sound, something that would approximate that.
Guest:And he said, this is a quote, just do the, I made an example with my mouth.
Guest:He said, just do what you just did.
Guest:For your bits, the worse it is, the better it is.
Guest:So if I got Dan Pashman in a little trouble, then that's fine with me because I feel I was disrespected.
Marc:I got to be honest with you, though.
Marc:I got to be honest with you, Bruce.
Marc:I found the sound to be very effective, and I thought you had done some research, perhaps watched a nature show or two.
Marc:Like, I bought it.
Marc:Like, I felt like I was being raped by a monkey.
Marc:Well, that's my primate training.
Marc:Then it worked.
Guest:I feel dirty and weird, and I blame myself.
Guest:Excellent.
Guest:Okay, we're going back to script.
Guest:You've just been ravished by an ape.
Guest:Now someone enters.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Now just a dang minute.
Marc:Dang.
Marc:Wait, here we go.
Marc:Chris Lopresto, why have you suddenly burst into the studio?
Guest:I saw what that monkey did to you, Mark, and I didn't like it one bit.
Guest:Well, Mr. Lopresto, it seems you and I have something of a conflict.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:You want a piece of me?
Guest:Why, you're reading my mind.
Guest:Holy crap.
Guest:Where am I?
Guest:I'm not giving up.
Guest:I can take it.
Guest:Obviously, you just did.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:What are you going to do now?
Guest:Well, if I were any kind of gentleman, I'd send you flowers.
Guest:OK, tough guy.
Guest:I'm still standing.
Guest:Well, so am I.
Guest:Is that a threat?
Guest:Threat, promise, it's all in one's point of view.
Guest:Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
What?
Guest:What the?
Guest:You never laid a hand on me.
Guest:That was hardly the point.
Guest:All right, all right, that's it, that's it, that's it.
Guest:Enough of this, all right?
Guest:Okay, I think Chris wants to say something.
Guest:Let me just say, Mark, and you too, Trevor, that was incredible.
Guest:I didn't know it could be so good.
Guest:There you go, Chris liked the thrust of the piece.
Marc:I think we're all doing some pretty good acting.
Marc:I got to be honest with you.
Marc:I lost an entire touch with the fact that we're actually doing this mock piece and I was in it.
Marc:It's like Tennessee Williams.
Marc:This was theater.
Marc:Tennessee Williams, exactly.
Marc:Can you do Trevor in a Southern accent?
Marc:It's amazing.
Marc:Amazing what we got away with.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:The Bruce Cherry Pitch of the Week is one of my favorite moments that led to was like right when shit was going down and we were like going to get canceled.
Guest:There was an executive that was trying to stand up for us named Scott Elberg.
Guest:He liked what Mark was doing.
Guest:He was trying to, you know, see if there was a way.
Guest:He also just liked that we were doing well in the ratings.
Guest:And he, you know, thought there was a promise with the show, especially with Stern going off the air.
Guest:So he's really fighting for it.
Guest:And he had a meeting some morning with people to try to convince them to keep us on the air.
Guest:And that day, Bruce Cherry had a pitch of the week that was shenanigans, the clown that has sex with his dog.
Guest:And I literally remember, it was like getting called to the principal's office, like right after the show, it was like a message like, Scott wants to see you at his office right away.
Guest:And like, we all like walked in there, like one after another, like filed in and he was like, what is this?
Guest:The clown that has sex with his dog?
Guest:You're doing this on the day that I'm trying to save the show?
Guest:The clown that has sex with his dog?
Guest:What are you doing to me?
Guest:Like he was...
Guest:he wasn't even like angry.
Guest:He was like completely flummoxed.
Guest:But the climate is sex with his dog.
Guest:Why'd you, why'd you do that?
Marc:It's like that, that conversation could only happen at a radio station.
Marc:It's like, you just have these like, you know, insane, you know, rebels, you know, on the morning show and you just have suits going, what are you, what are you trying to do?
Guest:I think we're all better for it.
Guest:I think we, you know, we've obviously we reminisce about it, but it actually did help our help our lives out in many ways.
Guest:And, you know, led to for Mark and I, what we're doing today.
Guest:I think, you know, Chris, you know, you probably feel good about the relationships you built there and everything.
Guest:It's a positive time.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:I wouldn't trade it for the world.
Guest:I'm so, so happy to have been part of your guys' lives in that time because it was such a crazy time.
Guest:And yeah, I just absolutely loved it.
Marc:The funny thing is, is the show, if you really think about it, Brendan, the tone of the show would not have evolved hadn't Chris been there from day one.
Guest:No, I think that's true.
Guest:I think the spirit of live radio needed to be evoked on the show.
Guest:And the only person, literally the only person outside of Mark Riley who had done live radio was Chris.
Guest:Every other one of us, even myself included, Pashman, who had radio chops.
Guest:We were doing like news radio or, you know, a production at work elsewhere.
Guest:Like we've talked about before, there were lots of TV people.
Guest:Chris and Mark Reilly were the only people who had done live talk radio on a daily basis.
Guest:And Mark's type of talk radio was very different.
Guest:It was like, you know, public affairs, policy oriented stuff.
Guest:So Chris was the only one coming to the table with the knowledge of how to do that kind of stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it was just like he was a great enabler of all my insane nicknaming and bullying and, you know, boys club bullshit.
Marc:It was good.
Marc:You know, I was happy to know that part of myself for a year or two.
Guest:I was always saying yes.
Guest:Well, speaking of Mark's personality and parts of it that he didn't know, I think you're probably aware that I have introduced him to the world of wrestling, and we're going to go to see it live in January out in L.A.
Guest:As someone who goes to wrestling, you and I have gone together to pro wrestling.
Guest:You enjoy it from...
Guest:I would say it was similar to me, enjoyed it in your youth and kind of had a break from it.
Guest:But you're now you're watching it again.
Guest:Do you have any advice for Mark on his first time at a live wrestling show?
Guest:Don't be afraid to just ask Brendan basic questions.
Guest:I do it all the time.
Guest:And it's amazing.
Marc:What's an example?
Guest:Like, hey, man, what do you think?
Guest:This ladder that's going to be, do you think that's going to be in place?
Guest:Like, oh, absolutely.
Guest:And not only that, it's going to go this way.
Guest:I mean, he just, he can script it so, and you can see it in his mind so well.
Guest:You know, it was my favorite time of that was we were watching it and these guys all came out.
Guest:There was going to be like a big giant brawl with a bunch of 10 people.
Guest:And these guys came out and I was like, oh, look, they're all wearing white.
Guest:They're going to bleed.
Guest:And we were like, what?
Guest:And I'm like, yeah, yeah, they're wearing white.
Guest:They're going to bleed all.
Guest:There's going to be this is going to be a bloodbath.
Guest:They're going to bleed all over the place.
Guest:And sure enough, these guys bled like stuck pigs.
Guest:And because they were wearing white, it showed up on everything.
Guest:He just knows it.
Guest:It's unbelievable the shit that he knows in his brain.
Guest:It's just it.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:mjf i think you'll love mjf uh he's the he's the champ he's the one that uh verna was telling you about yeah yeah when i go to my wife's family in long island everyone loves mjf and it's the only place in the world where he is a good guy right everywhere everywhere else but in long island he's a hero because he's as bad as they all are
Marc:Well, I hope it sticks because I could do something to get excited about.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:At the very least, you know what I hope sticks?
Guest:I hope what sticks is like being at a live thing with – because I also know about you.
Guest:You don't love crowds.
Guest:You don't love big to-dos and that.
Guest:But if we can make it easy on you, especially in a perspective of like –
Guest:They're like rolling out the red carpet.
Guest:Yeah, Marc Maron, come on down.
Guest:Like, I love that idea that like, oh, you could just go to one of these things and have fun.
Guest:And like, you know, people come up to you and, you know, high five you and shit.
Guest:Hanging out watching the wrestling matches while it happens.
Marc:Yeah, I enjoy special treatment.
Marc:You know, it's weird because I enjoyed it to the point where when I had to take my girlfriend to the emergency room at Cedar Sinai.
Marc:She was okay.
Marc:But, you know, it's like a mash unit there.
Marc:You're just 100 people with different degrees of sickness, you know, waiting in chaos.
Marc:And I had that moment where I'm like, is there anyone I can call to make this work?
Marc:I figured it.
Marc:Yeah, there was actually...
Marc:oh right this way we didn't get red carpet treatment but we did get you know we did jump the triage line which she just you know she just had a mild stomach problem i felt bad with the guy who was holding his hand you know like that had been amputated or whatever but uh but i took it that's great yeah
Guest:Chris, buddy, if there's other fun stuff for us to talk about, it doesn't have to be about Morning Sedition.
Guest:You should come back on.
Guest:You're a good hang as always.
Guest:And, you know, I see you all the time, but I don't think you and Mark have seen each other's faces for a little bit.
Guest:Let's do this again.
Marc:Yeah, you look good, buddy.
Marc:Play the outro music.
Guest:Take us out, man.
Guest:Love you, man.
Marc:Love you too, buddy.
Marc:Hi, I'm Mark Maron, and I feel like s***.
Marc:Yeah!
Marc:I didn't think I was capable of having as good a time as I have at work.
Marc:I mean, we laugh every day, no matter how horrendous things are.
Marc:And if you think that's a bad thing, you've got to be crazy, and you've got to lighten up.
Marc:Former President Bill Clinton.
Marc:Good morning, Mr. President.
Marc:Good morning, Mark.
Marc:He's three-time world wrestling entertainment champion.
Marc:Please welcome our guest host for today, Mitt Foley.
Marc:Very excited to have Tim Robbins in the studio.
Marc:Good morning, Jeff Daniels.
Marc:Good morning.
Marc:Charles Barkley is with us.
Marc:Good morning.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:I'm glad to be here.
Marc:Congresswoman Brown, can I ask you a personal question?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Are you in the tub?
Marc:The mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg.
Marc:Good morning, Mayor.
Marc:Good morning, Mark.
Marc:Rob Zombie joins us now in studio.
Marc:Andy Richter, thanks for being with us.
Marc:All right, thanks.
Marc:Thanks for joining us, Joe Pantoliano.
Marc:It was great seeing you.
Marc:Thanks for having me on, fellas.
Guest:Hi, this is Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller.
Guest:You're listening to Morning Sedition.
Marc:Am I stupid?
Marc:No.
Guest:All right.
Ha ha ha ha.