"Howard Stern"

Speaker 1 Wondering how you can invest in yourself and work towards a goal that will last? Rosetta Stone makes it easy to turn a few minutes a day into real language progress.

Speaker 1 Scotty and I are here in England still, right in London. And before we leave, we're talking about going to Paris while we're over here because it's like, when are we going to be over here again?

Speaker 1 And so we might take a day just to go over to Paris. And we talked about how great it would be to use Rosetta Stone to learn just a little bit of French before we go.
It's French, right?

Speaker 1 And now Smartlist listeners can grab Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off. Visit rosettastone.com slash Smartlist to get started and claim your 50% off today.

Speaker 1 Nobody wants to spend the holiday season clicking from one site to the next to get their hands on the best brands. But who knew Walmart has the the top brands we all love?

Speaker 1 Like the big names that your friends and family actually want, and all in one place. Nespresso, Nintendo, Apple, you name it.
Get the brands everyone loves at prices you'll love at Walmart. Who knew?

Speaker 1 Go to walmart.com or download the app to get all your gifts this season.

Speaker 2 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 2 My name is Mark Zito, and on behalf of SiriusXM, I want to thank you so much for coming out to Steven Talkhouse for a very special, very intimate episode of Smartless.

Speaker 2 Smart,

Speaker 2 less.

Speaker 2 Smart.

Speaker 2 You guys. Hi, everybody.

Speaker 2 Welcome.

Speaker 3 Thank you for being here.

Speaker 2 You guys aren't really fans.

Speaker 3 You're friends of ours.

Speaker 2 So that's very nice of you to show up. Thank you, everybody.

Speaker 2 Drive all the way out here to Long Island. Pay nothing.

Speaker 2 Really nice. Pay nothing.
Right?

Speaker 2 Sit here and be like, all right, yeah, entertain us.

Speaker 3 We're very excited to be doing like, so we're going to do four live shows shows

Speaker 3 every year. Every year.

Speaker 3 You know, we're going to do the.

Speaker 2 Open to less, Scott, but that's fine.

Speaker 3 We do the regular sort of podcast

Speaker 3 on the computer thing, right?

Speaker 3 What do you watch it or listen to it on, whatever it is?

Speaker 2 And then we're going to do four lives. This is our first one.

Speaker 3 Very excited.

Speaker 2 On top of that, we've got our white whale.

Speaker 3 People would ask me, like, who have you not interviewed that you want to?

Speaker 2 Howard Stern?

Speaker 3 Because he doesn't do this, and he's the man.

Speaker 2 He's the man.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 we feel very, very blessed that he,

Speaker 2 and we'll get into that in a second.

Speaker 2 Is that your intro? No.

Speaker 3 I don't have an intro. Sean's got an intro.

Speaker 2 Look at the cards. I wrote a beautiful card.

Speaker 2 Hang on,

Speaker 2 I do want to say something.

Speaker 2 I'm like Fanning, who's the little Dakota Fanning when she was a little girl. She was really over-prepared in the best way.
I did cat in the hat with her.

Speaker 3 Go on. We got something to trim already.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 The audience is riveted by that story.

Speaker 2 Fucking what?

Speaker 2 Dakota Fanning? Well, she's really, she was really smart for everybody and like

Speaker 2 prepared. I love that.

Speaker 2 But everybody knew, everybody here knows who our guest is going to be, so there are not a lot of surprises.

Speaker 2 So there is one surprise that we do have today, just to kind of get everybody warmed up, to get us warmed up a little bit.

Speaker 2 Something, Sean, you don't know about. Uh-oh.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Don't worry, it's not your dad. We still can't find him.

Speaker 2 It's so fun because he left. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Top speed.

Speaker 2 You know, he came to the. Tears are still wet, huh?

Speaker 2 And I would tell you,

Speaker 2 he came to the last show of Good Night Oscar in Chicago. Yeah, we're going to be able to do it.
Maybe we walk us through that. This is kind of a sad story.
I don't know if this we want to.

Speaker 2 All right. But anyway, we can get back to that again.
Keep going. That's a true story.
He did. He came to the last show.
I didn't even know he was there. Did he go backstage? No.
No. It was wild.

Speaker 2 Go ahead. Did he have notes? Yes.

Speaker 2 Yes, he emailed them to me.

Speaker 2 That is pretty weird. Wait, did you see him? I didn't.
My sister, he Tracy? Yes,

Speaker 2 that's correct. He emailed my sister.
Sorry, he posted on Facebook that he went to the last show, and that's all he wrote.

Speaker 2 And my sister, to bait him, like, don't you want to say something about your son that you haven't seen in 75 years? He said,

Speaker 2 you look great. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And he just wrote back, Oscar Levant, just like I remembered him. That was it.

Speaker 2 Isn't that wow? Anyway.

Speaker 3 How long have you not seen him?

Speaker 2 40 years?

Speaker 3 And he's in the theater with you. You just started something.
He didn't stick around and say.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 What a treat. And then, wait, and then, and then, check this out.
Two gay guys came up to Scotty in the audience because Scotty was there. And they go, are you, Scotty? That's not the whole story? No.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 They came up to Scotty and they said, they said, oh, I just want to let you know we live next door to Sean's dad, and I understand they don't see eye to eye.

Speaker 2 Was that a shot at your mom?

Speaker 3 For those of you who don't know, Sean's mom famously has one fake eye.

Speaker 2 Yes. Hat, hat, hat, hat.

Speaker 2 Because hilariously, she died.

Speaker 2 So Sean should be an axe murderer, right?

Speaker 3 I mean, but he's

Speaker 2 race this guy. He's claimed this.
We love him. Oh, we all have

Speaker 2 skeletons. Go ahead.
We all love one-eyed parents.

Speaker 2 One-eyed parents. So we do have one surprise tonight, just so

Speaker 2 to try to bring us out of the hole of Sean's upbringing.

Speaker 2 So I've asked the guy to come here tonight just to do a little something before we get going. Are you serious?

Speaker 2 I swear to God. Yeah, he's an Emmy winner.

Speaker 2 He's a finalist on America's Got Talent.

Speaker 2 He's been on the Jimmy Fallon program, amongst others.

Speaker 3 Is that what it's called? The program?

Speaker 2 It's called the Jimmy Fallon program. That's what the producers tell me.
I don't know. There he is, Jimmy.
Thank you, Jimmy.

Speaker 2 Please don't stand up. No, please don't sit.
Please sit down. Mr.
Fallon. Beg you to sit down.

Speaker 2 Thank you to sit down.

Speaker 2 I love it. God, we saw it.
It was in an intro, Jimmy.

Speaker 2 We get it. You're on NBC.
Yeah. And you own Wayfarers.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 By the way, Jimmy, on all seriousness, you were great in Jurassic World. I thought that was great.

Speaker 2 Down again.

Speaker 2 Again, down.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 he's done so many things.

Speaker 2 No, she's not here, man. She didn't make it.

Speaker 2 She's working on her stuff.

Speaker 2 He's one of the world's most sought-after mentalists. He's worked with clients ranging from A-list celebrities, heads of state, Fortune 500 companies.
Guys, please welcome the amazing Oz Perlman.

Speaker 2 Just to kick us off.

Speaker 2 You'll know something special for us. What? I didn't know.
Yes. Wait.

Speaker 4 Not as a code of fanning, unfortunately.

Speaker 2 I know.

Speaker 2 This is a surprise to Sean. Sean knows what's going on.

Speaker 4 He was waiting for me to be his dad. I'm sorry, Sean.

Speaker 2 Wait, can I tell you something? Tell me. He sends me clips of you all the time.
That's what Will told me. I'm obsessed.
I think this is amazing. Sean legit doesn't know anything about this.

Speaker 4 Sean has no idea. This is wild.

Speaker 3 Will, you have my phone number, right? Yeah. And my email address.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I gotta go.

Speaker 3 I don't like clips of things.

Speaker 2 Do you know who this is? Do you know who this is? You crouchy.

Speaker 3 He sort of clued me into it. It's our smartlist on Moose Boosh today, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. Wait, this is so cool.
This is so good. Here's what I know, Jason.

Speaker 4 Supposedly, I read minds, but if I'm going to know how people think, right? I need to to know what they're thinking at the same time.

Speaker 2 Here's Will's skill.

Speaker 4 Everybody, where are my smartlist fans in the room? Come on.

Speaker 4 Will notoriously knows dates, years behind, everything. You can tell him, June 2006, he knows what he's wearing.
Jason can't remember what he had for breakfast today. Am I right?

Speaker 4 Sean Webby Award winner, best host.

Speaker 2 I thought you were going to say Sean ate Jason for breakfast. That might have been.

Speaker 4 Here's what I want you to do. I'm putting tasks, putting tasks out there.
You're going back in time thinking of somebody that these guys would not know. Somebody from your past that they would not.

Speaker 4 You know what? Jason, go back in time, think of the first girl you ever had a big crush on.

Speaker 2 Think to how old you were at the time. I got it.

Speaker 4 And tell them, because if I'm listening to this on my podcast right now, I'm saying this is set up, this is fake.

Speaker 4 Before today and me asking you to think of her, has it been days, months, or years since this person popped in your mind?

Speaker 2 Years.

Speaker 4 Years. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Didn't even know I was going to be on the show.

Speaker 4 Count the number of letters in her first name just to yourself. No, don't use your fingers.
Jason, I can see your fingers.

Speaker 2 Okay, you're yelling at me.

Speaker 2 I'm fucking nervous. I'm nervous that you're going to guess it and I'm going to be all freaked out.

Speaker 3 This is coming out at your time, Howard.

Speaker 4 Five letters. Was it five letters? Yes.
I watched your eyes.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 4 He has not thought of this person in years.

Speaker 4 This is not set up because if it was, it'd be going better.

Speaker 2 Tell us all for everybody listening.

Speaker 4 I have written down, everybody in the room, don't say the name, but if you can see what I wrote down, clear as day, everybody in the room say, yeah.

Speaker 4 Close your eyes for me, Jason. Close your eyes.

Speaker 3 But if you get this, like, I'm you're gonna be in my life the rest of my life.

Speaker 2 That's that is what I do.

Speaker 3 I'm never gonna let you go.

Speaker 4 Like a splinter that doesn't leave.

Speaker 2 Wow, clearly, you let her go, but go ahead.

Speaker 4 You haven't thought of her in years. I wrote it down.
Everybody in the room has seen it. How old were you at the time, Jason? 14.

Speaker 2 Ooh, 14.

Speaker 4 And tell us, what was this young lady's name?

Speaker 2 Paula.

Speaker 2 I wrote down, Paula, 14.

Speaker 4 For those who can't see Jason's face, he is in shock.

Speaker 3 Yeah, like, but like, why aren't you a trillionaire on Wall Street?

Speaker 2 It's my former job. Will, Will, you thought.

Speaker 3 You're wasting this at Stephen Talkhouse.

Speaker 2 I'm monetizing. We're in the Hamptons, Jason.

Speaker 4 Trust me. I'm monetizing.

Speaker 4 Will, Will, you're back in time. You're thinking of somebody.
Jason's shook up, by the way. I wish they could see his face and not just hear the text of his voice.

Speaker 2 That's the most surprised his face gets, by the way.

Speaker 2 you know what do you think your face is doing right now smiling

Speaker 4 it's very good sean how about this all right you read his mind you were so confident with jason and then you had no idea

Speaker 4 is there any way in the world will that sean knows who popped in your head when i asked you to think of somebody from your past no okay take a pad of paper yep Sean, here's the game plan.

Speaker 2 I need you to act. Good luck.

Speaker 4 Sean, look at my hands. Yeah.
And can you tell everybody listening in, I'm going to pretend in a moment I have a crystal ball in my hand. Do I actually have anything in my hands?

Speaker 2 Zero, none. Everyone in the audience, is there anything in my hands? No.

Speaker 4 Sean will swear up and down that he saw a crystal ball appear in my hands and in it the name of your friend as a kid or whoever this person is. Have you written down a name? I have.

Speaker 4 Can anybody see it right now other than you?

Speaker 2 I don't think so. Sean,

Speaker 2 look into Will's soul

Speaker 4 and tell him

Speaker 4 what name did you see in that crystal ball? Tell him what, before I walked in here, have we spoken a word in our life, Sean?

Speaker 2 Never.

Speaker 4 Tell him who's he thinking of? Say it. Scott.

Speaker 2 You fucking what?

Speaker 2 Turn it around, show the audience.

Speaker 2 Fucking what? I can't hear you in this room. I received the same show.

Speaker 2 How is that possible?

Speaker 2 How is that possible? Holy shit, that is unbelievable.

Speaker 4 Huge fan. Huge fan.

Speaker 2 Incredible.

Speaker 2 So, guys, how do you introduce a man who needs no introduction? Because he's one of the most famous people on the planet, plus he's on the poster outside.

Speaker 2 He's the king of all media, the interviewer of all interviewers, the winner of Best Hair in America,

Speaker 2 four years in a row. He's a great artist, a great

Speaker 2 painter.

Speaker 3 More sincere.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, wait, I lost my thing.

Speaker 5 And he is incredible.

Speaker 2 He's the most amazing person. And now his home for 20 years has been Sirius XM, which is now ours, which makes us roomies.
It's the most incredible icon of all time, Howard Stern. Ever.
Yes!

Speaker 2 Oh, man. You know,

Speaker 2 all my years in radio. Yes.

Speaker 2 Nothing works better on radio than magic. Yeah, sure.
sure.

Speaker 2 You guys are on to something.

Speaker 3 I told you, Arnett.

Speaker 2 I don't want to come off like an expert. You know, I've only been

Speaker 2 doing this for like 50 years, but you've also made Howard the second guest. I remember.

Speaker 3 When's the last time you weren't the lead guest?

Speaker 2 I know, and I remember having amazing crescent on, and

Speaker 2 the audience was amazed as I described everything that was going on in the room. The play-by-play was unbelievable.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah, he made a table lift and I go, if you were here now, you'd see a table lifting off the ground.
And people are like, no wonder this is such a great radio show.

Speaker 2 First of all, welcome to SiriusXM, the glorious world of SiriusXM.

Speaker 2 I'm a huge fan of the company, so welcome.

Speaker 2 You know, I don't even know how long I've been with SiriusXM.

Speaker 3 Since it started, you started it.

Speaker 2 When I started, we had 200,000 subscribers.

Speaker 2 And I I remember walking around in, I don't even know where I was, somewhere in Manhattan, handing out radios for free,

Speaker 2 hoping that someone would take one.

Speaker 2 And it was a harrowing experience leaving terrestrial radio and coming to Sirius, but it was the best decision I ever made. And you were allowed to talk about it too, right?

Speaker 2 When you were at the very end there when you were on terrestrial radio, I remember that. Yeah, it was a very strange time in my career.
I was on regular radio. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I somehow convinced them that it would be okay if I talked about the fact that I was leaving regular radio and going to satellite radio. And then they told me, okay.

Speaker 2 They said, don't mention serious radio, just call it something else. So we called it.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 3 what you did for it, though, because we had all sort of heard that satellite radio was coming, and I was a little circumspect.

Speaker 2 And you said, which one are you? You're Jason. I'm Jason.
I'm Jason.

Speaker 2 That's Jason.

Speaker 3 And I was like, well, I don't know if I want, satellite, I got to get a different radio for that. But when you went to satellite, I was like, oh, it's okay now.

Speaker 2 I'm going to go to,

Speaker 3 it was like when Fincher went to Netflix, it was like, oh.

Speaker 2 You do forget because things move rather rapidly, but it was a very strange time because there was an effort by regular radio to say what a failure I would be. Right.

Speaker 2 And they were putting out that anyone who went to satellite radio, your career would be over, you would disappear forever. And, you know, so there was this big campaign.

Speaker 2 to, you know, discredit satellite radio.

Speaker 2 But I knew deep in my heart that satellite radio would be successful. And now I look around, everybody's got a fucking microphone in their house.

Speaker 2 Everybody's on the radio. You three.
I know it's ridiculous. You want to hear the most aggravating things.

Speaker 2 But, Howard, I do love you guys. But

Speaker 2 a couple things.

Speaker 2 Jason and I,

Speaker 2 the only person I didn't know was Sean. Right, it's nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you. And I do want to ask you about your classical piano.
Oh, my God. All right.

Speaker 2 And I want to ask you about your guitar piano. Yes, I'm most impressed with your classical piano.
Well, you guys will get some time time after the interview.

Speaker 2 No, but here's the thing I want to tell you that annoyed me. Can I tell you this? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 So Jason was over my house, and I have mad respect for Jason. I think he's a fabulous actor.
Incredible, one of the best.

Speaker 2 Wonderful guy. He's overcome a million great times.

Speaker 2 Oh, he's had a lot of problems. A lot of fucking problems.

Speaker 2 And he still has a bunch. Yeah, he's got a lot of problems.
Look at him. We could go on all day.

Speaker 2 But, you know, I'm talking to Jason, and I'm feeling very good about my own career and everything. And Jason goes, you know, man, man, it's crazy.

Speaker 2 We like started this thing out of our basement, like a radio show. And I'm like, oh, here we go.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like, cool. And he goes, yeah, we started a thing, and like, it was just the three of us sitting around, and we talk, and we just crack each other up, and everything.

Speaker 2 I don't know what's going to happen with it, man, but it's, they're telling me it's like the biggest thing ever. Oh, shit, I didn't say that.
Oh, yeah. No way.
Oh, yeah, you did.

Speaker 2 So I go, oh, this is great. Again, I spent my life

Speaker 2 begging people to put me on the radio. It was rarefied era if you even were allowed on there.
You had to work on your voice, this and that. You had to work on the content.

Speaker 2 You had to make sure you get people. He's clowning around.
Yeah, yeah. So listen, it's over.
I know, but you talk about

Speaker 2 perfecting. You hide your bitterness, really.

Speaker 2 Oh, I'm so bitter. So bitter.

Speaker 2 You talk about perfecting your craft. So how did you first meet the whack pack?

Speaker 2 Oh, that's an excellent question. It is.
I want to know because you did. You found like the craziest group of people available and put them together.
How did that come together? The wow.

Speaker 2 Listen, when I was on the radio

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 it was brutal. In order to get an audience and to maintain an audience, every 15 minutes they take the ratings in radio.

Speaker 2 It isn't like this, like where you go, you know what, we have a lot of people listening. You know, it could be three people listening to this.
Nobody knows. Nobody cares.

Speaker 2 But you're on the radio and every 15 minutes they take ratings.

Speaker 2 And what are you going to do to hold people's attention? But you found all these people like this, like kind of...

Speaker 2 But look, I found people that I was interested in.

Speaker 2 I'll never forget the day I was on the radio and I took a little bathroom break and I walked by my green room. The lights went up.
I'm looking at the room and there he is. Beetlejuice.

Speaker 2 Beetlejuice.

Speaker 2 You know my show? Jason, you ever hear my show?

Speaker 2 At high school, I listened to it a lot. There was a guy named Beetlejuice who's very popular, even to this day on the internet.
It's insanely popular. Right, right.
So,

Speaker 2 you know, I said, this guy's a star. He's going to be fantastic.
He's quiet, so they don't hear it.

Speaker 2 This guy's going to be a star. This guy's going to be a star.
And sure enough, he was. No, I mean, I was always looking for interesting people.

Speaker 2 I have a question about that.

Speaker 2 Early on, where did you get the balls to not give a shit about the consequences of what you were saying and what you were doing on air? Where do you get that from?

Speaker 2 Because do you think you would have that now if you started your career now with the same personality? Since we live in cancel culture, go ahead. I believe I was technically insane.

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't, I can't.

Speaker 3 Did you self-sabotage? Like you had like this little bit of a musician.

Speaker 2 No, not self-sabotage. Well, here's the truth.
In my family, words meant nothing.

Speaker 2 My mother would say actions only mean anything. And I guess guess I took her literally.

Speaker 2 Howard, what would you consider would be the sort of the turning point in your career where you kind of broke through? Because, again, you started, you had all these,

Speaker 2 you sort of

Speaker 2 keyed into this kind of thing

Speaker 2 with odd characters on your show. But what was the turning point where you felt like you broke through to a bigger audience? I had a miserable failure in Detroit.

Speaker 2 I got hired to be the morning man at WWW

Speaker 2 in Detroit,

Speaker 2 which are the worst call letters for a radio station. I get on there and go, WWWW, Detroit's W-4.

Speaker 2 I don't know what I'm doing. So

Speaker 2 I was hired to be the morning man. I had had some success in Hartford.
Not a huge success, but success.

Speaker 2 And I got hired in Detroit. And there was a radio consultant who said to me, do not go to Detroit.
There are four rock stations.

Speaker 2 And out of the four, the one that they want to hire you at, dead last. Nobody even, I would go to parties and people would say, what do you do for a living? I'd say, oh, I'm the morning guy in W-4.

Speaker 2 They go, oh, is that station still on the air? Nobody listened to that.

Speaker 3 W-4 was a short version of WW4.

Speaker 2 W-4, Detroit's W-4, the worst station. So, yeah, I went on the radio in Detroit.
It was a tremendous failure. And I said, what am I doing wrong?

Speaker 2 And I sat with it and I thought, I've got to really

Speaker 2 just,

Speaker 2 I guess, lose all inhibition. and admit to everything and just see where that goes.
And when I went to Washington, D.C.,

Speaker 3 it It was like it was not going great. And he was like, might as well throw it all against the wall.

Speaker 2 But I have to give the credit to also Robin Quivers. I met her in Washington and she was phenomenal.
Phenomenal, Robin.

Speaker 2 The chemistry was great. And a program director put us together and I went on the air with her and I started to become very confessional.
And people respond.

Speaker 2 We shot up to number one in a record amount of time. Because it was real and honest.

Speaker 2 And so that was the moment when you started getting really real about your own life, that started to change it. Yes.
And

Speaker 2 did you notice being real about your life? Because so much,

Speaker 2 you know, anybody who's listened to this show knows that you talk about what's going on in your life, what you did on the weekend,

Speaker 2 new haircut, new clothes.

Speaker 2 Wait a second. I talk about, I was masturbating at least three times a day and talking.
I was trying to, like, not, my kids are here. So,

Speaker 2 oh, sorry.

Speaker 3 And I'm not sure there's been a lot of people.

Speaker 2 How many do you have exactly? I mean, we're looking into it, but the point is, we got to find out. The point is, is you should be found.

Speaker 2 You you talked about so much about your personal life. Was there a point where talking about your personal life hurt your relationship? I don't mean necessarily even romantic.

Speaker 2 I mean, hurt relationships because people were nervous about talking to you

Speaker 2 like at a party or I know. Well, it hurt everything.
It hurt my, but I didn't care.

Speaker 2 All I cared about was my job,

Speaker 2 keeping that job and getting audience and ratings. And

Speaker 2 that is a disaster. But do you wave at somebody on the street and go like, like, hey, and they're like, fuck, man.
I don't want to say hi to him because

Speaker 2 I'm going to end up on the show tomorrow. I mean, people thought, not only that, I went through a very strange period.

Speaker 2 I don't want to get all heavy about this because everyone knows this show is not heavy.

Speaker 2 No, no, I don't know.

Speaker 2 But I don't want to get heavy. We're going to get kicked over a show and we're going to make you cry before you're out of here.
Okay, well, I'll do that.

Speaker 2 What it was is that I was very insecure about my career. I wanted this thing to take off in the worst way.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 I even had a policy about, I stayed in my home after I did my show. I never went out.
I was insane.

Speaker 2 So I didn't want to meet anyone in show business because I didn't, if people, because I was talking on the air about a lot of people, and I didn't want, so I just stayed in my house.

Speaker 2 I planned the radio show, did it, and went home. And

Speaker 2 the stuff I was doing was so outrageous and so entertaining to the audience that it blew up.

Speaker 2 I mean, in New York, we had 25 million listeners, and one out of every four cars on the Long Island Expressway was listening to me. Wow, that's awesome.
And it was pretty phenomenal.

Speaker 3 But you have no life.

Speaker 2 I had no life.

Speaker 2 But don't applaud. I had no life.
But Howard, but Bradley Cooper, he's so good looking. But Howard, that shifted.
If I looked like that, I wouldn't have to go on the radio and say shit.

Speaker 2 And we will be right back.

Speaker 1 Hey, all you underwearers. Are you sick of feeling bounced around? Have you got a bad case of jugglers, Jock?

Speaker 1 Is your junk junk drawer on life support? Well, Duluth Trading Company is here to get you buck naked.

Speaker 1 Since 1989, Duluth Trading Company has been engineering unders and workwear to help tackle your toughest tasks.

Speaker 1 Everything from underwater wielding to botanical gardening to excruciating Hollywood lunch meetings. Duluth Trading's buck naked underwear, life-affirming.

Speaker 1 Doesn't matter if you're working overtime, golfing 36 holes, or dragging your co-hosts through a podcast. The no-pinch, no stink, no-sweat construction keeps you comfortable.

Speaker 1 And the crotch cradling bullpen pouch, the epitome of support. Duluth keeps me super comfortable.
Every time I'm wearing it, I feel fully supported.

Speaker 1 So if you've got a rear end and you're ready to go buck naked, visit duluthetrading.com or shop in store today.

Speaker 1 Life is full of choices like deciding whether to try that new food trend, which celebrity story to believe, or if the latest show is worth a stream or a skip.

Speaker 1 At State Farm, their goal is to help you make decisions that you feel good about. And when it comes to choosing coverage, you can feel the same.

Speaker 1 The State Farm Personal Price Plan can help you create an affordable price when you choose to bundle home and auto insurance. You have options to choose from to help best fit your needs.

Speaker 1 It's about giving flexibility, offering coverage that makes sense, and supporting smart decisions for both today and tomorrow. So planning ahead feels easier and empowering.

Speaker 1 Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Speaker 1 Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer.
Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state.

Speaker 7 The family that vacations together stays together. At least, that was the plan.
Except now, the dastardly desk clerk is saying he can't confirm your connecting rooms. Wait, what? That's right, ma'am.

Speaker 7 You have rooms 201 and 709. No, we cannot be five floors away from our kids.

Speaker 7 The doors have double locks. They'll be fine.
When you want connecting rooms confirmed before you arrive, it matters where you stay.

Speaker 2 Welcome to Hilton.

Speaker 7 I see your connecting rooms are already confirmed. Hilton, for this day.

Speaker 3 And now, back to the show.

Speaker 2 Howard, that shifted though, because, and it was about, I'm going to say almost 10 years ago, maybe a little bit more,

Speaker 2 where you started hanging out with a lot of people and your life changed.

Speaker 2 And you became kind of one of the people that you used to talk in a certain way, right? Not one of the people, but you became friends with a lot of people. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 And you allowed celebrities into your life. You became friends with people like Jason Bateman from TV and Film, who we all love.
Well, my dream was to be friends with Jason Bateman. Sure, yeah.

Speaker 2 There's only one way I'm going to get this on my side.

Speaker 2 It's our dream, too.

Speaker 2 But it shifted. Like, I remember back in the day, I mean, years ago, you remember I used to call Chevy Chase's house all the time.

Speaker 2 She used to drive him crazy.

Speaker 2 I told you I was insane. I know.

Speaker 2 But then it changes it because you have to meet those people right out in the world. Well, Chevy ended up coming to my wedding, which is even more important.
Come on,

Speaker 2 yes, and got up to make a beautiful speech to myself and my bride,

Speaker 2 and then stated to the audience that I had given him herpes.

Speaker 2 Wow. Which was really weird.

Speaker 2 But I loved it.

Speaker 3 But your audience is bigger today than it's ever been, and you're not doing all of those sort of shocking things.

Speaker 3 You're doing measured, deep conversations, long-form interviews with very sophisticated people and like so well because I think any good performer and you guys are great performers and you know this you must evolve.

Speaker 2 The show the show, you know, I used to say this now Rush Limbaugh, forget the politics,

Speaker 2 you know, he had a very big following, but it was the same thing every day. You could predict what he was going to say.
Some people like that because it's late comfort and whatever.

Speaker 2 Lay comfort to them. But for me, as a performer, I felt I want the show to be funny.
I also want to be able to interview people. I want it to be broader.

Speaker 2 And I made a conscious decision to shift the show and change it around. And to me, it was way more exciting because the common thought was, well, how are to go to satellite?

Speaker 2 And now this show's going to be so fucking filthy, and everyone's going to be out of their mind, and the strippers are going to be able to fuck on the air.

Speaker 2 Did you miss those constraints? No, no, the constraints, by having the constraints off, I said, Well, then it's no longer funny. Exactly.
You know,

Speaker 2 if you regular radio, it was funny, the government was trying to shut me down. That was drama.
That's fun, that's tension, right? But then I got to satellite, the tension wasn't there.

Speaker 2 So, what do you do now that you have the ultimate freedom? Right. And I decided to shift the show, and I ultimately am more interested in the show now.

Speaker 3 Right, I would say that it would, in a compliment to you, that it was less deliberate or contrived or strategic for for you to, oh, let's switch it up now and give the audience something they're not going to expect.

Speaker 3 I think it's, and I haven't known you for, you know,

Speaker 3 a thousand years, but

Speaker 3 it does seem pretty obvious that you have naturally just evolved into a more curious, serious, not as a pejorative person who's interested in different kinds of questions and within the market.

Speaker 2 Let's make it simpler. Let's make it simpler.
You know, it wasn't like. It would be really creepy to be my age and still doing a show the way I did it when I was 30.
True. I was 30, I wasn't sure.

Speaker 3 You weren't doing it as a ratings ploy. You were being sincere and genuine.

Speaker 2 I thought I was funny. Yeah.
And I always had this idea that we could be really funny on the radio. That radio didn't have to be a bastard on the street.

Speaker 3 But I mean, now.

Speaker 2 Now, it was not a ratings point.

Speaker 3 And you are, hands down, the best interviewer in all of media.

Speaker 2 Thank you. It's true.
Without a doubt. Take the compliment, Howard.
Jesus.

Speaker 2 I'm taking the compliment.

Speaker 2 My psychiatrist said you should be able to take a compliment. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 This is what I'm doing.

Speaker 3 Yeah, like not,

Speaker 3 it doesn't matter whether it's comics or athletes or musicians or actors or whatever it is.

Speaker 3 You question them for us as us, and it's a layman's point of view, and it's very curious, and you're listening.

Speaker 3 You don't have a bunch of fucking cards with questions on it. You're engaged in a conversation, and it was a true inspiration for us.
It really is.

Speaker 2 Sean is holding up all his cards. By the way, let's let's let Sean get a question.
He wrote Sean. I literally, I have pages of them because I don't know.
Sean and I don't really know each other.

Speaker 2 That's why I wrote all this stuff down. And

Speaker 2 my research of you, because I am a big fan, I found all these things that we actually do have in common growing up. Issues with our dad, you don't like Italy, which you just went with Jimmy Kimmel.

Speaker 2 I didn't want to go either.

Speaker 2 We're going to get

Speaker 2 to bully with you. Wait, wait, wait.
Wait, bullying. Like as a kid, I was bullied too, not for being Jewish, but for being gay.
And so,

Speaker 2 oddly, I was was bullied for being gay, and I wasn't.

Speaker 2 It's crazy.

Speaker 2 I got bullied for everything.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm not gay. We're sorry to see you leave.

Speaker 2 Leave me alone. You seem very gay.

Speaker 2 But the thing that I thought was fascinating, my mom had a glass eye. Your dad had a glass eye.
And

Speaker 2 neither one of us was allowed to talk about it. Can I ask you a question? Can you wait one second? Is your mom still alive? Is your mom still alive? No, she's dead.
Okay. My father died two years ago.

Speaker 2 I know. I'm sorry that, but.
But I want to to ask you a question. What would you do? This is a what would you do? Forget these other two guys.
I'm asking you.

Speaker 2 Because you had a mother with a glass eye. Yeah.
So my father had this glass eye. And I could go into that for three hours.

Speaker 2 Same, right. Same.
There's so many things. It's so fucking heavy.
It's so great. But it's also funny.
But when he died, I was given a box of his stuff.

Speaker 2 Yes. And it.

Speaker 2 What do you mean? Oh.

Speaker 2 I told you, you shouldn't have an audience at this point. By the way, this is.

Speaker 2 I open up the box. Yeah.
Of course. It's my father's glass eye.
Wait a minute.

Speaker 2 The same thing.

Speaker 2 When my mom died, my sister passed it around and repackaged it to each one of us. We opened, oh, we got something from my sister.
It's my mom's fucking eye. Here comes the question.

Speaker 2 Here comes the question. Yeah.
So I go to my wife. I say, I got this eye.

Speaker 3 The great Beth. Beth,

Speaker 2 my beautiful Beth. Beth Stern.
Where is she?

Speaker 2 Where is Beth? Oh, there she is. Oh, there she is.
I love you. Hi, Beth.
Nice to meet you. I've heard such great things.

Speaker 2 So, anyway, here's the thing. So I turn to my wife and I say to my wife,

Speaker 2 you know, I don't know. I go and I open it up and my father's eye was such a taboo subject.
My father never talked to me about anything. That's right.

Speaker 2 And one time I asked my mother, does dad have a glass? And she said, listen to me.

Speaker 2 You,

Speaker 2 that's your father's story. Don't ask me.
And I'm like, what? How old were you?

Speaker 2 I was a kid. How old?

Speaker 3 Okay, here's the deal. How old were you and you still didn't know know whether your dad's eye was glass?

Speaker 2 No, they wouldn't talk.

Speaker 2 And did it blink shut? Did it blink shut or did it stay open? Did it blink shut or stay open? It stayed mostly open.

Speaker 2 And also, things would. You needed to confirm? My mom's kind of shades, like a sort of like a tinted glasses.
It wasn't a confirmation of the glass. I wanted to know what happened with my father.

Speaker 2 But I wasn't allowed to ask. My father would blow up if everyone was afraid he'd get really angry.
He'd throw that eye at you.

Speaker 2 It could. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But here's my question.

Speaker 2 So now I have the eye, and I said to my wife, I need to find out how to, I can't just take my father's eye and throw it in the garbage. Like, there might be laws against that.
I don't know. Are there?

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 Wouldn't you want to save it as a keepsake? No. No, no, no.
Beth, where is it? It's a cat toy now.

Speaker 2 She's got it in a eye. She's got it in a locket around her neck.
She brought it here for you guys.

Speaker 2 No, it's a, so she says to me, throw it in the ocean. What?

Speaker 2 I go, I'm just going to throw my eye.

Speaker 2 I say,

Speaker 2 my father's eye watching. Your dad's never seen the the ocean.
He loved the ocean.

Speaker 2 So, what did you do with the eyes, my question? What did you do? Well, I got it sitting in a box. Yeah, of course you do.
You got to hold it.

Speaker 3 You don't tossing in the fucking ocean.

Speaker 2 No, you're not. No, my mom.
You brought yours on stage. My mom, so it was the same.
We weren't allowed to ask about it. Irish Catholic, same as Jewish.
You just don't talk.

Speaker 2 You stuff it all down. So there's our headline.

Speaker 3 Irish Catholic, same as Jewish.

Speaker 2 That's our headline.

Speaker 2 We got our title of this episode. And so, my mom.
There are a few differences between Irish and Catholics. Just a couple.

Speaker 2 But not gays and Jews. Right.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 so my mom, we weren't allowed to say, so my whole life, I was like, I'd be at the store, and the checkout girl at the counter would be like, staring at my mom's eye.

Speaker 2 I'm like, mom, they're staring at your eye. Shh, just shut up, right? Right? So then 10 years old, 20 years old, 30 years old, 35 years old.
Finally, I'm like, mom, what happened to your eye?

Speaker 2 And she still didn't want to talk about it. I found out after she died, she had cancer in the eye.
They took it out two years old.

Speaker 2 And then as she grew older, this gets really gross gross and funny. As she gets older, she gets, my sister and I read the medical reports.

Speaker 2 They took skin from her vagina to reshape her eye as she grew older. And then my oldest brother goes, I knew when I got upset with her, I wanted to fuck her in the eye.

Speaker 2 God. Wow.
It's true.

Speaker 2 It's dark. It's dark.
That's it. This show has to be canceled.

Speaker 2 That is very unfortunate. She made a terrible joke about that one a long time ago, but I'm not going going to repeat it here.

Speaker 2 By the way, we're all talking about being honest. That's an honest story.
That's a true story. And that's us making jokes about painful things.
Yeah, so

Speaker 2 her complaint after that, she thought that everybody looked like a cunt, right? Isn't that what she said?

Speaker 2 Did you famously say that? When I was a little kid, I was five years old.

Speaker 2 There was a guy on my block, a kid on my block, a five-year-old kid, said to me, he came up to me, he said, my parents told me your father has a glass eye. I was so freaked out.

Speaker 2 We got into a fist fight. It's probably the only fight I ever won.

Speaker 2 I beat him up.

Speaker 2 It was crazy.

Speaker 2 But I could never ask. My father wasn't approachable like that.
That's why it was so much mystery.

Speaker 3 Did you ever get the story?

Speaker 2 Yes, I did. It was a crazy story.
What happened was I was so curious about the eye and everything about my father, because I didn't know him.

Speaker 2 I would sneak into his room when they would leave the house, which was infrequent. Nobody ever left my house.
And

Speaker 2 he would, you know, so no one could figure out the lie.

Speaker 2 My father kept his eye with his porno. So the eye.

Speaker 2 My father had porno, you know, like he had some erotic books and things. You know,

Speaker 2 if you met my mother, she's not exactly putting out.

Speaker 2 My mother once said to me,

Speaker 2 you know, I prefer to be celibate, but your father has knees.

Speaker 2 I go, really? That's gross. Oh, but fucking somebody in the eye is that.

Speaker 3 Those books, no movies, no tapes.

Speaker 2 It was books back then, and

Speaker 2 the books were wacky, but the eye was staring at me. I wanted to read the erotic books.
So I was all freaked out about it,

Speaker 2 the eye. But then finally...

Speaker 3 You didn't sit out to go to sleep.

Speaker 2 I don't know what went on, but in all seriousness, I finally talked to my mother about it. She wouldn't tell me,

Speaker 2 but I broke her down. And it was a terrible accident when my father was young.

Speaker 2 He put some film.

Speaker 2 in a bottle and the bottle exploded. He lit it and it exploded in his eye when he was a little kid.

Speaker 2 And my father had a fabulous attitude about his eye in the sense that he I didn't see any evidence that he saw himself as handicapped you know he did his thing so was he just proud or is that the thing he just didn't want to I think he I think it was a big pain in it you know for him in his life seriously a seriously big pain you know wow and um yeah it was a big my mom would sleep you know her eye was constantly open so when she slept she'd be like

Speaker 2 you know like this and I approached the bed and I did I'd be like mom oh she's sleeping oh no she's not sleeping oh she's awake Like, I didn't know whether.

Speaker 2 I'm like, can I get a glass of water? Oh,

Speaker 2 you're sleeping. Like, it was,

Speaker 2 just like that. It was crazy.

Speaker 2 And then we would, we would.

Speaker 3 Where is the eye now?

Speaker 2 My sister has it in a box.

Speaker 3 Is it like a timeshare? You get it.

Speaker 2 Do you get it for like, if you want it for the holidays?

Speaker 2 Sure, I could do it. She could pass it around.
We did, one really quick question.

Speaker 2 I've said this on the show before, but we used to take, my mom used to go bowling on Thursday nights, and we used to go upstairs, we used to invite friends over, and we'd had a chain on the door, and we'd go upstairs and get her extra eye.

Speaker 2 She had two, and she was in the box, and we'd get it, and they'd knock on the door, knock, knock, knock, and we'd open it just as much as the chain would go, and we'd stick the eye out and go, who's there?

Speaker 2 With the eye.

Speaker 2 Anyway, I wouldn't have risked that in my house. That's fun.
Yeah, it is fun. It's fun, but dangerous with, you know, if you knew my dad.
Tell me about Italy and Jimmy Kimmel. Did you like Italy?

Speaker 2 I know you didn't want to go. I'll give you an exclusive.

Speaker 2 It was, and this is the most boring answer ever. It was actually a bad question because I loved it.
I don't have anything to fish about. I don't think you were going to love it.

Speaker 2 I don't like to travel. I'm perfectly happy sitting at home, and if I want to see Italy, I'll go on the internet and look at pictures.

Speaker 2 You know, I went to Paris once, and I was like the Eiffel Tower, and I saw it. I'm like, got it, ready to go home.

Speaker 2 It looks like the movies and the postcards, got it. It looks the same.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 we had a great time.

Speaker 3 Did you somehow convince you and Beth that this is going to be great.

Speaker 2 No, I had said, you know, my wife wanted to travel, and I wanted, you know, I wanted to be a human being for my, I mean, I can't, I can't be in a marriage, and if my wife wants to travel, I can't say, well, go ahead.

Speaker 2 Once a year, she gets away.

Speaker 2 You go, and we ended up having a very romantic time, honey, right? Romantic. Romance was in the air.

Speaker 2 Romance happened.

Speaker 2 And barely confirming that listening. I know.

Speaker 2 Poor woman. Imagine, you know, think about it.
That was a nod. Imagine, you know, imagine me crawling on top of you in Florence.
I mean,

Speaker 2 it's like a praying mantis attacking you.

Speaker 2 So I felt for the woman. I did.
But she's a good sports. She took it like a champ.

Speaker 2 She's a bad person. And

Speaker 2 I felt horrible. I felt horrible.
But honey, it wasn't so bad, right? It was over quick. You're the king of the insects.
You're like, dude. Yeah, yeah.
I was like, oh,

Speaker 2 like the brindle fly, you know.

Speaker 2 Howard, do you have any, is there any one interview you have that you regret? Is there any one that you're like? Oh, many, many. What's the one you regret the most?

Speaker 2 Well, because I was an asshole many times.

Speaker 2 You know, when I was on regular radio, terrestrial radio, whatever you want to call it, I didn't have the faith that if I did an interview, that my audience would hold.

Speaker 2 We had something like a 10-share at number one in New York, and I thought, well, if someone comes on the air and they're talking, I could hear the radios clicking off.

Speaker 2 That the only thing that might be compelling is if, you know, I was doing my thing,

Speaker 2 which means I was not trusting of other people, that other people might have talent. So there were people, and I've written about this,

Speaker 2 the fabulous, most wonderful Robin Williams, for example, came on my show.

Speaker 2 And I just was ridiculously

Speaker 2 insulting.

Speaker 2 And why?

Speaker 2 Because I was trying to be funny. Robin Williams is way funnier than I am.
Let him be funny.

Speaker 2 But being the insecure child that I was,

Speaker 2 somehow having some connection with an audience where I was intuitive and thinking I could hear when they're turning off the radios,

Speaker 2 if somebody gave a long answer or it wasn't moving fast enough, the rhythm wasn't right, I could hear the radios clicking off. And so I really had no business having guests on.

Speaker 2 It's funny,

Speaker 2 you're really honest about that in your self-assessment of that time in your life now that you're older. And is that just

Speaker 2 a result of getting older or is this a result of doing a lot of work? It's a result of leaving terrestrial radio and going to satellite. It suddenly dawned on me.

Speaker 2 I work for a company now that has 100-something channels.

Speaker 2 As long as the person who's paying for a subscription is happy with the product, and if they're listening to me and I'm doing a long-form interview, and if it's not their cup of tea, they can go to a different channel on our service.

Speaker 2 And that freed me, that liberated me, because it wasn't about me necessarily holding the audience.

Speaker 2 If you enjoy listening to Robin Williams, great, then we have you as a listener. But if you don't, there's a million other choices on the street.

Speaker 3 But don't you also find that

Speaker 3 your agenda is no longer to provide a show for your listener, but instead perhaps you hope that the people remaining listening to you on that particular day happen to be as interested in the person you're talking to as you are.

Speaker 3 In other words, you're not. That's right.
Yeah, it's a more honest sort of, you're not pushing, you're not pressing, you're just a pressure.

Speaker 2 Yes, but you couldn't have done that. If you guys started your radio, let's say you started a career in radio back in the day,

Speaker 2 this format would not have lasted. It would not be on the radio.
It doesn't hold an audience en masse. Right.
You know, Jimmy Fallon's sitting in our audience, right?

Speaker 2 When he does an interview, he can't do an hour interview. He's got to sit there because he's dealing with televisions coming on and off and on and off.
We're in a unique position.

Speaker 2 The period of time we're in right now has allowed us to sit here and have a real conversation and we can play to a niche audience.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, not to get too academic about it, radio, the old format of radio is gone. And I recognized that when I came to satellite and I felt that was the innovation.

Speaker 2 I could sit and have a real conversation with someone like Robin Williams. And

Speaker 2 I have regrets that,

Speaker 2 yeah, the format helped me to evolve.

Speaker 2 I have an actual question for Jimmy. You know, seriously, seriously, no, to that point.
No offense, but I think I'm the interview service.

Speaker 2 You've been great.

Speaker 2 I guess I just haven't delivered the goods. Jimmy, why don't you take over? This always happens.
Always happens.

Speaker 2 It has everything to do with it. Why don't you get up and do a few Gilbert Godfrey impressions? Go ahead, pal.

Speaker 2 It has everything to do with what you just said, which is Johnny Carson used to have long, long, long interviews, 20 minutes, half hour.

Speaker 2 And so, Jimmy, I was thinking about you because you're one of the best at what you do. Thank you for standing.

Speaker 2 Have you ever had discussions about what Howard is saying about instead of the six, seven minutes you do, oh, right, you don't have a microphone? Oh, he's coming up to stage. Here we go.

Speaker 2 He's never going to leave. You know, once Jimmy,

Speaker 2 get the Fallon mic. I love this.
Jimmy Fallon. I love it.
I love it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Come on, Jimmy. God bless you.
Come on, Jimmy. Can I leave now? No, no.

Speaker 2 Did you ever have

Speaker 2 the discussion about changing your format to do kind of where this feels like it's going, which is long-form interviews as opposed to six, seven minutes? No, I know you can't do it.

Speaker 2 I wish that I could do a longer interview with

Speaker 2 certain guests.

Speaker 2 But yeah, but I do wish that I can get into it and talk for an hour.

Speaker 5 I'm jealous when I, you know, can listen to you.

Speaker 2 When you hear a real conversation. Yeah, I love it.
Because then when it gets going, it's great.

Speaker 5 And even with an audience, like you said, like this is, we're loving this.

Speaker 3 But here's the good news: when I'm in the mood for what you provide and what Kimmel provides, what Cobert provides, you guys do it better than anyone.

Speaker 2 But I want to be focused.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 3 when I'm in the mood for a long-form thing, it's like there's no one better.

Speaker 2 You know?

Speaker 2 How much do you

Speaker 2 think? Thank you, Jimmy Fangy. Thank you, Jimmy Fang.
Jimmy, one Gilbert Gottfried impression, for Christ's sake. Thank you.

Speaker 5 I was going to say, my wife, my beautiful wife, Paula, is in the audience.

Speaker 2 She dated you when you were 14.

Speaker 2 You haven't talked to her in a couple years. Give her a

Speaker 2 a ball. I love Jimmy very much, by the way.
I want to tell you.

Speaker 3 Who doesn't love Jimmy?

Speaker 2 Fallon.

Speaker 2 I'll let you in on his secret. And Nancy Javonin.
Oh, Nancy's the best.

Speaker 2 Jimmy and I are going to go camping together on a beach, and it's just going to be the two of us alone. Jimmy, right? We're going to be in a, what is that called? An RV? An Airstream.
Wow. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 How much of your guests? He thinks I'm going to go. How many of you are your guests?

Speaker 2 Because one of the other things that we get to do is we get to choose, choose, we reach out to people that we're interested in talking to.

Speaker 2 How much of that do you do and how much of that comes in through you?

Speaker 2 We reach out to some people, but mostly, and this is probably to our detriment, but I don't want to have a lot of guests.

Speaker 2 We keep a limited amount. I think some of our strongest shows are when we're just sitting and doing our own thing.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 We'll be right back.

Speaker 6 Today's episode is sponsored by Ashley. They don't just sell incredible furniture, they're also making an impact in vulnerable communities.
Here's a tough fact.

Speaker 6 Over 7 million kids are affected by the welfare system and over 368,000 are currently in foster care. So together with Ashley and SiriusXM, we made a donation to four others.

Speaker 6 an organization working to end the child welfare crisis in America. You know, partnering with Ashley and our live show, first of all, they just made our set look really good.

Speaker 6 They made us really comfortable. And they kind of made us look legit because otherwise it would have been, you know, milk crates and, you know, cardboard boxes.

Speaker 6 And Ashley made it look like a real, kind of looked like a living room, made it really comfortable, made our guest, John Mayer, really comfortable.

Speaker 6 And then he thought that maybe we're professional, we're not just a bunch of clowns. To be honest, there was a point where I got so comfortable, I forgot that I was in front of an audience.

Speaker 6 I was sitting back back on that nice Ashley couch, and I was just hanging out with my buds in my living room.

Speaker 6 Anyway, Ashley offers timeless, well-crafted furniture with white glove delivery right to your door. Visit your local Ashley store or head to Ashley.com to find your style.

Speaker 1 Some like it hot, but for most, a little spice goes a long way.

Speaker 1 Dorito's Golden Sriracha Flavored Tortilla Chips are the perfectly balanced blend of yellow and green srirachas for a chip that's tangy and sweet with just the right amount of heat.

Speaker 1 Doritos golden sriracha are spicy, but not too spicy because Doritos knows bold flavor doesn't have to mean just heat. Try Dorito's Golden Sriracha for yourself.

Speaker 1 Look for them wherever Doritos are sold or find a store near you at Doritos.com.

Speaker 2 Doritos for the bold.

Speaker 1 This is an ad by BetterHelp. Have you ever had someone that you haven't reached out to in a long time And you're just like, you know what, just do it.

Speaker 1 I just did that recently and it was such a wonderful experience. We had a great lunch, a lot of catching up, and I'm so glad we did it.
It was great.

Speaker 1 As the seasons change, shorter days don't have to weigh you down. This season, BetterHelp encourages you to reach out, check in on friends, reconnect with loved ones, and remind them you're there.

Speaker 1 Just like it takes a little courage to send that text or grab coffee with someone you haven't seen in a while, reaching out for therapy can feel difficult too, but it can be worth it.

Speaker 1 It can leave people wondering, why didn't I do this sooner? With over 30,000 therapists worldwide, BetterHelp is one of the leading online therapy platforms. BetterHelp therapists are fully qualified.

Speaker 1 BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. This month, don't wait to reach out.

Speaker 1 Whether you're checking in on a friend or reaching out to a therapist, BetterHelp makes it easier to take that first step.

Speaker 1 Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/slash smartless. That's

Speaker 1 slash smartlist.

Speaker 1 And now back to the show.

Speaker 2 I have to say,

Speaker 3 I tried to be a guest on your show for so many years. I kept asking my publicists every year, just hoping like, are things good enough in my career where maybe I could be, how are they?

Speaker 2 And I remember I was- No, no, no, no, but I once got my public said, listen, Jason, we got news back. It's good news, bad news.

Speaker 3 Good news is he says he's a fan. Bad news is he says he just genuinely really has nothing he would like to know about.

Speaker 2 No, no, no. But no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 I'm paraphrasing. But it was absolutely.

Speaker 2 You know what I was like?

Speaker 2 Honestly, and I've said this to Jason. I said, look, I could Google you and find out enough stuff.
I don't really need to sit and talk to you. I don't have to believe that about anybody.
Really?

Speaker 2 What have you done? I'd rather talk to a

Speaker 3 no, no, no, but seriously, it's much more interesting talking to somebody who's got like a weird, fucked up look.

Speaker 2 Here's the thing.

Speaker 2 If I did a show every day where i just interviewed one guest that would be fascinating to me but there's also an audience in my in my my group that likes to hear us doing you know bits and and shtick and and like sitting and talking robin and i just talking and i recognize that so i don't i don't overload the show with a lot of guests but sometimes we do reach out like um uh you know i wanted joe biden on so we had him on

Speaker 2 And I wanted Bruce Springsteen. I begged him to come on.
I just wanted him to come on. Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's the white whale. It was unbelievable to be sitting in a room with Bruce, and he's doing a concert, basically, and talking about how he creates songs.
Yeah. So, you know, we do reach out.

Speaker 2 And there are people I just love to see.

Speaker 3 Do you miss playing music at all?

Speaker 2 Like being a disc jockey?

Speaker 2 It never was about music. You know, it's weird.
I play music and I talk over it. Yeah, yeah.
So,

Speaker 2 you know, it's like I can't.

Speaker 2 Playing, when I got into radio, I was a disc jockey, you know, straight disc jockey.

Speaker 2 My father would say, first you must learn learn to be a straight disc jockey not all that nonsense you do so uh yeah so i went on the radio and be like hi this is uh howard stern uh wrnw uh uh progressive music from the woods and this is crosby stills national young

Speaker 2 and so uh you know we would do that and i hated it I hated it. Even you had a segue that you had to play a record and make sure there was no dead air.

Speaker 3 You had no autonomy. You couldn't launch bands.

Speaker 2 You had to play whatever. Oh, no, no, I played whatever I wanted, but

Speaker 2 it was was horrible. I mean, it was a lot of pressure.
You know, you had to get the commercials lined up. It was just you in a little room in a house somewhere up in the woods.

Speaker 2 It was, you know, these were these shitty radio stations, $96 a week.

Speaker 2 And you played records and you announced them. And

Speaker 2 this is what I did. And I was the worst at it.
I was the worst.

Speaker 2 There were no performers in my family. I didn't understand performance.
I was not in show business.

Speaker 2 My father even said, you cannot be on the radio. You have no elocution.
You do not enunciate. You read nothing.

Speaker 3 You did have some sense that you had no sense.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 3 you had a sense that your personality might be halfway entertaining

Speaker 3 between that and the middle.

Speaker 2 When I'd walk around college, nobody seemed to pay attention to me. I think I had the worst personality.

Speaker 3 You had no confidence that you were going to be somewhat compelling over.

Speaker 2 I would write letters to my girlfriend saying,

Speaker 2 I will be the world's greatest radio person. Why did you think that? I have no idea.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 I just knew that there was something there. Well, you weren't always...
Sorry.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 3 you weren't always this charismatic? You weren't always this

Speaker 2 cool and talking? No, it took me years.

Speaker 2 That's why I resent this podcast. You guys are just on here talking.
I had to spend years. I had to spend years.

Speaker 2 It took me 10 years just to get conversational.

Speaker 2 It was very slow.

Speaker 2 You guys are too talented. No, no, no.

Speaker 2 But in all seriousness,

Speaker 2 playing records was horrible. Were you a fan of music, though? Oh, huge fan of music.
You know, music meant more to me than religion. I never got a thing out of religion.

Speaker 2 But man, when I'd hear the Beatles or the Stones or George Harrison, you know, My Sweet Lord, that stuff, that spoke to me. That moved me.
And I was happy to launch a lot of bands.

Speaker 2 I was a program director for a while. Yeah.
And I didn't even understand. I didn't know anything.

Speaker 2 A guy from a record company would call me up and he'd go, Would you play our record? I go, sure. He goes, well, no, no, no, I'll play it for you.
I go, you're going to have to play it for me.

Speaker 2 I'll report it to Billboard. I didn't care.
I was happy to do that.

Speaker 3 Do you get Starstruck around musicians?

Speaker 2 I admire musicians, and I know how hard they work at it.

Speaker 3 But is that the group that would, if anyone was going to get you Star Street? That or athletes or musicians.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Who?

Speaker 3 Who would be, who's the one that you haven't met? You'd be like, uh-oh, I can't talk.

Speaker 2 Oh, geez. Is it a Beatle? Well, I've met Paul and Ringo, and they were great on the show.

Speaker 2 You want to take a temperature of the room about the name of the Beatles? Oh, yeah. Do you guys know about this?

Speaker 2 Old Captain Brain.

Speaker 2 What happened? But let's take an

Speaker 2 honest thing of the audience. I didn't know my whole life, I thought it was the insect of the Beatles.
I didn't know it was people who make beats.

Speaker 2 B-E-A-T.

Speaker 2 It was like... Clap if you were with me.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Be wild.
I did not know that till right now. I didn't know it was.
what to suck the air out of the room. I want to thank the guys for that story.

Speaker 3 Have you noticed the arrow in the FedEx logo?

Speaker 2 Yeah. I don't know what that means.

Speaker 2 All right, here's one you didn't know, Sean.

Speaker 2 Sean, here's one I guarantee you you didn't know. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know the place you go for roast beef, right? Arby's, right? Yeah. Why is it called Arby's? They got the meat or whatever they say.
No? No. Think about it.
Why is it Arby's? Roast beef. R.B.

Speaker 2 Roast beef.

Speaker 3 I didn't know that, but I put it together.

Speaker 2 RB's. R.B.
Oh, I see. Did not know that.
Look at Will. We could do this all day.
This is going great.

Speaker 2 Now, wait. So, speaking of speakers.

Speaker 2 Really glad I came on. By the way, these guys treat it like it's a TV show.
I'm in a trailer. I'm waiting to come on.

Speaker 2 There's a warm-up back for the audience. I don't know from this.
You just go on the radio.

Speaker 3 First of all, I don't think we've said it yet. I can't thank you enough for doing this.
You don't do this.

Speaker 3 I've seen you do it for Letterman. I've seen you do it for Kimmel.

Speaker 3 You don't do this, and I can't thank you enough.

Speaker 2 This is a really, really good.

Speaker 2 Happy to be here.

Speaker 2 We really do. And just so you're not just hearing it from Jason, that you are the gold standard for us, and you're the guy that we've always wanted to talk about.
We talk about you all the time.

Speaker 2 And honestly, this is.

Speaker 2 I'm really honored. And, Will, much to your point, for many years, I couldn't take a compliment, but I do appreciate you.
Oh, I got a new one for you. Okay.

Speaker 3 Everybody knows you're recently 70. It's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 It's so fucked up. No, no, no.

Speaker 3 You have not changed enough.

Speaker 2 Oh, God.

Speaker 2 Beth, back me up here.

Speaker 3 Like,

Speaker 3 what are you guys doing? I know you're not out there, like, running 10 miles on the beach every day. Is it just jeans? I mean, you look exactly the same.

Speaker 2 I look terrible. No, no, Howard.
The only thing I will say is that you look exactly the same for the last 30 years. I can't even see a picture, but I will tell you one thing.

Speaker 2 I do not color my hair.

Speaker 3 No, I know. I can tell you.

Speaker 2 I don't.

Speaker 2 This is it. And I have a gray beard.
He doesn't either.

Speaker 2 You don't color your your head. I don't know.

Speaker 3 But you don't have.

Speaker 2 You're supposed to have like a belly.

Speaker 2 I do have a belly. I have a belly intense.

Speaker 3 You're supposed to. Everybody's got it.

Speaker 2 I got a belly intense, right, honey? You've seen me with my shirt off.

Speaker 2 She's busy talking. By the way, Sam.
You want to go terps off? Yeah, wait. You want to go taps off? Should I go terps off? Oh, no.

Speaker 3 But you don't look like you ache or you're sore.

Speaker 2 I can't fucking.

Speaker 2 No, no. No, you're not.

Speaker 3 You seem like you're in great shape. Are you doing anything that

Speaker 2 you paint guitar painting? Let's get into that. I do.
Well, yeah, I do.

Speaker 2 I paint. I like to paint.

Speaker 3 It's incredible the painting here. I don't know if you guys, does people know? Okay.
And the photography, it's like,

Speaker 3 and the tiny sketching with the magnifying glass. I like it.

Speaker 2 I don't use a magnifying glass. No more? No, I never did.
I never used it.

Speaker 3 I saw your drafting thing. There was something that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I have a big magnifying glass, but I don't use it for that. Okay.
Really?

Speaker 2 I'm just telling you. It was there.
I mean, I'm not fucking crazy. No, you know, it was there.
It was there. It was there.
But,

Speaker 2 yeah, I enjoy those. I mean, it's really cool.
Holly cool. When did you start playing guitar? Okay.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I'll tell you why I play guitar. And I'm going to blame Jimmy Fallon.
You're going to jam with Jelly Roll tonight? No, with no one. Jimmy Nerd tonight?

Speaker 2 Jimmy, stand up. There we go.
Jimmy Fallon. Jimmy Fallon says to me,

Speaker 2 here's what happened.

Speaker 2 Ten years ago, I turned 60,

Speaker 2 and I said, I either want to play the guitar

Speaker 2 or I want to learn to paint. Oh, and you know.

Speaker 2 I never drew. I never, you know, did anything.

Speaker 2 For For some reason,

Speaker 2 I wanted to paint in the worst way. So that's all intentional.
And

Speaker 2 I began to study watercolor, and I really focused on it. I mean, and you know as a pianist that you have to, you have to, you just have to focus on it.

Speaker 2 It's not that people have some sort of natural ability.

Speaker 2 It's the work. You have to work out it.
People go, oh, I don't have it. I'm going to focus on the pianist's whole life.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I'm an expert. Just two laughs for that.
I thought that was pretty good. It's a tough freaking crowd.
We'll sweeten that in the edit. It's okay to laugh

Speaker 2 but you know i anyway i i enjoy those but i i applaud you wanting to research and find other things um not that you are older like 70 years old

Speaker 2 but that you pursue things that somebody your age is willing to do new things is what you're saying well it's true and by the way

Speaker 2 that fucks my head up yeah because what i said to my wife i want to learn guitar but i feel foolish because of my age like what am i trying to do here I don't want to be a rock star.

Speaker 2 I just want to understand music. You found yourself through no hobbies.
Because I love musicians and I love what they do, and I want to understand that language.

Speaker 2 Let's do a duet sometime, piano and guitar. Do you play minuet and G? I do.
All right, then we can do it. But if you play classical

Speaker 2 classical guitar? No, but I don't play classical guitar. Yeah, it's starting 12-string guitar, man.

Speaker 2 I don't know. No, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 It hurts the fingers, though, doesn't it?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 look at the tips of my fingers. Look at those calluses.
Oh, my God. Yeah.
So, you like vacation.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm on vacation now, so I can play.

Speaker 2 No, from work.

Speaker 2 I'm on vacation from work. Okay.
So I can play

Speaker 2 some days five, six hours. Really?

Speaker 2 Wow. So you must be good now.

Speaker 2 You're not good. Who's your favorite guitarist? Oh, geez.
There's so many.

Speaker 3 Why don't you just name one of them?

Speaker 2 A few of them. Well, I mean, you got to say Hendrix.
You got to say Jimmy Page. I mean, Jimmy Page, now I have even more appreciation for Jimmy Page.

Speaker 2 I was playing one of the most beautiful love songs, Thank You

Speaker 2 by Zeppelin.

Speaker 2 And the intro to that. And you sit and you realize this guy wrote this.

Speaker 2 Yes,

Speaker 2 excellent. Excellent.
Exactly.

Speaker 2 Was that you singing or playing the guitar? Keep that applause up. But you realize how brilliant it is.
And in order to get to that level, you've got to play every day for hours and hours.

Speaker 2 And I'm mad at myself because when I was younger, I didn't allow myself to practice music, which Sean did when he was smart about it. Well,

Speaker 2 when I was younger, I had so many, I don't know why I reacted this way, but so many adults, when they found out when I was like five, six, seven, eight years old playing piano, practicing, they'd go, oh, you know what?

Speaker 2 I wish I would have stuck with it. Over and over and over, all these adults telling me that.
So I was like, there must be something to that. So that's what made me stick to it.

Speaker 3 Was there something, was there a fork in the road where had you stuck with that instead of radio, you would have to be.

Speaker 2 Radio, it had to be radio for me.

Speaker 3 So it was never like. I I was five years old,

Speaker 2 no, I announced to my family, I will be on the radio,

Speaker 2 which was ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense.
I don't understand it.

Speaker 2 But your dad was a sound engineer. Yeah, well, he was a radio engineer.
Radio engineer. So that part of it made sense.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but listen, my father didn't spend a lot of time paying attention to me or interacting with me. And I used to sit.
Mine did. Well, I would watch him.
Yeah, he was focused on you.

Speaker 2 No, but I, but he would, he would,

Speaker 2 when I would see him commuting to work and he put the radio on and Bob Grant was on who was this broadcast conservative broadcaster, but the guy was mesmerizing on the radio.

Speaker 2 And I saw the way my father listened and shushed me, told me to shut the fuck up so he could hear Bob Grant. Shut up.
I said, so that's how you get, that's how you get someone's attention. Set out.

Speaker 2 You get on the radio.

Speaker 2 You did it to get your dad's attention. I think so, yeah.

Speaker 2 And did you get, sorry, just to follow up on that, if you don't mind, Jesus Christ, all right.

Speaker 2 Do you think,

Speaker 2 what was the moment where your dad, I mean, obviously you had incredible success in radio. Was there a moment where he, like, was there an actual moment where he went, holy shit, Howard?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think my mother put him out. You know, he just said, oh,

Speaker 2 okay, I love you.

Speaker 2 You know, he was not.

Speaker 2 My father grew up in the depression. Yeah.
He had nothing. When I say nothing, it was like literally no shoes.
You know, his father worked in a sweatshop as a pants presser.

Speaker 2 My father was a very deprived guy,

Speaker 2 and he didn't have a lot of room for emotion. I think he probably had a lot of bottled-up emotion, but he couldn't express it, and he didn't know how.
He didn't have the facility.

Speaker 2 But I would have loved to have known my father. I would have loved to have.

Speaker 3 Why do you think you're so well

Speaker 3 adjusted to that? I'm not.

Speaker 2 I'm a mess.

Speaker 2 I'm still with the psychiatrist.

Speaker 3 Beth wouldn't be with an idiot.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 no, no, I didn't say I was an idiot. I said I'm fucked up.
You're not a dad.

Speaker 2 Honey, come up here and tell people I'm fucked up. Please come up.

Speaker 3 Well, what do you, do you, do you.

Speaker 2 She says I'm a lot.

Speaker 2 Honey, please. You don't want to come up.

Speaker 3 Do you think, do you, well, but, like, I don't think that people know,

Speaker 3 like, if there was one misconception of you, do you have any idea what that might be? I mean, I don't know, but I will say that for me personally, given your edge of humor, it was

Speaker 3 really exciting to get to know you a little bit and see how incredibly soft and chewy you are on the inside, how incredibly sincere and genuine and attentive you are to the point.

Speaker 2 But what I said was, you know, it was unfair. You just go around saying, oh, well, that's an act on the the radio.
It was. It was who I was.
I had a lot of actions.

Speaker 3 Obviously, but there's a choice to not be fucked up and just know how to manage it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but my attitude about radio, and I say this over and over again, was I just want to make people laugh.

Speaker 2 I want people to have a great time in their car. Whether if it's a compelling interview, great.
But if I'm sitting there and I'm being really funny and I'm doing something good,

Speaker 2 well, you know, that's what I'm trying to do. So I never did anything out of malice.
I did it because I thought I was genuinely funny.

Speaker 2 Was I genuinely funny? Sometimes, sometimes. You were speaking the truth.

Speaker 3 You know, your observations weren't. It was sometimes painful for folks, and that was the funny part.

Speaker 2 Part of being honest, though, I remember when you spoke about your health scare, about having a little spot on your kidney, thank God it was nothing. And

Speaker 2 you revealed like that was one of the first, one of the few things that you did not share with your audience because you've always been so open and honest with your audience about everything.

Speaker 2 So where is that line? And is there anything? I'll tell you why, and you guys probably know this from doing this now and having a popular show.

Speaker 2 You know, if you go on a radio and you say, listen, I could potentially have this thing, and they're telling me it could be cancer, a 95% chance.

Speaker 2 You start to get letters from every know-it-all in the audience. Listen, my mother died.
You're fucked. You're this, you're that.

Speaker 2 And I'm neurotic. I am neurotic about my health.
I don't want to know. Where's Bradley Cooper? I just want to look at him.
Come on. You know what I mean? Come on, Bradley, set up.
There he is.

Speaker 2 There's Bradley Cooper.

Speaker 2 Look at that. That son of a bitch.

Speaker 2 So good looking. He is gorgeous.

Speaker 2 I love Bradley Cooper. I don't mind saying that.
We all do. No, no, there are people.
Sean doesn't love him.

Speaker 2 Bradley, I love you.

Speaker 3 Another one of you.

Speaker 2 Can I tell you Bradley Cooper story? I would love to hear a Bradley story. Can I tell you Bradley Cooper? If it's positive.

Speaker 2 One of the greatest moments for me on the show, a personal, because you asked about people I interviewed. I was interviewing Bradley, and at the time, Bradley had just finished a run on

Speaker 2 Broadway,

Speaker 2 The Elephant Man. Brilliant.
Brilliant job. Absolutely Absolutely brilliant.
And I am a fan of the Elephant Man. And I said, you know, and Bradley's so serious about the Elephant Man.

Speaker 2 He has serious Elephant Man hang-up. He goes, you know, I just want you to know I don't joke about the Elephant Man.
I said, I'm not going to joke, but I would like to do The Elephant Man for you.

Speaker 2 And I would love if you would come back as your Elephant Man.

Speaker 2 And so I said,

Speaker 2 oh.

Speaker 2 Oh, you're so kind. You're so

Speaker 2 full of kindness. So beautiful.
And Bradley looked at me and I said, He's either going to walk out. And he goes, Oh, fuck you.

Speaker 2 And we had a moment where we were both the elephant man, immersed in our character, and it was one of the single biggest highlights. Radio Magic.
Radio Magic.

Speaker 2 You acted it up. You got to act with Bradley Cooper.
I got to act with Bradley Cooper. Very few people, you know, very few people.
This guy's one of our best actors. Yes.
Rarefied Air.

Speaker 2 Without a doubt,

Speaker 3 one of the greatest filmmakers we've got.

Speaker 2 Maestro is incredible. That's right.
And when he saw,

Speaker 2 he was so inspired.

Speaker 2 Tell him, Bradley, how good I was.

Speaker 2 He loved it. Never saw such acting.
I've had no training, by the way, as an actor.

Speaker 2 That's right. That's right.

Speaker 3 How many times did you audition for private parts?

Speaker 2 Yeah, because I was going to say, you want to know something about private parts? Here's the funny thing. So in developing.
What a movie, by the way. Thank you.
Thank you, Howard. It's a great movie.

Speaker 2 Thank you. It is.
It's so good. But I got to tell you a funny story about you, because this leads into it.
It's insane.

Speaker 2 So, you know. Closer to the mic, please.

Speaker 2 So I wrote the book.

Speaker 2 I wrote the book, and I had no clue when they said they want to make a movie out of it. How am I going to make a movie out of this thing? Betty Thomas.

Speaker 2 Before Betty,

Speaker 2 I was involved in writing some of the scripts. We had other writers and this and that.
There were 25 full drafts of this thing, and each one was worse than the next.

Speaker 2 And my agent at the time, who just passed away, and Don Buckle loved him. He's great.
But he said to me, these scripts are so bad, you'll be laughed at it. So the movie studio said, listen,

Speaker 2 Reischer Entertainment put up the money, and Paramount was the distributor. And so they said, listen, this is crazy.

Speaker 2 The money that we're spending on these writers, and you're not accepting any of these scripts, we're going to hire Jeff Goldblum to play you since you won't do that. No way.
Is that true?

Speaker 2 That's great, Jeff Goldblum. No way.

Speaker 2 I looked him in the eye and I said, you know what? I would pay to see that.

Speaker 2 I would love to see Jeff Goldblum as Howard Stern. I think it would be terrific.
But anyway.

Speaker 3 Was there a plan for you to play the part?

Speaker 2 And they wanted to go to the next step. Yeah, of course.
I don't know. No, but they were so frustrated with me because I had written into the contract.
And again, this was my agent's brilliance.

Speaker 2 They couldn't make the movie unless I had full script approval. And I wrote half the scripts and they sucked.
That'd be so great to just shoot some scenes today with Jeff Goldblum. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 From, right? And just put it on the internet? Yeah. That'd be a lot of fun.
You want to know one of the most thrilling things in my career?

Speaker 2 Speaking of that. And then we got to go.
Oh, you got to go? No, after that. You got to go.
After that, you have a hard out. You have a hard out.
People are really tough about it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I have a hard out. Yeah.
No, I do. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm very busy.
I have to go home and paint and play the guitar.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm busy. No, I sit at home and stare at the wall, and Beth looks at me.

Speaker 2 She's not allowed to leave the house.

Speaker 2 Will you go home tonight and just turn on the TV?

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. I've got the advanced copy of next week's Bachelorette.
Oh,

Speaker 2 I cannot watch it.

Speaker 2 Do you watch Traders? Do you watch Traders? No. Bachelorette.
I'm Bachelor Nation all the way. Anybody else with me?

Speaker 2 Look, Jimmy Fallon's with me. Bradley? Sure.

Speaker 2 Well, these people have a lot. I love it.
Bradley, you do not know it. Amanda loves it.
Bradley doesn't watch it.

Speaker 2 Bradley watches Bachelorette. That's the secret.
He doesn't want anyone to know. All right.
Yeah, he loves it.

Speaker 2 What time is it?

Speaker 2 What's time for you to go? 6:30.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 2 we've gone way over. Howard, we've taken up way too much.
Way too much.

Speaker 2 You're very kind to drop.

Speaker 2 We feel we were a success. Yes,

Speaker 2 we were a success. Oh, my God.
We're going to record.

Speaker 2 Honestly.

Speaker 3 Everybody take a nice break. We'll record in about 20 minutes.

Speaker 2 What do you mean? Great rehearsal. What are you recording? Tell me.

Speaker 2 This is a recursive. Is the show actually over? Do I leave and then you keep talking?

Speaker 2 You're going to leave and we're going to keep

Speaker 2 it. We're going to talk about you a little bit.
A wrap-up. Yeah.

Speaker 3 We're going to talk about how great you are once you leave.

Speaker 2 Maybe I should listen in. I'll sit here.
I won't say a word. Go ahead.
Let me hear what you guys do. And I'll tell you what, I'll do.

Speaker 3 But here's the thing.

Speaker 2 Every once in a while, every once in a while, I'll interrupt, and I'll just go, that's not good radio. Or if that's really good radio, I'll tell you what I will do.
Do you mind if we cut your mic?

Speaker 2 Not at all.

Speaker 2 Here's why. Why is the judge on America's Got Talent? I know.
Fantastic. The only reason I won't.
By the way, the guy who did the warm-up today, they had a warm-up. O's.
Yeah, O'Se.

Speaker 2 I wanted him to win the entire season. He did not win that season.
He should have. He's fat.
Yeah, he's amazing. He's phenomenal.
O's Perlman. You know what you can do? A name built for show business.

Speaker 2 Here's what you can do.

Speaker 3 While you're being quiet and pretending that you're not here when we're doing this. No, I'm not going to do it.

Speaker 2 If I have to be completely quiet, I'm not doing it. All right, you can talk a little bit, but I want you to.
I'm going to do that under protest.

Speaker 2 We might embarrass you if you stayed and heard how much we were going to praise you. I've got to say something about you guys.
Yeah, this is going to hurt. It's got to be kind.

Speaker 2 Thank you for having me. Thank you.

Speaker 2 I'm very excited that you're part of the Sirius SiriusXM family. We are.
So are we? I wish you a lot of success. Thank you.
Not too much success, but a lot of success. Sure.

Speaker 2 And no, seriously, it's great to have you guys in the family.

Speaker 3 Thank you for blessing us into it and by doing this. Yes.

Speaker 2 I understand the Sirius stock is going to go over $2.90. Now that you guys are here, God bless.
I can't wait. Oh, that stock.
I'm going to be so wealthy.

Speaker 2 You guys, please help us thank Howard Sturgeon. Thank you.
Great Howard Star. Thank you.

Speaker 3 I can't get out of my chair.

Speaker 2 Howard Stern, keep it going. Keep it going.

Speaker 2 Woo-hoo-hoo.

Speaker 3 The one and the only, the king of all media.

Speaker 3 Radio, podcast, television, film.

Speaker 2 He is the king of all media. They have to raise the ceilings of the talk house just for him.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 That was surreal for me. I've never met him.
I know, you know, I didn't ever get to know him.

Speaker 3 Was he what you thought he was going to be?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was really, really nervous. I was really nervous.

Speaker 3 Was he what you thought he was going to be?

Speaker 2 Yes, I thought that.

Speaker 3 How was he different than you thought he was going to be?

Speaker 2 I didn't know he was going to be so relaxed and easy to talk to. Right? I thought he was going to be like, so what do you guys got? Let's see what you guys got.
And he wasn't like that at all.

Speaker 2 No, because he's the king of all of it.

Speaker 3 But he was also incredibly generous and empathetic and probably knows that we're nervous and we're dumb and we have a new show and he's the king.

Speaker 2 that's why i have 75 cards tremendous amount of

Speaker 2 candor

Speaker 3 yeah immediately he took he took the he took the the the reins and helped us and he started talking it's and you wrote so many questions because you were so nervous right serious

Speaker 2 upstairs and we're like what the fuck it's an hour yeah like writing any questions you didn't get to that we should listen to

Speaker 2 no and any anything you're really pissed you didn't get to uh uh let's see i mean we talked about a lot i want to talk about italy a little bit more and what oh yeah like his vacation like what's his ideal vacation?

Speaker 3 We'll bring Jimmy on and talk about that.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Anyway, so I love him, though. I've been a huge fan.
And by the way, I didn't share with you guys the first time. What are you looking at? Nothing.
I'm just. I'm joining you working.

Speaker 2 I am. I am.
So the first time I'm going to be able to do it.

Speaker 5 Can you feel it coming?

Speaker 3 Yeah, he starts to work on a buy.

Speaker 2 So you can see his brain. So the first time.

Speaker 3 And he tees himself up for it.

Speaker 2 Right. So the first time.

Speaker 3 But it's too early to do it now. We're still doing wrap-up.

Speaker 2 We're wrapped up. Okay, we're wrapped up.
We're ready to go.

Speaker 2 And we got Jelly Roll coming up, which is so exciting. So, yeah.
Oh, so goodbye.

Speaker 2 So, we so the first time I was ever here in the Hamptons was only like two, three years ago. And that was the first time ever.
And I stayed with Will at his house, which is not very far from here.

Speaker 2 And this is going to be terrible. This is going to be horrible.

Speaker 2 Dude. And Will lives so close.
So I was just going to ask, Will,

Speaker 2 today, did you drive yourself over here or did you ride your

Speaker 2 bicycle?

Speaker 2 Jesus Christ for the live show. Tell about that, guys.

Speaker 2 Sorry about that.

Speaker 3 But the interview was fun, was it not?

Speaker 2 It was really fun.

Speaker 2 Thank you guys for coming. Thank you so much for coming, you guys.
Thank you guys so much. Bye.

Speaker 2 Stick around for Jelly Roll.

Speaker 4 Thank you guys.

Speaker 2 And let's go enjoy some Jelly Roll. Yeah, Jelly Roll.
Please stick around.

Speaker 2 Jellyroll is performing out there.

Speaker 2 We're so excited. Thank you guys.

Speaker 2 Smartless is 100% organic and artisanally handcrafted by Rob Armjarv, Bennett Barbicoe, and Michael Grantary.

Speaker 2 Smartless

Speaker 7 There are millions of podcasts out there, and you've chosen this one. Whether you're a regular or just here on a whim, it's what you have chosen to listen to.

Speaker 7 With Yoto, your kids can have the same choice. Yoto is a screen-free, ad-free audio player.
With hundreds of Yoto cards, there are stories, music, and podcasts like this one, but for kids.

Speaker 7 Just slot a card into the player and let the adventure begin. Check out Yotoplay.com.

Speaker 1 You know those moments when you're trying to work through a complex problem and you can't stop until you found the answer?

Speaker 1 That's where Claude comes in, the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough.

Speaker 1 Whether you're planning something big, researching a topic you're curious about, or just trying to work through a problem, Claude matches your level of curiosity.

Speaker 1 Try Claude for free at claude.ai/slash smartless and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner.