Selects: How Schoolhouse Rock Rocked: Featuring Bob Nastanovich of Pavement

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Hey, everybody, happy Saturday.

And as promised in our Saturday Morning Cartoons episode, which by the way, I hope you woke up this morning and went downstairs and at least streamed some cartoons for nostalgia's sake.

But as promised in that episode, here is our past Schoolhouse Rock Ep that we recorded quite a number of years ago.

And we thought it was apropos that we put it out the same week as the old Saturday morning cartoons up.

We really had a great time recording this episode.

Schoolhouse Rock was a fundamental source of learning and entertainment for both of us growing up and for most of Gen X, I would say.

So I hope you enjoy it all over again.

Here we go with How School House Rock rocked, featuring Bob Nestanovich Fayman.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

As your body grows big, your mind must flower.

It's great to learn because knowledge is power.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark.

There's Charles W.

Chuck Bryant.

There's Jerry.

And this is stuff you should know.

Chip off the block

of your favorite schoolhouse.

Yeah, that was.

We just heard the theme song.

if you're between the ages of

well were you into it yes okay so you're what 41 i'm 40 dude 40 yeah so probably younger than you even a bit

let's say if you're between

i was definitely toward the tail end of it okay let's say 38 to

50 years old actually yeah that's not true so let's say it was up to 85 so schoolhouse rock yeah nine yeah

so so it's somewhere in that range.

I'd say 35 to what?

Well, 50-ish.

All right, that's what we agree on.

A little more, 55, maybe.

So that 15-year period, you were lucky.

Yeah, like if you just heard that theme song and

like something inside your body happened emotionally in your brain, then that means that you grew up in the 70s and 80s.

I think the heyday of Saturday morning cartoons, personally,

as a fan of Schoolhouse Rock, one of my favorite, favorite, favorite things in the world.

Yeah, it was pretty great.

I still love it.

Yeah.

Like, I still listen to this stuff semi-regularly.

Oh, do you?

Yeah.

It had been a little while.

When I went back to

research this, I listened to it or watched a bunch of them.

Yeah.

And

they all just came flooding back.

Yeah, and

the writer of this article actually interviewed, didn't he?

Bob Doro?

It sounded that way, unless he's a big fat liar in his author's note.

Well, I just remember when this article went around, like the first thing we do when there's an article at How Stuff Works is there's a

email that goes around to everyone where people kind of suggest

kind of questions you can answer and stuff like that.

Yeah.

I don't think we ever really talked about that, did we?

I don't think so.

Nine years in.

That's a secret.

And people say, hey, you should think about this.

You should do this.

And I said, somebody should try and interview Bob Doro.

It's like he's 93 years old.

And, you know, you can still get in touch with the guy, I think.

Yeah.

And apparently, this dude did.

And sadly, I think all we got was like one quote.

Yeah.

Well, he was on his way to like a jazz gig in London when he caught him.

I bet you there was more in there than this.

I was a little disappointed.

Oh, you're saying, I got you.

I wanted like more, more select pull quotes from Mr.

Doro.

You wanted like, I called Mr.

Doro.

He answered, hello?

So Mr.

Doro?

We should have interviewed him for this.

I don't know why we didn't.

I don't either.

Apparently, it's easy to get to.

And there's...

Well, I'll get to that.

Never mind.

Should we get in the Wayback Machine?

Yes.

Let's go back to the 70s, the greatest decade in the history of humanity.

Probably.

I'm not joking.

I'm a fan of 60s, 70s, and 80s.

It'd be tough for me to decide.

The 60s were a little too hippie for me.

Oh, yeah?

Love the 70s, though.

I mean, I love the 70s.

And not even as a golden age.

There was a lot wrong in the 70s.

Nixon was president during the 70s, okay?

Yeah.

Lots of stuff were wrong in the 70s.

But

something

about that decade just hit all the boxes.

Yeah.

I just love it.

I do too.

And it reminds me of my childhood, which is great because, you know, I had a good childhood.

It was fun.

I have a lot of, we talked about that in the nostalgia episode on how nostalgia is the correct path in life.

Yeah.

Even though John Hodgman doesn't think so.

Yeah.

Nothing to that.

So early 70s, there was a gentleman named David McCall and

he was a he co-owned an ad agency called McCaffrey and McCall.

And as the story goes, he was on vacation with his family and he knew his son was having some trouble in math

remembering specifically multiplication tables.

Yeah, no matter how much he yelled at him every night, he couldn't get multiplication.

But they were in the car and this kid was singing uh as the story goes rolling stones uh rolling stones song and he was like well you know that why can't you remember the other stuff

i don't think he was that gruff

but it did hit him he was like you know my son remember can he has no problem memorizing things but there's something about these multiplication tables so i wonder if there's something to

uh sing song right and turning learning into not only just music because that's not a new thing people have been doing that forever right but popular sounding music.

Right.

And like pairing them with concepts to teach, right?

Yeah.

To make kids understand difficult concepts, right?

And

it's so weird now, especially in the post-schoolhouse rock world.

Yeah.

That, yeah, of course people do that.

Like that's a technique that you use to teach kids.

But apparently, no one else is doing this at the time.

Yeah.

This makes

this was a this was a pretty interesting idea and it really

it germinated in just the right guy's mind because this guy McCall was like you said he was a partner in this advertising firm and they basically specialized in

in doing the same thing but get you getting you to buy something.

Yeah, he was saying maybe we could do the same thing that we do to sell people stuff but to basically sell education to kids to teach kids using the same techniques that we use in advertising.

Yeah, like they would see a jingle for a product that would get lodged in someone's head and they would say, you know, why can't we do that same thing?

Like it would get lodged in a kid's head and they would have learned something instead of bought something.

Right.

But you could also buy stuff.

If you learn enough stuff, you can buy even more stuff.

So he went to...

One of his,

I think he was a creative director, a co-creative director named George Newell, ran it by him.

He said, great idea.

Get someone on it.

And he threw a cigarette at him, got out of the office, and commissioned one of their writers.

They had jingle writers on staff, or at least working with them.

And they said, go write something.

It wasn't very good.

Didn't you feel bad for this person?

I did, but you know what?

It could have died there.

Right.

We never would have had Schoolhouse Rock.

But this person went down in history as the contributor to Schoolhouse Rock who didn't make it.

Yeah.

Sad.

Or the person who almost killed Schoolhouse Rock.

I guess so.

But McCall was like, no, this idea is too good for this.

Yeah, which is really, you know, a great thing and a lesson in persistence.

So he went, Newell was a jazz piano player, and he went to his buddy, one Bob Doro, one of my heroes, who was and is a great bebop jazz pianist and composer, and said,

you can write a jingle too.

Why don't you try this out?

And here's the one quote.

We might as well read it from

93-year-old Mr.

Doro.

I don't know how I lucked out.

Apparently, they tried other songwriters, but most of them wrote down to kids.

When I met McCall, he said, Here's my idea, give it a try, but don't write down to the kids.

And when he said that, I got a chill.

I have a high opinion of children.

And that was sort of the key right there.

They weren't

songs like written in a remedial way because it was children.

Right.

Itsy bitsy spider.

Give me a break.

Oh, that's a classic.

So, um, but you're right.

But so this idea germinates in this right guy's head.

He happens to end up indirectly getting in touch with this guy who has a high opinion of children, and he happens to be a jazz composer.

Yeah.

Things are starting to like happen.

There's basically the hand of the almighty at work here.

That's right.

So Doro goes home.

He has a daughter, gets out her textbooks, and the first thing he comes up with, to me, one of the best.

Man, it is far out.

Three is a Magic Number was the very first schoolhouse song written because the first thing they wanted to tackle was math because of McCall's son.

Yeah, this composition that he came back with, Three is a Magic Number,

it's

I when I hear it, it's super cool, but I don't...

I'm really surprised that everybody was like, this is, yes, figure something out from this.

Oh, man, I loved it.

It is, it's cool, but it just doesn't seem like the basis, the keystone of schoolhouse rock to me.

I'm surprised.

Well, it's one of my favorites.

That's great

because it dealt with multiplication.

And not only that, but like you said, got a little trippy with the symbolism: faith, hope, and charity, heart and mind, and body.

Right.

It was about, and I've wanted to do a podcast on three, the number three, because it's very special.

It is very special.

It is very special.

we did one on zero, why not three?

Oh man, I forgot about that.

Remember, I think my brain melted a bit there.

That's a good one.

It's tough.

Zero's tough.

It is tough.

And not at all magic, right?

Not really.

So, regardless, if you would have been working there, you would have been like, meh, and everyone else enjoyed it.

You'd be like, I'm going to go get a bagel.

I'm going to go work on this processed cheese account.

I did think of Mad Men quite a bit when I

researching this.

It was sort of that same time period.

Yeah.

Or I guess toward

no, Madman didn't make it into the 70s.

Yeah, I thought he did because wasn't he supposed to be D.B.

Cooper at the end?

And that was the 70s.

Yeah.

Or early, I guess it was 71.

I think it did crack into the 70s.

Not like Boogie Nights did.

That was all 70s.

Into the 80s.

No, that's right.

It cracked into the 80s with that

cheese set.

That song you recorded?

Well, no, I was, well, yeah, that for sure.

But I was thinking about when

the party, the New Year's Eve party,

celebrated

1980 with Bill Macy.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, man.

What a great movie, that was.

That was wonderful.

Yeah, movie's almost like 20 years old.

I believe it.

We're old, Chuck.

I know.

But

those pop culture references are the ones that really hit home for me.

What, the ones from the 70s?

Well, when I think of like Boogie Nights, I was like, oh, yeah, that was just like a few years ago, right?

And then someone says it's celebrating its 20th anniversary.

I'm like, what?

Or like when I see an athlete's son or daughter

playing the same sport.

The rookies are now like the old coaches and managers in the sports now.

Man.

It's bizarre.

So everyone's impressed at McCaffrey and McCall.

Then they did a pretty smart thing.

They went to, McCall was on the board of the Bank Street College of Education in New York there, and he took it to them.

It was just a song at this point.

He said,

What do you think is a learning tool?

They used it, played it for the students, and they were like, This is awesome.

Like they're responding.

Again, I'm not sure.

Except for little Josh.

He's just sitting there with his arms crossed.

He's scowling.

I've never seen him so mad before.

So the students liked it.

The agency liked it.

So they knew they were on to something.

They got their art director, Tom Yeo, Y-O-H-E.

Oh, you're going with Yo?

I'm going all out with Yohee.

Okay.

Tom Yohe.

And

said,

put some animation to this.

Draw out some storyboards.

Because that was the beauty of Schoolhouse Rock to me was

it was a combination of everything.

It wasn't just the song.

Like, the songs are great.

And we'll get more to the music here in a bit, but it was the combination of the visuals with the song and the fact that you were learning something in such a unique way, it was just like the perfect storm of awesomeness.

Yeah, the songs on their own would have stood up on their own.

Oh, yeah.

And initially, like they

planned to just release an album of cool songs like this, yeah.

But it was when uh Yohi started sitting there right, like drawing some of this stuff out.

Uh-huh.

That's, I mean, schoolhouse rock is not one or the other, it's the combination of those two things, and they play off each other so well.

Agreed.

Uh, so they took um

now they have these storyboards uh they take this to a guy named radford stone he was their uh account supervisor the vp um for abc and they said there's this young upstart at abc for their children's programming named michael eisner

doubt if he's ever gonna go anywhere

but right now he's running the kids shop over there um and let's bring in because this guy knows a lot about kids programming let's bring in chuck jones to the meeting yeah shout out to our friend jessica granddaughter of mr Jones.

And

sat down in a meeting, played the demo tape, showed him the storyboard.

They all turned to Chuck Jones, said, What do you think?

And he said, Buy it.

Buy it.

That was how Chuck Jones thought.

No, he didn't.

And Michael Eisner bought it.

And

before you knew it, they were in business.

We're going to take a break.

I think we should.

Josh is going to go collect himself and we'll be right back.

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You all right?

Yeah, I'm all right.

All right, we're back.

That was so strange.

So Schoolhouse Rock started on ABC Saturday morning as what they call an interstitial.

Yeah, we had some of those.

Yeah,

it's programming between the programming that's not commercial.

Right.

When the creators of the program you're actually watching weren't good enough to make 22 full minutes, you rounded out with interstitial programming.

Yeah, exactly.

This is January 6th and 7th, it was the first weekend in 1973.

So I was but two years old.

Oh, well, that was negative three.

Yeah.

You were in the upper atmosphere.

Just playing my liar.

Coalescing, waiting to be born.

Flapping my wings.

And this was before,

like you said,

the original thing was it was just going to be an album called Multiplication Rock

until they realized that the visuals were important.

They could put it on television.

And the first four songs that first weekend were some of the greatest.

Aside from Three is a Magic Number, Four-Legged Zoo, Elementary, My Dear, and My Hero Zero.

Great song.

Zero again.

Yeah.

Not magical, but it is a cool number.

Such a funny little hero.

Yeah.

So you came along.

They counted on their fingers and toes.

Right.

So that when was that, Chuck?

1973?

Yes.

And I think that first one had quite a was so it was up to so thir there were 13 episodes then if it went from zero to twelve.

Yeah, and I think what they settled on was

almost like seasons.

Right.

Uh themed seasons.

So the the first season was going to be math related.

Yeah.

So

apparently bob dorrow had been off like coming up with songs didn't realize that they wanted a song for each number and he had started to to combine several numbers in a different song so he didn't get the memo he didn't and he finally did and um

he uh

he was trying to figure out how to like break the the songs apart and he came up with one called the four-legged zoo have you heard that one yeah it's it's fine yeah so so not one of my favorites, but I mean, they were all great.

It's just some stand out a little more than others.

Yeah.

So what's your favorite of the multiplication rock?

Oh, well, three is a magic number.

Okay.

Yeah.

And that was something else I noticed about this.

There were,

for each season, there were

at least one standout song per season that just about everybody knows.

Yeah.

And I would guess three is a magic number is probably that one.

Yeah, or maybe My Hero's Hero.

That was a big one.

Yeah.

That was a hit.

So much so that Bob Doro was up for Grammy in 1974

for

I think the whole album, right?

Yeah, but those jerks at Sesame Street won.

If you're going to lose, lose to Sesame Street.

Yeah, and Doro is like writing and singing these initial first few songs.

I think

he sang, yeah, all of them except two, and he hired two other jazz musicians, Grady Tate and Blossom Deary.

Great name.

Grady Tate sang naughty number nine and Blossom Deary sang figure eight.

But all the rest of them, the other 11, Bob Durow, sang and he wrote all of them.

So yeah, they really struck gold with that guy.

Yeah, I mean, he was, he was that initial genius behind this whole thing.

Yeah.

And this is another cool thing about Schoolhouse Rock that I noticed.

The people involved stayed on for basically the whole run, the initial run, from 73 to 85.

Yeah, it seemed like a project that everyone enjoyed working on and that was highly collaborative.

And it just seemed like a good experience.

I don't think there's like the VH1 special, like the dark side of the schoolhouse rock years.

So they move on to, I don't know which one is my favorite, Grammar Rock or History.

But they moved on to Grammar Rock next.

Yes,

season two.

Yeah, 73 to 74.

And we should say, I don't think that these were,

like, I don't think there were breaks in the season.

I get the impression that from 1973

till 1985, when they had enough episodes, they were just running them like every Saturday morning during cartoons.

Yeah, I certainly don't remember like breaks.

Yeah.

Like it just seems like every week they were there.

Right.

So 73 and 74, you have Grammar Rock, which

debuted.

Some people will probably say the biggest of all time, Conjunction Junction.

Yeah.

That's the one everybody knows.

It's a great, great song.

Sung

as he sang many others, including my all-time favorite, which I'll get to later.

Okay.

I bet I know what it is.

I bet you don't.

He was Merv Griffin's trumpet player, Jack Sheldon, who just had this voice that's just like...

It's the Conjunction Junction.

Yeah, it's unbelievable.

Yeah.

Very unique guy.

He kind of looked like Will Farrell to me.

Like, he should play him if they did a movie about.

They they should do a movie about the whole thing, if you ask me, about schoolhouse rock.

Yeah, I think they're not.

There's no controversy or conflict.

It's just two hours of everybody getting along, doing great stuff.

Who wants to see that?

All right.

So Jack Sheldon came along,

sang Conjunction Junction.

And did you go back and listen to that

for this?

Oh, yeah.

I listened to a lot of these.

So that is a sophisticated song.

Yeah.

If you listen to like the, you remember our poetry episode?

Yeah.

If you listen to like the meter and the um the rhyming pattern the rhyme scheme and the slant rhymes they use yeah like for something that's made for kids it is not just rhyme rhyme rhyme rhyme rhyme rhyme oh yeah rhyme rhyme rhyme you know like it's a sophisticated song um and it's pretty pretty cool yeah i think that's i mean i think that's why it worked that was the secret is um it's well i guess it's that not not talking down to kids yeah and like the music was was good right like if you listen to um

i mean those are a little sing-song-y, but like

some of them were like pop music at the time, like the Verb song.

That's one of the funkiest songs I've ever heard.

Verb, that's what's happening.

Yeah.

And especially that one, like I read, I read this great blog post by this African-American guy that was talking about how verb like meant so much to him because at the time, you know, they didn't have a lot of like cartoons and stuff that addressed the black community at all.

And so all of a sudden, you get this cartoon, it's got this super funky music and this kid uh that looked like him right having this great adventure uh in the city and uh it just kind of it's pretty pretty neat thing i think yeah that was season two was grammar right yes so apparently in that same season a lady named lynn ahrens um was a she was a copy copy department secretary yeah this is where it reminded me of mad men who's like basically took uh

peggy's journey oh okay from like secretary to superstar.

I've never seen Mad Man.

Yeah, it's good.

I'm re-watching it right now.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

It's that good.

Yeah.

So

Lynn was she was a secretary at the advertising agency and apparently she was playing her guitar on lunch break.

Another reason the 70s were great.

Exactly.

And

who was it that founder, Newell?

The creative director guy?

Yeah, like in the movie, he's just walking down the hall and hears this beautiful music and stops.

He's like, What in the world's going on in there?

Right.

And it was Lynn Ahrens.

And so they took her and put her on, I guess, part-time on the project.

And they,

I guess, eventually made her a full-time songwriter, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, she

had to get 15 of the songs.

Right.

Including some of the biggest ones.

A Noun is a Person Place or Thing.

Great song.

Interplanet Janet, Interjections.

That's a good one.

A Victim of Gravity about Isaac Newton.

Interplanet Janet sounds sounds like Rocky Horror if you go back and listen to it.

Yeah, it kind of does.

It bears a real resemblance to it.

Or Rocky Horror sounded like Interplanet Janet.

Well, I went and looked.

Rocky Horror was three years before Interplanet Janet.

The movie or the play?

The movie.

Okay, so the play was even before that.

Was it a play first?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, okay.

Meatloaf was even in the play.

Oh, yeah.

Before the movie.

Not a play, I guess, musical.

Sure.

Which is a play with songs.

He's played with songs and dancing.

So the next one to come along was America Rock or History Rock, which kind of vies for the best to me with Grammar Rock.

And that one tied into the Bicentennial.

Yeah, that was a big deal, which you don't remember, but I remember being a little kid, being five years old.

It took over the country for, you know, that entire year.

Yeah, I know.

There's like a resurgence in colonial emblems and stuff like that.

You know, if you ever walk past like

a very, very old person's house today, you might see like a flag holder that's a black metal eagle holding like some arrows, maybe, or something like that.

That is from 1976.

Still there.

Like a resurgence in Betsy Ross and colonial like knickknacks and stuff.

Yeah.

I was just born, but it was, there was a, it created like a high watermark that I was able to see even, you know, four, five, six years later.

So

History rock or america rock um

featured some of the best songs mother necessity shot heard around the world

uh and no more kings which is

maybe my second all-time favorite yeah yeah and that's the one that um

there was an album that came out in like 95 96 called schoolhouse rocks

rocks i think so schoolhouse rock rocks where they got contemporary artists to cover uh these songs

and did you ever listen to that?

I listened to the pavement one today.

Oh, man.

So I emailed Bob Nostanovich today from Pavement because, as I said in the previous episode, I tricked him into being my email friend.

And I said, hey, dude, I would love to hear if you have any thoughts on No More Kings, how you guys were approached, if there are any stories.

what it meant to you, what it didn't mean, whatever.

Let me know.

Crickets.

No, no, no.

He emailed back

and then i said i'll call you on my way to work called on the way to work crickets yeah got his voicemail and then as i was coming in the studio he called and left the voicemail saying he was in his minivan rocking out and he didn't hear the phone ring oh that's funny which is very funny to me but um

i told him i'd like to hear what he has to say because he said he has a tale to tell about that experience man we're gonna have to record it after this well yeah or

if Maybe it could be like a listener mail.

Yeah, like if I can get him on tape, then we'll tag it at the end.

Okay.

If not, if it ends up being an email version or something, I'll just maybe recount it in my own dumb words.

Or you could ask him if we could read the email and make it listener mail.

Oh, for real?

Yeah.

Like a real listener mail?

All right, it's not a bad idea.

So anyway,

so listen up for the end for Bob Nestanovich's story about No More Kings.

Because if you listen to that CD, it's like the Lemonheads and Ween.

It's a super 90s CD.

Yeah.

Moby.

Moby, and they're all, most of them are pretty straight ahead until you get to the pavement song and it's just all pavement.

Like Malcolm has changed words.

There's like laser guns at the end and it's just wonderfully pavement.

Yeah.

Like quintessentially pavement.

Yeah.

Like leave it to them to just kind of throw it all out the window and do their own thing.

Yeah.

I liked it a lot.

Three Ring Government.

I didn't really know that one.

That one was good.

And apparently they um so it basically talks about the different branches of the government, but puts it in the context of a three-ring circus.

And it's um

really,

I mean, aside from the fact that it compares the government to a three-ring circus, it's not at all offensive, but apparently they sat on that one for years and didn't release it until like 1979 because they were worried about it offending the government, which is a strange thing to worry about.

Yeah.

Through today's lens.

Yeah.

But even still, I mean, this is like post-Watergate.

It's not like everybody was like, oh.

Right, right.

You know, we couldn't possibly call the government a three-wing circus.

Yeah, that's true.

That is weird.

It seems like that would have been a good time to do it.

Yeah, you know.

I think so.

But the most famous song from that year

by far was Sheldon's I'm Just a Bill.

Is that your favorite?

No.

Okay.

That was composed not by Mr.

Doro, but by a man named Dave Frischberg.

And

I mean, that one was just a mega hit.

Sure.

It went straight to number one on the Billboard charts.

It's like, as far as Schoolhouse Rocks goes,

that's the cultural icon that signifies the whole thing, I think.

Close second would be Conjunction Junction.

Maybe they're tied.

I don't know.

But I just feel like I'm just a Bill is the most readily recognizable one.

Yeah, and it's just amazing when you look back, though, like the learning that was going on and the teaching that was happening.

Yeah.

These kids, us, we were learning how a bill becomes a law

in the best way possible.

Like better than any, well, not any teacher.

There were great teachers back then.

I want to say like any dumb teacher that's boring their kids.

But it definitely struck a chord with me.

Sure.

You know?

Yeah.

And that's how I remember a lot of this stuff.

And apparently, too, adults were also noticing Schoolhouse Rock at the time.

Supposedly,

there were plenty of orders.

This was before video cassettes.

Yeah.

Before they were widely available, I guess, in the home.

I'm trying to think of how they would have played them if they didn't have video cassettes.

But anyway, apparently lobbyists and legislators would get in touch with ABC and be like, you got to get me a copy of that I'm a Bill thing.

Give me a Betamax.

Because I want to show it to my staff to train them on this kind of stuff.

Well, I think they asked for cassettes at least, at the very least, so they could play in the music.

I see.

Maybe that's what they meant.

Probably.

Okay.

An eight-track.

Yeah.

And then there was Science Rock, was the year after that.

That was 78 and 79, which was pretty good.

Interplanet Janet, Victoria.

I like that one.

It is so weird.

What, Interplanet Janet?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good one.

And then the Telegraph Line song, which

I think that was written by

Ms.

Ahrens, too, I think.

Oh, yeah.

And that one was really like,

I mean, it was, you literally learned about the nervous system and how the body communicates

to the brain by listening to that song.

And that's one that they've wanted to play for med students.

Yeah, and they did.

Amazing.

Some of them.

All right.

Well, let's take another break.

And

geez, we'll cover the sad last season of Schoolhouse Rock after this.

so Chuck, Schoolhouse Rock for the first four seasons was the epitome of creativity.

Even their process was creative.

Like the songwriters would, I guess they would say, this season our theme is, you know, going to be science or going to be grammar or whatever.

So go forth and figure this out.

And the songwriters would come up with songs and they'd pitch them to the creative team.

And so there was this process of creativity, and it started with the creatives.

That's the key here, right?

That's what made it just so legitimate and so wonderfully creative this whole time.

It started with the creatives, right?

Yeah, and they would, pretty cool, they would get them vetted by that Bank Street School of Education.

Yeah.

So they would make sure everything was like, you know, it was right.

Yeah.

And then ABC would be like, oh, well, let me see it.

And then they'd say, oh, I guess it's fine.

And then they'd start to storyboard it once they had the lyrics set in stone, right?

That was the first four seasons.

The fifth season, they said, die, creativity, die.

And they reversed the process and they said, hey, songwriters, here are your assignments now.

We think kids should know more about computers, so we're going to just screw this whole thing up, okay?

Yeah, this is a part I don't get.

It says the ABC program exec Squire Rushnell commissioned this because there was the idea that children were afraid of computers.

I guess.

I don't remember anything but there being like excitement about computers.

I don't remember any kids being like, I don't want to go near that.

Yeah.

I remember kids being like, oh, that's cool.

Let me sit down.

Usually it was the parents that were afraid of computers.

Well, I think herein lies the problem with season five.

So we should say season five, too, if you notice, we jumped quite a bit from 1979 to 1985.

Schoolhouse Rock was running all those years on Saturday mornings.

They just weren't any new ones, they were the same ones that they were rerunning.

Yeah, the classics.

1985, Squire Rushnell says,

Give me four episodes or six, is it four or six on computers?

Yeah, and we're gonna call the season a scooter computer and Mr.

Chips.

What do you think of that?

So it's what, like a computer with a bag of chips?

It's like, no, Mr.

Chips is a computer.

Well, what's scooter computer?

He's a kid.

And there you have it.

And they say, well, what about the Goodbye, Mr.

Chips, that great book?

And you went, no one's ever read that.

What's a book?

So

it was a little confusing.

We have disdain for him.

It was a little weird.

I know I feel bad if that's not really how it went down, but it sounds kind of like that classic story, you know.

Sure.

Like an executive takes over the creative and it just goes downhill.

That's usually how it happens.

And I do feel a little bit bad because, you know, the originals were still involved.

They got Mr.

Doro back on board.

Yeah.

And I think they did the best they could, but I think one of the issues is

all the other seasons, you know, math and science and history, it's all civics.

It's all baked in.

Like that stuff is classic and didn't change.

When you're writing songs about

data processing and basic computer language right a couple years later like no it's not relevant anymore right you know yeah so it's sort of that's why no one's ever heard of it plus again they they were like so wait scooter computers the boy or the computer he's hanging out with right and why is the computer on roller skates yeah just stuff like that you know it was a it was an undignified end to something really great agreed and so they pulled the plug on the whole thing in 1985 they said hey this mary lou Retton lady, we like her.

She's got gumption.

She's got apple pie coming out of her ears.

Gross.

We love her, and we want to put her on TV.

So they put her interstitials on.

Yeah, ABC Fun Fit.

Oh, I'll bet that was the same time when Reagan made Arnold Schwarzenegger as like fitness czar.

Do you remember that?

Uh-huh.

I'll bet.

Totally remember that.

The presidential fitness test, right?

Yeah.

Man, I failed that so many times.

Yeah, I think I was always sick that day.

It's like, I got to climb a rope.

Yeah.

Still to this day, I've never climbed a rope in my life.

No.

Made it this far.

Yeah.

I'm going to be chased by a tiger on the way home.

I think I was going to say that's how you're going to meet your demise one day.

You're going to be in like a burning building and a rope's just going to fall from the ceiling like a cartoon.

Reagan.

In the late 80s, there was a student at UConn, Go Huskies, that said, I want to bring Schoolhouse Rock back.

They started started a petition.

I could not find this person's name for the life of me.

I couldn't either.

Sorry, person.

But ABC said, you know what, people want this.

And I guess it took them a little while to get around to it.

But in 1993, they brought it back, rerunning

all those classic tunes and

cartoons and added some new stuff

by Bob Doro and the gang.

Yeah, they brought back the originals.

And this season was called Money Rock.

And they did a substantial number of new episodes, but again, written and performed by all the original people, but a good starting of 20 years later.

Yeah.

And they had things like

$7.50 Once a Week, which is about maintaining your budget.

Tyrannosaurus Debt, which is about the national debt,

and plenty of others.

I remember The Tale of Mr.

Morton.

That was another Lynn Aaron's offering.

What was that one about?

I can't remember exactly.

I didn't go back and re-watch it, but I remember

lost lost all his money on scratch-offs or something?

I don't think so.

But, you know, again, the reason why this was, it worked so well is because these were men and women who were used to selling products for a living, and it was just sort of a natural

natural thing for them to do as an ad agency.

It seems weird at first when you're like, an ad agency came up with Schoolhouse Rock, but it kind of makes perfect sense when you think about it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean,

they were selling these ideas to children in ways that were comprehensible to children that were approachable by children um

and they just kind of took the kids point of views and and packaged it for them i think is a good way to put it yeah so besides the schoolhouse rock rocks cd

which i still have actually yeah that 90s thing created a bit of a resurgence of it yeah a resurgence in popularity for sure boy that blind melon uh three is a magic number was great yeah yeah Shannon.

I didn't hear that one.

Did you like them?

Yeah.

I think Soup, their second album, is one of the great underrated records of the 90s.

I don't recall that one.

Man, it was good.

I think I only heard their first album.

But they,

I think they made like the pop charts right out of the gate and just kind of were unfairly labeled as a pop group, even though they really weren't.

They were

a lot more to them.

No rain song and the catchy video with the little girl and everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Soup was good, man.

You should check that out.

Oh, well.

It's very good.

Very sad.

What happened to him?

Yeah, he OD'd, and they didn't find him for a while, right?

I don't remember that part, but maybe.

I think

nobody missed him for a little while or something like that.

What a waste.

In 1993, though, there was another resurgence.

I guess that was before the CD

when they took it to the stage.

with Schoolhouse Rock Live,

which kind of started out as most

great theater like this in a sort of a basement black box theater in Chicago.

And it just grew from there to eventually an off-Broadway run.

Yeah, not just that.

It started in the basement theater of a vegetarian restaurant in Chicago.

Just to add that extra little dose to it.

Yeah, why not?

But yeah, it made it onto off-Broadway.

Yeah, it ran for four solid years, and then they had a touring version.

I remember wanting to see it, but,

and I think I was living in New Jersey at the time.

I should have gone and seen it.

I think I had no money at the time.

I think it still might you still might be able to catch it.

There's a group called the Theater Bomb Theater Bam Chicago Theater Bam

Chicago.

And they're still doing shows?

They're still touring.

As far as I know.

I need to do my Free to Be You and Me live show.

That's one of my dreams.

I've talked about that before.

Isn't that Rosie Greer one?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Did he do the whole album or just that one song?

Just the one.

It was conceived by Marlow Thomas.

That's pretty great.

But yeah, that was another, like, that one hits me square in the face still from childhood.

Right in the breadbasket.

Right in the breadbasket.

In 97, they had a 25th anniversary

package of VHS tapes.

Yeah, so think about this.

Like, it goes off the air in

1985, then all of a sudden, 93, 94, 96, 97, there's like...

schoolhouse rock everywhere.

It will never die.

No, and I think like this was one of the first instances because, dude,

admittedly, Generation X is extremely nostalgic as far as generations go.

Yeah.

Very nostalgic.

I would propose that schoolhouse rock was the thing that kicked it off.

Oh, yeah.

As far as Gen X nostalgia goes.

Yep.

Well, it definitely was something that was so drilled into our consciousness.

Like it's a touchstone.

Right.

But I mean, this resurgence of it, I think is the first example of just how nostalgic as a generation, Generation X is.

Yeah, for sure.

That's mine.

You got Sharknado.

I'm predicting that that will be rooted out by historians in years to come.

You're going to dig that one out of the vault.

Maybe at the place of your death, hang like a plaque next to that rope

that you couldn't climb.

It'll be a memorial.

I'll be like, rope, geez.

You already forgot?

Right.

In 2013, Kennedy Center had a sing-along for their 40th anniversary.

2,000 people in attendance.

Pretty amazing.

I would have done anything to have gone to that.

And then it's been

parodied and homaged over the years and everything from the Simpsons to Saturday Night Live.

Did you see Conspiracy Rock?

No.

Conspiracy Theory?

Dude.

That was a TV funhouse bit, right?

Yeah, by Robert Smeigel.

It's one of the all-time greats, man.

He nails, nails the conspiracy theory or nails Schoolhouse Rock.

But it's all about how these major corporations like GE and Westinghouse own the media.

They own like ABC, NBC, all these media outlets, and how they can use it to shape opinion and squash

opinions that disagree with them or their products and choose what to report on.

It is so good.

Go watch it right now.

It's on YouTube.

But apparently there's a bit of a conspiracy theory around it as well because it aired on the actual Saturday Night Live episode.

But then when they re-ran it and I think released that episode on DVD, it wasn't there.

They edited it out.

And

supposedly

it was just because Lauren Michaels didn't think it was funny.

There's just no way that that's all it was.

It was so...

I'm thinking no.

It was such a smack in the face to NBC and like all the other ones.

Well, and and they just had one a couple years ago on that was an homage to I'm just a bill that was pretty great too.

Yeah.

This was better.

You got to see it, man.

Yeah, I have a feeling I have and I just don't know it.

He nailed it.

I'll let you know.

I'll text you and say, I have seen it.

And you'll say, who's this?

I don't have your number in my phone.

So

I actually ran across a little bit as great as Schoolhouse Rock is, I actually ran across criticism of it.

What?

Yeah.

Oh, boy.

Are Are you going to should I just leave the room?

Maybe.

I'm about to get angry.

You might want to.

All right.

So

they were teaching

very broad concepts to kids

in ways that kids could understand.

Awesome ways.

And

when you're coming at them with multiplication or grammar, whatever.

Sure.

But apparently, especially with the history rocks or America rock season, depending on what you want to call it, that's where the criticism tends to come out.

So there's one called Elbow Room.

Did you remember that one?

Got to get you some Elbow Room.

Right.

Where it's about there's so many white settlers that we just got to spread westward.

Oh, okay.

I see where this is going.

Not a single Native American is shown in this westward spread.

Yeah.

They actually mention that it's God's will, manifest destiny.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the whole thing kind of, I don't want to say it came under fire because it's not like everybody's like, oh yeah, Elbow Room.

Forget schoolhouse rock.

Yeah.

Very few people are, but there is criticism of schoolhouse rock in that it really kind of fed American children this the popular line on things.

Yeah, and it was just exactly the kind of stuff where when you grow up, you're like, wow, I was really misled when this was first explained to me as a child.

Yeah, yeah.

So, well, we talk about that a lot too, about how schools, especially in like the 70s and 80s,

whitewashed a lot of stuff.

And so this was part of that.

I can see that.

I mean, it was, and I'm not justifying it, but it was definitely of the times.

For sure.

You know, which is why, you know, I think that these creatives were like, we can't say this to kids.

Right.

You know, I think that there's definitely been more of an awakening in recent years.

But I wasn't sure.

It wasn't a Trail of Tears song in other words.

Right.

Yeah.

And this is another name for what they were talking about.

Like, forced removal was turned into get you got to get you some elbow room.

Right.

You know?

So sketchy, though.

I want to know,

Chuck, because I'm not in school and I don't have a child in school.

I don't have a child at all.

Well, I have a four-legged child, but

are they still misleading kids like they did when we were young?

Do we just assume now that we know the deal that they don't do that any longer?

Or are they still doing it?

So any history teachers out there that are like fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade, because that's when I remember really being just overtly lied to.

And then as we got a little past that they started to be like well maybe the native americans didn't really want to leave right and then it just got a little more legitimate so i want to know teachers out there let us know i bet the answer we'll get is that we've come a long way and it probably depends on your district oh yeah and maybe even your teacher yeah i could see that um

I bet there's not like a one sweeping answer for that one.

But there's definitely been progress, you know.

I would guess.

You know, who would let let us know?

It's Tyler Murphy.

Yeah, Murphy.

Who would know?

Let us know.

Well, I know what he's doing.

He's doing all the right things.

Oh, yeah.

He's up on the desk.

Yeah, yeah.

Opening minds.

This is great stuff.

So, you ready for my favorite?

Yes, please.

Rufus Xavier Sarsparilla.

What was that one about?

I'm not sure.

Pronouns.

Yeah.

I have a hard time expressing how much joy this song brings me

still.

Yeah.

I listen to it a lot.

Yeah.

If I'm ever down, down, that's the song.

That's pretty great.

It's amazing.

It's the wordplay is unbelievable.

And it's another Sheldon song.

Right.

Like how it's, it's very fast.

So how he like every

I looked up to see if people did it live and stuff and everyone always slows it down because nobody can.

Oh, is that fast?

Well, it's just very complex.

And the whole idea of the song is is the complexity of all these nouns that you can replace with pronouns.

I gotcha.

I got a friend named Rufus Xavier Sasparilla and

they go to the zoo and there's an aardvark and an armadillo and all these big words.

He's like, I could say that, or I could say, he did this and we did that and she said this.

Nice.

Yeah, it's a word that takes the place of a noun like kangaroo.

Can we play it?

You know what?

We wouldn't, because of law,

they should make actually one about copyright infringement.

Right.

It was sorted out as a bill.

Yeah, so we probably can't play enough of it to do it justice.

So I just say go and listen to that song in full because it's delightful.

All right, I'll do that.

Man, they go to the zoo, there's animals, they all pile on a bus.

They.

Yeah, this girl and Rufus Xavier Sasparilla.

They.

Yeah, exactly.

You got anything else?

No, but

there probably will be a tag on this one with Mr.

Nostanovich

or with me just recounting his tale of No More Kings.

So

if if you want to know more about Schoolhouse Rock, go read this article on HowStuffWorks.com.

And since I said that, it may be time for listener mail with Bob Nostanovich.

All right.

So now, as promised, or as hopefully promised, we have

via telephone in the studio, Mr.

Bob Nostanovich, who

is actually a member of two of my favorite bands of all time, both Pavement and Silver Jews.

And it's a real treat to to have you here, Bob.

We did a show on Schoolhouse Rock and talked kind of at length about Pavement's efforts toward that,

I guess, late 90s

CD.

And got in touch with you and you said you had a couple of stories to tell.

It was a, we were in Memphis.

We were supposed to be making a Silver Jews record.

And the singer of Silver Jews, David Berman, decided he did not want to make the record and he went home.

And we'd already booked booked a week of studio time, Silver Juice had.

And then subsequently, we were

Stephen and myself and Steve West were unceremoniously fired from Silver Juice.

That's beside the point.

We were kind of like, I had all the studio time that

David was supposed to pay for.

So to bail him out, Pavement sort of took that and

made a record.

So Stephen, Stephen, thankfully, had three songs and we made a Pacific Trim EP, but

I guess most significantly

in regards to this project, Jackie Ferry, a dear friend of ours, was supervising the schoolhouse rock

compilation.

And she gave us our choice of songs and it was

fairly obvious to us that No More Kings, you know,

had a lot of appeal.

It was always our favorite one we were kids Boston Tea Party theme

kind of

we were able to use the vocal stylings of Steve West to our advantage I believe for the first time in band history what did he do for that song

and it all turned out to be we were very pleased with it in fact we're very pleased with

all of it but

and I think that it's an outstanding compilation and I it's one of those things in in pavements time that I feel like we actually did a good job on.

Now, what did Steve West do for that one?

He played drums, and then

all the deep voice rambling in the background.

Ah,

mostly him.

He's got an incredible voice,

speaking voice.

He's one of those people that you can hear

from 150 feet away

with a wind.

He's got a beautiful deep voice.

So

we

he's doing all like the ranting and raving.

It was all pretty jubilant.

We had a good time.

It was the only time the three of us ever recorded together as payment.

But

I feel like we made a good choice.

And we just love that song.

It was one take.

Oh, really?

It was overdub.

Yeah, one take on the instrumental and just

some vocal dubbing.

Probably took eight minutes.

Wow, and it was just the three of you?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, just the three of us.

We're the only ones there because we thought it was gonna be Silver Jews, and that was in Silver Jews.

So Canberra and

Eibold

were at home, and I don't even know if they were contacted.

We made that Pacific Trend EP, that song Give It a Day

during the same session, and

a couple other songs are on the B side of that thing.

No, Schoolhouse Rock was

this kind of thing that popped in my mind, like, well, do we have anything to do?

And it seems like I got this one song.

He's like, well, we have to do this thing for Jackie.

We have to do this thing for Jackie.

We're probably sort of planning on doing it anyways.

But Jackie at the time was a BJ on MTV.

And she later became our,

she was the nanny for

Courtney and Kurt.

for Francis Bean Cobain.

Oh, wow.

And then she was a tour manager for

Pavement.

In fact, she has she's been battling cancer for over a decade.

But one interesting artifact that she owns is the actual

cardigan's

button-up cardigan sweater that Kurt Cobain wore in the famous MTV Unplugged performance.

Oh, wow.

Holy cow.

So yeah, she's quite a character.

But

it it was her it was her project

and um

you know she was a good friend and and um

we wanted to do the best we could for her and

didn't really care about anything else.

We didn't even realize how we we didn't know whether it was a good

tiny thing, like a limited edition of like two hundred or whatever.

But yeah, funnily enough, my wife, that was the first payment song she ever heard'cause her sister Oh, really?

Yeah, my her sister bought the School Us Rock thing when her sister was like 14.

And

my wife went would have been about 10.

And

she heard that.

It was the first time she ever heard pavement.

That's pretty funny.

Yeah, she likes it.

We were talking a little bit about just your take and kind of just the different takes of all the artists on that compilation.

And a lot of them were pretty straightforward.

And I think I really like the pavement one the most because it was

it was kind of the perfect mix of very straightforward at times and then just totally pavement pavementized at times

yeah it's very um we don't I mean we straightforward I don't think we're kind of good enough to do things straightforward like

I think it's like you think of like a band like Nickel Creek covering our song spit on a stranger they can and they kind of Americana did or whatever but sure

Like in order to do like straight things, you got to be

you got to be good or else you're going to kind of humiliate yourself.

Like, for example, like REM doing like Pylon's Crazy, they could do that pretty straight.

Right.

Because they have that sound.

So they just,

you know, but I think like I've heard a lot of cover songs where it's like a great song and like a somebody with a great voice, you know, usually like a female will sing it pretty straight.

And just the fact that it's a...

somebody with a gorgeous voice, you know, covering a classic, it sort of works.

But

no,

none of us are good enough to do that.

We had to devise our own take on it, you know.

Well, I thought it totally worked.

Was the schoolhouse rock?

I mean, was that something that you guys were into, or was there much decision?

I mean, besides the fact that it was your friend asking, was it something that you thought was kind of cool?

Or

did you feel like you should do it?

Yeah, I thought it was a great idea.

At the time, we thought it was a great idea.

And at that point in our lives,

I was guessing it was like 96, 96, 97, somewhere in there.

Yeah, yeah.

We'd forgotten,

you know, like that point where, you know,

we hadn't seen or heard any of that.

The only one that I could really remember off the top of my head at the time was like Conjunction Junction, you know.

Yeah, of course.

What's your function?

But, like, you know, those are some of the first songs when we were little kids, like under 10 years old, that got stuck in our head.

Yeah.

So, yeah,

I just thought it was, I mean, if anything,

the only negative I thought it might be a little bit childish and corny.

But, you know, I noticed it came together and

it just seemed like a very worthwhile project to me.

And,

you know, she was pretty earnest, jacky, and

I'm happy it all worked out.

I kind of, I think it's actually become like sort of a one of the more significant things that pavement ever did, sort of outside the realm of pavement.

Yeah, for sure.

While still being pavement, like,

you know, I don't even know.

I'm the kind of person in regards to that band that would find out about things last.

So

I lived in Louisville and I was always at the racetrack.

And,

you know, people would say, hey, you know what?

You're going to be making a new album in like two months.

I wouldn't know anything about it.

Or like, you know, you're going on tour, you're starting in London.

I would, like,

you know, I just wouldn't even know.

And, like, so anything that rolled through the door there, like requests to do stuff,

I never knew about them, you know, unless you were going to do them, you know.

So, right.

You can see where I was on the pavement, the pavement totem pole.

Well, man, I always call you

pavement's secret weapon.

Yeah, yeah.

I think there was something about your addition to the band that really just sort of mixed everything up.

Whether it was, you know, the percussive elements or just you coming in with your unique take on backing vocals.

Yeah, no,

I think I presented the element of really not entirely knowing what I was doing and that was true.

And the funny thing about it is, like,

even at this point in my life, when people who are completely unaware of pavement,

mostly from this industry, the horse racing industry, like

heard

I was in a band, even a successful band, they can't even, they just, it doesn't make any sense to them.

And then

they'll also

um you know they'll have to like look it up on google or whatever to realize that you know we were actually like a band that made records and stuff

and then um

and then

the funny thing is they'll always ask me to you know if it's musotypes or something i'm like a one thing i'm really sort of unaware of in the human race

I have no feel for are people that like kind of collect musical gear and take music really, really seriously and like playing music really seriously and like jam and like

or just really like have this incredibly dry approach to like like gear heads who like are really really serious and like yeah people ask me to jam

and I don't I mean my idea of I don't I don't jam I mean I can't imagine jamming like what does that even mean like right um

no I'm not saying

it's really awkward like it's always awkward.

Like people ask me to do something, and then I'll be like,

oh, man, like,

you know, like, I got to figure out a way to get out of this, you know, because like,

A, my skills, like, they're not going to, really not going to believe I'm in a band once I show up with like whatever I have, two drums or whatever, and start hitting them.

They're going to be like, there's no way this guy was in a band.

Like, this is a fake.

So it's very strange, very strange.

Well, you just got to say, no, man, I'm the secret weapon, and the secret weapon doesn't jam.

Yeah, like the spice and like some sort of

bowl of burgu or something.

I don't even know.

It was just like the whole experience was

pretty magical.

It still doesn't really make that much sense to me, you know.

Yeah.

I just

really enjoyed it for sure.

But in regards to that specific project, that's something that went really smoothly.

Like, it never got to the point.

I mean, it was literally like Steven, i'm sure probably worked on it that morning or something but when when they press record on that slow ass rock thing that thing was a hum thing or it was in and out the door doug easy is like that's good you know like yeah that's probably a good approach for something like that because you don't want to overthink it and then it becomes a thing and it's stressful perhaps so i think that approach to just get in there and like knock it out was probably the way to go it certainly worked out in this case yeah and it's a song that has no history within the context of the band You know, it's not like something that we've been working on or something that's been sitting there or something that have been played live.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, I think that we had to

pavementize it and give it a bit of an original spin because

that's the only way we can really do it.

I mean, like, you know, like we were talking about with the straight thing, you know, you can't,

you got to have significant.

Yeah, not that like, you know, Steven and Steve West aren't talented.

I'm not going to lie.

Those guys are great.

But like, in fact, the fact they're able to throw improvise,

something like that is pretty cool.

But

I remember being really, really happy that Steve West,

who'd never really been used

in pavement outside of just playing drums,

that he was...

that he sort of fit fantastically on that

recording.

So I sort of love that about No More Kings.

I love hearing him in there.

Nice.

All right.

Well, thanks, Bob.

I appreciate your

telling us these stories.

And I'm going to think of about a hundred more reasons to have you on in the future.

Yeah, anytime.

I'm going to call this one

sad yet happy email.

Hey guys, my name is Sam.

I want to send you an email thanking you for your show.

The podcast is actually a rediscovery for me.

My dad used to play it back in 2009 when we would drive up to the the mountain to go skiing.

I have very fond memories of laughing and nerding out with my dad and brothers after a great day on the slopes.

Can't believe you guys are still going strong after eight plus years.

There is a little more to my rediscovery of your show though that I wanted to share.

It's been four and a half years since one of my brothers who is an amazing skier died tragically to suicide.

Since I was in college at the time, I didn't have enough time to properly grieve.

Recently I've been mulling through many painful memories that I ignored in those first three years.

However, your show unexpectedly brought back really happy ones.

It has reminded me of the fun, adventure, and learning our family enjoyed while listening to your show when we were skiing.

I remember laughing hysterically with my family at your jokes, rolling my eyes when my brothers and dad would try to comment on your show to sound smart because it was so creepy.

One of your favorite episodes of ours was the one on cannibalism.

Being a high schooler at the time, I also really liked the show on flirting because I thought I could put it into practice.

Needless to say, it didn't really work.

What?

This month I went home for a week to visit my parents, and I went skiing with my mom and dad for the first time since my brother died.

It was very painful, but also unimaginably special.

When my family and I are on the mountain, I feel like I can encounter my brother as he was when he was healthy and full of life.

I could picture him diving down a slope that was way too steep with the most enormous grin on his eager face.

All in all, it was a great day.

So, I just want to say thank you for the hard work and providing interesting topics to fill my time, making me laugh, but also inadvertently helping me cherish a special time in my life.

Man,

that was heavy.

That is from Sam, and she sends hugs.

Sam, that is fantastic.

Thank you very much for letting us know.

We appreciate that.

And our best to your whole family.

Absolutely.

If you want to get in touch with us like Sam did and just lay one on us, we appreciate it.

Lay it on us.

Send us an email to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com.

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