Speaker 1: One foot in the grave. It's one more thing. I'm so.
Speaker 2: I understand you're going to interview me on the topic
Speaker 2: of my milestone birthday, just so I can get prepared.
Speaker 1: Do you have a style in mind?
Speaker 2: Are you going to be like Scott Pelly, slow talking
Speaker 2: and making me repeat everything? You gonna make me cry
Speaker 2: like Ellen DeGeneres. Do you have more of Charlie Rose
Speaker 2: approach in mind?
Speaker 1: Katie?
Speaker 3: Joe and I were working together. Joe and I have
Speaker 3: basically the same birthday. My birthdays in ten days, and
Speaker 3: I'm turning the same age, so we are in the
Speaker 3: same reflective age situation of turning sixty. His birthday is today.
Speaker 3: Joe and I were working together when we turned thirty,
Speaker 3: when we turned forty, when we turned fifty, and now
Speaker 3: when we turned sixty. That doesn't seem possible.
Speaker 2: That's amazing, but it really doesn't seem possible.
Speaker 1: No, particularly even the hatred of each other that we share.
Speaker 3: Just from a time standpoint, the one thing that you
Speaker 3: can't you can't. This is gonna be one of the
Speaker 3: things I want to ask you about. Okay, Well, I'll
Speaker 3: just ask you instead of giving an answer first. That
Speaker 3: would be a dumb way to interview innovative got a
Speaker 3: couple of questions. Okay, what does sixty feel like compared
Speaker 3: to what you thought it would feel like when you
Speaker 3: were thirty, emotionally, physically, whatever.
Speaker 2: Well, that that question assumes that I remember what I
Speaker 2: thought when I was thirty, well, or any any point
Speaker 2: when you're.
Speaker 1: No, I see your point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think fairly similar.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: I was never never particularly afraid of aging. I've never
Speaker 2: been particular and particularly enthusiastic about the idea either it would.
Speaker 3: Be enthusiastic about aging past like twenty one, who would
Speaker 3: be enthusiastic about aging?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what, I think.
Speaker 2: One of the formative aspects of my life is that
Speaker 2: I've always been a golf freak. And even when I
Speaker 2: was thirty five, I played golf with guys who were
Speaker 2: seventy who were having fun and good players, and we'd
Speaker 2: have a couple of drinks afterward and a hoot, and
Speaker 2: so I saw. I don't know if you'd call them
Speaker 2: role models exactly, but I didn't fear that.
Speaker 1: You have a thought, Katie before I jump in, Oh, no,
Speaker 1: go ahead, I'm listening.
Speaker 3: I'm the exact opposite. I've always assumed like when I
Speaker 3: was in my twenties, I assumed there's no way anybody
Speaker 3: over the age of thirty was having fun. And I
Speaker 3: felt that way by my whole life. I thought, there's
Speaker 3: no way you're having fun in your forties. Fifty year
Speaker 3: olds aren't having fun. Certainly, nobody's gonna have fun in
Speaker 3: their sixties. And if they're like smiling and laughing, like
Speaker 3: you say, you see people they just don't remember what
Speaker 3: fun was. This is as good as it gets for them,
Speaker 3: but they're not actually having fun. If there's one thing
Speaker 3: I'd tell younger me, well, maybe that's the question I
Speaker 3: want to ask. If you could tell thirty year old you,
Speaker 3: forty year old you, whatever, twenty five year old something,
Speaker 3: what would it be?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: Okay, you know me, I quibble about every question. Does
Speaker 2: this like include? Do you tell yourself don't quibble so much.
Speaker 2: It's a waste of time. It could be so quibblesome
Speaker 2: people don't like it.
Speaker 1: Wisdom or.
Speaker 2: I'll just stick with wisdom for now because I will
Speaker 2: the reason I asked that question, and I can picture
Speaker 2: it so vividly. It's causing giant emotional changes in my
Speaker 2: brain right now. It was around and Gladys Dn't Bother
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight to two thousand, two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: when the talk show had just started, because we realized
Speaker 2: we had no future in music radio.
Speaker 1: We were doing a talk show between the records, and
Speaker 1: it was stupid, but.
Speaker 2: We'd started at our now home station in Sacramento, Toxix
Speaker 2: fifty kst and of the forty five rated RATEEO stations
Speaker 2: in Sacramento, it was forty fifth when we took over
Speaker 2: the morning show, and it was taking longer than we
Speaker 2: had hoped to really grow it, just because the mathematics
Speaker 2: of it. Lord knows, we had no marketing at that time.
Speaker 3: I don't have you ever on a station or a show, Katie,
Speaker 3: with no listeners, but I have you can say to
Speaker 3: your listeners, tell your friends to tune in. But they
Speaker 3: got no friends, they aren't listening. There's nobody to tell anybody.
Speaker 3: I feel that's my soul.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: And we had taken a fifty percent cut and pay
Speaker 2: to get started in talk radio. And I had three
Speaker 2: little kids, including a baby, and I was so stressed
Speaker 2: and so concerned that I was not going to be
Speaker 2: successful in the one field I had chosen.
Speaker 1: And you know. This is not some sort of dumb,
Speaker 1: humble brag, but I was one of.
Speaker 2: Those kids who people would say, he has so much potential, Oh,
Speaker 2: you could do this, or you could do that, And
Speaker 2: here I was going to be a dead ender who
Speaker 2: couldn't support his family.
Speaker 1: Miserable amounts of stress. Oh. I dealt with it the
Speaker 1: best I could. So, I mean, if I could just
Speaker 1: whisper in my young ear, it's can work out okay that?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna blubb her.
Speaker 2: That would have been enormously helpful. But wisdom wise, stay
Speaker 2: out of the shun. Yeah, oh my god, yeah yeah, Hey,
Speaker 2: the sunscreen thing. Take that seriously, dip shit. Show videos
Speaker 2: of uh. I'd show videos to myself. Look at this,
Speaker 2: and young me would say, what is that device you're holding.
Speaker 1: I'd say, it's a cell phone. Don't worry about it anyway.
Speaker 2: Watch this video of a dermatologist cutting a chunk out
Speaker 2: of you.
Speaker 1: Oh god, I'd say, what's what's your point? Why are
Speaker 1: you doing this? I'd say, be careful with the sun. Anyway.
Speaker 2: It would probably be you know, it would probably be
Speaker 2: parenting advice. You know, you never get You'll never regret
Speaker 2: being patient. If you got to bring the hammer down,
Speaker 2: you can bring it down in an hour. Take a while,
Speaker 2: calm down and think about what's the smart thing to do.
Speaker 2: Probably because I was a very young parent by modern standards.
Speaker 1: If you're an older parent like me, your tea is
Speaker 1: so low you can't really get worked up about anything.
Speaker 2: Right, don't let me take off my supplier hose and
Speaker 2: hit you with him son.
Speaker 1: And you know, make me. I don't know if they
Speaker 1: decided to run off, I couldn't catch them. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you come back here if you'd like. Eh.
Speaker 3: The whole perspective on time thing, the way it changes
Speaker 3: when you get older, it's just impossible. There's no point
Speaker 3: in trying to explain it to somebody who's younger. Nobody
Speaker 3: could have. I'm sure somebody tried to explain it to me.
Speaker 3: I was like, whatever, old man, Well.
Speaker 1: And you can believe it, but you can't relate to it.
Speaker 1: The idea that no five years goes by in the
Speaker 1: blink of an eye. You have to live that. Yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: I know my kids in this.
Speaker 3: They've got a particular reason to feel like this because
Speaker 3: I was an older parent. So when I was a
Speaker 3: kid was a really long time. You know, if you
Speaker 3: have kids in your twenties, like you, you're only talking
Speaker 3: about a twenty year gap in now and when you
Speaker 3: were a kid. For me, it's you know, nearly a
Speaker 3: forty year gap or whatever it is. Yes, so they
Speaker 3: can they really have good ammunition for what you know
Speaker 3: about what high schools like is completely irrelevant to me,
Speaker 3: But it's not. I look around their high school, I
Speaker 3: see the stuff.
Speaker 1: It's the same.
Speaker 3: Thing, really, just you know, clothes are actually exactly the same.
Speaker 3: They're wearing the same clothes, same hairstyles as when I.
Speaker 1: Was in high school. But so much of it is
Speaker 1: the same.
Speaker 3: But you can't convince young people that you have like
Speaker 3: really any understanding of their what they're going through.
Speaker 2: And between most of my child raising in yours was
Speaker 2: the giant you know. It's like the ADBC dividing line
Speaker 2: of smartphones. Yeah, and how that's changed everything.
Speaker 3: But the you know, but the wanting to have a
Speaker 3: girlfriend and being nervous about asking them, just all that
Speaker 3: sort of stuff is just yeah, it doesn't seem any different.
Speaker 3: I get the but I just I remember hearing years
Speaker 3: ago we did a big show and we turned forty, which.
Speaker 1: Is freaking twenty years ago. I can't believe that.
Speaker 3: But anyway, we did a big show when we turned forty,
Speaker 3: and I remember hearing somebody say something about I think
Speaker 3: it was ancient wisdom, but just.
Speaker 1: People.
Speaker 3: You can tell people you know how this is going
Speaker 3: to turn out or what your experience is shown, They're
Speaker 3: still going to do it their way and find out
Speaker 3: for themselves. It's just it just seems and that seems
Speaker 3: to be way more true than not true. There's some exceptions,
Speaker 3: but it's way more true than not true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's it was very little of the.
Speaker 2: Wisdom and conventional wisdom about conventional thinking about aging and
Speaker 2: what you're going to go through that has not been true.
Speaker 2: But you do have to confront it on your own
Speaker 2: and deal with it on your own, and and it's
Speaker 2: it's it's fine, you know.
Speaker 4: It's just to backtrack for one second. By standards, did
Speaker 4: you have older, younger parents.
Speaker 2: At the time, Very typical. My mom was twenty four,
Speaker 2: so twenty three or twenty four when she had my
Speaker 2: sister than me a year later, and then in her
Speaker 2: early thirties when she had her last kid, my little brother.
Speaker 1: Now it was practically everybody back in the day so.
Speaker 4: Young, ifh because I was thinking about your outlook on
Speaker 4: life and not really being worried about aging, and I
Speaker 4: was thinking my parents are older her standards about same
Speaker 4: with Jack and his kids, almost forty years, and I
Speaker 4: think that kind of made it so I do. I'm
Speaker 4: not really worried about aging because I'm seeing them in
Speaker 4: their older years and they're having a blast and everything's good.
Speaker 4: You know, maybe I was wondering if I contributed, but
Speaker 4: you had young parents, would have.
Speaker 3: To would be like similar to your story about being
Speaker 3: around golfers. But if you're around your parents and you
Speaker 3: see them in their sixties or seventies and doing stuff right,
Speaker 3: I have.
Speaker 1: To think I would think, yeah, and oh go.
Speaker 2: I was just going to say in a weird way
Speaker 2: when I was having those excruciating back problems, and I'd
Speaker 2: say this with great sympathy to people have ongoing back problems.
Speaker 2: Mine are much much better through a combination of never
Speaker 2: ending physical therapy and workouts and stretching that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: I was so miserable the last six months of being
Speaker 2: like fifty eight, in the first six months of being
Speaker 2: fifty nine, and I feel so much better now. I
Speaker 2: feel like I've deaged five years. So the idea that
Speaker 2: the calendar says otherwise, I just it's internally. I know
Speaker 2: that's correct, but I feel really good. But you're doing
Speaker 2: my recent standards.
Speaker 3: But you're doing that thing where they drain the blood
Speaker 3: out of young homeless people and they put it in
Speaker 3: your right.
Speaker 1: Not all homeless.
Speaker 3: Some of them have volunteers, but most of them are
Speaker 3: homeless because they need the money.
Speaker 2: Training the blood of the young and injecting it into
Speaker 2: my greedy veins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm glad that's working for you. If I could
Speaker 1: get that going, man, I would you have a question, Michael.
Speaker 5: No, it wasn't about this though.
Speaker 3: I was just thinking about the training the blood of
Speaker 3: the homelessness, nothing about this.
Speaker 5: I was just thinking about what Joe said. You know,
Speaker 5: you guys started in two thousand and that's when I started.
Speaker 5: And I was gonna tell Katie that the show show
Speaker 5: you how low they thought of the radio station.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: They used to tell me that, wouldn't you like to
Speaker 5: come work on some other show or whatever? And I
Speaker 5: refused to do it because I believed in this show.
Speaker 5: I really did, and it drove them nuts.
Speaker 1: They hated me for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah about us them, Yeah, the bosses were like, you know,
Speaker 2: you're pretty good talented, which Michael is obviously.
Speaker 1: You know you should come work over here at a
Speaker 1: real radio station. Michael could call on not it was
Speaker 1: a great call. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Just before we started nineteen ninety eight, they had a
Speaker 2: serious meeting about just shutting it down and taking it
Speaker 2: off the air to save the electricity and so they
Speaker 2: wouldn't have to bother employee employing nice people who are
Speaker 2: trying hard, but we weren't getting anywhere. It's like, this is
Speaker 2: not worth the trouble. Why don't we just shut that
Speaker 2: radio station off? And it took several years, but what
Speaker 2: was it, four or five years later we were number
Speaker 2: one in the market and have been a good bit
Speaker 2: of the time ever since.
Speaker 1: That is awesome. Wouldn't want to do it again, sweetheart.
Speaker 5: And Katie, you know the thing that management would tell me, huh,
Speaker 5: don't hit sounds, don't hit these clips. I don't think
Speaker 5: we set up the call and they set up a
Speaker 5: topic that was the really bag.
Speaker 2: They really tried to make us do old school talk
Speaker 2: radio and you weren't having it.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: They called us in and said look, you're gonna keep
Speaker 2: doing it like that, well you sink or swim, all right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you gotta do it on your own.
Speaker 1: You have a better sect or where you got that.
Speaker 1: We're like good, that's what we've been wanting.
Speaker 3: One more thing on the birthday thing, to wrap this
Speaker 3: up so you can get on with your birthday and
Speaker 3: start boozing or eating cake or whatever it is you
Speaker 3: do on your birthdays. Reading booze cake. You have never
Speaker 3: been a milestone guy like birthday, New Year's that sort
Speaker 3: of thing.
Speaker 2: Like to a fault. Yeah, I keep thinking I should
Speaker 2: be more. I am the way the other end of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I do remember from building up to turning thirty,
Speaker 3: turning forty, turning fifty for me, the build up and
Speaker 3: then the moment I turned the age, it just disappears.
Speaker 3: It's just like, what was that all about?
Speaker 2: That's well, speaking of trading wisdom back and forth, you
Speaker 2: have convinced me completely that New Year's resolutions, which absolutely
Speaker 2: have value, but if you're serious about doing something or
Speaker 2: quitting something, don't wait for a particular date, do it
Speaker 2: now or whatever. And so a lot of things that
Speaker 2: because I was thinking as you were talking about that earlier,
Speaker 2: I was thinking, yeah, I need to sit down and say,
Speaker 2: all right, what do I want to dedicate myself to,
Speaker 2: you know, the new start at age sixty blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But I'm already doing those things.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's a good idea. And you know, because
Speaker 3: you got one foot in the grave and you don't
Speaker 3: have that much time.
Speaker 1: Less, it's talk TikTok.
Speaker 3: But to the like milestone, you know thing, do you
Speaker 3: remember what you were doing on your fortieth birthday? Do
Speaker 3: you remember what you did on your fortieth birthday?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: We had a hellacious party. You remember that in my backyard.
Speaker 1: I do remember that. Yeah. It was Oh it was.
Speaker 2: Great barbecue and rock and roll, and my dog got
Speaker 2: drunk off the keg next morning. You're not supposed to
Speaker 2: let your dog do that.
Speaker 1: But look up, some bitch. Do you remember your fiftieth birthday? No?
Speaker 1: Not offhand?
Speaker 3: Okay, So there's an example of because like, I can
Speaker 3: remember where I was was with when I turned thirty, forty, fifty,
Speaker 3: even twenty five, which was my first Oh my god,
Speaker 3: I'm getting older.
Speaker 1: What did I do on my fiftieth.
Speaker 2: You know, it's probably one of those It fell on
Speaker 2: a funky day of the week, and so it was
Speaker 2: daylight today. I just worked and then we had some
Speaker 2: big wingeding on the weekend or something like that.
Speaker 1: But no, I don't really recall.
Speaker 3: I'm going to tell about my fortieth birthday in one
Speaker 3: of the podcasts next week because it's quite a story
Speaker 3: tied into sobriety, because that was the last major birthday
Speaker 3: where I was still drinking. My fiftieth birthday, I was
Speaker 3: in the middle of chemotherapy, and I was flat on
Speaker 3: my back and sick as a dog and turning fifty
Speaker 3: and alone in the bedroom, and I was quite miserable
Speaker 3: in thinking, this is really a low point for turning fifty.
Speaker 1: This is not going well. Right, Well, you're right, yeah.
Speaker 3: I was like, cool, So what are you gonna do today,
Speaker 3: specifically today on your sixty birthday?
Speaker 2: I got to work out with the guy my trainer
Speaker 2: essentially keeps the you know, the physical thing going on.
Speaker 2: Then spaghetti and meat Paul's for dinner, which is my
Speaker 2: childhood birthday dinner, and I still and then I spent
Speaker 2: time with my daughter and my son.
Speaker 1: That's cool. Your kids are yeah, yeah, kid number three,
Speaker 1: I don't remember their names. She was the third one,
Speaker 1: she have no name. She girl is actively she's.
Speaker 2: Busy at law school and will join us on the weekend,
Speaker 2: So that'll be a true wing ding, and then that'll
Speaker 2: be the big fast.
Speaker 1: There you go. Well, happy birthday? Any chance? Happy birthday?
Speaker 3: Any chance we're recording a podcast like this when we
Speaker 3: both turned seventy, Surely this is the last one.
Speaker 2: You're gonna have to find me, call me and say, hey,
Speaker 2: remember me? We worked together for forty years.
Speaker 1: Hey Joe, what did you do for your sixtieth birthday?
Speaker 1: What'd you say? I don't know, I am.
Speaker 2: I am not superstitious at all, but I've got this
Speaker 2: thing about making any pronouncement about what's going to happen
Speaker 2: years from now.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: It's one of those if God is willing things, I don't.
Speaker 2: I just feel weird saying it, which is irrational, but.
Speaker 1: I get it.
Speaker 2: Shock me that we're still doing something like this. Then
Speaker 2: if God will.
Speaker 1: It, we're still sucking wind. Oh you'll still be alive
Speaker 1: when you're seventy. Come on, I don't know. Ask the
Speaker 1: city bus that didn't see me in time? You don't know?
Speaker 1: How about you look both ways? Yeah, that's all you
Speaker 1: gotta do. Joe.
Speaker 5: There's some great deals on walking tubs. The new models
Speaker 5: are coming in. Well, I guess that's it.
Speaker 1: That's an old wives tale. That's funny.