Speaker 1: I had braces for nine years. I got them on,
Speaker 1: they came off. I was seventeen and I remember the
Speaker 1: braces came off and I had a date that evening.
Speaker 1: So I went to the gym and I'm in the
Speaker 1: shower and I'm, you know, coming out of the shower,
Speaker 1: and I'm drying off my hair and I look in
Speaker 1: the mirror and I see something like a thin spot
Speaker 1: at the very very top, about the size of a quarter.
Speaker 1: And I went, I literally said, are you frigging me?
Speaker 1: I don't get a day one day.
Speaker 2: Hello, this is Jason Alexander and I was on Seinfeld. Hi,
Speaker 2: this is legendary radio DJ and writer producer Peter Tilden. Okay, no,
Speaker 2: it's just me, Brian Baumgartner. But I swear you're going
Speaker 2: to hear from them soon. Hi everybody, and welcome back
Speaker 2: to Off the Beat. We've lost a recording somewhere. We
Speaker 2: didn't hear them introduce themselves. But that's okay. I can
Speaker 2: not only host the show. I can I can play
Speaker 2: different characters as well. Apparently today, as you just heard,
Speaker 2: we've got not one not too well, yes, two guests,
Speaker 2: and they are real life besties. Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden.
Speaker 2: You may know Jason Yes from his time on Seinfeld
Speaker 2: playing George Costanza, or perhaps you know him from his
Speaker 2: extensive Broadway career, which we discuss in depth today, or
Speaker 2: from Pretty Woman he played Philip Stuckey. And of course
Speaker 2: we also have writer producer Peter Tilden on today to
Speaker 2: talk about his career and working from KABC to co
Speaker 2: creating Hit the Road with You Guessed Jason Alexander. Also,
Speaker 2: they just started a brand new podcast together called Really, No,
Speaker 2: Really and Yes Really that is the name, and it's
Speaker 2: a good one. So I'm not going to keep you waiting.
Speaker 2: I know many of you have wanted the stars of
Speaker 2: Seinfeld on today. You have my favorite because he's the first.
Speaker 2: Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden. Everybody enjoy.
Speaker 3: Bubble and Squeak.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 4: Bubble and Squeakna.
Speaker 3: Bubble and Squeak.
Speaker 1: I cook get every mon lift ooh from the ninety.
Speaker 5: Before, Hello, everybody there, We look at this.
Speaker 4: Wow, look at you too, look at you?
Speaker 2: Really no, really you even have the poster strategically placed.
Speaker 1: You bet. We don't get around and we know this
Speaker 1: is just audio. We don't care.
Speaker 2: I promise we'll grab a picture to at least show that.
Speaker 2: How are you How are you both doing?
Speaker 1: Oh? We're living the dream right you saw?
Speaker 3: So we were at the the Our Heart Award show
Speaker 3: where you hosted, which that's amazing.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: We're just we're, like Jason said, couldn't get any better. Yeah,
Speaker 3: pinch me.
Speaker 4: When when did the two of you meet? Now? Was
Speaker 4: it on Bob Patterson?
Speaker 1: No? No, no, it was so As you probably know,
Speaker 1: Peter was one of the foremost talk radio hosts in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles for thirty years.
Speaker 4: Yes, and Peter, what.
Speaker 1: Was that KBC back then when I met you?
Speaker 4: Or it was KBC?
Speaker 1: It was KBC and I came in, you know, promoting
Speaker 1: Seinfeld in its earlier years. So it's probably around ninety two.
Speaker 1: I would imagine maybe second season or third season, went
Speaker 1: in to you know, do a straight up interview with Peter,
Speaker 1: which does not exist, by the way, there is no
Speaker 1: straight up interviews with Peter. And we were giggling and
Speaker 1: having a good old time and it just felt like,
Speaker 1: you know, we clicked. And after the after we went
Speaker 1: off the air, Peter said, Hey, it's early I want
Speaker 1: to go grab some breakfast and I went, I kind
Speaker 1: of do.
Speaker 3: We've been eating for twenty seven more years. We haven't
Speaker 3: stopped eating.
Speaker 1: He was actually at that breakfast where he said, I've
Speaker 1: got your next show after Seinfeld. It was exactly the
Speaker 1: one we did, but but we've been the best friends
Speaker 1: ever since.
Speaker 4: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: I want to go back even before that and talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about both of you growing up. When
Speaker 2: did you realize you started to have interest either in
Speaker 2: performing or the arts, or Peter, you know, having a
Speaker 2: career in the arts as well. When did you start
Speaker 2: getting excited and interested about that.
Speaker 3: I'll go first and get it out of the way,
Speaker 3: because it's not as interesting as yours with magic and Broadway. Now.
Speaker 3: I was trapped in a home with insane people. Okay,
Speaker 3: who would help if you open my refrigerator. Everything was
Speaker 3: upside down, waiting for the last drop. They came from Europe.
Speaker 3: They had nothing, so I always thought I was upside down.
Speaker 3: The heat in the house it was convection currents coming
Speaker 3: up with my father's body. The only time I saw
Speaker 3: my parents touch was for a brief Heimlich So I
Speaker 3: had to get out of there. So when I got out,
Speaker 3: I tried a bunch of different things, and then ended
Speaker 3: up working at radio station briefly then realizing I could
Speaker 3: write copy to help sales, and I liked the copy,
Speaker 3: and then I started doing that and got creative with that.
Speaker 3: Was heard on the radio in Philadelphia, just sitting in
Speaker 3: and they said, you want to come out to LA.
Speaker 3: I came out to LA, kept the ad agency I
Speaker 3: had going, and then started branching out really quickly from
Speaker 3: radio into doing TV and other stuff. So it was
Speaker 3: not till later, not till I had no sense that
Speaker 3: this was going to happen. It was kind of accidental
Speaker 3: until you know, well, well after college. Unlike Jay, who
Speaker 3: I think, well, Jay will tell you it was a child.
Speaker 3: He wanted to perform well. In a way, I was
Speaker 3: much in juxtaposition to my seemingly gregarious personality. I was
Speaker 3: I was and.
Speaker 1: In many ways still am, you know, a kind of
Speaker 1: a small personality kid.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 1: I was a bullied kid. My parents both worked, My
Speaker 1: siblings were much older than me, so I was kind
Speaker 1: of a latchkey kid, a little bit of a loner,
Speaker 1: a little bit of an introvert, kind of a you know,
Speaker 1: a scared little kid. And my escape was into magic,
Speaker 1: magic tricks.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had seen Mark Wilson and family on The Sullivan
Speaker 1: Show or something or wonder Rama or whatever the hell
Speaker 1: it was, and I said, oh, that looks like fun
Speaker 1: to have to have powers. That sounds interesting when you're
Speaker 1: intimidated a little kid. So I was I really did
Speaker 1: you know? For however, it started when I was six
Speaker 1: years old, and I was I got books and I
Speaker 1: got magic kids, and I really put in the time,
Speaker 1: and I thought magic would be an avenue for me,
Speaker 1: not really thinking of it as performing. I didn't really
Speaker 1: equate it that way. I just thought I was somehow
Speaker 1: empowering myself in some very juvenile way. When I was
Speaker 1: twelve or thirteen years old, we moved from one town
Speaker 1: in New Jersey to about five towns over where I
Speaker 1: knew absolutely nobody, and two things happened at the same time.
Speaker 1: One I went to, you know, is sort of a
Speaker 1: what was called a magic camp. It was just a
Speaker 1: really bunch of courses, and I realized that I just
Speaker 1: was not keeping up with my peers. My ability to
Speaker 1: do close up magic was considerably less skillful than anybody else,
Speaker 1: and I went, I'm not going to be good enough
Speaker 1: for this. And at the same time, the first kids
Speaker 1: that picked me up in the new town were the
Speaker 1: theater kids. And again I didn't think of it as performing.
Speaker 1: I thought of it as, oh, suddenly I have friends.
Speaker 1: I have friends, never friends before. So I got pulled
Speaker 1: into this community, and it turned out that I had
Speaker 1: an affinity for being on stage, and it just kept growing.
Speaker 1: And soon after that my enjoyment of actually going, Oh
Speaker 1: I like doing this as much as I liked being
Speaker 1: with these people started to develop, and then it became
Speaker 1: a goal.
Speaker 2: So right, So for you to start, it was really
Speaker 2: about just being a part of something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was I. I was not an athletic kid,
Speaker 1: so it was my team. I suddenly had a sports team,
Speaker 1: you know, And you didn't find that magic Magic Camp.
Speaker 4: The team wasn't.
Speaker 1: There, Uh, not so much a team sport.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how sad was on the Tale of One to Ten.
Speaker 3: How sad was Magic Camp?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 1: First of all, every kid there was in desperate needo therapy,
Speaker 1: and you know, we were all we were all bottom
Speaker 1: of the barrel on our you know, home turf, and
Speaker 1: but some very talented kids there. I don't know if
Speaker 1: they went on to have careers, but I I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a close up magician. I have teeny tiny
Speaker 1: little hands. To this day, I have a six month
Speaker 1: old grandson. His hands are almost my size. So I
Speaker 1: just couldn't manipulate the cards and the coins. And I
Speaker 1: knew I wasn't going to catch up. I wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna get ahead of the curve. And I went,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna work out for me, So got'll look elsewhere.
Speaker 2: You you start falling in love with with actually acting performing,
Speaker 2: and for you, did you feel like you needed more training,
Speaker 2: that you needed to go somewhere and study. Talk to
Speaker 2: me a little bit about for you how because for me,
Speaker 2: what's fascinating is making the jump right from which was
Speaker 2: me which was like, oh this is a fun activity, right,
Speaker 2: this is an extra curricular to then like, oh no, no,
Speaker 2: this is what I want to do for the rest
Speaker 2: of my life.
Speaker 1: There were two people who were very influential to me
Speaker 1: deciding I wanted to be an actor. One we just
Speaker 1: had on our podcast, Bill Shatner. I was a star
Speaker 1: trek nut, and I was a star trek nut because
Speaker 1: I fell in love with the charisma that Shatner had
Speaker 1: on constant display in the role of Kirk, so I
Speaker 1: understood that that was what acting was. I would basically
Speaker 1: do anything as Bill Shatner. I would just be Bill Shannon.
Speaker 1: But when I was twelve years old, thirteen years old,
Speaker 1: these kids that I had fallen in with the fact
Speaker 1: that I had grown up in New Jersey, we kept
Speaker 1: going into New York to see Broadway shows and it
Speaker 1: was very cheap to do that back then. And I
Speaker 1: saw a very early performance of Pippen with Ben Vereen,
Speaker 1: and Pippen was the first show that had magic tricks
Speaker 1: in it that I went, oh, magic and I could
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, And I know this sounds as I
Speaker 1: understand how ridiculous this sounds. But as I sat in
Speaker 1: that chair, I went, I could be Ben Veren, which
Speaker 1: means I have to learn to sing, I have to
Speaker 1: learn to dance like that, and I have to have
Speaker 1: that much charisma, I have to have that much power
Speaker 1: on a stage. So I did. Literally the next week,
Speaker 1: I was in tap dance classes and I was studying,
Speaker 1: you know, voice, So I knew those were skills I
Speaker 1: had to develop. I didn't really understand that I also
Speaker 1: needed that there were skills in craft to acting. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that, but my parents were dead set as
Speaker 1: supportive as they were because I started working professionally when
Speaker 1: I was fourteen. I couldn't have done that if my
Speaker 1: parents weren't behind that effort. But they were very realistic about,
Speaker 1: you know, life in this business, and they wanted me
Speaker 1: to go and have a college education. They were not
Speaker 1: thrilled with the fact that my college education was going
Speaker 1: to be as a theater major. But it was when
Speaker 1: I got to Boston University and started studying theater that
Speaker 1: I went, oh, there's like a craft to this, There's
Speaker 1: like things you have to know. So that's when it
Speaker 1: started to be when my eyes were open to you,
Speaker 1: just don't imitate Bill Shatner every time his.
Speaker 2: Mother, Bill Shatner and Ben Vereen. I know, that's what
Speaker 2: I was thinking. It's also for me really interesting as
Speaker 2: people began to find their place in in the business
Speaker 2: and you know, to hear from you or to know
Speaker 2: about you, that your your Broadway debut happens and merrily
Speaker 2: we roll along. Obviously, as you mentioned singing and dancing
Speaker 2: and acting, was there a part of you that felt
Speaker 2: like you wanted to be a musical theater actor. That
Speaker 2: that's that, that was your career, that's where you wanted
Speaker 2: to live.
Speaker 1: Well, that was that was the Ben Vereen influence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, part of the magic of Veren was the
Speaker 1: way he moved. I I had. You know, we'd all
Speaker 1: watched dancers. I grew up with Freda Staire and Jean
Speaker 1: Kelly and you know, great dancers. But the the fossy
Speaker 1: sense of sexualized, sensuous movement on a guy and a
Speaker 1: guy that had some street swag to him, you know,
Speaker 1: was just the most I went, well, that's, of course,
Speaker 1: that's what you got to do. That's what I want
Speaker 1: to do. And you know, my eyes had to be
Speaker 1: opened to the fact that I was never going to
Speaker 1: cut the same dash as a been for me. Now
Speaker 1: that that reality check came along a little later, but
Speaker 1: in the moment of my childhood when that all happened,
Speaker 1: I went, Yeah, the musical theater. And that's what I
Speaker 1: got pulled into by these theater kids. You know, first
Speaker 1: thing I did with them was sound of music and
Speaker 1: I was a Von Trapp kid, So musical theater was
Speaker 1: what I thought would be my best and maybe only
Speaker 1: area of success. I wasn't even sure that I could
Speaker 1: carry the ball as a non musical actor.
Speaker 2: Okay, Peter, at this time you have started working out
Speaker 2: of college in radio and you come to LA, how
Speaker 2: old are you?
Speaker 3: Much much later? I didn't come out here in my thirties.
Speaker 3: I was I had a first family, and I had
Speaker 3: an that agency that was doing okay. And then when
Speaker 3: when the guy called said come out, that was a
Speaker 3: big risk to come out, and I came out, kept
Speaker 3: the agency going for as long as I could for
Speaker 3: the people that were there, and then I didn't know
Speaker 3: what I was doing in morning drive radio. Your first
Speaker 3: job was a was a real eye opener for me,
Speaker 3: and I thought I was going to go back. After
Speaker 3: a year, I just thought it was over. It was
Speaker 3: a failed experiment. But I got to meet some people
Speaker 3: and it was really cool. And then talk radio called me.
Speaker 3: This was Cale that was KLSS before Howard Stern. Talk
Speaker 3: Radio called and I went and it was wild. They
Speaker 3: were the number one station in the country at the time.
Speaker 3: And here I am with everyone's coming in. Every guest
Speaker 3: that you could have a president's actors, actresses, politicians, everybody
Speaker 3: met everybody and interviewed everybody. So it was and amagenta.
Speaker 3: I'm a professional guy who really wants to know everything
Speaker 3: about you. I think you know we did a court
Speaker 3: of course of thing and I never met you, but
Speaker 3: I like coming in. I mean today, I prepped today
Speaker 3: for what you and Jason have in common. You knew,
Speaker 3: you knew my, you knew the brand of underwe what
Speaker 3: just about? Yeah, I don't know you knew to think
Speaker 3: that now people are going to a different place, disgusting,
Speaker 3: But but like today, what you and Jason have in common.
Speaker 3: Both studied theater right, both did nine seasons on this sitcom.
Speaker 3: Both have a daytime emmy. Both of you didn't want
Speaker 3: to be kind of type gests because you do a
Speaker 3: lot of other stuff. Both were our directors at small theaters,
Speaker 3: artistic directors at small theaters. So it's just cool to
Speaker 3: come from that place. So I also want to be
Speaker 3: here as an audience and not mentioned what I'm doing
Speaker 3: because it's fascinating watching you guys. And you asked a
Speaker 3: great prerect question, which was when's that moment when it
Speaker 3: goes to hobby the holy crap, I got to deliver?
Speaker 3: And then when does it go from I got to
Speaker 3: deliver to how do I keep delivering. It looks a
Speaker 3: competition and my nightmare. Always stay to Jason. And if
Speaker 3: you're listening to this and haven't seen Jason onstage, He's
Speaker 3: my buddy, He's my best friend. We are you all
Speaker 3: the time, we have the podcast, we've done shows together.
Speaker 3: I'm still in awe when he walks on stage, even
Speaker 3: if I've helped write the piece. There's a different power
Speaker 3: that happens. He just it's just this thing happens. And
Speaker 3: you know, thats Brian, how amazing that is to own
Speaker 3: a piece of that stage for X amount of time
Speaker 3: and it's yours. You own it and you can do
Speaker 3: with it whatever you want, and not everybody succeeds. And
Speaker 3: it fascinates me when I watch him go out there
Speaker 3: and he transforms into this thing. It's goosebump time. He
Speaker 3: does it every time. It is really powerful.
Speaker 1: Thanks Pety, and thank you Peter for not mentioning the
Speaker 1: hairline that Brian and I.
Speaker 3: Point Well, yeah you both have, Okay, don't I don't
Speaker 3: thank Thank goodness, but both which, by the way, must
Speaker 3: have played into both of your psyches growing up young,
Speaker 3: because I remember everybody around me. It's that age I
Speaker 3: remember asking this, this girl Anne, who I was dating
Speaker 3: at the time, constantly at the back, the back standing,
Speaker 3: it's standing in it. It's stinning, isn't it. She say,
Speaker 3: you're neurotic. I go, no, I'm thinning. I'm sinning. And
Speaker 3: she ran into me like thirty years later and I said, look,
Speaker 3: see she said, it's the same.
Speaker 4: It's the same.
Speaker 3: But what age, like, what age did it happen to you?
Speaker 4: Yeah? What? What? What about you? Jason?
Speaker 1: I remember it almost of the day. I had braces
Speaker 1: for nine years. I got them off. I came off.
Speaker 1: I was seventeen, and uh, I remember the braces came off.
Speaker 1: And I had a date that evening. So I went
Speaker 1: to the gym and I'm in the shower and I'm,
Speaker 1: you know, coming out of the shower and I'm drying
Speaker 1: off my hair and I look in the mirror and
Speaker 1: I see something like a thin spot at the very
Speaker 1: very top, about the size of a quarter. And I went,
Speaker 1: I literally said, are you freaking didn't me? I don't
Speaker 1: get a day one day? And it was it really
Speaker 1: was the beginning. By the time I got to college,
Speaker 1: you know, my sophomore year of college, I had you know,
Speaker 1: like like a solid drinkcoaster spot up there, you know,
Speaker 1: and I and I panicked over and I cried about it,
Speaker 1: and I really really thought it was the end of everything.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you always say, what do you
Speaker 1: want to tell your younger self? If it hadn't happened,
Speaker 1: my career would not have happened the way it did
Speaker 1: because I kept getting cast much older than I was,
Speaker 1: which was far more interesting roles, right, and I had
Speaker 1: an energy about those roles that guys that age didn't have,
Speaker 1: so it made me kind of unique. I met my
Speaker 1: wife when I was twenty, so it wasn't like I
Speaker 1: was looking good and she got fooled. She's was going
Speaker 1: on with anywhere?
Speaker 2: Did you ever, I mean, this is I guess this
Speaker 2: is personal. Did you ever or consider doing something to
Speaker 2: change it?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 1: My god, are you kidding? First of all, I was
Speaker 1: one of the first rogaine users. But rogain, you know,
Speaker 1: rogain now comes in two forms. There's a there's like
Speaker 1: an oil base and there's a foam the oil base.
Speaker 1: Back in the beginning, it was like all oil. So
Speaker 1: if you have thinning hair and you put oil on
Speaker 1: your head, you look like you belong on the street,
Speaker 1: you know, so that was no good. Then I went
Speaker 1: to hair club for men for a year and they
Speaker 1: had the thing where they make fishing line and they
Speaker 1: take your hair and they make a braid and then
Speaker 1: they sew the to pey onto that braid and you
Speaker 1: have to go every four weeks to have it to
Speaker 1: have the crud the cottage cheese scraped off your head
Speaker 1: because you can't shampoo under that.
Speaker 3: So, by the way, if they want to use that
Speaker 3: as they're out, yeah, right, the Cottage.
Speaker 1: After Seinfeld, there was a period of time where people
Speaker 1: where I got really close to a couple of rolls
Speaker 1: and they ultimately didn't go with me because they said,
Speaker 1: he looks so much like his character on Seinfeld, And
Speaker 1: I'm going, you honestly can't see me, Like if I
Speaker 1: grow a mustache or I put on a wig, you
Speaker 1: can't figure that out. So as a sort of fu
Speaker 1: I wore a to pay for two of you years,
Speaker 1: publicly making no bones about it, going see, see, it
Speaker 1: changed nothing, right, So if I could have changed it easily,
Speaker 1: I probably would have, but nothing was was going to
Speaker 1: be easy. And frankly, who you know, nobody cares anymore?
Speaker 2: No I know, I mean, I'll tell you briefly mine
Speaker 2: because it's it's similar in a way. Now, I already
Speaker 2: was playing older roles. I'm convinced that it was sped
Speaker 2: up by that old makeup company ben Nye. Remember ben
Speaker 2: Nye does the theater makeup. And I convinced that cutting
Speaker 2: thinning for older roles and putting makeup on did something,
Speaker 2: because it was right after that where it really took
Speaker 2: a turn. So I went in, I got the I
Speaker 2: got the prescription. I had to get a prescription for
Speaker 2: the ro game. My dad was a he is a
Speaker 2: doctor and got a dermatology that was just like buddy
Speaker 2: and got me the stuff. And then it was explained
Speaker 2: to me that it could have no effect, it could
Speaker 2: stop the loss, or it could reverse like a clock.
Speaker 2: But then what was explained to me was if you
Speaker 2: ever stop, the clock speeds up to wherever you would say,
Speaker 2: it leaves up. And I thought, am I going to
Speaker 2: do this forever? Like that was for me? That was
Speaker 2: the decision. And yeah, it was oily back then at
Speaker 2: the time at least it kind.
Speaker 1: Of had a alcohol.
Speaker 4: Yes kind of smell anyway, so I stopped.
Speaker 1: I blame the jew fro phenomena of nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: where every Joe boy was getting an afro, and I
Speaker 1: did it. And that's what I noticed. Oh sure, I
Speaker 1: burnt every follicle, I assid and eat and I killed
Speaker 1: every all.
Speaker 2: You premieerarily we roll on, then a number of other
Speaker 2: Broadway shows, the Rank personals, Broadway Bound, Jerome Robbins, Uh Broadway.
Speaker 4: Were you happy? Was that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I was delirious. I I had only one.
Speaker 2: Living in New York performing on Broadway.
Speaker 1: When I once, you know, Ben Vereen got under my skin.
Speaker 1: I had one ambition in life that was to somehow
Speaker 1: get to make a living on the New York stage.
Speaker 1: I had no fantasies about film or television. It was
Speaker 1: all about how do I get across the river and
Speaker 1: make a living on that stage. And I realistically thought,
Speaker 1: and I was pretty optimistic, you know, I didn't think
Speaker 1: anything was gonna stop. But optimistically I thought, well, I'll
Speaker 1: get out of college, I'll have to go do summer stock,
Speaker 1: I'll have to do touring companies. Maybe by the time
Speaker 1: i'm forty, if I'm lucky, i'll get to New York.
Speaker 1: I'll get to Broadway. And I turn around and I
Speaker 1: can't even finish college because I get cast in my
Speaker 1: first Broadway show at twenty and not only AH Broadway show,
Speaker 1: but Hal Prince and Steve Somedheim, which were the two
Speaker 1: biggest figures in the American musical theater of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And suddenly, you know, I'm calling them Hal and Steve
Speaker 1: and my Way debut. It was I was. I was
Speaker 1: all through the eighties doing all that theater in New
Speaker 1: York as my primary living and living well, my wife
Speaker 1: and I. You know, we had a lovely apartment that
Speaker 1: we rented. We were able to put money in the
Speaker 1: bank every year, and I thought, this is it. This
Speaker 1: is as good as it gets. If I'm lucky enough
Speaker 1: to keep this going, what a happy man am I?
Speaker 1: And then you know, all the other stuff happened, and
Speaker 1: you go, okay, what are you doing? Dream of now?
Speaker 1: This is nuts? And it all gets through a podcast
Speaker 1: with my friend Peter.
Speaker 2: Finally, you were nominated for a Tony for Jerome Robbins's Broadway.
Speaker 2: Talk to me a little bit about finding out that
Speaker 2: you were nominated for a Tony.
Speaker 1: Well again, you know, twelve year old kid in New
Speaker 1: Jersey fantasizing in the bathroom I'm not holding the Oscar.
Speaker 1: I'm holding of Tony. That's what it was all about.
Speaker 1: It was I don't even know where to put it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know where it all sits for me now.
Speaker 1: At the time, it was hard to remember. It was
Speaker 1: all terribly exciting and a little bit confusing because it
Speaker 1: felt like my life was happening at a very accelerated pace.
Speaker 1: You know, when you dream of something as kind of
Speaker 1: an end goal and it comes early, right, it really can't.
Speaker 1: As much as it's exciting, it can throw you because
Speaker 1: you go, well, what the hell do I dream of next?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm already disproportionately blessed. Where can this go
Speaker 1: but down in some ways? So I was overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: it all. And I can tell you I've said it
Speaker 1: on things before. I was I would have been horribly
Speaker 1: disappointed if I had lost the award. But I won it,
Speaker 1: and it was a great night and I'm very, very
Speaker 1: thrilled and proud to have it. But when I got
Speaker 1: home that night, you know, we had done the party
Speaker 1: and we had done everything, and I got home and
Speaker 1: you know, I had twenty messages on my phone machine,
Speaker 1: which was a lot. You know, it's a normal day
Speaker 1: would be three or four twenties a lot, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't one hundred, it wasn't a thousand. But the world
Speaker 1: didn't change. And I got into bed that night with
Speaker 1: my wife and there was a line in Pippin that
Speaker 1: I used to quote all the time, because the story
Speaker 1: of Pippen that Ben Maveren show is Pippen knows he's extraordinary,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't know what he's supposed to do with
Speaker 1: his life, so he tries a bunch of different things,
Speaker 1: and at one point he tries being a soldier, and
Speaker 1: at the end of that sequence, Ben Marien says to him,
Speaker 1: well how was that for you? And Pippen says, I
Speaker 1: thought there'd be more plumes. And I got in bed
Speaker 1: that night with my wife, Dana, and she said, what
Speaker 1: are you feeling? And I said, I thought there'd be
Speaker 1: more plumes? And what I learned was, you know, it
Speaker 1: was the beginning of learning that the destined. You hear
Speaker 1: it all the time, It's not the destination, it's the journey.
Speaker 1: It began to prove itself very very true for me
Speaker 1: that night, so I'd no longer put energy on those
Speaker 1: kinds of milestones. There are very different kinds of markers
Speaker 1: and milestones and goals in my life that I think
Speaker 1: ultimately have more personal value.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's I mean, that's that's so true.
Speaker 2: The journey, I mean, it's everything, and especially when you're
Speaker 2: in a business such as ours, where there's a strive
Speaker 2: for some sort of artistic creativity. There's wanting to be different,
Speaker 2: wanting to change things, even roles that you play that
Speaker 2: have happened before that you find your own way within that.
Speaker 2: Performing in front of a live audience, then performing in
Speaker 2: front of millions, I mean, all of those things. When
Speaker 2: you know, when people would ask us about the show
Speaker 2: or the Emmys or the Golden Globes or this or that,
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, yeah, we had a couple of
Speaker 2: great parties. We had a couple, but it's never what
Speaker 2: I think about.
Speaker 1: It's also, you know, Peter, you should talk about this
Speaker 1: a little bit. But you know, Peter and I have
Speaker 1: done several projects together that by a barometer, a showbiz barometer,
Speaker 1: they didn't succeed, they didn't become the goal that we
Speaker 1: had hoped for. But Pete, they are probably the best
Speaker 1: parts of our life together. Was every one of.
Speaker 3: Those objects I always say to Jason, you know, the
Speaker 3: reason I came up with the first TV show was
Speaker 3: so we could work together, because there's a different thing
Speaker 3: to be friends, and then there's a real different thing
Speaker 3: to share the stage together. You know, that's really something special.
Speaker 3: And then when that went away, I said, oh, I
Speaker 3: got to come up with the next thing so we
Speaker 3: can be together. Came up with another show about a
Speaker 3: family on a buss withfore covid who. I thought that
Speaker 3: would be the nurse worst nightmare. You have kids in
Speaker 3: your family and you know exactly what they're doing every
Speaker 3: minute of the day. I don't want to know most
Speaker 3: of that because the responsibility would be insane. So we
Speaker 3: got to do that. Sold that, and then when the
Speaker 3: corporate when the Donnie Clay is Bob Patterson's give me
Speaker 3: the TV show we was a motivational guy went away,
Speaker 3: we created a live show where we played corporations as
Speaker 3: that character so we could continue doing that. We traveled
Speaker 3: all over, then created a stand up show, and then
Speaker 3: this podcast I didn't want to do. You know, I
Speaker 3: was in radio. I didn't want to do a podcast
Speaker 3: because there's so many wasn't sure. Then researched it came
Speaker 3: up with the concept. Jason was in and thought and
Speaker 3: the greatest thing. We were doing an interview the other day,
Speaker 3: Jason said, the most amazing thing is like this. This
Speaker 3: was the magic in my radio career that I got
Speaker 3: to interview everybody and anybody and ask these kinds of
Speaker 3: questions that you really want to know about if you're
Speaker 3: really an interested person, and you can travel through cultural
Speaker 3: time and space and find out about them and live
Speaker 3: experientially through them. I mean, Jason's talking about Broadway. It
Speaker 3: takes you on that stage. I always asked them, how
Speaker 3: do you it's the same show every night? Are the
Speaker 3: little nuances? Is that? What's the magic? I couldn't imagine
Speaker 3: the redundancy. So it's such a different world, you know.
Speaker 3: And I know you're laughing because you're smiling because the
Speaker 3: same question. But it's been such an amazing journey to
Speaker 3: share this. I wouldn't have gotten to meet you. I
Speaker 3: wouldn't have gotten to do this with Jason with you.
Speaker 3: So the next chapter that we create always is really exciting.
Speaker 3: And again, will this be a huge success. It doesn't,
Speaker 3: it'd be nice, and it's great of a lot of
Speaker 3: people can hear it, and we move the ball and
Speaker 3: kind of educate some people and make them laugh. But
Speaker 3: you know what, this was already, what a great look
Speaker 3: at that, What a great way to spend an afternoon
Speaker 3: for a bit, you know, hanging out with you and
Speaker 3: you can get into a jacent in a different way
Speaker 3: in the audience.
Speaker 1: And it's a definition, it's a redefinition of what success is.
Speaker 1: We tend as human beings to define success by the
Speaker 1: response we get from other people as opposed to our
Speaker 1: own experience of the thing we're doing. And the nice
Speaker 1: thing for Peter and I is that the experience of
Speaker 1: the doing of everything we've done has been some of
Speaker 1: the best times in my life. We laughed together and
Speaker 1: and worst stuff. And you know, when we were doing
Speaker 1: about Patterson, when that show ended, Peter went into the
Speaker 1: hospital and died on the table. He was that ill.
Speaker 1: And so when I think about, you know, what was
Speaker 1: the cost of trying to make a success for other people?
Speaker 1: And yet we we laughed ourselves sick through them.
Speaker 3: And continue and continue to that's the only way to go.
Speaker 3: And that was what we figured the showd let's learn
Speaker 3: some stuff. But also if we're not laughing and we're
Speaker 3: doing something, this device that we don't. The world doesn't say, hey,
Speaker 3: we need another divisive thing, so if we can, yeah,
Speaker 3: let's not do that. Let's let's educate a little bit.
Speaker 3: Let's learn what we want to do, because we're both bumpkins.
Speaker 3: And the funniest thing is is this evolves. Jason and
Speaker 3: I argue all day long about everything when we do
Speaker 3: when when we do these it becomes this sickening love.
Speaker 3: And then we go back and go you talk to
Speaker 3: my shut up you talking your show?
Speaker 4: Why did you ask? We're not doing that.
Speaker 3: We're not doing it now. But it is a joy.
Speaker 3: You know that you do it. No need to do
Speaker 3: this right, You can be out playing golf. Absolutely no.
Speaker 2: In fact, I have said so, I hope it sounds
Speaker 2: like you are having the same experience. People ask about
Speaker 2: me doing the podcast. I universally it is my favorite
Speaker 2: and the best time of my day because getting to
Speaker 2: hear people's stories and you know, being genuinely interested in
Speaker 2: the question that I'm about to ask Jason, which is
Speaker 2: you you're on Broadway. It's your dream, it's your it
Speaker 2: is your everything. There may not be as many plumes
Speaker 2: as you say when you finally get there and you
Speaker 2: have the Ultimate and you win the Tony. Why the
Speaker 2: change another opportunity or do you make a conscious decision
Speaker 2: that you're ready for something else when you start moving Which,
Speaker 2: by the way, for people who don't know, the year
Speaker 2: that Jerome Robbins Broadway comes out and he wins the
Speaker 2: Tony and that's his he gets the twenty phone calls,
Speaker 2: this is the year that Seinfeld comes out for you.
Speaker 2: For me, let me just say this first. For me,
Speaker 2: when I was doing theater, I considered it a career change.
Speaker 2: That's what it was for me when I moved to
Speaker 2: Los Angeles and said I'm going to say no to
Speaker 2: theater projects for the next year, and it really, for
Speaker 2: me felt like a career change. For you, what is
Speaker 2: the decision for you to begin to transition into television.
Speaker 1: Was Brian, There was no decision. I am always I
Speaker 1: was so happy. Thirty five years ago, Robert Duval won
Speaker 1: an Oscar for Great Santini and he was being interviewed
Speaker 1: on television and the interviewer said to him, it must
Speaker 1: be great to get to a point in your career
Speaker 1: where you're making your choices and you're doing the things
Speaker 1: you want to do and people are coming to you,
Speaker 1: And Duval looked at her and went, I don't know
Speaker 1: what the hell you're talking about. Nothing has changed. Anybody
Speaker 1: who basically wants to hire me, All they got to
Speaker 1: do is ask, if it's not porn, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: You know, I think there's maybe twenty five people in
Speaker 1: our business at any given time, but we're literally making
Speaker 1: choices and decisions and plotting a course. The rest of
Speaker 1: us schmucks are just going, what someone wants me to
Speaker 1: do something, Oh, that sounds interesting. So all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm doing theater and Gary Marshall hires me
Speaker 1: for Pretty Woman, Like, go, okay, I've been in a
Speaker 1: couple of movies. Didn't change my life. This isn't gonna
Speaker 1: Who knew Pretty One was going to be Pretty Woman?
Speaker 1: And then this pilot comes up and they go, it's
Speaker 1: the Seinfeld experience with the Seinfeld whatever, and I go, oh,
Speaker 1: I saw Jerry Seinfeld the club. It seems fun. And
Speaker 1: you know, I audition, I auditioned. It didn't come get me.
Speaker 1: I didn't audition and I got it and we did it,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was a failed pilot. It wasn't
Speaker 1: going I went back to New York and they went, now,
Speaker 1: we're going to do four more. I went, okay, you know,
Speaker 1: I got nothing else going on, and it became a thing.
Speaker 1: There was no choice. The next thing I knew, I'm
Speaker 1: living in la I got kids, and I can't get
Speaker 1: back to New York to do theater. And once I
Speaker 1: had the kids, I kind of that was the change.
Speaker 1: The children were the change, because doing eight shows a week,
Speaker 1: it's the antithesis of a child's schedule. You know, they
Speaker 1: come home from school, you go to work, they come
Speaker 1: home on weekends, you go to work. They're not going
Speaker 1: to school on holidays. You're working double on holidays. So
Speaker 1: I knew if I wanted to be a participatory father,
Speaker 1: the theater had to be a very very selective, small
Speaker 1: piece in my life. So I focused on film and
Speaker 1: television specifically until my kids got through high school, right
Speaker 1: and then now I'm really more back in the theater
Speaker 1: than anything else.
Speaker 2: That's that's really interesting, and I think that's partly that's
Speaker 2: got to be. You know, I worked all around the country,
Speaker 2: including New York and other places. I was more you know,
Speaker 2: I was working at the Guthrie and Berkeley rep and
Speaker 2: doing touring shows, and you know, for me, it felt
Speaker 2: like it felt like I had to make a decision.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't sort of happening as simultaneously as it
Speaker 2: was for you. I mean simultaneously, but I mean moving
Speaker 2: back and forth between doing this movie or doing that.
Speaker 2: You know, I had done a couple of films, but
Speaker 2: that was like, oh, they came to you know, Minneapolis
Speaker 2: or whatever, and I just happened to get cast in
Speaker 2: this or that. But that's interesting that for you it
Speaker 2: wasn't a change, and so really was it was after
Speaker 2: Seinfeld happened and your kids came that you decide to
Speaker 2: focus exclusively there for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember when Seinfeld ended. My sons were ten
Speaker 1: and six years old, and I said to my wife,
Speaker 1: you know, honey, I think the best thing we could
Speaker 1: do is go back to New York and go back
Speaker 1: on the stage. I don't know what's going to happen
Speaker 1: in film and television. I mean, I've got this elevated visibility,
Speaker 1: but that's going to be really powerful on the stage.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's going to be meaningful out here.
Speaker 1: And my wife, you know, has achieved more wisdom in
Speaker 1: one lifetime than I will get in ten says to me,
Speaker 1: you know, absolutely, whatever you want to do, we will go.
Speaker 1: Let me just ask you a question. You know what
Speaker 1: a the week is like on your deathbed? That's always
Speaker 1: a good sentence on your deathbed. Do you think you
Speaker 1: will remember your great nights on the stage or the
Speaker 1: nights you tucked your boys to sleep? And I went okay,
Speaker 1: and so the decision got made. And that's why I
Speaker 1: started a theater. Well I didn't start it, but I
Speaker 1: took over a theater company out here for several years.
Speaker 1: Just I did the producers in LA for a year
Speaker 1: with Marty Short. You know, I would keep my toe
Speaker 1: in the water. But I was really working in Peter
Speaker 1: Knows because we did a lot of it together. I
Speaker 1: was working to try and get a television thing happening
Speaker 1: again because I knew that was the best parenting schedule
Speaker 1: I had ever had, and so was that I was
Speaker 1: actively pursuing. But everything else has been pretty much a
Speaker 1: happy accident.
Speaker 2: You come from the theater, which is the genesis of
Speaker 2: this question. How close to you is George?
Speaker 1: You know, my knee jerk answer used to be not
Speaker 1: at all, But you know now I don't honestly know.
Speaker 1: I can tell you, George, there were three role models
Speaker 1: in my head over the years that I played him. Initially,
Speaker 1: when I was auditioning for it, I had Woody Allen
Speaker 1: in my head. As we were doing some of the
Speaker 1: early episodes. There was a good little doll up of
Speaker 1: Jackie Gleeson that got in there as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I see that.
Speaker 1: But as soon as I as soon as I understood
Speaker 1: that George was some sort of alter ego for Larry,
Speaker 1: I had the great good fortune of having the role
Speaker 1: model standing next to me for the next seven years.
Speaker 1: And I feel like most of what I was doing
Speaker 1: as George was trying to run Larry's physicalities and Larry's
Speaker 1: vocal rhythms and Larry's I'm going to say performative sensibilities,
Speaker 1: because actually I know Larry to be a much, for
Speaker 1: lack of a better word, sweeter human being than the
Speaker 1: character he plays. But I was just trying to funnel
Speaker 1: all that through something that would fit on me. So
Speaker 1: I would I would have always said, it's well, it's
Speaker 1: not me, it's mostly my interpretation of Larry. But as
Speaker 1: I go back of late and I sometimes look at
Speaker 1: an old episode and I go that little piece of timing,
Speaker 1: that look that I did, that little thing. That is
Speaker 1: something I can see in my sons, and I go,
Speaker 1: So that's pure Jason Arry. So I can tell you
Speaker 1: only I understand George. George could be a despicable human being.
Speaker 1: He is selfish, he's unethical, you know, he behaves very
Speaker 1: badly at times, and.
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 1: And what saves him from me, and the reason I
Speaker 1: have affection for the character is because he is so
Speaker 1: driven by a sense of I'm not cutting it, I'm
Speaker 1: not worthy, I'm not good enough to be anything. But
Speaker 1: he can't live with that, so he overcompensates and exaggerates
Speaker 1: and lies and manufactures and acts out out of a
Speaker 1: desperation that you know, who of us has not been
Speaker 1: prey to that at one time or another, acted in
Speaker 1: ways we're not proud of. I mean, I've been in
Speaker 1: therapy for thirty five years. Try and not do that
Speaker 1: stuff because it's such a common And I think that's
Speaker 1: why George has the touch of the common man is
Speaker 1: because everybody to some degree feels their own inadequacies, even
Speaker 1: if they have a healthy ego, they feel their own inadequacies.
Speaker 1: They feel when they go into any given room, that
Speaker 1: they're not enough, they don't deserve to be there, And
Speaker 1: for many, many people, they compensate by exaggerating, overblowing, making
Speaker 1: inorganic choices to who they really are, and they get
Speaker 1: hoisted on their own petard, much like a George. And
Speaker 1: so I have sympathy because I think he is, in
Speaker 1: many ways the human race trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1: You know, No, I look at Peter. Peter has come
Speaker 1: so so far and yet has so far to go.
Speaker 3: You know something, I'm thinking, you're much more like George
Speaker 3: than you admit. So there's this there's a sense of
Speaker 3: entitlement and George that Jason doesn't have. But when Jason
Speaker 3: is slighted, and it's really funny, and I'm not trying
Speaker 3: to segue back to the podcast, but Jason the the
Speaker 3: origin of the podcast. The phrase came up with Jason
Speaker 3: would I would crack up because and this is a George.
Speaker 3: If we're driving and I get cut off, I go,
Speaker 3: what the hell does it? You know, Jason does a
Speaker 3: difference thing when he's cut off, or the waiter doesn't
Speaker 3: bring the check in time, whatever. Really, really, it's this
Speaker 3: huge enormous slight It really encompasses so much, they just
Speaker 3: they just stupid.
Speaker 1: On the road and not just really really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but something is done and politically, something that's done
Speaker 3: in the world that you really Jason noise really, which
Speaker 3: is a succinct the way of saying, what are.
Speaker 4: They doing to me? What are they doing to me?
Speaker 4: What are they doing to me? Exactly?
Speaker 3: And I couldn't get, by the way, Brian, I couldn't get.
Speaker 3: They wanted really dark out, they wanted like a half
Speaker 3: moneion bucks, and I went, there's no way. So I thought,
Speaker 3: how do we make it even more absurd that I
Speaker 3: don't believe your first answer, So I don't believe you
Speaker 3: shows answer. So I'm already going really, no, really, I'm
Speaker 3: assuming you're gonna bes me, and I'm going right to
Speaker 3: the second. But that's Jason that when you say his house,
Speaker 3: he like George, that's Jason. I see it. He's sweet,
Speaker 3: he's a dad, he's this, And then it dissolves in
Speaker 3: a second when that slight comes on.
Speaker 1: I'm one line away from going, you know, we're living
Speaker 1: in a society, and I see it.
Speaker 3: So he's not George because he doesn't go to there, right,
Speaker 3: but he will go there for money, but he doesn't
Speaker 3: go there. But it's lurking. It is lurking under the skin.
Speaker 3: Because you saw easily.
Speaker 2: How easily he went, Jason, How important for you, because
Speaker 2: you just brought it up? How important for you is physicality,
Speaker 2: vocal rhythm, posture. For lack of a better word, that's
Speaker 2: an awful, non actory word. I don't know where that
Speaker 2: just came from. But how important is that for you
Speaker 2: to creating a character?
Speaker 1: Essential? Brian, I've been teaching acting for the last I
Speaker 1: don't know, twenty five years, and it's been developing. My guru,
Speaker 1: the man who really sort of brought clarity to me
Speaker 1: about the craft is a gentleman who's still teaching and
Speaker 1: a friend of mine. His name is Larry Moss. He's
Speaker 1: New York based, and I started building off the principles
Speaker 1: that Larry gave me about twenty five years ago when
Speaker 1: I started doing masterclasses. But one of the main components
Speaker 1: that's developed in my own look at stuff is that
Speaker 1: without getting too much into how we make the sausage,
Speaker 1: but you know, actors do many things. We portray feelings,
Speaker 1: but we're not called emmotors or feelers. We speak the lines,
Speaker 1: but we're not called speakers or orators, We're called actors.
Speaker 1: And the thing we bring to text that makes it
Speaker 1: more than a reading is actions, physicality, verbs, things we
Speaker 1: try to do to each other as these lines tell
Speaker 1: their story. And so the physicality of not only how
Speaker 1: does my character inhabit and move through space? Is there?
Speaker 1: You know, is there a person that I want to
Speaker 1: use as a sort of a role model? Is there
Speaker 1: an animal? Is there an idea that informs my body
Speaker 1: in a different way? And then you know with the text,
Speaker 1: what am I? What am I physically doing? What actions
Speaker 1: are being played through all this? What am I trying
Speaker 1: to get the other actors or other characters rather to
Speaker 1: do in any given scene. So there's a huge physical
Speaker 1: component to it. And it's the thing that a lot
Speaker 1: of American actors in particular don't put much thinking into.
Speaker 1: And it's the thing that I when I teach, I
Speaker 1: kind of lead with it. And in many ways it
Speaker 1: can screw up actors because they're being asked to think
Speaker 1: in a different way and it's very off putting. But
Speaker 1: for those that rally to it, you just see these huge,
Speaker 1: huge leaps in their ability and what they can do,
Speaker 1: and the sort of uniqueness of their performance, So it's exciting.
Speaker 4: What do you think the legacy of Sidefeld is?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, you know, I have no idea, you know,
Speaker 1: I keep waiting for us, for someone to have enough
Speaker 1: perspective on it to really be able to answer that question.
Speaker 1: I'm honest to God. Other than I really do think
Speaker 1: it was a funny show. I can objectively stand back
Speaker 1: and go, really funny and really performed and written exquisitely well,
Speaker 1: and I give so much, you know, high fives to
Speaker 1: the writers. People always say you guys were so good,
Speaker 1: you were and I go, well, you know, if they
Speaker 1: throw the ball to the five yard line, it's not
Speaker 1: hard to fall. And the writers, the writing on the
Speaker 1: show was consistently handing you, you know, a touchdown every week.
Speaker 1: You just had to not fumble it. It's a very
Speaker 1: funny show, and it's celebrated funny. It's but I guess
Speaker 1: it in its zeitgeist, it was able to ask the
Speaker 1: audience to look in the mirror at the things they
Speaker 1: were going through all the time and do what Jerry
Speaker 1: and Larry are able to do, and most good comics
Speaker 1: are able to do, is to take the stuff that
Speaker 1: seems mundane or oppressive or wrong or just crazy about
Speaker 1: their lives, and see what's funny about it, To see
Speaker 1: what it's funny in the human condition to give voice
Speaker 1: to the false inflations of ego. And and you know,
Speaker 1: I deserve this and I'm gonna get that, and I
Speaker 1: don't deserve this, and this is right for me and
Speaker 1: every man for himself and need before you know, there
Speaker 1: was something about the way they portrayed those things. And
Speaker 1: the fact, I mean the fact that we did an
Speaker 1: episode on masturbation and got away with it and involved
Speaker 1: a girl in it. At the time, I mean, forget
Speaker 1: even just doing a show up masturbation to a girl
Speaker 1: be part of it was unheard of. And but that's
Speaker 1: what I mean about. I'm going to take a wild
Speaker 1: swing and say ninety percent of the human population at
Speaker 1: one time or another has probably touched themselves. To make
Speaker 1: fun of that reality is so bold and so interesting
Speaker 1: and makes it all so much more human to say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, we all have. We all well think
Speaker 1: too highly of ourselves at one time or another. We
Speaker 1: all take the selfish path or the past the least
Speaker 1: resistance every now and then, and we look awfully stupid
Speaker 1: when we do. It did that, and I think it
Speaker 1: allowed people to do what we are not as capable
Speaker 1: of doing right now, which is to laugh at ourselves.
Speaker 1: You know, I am as progressive a human as I
Speaker 1: think I can be, But I worry. The only thing
Speaker 1: I worry about is that as we struggle to figure
Speaker 1: out how we all fit together, no matter who we
Speaker 1: are and what we represent, if we lose our ability
Speaker 1: to go, we are all kind of silly. We're all
Speaker 1: kind of I mean, the struggles are real and the
Speaker 1: wants are real, but we do behave in kind of
Speaker 1: crazy ways every now and then. And if we can't
Speaker 1: enjoy that about ourselves and about each other, then I
Speaker 1: truly do worry for humanity. In some ways we lose
Speaker 1: our sense of humor and the ability to go, we're
Speaker 1: kind of silly. I mean, the things we want to
Speaker 1: do are serious and they're vital, but we're kind of
Speaker 1: silly in the way we navigate this crazy world.
Speaker 2: Dude, I I look, I'm a nerd for the business.
Speaker 2: I love the business. I read a lot about it.
Speaker 2: And for whatever it's worth, the answer that you just
Speaker 2: gave about Seinfeld, maybe it's been said a thousand times before.
Speaker 2: But it's the smartest and most scinct answer that I've
Speaker 2: ever heard about. It makes sense because you're you're a
Speaker 2: smart guy, and you worked on it for a hell
Speaker 2: of a long time. But you know, people talk about
Speaker 2: the Office, and especially when the Office first started, because
Speaker 2: it was different, like Seinfeld was different.
Speaker 4: They sort of connected.
Speaker 2: Us in a in a way like we're we're a
Speaker 2: progression for that, And for me that never made sense
Speaker 2: to me because to me, our even though you know,
Speaker 2: the form was totally different, I saw us as being
Speaker 2: born out of Cheers, which is a collection of people
Speaker 2: who are stuck together, either by choice or not in
Speaker 2: different environments. But ultimately, you know, to be simplistic right now,
Speaker 2: to not give an hour dissertation celebrating the ordinariness of people,
Speaker 2: like finding small victories that may seem mundane to other
Speaker 2: people that are but are very important. And for me,
Speaker 2: Seinfeld was never that. It wasn't a show about nothing,
Speaker 2: but your answer right there is finding those idiosyncrasies and
Speaker 2: being able to laugh at ourselves and how important that
Speaker 2: is and how today, yeah, we run the risk of
Speaker 2: we need that lesson again, I should say, I think
Speaker 2: that's for what it's worth. It's really smart to me,
Speaker 2: so thank you, thank you for doing that. You already
Speaker 2: told a little bit of the story. You're you're doing
Speaker 2: Seinfeld and you meet this guy Peter who tells you
Speaker 2: what you're going to start working on on next. Was
Speaker 2: that Bob Patterson?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 3: By the way, I just want to announce our new podcast,
Speaker 3: which we Lighten Up. Is a new podcast. You'll be
Speaker 3: launching it today right after Lighting the Hell Up. Lighting
Speaker 3: the Hell Up. Yeah, that was Bob Patterson right to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Peter Pete, right right down to the name. Peter
Speaker 1: took me to that breakfast and he said, your next
Speaker 1: show crazy, He said, do you know who Tony Robbins is?
Speaker 1: I said sure. He said, I want to do a
Speaker 1: show where Tony Robbins can't motivate his own family. And
Speaker 1: the guy's name is going to be Bob Patterson and
Speaker 1: he's gonna be and I went, well, that's not I said,
Speaker 1: that's that's not. I don't think anybody's ever touched that.
Speaker 1: That's really funny. A guy who's made a living telling
Speaker 1: everybody else how to live their lives to improve it.
Speaker 3: And because we all know the behind closed doors allegedly
Speaker 3: that's what's going on, you know. And I'm fascinated by
Speaker 3: the self improvement, that whole movement that somebody says, you know,
Speaker 3: what's going to take you to the next level, what's
Speaker 3: going to really make you feel good about yourself and growth?
Speaker 3: Walking on hot coals without any shoes for fifteenth ape
Speaker 3: that is the thing that is going to that sweat
Speaker 3: lodge is going to do it. And it's like, you go,
Speaker 3: in what world? In what world do they have that formula?
Speaker 3: And it's it's fascinating because I never know if it's
Speaker 3: about people who want somebody else to do the push
Speaker 3: ups for them, But I just always picture these motivational
Speaker 3: guys at home going.
Speaker 1: Oh, no, we can't get a divorce.
Speaker 4: You know what that looks like to me?
Speaker 3: I got a book coming out, So we created the
Speaker 3: show Bob Patterson, who what was his slogan, help me,
Speaker 3: help you help me or whatever? Yeah, And then because
Speaker 3: Jason circling Back was so intimidated by William Shantner, I
Speaker 3: made William Shantner his nemesis just to watch the two
Speaker 3: of them on stage together and watch Jason get to
Speaker 3: act with the legend who launched his career, which was
Speaker 3: stunning to watch.
Speaker 4: It was great, very.
Speaker 6: True, very true.
Speaker 2: Hit the Road another collaboration. You co created that series
Speaker 2: together as well. Talk to me a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: That was Jason, as we can hear when he plays aggravated.
Speaker 3: There's nobody funnier than that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I remember in country music because I did country
Speaker 3: music for about nine years. I know you're Willie Nelson
Speaker 3: fan and from Texas. I guess you know Pat Green too,
Speaker 3: right the whole Yeah, there you go. Yes, So I
Speaker 3: helped him want to with wa wa.
Speaker 2: Wait, hold on a second, Hold on a second, Pat,
Speaker 2: How did you know that?
Speaker 3: Because I did country music for nine years and I
Speaker 3: was the Westco station that that supported Wave on Wave
Speaker 3: and hung with Pat. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Pat Green was a childhood friend, fraternity brother of my
Speaker 4: friend in my dorm's brother who I started listening to
Speaker 4: Pat Green on the in my dorm room. Outside. Nobody
Speaker 4: knew who Pat Green. This is what I mean about
Speaker 4: my underwear. I don't know how you could put the
Speaker 4: cool thing about Pat that we should do now. And
Speaker 4: I'm thinking about this if you're a Pat Green fan.
Speaker 4: Pat also, so Pat had a hit with Wave on
Speaker 4: Wave with which with a national hit and he did
Speaker 4: charity for us. Brad Paisley, who was a friend, played
Speaker 4: with him. Whatever I put that together. But Pat, if
Speaker 4: you're in Texas, you know Pat because Pat sells out
Speaker 4: and he tours Texas and he played, you know what,
Speaker 4: his big passion is golf. He's like an eight handicap,
Speaker 4: you close to close to your handicap. So you guy,
Speaker 4: if if you love him, you could play eighteen holl
Speaker 4: And I singing for you, we should go play.
Speaker 2: I knew him when he was just I mean like literally,
Speaker 2: like not even the note, Like he just was like
Speaker 2: my friend's friend. But it was Pat Green And now
Speaker 2: he's a big.
Speaker 3: Exploded in tex Willie Nelson, you're one, by the way,
Speaker 3: I was on Willie Downson's bus and it's a combination
Speaker 3: of a dope den in your grand grandmother's apartment because
Speaker 3: there's like all these Danish boxes are open, and it's
Speaker 3: it's really an amazing because he's older, I mean, Moie's
Speaker 3: older now at this point. But what a what a
Speaker 3: you've met him, obviously, he's what a character. What an amazing,
Speaker 3: amazing birthday, amazing ninety Jason. Back to Jason and the
Speaker 3: bus when he was doing country music. Jamie O'Neill was
Speaker 3: in a family band with her parents, and she used
Speaker 3: to say never always stuck with me that right before
Speaker 3: you go in stages, well score you, I don't care
Speaker 3: about you. One, two, three, I see America singing and
Speaker 3: then you come off stage one dad, and I thought,
Speaker 3: what a great thing that is that you're stuck and
Speaker 3: you know that your kid is doing. You don't want
Speaker 3: all the stuff you don't want to know that your
Speaker 3: kids are doing you're forced to deal with because you're
Speaker 3: on a bus traveling across the country and you're not
Speaker 3: doing so well. So all of that and that's why
Speaker 3: we launched it. And it was originally called Swallow, which
Speaker 3: was the family of the family name and it takes agard.
Speaker 1: We said, it's the it's the it's the dysfunctional Partridge family.
Speaker 1: So we said, what's another bird, and we went, oh, Swallow.
Speaker 1: That's smart enough to realize that's not a good name
Speaker 1: for a family man.
Speaker 3: And the bus would be defaced all the time, but
Speaker 3: the network changed it to hit the Road.
Speaker 2: Okay, are you better work collaborators or friends?
Speaker 1: There's no difference.
Speaker 3: I was just going to say that too. There's no
Speaker 3: line as we do this. I love him so honestly, Brian.
Speaker 3: You know the other part of Seinfeld, the other part
Speaker 3: of the Office is, especially in today's world with COVID isolation,
Speaker 3: you got to see friendships that were really and because
Speaker 3: they spoke like real people spoke. They didn't speak in
Speaker 3: sitcom set up in punchline, and there was stasis there
Speaker 3: like there's in real life, and there was emotion and
Speaker 3: you could actually play stuff out. It wasn't the old sitcom.
Speaker 3: I think that people connected with that in such a
Speaker 3: big way, just like they do reality television, which they loved.
Speaker 3: They just loved. They were immersed in those characters. It
Speaker 3: becomes part of who you are, touched on just like
Speaker 3: music is powerful and you remember when that song came out,
Speaker 3: what you're going through. I hear it with the next
Speaker 3: generation for Seinfeld, where they go they're just finding it.
Speaker 3: When you say what are they finding, They're finding the
Speaker 3: joy of four people who were honest with each other
Speaker 3: and talked in a way that no sitcom did before.
Speaker 3: And the same with the Office, and then on and
Speaker 3: on this real thing like independent movies. I think that
Speaker 3: was a huge thing. So Jason and I are pretty
Speaker 3: much off the air on the air, same the same deal.
Speaker 3: And I'm blessed to have your best friend and be
Speaker 3: able to do to hang like that and I'm forced
Speaker 3: forced to be together.
Speaker 4: It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And you know, honestly, Brian the difference from me and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure it out, and I've been trying
Speaker 1: to figure it out for many, many years. I know
Speaker 1: this sounds like I'm trying to be cute and I'm not.
Speaker 1: I never thought of myself as particularly funny, and suddenly
Speaker 1: I was making a living playing comedy before Seinfeld, even
Speaker 1: on stage in my Broadway days, I was doing comedy, comedy, comedy, comedy.
Speaker 1: Unlike many people who sort of thought about comedy all
Speaker 1: their lives, I didn't create a comedic persona for myself
Speaker 1: in life prior to having to sort of present that way.
Speaker 1: So with the podcast is so interesting for me. My
Speaker 1: sense of humor, for whatever it may be, is informed
Speaker 1: by the fact I grew up in New Jersey and
Speaker 1: my dad and all his friends and a bunch of
Speaker 1: my friends have that sort of Joe Peshy, if I
Speaker 1: really think you're great and I like you a lot,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna nudge at you, right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try I'm gonna pick at you like a little like
Speaker 1: a little chicken. And that is a that I found
Speaker 1: that to be a real Jersey thing. And so that
Speaker 1: is the sense of humor I grew up with. And
Speaker 1: so often it'll become my Oh, I have to be funny.
Speaker 1: They're expecting Jason to be funny. Let me go to that.
Speaker 1: And I don't often like the way it comes off,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's not it's not really who I am.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 1: If Peter and I are doing the show, what you're
Speaker 1: gonna hear from me is picking at Peter, and he'll
Speaker 1: picking at me. But if you ask me off the show,
Speaker 1: tell me about Peter Tilden, I go, he has my heart,
Speaker 1: you know, I mind, we really do.
Speaker 4: But it's genuine. The picking is genuine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my default is not to go to the sense
Speaker 1: of humor. So even with the podcast now, in developing
Speaker 1: our podcast personas has been so interesting because you know,
Speaker 1: he says, we argue all the time, we discuss all
Speaker 1: the time, we have different points of view, but on
Speaker 1: the show we do what we step it up, you know,
Speaker 1: we go what's your take, what's my take? Let's make
Speaker 1: sure that you know that we have something. And it's
Speaker 1: become a really interesting fun thing. But the most laughs
Speaker 1: we've ever had in our life together outside is when
Speaker 1: you know he'll be he'll be working on something, we'll
Speaker 1: be working on a piece of material and he'll he'll
Speaker 1: start to say something structural and I go, that's not
Speaker 1: your area. Structure is not your area the structure, and
Speaker 1: he's like, not my area. I did it. I did
Speaker 1: a radio show for thirty years. I had four hours
Speaker 1: to feel all about structure. It's not my area and
Speaker 1: not your area. What do you what do you ask?
Speaker 3: So when you say is that really ramp it up?
Speaker 3: And then I go, so what's my area? And he'll go,
Speaker 3: I haven't found it yet. We don't know what you are.
Speaker 1: For your area.
Speaker 3: It's a great question, Brian, What a great question that was.
Speaker 3: We've never been I've never thought of that. Is there
Speaker 3: a line between the work and the friendship thing? And
Speaker 3: he when I heard himself, I was really curious to
Speaker 3: hear his answer because I feel the same way.
Speaker 1: It's it's yeah, we we The only difference is we
Speaker 1: we don't generally lead with there is no bigger heart
Speaker 1: in the world than Peter Tilden. If he found out
Speaker 1: you had a charity, or you have a kid, or
Speaker 1: you have somebody in need or you need he's not
Speaker 1: only going, oh my gosh, that's so sweet. If there's
Speaker 1: anything I can do. No, no, no, it's not. If
Speaker 1: there's anything I can do, He's going, here's what I
Speaker 1: can do. I'm going to make a call. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do a thing. The heart is stupid. We know that
Speaker 1: with each other, and that is a big bonding thing
Speaker 1: between us, but we on air, we would never talk
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 3: Well, that's also the pathetic desire to be loved by everybody.
Speaker 3: I mean the downside, pathetic because you just need that
Speaker 3: much love.
Speaker 2: Well, uh, your answer is supremely interesting to me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean our stories are very similar. When I am
Speaker 2: introduced as a comedian, I feel physically uncomfortable. And I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that as a joke, Like I feel like
Speaker 2: I start like having to adjust because it's not It's
Speaker 2: not how I define myself or see or or see myself.
Speaker 2: I see myself as someone who creates characters and is
Speaker 2: interested in building relationships and characters, not as making people.
Speaker 4: Laugh, but that's what he s expected.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, is your best friend in the business,
Speaker 3: by the way.
Speaker 2: No, no, And in part I'll be honest with you
Speaker 2: actually now just to share something with you. Not that
Speaker 2: like every single person is different. But I talked to Pendolette,
Speaker 2: Penn and Teller Pendelette, very smart guy. He tells me
Speaker 2: they've been together. I'm gonna mess it up now, whatever
Speaker 2: it is, thirty forty years. They have dinner once a year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 2: they you know, they keep it totally separate.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: I didn't expect that to be your answer. But that's
Speaker 4: what made me.
Speaker 1: That's what made me think, you know, there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of great working well. You know, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: People assume that Jerry and Michael and Julia and I
Speaker 1: are the closest social friends. I honest to god, I
Speaker 1: love them to death, all three of them. If they
Speaker 1: asked me to walk through a hoop of fire, I
Speaker 1: do it in a second. We are constantly doing things
Speaker 1: for each other. But our experience on the show is
Speaker 1: because of everyone's schedule. We were we were were friends,
Speaker 1: we weren't really social friends. We didn't write all that
Speaker 1: often and when the show ended, we didn't have that
Speaker 1: history of being social friends. So unfortunately, you know, we
Speaker 1: we chat and see each other very very rarely, and
Speaker 1: when we do see each other it falls right back together.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's just we sort of have the
Speaker 1: pent Andella relationship of you know, tell you on your
Speaker 1: birthday and say happy birthday.
Speaker 4: And happy birth yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: And your success and good luck on this project, and
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've talked about it quite a bit your new
Speaker 2: podcast really no, really, by the way, I don't know
Speaker 2: how you could listen to the to the two of
Speaker 2: you together and not want to go deeper into your relationship.
Speaker 2: This bizarre and awkward, craziest thing that you've learned from
Speaker 2: a guest so far.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's one that hasn't aired yet. And in fact,
Speaker 1: you give it away, you tease it, don't give it away.
Speaker 1: Boiler no, no, no, boiler alert inclusive.
Speaker 4: He'll blow it, he'll give it away.
Speaker 1: We may not use it. I think it's important that
Speaker 1: we share it. Peter introduced me to a guy who
Speaker 1: was a former white supremacist, and the really, no, really,
Speaker 1: of why we had him on the air is one
Speaker 1: of the reasons he was compelled to leave the movement
Speaker 1: is he was a big scient Feld fan. Anyway, these
Speaker 1: Jews can't be all bat so.
Speaker 4: The white supremacist.
Speaker 3: He's a major He was a major voice of a
Speaker 3: brand new movement and had and for many years. And
Speaker 3: when I when I booked him, because I'd known him
Speaker 3: from radio when I did my radio, He's fascinating, he's articulate,
Speaker 3: he's smart, really and and the really, you know really
Speaker 3: was that he left partially because of Seinfold, But the big.
Speaker 1: Yeah we had we were having, you know, a conversation
Speaker 1: that went funny and went not funny, and but we
Speaker 1: said to him, tell tell me something about these rank
Speaker 1: and file, you know guys that we see on the street,
Speaker 1: and we go, these are not good people. You know,
Speaker 1: these are scary people. I I I I wish I
Speaker 1: didn't have to share a world with this kind of energy. Right,
Speaker 1: What what don't I know about them? That I could
Speaker 1: see them differently? And without blinking an eye? He said,
Speaker 1: they're all broken, they all have a trauma. And he said,
Speaker 1: I will tell you that you will move them far
Speaker 1: faster and far further by looking at them and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, what some stuff really must have happened to you.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry it happened to you. And if you can
Speaker 1: find your way to not shouting at me or hating me,
Speaker 1: maybe we could talk about it sometime. Because you're a
Speaker 1: human being. I'm a human being, he said, You'll go
Speaker 1: so much further. In the fact, it was part of
Speaker 1: his conversion was people who should not have been kind
Speaker 1: to him. That's what you mean, because what got him
Speaker 1: into the movement was people being unkind, people taking advantage
Speaker 1: of him, people not seeing his heart or taking advantage
Speaker 1: of his heart until it shattered, and then he was
Speaker 1: susceptible to wanting to feel powerful. And that wasn't like
Speaker 1: the most revelatory thing I ever heard, but to hear
Speaker 1: it coming from someone who had been through it, and
Speaker 1: to hear the prescription for the greatest thing you can
Speaker 1: do to help mend it is to find your compassion
Speaker 1: for that human being at their very worst. And I
Speaker 1: thought that that was a huge lesson.
Speaker 3: He said, it's tough because it's counterintuitive for you to
Speaker 3: reach out but know that they're broken. And he said
Speaker 3: everyone that I hated that chipped away at me because
Speaker 3: they were nice to me along the way. It eventually
Speaker 3: wore me down because the kindness is what got me
Speaker 3: out and mine is a little bit my Oh wow,
Speaker 3: was recent fascinating astronaut who was in a space station.
Speaker 3: We were talking about space junk. It was really not
Speaker 3: really are we going to be landlocked in a couple
Speaker 3: of years, because there's so much space hunt that it's glowing,
Speaker 3: and we got an astronaut to talk about it. And
Speaker 3: I didn't know if space walk was seven hours long
Speaker 3: that your arms are exhausted because you're doing it with
Speaker 3: your arms and if you get untethered, there is a
Speaker 3: major tether, but it can pull you back really fast
Speaker 3: and you could hit the vehicle and bad stuff out
Speaker 3: your helmet, brakes, whatever. But the best moment for me
Speaker 3: was he's got something to hydrate himself in his suit
Speaker 3: so he can sip on it some water. And he said,
Speaker 3: I'm in my spacewalk, it's is my space walk, and
Speaker 3: I see something really little plastic piece float by my
Speaker 3: eyeline And at that moment, I realized the tip broke
Speaker 3: off the thing I hidrate with, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: drown on my helmet while I'm doing a spacewalk. Uh,
Speaker 3: huh right, So he starts stipping, like, can you imagine. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's one of the little things you have to put
Speaker 3: up with doing his spacewalk, drowning the other helmet.
Speaker 1: The other part of that, and then I may have Yeah.
Speaker 1: He talks about doing a spacewalk for seven hours with
Speaker 1: a partner and they go out and they retrieve this
Speaker 1: piece of a thing that they need. This is like
Speaker 1: a handle, he said. It looks like a steering wheel,
Speaker 1: and it's about a half inch of solid aluminum and
Speaker 1: they've got it under one guy's got it under his
Speaker 1: arm and they come back in after the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and they get in the air lock and they hold
Speaker 1: up that piece of material and there's a hole right
Speaker 1: through it, which meant that some piece of space junk
Speaker 1: traveling at seventeen five hundred miles per second or per
Speaker 1: minute passed through that thing that he was holding under
Speaker 1: his armpit. And he said, they looked at each other
Speaker 1: and they said, you know, if that had hit one
Speaker 1: of us, done, good night.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really there's so much that's there's so much
Speaker 3: we find out when you dig deep, you know, you
Speaker 3: start peeling the onion about just living in that space
Speaker 3: station is insay in weightlessness the entire time. It's the
Speaker 3: size of a six bedroom house, accept so much bigger
Speaker 3: because you're using all the all the ilume, the ceiling,
Speaker 3: the walls, whatever. So but it's bizarre. You got to
Speaker 3: tether yourself to a sleeping bag, and I think Mark
Speaker 3: Kelly bunged himself so you could feel gravity a little
Speaker 3: bit of gravity and you don't feel your arms, so
Speaker 3: you got like phantom limbs going and your eyes change shape,
Speaker 3: so your visions are bizarre.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really no, really airs weakly on Tuesdays the same
Speaker 2: day as get your off the beat and really no,
Speaker 2: really double let's do a double.
Speaker 1: Do milk and a cookie, A milk and a cookie.
Speaker 4: I'll be whatever you don't want to be.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 2: You can listen on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcast. Guys,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate both
Speaker 2: of you so much getting to know you both better.
Speaker 2: And yeah, this is wonderful. You have an idea for
Speaker 2: the two of us. You give me a call.
Speaker 6: You got it.
Speaker 3: I'm halfway there already. It's called lighting up.
Speaker 4: It's working. Thanks for being so gracious.
Speaker 2: Thanks you guys, Jason Peter, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: joining me today.
Speaker 4: That was that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: And look your podcast, I mean a podcast that somehow
Speaker 2: both breaches space and finds humanity in the worst of us. Guys,
Speaker 2: I'm all ears. Congratulations on that. Listeners, We're gonna see
Speaker 2: you next week for another episode. We're gonna have another
Speaker 2: one of your favorite people on the podcast. I mean,
Speaker 2: besides me, We're gonna have me and then also someone
Speaker 2: else that you love equally as much.
Speaker 3: I know who it is.
Speaker 2: And you know what I'm not telling. Nope, I am
Speaker 2: not telling. But come back and join us. We're gonna
Speaker 2: tell some stories. We're gonna have some laughs, we're gonna
Speaker 2: learn a little bit, and who knows, I might even cry.
Speaker 4: We'll talk to you then.
Speaker 2: Off the Beat is hosted and executive produced by me
Speaker 2: Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Ling Lee. Our senior
Speaker 2: producer is Diego Tapia. Our producers are Liz Hayes, Hannah Harris,
Speaker 2: and Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan Papa Zachary,
Speaker 2: and our intern is Sammy Katz. Our theme song Bubble
Speaker 2: and Squeak, performed by the one and only Creed Bretton,