January 22, 2024 • 49 mins
Isaac Mizrahi chats with the beloved host of NPR’s “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me,” Peter Sagal. Peter shares some surprising and hilarious behind-the-scenes stories, what it’s like to have a newborn at 58 and how he landed the job writing “Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights.” Plus, Isaac challenges Peter to his own version of “Not My Job” and so much more.
Follow Hello Isaac on @helloisaacpodcast on Instagram and TikTok, Isaac @imisaacmizrahi on Instagram and TikTok and Peter Sagal @psagal and @waitwaitnpr.
(Recorded on November 14, 2023)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
So the story was based on vaguely in her experience.
It was but a young woman, an American, there in
the Cuban Revolution. She's there to witness it, she gets
involved in it, she meets people who are involved in it.
So I wrote a screenplay in which you see the
Cuban Revolution from this young woman's eyes.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And it's a good idea.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
It was a fabulous idea. I thought. I don't know
who the screenplay was, but I did my best, and
the note I got back was we were hoping for
something more like dirty dancing.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Aha. Oh wow. This is Hello Isaac, my podcast about
the idea of success and how failure affects it. I'm
Isaac Mizrahi, and in this episode I talked to writer
humorous and host of NPR's Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me,
Peter Sagel.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Hello, Isaac. It's Peter Sagal, And I just want to
say that one of the things I've carried with me
through my life is that when we met in person
back in two thousand and six, even though you are
an icon of high fashion, you were dressed in the
same kind of shmata that I wear every day. And
it's just kept me going as I've continued to buy
my clothes at targeting Costco. So I'm looking forward to
(01:08):
seeing you again and getting that same fashion validation.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Peter Sagel is one of those people that I really
really relate to, only because I think he's so good
on his feet. I noticed that in the show he
does wait wait, don't tell me that I've been listening
to forever. He is really, really, just witty, and I
want to talk to him about what it means to
(01:35):
be witty and funny and if there's any difference and
how it all comes together for him on that show
because it is literally one of the great institutions in
this country, and he is just beloved in my book.
So let's get started. Peter Sagel, Hello Darling.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Hello Isaac. How are you you.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I'm okay. Actually, Can I just say one thing, which
is already a shock because I listen to your show
nearly every week and you have this unbelievable voice that
was meant for radio Darling, and we've met several times,
and every time I see your face, I'm like, Nope,
that's not Peter Segel. It can't possibly be. Like the
face doesn't match the voice.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, I'm well aware of that. Nobody who's ever met me,
and this goes back for all twenty five years of
my radio career has ever said, oh my gosh, you
look exactly what I thought you'd look like. And then
I asked him, well, what did you expect? And they
say various things. One person said to me, quite famously,
you don't sound bald, and I don't know how that.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Oh God, that nice, love.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
How do you sound bald?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I don't know, darling. But here's the thing. The first
time I was on Wait Wait was in literally like
the nineties or something. It was like ninety eight. I
know that because I had an assistant at the time
called Sam Wilson, who was very groovy, and he discovered
your show very very early on, and the request came
through and he was like, you have to do the
(03:05):
show and I was like, Sam, do I really was like, no,
you really do, because it's the greatest show. So I
reluctantly was like hello. It was over the phone, right,
it's like, what do you want? I literally was like, yeah,
can I help? I was so rude, I remember on
the show and then you asked me all these ridiculous
questions like you did all these games, and I was like,
who are these people? This is not gonna last. Meantime,
(03:27):
it became like my favorite show after I listened to
it and I did it again, and we did it
in person. But that first time I remember like absolutely
disdaining the whole idea.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
But there you are, and now you are and we're
all still here. I have the dates. People say to
me that, oh, I'm your number one fan, and I say, no,
you're not your best number two, because we have this
fan named Lynn Fomm in Portland who has, over the years,
maintained a database of all the interesting stats of our show.
So with a quick look, I can tell you that
your first appearance on our show was You're correct, it
(03:59):
was by phone in March of two thousand and three.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Oh okay, tame.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Then you joined us on stage in New Haven of
Alta Haven in September of two thousand and six.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Thank you, Lynn Farm, thank you Darling, Thank you Lynn.
So let's start with a little history about you. You
now live in Chicago. Are you from that area? Did
you grow up?
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I'm from suburban New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Really what brought you to Chicago?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Well, they offered me this job. I was living in
New York. I was living in Brooklyn in nineteen ninety seven.
I was married to a person to whom I'm no
longer married, who was a nice Midwestern girl.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Nice at any rate.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
She very much didn't really want to live in New
York and certainly didn't want to raise our child in
New York. Wow, and she was pregnant. So we had
this deal. It was like something from a fairy tale.
We would live in New York City to the first
birthday of our first child, at which point we would
have to leave to someplace, and I had no idea where.
And then I had tried out to be a panelist
(04:54):
on this new radio show, and just between you and me, Isaac,
my initial impression of it was very similar to your.
And then, much to my amazement, they offered me the
job of host, which would require me to move to Chicago.
And I don't know if you've been here, but Chicago
is in the Midwest.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Yes I have. I love Chicago is.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
A great town. So it suited my then wife, it
suited me, and off we went. And I did not
expect a number of things. I did not expect i'd
be here for so long. I did not expect I'd
do this job for so long. I did not expect
that someday I would be no longer married to that person.
But stuff happens, and you.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Know, yes it really does happen. It does. But where
were you educated.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I was a product of public schools in suburban New
Jersey and then Harvard College.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
As we comes, just people like to say yeah, wow, yeah,
And you never missed the opportunity to say right well
about this.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And say, I don't know how many minutes we are
into this podcast, but I did not say it before. Then,
before you were in a little credit.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Congratulations, I asked you did ask.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I would have had to try to bring it up somehow,
So I thank you for saving me that effort.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
So how did you make it from public school in
New Jersey to Harvard? Like, how did you.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Guy that the biggest goddamn suck up you've ever met,
suck up to the teacher, to anybody, especially teachers, sometimes parents,
school administrators. I was just a brown noser, and I
guess I still am. I guess it might be my
only skill. And rather than being like intelligent or talented,
I'm clever and clever, My friends will take you a
(06:26):
long way, especially when you're taking standardized tests and impressing
people who might give you a recommendation. So I had
a reputation as being very clever, very smart, as my
mother from Boston might have said. And basically I was
more popular with adults than I was with my peers.
And it turns out that those adults are far more
important to getting you into a good school than your
(06:48):
peers are.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Interesting and what did you study? What did you see
yourself doing as a young man or a little boy,
What did you want to do well?
Speaker 1 (06:56):
My first professional ambition was I was going to be
a pediatrician. And that was partially because my mother really
wanted me to be a doctor. To nice Jewish mother
exactly really really that stereotype rayal her whole life, but
also because I was under the mistaken impression that the
profession was called peter attrition. Thus I thought, I'm talking
(07:18):
about the age of four or five.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I see, as soon as I was able to sort
of like consciously express my own actual desires apart from
those around me and my parents, I always wanted to
be a writer. That was my goal. I grew up
loving written humor like S. J. Perrolman and Woody Allen's
early books, and more than anything, that's the sort of
thing I wanted to do. In fact, one of the
(07:41):
reasons I really really wanted to go to Harvard was
because of the Harvard Lampoon, which was even then, back
in the late seventies early eighties, legendary, and I wanted
to be a part of that. And as it happened,
they wanted nothing to do with me once I got there.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
The Lambone, they rejected you. That's filling. Yeah, you talk
like a like I prequalify a lot of things, like
the sentences are quite structured. Congratulations, it's a beautiful and
I note that on the show. That's how you talk, right,
just in general, like that's probably how you address your
infant children constantly.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
I'm constantly saying, excuse me, Theodore. But I was wondering,
I was wondering if, in fact, if, in fact, given
the proposition given, assuming for the moment, Theodore, that you've
pooped in your diaper.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
But Darling, you don't really have a background in theater,
do you.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
I do. Actually, that was my other thing, because my
other love passion. Whatever you want to call them enthusiasm
growing up with theater, so I was a theater kid
in high school. I started in the plays, and then
I went off and my other thing I wanted to
do in college was put on plays. I ultimately acted
in them, I wrote some, I directed a bunch, so
(08:56):
that was my thing. I was not the greatest student
in the world, never have been, but I was very
good at like running around and trying to be in
shows and putting on shows. By the time I got
out of school, I ended up pursuing that as a career,
sort of by accident, but I spent the first ten
years more or less out of college pursuing a career
in the theater, first working in the staff of a
(09:18):
now defunct large institutional theater in southern California in LA
called the La Theater Center Shout out to Spring Street
if you're listening, and then became a playwright myself and
managed to sort of start on the first rungs of
that career, including some fellowship, some awards, and then ultimately
some productions. And that's what I was doing when I
was first introduced on Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me as
(09:41):
a panelist and now joining us from Brooklyn playwright Peter Segel.
That was what I wow, this is actual, reliable.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah right, well we know that you actually wrote Dirty
Dancing too, or Dirty Dancing? Is it with Absolu?
Speaker 1 (09:57):
I am the second story credit on Dirty Dancing to
a Vana Knights.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Vana Knights. Okay, well that's a big credit, Darling.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I got the poster, I got to go to the premiere.
I got to insult Patrick Swayze without meaning to. It
was a big time.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Did you go to Havana to research this?
Speaker 1 (10:12):
I didn't. I imagined that this would be to me.
This movie would say Chinatown was to Robert Town, which
put me on the map as a screenwriter. Well, this
is what happened. So I had written a few plays
and one of them came to the attention of a
producer you might have heard of or even met, named
Lawrence Bender, who was very well known at the time
(10:33):
for being Quentin Tarantino's producer. Yes, he produced Reservoir Dogs
and Pulp Fiction, and he wanted to do a movie
with me, having read my play, and we kicked about
some ideas and we came up with a story based
on the autobiography, or at least the life story of
a dear friend of his, a dancer and choreographer named
Joanne Jansen. Joanne, who was a vivid person, had spent
(10:58):
her youth part of it in Q but with her father,
who worked for I think Alcoa, and she had been
living in Havana at the time of the Cuban Revolution,
right mm hm, And so the story was based on
vaguely in her experience. It was but a young woman,
an American, there in the Cuban Revolution. She's there to
witness it, she gets involved in it, she meets people
who are involved in it. Parenthetically, the Cuban Revolution is
an amazing story that has never been properly told, and
(11:20):
I thought I would properly tell it. So I tried,
and I wrote a screenplay in which you see the
Cuban Revolution from this young woman's eyes.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And it's a good idea.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
It was a fabulous idea, I thought. I don't know
who good the screenplay was, but I did my best.
And the note I got back was we were hoping
for something more like dirty dancing.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Aha, oh wow, which that's great.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
I don't know how I missed that to begin with,
but I did. And at which point in retrospect, I
should have said, well, you know that's not me. I'm
not the guy for that. But you know, it was
my first job in Hollywood. I wanted to do a
good job. I wanted to be a trooper. So I
kept at it, and every draft I did, trying to
make more like Dirty Dancing, I e. A romance between boy,
girl and music. It got worse because I was not
(12:04):
then more am I now a sixteen year old girl.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Darling. I'm going to recommend a book in case you
haven't read it, that you must must read. It's Joan
Dideon and John Gregory Dunn's experience writing I don't know,
some movie from Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford. It's called Monster,
and it is so I've heard about, incredibly funny and wonderful.
It's like you hand in one thing and they're like, well,
(12:26):
we were thinking, can it be more like Dirty Dance?
It is just one of the funniest books in the world.
Allah what you're talking about right now, and the thing
about you as a person on the show, and I'm
guessing as a writer because I never read anything that
you wrote, but I think you're extremely witty and you're
extremely funny. Did you ever do stand up? And if not,
(12:50):
how did you escape doing stand up?
Speaker 1 (12:53):
I never did stand up. It never occurred to me
to do stand up. I've done monologues, and I've done
sort of comic things. Of the plays that I wrote,
I like to think, even though they were all in
very serious topics, often had lots of jokes. Right, And
I was known, like a lot of theater kids were
as the class clown, and like a lot of people
who grew up that way, you're raising your hand.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yes, I'm raising my hands exactly, a lot of.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
People who for various reasons, didn't fit in in high school. Right.
Maybe they were socially awkward, Maybe they were you know, closet,
maybe they were gay, Like, maybe they were gay.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
And you're about to come out of something after having
five children and two right exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah, No, not me, No, that's not me. But I
had other problems. But a lot of us, as you
well know, masked that or got around it, maybe by
being funny. You know, if you weren't socially successful, or
you're not good looking, you're not good at athletics, or
anything else that might impress the cohort of high school students.
You make jokes. My problem in general was that my
(13:52):
jokes again were far more appreciated by the adults around
than the kids.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
But that's smart adults, by the way, Yes, only the.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Best adults appreciating my jokes as a seventeen year old.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Right, well, let me ask you this, because the show
that you do every single week for what is it
about twenty five years?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Sent years?
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Twenty five years? Okay, yes, so that show gets put together.
I'm guessing there's a lot of writing in advance, right,
Do you write jokes? Actually?
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Do I write jokes? But thank god I am not
the only one who does. And I think if I write,
I would have been around for twenty five years. We
have what is essentially a writer's room. I mean, we
don't call it that, but we have producers who work
on the show, many of whom have other duties as well.
Everybody contributes. We have some people who are professional writers.
That's all they do is I write jokes for us.
(14:41):
For example Peter Gwynn, who is a veteran of Stephen
Colbert and New York and other high level comedy stuff.
And so yeah, when I stand up to do the show.
I have in front of me, a script that's been
written and rewritten with stories that we've selected and pitched
to each other, with jokes that we've written about those stories,
and I absolutely contribute to it. Sometimes it'll be my jokes.
(15:02):
Sometimes it's my edits of other people's jokes. And I
had to get used to this because this wasn't what
I was used to as a writer. I felt very
strongly about credit. It was really weird for me at
first to perform other people's jokes and get a.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Lot right, I understand, Darling, I under I.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Was like, well, no, I'm glad you enjoyed that, and
eventually I realized, no, no, just stake the applause.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Darling, Darling. That's what's called show business. They exactly, you know,
But how much of it happens on the spot.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
A lot of it happens on the spot, and the
show is designed that way. Our gimmick, if you will,
is a spontaneity, and as George Burns said about sincerity,
if you can fake that, you've got it made. So
in the space if you will of comedy of satire,
you've got people like Stephen Colbert who are both brilliant
and have amazing staffs of writers. You've got, say John Oliver,
(15:56):
who's got, you know, just an incredible staffag producers who
create those very funny, lengthy packages that he does that's
become his hallmark. That's amazing. I am incredibly impressed. We
don't have the money to do that. They have enormous staffs.
We have a staff of maybe seven people in a
good week.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
That's a lot of people writing jokes. Because here's the
thing about all these people who have like writing staffs
and jokes and whatever. I mean, you're the sieve through
which everything. Yeah, and so when you read the script,
do you ever go like, yeah, that's so funny. I
can't tell that.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
It's more like this, you know, as you know, we
have this panel and the panel very funny people changing
from week to week. But they're all great. They don't
know what we're gonna ask them, they don't know what
we've written. They sometimes can anticipate what the top stories are,
so maybe they're thinking, oh, yeah, I better come up
with something to say about I don't know the state
of the Union speech. But almost always I'll start something,
(16:52):
start with our best jokes that we've written about, you know,
the topic a right, and then the panel will come
up with something and my job is to follow them
see where they go. You know. Sometimes I'll encourage them
to go further. Sometimes I'll hit the ball back. Sometimes
we never go back to the written script at all. Right,
it's like, this is much more interesting, and all these
amazing jokes that were written with blood and sweat over
(17:14):
the course of a week vanish, never to be heard
from again. Sometimes I go back to the script and
pick it up if things aren't going in a useful direction.
And sometimes I'm almost embarrassed to admit this. Sometimes I
am able to offer a written joke as if I
just thought of it.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Well, we all can do that, darling, I mean, any
of us who perform on stage, I have learned to do that.
I mean, that's that is just.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
But I had to learn how to do that. That
was one of the skills that I needed to acquire
after we got these talented writing.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Speaking of doing a show that is so of the moment,
and yet it's not daily, it's weekly, you know. It's
like because sometimes news changes from literally it.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Does, especially a couple of times over the years we've
had to go into the studio on Friday, even after
performing the show and a live audience, and had to
fake live audience to change something that happened on Friday. Famously.
I remember once it was in the spring of two
thousand and nine, and it was the Nobel Prizes that
had come out, and we did it thing about Nobel Prizes,
(18:14):
and then Friday morning they gave the Peace Prize to Obama.
We've done the show in this enormous auditorium in Boston,
so we had to fake that echo with effects and
we had to reassemble. Everybody was doing a reshoot in
a major motion picture. But generally speaking, we have two advantages.
One is that most of the stuff we do in
the show is not with the exception of the first
(18:36):
couple of stories, is not like absolutely timely this week's
big story. A lot of it. It's just goofy stuff
that can hold you know. The other advantages we don't
really care. We stopped caring during the Trump YU there
was just so much crap over the transom. My joke
was it was like that famous I Love Lucy's sketch
(18:57):
with the chocolates. It just keeps coming faster. And so
during the Trump administration. Our attitude went from oh my god,
we have to anticipate what might happen with the story.
We'll record two different things depending on what happens on
Friday too. After seven thirty Central Time on Thursday, it
is no longer our problem. Right, We're going to go
(19:17):
home and put our heads under the covers like the
rest of you.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
You've been doing wait, wait, don't tell me for twenty
five years, right, And it's a lot of shows because
you have like guest hosts occasionally I have see how
many shows do you do a year?
Speaker 1 (19:39):
We do about forty shows a year, okay, which is
more than That's a lot of shows, a lot of shows.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
It's more than we have the Gilmour Girls.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Yes, exactly exactly, because we're weird. We're sort of an
entertainment show but on a news show schedule. So we
do about forty shows a year. And wow, we celebrated
our thousandth episode in the fall of twenty nineteen, so
maybe we're up to I don't know, twelve hundred maybe, right,
(20:09):
Since then.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Is it a grind? How do you keep it fresh?
I mean, you know, talk about that, talk about doing
anything for twenty five years, you know, which, by the way,
is very appealing to me.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
There were there were times, especially when I was younger,
where I was like, oh my gosh, is this all
there is? To quote the torch singer, and was eagerly
trying to move on to the next thing, because this
is America, right, You're supposed to move on to the
next thing. Isn't that right? You're supposed to get the
next thing? Yes, and I did try. I did a
bunch of projects, some of which even saw the light
of day, but nothing ever came along as steady and
(20:43):
as reliable and frankly as successful and popular as wait wait,
don't tell me right. And now I have now aged
to the point, Isaac, where rather than being frustrated that
this is all I get to do, I am grateful
that I get to do it. Oh my god, of
oh my god, I've got this amazing gig. I get
to do a show of a kind in front of
a live audience every week. And not to get too
(21:04):
sentimental on you, but because we have been doing it
for so long, we've become kind of an institution background yes, yes, yes,
And so my favorite thing is we'll be doing a
show and this is back when we could meet people
after every show. We stopped that with a pandemic, and
maybe we'll go back to it. But even now and then,
it happens people will raise their hand in the audience
(21:25):
and volunteer this. A young woman, for example, will say,
you know, I grew up listening to the show with
my dad on the way to soccer practice when I
was in the third grade. And now I'm twenty five
years old and here is my father and I've taken
him for his sixty fifth birthday and they wave and I.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Oh, my god, it's incredible.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
You know.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Look, we're basically dad jokes and fart jokes, and except.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
You're talking about something that you know, went from being
this kind of crazy anomaly, right, yeah, to becoming this
beloved thing. You know, how has it changed? Are there
things about it that you like better?
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah? Oh, absolutely absolutely. Let me start with myself. I
think I'm a lot better at it than I was.
We've been doing this thing recently where there's a sort
of like a little podcast extra for supporters. We will
go back and we will listen to segments from shows
from twenty years ago, like the first time you were
on the show, and then will listen to me asking questions,
(22:27):
and then in the present moment, myself and a special
guest a listener will try to figure out what the
answer is from the distance of twenty years, which gives
me an opportunity to listen to myself twenty years ago.
And ah, oh man, Honestly, if I am a terrible
person and I end up in hell, my torture will
be having to listen to me doing this show the
(22:47):
first five years when I had no idea what I
was doing. So I think I'm better at it in
a number of ways, and I can tell you sort
of what my evolution was. Obviously, I think over the
years we acquired and happy have been able to keep
a bunch of really talented people came in and to
make our show a lot better.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Not to mention some of the panelists, and.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
That's the last and most important thing. That's the place
where we try to really keep the show fresh by
bringing in new voices, some of whom will join us
for a show or two, some of whom will become
beloved members of the family. As it were. These amazingly
talented young comedians.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Well, you know what Is it just funny? Is your
show just funny?
Speaker 1 (23:28):
We occasionally have arguments on our staff, good ones, about
what's to stress. What do we need to talk about
this week? Is this too tasteless? Is this too serious?
But the one thing we all agree on is even
those of us and that would really be me who
think that we have an obligation to take on the
major stories of the week, is that people turn to
us for a break. And that has to do with
(23:50):
a larger media environment, which can be very, very depressing.
I don't need to tell you that. It also has
to do with the specific environment of public radio, which
tends to be very serious. You know, like in our
market here in Chicago, we come on after Scott Simon's
morning news story, and these days it can be pretty bleak,
and so by the time people get to us on
(24:11):
Saturday morning, usually they are ready to lighten up. And
that can be both us saying rude things about the
major people in the news, be they whatever president, be
they whatever thing that's happened. But it's also just as
goofing around with the silliest stories we can find. And
that's another thing I should say that has been confirmed
(24:31):
and reaffirmed over and over again by our audience. They say,
oh my god, sometimes just waiting to hear you guys
goof around gets me through the week. Of course, particularly
true during the pandemic when we continued to do shows
not in front of a live audience but on zoom
got helps us all and people said the same thing.
You know, knowing that you guys were still doing this
show was really encouraging for me and helped me cope.
(24:54):
So again, it's a privilege, in an honor to do
that work, to just be goofy.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Darling, go back a minute, because you were saying sometimes
you have to segue from this really really heavy duty
news into a kind of a light comic show. But
I want to talk to you about fatherhood, because Darling,
you took that very seriously. Like you've got some kids, Darling,
you you have it.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
I have a lot of them. Strangely, I've lost tracked
with some of them you have.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Indeed, First of all, what the hell were you thinking?
Like what kind of a person listens to the news
and then goes, yeah, I'm gonnappropriate, I'm gonna have another generation.
Tell me a little bit about your kids. First of all,
how old are they?
Speaker 1 (25:33):
My first batch of kids, my.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Rady Budge, the first yeah, Zaegel Budd.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
We were born in nineteen ninety eight, two thousand, two
thousand and three, all girls, and they're out in the world.
They're being adults. And so you know, to my credit,
things weren't so dire back then. So you know, I
guess and so and so I think we can be forgiven.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, you were like, oh, nine to eleven,
that's fine. To eleven happened, what can possibly.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, you know, it'll be fine. I think our last
daughter was born after the invasion of a rocket. She
was to see before, you know, before it happens, right, Okay,
we get to pass on that. The second round was
very unexpected, but very welcome, I should say, in case
my kids ever listened to this, glad you're here. So basically,
my incredible good fortune was after my marriage exploded in
(26:24):
a pretty bad way. I spent a couple of years
in the wilderness as one of those awful divorced men
in his forties. Oh lord, but I met an astonishingly
lovely and kind and as far as my needs went
forgiving young woman named Mara to whom I am now married,
And it was obvious to everybody whoever met her, even
(26:47):
if it wasn't immediately obvious to her, was born to
be a mother, And so this was something we decided
that we wanted to do. And I mean my feelings
about it were where shall we say a complex. I
had done it four, I had children, I'd experienced that
for good and for bad. She never had, though, and
I knew she wanted to, and it felt unfair to
(27:08):
say to somebody, oh, I'd like you to spend the
rest of your life with me and also give up
this deeply important thing to right. And also, you know,
I'm older than she is, and it is my plan
to die long before she does. I work pretty I
very much want her to have somebody around that she
can complain about me too, knowingly. Right, Remember when your
(27:32):
dad used to do this and matterss thing? Yeah, Mom,
that drove me crazy too.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Remember when that asshole called your father? Right exactly, Wait
a minute, did you at least make a deal with
this woman to go you know what, You're going to
have to do a lot of the heavy lifting because
I'm fifty five. How old are you, darling?
Speaker 1 (27:47):
I'm fifty eight, now.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Fifty eight okay, And when did you have your last kid?
Speaker 1 (27:51):
My son, Teddy, who I do think will be my
last kid in both ways ahaha, was born in January
of this year, uh right before.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
So like basically like you and Elton John and Alec
Baldwin like this exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
You meet every among the so many things we have
in common. Also, one of the great pleasures of my life,
as you can imagine, is whenever an elderly celebrity has
a child, I hear about it. Right of course, here
you had a baby. He's eighty.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
God, that is so great. That is so great. So
one of the great things I love about wait, wait,
don't tell me are the games that you play with people.
So I want to play a game with you. We
know that you wrote this screenplay for Dirty Dancing Too
Havana Knights, and we were thinking we were going to
play a game with you called Dirty Diapers. Oh, because
of these.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Things, I am on top of this, my friend.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
You're ready, okay. Marion Donovan has been credited with creating
the first practical disposable diaper in nineteen fifty by using
which of the following materials A an umbrella B, A
shower curtain C A pillowcase.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
I'm going to go only because of its moisture protective quality.
Is a shower curtain B?
Speaker 2 (29:06):
You're right? Question number two. Marion's final diaper design included
nylon parachute cloth, which was breathable and eliminated diaper rash.
She also used metal and plastic snaps instead of elastic
or sharp diaper pins. What did she call it? Did
she call it the boater, the floater or the bloater?
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Gosh.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
I was going to eliminate C because why would you
call a commercial product the bloater? But you said exactly,
it's something encouraging me to skip that. Then I was
going to say, well, on the other hand, maybe that
was like internal use because it would bloat with So
the other one is the boater like a yes, or
the what was the other option?
Speaker 2 (29:46):
The floater?
Speaker 1 (29:47):
The floater? Uh, only because a floater is really kind
of gross in the context of what goes into the diaper.
I'm going to go with the boater.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Yes, you got it right, You got too right. I'm
so happy. I don't know what you're going to win.
You're gonna win like me on your answering machine, so
I would take it. This is the third question. How
long does it take for a disposable diaper to decompose completely?
Twenty to fifty years A, one hundred to two hundred
years B or two hundred and fifty to five hundred
(30:18):
years C.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Only because I am incredibly guilty about using these things,
I'm going to go for the longest period, which was C.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Wow, Darling, you see because you have a lot of
experience with these games. I'm not kidding. I'm sorry about
my dog, but he's very excited with the bell and everything. No,
that's fine, all right, I have another game. Is that
all right? Ok? Seriously this is called not my job anymore.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Ah, that's a twist. So this is lily about something
I used to do.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Yes, I read somewhere that you were a magician's assistant.
That's sort of right, sort of true.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Everything about me is sort of true. I sort of
wrote Dirty Dancing to Havanna Knights. I sort of was
a magician's as in that when we were growing up,
my older brother, now a rabbi still in New Jersey,
was a children's magician, and I would be his beautiful
young assistant.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Sometimes, right, did you wear something dressed? No, I don't know, cape.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
I don't remember. I vaguely remember wearing some sort of costume.
It might have been a T shirt that said magician's assistant,
but it's been a while.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Okay, we'll have the following true or false questions about magic.
The FBI hired a magician to train agents in sleight
of hand techniques for use, and there mickey slipping LSD experiments.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Wow, Okay, I know they did LSD experiments, but you
might be trying to fool me. I'm gonna say yes,
because that's the sort of thing they do.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Well, it's sort of false because it's the CIA, not
the FBI. The true question I had like a buzzer
like I was distracted.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
I was distracted by the magician thing, and I let
that little factoid go by.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
See see you learn it, Darling. Okay, Question number two,
it's illegal in Queensland, Australia to own a pet rabbit
unless you can prove that you're a magician.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
MM. Is that true or false? Yes, that's true because
rabbits are a terrible problem in Australia.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Darling, that is true. How would you ever know.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
That because I mentioned my actual skills. I just have
this amazing ability to collect tidbits of useless information. And
I remember reading that rabbits are an invasive species in
Australia and reproduce like mad and eat all the crops.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
The other thing I heard about, like, you know, we
think koalas are so cute, and they're infested with disease
and they have like crazy like rashes on their butts
and they're disgusting.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
According to they get chlamydia, right, a lot of.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Chlamydia from the koalas. All right, here's another question lifestyle,
right exactly. Hey, hey, watch what you say about life?
All right? Question number three. In two thousand and six,
David Copperfield and two assistants were robbed at gunpoint. David
was able to use sleight of hand to conceal his possessions,
and when the thieves turned to him, he called his
(33:08):
spontaneous illusion reverse pickpocketing.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
See here's the thing. I just have an instinct about
this in that I think that might have happened, but
I don't think it was David Copperfield for reasons that
I can't quite say. But I'm just gonna go with
my gut and say that's false. It was another magician.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
It's actually true, Darling, it was David Copperfield. Damn. You see,
I'm sorry we threw you off with that CIA FBI.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Yeah, no, no, no, no, that one's just on me. I
followed my instinct, and my instincts.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
All right, do you want, darling, do you want one
more to make it?
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yes, so you could actually win my voice.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
But one of the things I do is, whenever anybody
comes in the show, it might have done it with
you back in two thousand and six, is I always
talked to them beforehand, and I tell them you're gonna
play the silly quiz on our show, and it doesn't matter.
Don't take it seriously. It's totally fine if you lose
and I am down two to one and I feel
terrible to see you.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
See what I'm saying. What I'm saying, well, you won
the first round, so this is the second round. All right,
you're ready for this. Apollo Robbins, a pickpocket magician, struck
up a conversation with Ronald Reagan and his secret service agents.
Within a few minutes, he emptied the agent's pockets of
everything except their guns, is that right, false or true?
Speaker 1 (34:23):
I happen to know Apollo. He's been in the show.
I've met him a few times. He's a really nice guy. Okay,
And even if that's not true, I'm gonna say it's
true because Apollo can do anything. So I'm gonna say
true just as a tribute to my friend.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Okay, Well, it's true that he did it, but not
to Ronald Reagan. It was Jimmy Carter. It was just
s see you see. Yeah. Well, listen, by the way,
you won the first round, which means that I will
record your if you want me.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
You know what, I might really enjoy that.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
No, wouldn't it be hilarious, Like Hi, darlings.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Why not? It would be very unexpected. I think it
would be hilarious. So yes, I will take you up
on that.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
All right, I'm going to ask you now a question
that I ask most of the people that I speak
to on my podcast, which is about their obituaries, because
I am literally obsessed with obituaries. What does your obituary
say when you die in about fifty years from now?
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Fifty years? Thank you? I appreciate that, my sons appreciate that.
For many years I always said it was going to
be Peter Sagel, who wrote Dirty Dancing Havana Nights without
ever meaning to right, I think I would have to
quote The Times or Vanity Fair to paraphrase what they said.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
It will say.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Peter Sagel, who affably told dad jokes on public radio
for many years, died today of frustration when he didn't
get a quiz.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Correct, you say, well, I hope not, and that is
not why you die. And by the way, you know
you said that a little bit earlier about dad jokes. Yes,
and I'm not so sure that's what it is, because,
first of all, a dad joke can be really, really funny.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Okay, well that's true, and I don't mean to diminish
the quality of dad jokes.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
And right, so there you go. But I find the
show to be so much more than just dad jokes,
you know. And I'm wondering, asking for a friend, now,
how do you become a panelist on that damn show?
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Basically, you become a panelist on our show by being
generally very funny and sharp. I should say, by the way,
that we have had over the years some incredibly funny people,
including people who have gone on to astonishingly successful careers
like Keegan. Michael Key is a great example. Wow, we
have been on our show and despite their an amazing talent,
(36:49):
just couldn't fit in that we were a weird gig.
We require a bunch of different skills that are not
necessarily the kind of skills you need to be a
successful comedian or anything in this world. They're just particularly
to our show. So yeah, you have to know a
lot about the news. You have to be quick, you
have to be at the same time willing to grab
the spotlight. You have to play well with others.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
You have to get along with Paula Poundstone.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
You have to get along with Paula pound I don't
know if you ever met Paula. That's not hard.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
That was amazing. Absolutely, agree to go out of your
way to not exactly all right, Well, is there something
you want to promote on the podcast?
Speaker 1 (37:26):
I will say that I do a book that is
in print that came out a few years ago called
The Incomplete Book of Running that I'm proud of and
people tell me they enjoyed. So I recommend that from
your local independent bookseller or library. And other than that,
just tune in to wait wait, don't tell me on
the weekends or listen to it on a podcast. It's
always great when you spend time with us.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Well, here's the thing. I want your voice on my
answering machine.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
It would be an honored darling.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
That would just be the greatest thing in the world.
And first of all, what answering machine?
Speaker 1 (37:55):
That's another question. When the show began, we actually said
answering machine. I always say voicemail, but I guess everybody's
got a voicemail. It's just that nobody is rude enough
to leave you one. Right.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
I have one of the most absurd and hilarious messages
from like nineteen ninety three from Liza Minelli. It's one
of the great things ever. I forgot that what she says, like, honey,
it's me, and I forgot what it was. It was
some of the most like ridiculous, hilarious thing in the world.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Isaac, Can I ask you a question. Sure, you're an
eclectic fellow, and I might make a guess as to
what the lead of your obituary might be, But what
do you want it to be?
Speaker 2 (38:34):
I think, I boy, well, you know what. The more
I ask people that question, the more they go oh,
I want to just be remembered for being a good person.
You know, you're talking to like someone so incredibly accomplished,
so incredibly like career orient They're going, I want to
be known as a good dad or a good mom, right,
And I go, like, are we living in the same planet?
(38:56):
You know, Darling. I used to have like a recurring
nightmare that I would be on the phone with my
shrink and my mother at the same time, going, you
cannot let them publish this obituary. It's not going to happen.
This cannot be And so I'm not exactly sure. Here's
the thing. I don't want it to be about fashion
or clothing, That's all. I know.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
That's a big ask for you.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
I want it to be like third paragraph in.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
By the way, what And you know, I'm just I'm
just imagining what your obituary would say. And in addition
to his extraordinary humanitarianism and sexual prowess, yes, it his
own clothes, no, Darling, No, no, but why not? I mean,
clothing was your first love. It's how you first became
well known. And you're very very good at.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
You're right, You're absolutely right, You're absolutely.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Right, And I will say that, that idea of being
remembered as a good person, that's become more and more
important to me as I've gotten older. I too read obituaries,
and what I look for when I read those obituaries
is I look for the people about whom other people
have really good things to say, you know, I mean,
I remember just two random examples. There was an obituary
(40:02):
recently of a very wealthy man. He made his money,
I think with duty free shops, and he gave all
his money away all yeah, did anonymously.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
That was incredible. I read that a bit.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
And I also remember, and this is a you know,
obviously a kind of outlier of an example, but I
remember reading the obituary of Rush Limbaugh, and it was
all about his career and who influential he was and
his hands and all these things and wow, and nobody
had a goddamn nice thing to say about him. Nobody said, oh, yeah,
the Rush. I knew he was such a great friend, right, Oh,
his dinner parties were wonderful. You always knew if you're
(40:36):
going to rush his house, you'd ever Nobody said anything
like that.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Well, by the way, did you read the obituary the
other day about the chicken Lady. Did you see that?
Wait a minute, yes, the woman who was chicken activist,
the chicken rights lady, the chicken rites. That was amazing.
I thought that's my obituary. Actually, I do have one final, final,
final question. I hope you have one second to.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Do for you, Isaac Bubbola.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Is there some kind of a failure in your life
that you don't remembered? Uh?
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Yeah, I mean there's been a lot, but the one
thing that stays with me, and I also should say
that this is a little bit of what my book
is about, was my divorce. Because I grew up my
parents had a very happy marriage. It lasted for sixty
three years until my mother died just two years ago.
And you know, it wasn't perfect, but they were devoted
to each other. And for me and my brothers certainly,
(41:27):
and most of my extended circle of friends, the idea
of ever getting divorced, ever being that guy, seemed imposiit ah,
And like a lot of people, I probably delayed what
would have been a healthy thing, which is ending the
marriage for man and many years, just because I didn't
want to have that failure. I didn't want to be
that person I never could have imagined being, And it
(41:49):
just so happens that Without getting into it, it was
a particularly ugly divorce. I had hoped to have one
of those amical divorces you sometimes hear about. It didn't
work out that way. It was really brutal. Ah. It
cost me a lot. And what was so awful about
it was I felt like Job. Not to be too
dramatic to the biblical, but in that you remember what
(42:12):
happens to Job is everything he has accumulated is taken away.
It's family is wealth. And I felt that way I
did in my house. My family was separated from me.
Everything that I had felt I had worked for and gotten,
and I'm making little quotes I had lost. Now it
is also true that, like Job, I have regained all
that in spades. Although I didn't get back what I lost,
(42:35):
I've gotten other things that are even better. But one
of the things that it really did to me when
you ask what I learned, is how much I had
to change my attitude from that sense of accumulation. Like
you go through life and you accumulate these things. You
get a house, you get a career, you get a wife,
you get a family, and then you have these things
(42:56):
that I guess I don't know. When you die, they
add them up and they give you a score.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Well only you see, going back to a bit starling, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
And I kind of learned to put that feeling aside
of both accumulation gain and loss, and to try to
live my life in a different way about being far
more in the moment and far more about appreciating what
I had rather than what I could get and other things.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
This is a really really good lesson for us. Also,
by the way, you're totally a good looking guy. You're
sort of like the Stanley Tucci of the Jews or
something like that. Did you have like a hard time
meeting your second wife or did it just happen.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
It kind of just happened in the sense. I mean,
I'm very lucky in that when I became divorced, I
had a public profile, so it was a little easier
for me to meet people to date. But it turns
out that I think this is true, that my wife
had actually been to see my show, you know, long
before she met me. Oh, she wasn't that crazy about it,
(44:00):
But I will tell you the story. Because you are
a showman. And the refversion is this. I met my
wife because I was asked to be the special guest
star in a show here in Chicago that was a
parody of a Christmas Carol and other Christmas specials, including
the old Andy Williams style specials with Oh who was
at the door, and every night they had a celebrity guest,
and in Chicago, I count as a celebrity, so I
(44:22):
got to do it. And the night before they had
had a person who will go unnamed, who was terrible,
and they gave scores. The stage manager and cast gave
scores to all their guests one to five stars, depending
on how lovely they were to work with, and she
got zero stars. This person z I showed up the
next night, and because I had been in the theater
impressed the stage manager with the fact that I knew
(44:45):
that stage left was stage left, I knew not to props,
and then when somebody said to me five minutes, mister Segal,
I knew to say thank you five And so in
comparison to the terrible person who had been on before,
and thanks to my background in the theater, I am
now happily married. I married the stage manager.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Ah I was waiting for that. God, so she just
liked you. I was going to say, how many stars
did you get?
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Dark I got five stars. But there again, I think
I looked good compared to my immediate predecessor. But you know,
I scored some points and everything then thereafter came from that.
So everybody, learn your stage etiquette. Stage left from the
perspective of the performer the audience.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
That's right, right.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Okay, don't touch the props, don't touch the costumes.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Touch the costumes, don't touch the props.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
God, never mess around. Know your lines, know your cue,
and the appropriate response. When someone tells you what the
time is before your performance, they say ten minutes, you
say thank you, indicating you just heard that and you
know it.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Learn that and you will end up as happy as
I am.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Well, Darling, that is incredible advice to leave our listeners with.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
I think so you are.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
An amazing, amazing podcast asked guests, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Please, I think you are a delight. You're in every way.
I'm just so thrilled to know that you're out there listening.
It's very exciting to me all.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
The time constantly. That was such a delight it's everything
I hoped it would be, and in a funny way,
it's exactly what I hoped it would be. For one thing,
he's the first guest, or one of the few guests
I've had on who actually just answered the obituary question
(46:33):
without a flinch. And he answered it so intelligently, and
he said what I was expecting him to say, and
then he asked me the question, and what I said
to him was something he wasn't expecting. And I guess
that's why I asked that question on every single podcast,
because what people expect my obituary to be and what
I really wanted to be about are not the same
(46:55):
at all. In his case, I was just thrilled and
delighted that Peter understands what that show has become in
this country and who he has become in this country
as a kind of like an icon and a beloved
weekly character in our lives. Anyway, I had a lot
of fun between everything that Peter said and playing the
(47:18):
games and pretending to be Peter Segel in some ways,
and I'm glad you've got a chance to hear it.
Thank you so much for listening, darlings. If you enjoyed
this episode, do me a favor and tell someone, Tell
a friend, tell your mother, tell your cousin, tell everyone
you know. Okay, and be sure to rate the show.
(47:39):
I love rating stuff. Go on and rate and review
the show on Apple Podcasts so more people can hear
about it. It makes such a gigantic difference and like
it takes a second, so go on and do it.
And if you want more fun content videos and posts
of all kinds, follow the show on Inta and TikTok
(48:01):
at Hello Isaac podcast and by the way, check me
out on Instagram and TikTok at. I Am Isaac Msrahi.
This is Isaac Misrahi. Thank you, I love you and
I never thought I'd say this, but goodbye Isaac. Hello
Isaac is produced by Imagine Audio Awfully Nice and I
(48:25):
AM Entertainment for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by Me
Isaac Msrahi. Hello Isaac is produced by Robin Gelfenbein. The
senior producers are Jesse Burton and John Assanti. It is
executive produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Cara Welker, and
Nathan Klokey at Imagine Audio Production Management from Katie Hodgens,
(48:48):
Sound design and mixing by Cedric Wilson. Original music composed
by Ben Waltzon. A special thanks to Neil Phelps and
Sarah katamak at I AM Entertainment.
So the story was based on vaguely in her experience.
It was but a young woman, an American, there in
the Cuban Revolution. She's there to witness it, she gets
involved in it, she meets people who are involved in it.
So I wrote a screenplay in which you see the
Cuban Revolution from this young woman's eyes.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And it's a good idea.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
It was a fabulous idea. I thought. I don't know
who the screenplay was, but I did my best, and
the note I got back was we were hoping for
something more like dirty dancing.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Aha. Oh wow. This is Hello Isaac, my podcast about
the idea of success and how failure affects it. I'm
Isaac Mizrahi, and in this episode I talked to writer
humorous and host of NPR's Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me,
Peter Sagel.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Hello, Isaac. It's Peter Sagal, And I just want to
say that one of the things I've carried with me
through my life is that when we met in person
back in two thousand and six, even though you are
an icon of high fashion, you were dressed in the
same kind of shmata that I wear every day. And
it's just kept me going as I've continued to buy
my clothes at targeting Costco. So I'm looking forward to
(01:08):
seeing you again and getting that same fashion validation.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Peter Sagel is one of those people that I really
really relate to, only because I think he's so good
on his feet. I noticed that in the show he
does wait wait, don't tell me that I've been listening
to forever. He is really, really, just witty, and I
want to talk to him about what it means to
(01:35):
be witty and funny and if there's any difference and
how it all comes together for him on that show
because it is literally one of the great institutions in
this country, and he is just beloved in my book.
So let's get started. Peter Sagel, Hello Darling.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Hello Isaac. How are you you.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I'm okay. Actually, Can I just say one thing, which
is already a shock because I listen to your show
nearly every week and you have this unbelievable voice that
was meant for radio Darling, and we've met several times,
and every time I see your face, I'm like, Nope,
that's not Peter Segel. It can't possibly be. Like the
face doesn't match the voice.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, I'm well aware of that. Nobody who's ever met me,
and this goes back for all twenty five years of
my radio career has ever said, oh my gosh, you
look exactly what I thought you'd look like. And then
I asked him, well, what did you expect? And they
say various things. One person said to me, quite famously,
you don't sound bald, and I don't know how that.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Oh God, that nice, love.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
How do you sound bald?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I don't know, darling. But here's the thing. The first
time I was on Wait Wait was in literally like
the nineties or something. It was like ninety eight. I
know that because I had an assistant at the time
called Sam Wilson, who was very groovy, and he discovered
your show very very early on, and the request came
through and he was like, you have to do the
(03:05):
show and I was like, Sam, do I really was like, no,
you really do, because it's the greatest show. So I
reluctantly was like hello. It was over the phone, right,
it's like, what do you want? I literally was like, yeah,
can I help? I was so rude, I remember on
the show and then you asked me all these ridiculous
questions like you did all these games, and I was like,
who are these people? This is not gonna last. Meantime,
(03:27):
it became like my favorite show after I listened to
it and I did it again, and we did it
in person. But that first time I remember like absolutely
disdaining the whole idea.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
But there you are, and now you are and we're
all still here. I have the dates. People say to
me that, oh, I'm your number one fan, and I say, no,
you're not your best number two, because we have this
fan named Lynn Fomm in Portland who has, over the years,
maintained a database of all the interesting stats of our show.
So with a quick look, I can tell you that
your first appearance on our show was You're correct, it
(03:59):
was by phone in March of two thousand and three.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Oh okay, tame.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Then you joined us on stage in New Haven of
Alta Haven in September of two thousand and six.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Thank you, Lynn Farm, thank you Darling, Thank you Lynn.
So let's start with a little history about you. You
now live in Chicago. Are you from that area? Did
you grow up?
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I'm from suburban New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Really what brought you to Chicago?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Well, they offered me this job. I was living in
New York. I was living in Brooklyn in nineteen ninety seven.
I was married to a person to whom I'm no
longer married, who was a nice Midwestern girl.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Nice at any rate.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
She very much didn't really want to live in New
York and certainly didn't want to raise our child in
New York. Wow, and she was pregnant. So we had
this deal. It was like something from a fairy tale.
We would live in New York City to the first
birthday of our first child, at which point we would
have to leave to someplace, and I had no idea where.
And then I had tried out to be a panelist
(04:54):
on this new radio show, and just between you and me, Isaac,
my initial impression of it was very similar to your.
And then, much to my amazement, they offered me the
job of host, which would require me to move to Chicago.
And I don't know if you've been here, but Chicago
is in the Midwest.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Yes I have. I love Chicago is.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
A great town. So it suited my then wife, it
suited me, and off we went. And I did not
expect a number of things. I did not expect i'd
be here for so long. I did not expect I'd
do this job for so long. I did not expect
that someday I would be no longer married to that person.
But stuff happens, and you.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Know, yes it really does happen. It does. But where
were you educated.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I was a product of public schools in suburban New
Jersey and then Harvard College.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
As we comes, just people like to say yeah, wow, yeah,
And you never missed the opportunity to say right well
about this.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And say, I don't know how many minutes we are
into this podcast, but I did not say it before. Then,
before you were in a little credit.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Congratulations, I asked you did ask.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I would have had to try to bring it up somehow,
So I thank you for saving me that effort.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
So how did you make it from public school in
New Jersey to Harvard? Like, how did you.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Guy that the biggest goddamn suck up you've ever met,
suck up to the teacher, to anybody, especially teachers, sometimes parents,
school administrators. I was just a brown noser, and I
guess I still am. I guess it might be my
only skill. And rather than being like intelligent or talented,
I'm clever and clever, My friends will take you a
(06:26):
long way, especially when you're taking standardized tests and impressing
people who might give you a recommendation. So I had
a reputation as being very clever, very smart, as my
mother from Boston might have said. And basically I was
more popular with adults than I was with my peers.
And it turns out that those adults are far more
important to getting you into a good school than your
(06:48):
peers are.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Interesting and what did you study? What did you see
yourself doing as a young man or a little boy,
What did you want to do well?
Speaker 1 (06:56):
My first professional ambition was I was going to be
a pediatrician. And that was partially because my mother really
wanted me to be a doctor. To nice Jewish mother
exactly really really that stereotype rayal her whole life, but
also because I was under the mistaken impression that the
profession was called peter attrition. Thus I thought, I'm talking
(07:18):
about the age of four or five.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I see, as soon as I was able to sort
of like consciously express my own actual desires apart from
those around me and my parents, I always wanted to
be a writer. That was my goal. I grew up
loving written humor like S. J. Perrolman and Woody Allen's
early books, and more than anything, that's the sort of
thing I wanted to do. In fact, one of the
(07:41):
reasons I really really wanted to go to Harvard was
because of the Harvard Lampoon, which was even then, back
in the late seventies early eighties, legendary, and I wanted
to be a part of that. And as it happened,
they wanted nothing to do with me once I got there.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
The Lambone, they rejected you. That's filling. Yeah, you talk
like a like I prequalify a lot of things, like
the sentences are quite structured. Congratulations, it's a beautiful and
I note that on the show. That's how you talk, right,
just in general, like that's probably how you address your
infant children constantly.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
I'm constantly saying, excuse me, Theodore. But I was wondering,
I was wondering if, in fact, if, in fact, given
the proposition given, assuming for the moment, Theodore, that you've
pooped in your diaper.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
But Darling, you don't really have a background in theater,
do you.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
I do. Actually, that was my other thing, because my
other love passion. Whatever you want to call them enthusiasm
growing up with theater, so I was a theater kid
in high school. I started in the plays, and then
I went off and my other thing I wanted to
do in college was put on plays. I ultimately acted
in them, I wrote some, I directed a bunch, so
(08:56):
that was my thing. I was not the greatest student
in the world, never have been, but I was very
good at like running around and trying to be in
shows and putting on shows. By the time I got
out of school, I ended up pursuing that as a career,
sort of by accident, but I spent the first ten
years more or less out of college pursuing a career
in the theater, first working in the staff of a
(09:18):
now defunct large institutional theater in southern California in LA
called the La Theater Center Shout out to Spring Street
if you're listening, and then became a playwright myself and
managed to sort of start on the first rungs of
that career, including some fellowship, some awards, and then ultimately
some productions. And that's what I was doing when I
was first introduced on Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me as
(09:41):
a panelist and now joining us from Brooklyn playwright Peter Segel.
That was what I wow, this is actual, reliable.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah right, well we know that you actually wrote Dirty
Dancing too, or Dirty Dancing? Is it with Absolu?
Speaker 1 (09:57):
I am the second story credit on Dirty Dancing to
a Vana Knights.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Vana Knights. Okay, well that's a big credit, Darling.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I got the poster, I got to go to the premiere.
I got to insult Patrick Swayze without meaning to. It
was a big time.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Did you go to Havana to research this?
Speaker 1 (10:12):
I didn't. I imagined that this would be to me.
This movie would say Chinatown was to Robert Town, which
put me on the map as a screenwriter. Well, this
is what happened. So I had written a few plays
and one of them came to the attention of a
producer you might have heard of or even met, named
Lawrence Bender, who was very well known at the time
(10:33):
for being Quentin Tarantino's producer. Yes, he produced Reservoir Dogs
and Pulp Fiction, and he wanted to do a movie
with me, having read my play, and we kicked about
some ideas and we came up with a story based
on the autobiography, or at least the life story of
a dear friend of his, a dancer and choreographer named
Joanne Jansen. Joanne, who was a vivid person, had spent
(10:58):
her youth part of it in Q but with her father,
who worked for I think Alcoa, and she had been
living in Havana at the time of the Cuban Revolution,
right mm hm, And so the story was based on
vaguely in her experience. It was but a young woman,
an American, there in the Cuban Revolution. She's there to
witness it, she gets involved in it, she meets people
who are involved in it. Parenthetically, the Cuban Revolution is
an amazing story that has never been properly told, and
(11:20):
I thought I would properly tell it. So I tried,
and I wrote a screenplay in which you see the
Cuban Revolution from this young woman's eyes.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And it's a good idea.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
It was a fabulous idea, I thought. I don't know
who good the screenplay was, but I did my best.
And the note I got back was we were hoping
for something more like dirty dancing.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Aha, oh wow, which that's great.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
I don't know how I missed that to begin with,
but I did. And at which point in retrospect, I
should have said, well, you know that's not me. I'm
not the guy for that. But you know, it was
my first job in Hollywood. I wanted to do a
good job. I wanted to be a trooper. So I
kept at it, and every draft I did, trying to
make more like Dirty Dancing, I e. A romance between boy,
girl and music. It got worse because I was not
(12:04):
then more am I now a sixteen year old girl.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Darling. I'm going to recommend a book in case you
haven't read it, that you must must read. It's Joan
Dideon and John Gregory Dunn's experience writing I don't know,
some movie from Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford. It's called Monster,
and it is so I've heard about, incredibly funny and wonderful.
It's like you hand in one thing and they're like, well,
(12:26):
we were thinking, can it be more like Dirty Dance?
It is just one of the funniest books in the world.
Allah what you're talking about right now, and the thing
about you as a person on the show, and I'm
guessing as a writer because I never read anything that
you wrote, but I think you're extremely witty and you're
extremely funny. Did you ever do stand up? And if not,
(12:50):
how did you escape doing stand up?
Speaker 1 (12:53):
I never did stand up. It never occurred to me
to do stand up. I've done monologues, and I've done
sort of comic things. Of the plays that I wrote,
I like to think, even though they were all in
very serious topics, often had lots of jokes. Right, And
I was known, like a lot of theater kids were
as the class clown, and like a lot of people
who grew up that way, you're raising your hand.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yes, I'm raising my hands exactly, a lot of.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
People who for various reasons, didn't fit in in high school. Right.
Maybe they were socially awkward, Maybe they were you know, closet,
maybe they were gay, Like, maybe they were gay.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
And you're about to come out of something after having
five children and two right exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah, No, not me, No, that's not me. But I
had other problems. But a lot of us, as you
well know, masked that or got around it, maybe by
being funny. You know, if you weren't socially successful, or
you're not good looking, you're not good at athletics, or
anything else that might impress the cohort of high school students.
You make jokes. My problem in general was that my
(13:52):
jokes again were far more appreciated by the adults around
than the kids.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
But that's smart adults, by the way, Yes, only the.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Best adults appreciating my jokes as a seventeen year old.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Right, well, let me ask you this, because the show
that you do every single week for what is it
about twenty five years?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Sent years?
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Twenty five years? Okay, yes, so that show gets put together.
I'm guessing there's a lot of writing in advance, right,
Do you write jokes? Actually?
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Do I write jokes? But thank god I am not
the only one who does. And I think if I write,
I would have been around for twenty five years. We
have what is essentially a writer's room. I mean, we
don't call it that, but we have producers who work
on the show, many of whom have other duties as well.
Everybody contributes. We have some people who are professional writers.
That's all they do is I write jokes for us.
(14:41):
For example Peter Gwynn, who is a veteran of Stephen
Colbert and New York and other high level comedy stuff.
And so yeah, when I stand up to do the show.
I have in front of me, a script that's been
written and rewritten with stories that we've selected and pitched
to each other, with jokes that we've written about those stories,
and I absolutely contribute to it. Sometimes it'll be my jokes.
(15:02):
Sometimes it's my edits of other people's jokes. And I
had to get used to this because this wasn't what
I was used to as a writer. I felt very
strongly about credit. It was really weird for me at
first to perform other people's jokes and get a.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Lot right, I understand, Darling, I under I.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Was like, well, no, I'm glad you enjoyed that, and
eventually I realized, no, no, just stake the applause.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Darling, Darling. That's what's called show business. They exactly, you know,
But how much of it happens on the spot.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
A lot of it happens on the spot, and the
show is designed that way. Our gimmick, if you will,
is a spontaneity, and as George Burns said about sincerity,
if you can fake that, you've got it made. So
in the space if you will of comedy of satire,
you've got people like Stephen Colbert who are both brilliant
and have amazing staffs of writers. You've got, say John Oliver,
(15:56):
who's got, you know, just an incredible staffag producers who
create those very funny, lengthy packages that he does that's
become his hallmark. That's amazing. I am incredibly impressed. We
don't have the money to do that. They have enormous staffs.
We have a staff of maybe seven people in a
good week.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
That's a lot of people writing jokes. Because here's the
thing about all these people who have like writing staffs
and jokes and whatever. I mean, you're the sieve through
which everything. Yeah, and so when you read the script,
do you ever go like, yeah, that's so funny. I
can't tell that.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
It's more like this, you know, as you know, we
have this panel and the panel very funny people changing
from week to week. But they're all great. They don't
know what we're gonna ask them, they don't know what
we've written. They sometimes can anticipate what the top stories are,
so maybe they're thinking, oh, yeah, I better come up
with something to say about I don't know the state
of the Union speech. But almost always I'll start something,
(16:52):
start with our best jokes that we've written about, you know,
the topic a right, and then the panel will come
up with something and my job is to follow them
see where they go. You know. Sometimes I'll encourage them
to go further. Sometimes I'll hit the ball back. Sometimes
we never go back to the written script at all. Right,
it's like, this is much more interesting, and all these
amazing jokes that were written with blood and sweat over
(17:14):
the course of a week vanish, never to be heard
from again. Sometimes I go back to the script and
pick it up if things aren't going in a useful direction.
And sometimes I'm almost embarrassed to admit this. Sometimes I
am able to offer a written joke as if I
just thought of it.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Well, we all can do that, darling, I mean, any
of us who perform on stage, I have learned to do that.
I mean, that's that is just.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
But I had to learn how to do that. That
was one of the skills that I needed to acquire
after we got these talented writing.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Speaking of doing a show that is so of the moment,
and yet it's not daily, it's weekly, you know. It's
like because sometimes news changes from literally it.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Does, especially a couple of times over the years we've
had to go into the studio on Friday, even after
performing the show and a live audience, and had to
fake live audience to change something that happened on Friday. Famously.
I remember once it was in the spring of two
thousand and nine, and it was the Nobel Prizes that
had come out, and we did it thing about Nobel Prizes,
(18:14):
and then Friday morning they gave the Peace Prize to Obama.
We've done the show in this enormous auditorium in Boston,
so we had to fake that echo with effects and
we had to reassemble. Everybody was doing a reshoot in
a major motion picture. But generally speaking, we have two advantages.
One is that most of the stuff we do in
the show is not with the exception of the first
(18:36):
couple of stories, is not like absolutely timely this week's
big story. A lot of it. It's just goofy stuff
that can hold you know. The other advantages we don't
really care. We stopped caring during the Trump YU there
was just so much crap over the transom. My joke
was it was like that famous I Love Lucy's sketch
(18:57):
with the chocolates. It just keeps coming faster. And so
during the Trump administration. Our attitude went from oh my god,
we have to anticipate what might happen with the story.
We'll record two different things depending on what happens on
Friday too. After seven thirty Central Time on Thursday, it
is no longer our problem. Right, We're going to go
(19:17):
home and put our heads under the covers like the
rest of you.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
You've been doing wait, wait, don't tell me for twenty
five years, right, And it's a lot of shows because
you have like guest hosts occasionally I have see how
many shows do you do a year?
Speaker 1 (19:39):
We do about forty shows a year, okay, which is
more than That's a lot of shows, a lot of shows.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
It's more than we have the Gilmour Girls.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Yes, exactly exactly, because we're weird. We're sort of an
entertainment show but on a news show schedule. So we
do about forty shows a year. And wow, we celebrated
our thousandth episode in the fall of twenty nineteen, so
maybe we're up to I don't know, twelve hundred maybe, right,
(20:09):
Since then.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Is it a grind? How do you keep it fresh?
I mean, you know, talk about that, talk about doing
anything for twenty five years, you know, which, by the way,
is very appealing to me.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
There were there were times, especially when I was younger,
where I was like, oh my gosh, is this all
there is? To quote the torch singer, and was eagerly
trying to move on to the next thing, because this
is America, right, You're supposed to move on to the
next thing. Isn't that right? You're supposed to get the
next thing? Yes, and I did try. I did a
bunch of projects, some of which even saw the light
of day, but nothing ever came along as steady and
(20:43):
as reliable and frankly as successful and popular as wait wait,
don't tell me right. And now I have now aged
to the point, Isaac, where rather than being frustrated that
this is all I get to do, I am grateful
that I get to do it. Oh my god, of
oh my god, I've got this amazing gig. I get
to do a show of a kind in front of
a live audience every week. And not to get too
(21:04):
sentimental on you, but because we have been doing it
for so long, we've become kind of an institution background yes, yes, yes,
And so my favorite thing is we'll be doing a
show and this is back when we could meet people
after every show. We stopped that with a pandemic, and
maybe we'll go back to it. But even now and then,
it happens people will raise their hand in the audience
(21:25):
and volunteer this. A young woman, for example, will say,
you know, I grew up listening to the show with
my dad on the way to soccer practice when I
was in the third grade. And now I'm twenty five
years old and here is my father and I've taken
him for his sixty fifth birthday and they wave and I.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Oh, my god, it's incredible.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
You know.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Look, we're basically dad jokes and fart jokes, and except.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
You're talking about something that you know, went from being
this kind of crazy anomaly, right, yeah, to becoming this
beloved thing. You know, how has it changed? Are there
things about it that you like better?
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah? Oh, absolutely absolutely. Let me start with myself. I
think I'm a lot better at it than I was.
We've been doing this thing recently where there's a sort
of like a little podcast extra for supporters. We will
go back and we will listen to segments from shows
from twenty years ago, like the first time you were
on the show, and then will listen to me asking questions,
(22:27):
and then in the present moment, myself and a special
guest a listener will try to figure out what the
answer is from the distance of twenty years, which gives
me an opportunity to listen to myself twenty years ago.
And ah, oh man, Honestly, if I am a terrible
person and I end up in hell, my torture will
be having to listen to me doing this show the
(22:47):
first five years when I had no idea what I
was doing. So I think I'm better at it in
a number of ways, and I can tell you sort
of what my evolution was. Obviously, I think over the
years we acquired and happy have been able to keep
a bunch of really talented people came in and to
make our show a lot better.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Not to mention some of the panelists, and.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
That's the last and most important thing. That's the place
where we try to really keep the show fresh by
bringing in new voices, some of whom will join us
for a show or two, some of whom will become
beloved members of the family. As it were. These amazingly
talented young comedians.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Well, you know what Is it just funny? Is your
show just funny?
Speaker 1 (23:28):
We occasionally have arguments on our staff, good ones, about
what's to stress. What do we need to talk about
this week? Is this too tasteless? Is this too serious?
But the one thing we all agree on is even
those of us and that would really be me who
think that we have an obligation to take on the
major stories of the week, is that people turn to
us for a break. And that has to do with
(23:50):
a larger media environment, which can be very, very depressing.
I don't need to tell you that. It also has
to do with the specific environment of public radio, which
tends to be very serious. You know, like in our
market here in Chicago, we come on after Scott Simon's
morning news story, and these days it can be pretty bleak,
and so by the time people get to us on
(24:11):
Saturday morning, usually they are ready to lighten up. And
that can be both us saying rude things about the
major people in the news, be they whatever president, be
they whatever thing that's happened. But it's also just as
goofing around with the silliest stories we can find. And
that's another thing I should say that has been confirmed
(24:31):
and reaffirmed over and over again by our audience. They say,
oh my god, sometimes just waiting to hear you guys
goof around gets me through the week. Of course, particularly
true during the pandemic when we continued to do shows
not in front of a live audience but on zoom
got helps us all and people said the same thing.
You know, knowing that you guys were still doing this
show was really encouraging for me and helped me cope.
(24:54):
So again, it's a privilege, in an honor to do
that work, to just be goofy.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Darling, go back a minute, because you were saying sometimes
you have to segue from this really really heavy duty
news into a kind of a light comic show. But
I want to talk to you about fatherhood, because Darling,
you took that very seriously. Like you've got some kids, Darling,
you you have it.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
I have a lot of them. Strangely, I've lost tracked
with some of them you have.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Indeed, First of all, what the hell were you thinking?
Like what kind of a person listens to the news
and then goes, yeah, I'm gonnappropriate, I'm gonna have another generation.
Tell me a little bit about your kids. First of all,
how old are they?
Speaker 1 (25:33):
My first batch of kids, my.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Rady Budge, the first yeah, Zaegel Budd.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
We were born in nineteen ninety eight, two thousand, two
thousand and three, all girls, and they're out in the world.
They're being adults. And so you know, to my credit,
things weren't so dire back then. So you know, I
guess and so and so I think we can be forgiven.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, you were like, oh, nine to eleven,
that's fine. To eleven happened, what can possibly.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, you know, it'll be fine. I think our last
daughter was born after the invasion of a rocket. She
was to see before, you know, before it happens, right, Okay,
we get to pass on that. The second round was
very unexpected, but very welcome, I should say, in case
my kids ever listened to this, glad you're here. So basically,
my incredible good fortune was after my marriage exploded in
(26:24):
a pretty bad way. I spent a couple of years
in the wilderness as one of those awful divorced men
in his forties. Oh lord, but I met an astonishingly
lovely and kind and as far as my needs went
forgiving young woman named Mara to whom I am now married,
And it was obvious to everybody whoever met her, even
(26:47):
if it wasn't immediately obvious to her, was born to
be a mother, And so this was something we decided
that we wanted to do. And I mean my feelings
about it were where shall we say a complex. I
had done it four, I had children, I'd experienced that
for good and for bad. She never had, though, and
I knew she wanted to, and it felt unfair to
(27:08):
say to somebody, oh, I'd like you to spend the
rest of your life with me and also give up
this deeply important thing to right. And also, you know,
I'm older than she is, and it is my plan
to die long before she does. I work pretty I
very much want her to have somebody around that she
can complain about me too, knowingly. Right, Remember when your
(27:32):
dad used to do this and matterss thing? Yeah, Mom,
that drove me crazy too.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Remember when that asshole called your father? Right exactly, Wait
a minute, did you at least make a deal with
this woman to go you know what, You're going to
have to do a lot of the heavy lifting because
I'm fifty five. How old are you, darling?
Speaker 1 (27:47):
I'm fifty eight, now.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Fifty eight okay, And when did you have your last kid?
Speaker 1 (27:51):
My son, Teddy, who I do think will be my
last kid in both ways ahaha, was born in January
of this year, uh right before.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
So like basically like you and Elton John and Alec
Baldwin like this exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
You meet every among the so many things we have
in common. Also, one of the great pleasures of my life,
as you can imagine, is whenever an elderly celebrity has
a child, I hear about it. Right of course, here
you had a baby. He's eighty.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
God, that is so great. That is so great. So
one of the great things I love about wait, wait,
don't tell me are the games that you play with people.
So I want to play a game with you. We
know that you wrote this screenplay for Dirty Dancing Too
Havana Knights, and we were thinking we were going to
play a game with you called Dirty Diapers. Oh, because
of these.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Things, I am on top of this, my friend.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
You're ready, okay. Marion Donovan has been credited with creating
the first practical disposable diaper in nineteen fifty by using
which of the following materials A an umbrella B, A
shower curtain C A pillowcase.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
I'm going to go only because of its moisture protective quality.
Is a shower curtain B?
Speaker 2 (29:06):
You're right? Question number two. Marion's final diaper design included
nylon parachute cloth, which was breathable and eliminated diaper rash.
She also used metal and plastic snaps instead of elastic
or sharp diaper pins. What did she call it? Did
she call it the boater, the floater or the bloater?
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Gosh.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
I was going to eliminate C because why would you
call a commercial product the bloater? But you said exactly,
it's something encouraging me to skip that. Then I was
going to say, well, on the other hand, maybe that
was like internal use because it would bloat with So
the other one is the boater like a yes, or
the what was the other option?
Speaker 2 (29:46):
The floater?
Speaker 1 (29:47):
The floater? Uh, only because a floater is really kind
of gross in the context of what goes into the diaper.
I'm going to go with the boater.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Yes, you got it right, You got too right. I'm
so happy. I don't know what you're going to win.
You're gonna win like me on your answering machine, so
I would take it. This is the third question. How
long does it take for a disposable diaper to decompose completely?
Twenty to fifty years A, one hundred to two hundred
years B or two hundred and fifty to five hundred
(30:18):
years C.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Only because I am incredibly guilty about using these things,
I'm going to go for the longest period, which was C.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Wow, Darling, you see because you have a lot of
experience with these games. I'm not kidding. I'm sorry about
my dog, but he's very excited with the bell and everything. No,
that's fine, all right, I have another game. Is that
all right? Ok? Seriously this is called not my job anymore.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Ah, that's a twist. So this is lily about something
I used to do.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Yes, I read somewhere that you were a magician's assistant.
That's sort of right, sort of true.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Everything about me is sort of true. I sort of
wrote Dirty Dancing to Havanna Knights. I sort of was
a magician's as in that when we were growing up,
my older brother, now a rabbi still in New Jersey,
was a children's magician, and I would be his beautiful
young assistant.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Sometimes, right, did you wear something dressed? No, I don't know, cape.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
I don't remember. I vaguely remember wearing some sort of costume.
It might have been a T shirt that said magician's assistant,
but it's been a while.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Okay, we'll have the following true or false questions about magic.
The FBI hired a magician to train agents in sleight
of hand techniques for use, and there mickey slipping LSD experiments.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Wow, Okay, I know they did LSD experiments, but you
might be trying to fool me. I'm gonna say yes,
because that's the sort of thing they do.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Well, it's sort of false because it's the CIA, not
the FBI. The true question I had like a buzzer
like I was distracted.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
I was distracted by the magician thing, and I let
that little factoid go by.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
See see you learn it, Darling. Okay, Question number two,
it's illegal in Queensland, Australia to own a pet rabbit
unless you can prove that you're a magician.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
MM. Is that true or false? Yes, that's true because
rabbits are a terrible problem in Australia.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Darling, that is true. How would you ever know.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
That because I mentioned my actual skills. I just have
this amazing ability to collect tidbits of useless information. And
I remember reading that rabbits are an invasive species in
Australia and reproduce like mad and eat all the crops.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
The other thing I heard about, like, you know, we
think koalas are so cute, and they're infested with disease
and they have like crazy like rashes on their butts
and they're disgusting.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
According to they get chlamydia, right, a lot of.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Chlamydia from the koalas. All right, here's another question lifestyle,
right exactly. Hey, hey, watch what you say about life?
All right? Question number three. In two thousand and six,
David Copperfield and two assistants were robbed at gunpoint. David
was able to use sleight of hand to conceal his possessions,
and when the thieves turned to him, he called his
(33:08):
spontaneous illusion reverse pickpocketing.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
See here's the thing. I just have an instinct about
this in that I think that might have happened, but
I don't think it was David Copperfield for reasons that
I can't quite say. But I'm just gonna go with
my gut and say that's false. It was another magician.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
It's actually true, Darling, it was David Copperfield. Damn. You see,
I'm sorry we threw you off with that CIA FBI.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Yeah, no, no, no, no, that one's just on me. I
followed my instinct, and my instincts.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
All right, do you want, darling, do you want one
more to make it?
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yes, so you could actually win my voice.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
But one of the things I do is, whenever anybody
comes in the show, it might have done it with
you back in two thousand and six, is I always
talked to them beforehand, and I tell them you're gonna
play the silly quiz on our show, and it doesn't matter.
Don't take it seriously. It's totally fine if you lose
and I am down two to one and I feel
terrible to see you.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
See what I'm saying. What I'm saying, well, you won
the first round, so this is the second round. All right,
you're ready for this. Apollo Robbins, a pickpocket magician, struck
up a conversation with Ronald Reagan and his secret service agents.
Within a few minutes, he emptied the agent's pockets of
everything except their guns, is that right, false or true?
Speaker 1 (34:23):
I happen to know Apollo. He's been in the show.
I've met him a few times. He's a really nice guy. Okay,
And even if that's not true, I'm gonna say it's
true because Apollo can do anything. So I'm gonna say
true just as a tribute to my friend.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Okay, Well, it's true that he did it, but not
to Ronald Reagan. It was Jimmy Carter. It was just
s see you see. Yeah. Well, listen, by the way,
you won the first round, which means that I will
record your if you want me.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
You know what, I might really enjoy that.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
No, wouldn't it be hilarious, Like Hi, darlings.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Why not? It would be very unexpected. I think it
would be hilarious. So yes, I will take you up
on that.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
All right, I'm going to ask you now a question
that I ask most of the people that I speak
to on my podcast, which is about their obituaries, because
I am literally obsessed with obituaries. What does your obituary
say when you die in about fifty years from now?
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Fifty years? Thank you? I appreciate that, my sons appreciate that.
For many years I always said it was going to
be Peter Sagel, who wrote Dirty Dancing Havana Nights without
ever meaning to right, I think I would have to
quote The Times or Vanity Fair to paraphrase what they said.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
It will say.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Peter Sagel, who affably told dad jokes on public radio
for many years, died today of frustration when he didn't
get a quiz.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Correct, you say, well, I hope not, and that is
not why you die. And by the way, you know
you said that a little bit earlier about dad jokes. Yes,
and I'm not so sure that's what it is, because,
first of all, a dad joke can be really, really funny.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Okay, well that's true, and I don't mean to diminish
the quality of dad jokes.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
And right, so there you go. But I find the
show to be so much more than just dad jokes,
you know. And I'm wondering, asking for a friend, now,
how do you become a panelist on that damn show?
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Basically, you become a panelist on our show by being
generally very funny and sharp. I should say, by the way,
that we have had over the years some incredibly funny people,
including people who have gone on to astonishingly successful careers
like Keegan. Michael Key is a great example. Wow, we
have been on our show and despite their an amazing talent,
(36:49):
just couldn't fit in that we were a weird gig.
We require a bunch of different skills that are not
necessarily the kind of skills you need to be a
successful comedian or anything in this world. They're just particularly
to our show. So yeah, you have to know a
lot about the news. You have to be quick, you
have to be at the same time willing to grab
the spotlight. You have to play well with others.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
You have to get along with Paula Poundstone.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
You have to get along with Paula pound I don't
know if you ever met Paula. That's not hard.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
That was amazing. Absolutely, agree to go out of your
way to not exactly all right, Well, is there something
you want to promote on the podcast?
Speaker 1 (37:26):
I will say that I do a book that is
in print that came out a few years ago called
The Incomplete Book of Running that I'm proud of and
people tell me they enjoyed. So I recommend that from
your local independent bookseller or library. And other than that,
just tune in to wait wait, don't tell me on
the weekends or listen to it on a podcast. It's
always great when you spend time with us.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Well, here's the thing. I want your voice on my
answering machine.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
It would be an honored darling.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
That would just be the greatest thing in the world.
And first of all, what answering machine?
Speaker 1 (37:55):
That's another question. When the show began, we actually said
answering machine. I always say voicemail, but I guess everybody's
got a voicemail. It's just that nobody is rude enough
to leave you one. Right.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
I have one of the most absurd and hilarious messages
from like nineteen ninety three from Liza Minelli. It's one
of the great things ever. I forgot that what she says, like, honey,
it's me, and I forgot what it was. It was
some of the most like ridiculous, hilarious thing in the world.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Isaac, Can I ask you a question. Sure, you're an
eclectic fellow, and I might make a guess as to
what the lead of your obituary might be, But what
do you want it to be?
Speaker 2 (38:34):
I think, I boy, well, you know what. The more
I ask people that question, the more they go oh,
I want to just be remembered for being a good person.
You know, you're talking to like someone so incredibly accomplished,
so incredibly like career orient They're going, I want to
be known as a good dad or a good mom, right,
And I go, like, are we living in the same planet?
(38:56):
You know, Darling. I used to have like a recurring
nightmare that I would be on the phone with my
shrink and my mother at the same time, going, you
cannot let them publish this obituary. It's not going to happen.
This cannot be And so I'm not exactly sure. Here's
the thing. I don't want it to be about fashion
or clothing, That's all. I know.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
That's a big ask for you.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
I want it to be like third paragraph in.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
By the way, what And you know, I'm just I'm
just imagining what your obituary would say. And in addition
to his extraordinary humanitarianism and sexual prowess, yes, it his
own clothes, no, Darling, No, no, but why not? I mean,
clothing was your first love. It's how you first became
well known. And you're very very good at.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
You're right, You're absolutely right, You're absolutely.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Right, And I will say that, that idea of being
remembered as a good person, that's become more and more
important to me as I've gotten older. I too read obituaries,
and what I look for when I read those obituaries
is I look for the people about whom other people
have really good things to say, you know, I mean,
I remember just two random examples. There was an obituary
(40:02):
recently of a very wealthy man. He made his money,
I think with duty free shops, and he gave all
his money away all yeah, did anonymously.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
That was incredible. I read that a bit.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
And I also remember, and this is a you know,
obviously a kind of outlier of an example, but I
remember reading the obituary of Rush Limbaugh, and it was
all about his career and who influential he was and
his hands and all these things and wow, and nobody
had a goddamn nice thing to say about him. Nobody said, oh, yeah,
the Rush. I knew he was such a great friend, right, Oh,
his dinner parties were wonderful. You always knew if you're
(40:36):
going to rush his house, you'd ever Nobody said anything
like that.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Well, by the way, did you read the obituary the
other day about the chicken Lady. Did you see that?
Wait a minute, yes, the woman who was chicken activist,
the chicken rights lady, the chicken rites. That was amazing.
I thought that's my obituary. Actually, I do have one final, final,
final question. I hope you have one second to.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Do for you, Isaac Bubbola.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Is there some kind of a failure in your life
that you don't remembered? Uh?
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Yeah, I mean there's been a lot, but the one
thing that stays with me, and I also should say
that this is a little bit of what my book
is about, was my divorce. Because I grew up my
parents had a very happy marriage. It lasted for sixty
three years until my mother died just two years ago.
And you know, it wasn't perfect, but they were devoted
to each other. And for me and my brothers certainly,
(41:27):
and most of my extended circle of friends, the idea
of ever getting divorced, ever being that guy, seemed imposiit ah,
And like a lot of people, I probably delayed what
would have been a healthy thing, which is ending the
marriage for man and many years, just because I didn't
want to have that failure. I didn't want to be
that person I never could have imagined being, And it
(41:49):
just so happens that Without getting into it, it was
a particularly ugly divorce. I had hoped to have one
of those amical divorces you sometimes hear about. It didn't
work out that way. It was really brutal. Ah. It
cost me a lot. And what was so awful about
it was I felt like Job. Not to be too
dramatic to the biblical, but in that you remember what
(42:12):
happens to Job is everything he has accumulated is taken away.
It's family is wealth. And I felt that way I
did in my house. My family was separated from me.
Everything that I had felt I had worked for and gotten,
and I'm making little quotes I had lost. Now it
is also true that, like Job, I have regained all
that in spades. Although I didn't get back what I lost,
(42:35):
I've gotten other things that are even better. But one
of the things that it really did to me when
you ask what I learned, is how much I had
to change my attitude from that sense of accumulation. Like
you go through life and you accumulate these things. You
get a house, you get a career, you get a wife,
you get a family, and then you have these things
(42:56):
that I guess I don't know. When you die, they
add them up and they give you a score.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Well only you see, going back to a bit starling, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
And I kind of learned to put that feeling aside
of both accumulation gain and loss, and to try to
live my life in a different way about being far
more in the moment and far more about appreciating what
I had rather than what I could get and other things.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
This is a really really good lesson for us. Also,
by the way, you're totally a good looking guy. You're
sort of like the Stanley Tucci of the Jews or
something like that. Did you have like a hard time
meeting your second wife or did it just happen.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
It kind of just happened in the sense. I mean,
I'm very lucky in that when I became divorced, I
had a public profile, so it was a little easier
for me to meet people to date. But it turns
out that I think this is true, that my wife
had actually been to see my show, you know, long
before she met me. Oh, she wasn't that crazy about it,
(44:00):
But I will tell you the story. Because you are
a showman. And the refversion is this. I met my
wife because I was asked to be the special guest
star in a show here in Chicago that was a
parody of a Christmas Carol and other Christmas specials, including
the old Andy Williams style specials with Oh who was
at the door, and every night they had a celebrity guest,
and in Chicago, I count as a celebrity, so I
(44:22):
got to do it. And the night before they had
had a person who will go unnamed, who was terrible,
and they gave scores. The stage manager and cast gave
scores to all their guests one to five stars, depending
on how lovely they were to work with, and she
got zero stars. This person z I showed up the
next night, and because I had been in the theater
impressed the stage manager with the fact that I knew
(44:45):
that stage left was stage left, I knew not to props,
and then when somebody said to me five minutes, mister Segal,
I knew to say thank you five And so in
comparison to the terrible person who had been on before,
and thanks to my background in the theater, I am
now happily married. I married the stage manager.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Ah I was waiting for that. God, so she just
liked you. I was going to say, how many stars
did you get?
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Dark I got five stars. But there again, I think
I looked good compared to my immediate predecessor. But you know,
I scored some points and everything then thereafter came from that.
So everybody, learn your stage etiquette. Stage left from the
perspective of the performer the audience.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
That's right, right.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Okay, don't touch the props, don't touch the costumes.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Touch the costumes, don't touch the props.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
God, never mess around. Know your lines, know your cue,
and the appropriate response. When someone tells you what the
time is before your performance, they say ten minutes, you
say thank you, indicating you just heard that and you
know it.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Learn that and you will end up as happy as
I am.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Well, Darling, that is incredible advice to leave our listeners with.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
I think so you are.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
An amazing, amazing podcast asked guests, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Please, I think you are a delight. You're in every way.
I'm just so thrilled to know that you're out there listening.
It's very exciting to me all.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
The time constantly. That was such a delight it's everything
I hoped it would be, and in a funny way,
it's exactly what I hoped it would be. For one thing,
he's the first guest, or one of the few guests
I've had on who actually just answered the obituary question
(46:33):
without a flinch. And he answered it so intelligently, and
he said what I was expecting him to say, and
then he asked me the question, and what I said
to him was something he wasn't expecting. And I guess
that's why I asked that question on every single podcast,
because what people expect my obituary to be and what
I really wanted to be about are not the same
(46:55):
at all. In his case, I was just thrilled and
delighted that Peter understands what that show has become in
this country and who he has become in this country
as a kind of like an icon and a beloved
weekly character in our lives. Anyway, I had a lot
of fun between everything that Peter said and playing the
(47:18):
games and pretending to be Peter Segel in some ways,
and I'm glad you've got a chance to hear it.
Thank you so much for listening, darlings. If you enjoyed
this episode, do me a favor and tell someone, Tell
a friend, tell your mother, tell your cousin, tell everyone
you know. Okay, and be sure to rate the show.
(47:39):
I love rating stuff. Go on and rate and review
the show on Apple Podcasts so more people can hear
about it. It makes such a gigantic difference and like
it takes a second, so go on and do it.
And if you want more fun content videos and posts
of all kinds, follow the show on Inta and TikTok
(48:01):
at Hello Isaac podcast and by the way, check me
out on Instagram and TikTok at. I Am Isaac Msrahi.
This is Isaac Misrahi. Thank you, I love you and
I never thought I'd say this, but goodbye Isaac. Hello
Isaac is produced by Imagine Audio Awfully Nice and I
(48:25):
AM Entertainment for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by Me
Isaac Msrahi. Hello Isaac is produced by Robin Gelfenbein. The
senior producers are Jesse Burton and John Assanti. It is
executive produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Cara Welker, and
Nathan Klokey at Imagine Audio Production Management from Katie Hodgens,
(48:48):
Sound design and mixing by Cedric Wilson. Original music composed
by Ben Waltzon. A special thanks to Neil Phelps and
Sarah katamak at I AM Entertainment.
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