When Jared Kushner finally arrives in prison, it will mark the first time he ever got anywhere completely on his own. It's 3 a.m. Tuesday, May 30th, 2017. I'm David Feldman. We have a lot of show, so let's get right to it. This is the David Feldman Radio Network. Good news for the White House. Trump's new health care plan now includes immunity from prosecution. Welcome to the broadcast. I'm David Feldman, DavidFeldmanshow.com. Please friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, and do all your Amazon shopping via the David Feldman Show website.  It doesn't cost you more money. And for as little as $5 a month, you can gain access to all our premium content. Please go to DavidFeldmanshow.com, hit the go premium button. We accept all major credit cards. If you're already a subscriber and you forgot the password, please hit the contact button. Email me and I'll send you our password. Hit the contact button anyway and stay in touch with me. I answer all your emails. On today's show, down with tyranny's Howie Klein, peels back the curtain on what's in store for the GOP when it comes to getting rid of Obamacare, denying African Americans the right to vote, and impeaching Donald Trump. Sunday was menstrual hygiene day around the world. Millions of girls and women around the world, especially refugees, lack the hygiene and facilities to attend to their period. I read about this in an article over at theconversation.com that was written by Dr. Marnie Summer from Columbia University, who joins us today in Tanzania, where she is working inside two refugee camps. Then we lighten the mood by talking with my old friend, John Ross. John's a comedian, a comedy writer. He has a steel-trap memory and he's going to provide a follow-up to my conversations last week with Jake Johansson and Fred Stolar about the early days of the San Francisco comedy scene. Speaking of the San Francisco comedy scene, Mark Hirshon is the host of Suck-A-Tash. It's a terrific podcast that's a weekly roundup of what you should be listening to in terms of podcasts, especially comedy podcasts. Mark writes for the Huffington Post, Splitsider, he's written several screenplays for the Hallmark Channel. Like I said, he joins us from Sausalito to discuss the current state of podcasts, as well as the early days of stand-up comedy in San Francisco. And then she's back. House is in the Laura. Laura House is in love and on our show. Stay with me. Joining us is the- As always? As always, I'm out of it.  I don't stop. I never stop. I just keep going and going until I crash. Joining us is the founder and treasurer of the Blue America pack. He also writes the down with tyranny blog, Howie Klein. Howie Klein, the Blue America pack raises money for progressive candidates all around the country. The D-Triple-C will not run anybody against Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, but I understand the Blue America pack has found a candidate to take on Paul Ryan. Yes, we're part of a coalition of groups that have been scouring the southeast part of Wisconsin, which is where Paul Ryan has his district. And we've been doing this really, really hard. I mean, certainly Blue America has been nonstop working on this. And we finally found someone who would be a great candidate, not us alone, but working families party, which is strong in Wisconsin, and the labor unions, which are, you know, very, very strong and in fact, much stronger than the Democratic Party in Wisconsin. So between the labor unions, the working families party in Blue America, we have come up with an incredible guy named Randy Bryce. And he hasn't declared yet. It's still sort of under the radar a little bit. People don't know yet, although in the next few weeks, I think everyone will know your listeners are getting a little early warning on this, something that hasn't happened yet, but will. He's an iron worker. Yes, he's an iron worker.   This guy is pretty much the opposite of her.  And he's good on the environment as she was. But in terms, when it comes to the bread and butter issues that people didn't like her stands on, the kind of, you know, a little bit establishment way that she approached that stuff is very different from Randy, who, you know, it was a Bernie, it was a leader of Bernie's campaign in his part of Wisconsin. And in fact, Bernie won that district in the primary. It's a very much when people describe the white working class districts that she did so poorly in that Trump won. This is one of those districts. And, you know, Obama won the district and Hillary lost the district. And the DCCC has never, ever once run a candidate there. Not only do they not run candidates, but when candidates do run there, they sabotage them.  And what I'm talking about is Steny Hoyer and Ben Ray Luhan and Nancy Pelosi getting on the phone and calling unions and calling big democratic donors and saying, don't give, you're wasting your money, don't do it. This time they're not going to be able to do that. Randy is very beloved among the unions. He's an activist in his union and he's the head of the AFL-CIO's outreach to veterans. He's a veteran as well, but he's the head of their veteran operation for the whole state. And in his part of Wisconsin, he's an official of the iron workers union. So he's not someone that the Democrats are going to be able to mess with the way they have messed with previous candidates. So that's a really good thing.  Before you do, I just want to just put in a little plug here, which is that you can follow Randy on Twitter by his name, which is iron stash. So in other words, he's an iron worker, as you mentioned, and he's got this big mustache. So he calls himself iron stash on Twitter. What's the challenge? I'm a challenge just to make it interesting. You say that they don't run anybody good against Paul Ryan. They don't run candidates against Paul Ryan. Okay. So Ryan, I'm looking this up. Paul Ryan, the Democrats ran a guy named Ryan Solin. He ran as a Democrat. That's different from the Democrats ran. I mean, the DCCC doesn't run any candidates against him. And what I said is that not only do they not run candidates, but they sabotage anyone who looks like they could possibly give a Paul Ryan any kind of a challenge. So this guy Ryan Solin was just some random person who ran and the DCCC didn't even look twice at it. It didn't matter to them. He didn't raise any money. He didn't make any noise and it didn't make any difference. But the last time a viable Democrat ran against him, it was a few years ago, and a guy who had been a local city official in, I think either Racino, Kenosha, one of those towns, a guy named Rob Zurbon ran against Ryan and he managed to raise a huge amount of money and the DCCC freaked out and they really were flipping out that he could actually cause Ryan some kind of damage and they really went after him in a horrible way. So instead of helping a Democrat, a good solid progressive Democrat who was raising lots of money and looked like he could do some, maybe win, possibly win, they didn't want to know about it. Now, I want to tell you why this is so horrible. I mean, it destroys the Democratic party when the DCCC does this kind of stuff. Just as an example, this coming in 2018, the U.S. Senator who's a Democrat, a very good progressive Democrat named Tammy Baldwin is up for reelection. Don't you think that if there's a Democrat running in one of the congressional districts, it's going to help to turn out votes that will help Tammy Baldwin keep her seat? That's expected to be a very tight and crucial race. I mean, the Democrats need everything they can get to keep her in the Senate. It's crucial. It's so important and yet here we have the DCCC just say no. That's it. That's all I know how to do when it comes to Wisconsin. They publish their list of districts that they're going to be targeting this year.  I mean, literally absurd. A district in Alabama where they have as much chance of electing somebody in that district as you have of becoming Trump's vice president in the next month.  And yet they have no candidates against Ryan, but no candidates in the state of Wisconsin at all. They're not targeting one district in Wisconsin, a purple state where Democrats win. And that's the DCCC for you. I've said so much about them already.  And when I say DCCC, by the way, that's Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. They're charged with electing Democrats to the House, and they do a terrible job at it. I want to pitch you an idea for Dan with tyranny that you might want to write or assign. Oh, I hope you want to write it. Here's the idea. Okay. Paul Ryan is going to kill 24 million Americans with his new health care plan. He's from Wisconsin. Do you know that Wisconsin is notorious for producing serial killers? Supposedly, there's something in the water that drives people mad. Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, David Spandbauer, some guy named Walter Ellis. Some of the greatest serial killers in American history. You know that I wasn't a serial killer, but someone went into a Sikh temple in Ryan's district and shot a bunch of people there, and that was just a couple of years ago while Ryan was in Congress. He follows in a long tradition of serial killers from Wisconsin. I'm being serious. Wisconsin is plagued by serial killers. I would love you to write that story for Dan with tyranny. I think you would make it really funny and fun. All right. Hang on. I'll do it if you'll edit it for me because I tend to overwrite it. All right. I will write that. Okay. That would be fun. North Carolina has been disciplined by the Supreme Court. North Carolina used to be a Democratic stronghold. The Republicans have taken it over and they want to keep all their power by making it impossible for African Americans to vote twice the Supreme Court has wrapped their knuckles saying, stop it.  You say something is happening in Illinois on Memorial Day yesterday. What happened yesterday? It happened in Illinois. It's a little bit different. I mean what the Supreme Court did was fabulous and what hopefully that and what it's based on the idea of racial gerrymandering that you're not allowed to use race to egregiously gerrymandering states. They tore up their map. They said these two districts cannot be used and you have to redraw them. The thing is you can't just redraw two districts because the districts around them are then affected. So they really have to come up with a new map. So that's really good news. The other part of that though that's important is that what the Supreme Court has, the conservatives on the Supreme Court have always said is that partisan gerrymandering rather than racial gerrymandering is okay and the Supreme Court seems to be moving away from that now. So there'll be some cases that come up probably pretty soon. There's one in fact in Wisconsin this day we were just talking about where they said, well we didn't do racial gerrymandering. We just did partisan gerrymandering. So they purposely tried to pack Democrats into a few districts so that there would be lots and lots of Democrats in just a couple of districts and that would make it easier for Republicans to win in districts where there were fewer Democrats. So now the Supreme Court is considering that and a few other cases and that's imminent. So that's an outgrowth of this Supreme Court decision that came down a couple of weeks ago in North Carolina. Now what happened yesterday which has to do with voter participation is that the Illinois legislature met, I was surprised to hear that they were meeting on Memorial Day, but happy that the House met. So what had happened is I think about a week or so before the Illinois State Senate unanimously, so that means every Republican and every Democrat voted unanimously. So yesterday, the Illinois State Legislature passed also unanimously a bill for automatic voter registration.  So if you're a citizen of legal age and you get a driver's license, that means unless you ask not to, so you could opt out if you don't want to register to vote, but if you, unless you ask not to, that means you can register to vote. You are automatically registered to vote. So that's a really good thing. It passed in Illinois yesterday like I said the week before. It passed in the Senate unanimously. Yesterday it passed in the House unanimously. Now it had passed the year before as well, but they've got a Republican governor, this guy, Rauner, who's pretty awful, and he vetoed it, but they worked with him to address his concerns and now it looks like he's going to sign this bill that passed yesterday. Now today, Maine is looking at the same bill. And just before I spoke with you, I was on the phone with Shana Bellows, an old friend of mine who's a state senator in Maine and an ultra progressive. She's fantastic. She used to be the head of the ACLU in Maine and she ran for the U.S. Senate, but she's in the state Senate now and she's the sponsor of this automatic voter registration. So the, the, the Maine House passed it on Thursday. So last Thursday, the House of Representatives of Maine passed this bill. Every Democrat, every independent and one Republican voted for it. So it passed. It was narrow, but it did pass. And then today, actually, today, the, the, the state Senate is going to vote on it. They need to get one Republican to go along with it and then it'll pass. The problem with it is the, they have a terrible governor, this crazy guy named Paul LePage, and he's very likely to veto it. Right. He's the one who's trying to get rid of all the socialist art in the state capital. That's right.  He's against increasing the franchise. He's against more people voting. He really opposes that stuff. And he will vote, he will veto this bill. He's going to veto the bill. How do you know he's going to veto the bill? Well, as soon as he got elected and Republican legislature was in power back in 2010, they did a very odd thing. In the early 1970s, I think 1972, Maine was one of the first states to do a same day registration. So same day registration means when you go, when you go to vote, you can say, Hey, I want to register to vote that day at the same place. So you can register to vote and vote on the same day. So that's considered really, really progressive. Maine has had that for over 40 years. Along comes Paul LePage. And what does he do? He has the Republican legislature repeal that of something that's been on the books for over 40 years. This is, this is a crazy person. And so fortunately, Maine has this thing that other states don't have called the people's veto. And Shena, by the way, was the, the head of a basically like a state referendum to repeal the repeal. And they were successful. So Maine is still a state that has same day voter registration. Thanks to Shena who, as I said, is the sponsor in the, in the Senate today of automatic voter registration. Explain to me what automatic voter registration means. It means same day registration or you're just automatically registered. Yeah, if you, if you deal with the state in any way, like, like I said, driver's license, say for example, that automatically, if you're, and if you're of, you know, if you're a citizen of the state and you are of, of, you know, the, whatever age the voting ages, I guess it's seven, it's 18 everywhere, I think. I'm not sure. I think some states may have a, have a different voting age. That's what I've, I've read a little bit about the, there's some questions about that. But I think there are states that have slightly different voting age. I think it's 17 and 18 though. Yeah, not for federal elections. So for federal elections is 18 everywhere, but in some states for state elections, it's 17 in any case. So if you're of the right age to vote and you deal with it in any state office, like the DMV is a good example, you will be asked if you want to opt out, if you want to opt out and not register to vote, then they don't register to vote. But, but other than that, you will be registered to vote. So Oregon did this and they were the first state. They did it in 2015 and it's gigantically increased their, their voter participation. And then the second state that did it also in 2015, but a few months later with California. So it's really exciting to happen all over the country. I mean, Connecticut has it, Colorado has it now, Alaska passed it, Vermont, there, there, there are more and more states that are doing it. New Jersey passed it also. But again, they, unfortunately they have a, that huge slob, I can't remember his name. Oh, Chris Christie, he vetoed it as well. He also vetoed a bill that would have outlawed underage marriages. You read that. Yeah, you read that. I bet he would also outlaw a bill that outlaws marrying your cousin. I'm going to ask. No, that was, I keep mixing them up. Right.  Well, it would be far more progressive. There would be far fewer Republicans in office. So how do I know that? There was a study recently done about what happened in Wisconsin. Why did Wisconsin go, you know, very, very narrowly, but it did go for Trump? And how did that happen after giving such good solid majorities both times for Obama? And what they, what they, you know, they had instituted some very, very stringent anti voter legislation in Wisconsin. They have a state center controlled by the Republicans, a state house controlled by the Republicans, and of course a very, very right wing crackpot Republican governor.  So they do, they tend to discourage people from voting instead of encouraging people from voting. And when you think about Wisconsin, Wisconsin is the birthplace of progressivism. I mean, it's the last state in the world you would expect to be doing this kind of thing, but they, they did do it. And it, and African American voter participation in 2016 was weighed down. And it is, it is thought certainly this, this, this study that I looked at makes the assertion that that is the reason why Trump won fewer voters. That's what they were, that's what they aim for and that's what they got. Going back to gerrymandering, do we know if in 2016, whether or not more Americans voted for a Democratic congressman than a Republican congressman? No, they have been times when the Republicans have controlled the house, even though there were as many as a million fewer Republican voters. But 2016 wasn't one of those. Really? Really? That kind of speaks to, that kind of speaks to Trump and gives him a bit more of a mandate than I was willing to, to give him.  You were talking about congressional people voting for Congress? I know, but you know, he didn't win the popular vote, but the fact that the Republican House got more votes than the Democratic House gives them a little bit more legitimacy. No? Well, okay, I mean, I, it shouldn't, you shouldn't have that in your mind, because most Republican, not all, but most Republicans, or certainly most Republican incumbents did much better than Trump. So in other words, you go, you go to, you know, I'll just pick a district at random that I was thinking about recently, a district in Houston, where John Colberson is the congressman. Colberson won reelection, handily, he, you know, he won, I don't know, 60% say, very, he did very well. And Trump lost to Hillary in that same district in Texas. So, so Trump, even in the districts that, a lot of districts that Trump won, he, he underperformed the Republican, he underperformed almost every Republican senator. So that, that's an easy comparison, because it's a whole state. So, you know, Republicans, you know, John McCain, I'm going to make this figure up, this isn't a real figure, but just to give you an idea, John McCain got, you know, one, you know, I don't know, three million votes in Arizona, and Trump had two and a half million votes in Arizona. So that those aren't real figures, but it gives you the idea of what I'm talking about. The senators, the Republican senators, almost all of them beat Trump. Gianforte. We got that whole thing about legitimacy. Okay. I listen, Donald Trump is an illegitimate president, the Republicans are illegitimate. Greg Gianforte is the new congressman from Montana, despite body slamming a reporter for The Guardian. Were most of the votes already cast when he? Yes. 260,000 votes had already cast. So the majority of votes had been cast. They, the secretary of state reported they were getting calls all day from people asking if they could, if they could change their vote. Unfortunately, the vote on election day was not that different from the early voting. So Gianforte was going to win this thing with or without the body slamming. I think that there were even some people, some Republicans, not people who were excited about the body. But it was a good idea. He raised $100,000 that day, and people specifically, some, not all of them, but some people specifically saying they were giving him money because of the body slamming, because these horrible, you know, liberal media types deserve to be beaten. He actually identified the reporter as a liberal reporter. Right. I don't know how he knew that, but somehow he thinks he does. I mean, I don't know what that reporter, I don't know that reporter's politics. If you're a reporter and you're trying to ascertain the truth, that automatically makes you a liberal in America. Well, maybe, maybe that's the point. Maybe that makes you a liberal wanting to report the truth.  He was trying to raise money from lobbyists and they were on the phone when Trump care passed and he was overjoyed about it. But when it came to talking to the voters, he couldn't very well say, you know, I'm in favor of this bill that's going to take away 10% of the people who live in Montana take away their insurance. He didn't want to say that. So what he said is he can't make a comment on how he would vote on it until he sees the CBO report. So the CBO report came out and what this reporter was asking him is, Hey, the CBO report came out. Can you make that comment now about how you'll vote on the Republican healthcare bill? And that's when he decided to beat him up. You know, it wasn't just body slamming. According to the Fox News reporters who were there, who swore on an affidavit, he also choked him. They said he put both his hands around the guy's neck and was pummeling him. Well, it reminds me of Grimm, the congressman, Grimm, who threatened to throw away... Although Grimm threatened to do that. You're right. But no one ever saw Grimm do that. Here we have witnesses. I mean, Grimm has done much worse than that before Grimm was a congressman. He was a murderer, but a mafia guy. What? But no one ever saw him murder anybody. Really? I thought he was like an FBI agent or something. He was a double agent. He worked for the FBI and for the mafia, and he would go back and forth, and eventually the mafia kicked him out because they realized that he was more on the mafia side than on their side. More on the FBI side than the mafia. Oh, no. He was more on the mafia side. Oh, he was kicked out of the FBI for being more on the mafia side. Mafia will embrace him. And he threatened to throw a reporter off the ledge inside the Capitol. He ended up going to prison for tax evasion, I believe, or campaign finance laws that he violated. Yeah, they let him off very, very, very easy. I mean, they had so much stuff on him that he resigned from Congress and was able to get a very light charges against him. He is a long record that goes way, way, way back, and the FBI is very, very savvy to it, but he always made a threat that he could bring down a lot of people with him. I'm sure he could have. Right. Greg Gianforte is 56 years old. I'm going to assume this is not the first time he's been violent with somebody. Sending him to Washington D.C. will be interesting. Yes, I don't think that the other members of Congress are excited to have a violent guy like that amongst them, but hey, everything is so partisan these days that people don't look beyond party labels. Everything is so partisan right now. Is it more violent now than you've ever seen? You have the governor of Texas holding up a pistol and saying he's going to use it on reporters. There's a lawsuit, one of the white supremacists who beat up a protester at a Trump rally is suing Trump because he says Trump claimed that if you punch a protester, I'll pay your legal bills. How violent is our culture? I was around in 68 when Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated. Is this as violent as 68 or is it just being overreported? Well, I don't think it's being overreported and we are yet to see how violent it gets. Trump has certainly created a very violent milieu and I'm somewhat worried about it. I think a lot of people are worried about it. He's enabled these kind of people. Everyone saw what he did at his campaign rallies, telling people, bemoaning the fact that you have to be politically correct and you can't just break their legs and stuff like that. His fans are extremely low IQ and a lot of them are very, very addicted to prescription drugs. And you put that together and you could have some major violence. And they have guns. They're addicted to guns and the adrenaline of being angry. And oxy cotton. Before you go, I want to ask you about Tom Price's seat, but two questions. One is, you weren't expecting Gianforte to lose, were you? I was hopeful. I was definitely hopeful that he would lose. I don't know that I would say I expected it. I knew it was going to be close. I had seen polls that showed him leading and I had seen polls that had shown what's his name, the singer leading. And that would have been a major, I'm sorry. Rob Quist, the guy who's the singer. But that would have been a big upset. Yes. And most of the professional polling elite said that Quist was going to lose. They were all positive he would lose. But I felt it was going to be close.  There's a special election coming up. Where does that stand right now? When is it and what are you expecting to happen? Well, the most recent poll shows the Democrat ahead by seven. John Osloff leading Karen Handel, the Republican, by seven points. That's huge. Most people are saying ignore that poll. It's an outlier because every other poll shows them one or two points, just one or two points separating them. So I tend to think that this is a tie. And again, it's going to all be about turnout. If the Democrats turn out their people, Osloff will win. If they don't, then Handel will win. And when is that election? When is it? Just like in Montana, the amount of money that the Republicans have poured into this is mind boggling. I mean, they're pouring in six or seven times more than the Democrats are. When is the election? It's June. I forgot which day it is, but it's a couple of weeks from now. It's coming up in June. And finally, Trumpcare. Is McConnell going to make it happen? Well, he's going to try to make it happen, whether he can succeed or not. If he can succeed, it'll be a miracle because there are so many Republicans that have said no to this issue or that issue that I don't see how it can. And then you had Trump, you know, sort of still high from his perceived home run that he hit in Europe, although no one else sees it that way. But he does coming back and saying, we need to pour more money into healthcare.  Because they're taking money out of healthcare. You've got people like Lisa Murkowski from Alaska and Susan Collins saying they're not going to vote for the bill if it includes defunding Planned Parenthood. Okay. Well, the Republicans in the House are not going to vote for the bill unless there is the defunding of Planned Parenthood. So there's a lot of that on a lot of different levels. I mean, especially Republicans who are seen as vulnerable in some way are not going to vote to defund Medicaid to the tune of $880 billion. They don't want to do that. That's going to put a lot of people, it's going to kill people. So my gut tells me that McConnell's not going to be able to pull this off. Okay. And lastly, before you go, and this really is the final before you go, two things are happening right now. One is Kim Jong-un keeps firing these ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan. Trump is silent, not saying anything. It's also pretty much settled that the only way to get Trump out is through impeachment, that Mueller's investigation will reveal obstruction of justice, but there's no way to prosecute a sitting president unless you get rid of him first. So the only way to get rid of Trump is political. You have to do it through impeachment and you can't impeach the guy unless you overthrow the House of Representatives and then the Senate. So he's going to be there for a while. Probably. I mean, the thing is, remember, if Mueller finds a smoking gun, a real smoking gun that even Republicans can't stomach, he could be impeached. I don't expect that he'll be impeached until 2018. If the Democrats take back the House, I think there's a good chance that Trump will be impeached. Now being convicted is another story. Remember, Clinton was impeached, but he was not convicted. The Senate found him innocent. So that's a political vote, and it's not likely that the Democrats are going to have 60 votes. I mean, the Democrats are not going to have 60 votes to find him guilty. So yes, you're right. He will be around probably until 2020 unless he keels over eating some fast food or he decides to retire or resign for one reason or another. He'll be there until 2020. The smoking gun may be North Korea. What happens when Mattis and Rex Spillerson and China say, okay, that's it. No more test missiles. Ra, ra, we're going to war against North Korea. What happens to impeachment then? Did you say China? Yeah, wouldn't China go in and discipline North Korea now? Isn't there talk that China is going to work with you? Well, that talk is from Trump. I don't think North Korea is going to do anything like that. But let's just leave China out of this and just say that the US decides to do something. I don't know what it is that they can do. I mean, you don't think they're going to fight a grand war in Korea, do you? I'm saying that once they find out that Trump obstructed justice and it's incontrovertible evidence to impeach, he starts bombing North Korea. Well, he can't bomb it. He's not bombing anybody. And I don't think that Mattis and Tillerson and any of them are going to go along with something that crazy. I really don't. And Mattis went along with the travel ban? Yeah, well, the travel ban is different from incinerating Seoul and Tokyo. Okay, Howie Klein is the founder and treasurer of the Blue America Pack. People should go to the Blue America Pack and give money to the Blue America Pack if you're progressive and you want to give to a cause where all the money goes to where they promise then go Well, actually, let me interrupt you there for a second. What we encourage people to do is to give directly to the candidates, not to the pack. If they want to give to the pack, they're welcome to. We love it. But we, most of the money that comes through Blue America goes directly to the campaigns of the progressive candidates. And we would much prefer since the candidates know best how to spend their own money, how to spend money, we prefer people to donate to them. So we have a list of progressive candidates that are well vetted who are guaranteed progressive. And if you go to the Blue America Pack, the list is there. And if you want to give one guy $5 and one guy $10 and one guy $1 or you only want to give $100 to one person and nothing to anybody else, you have all those opportunities to do that. Right. And pay attention because the only way to get rid of Trump is through politics. And I think you're right. Yeah. And read down with charity. I get to talk to you next week, sir. Great. Look forward to it. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye, David. The United Nations says the world is facing the worst refugee crisis since the end of World War II. How does this affect the hygiene and safety for millions of women and girls? What happens when displaced women are menstruating? This past Sunday was Menstrual Hygiene Day. For more on this, we go to Tanzania to speak with Dr. Marnie Summer, who is an associate professor of socio-medical sciences at Columbia University Medical Center. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. It's great to be here today. So you're in Tanzania. We're going to talk about women, refugees, menstruation. Maybe if we have time, we'll get to a study you're working on now about alcohol and rape. First off, tell me about Tanzania. What's it like today? It's along the Indian Ocean. It is. It is. It's actually fun when you visit here because in the morning, when you head out to meetings, the ocean is very, very, very far out. The tide has withdrawn, and then when you come back at the end of the day, it's full on water. It's steamy. It's the end of the rainy season, so there's pouring sort of trenches of rain every once in a while, but lots of squawking birds and traffic and nice people. So good to be here. From what I've read, it's a peaceful nation. They have about 100 tribes, but they're not fighting one another. Are you relaxed? I know you have serious, some sad work to do, but are you able to relax and enjoy Tanzania? Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those places that I think people really like to work. It's beautiful being on the ocean. It has been a very peaceful and united country since independence, and while there are, I think there's actually 120 ethnic groups or tribes, everybody speaks Swahili. I think everybody in this particular country feels like one nation, and it's a nice place to be. I've been coming here since 2006, so pretty used to being here, but I like being here. Tanzania was first occupied by the Germans during the imperial era at the turn of the 20th century, and then after World War I, the British took it over and then it became its own country. Tell me about menstrual hygiene day. That was Sunday. Yeah. What is menstrual hygiene day? So menstrual hygiene day was launched a few years ago now by an NGO based in Europe. I think it was with funding from the Gates Foundation. What's an NGO? Sorry, non-governmental organization. So sort of a non-profit, an organization aimed at doing good in the world that isn't part of a government of any sort. And they saw, I think they saw, there was growing attention to this issue of menstruation, and particularly around girls in school and the challenges that they're facing, and that there was sort of more and increasing efforts to talk about this issue, to try and bring attention to it with one of the biggest hurdles, frankly, is just talking about it in public, getting people in government, in donor, sort of the parts of the big, those parts of various governments around the world that are donating money to countries to try and do projects, local communities to get people to break the taboo and start talking about the topic. And so I think it was, I'm not sure if they really knew how wonderful it would turn out in terms of just spinning out into people writing about it all over the world, holding menstrual hygiene day activities all around the world. So it's really mushroomed into quite an experience, and it was really fun on Sunday watching things pop up from countries, low-income countries, high-income countries, places all over the world that were trying to break that taboo and make it something that everybody can talk about. The taboo. We have Republican politicians in America who don't understand female reproduction. When it comes to menstruation, Trump said, and I quote, it's too disgusting, I don't want to think about it. I'm not going to clutch my pearls and say, what's going on in these third world nations? Why don't they talk about menstruation? There is a taboo. What is the taboo in the United States? And how does it compare to the taboo and say the refugee camps that you visited in Tanzania? So I think that taboo is widespread, obviously, as demonstrated by our government right now. When I was doing my original study on this in 2006, 2005, and started looking into it as a doctoral student, I would go to dinner parties or other gatherings in the US, and people always, they meet a doctoral student, they want to know what you're studying, and I would start to tell them about menstruation, and very quickly it would be, please pass the potatoes, let's move on to the next topic. I think that it is historically, if you go back in time, there's anthropology around menstruation, there's it's sort of linked with either power, women sort of women having this that blood is somehow powerful, or that it's polluting and dirty and unhygienic, and there's fear surrounding it, and so it either becomes something people are uncomfortable and scared about, I think when they don't understand it, or seen as a way to sort of relegate girls and women to sort of a status of something we don't talk about, that diminishes them, and I wouldn't say that that is universal, I think there are cultures and societies that celebrate menstruation, I think that there are some cultures and societies that traditionally girls and women maybe got rest time during their menstruation, sometimes that one may perceive that as negative, they might have felt banished, and they might have been banished, and in other circumstances, there may have been a situation where they actually didn't have to do all those chores, but the taboo is strong people, I mean in the US, I don't think people talk about it regularly, maybe the younger generation starts talking about it, I think that is changing, as more and more media does pieces on it, I certainly go to very few dinner parties now where someone hasn't heard something about it, isn't interested to hear what I'm doing, but it's really easy for us in the US because we have toilets, we have supplies, we can buy drugstores, we can get on the internet, go to the library, learn whatever we need to know, when you go to lower income countries or you go to refugee camps or other camps for displaced populations, they may not have access to good information, they may not have easy access to any kind of toilet or a safe or clean toilet or a toilet with a door, they may not have access to water, they may not have anywhere to go at night, they may not be able to get supplies that they need, it's fine to use cloth if that's what you're comfortable using, but maybe they don't even have good cloth, and so I think and then there are taboos, there are taboos around what you eat, about whether or not you can pray in certain places, I've heard taboos around you can't garden during that time, you can't take care of the animals, you can't be in the kitchen, you have to sleep in a separate place, so again it's it's very dependent I think on the cultural context, so there's I think a significant amount of variation, you should bathe, you shouldn't bathe, so I think it's important to always try to understand and learn what the local taboos are, but I think one of the nice things about this growing sort of form of people trying to talk about it in different countries is to say okay what are these taboos and not to denigrate a culture in any way, but to try to sort of tackle those that may be hindering girls and women's abilities to go about their day, and to feel good about their bodies. Did you say you wrote your doctoral dissertation on menstruation? I did, yes. And it was an anthropological study of menstruation? No, I mean I am in public health, so there are certainly anthropologists in my department at Columbia at the Mailman School of Public Health, but I was looking more at what is the intersection of menstruation and girls education. There was very little out there and having grown up always having sort of no challenges around getting to go to a good school and getting to pursue the education that I wanted to pursue, I was concerned about the ongoing sort of gender gap in education around the world and started to look into what are some of the issues that we don't know enough about and we don't understand enough about, and there's a lot out there. We know a lot, we know a lot about why girls miss school, why they don't go to school, why they don't finish school, and their problems with boys too, but I honed in on this one piece that there were, this was back in 2004, but there were references to girls drop out of puberty, girls can't go to school because there aren't toilets, but there was very little actual empirical data on what's actually happening with girls. So that's what I did. I came to Tanzania in 2006 and 2007 to spend a lot of time hanging out with girls and also some time with teachers, parents, religious leaders, trying to understand with my Tanzanian research assistant what was really going on and what was happening around that age in relation to just their own understandings of their body and in relation to sort of their school participation and engagement and ability to manage their periods when they were at school. We are talking to you via Skype. You're in Tanzania. It's pretty amazing that we're able to converse. I'm in Manhattan. There are a hundred tribes in Tanzania. Are you able to see the different taboos among those 100 tribes? Does each tribe have a different taboo when it comes to menstruation? So I think there's actually 120 tribes. I think there's even more than 100, but I haven't tried to study all of them. When I first came, I was focused on one region of the country trying to understand the tribes in that region and we certainly heard what some of the beliefs and traditions were around menstruation. This was in the northeast part of the country. Traditions were, taboos were diminishing. It's a part of the country where there was pretty strong influence from colonialism. Girls' education was already more well respected in that region and so initiation ceremonies and other types of traditions that might have been linked to menstruation were already diminishing. That being said, I certainly asked a lot of questions about other parts of the country and there are some tribal populations such as the Masai who are in both Tanzania and Kenya, the Zeramo, some of the other tribal groups that have much stronger cultural beliefs around menstruation or around menarchy and menarchy being the first time a girl gets her period and what that means in terms of initiation ceremony and expectations for her. Do any of these tribes celebrate the first period? Yes, I think they do. I haven't spent time with a tribe that does but I absolutely heard that in some of the tribes in Tanzania and certainly in other countries that it is still or was at some time celebrated. Sometimes that celebration in some context is linked to the days when girls were expected to be sort of married off or start to have babies at some point after they started menstruating and so it was almost in in some cases not everywhere an indication, a celebration both of her young womanhood but also an indication that she was now becoming ready for sort of that next phase of life. How many understand that it's fertility? I think it's pretty widespread that they understand. I think that I've always sensed that the recognition of menarchy as even something celebrated or hidden was often linked to the knowledge that it is linked to reproduction. Is that because of imperialism that they understand that? Or does it predate? I think predate. I think it's the natural rhythm of life and probably the societies understood that something shifted at that point in time and sort of had ancient traditions around this sort of period of life when both boys and girls bodies are changing, their sort of way of understanding things is changing, their ability to do more things around the house or in the sort of local community is changing. So I'm pretty sure that predates. Whether or not they use the language of reproduction and fertility, you know, there are things about the language we use that are sort of Western but that is sort of I think just the ancient rhythms of life that I think were well understood. And the bleeding, you kind of intimated that that signals power in some cultures. I would assume they see a woman bleeding and not dying and they assume some kind of otherworldly power. Yeah, I think that those aren't societies that I've studied but when you get into reading the anthropology administration and some of the Mary Douglas and some of the other sort of early writers on how menstrual bleeding is considered polluting but also scary and particularly, I think, to men. So probably some of the silencing around it comes from that. But again, I'm not an anthropologist and haven't really spent a lot of time looking at the sort of ancient taboos and beliefs around it because I'm sort of much more focused on how is it hindering girls and women's lives today? What can we be doing to help to overcome and change that? Let's talk about the refugee camps that you visited in Tanzania. They seem to be taking in women from what countries? These particular camps, I've spent time in a number of camps related to the project I wrote about but these are Congolese and Burundian populations who've been going back and forth across the border for I would say a number of years now. But that's who's in those camps. How are they being funded? Is it through the UN? I think different places. There's UN, certainly UNHCR is there.  Refugee camps are generally the responsibility of the host country government. So in this case it would be the Tanzanian government runs the camps but certainly there is a lot of UN and donor support for running the camps into the various as I mentioned NGOs earlier and non-governmental organizations that are in the camps helping to respond to the refugee's living circumstances. Is this a permanent state for them? There are Palestinians who are living in Lebanon and they call them refugee camps. They've been there since 1967 some of them since 1949. Is this a permanent base for these refugees? I don't think this particular refugee population I mean it certainly doesn't have the length of the Palestinians. People have been the so the Burundians who came to the camp many of them were here a number of years ago when there was turmoil in Burundi and then at some point they went back to Burundi and attempted to rebuild their lives there or you know and then sort of chaos and disruption and violence erupted again and so they fled they had fled and they're still sort of fleeing. It doesn't get into the US papers really but back to these camps and then the Congolese. So some of these camps have been there for probably over a decade but have closed at times reopened at times gotten smaller at times gotten bigger at times they may be more than a decade I'm not sure. The Congolese I think similarly back and forth depending on you know the elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo where they're from there's been violence sort of erupting around those elections that are sort of keeping postponed. So they similarly sort of when times are peaceful I think oftentimes people do try to go home and then violence erupts again and they flee again. So these women in these refugee camps in Tanzania are they living in tents? Are they living in sleeping bags out in the open? How are they housed? So these camps have a sort of range there are I don't know that anybody gets sleeping bags they get blankets. There are many many many tents you certainly see huge numbers of tents and then for the refugees who have been there longer and I don't totally know all the sort of machinations of how this works in the UN system they are building mud house small mud houses. So there are I think it's the population that's been there the longest is starting to get moved into these mud brick houses and then those who are newer are in the tents. What happens if you get your period in the refugee camp? So I would say the resilience of the human spirit is undiminished and they manage but I think it's very difficult. So the toilets again it's important to understand sort of where did these populations come from some came for example the Brindians from a more urban environment and may be used to having latrines or some kind of toilet facilities relatively nearby. Others are coming from rural areas who may have had latrines somewhere in their compound or may have been used to sort of going into the forest or someplace nearby. In the camps in any camps whether it's refugee camps or displacement internally displaced populations in other countries in the Tanzanian camps is one example there are both household sort of what wouldn't call latrine facilities and also communal or shared latrine facilities there when I was there about a year ago or not even a year ago about six months ago in these same camps they were wood structures with sort of this plastic sheeting wrapped around them so they didn't really have a door but you and they're just sort of built behind the houses or built sort of a small number for four households to share. Is there shame associated with bodily functions? I know that we've talked about menstruation but just going to the bathroom is there shame and embarrassment and a need for privacy in these cultures? I mean I think it's the same in most cultures around the world I think just like people in the US they want to be able to go and not be rushed and be private and I think also importantly they want to feel safe if there's no door on the toilet if there's no lock on the inside of the lock of whatever door may be there then you're vulnerable. Are you saying there's a universal need for privacy when it comes to bodily functions because I've read about the Romans who would just sit in public and defecate. I don't know yeah this was in ancient Rome they would go to the marketplace and I haven't been anywhere where that's you know I've done research administration in about six countries and advised on studies in probably another 10. I don't think it's ever come up that people were comfortable managing their periods and probably their other bodily functions in public. That is a universal trait in humans. I would take probably in most cultures it's something that people do privately but I don't know that they necessarily do it individually always. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Eritrea and East Africa a long time ago and you know just as in the US two women will get up at a restaurant and go to the bathroom together you know people will sometimes go off together to the forest to do their business. And why do they go off together? I think good company you know someone to accompany you. I would say in context such as a displacement camp or refugee camp they may go for safety reasons they may go together. Women would be private about their periods because they're so vulnerable and weak that they're endangered so they'd want a door they want to be alone because men are lurking. Yeah I don't know that they're weak so much I would just say that you can't sort of change whatever cloth if you need to wash if you got blood on your skirt or your clothing it's messy unless it's sort of towards the end of your period in which case it's less messy. So you just need time and you need space to manage it and to not be worried somebody's going to walk in or harass you or sort of catch you in the middle of that when you're squatting or whatever body posture you use to manage. I guess the word weak is wrong but vulnerable and you're not feeling well as I understand it when it's that time of the month you want to lie down and it's not always a pleasant experience as I have seen in my house. Yeah I think again it depends I would say I certainly get cramps and it's pretty uncomfortable for a day or two a month but I and I think there's some women and adolescent girls who have it much worse than I do and may have to stay home from work or school or really lie down for extended periods and then I've certainly met girls and women who tell me I barely feel it. So I think that there really is the range. Many of us are uncomfortable many of us just sort of push through. I think one of the advantages you have in or I certainly know I am fortunate to have is access to pain medications so I can take you know whatever I need to do for the first day or two and go about my day and it may be a little uncomfortable but I'm certainly used to it. Some cultures may not be comfortable with the idea of pain medication it's not something they're familiar to it's not something they feel is appropriate but in other places it may be that they could really use pain medication and it's just not something that's accessible or something that they've been introduced to and that with pain not to say I'm pushing medicine but it certainly enables me to get through a lot of sort of difficult months. So again I think there's a spectrum but many women certainly and adolescent girls are uncomfortable particularly for the first day or the day before the day you know the second day. Well some of the resistance here in the United States to women in the military was how they're going to sit in a foxhole in the middle of the battle when they're getting their period. What is your answer to that? I mean my answer to be how primitive is that? There's resistance to women and also have been in historically all sorts of positions including the presidency because you know who knows what may happen they might get hysterical when they get their period. You know I think that we manage. I think that Gloria Steinem's comment what would the world look like if men could menstruate I think you know girls and women soldier on you know literally or figuratively and they would find a way to manage. So okay that's a vague answer you're talking to a man in his 50s. So more specifically how would they manage in the foxhole? Well yeah I mean there are a lot of men here in America who don't understand menstruation. It is a private thing. It's a bodily function. The cliche is that women are vulnerable when they're menstruating they don't feel well they want to lie down they need my doll their personality this is the stereotype that their personality changes when they're menstruating the same way my personality changes when I stub my toe yeah and I'm in pain. Tell me where I'm right where I'm wrong when I bring up the stereotype. So I think that probably that stereotype is utterly wrong for a lot of women and girls and perhaps a little bit more right for some of them and maybe it's just pieces of that stereotype for different women. I think that certainly for many women it's uncomfortable you have cramps your boobs hurt you know maybe you know you retain sodium so you feel thirsty you know your stomach doesn't feel right so certainly there's a lot of physical discomfort again wide range depending on the adolescent girl or woman and I keep saying adolescent girl because at least I think they get forgotten a lot as sort of a very you know big part of the population that's menstruating and often are struggling to sort of learn how to manage it. You use a tampon you use a pad you use a cup some women are on sort of fertility sort of family planning that sort of regulates their cycle it's predictable it may lessen the cramps or the amount of bleeding. So certainly I and then in terms of your mood I would say the vast majority of my co-workers or family members have absolutely no idea when I have my period and I'd say that's probably the case for most adolescent girls and women. Maybe I sometimes feel a little emotional once a month and you know and maybe I'll share the reason that I think I am or am not I do think all of that is very real you know we each noticed rhythms in our body whether anybody else has any idea what's actually happening I'm less certain that they really do I think women and girls are masterful at hiding it in societies around the world. I think one of the things that is really nice about the sort of the the outpouring of sort of new media and entrepreneurs and advocates out there talking about it is this realization that a lot of us have been doing the same thing to hide it and manage it you know we you know maybe we don't wear white on those days of the month so we don't have to worry you know if we have some kind of leak or accident that anybody's going to know we you know track it on a calendar so we can be ready and be carrying things although another thing for men to know is that it can be really irregular and some girls and women get it like clockwork and other skip months and others you know it's not something like on the 28th of every month that's when you get it you know it's very well what is there such thing as sink sisters I've heard about this you know I don't know what the science is I will say there are times in my life when I've spent a lot of time with women and we seem to start menstruating around the same time but I don't know the science and I don't know if there's anything to that and what do these women need from the United States are we providing enough the Trump administration has a new budget you write about yeah they have a new budget they want to give an extra 50 billion dollars to the Pentagon we have enough money to bomb Yemen and yet two thirds of that country is facing famine what is the Trump administration doing about all this you know it remains to be seen certainly it doesn't look very well look very good the funding that traditionally would go to organizations such as UNFPA and some of the other UN organizations that are a huge part of a response to assuring that girls and women's reproductive health needs menstrual hygiene needs whatever they are are being met whether it's in displacement camps refugee settings or just other low-income contexts it suggests they're going to cut the budget for public health across America and funding that goes to both science and refugee response around the world and all of these have huge implications for meeting girls and women's needs whether they are in such contexts or whether they're in living in a rural part of for example Tanzania and looking to some kind of development project that is going to assure that there are adequate toilets in that school or support a government that is trying to do a better job at assuring that the curriculum includes content that they need so they know about their bodies they feel empowered and have sort of strong self-esteem around how to manage their period and sort of their future fertility if they so choose yeah one of my daughters said to me and I just find this hard to accept as a man but I accept it is that you cannot address economic inequality until you address pro-choice issues a woman's right to an abortion has to be established before you can then venture into the realm of income inequality that was hard for me to understand when my daughter told me that I'm taking from what my daughter said menstruation and the problem women face as refugees is a serious issue that might have to be addressed before we get to the larger issues right it's a basic yeah I think it's a basic need and I think one of the things we come up against is people suggesting you know it's not a life-saving issue it's they're not dying of their periods but some of us would suggest how do you go stand in line to pick up your distribution in a in a displacement camp if you have to wait online for four to six hours to get your supply for that month how do you walk whatever distance you need to walk to fetch water for your family how do you go find firewood how do you just interact socially with those around you or sit in a classroom for eight hours a day or teach in front of a classroom of young people if you if you don't have access to safe clean toilets if you don't have some kind of supply whether that's a cloth or a pad or whatever it is that culturally and sort of and economically is you know your choice or available and if you don't have the information you need about your body I think some of the areas we need to learn more about there's been a real groundswell and attention to what are the challenges girls are facing in schools in low-income countries and the female teachers we spent a lot less time looking at how are girls and women managing and workplace environments how are they managing to go about their day in marketplaces in in factories in business offices how are they taking buses and transiting I think ultimately girls and women are incredibly resilient and strong and they find ways to manage and they use extra extra cloths and they wrap things around their waist so if they have an accident nobody sees I don't want in any way to suggest they're not out there doing their best but it's inequitable you know I don't know the difference between a panty shield a Tampax or a Kotex I don't I you know I just don't most men I think don't I would assume that third world nations don't have Kotex machines and Tampax machines in every restroom what do they use you say cloth well just to clear the record we don't have them in the U.S. either in every restroom most of our restrooms don't have them either so you have to have a supply with you or you have to be somewhere near a drugstore which fortunately if you're living in the U.S. there is often some kind of drugstore convenience store where you can go hasn't there been talk of free Kotex yeah but in terms of low-income countries generally people use pads disposable pads like you know the ones with wings on them you know a panty liner just you know is for lighter days when you don't have a lot of blood coming out a regular pad it comes in different sizes is better for the first few days and a lot of women use disposable pads in low-income countries if they can afford them or they use homemade pads reuse there's now a whole booming industry of reusable pads in many cultures they've traditionally just folded over cloth and found ways to hold that in place so that they can sort of go about their business and then if they can't afford cloth or don't have that sometimes they just use paper it starts to go down or or they stay home and then there's societies of which I know much less about that don't use anything and just bleed and stay close to home and what did they do three thousand years ago I have no idea but I think it depends on where you're talking about my guess it yeah right we've been talking with dr. Marnie summer she's an associate professor of socio-medical sciences at columbia university medical center and she's in tanzania today before you go and by the way thank you for taking time to be with me looking at the republicans there seems to be carelessness and conscious subjugation of women there's there's one part of these republicans in washington who are consciously subjugating women and then there's the republican who innocently doesn't care they just I don't know anything about fertility and menstruation what do you want from me how much of the menstruation problem women face in third world nations is because men just don't care because it doesn't involve them as glorious steinham said and how much of it is a conscious subjugation where they're aware that by making it hard for women to tend to their menstruation it weakens them and keeps men on top you know I don't know how I would split that I'm not sure that many people frankly think about menstruation I think that probably there's a lot more the men who act intentionally I think get that more of the reproduction issue and baby making issue I think most men honestly just haven't thought about it they don't menstruate they don't know what it feels like I think one of the reasons even amongst the community that has been trying to do something about this issue a lot of the engineers who work on toilets in a lot of these contexts are men and just frankly didn't think about it it's not something they'd experience it's not something they're familiar with I do think that the fact that women's bodily needs and adolescent girls by the needs are deemed less of a priority are deemed unimportant and in fact are deemed something that can be pushed back on or not supported obviously is hugely problematic but whether any of them have really thought about how their actions are impacting sort of a girls or women's ability to manage her period I'm guessing is highly doubtful so what can we do to help I think you can help to break the taboo you can talk about it you can help at least in the in the countries where you live and work to make it something that is acceptable to have conversations around support those organizations push back on governments that aren't providing adequate toilets water and information to the girls and women in their societies and and and even in the high income countries I think there's a growing realization that homeless girls and women others may not have the supplies that they need either and sort of girls and women or women in prisons so I think that finally there's it's something coming out of the closet as it were and it should never have been in the closet natural normal part of half the world's sort of all the girls and women out there of reproductive age that we're all experiencing right are there any charities specifically that you think are worthy yeah I mean UNICEF has been doing a lot water aid in the UK has been focused on sort of strengthening toilets saves that children is doing a lot I have a little nonprofit called grow and know we've been developing puberty books that include content on menstrual hygiene administration for girls and for boys how can people find out about growing though www.growandknow.org it's publishing books for girls about girls and boys we do careful data we work with girls and boys in different countries we work with the national governments and we come we collect girls stories about their first periods and how they manage and we come up with a book with local illustrators local publishing companies and then we sort of work with the government to get approval so it can be distributed in schools and then recognizing that nobody at all talks to boys some people talk to girls but nobody's talking to boys about wet dreams erections and girls periods you just tell them to listen to this show because that's all we talk about our wet dreams erections women's periods but I was a kid we used to trick or treat for UNICEF yeah that's a UN organization are they a good organization yeah they're a good organization they Columbia University where I am and UNICEF for the last five years have been hosting a virtual conference on addressing the issue of menstruation in schools and they really have been leaders in trying to push countries around the world to work with their local the national governments to at least try and address the issue in schools and it was something that UNICEF was responding to in the refugee camps in Tanzania as well fantastic Dr. Marnie Summers an associate professor of socio-medical sciences at Columbia University Medical Center she joined us today from Tanzania thank you so much for your work and your time thank you for having me you're listening to the David Feldman radio program you sad pathetic hump joining us as our resident film critic Michael Snyder these are the movies he's going to be talking about today pirates of the Caribbean dead men tell no tales Baywatch war machine Berlin syndrome long strange trip and the journey hey Johnny Depp is broke he requires two million dollars a month to live on even after he's paid off Amber heard he still needs two million dollars a month to live on you and I can live on half of that well hell I can live on you know what a hundred dollars a month if I'm crafty enough well was pirates of the Caribbean dead men tell no tales crafty for you oh my god this is a franchise that may very well have worn out it's wacky welcome I guess it's the fifth movie of these pirates of the Caribbean films and you know even though it's subtitled dead men tell no tales Johnny Depp's career is a dead man walking and it told this tale and maybe it's just that you know we're a little burned out on him this has been his cash cow the little films he's been making the indie stuff or the bar and stuff hasn't really registered and there's something about this fey indolin indestructible captain jack character that seems to keep the the the series rolling um you know this movie again this is a franchise based on a disney land ride it's it's the victim of the law of diminishing returns and and how many have they done this is the fifth the fifth film it's unbelievable and honestly the truth is this is one of that boy talk about damning with faint praise this is one of the better installments in the franchise but the bar is pretty low um you know I mean the first film was a surprise and very entertaining but they got more and more tedious and loaded with special effects and I mean when the series started Depp's drunken the diffident captain jack was pretty hilarious yeah I mean the idea of him inadvertently against his you know own better judgment or skills somehow surviving against like supernatural foes and and other pirates the guy that was kind of funny he stumbles the success in sword fights he survives ocean squalls he goes up against you know sorceress magic fueled enemies and there was this kind of because of the falling over and stuff and and his inebriation kind of a silent film slapstick charm to it um that reminded me a little of you know Keaton and Lloyd and maybe I'm giving Depp too much credit I mean he made me think of Jackie Chan's drunken master movies because that's another case where an actor basically fakes being allowed and you know and incompetent but somehow survives but I think that Depp is increasingly on autopilot in the series I know he's grateful that the money's coming in because of what you said but let's just say that he's navigating without a sextant he's almost an afterthought in the film to be honest with you the new one the thrust of it is this young guy trying to save his father and his father is the Orlando Bloom character of Will Turner from earlier in the series who has been eternally doomed to pilot the flying Dutchman ghost ship so the kid grows up and wants to save his dad and the only way he can do that is to find a mystical relic Neptune's Trident and so the only way you can do that is to find Captain Jack and and also maybe connect with this very smart and beautiful young woman and because she's a smart beautiful young woman back in these uh primitive times she's accused of being a witch of course in any event they go on this treasure hunt and they encounter uh an opposition in the form of Javier Bardem who was one of the best things about the movie um he's the ghostly villain Salazar who also wants to try it and so he he can become whole and human and alive again plus Jeffrey Rush and Oscar winner is back as Captain Barbosa who was kind of a more nuanced antagonist from earlier in the series so you got these veteran actors and the young leads uh Brenton Thwait and Kaius Goldario uh the skulls skull delario so I don't know anyway that you can't pronounce her name but she's incredibly likable and you got some good set pieces uh some of them are CGI and some of them are practical but maybe there's just too too many of these and um I think there's been four too many of the films um you know the film ends and it could be wrapping up the series in a nice little bow and then an end credit sequence hints that we're not done with the films nor with Jack Sparrow quite yet I don't know I don't know they're Disney property and you know I I don't think they're gonna kill the golden goose or the cash cow or whatever you want to call it something I don't want to watch time to talk about Baywatch yay or nay watch Michael Snell nay watch I mean I never watched nor did I ever care to original and seemingly ridiculous TV series Baywatch I mean this was a phenomena of the 90s I think it started in 89 or 88 and in international markets this TV program which was I don't know with crime fighting lifeguards living in an idealized sunny California I don't know how else to describe it this show turned David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson into stars and Hasselhoff became like gigantic in some markets particularly as we all now know Germany Germans love David Hasselhoff who was it who used to say that uh Norm McDonald he used to use that as a as a quip now and again on SNL but it's true and Hasselhoff played this lifeguard named Mitch Buchanan who led these busty and beautiful babes and a couple of guys in the lifeguard crew in all these various adventures so why do you want to remake a or make a movie based on this uh idiocy well tell you why because Hollywood has no uh comfort with original ideas and uh there's the old proof of concept this thing was successful back in the day it's kind of like why they made the Adams family movies you know based on a TV show that was based on a cartoon those films were clever because the people involved were smart and the scripts were good and the actors were good this on the other hand and not so much I get there's a camp and the nostalgia stuff and and they take a guy who has somehow continued to be great box office in most of the films he's done unlike uh Johnny Depp and they put this guy in the lead and it's Dwayne The Rock Johnson so he's everybody everybody's favorite and he's everywhere lately and so they decide they're going to make an action comedy based on the tv series emphasis on the comedy unfortunately none of it is any good Dwayne Johnson is Mitch Buchanan and he uncovers a criminal plot that threatens the future of the bay that they're watching I guess anyway you'll also get Zac Efron uh back he was pretty boy a good actress and a lovely woman Priyanka Chopra uh Alexandra Dadario a young actress of a limited skill but easy on the eyes and a few other uh appropriate uh choices and supporting roles but man is this unfunny and is this feeble uh you will choke over the low braille jokes as the Baywatch gang and including of course a few hotties that seem more like Hooters waitresses in red one-piece bathing suits than actual lifeguards I mean if they were serving me drinks on the beach I might take interest but anyway they seek new recruits including a disgraced alcoholic Olympic swimming champ played by Zac Efron and there's a chubby tech nerd who needs an inner tube or a life jacket in the kiddie pool but they need comic relief from all of this non-comedy and um you know so they have this chubby guy they they let him become a lifeguard it is sheer idiocy um you know you'll shudder at the stupid I mean Mitch and his crew go after yet another hottie this one is a sneering designer cloth real estate magnate and a drug dealer played by Priyanka Chopra uh and you got Johnson doing his usual shtick without any of the charm he sometimes displays uh how shall I put this here the rock does not roll um I felt like I was stuck between a rock and a dumb film anyway Baywatch uh don't watch is that it is that the easiest blurb we can give you mm-hmm war machine well this is a different uh kennel of fish entirely it's going for laughs in large part and it is a movie with a pretty good pedigree uh terrific cast an interesting bit of source material and is available for you to watch on netflix or you can go see it in the theater and it's not bad but it's not anywhere near as great and as interesting as I hoped it would be it's directed and written by David Michaud and it's based on a book called the operator the wild and terrifying inside story of america's war in afghanistan by uh michael hastings and what it does is it follows an arrogant uh you know and uh modern but kind of old school general played by brad pit and by the way brad pit excels in these sort of ambivalent anti-heroic lunatic characters uh and follows him as he's brought in um as the obama administration attempts to withdraw troops from afghanistan and yet continue to beat back the taliban and win the hearts and minds of the afghani citizenry uh so he's uh he's accompanied by a crew of of aides and uh fellow soldiers one of whom is anthony michael hall who's almost like a body guard type and boy he has become a burly chunk uh in his old age from saturday night live anthony michael anthony yeah from that from the breakfast club when he was a skinny little kind of archie andrews type yeah man same guy easily big thuggish fellow now and and you say like beefing up working out lifting weights yeah but he's beyond beef he's gone beyond the beef where's the beef well it's right there on anthony michael hall's body uh but it you have to pay a royalty net of clara paler's grandchildren for oh i'm sorry about that where's the beef well you also get ben kingsley who's here as karzai which is you know the kind of very funny droll performance on his part uh tofer grace plays basically um a media guy brought in to spiff up whatever news reports are coming up about general glenn mcman and his attempt to take over this afghani theater of war for the combined allied forces that are there you have all of the uh the interplay and the uh the the friction between the various countries that have banded together to help america task of bringing freedom to the afghanis um alan ruck plays one of the civilian you know meddlers that the government has sent in but ultimately it's brad pit um who is you know he makes the movie fail or succeed and i kind of enjoyed it but it just seemed like it started to sag in the middle and it wasn't anywhere near as funny as i wanted to uh have coming from the talent involved and you know it's interesting to see these guys and you know there's some really wonderful you know true to life escapades you know the soldiers are not always under fire and you see them uh you know between skirmishes you see them at camp you see them out in the field and i kind of wish it was a sharper satire or something and but you do get a good sense of what modern warfare is like and ye you know i mean it's dysfunctional when you think about it but um it's also uh really amazing to see something like this that is the antithesis of those classic war movies the saving private ryan's and and even movies from way earlier in hollywood history i enjoyed it i just wish it had been better it has good intentions but it just wasn't sharp enough and funny enough when you see a film like wag the dog about the political aspects of uh of the war machine not to use that phrase uh you know in a well advised way that to me is a piece of brilliance i hope that this would be as sharp and as topical as that and it is somewhat topical particularly as we face this idiocy uh on the governmental level these days but i i it just wasn't what i hoped it would be burlin syndrome um this is actually the best film of the films we've discussed so far and it's the movie you're least likely to see in your local theaters and and the movie probably you wouldn't necessarily jump to see on the other hand i thought it was really terrific i believe the director kate shortland is in australian her lead actress is uh teresa palmer and teresa palmer is a generally a young blonde who's in teen exploitation films or was or plays the you know the hot young college girl or the the female lead in some sort of young romance and she's frequently performed with an american accent and you wouldn't know that she's from down under but here she plays a real australian girl kind of a salt of the earth girl who's decided she's going to pursue her photography instead of a dead-end job back home and she's going to see the world so she takes off for a visit to berlin which is one of the great and most uh you know exciting capitals in all the world and certainly in europe and there she meets a local guy who was a teacher of english a german guy who teaches english in berlin and he kind of takes up with her and she takes up with him and it seems kind of cool and romantic and she's taking her photographs and then you find out that there's something very very sinister about the guy you know they connect and they have sex but things get very very ugly and very disturbing it's a thriller berlin syndrome doesn't do what you expect it's going to do with the very beginning but there are little clues that things aren't what they should be and i don't know if you've ever seen the movie the collector that starred samantha agar as a woman who was basically kidnapped by a guy who's obsessed with her and locked up and it's based on a book by uh john fowles who also wrote the french lieutenant's woman and this movie berlin syndrome is kind of a modern equivalent to the collector uh you know if if you if you want to be creeped out you need you know a good villain and max uh remelt who is a german actor who i haven't seen before i don't believe is first rate as andy this guy that uh that claire the Aussie photographer girl falls in with and man uh it is a creep show i thought it was exciting and tense and uh entirely plausible i mean berlin is such a big sprawling metropolis and all this building is going on there so there are all these nooks and crannies since the wall came down there's massive real estate development so various neighborhoods are you know kind of almost deserted or in the process of being rebuilt so it's kind of easy i think uh to lose somebody in this massive urban maze i thought that berlin syndrome was a terrific surprise and i think people should seek it out even if they only end up seeking it out on streaming it's a disturbing well done and clearly teresa palmer's best performance so far she actually her hair is dark in this uh brunette and she made me think uh if christian steward was an actress to to really conjure and she's done some good work lately this is she's like christian steward slightly more attractive sister and maybe slightly better actress long strange trip well this is the untold story of the grateful dead or that at least is the subtitle of the um movie's title and it's the most enormous and impressive and prodigious rock documentary about a band that's probably ever been made um how prodigious it's 239 minutes long and it was picked up for a distribution uh and availability online by amazon so i think you can probably pay to see it that way but i would recommend if you're a fan of the grateful dead the san francisco based progressive rock band that turned into a worldwide phenomenon with you know thousands of millions of dead heads um crazily devoted fans if you like this stuff seeing it in a movie theater with a big big sound system might be the way to go now um despite its length and all of its copious detail there are some kind of holes in the story and people that are sort of not given the attention you might see and that's it you know over 200 minutes worth of footage and archival footage and concert footage i think that's probably never been seen before interviews stills great historical detail about the band and how they came together uh keying on uh their lead guitarist their virtuoso lead guitarist and uh one of the band's two primary singers jerry garcia now sadly departed and then we also learned the kind of the why and the how of that as well um and we see a parade of their fans and we see talking head vignettes of people that you'll know famous and otherwise that speak about uh the band and what the band meant to them this was executive produced by martin scorsese and it was also also it was directed by amir barlev who directed the tilman story which is a pretty great documentary about spencer tilman and it shows you what can happen on a grassroots level if someone has talent and determination and never stops performing and creating um this is kind of an impressive saga and it'll definitely be of interest to their fans and i think if people are curious and have a love of adventurous music and patience uh this has really uh got a lot of uh gems and uh it's a worthwhile experience but you have to be a fan of uh popular music i think and and this is you know this is a very unique and specific sound one that spawned something called the the jam band scene which includes groups like fish but these guys are the granddaddies of that and uh you really are immersed in the grateful dead over the course of this thing and this is a group that this is a 30 year stretch that these guys have been around and kicking and uh you know a few of the guys are still alive and performing but uh obviously garcy is dead but you can relive some of his great moments and and the tragedy of his life over the course of this film again long strange trip which is actually the excerpt lyric from one of their more famous songs by the way before we get to the journey comedian michael mehan has a movie that came out do you know that i heard that that was the case i have not seen it nor have i been invited to check it out nor do i know anything about it but uh mike mehan is a very talented band and uh you know uh mazel tov have you seen the film no i read a great review of it and i contacted him so i'm trying to get him to come on the show the journey what's what's it what's it about before we get to the journey do you know it's about san francisco and it's a i guess it's a film noir the stars a lot of comics including levels brown and oh and kevin me oh how nice well there you go tell me you know i i can't tell you much about the journey i just wanted to bring it up because i noticed an interesting thing about it it doesn't open in the united united states for another couple weeks and it's basically a fictional account of what may or may not have happened when two guys on either side of the irish peace process uh the democratic unionist party leader a guy named ian paisley who was also a reverend and the shin fine politician martin mcginnis if they took a car ride during the middle of the peace talks what might have happened in that car ride they had never really met before in real life and i think they do take a short journey together or did in in the past but no one knows what went down as they traveled together and had to interact on a personal level for the first time this was a very major turning point in world politics when the troubles if you will well the horrible conflict between the protestants and catholics over the uh government purview of the british in northern ireland when that came to a head uh in the early 2000s or the mid to mid 2000s uh this thing you know is all i will tell you is that i love the film and timothy spaul as paisley and colmeny as mcginnis are absolutely great and there's terrific supporting work on freddy heimore and but now late john hurt probably one of the last films he did but in ireland the reviews were less than kind elsewhere where it has been reviewed it's been getting very positive notices and i wanted to bring that up because i i think there's a kind of a cultural and and national imperative in a situation like this when something is so close to home and so much of a tragedy and so deeply ingrained in a culture i think it's hard to look at it with uh you know uh eyes that aren't going to be affected by the prejudice one has built up over the years so it's it's amazing to note that the irish reviews have been sort of negative uh or um output you know these people have not been pleased with it i know one uk reviewer thought that the movie was misguided to dramatize the meeting um i on the other hand thought it was pretty good and we'll talk about it at greater length but it just struck me as interesting noticing the disparity between the irish and uk reviews and everywhere else that people have reviewed it so far again it doesn't open for another couple weeks in the states so i would just as soon uh restrain myself from any more discussion other than say two fantastic actors at the height of their powers before you go let's turn to sports i know you're a big 49ers fan tell me about colin cappernick well they let colin cappernick go and as anyone who pays any attention to the news probably noticed over the past years there's been a lot of controversy over the 49ers at that point long time quarterback colin cappernick um he is uh half black half white he's got a big old afro uh and he has taken a political stance over the past year or so to support such groups as black lives matter to point out the racism that's still inherent in this country and uh he initially brought attention to it by kneeling during the national anthem during exhibition games and eventually even regular season games over the past season infuriating this caught on the other school teams were doing it other players did and support players on rival teams where there was bad blood between the 49ers and the rival team members of the seahawks the 49ers arch enemies in the national football conference western division supported cappernick in this and uh and the patriots including the bonehead who's currently in the oval office railed against him and the far right and the middle right railed against him and anyone who fancied themselves they blitheringly uh you know chauvinistic patriotic type here in america thought that it was sinful to disrespect the national anthem as opposed to embracing the freedom of speech and freedom of expression that allows us to essentially protest things in our own country to oppose certain ideas to to question things on the authoritarian level and but people went crazy and actually i was surprised by the number of people who didn't go crazy i am surprised by the number of fellow teammates and as you said members of the nfl who joined him and how it's spread well that is that was heartening in a way i love america you know i am an american born in bread i believe in our system i believe in the country i at least i try to considering what's been happening lately um but the truth of it is that um i don't take any um i i don't think that standing for the anthem or singing along denotes any great patriotism uh you know uh it's what you do with your life and how you treat your fellow american and and fellow human being that is the true judge you know judge of your character so i found that really disingenuous for all these winers and haters people who truly um who truly are the sort of folks that that cavernic is protesting against all those guys were yelling how disrespectful it was and uh i mean the supreme court didn't they already throw out the the flag burning as a as a felony or whatever it was you know so i think kneeling during the the uh national anthem or refusing to sing the national anthem that's peanuts man so anyway the reason it's fresh in my mind at the moment is i just uh encountered this interesting piece of information john mara and by the way it does have a connection to um movies and tv and show business john mara who basically is the owner uh and i believe the son maybe the grandson of wellington mara longtime new york football giants owner operator john maras says he would not even think of signing the currently out of the league colin cavernic who by the way against statistically had a good season uh in the previous national football league season uh and can't get a job and roger gudell who was the head of the nfl has said this is due to um football issues not political issues well john mara just came out and said he would not sign the guy uh before he even considered it he got letter after letter from season ticket holders and fans saying that they would jump ship on the giants if he would ever uh sign this vile traitorous colin cavernic to a football contract in the coming season and um i just was sort of dumbstruck about this oddly enough the only team that has been sniffing around the guy right now the seattle seahawks the 49ers longtime rivals who have a quarterback who plays a style similar to cavernic and people have long compared russell wilson and cavernic particularly uh when the two of them were the quarterbacks in uh one first cavernic and then wilson in super bowls uh a few years back and of course wilson won his super bowl cavernic did not and their their careers diverged but i find it amazing that mara has gone on record now to say oh no our fans uh would not like this so i would not even think of doing this this is blind patriotic bowl makes me crazy and i will just say the john mara is i believe the father of actress kate mara and her sister actress rooney mara who are also the grandchildren of longtime pittsburgh steelers owner art rooney and then the rooney family so there's a weird connection here and by the way kate mara in a very interesting middle eastern war zone film coming up soon that we will review at some point okay but you know she's good but i mean wow we gotta wrap it i mean wow all i'm saying is wow what do you do about something yeah well i think 30 years from now colin cavernic will look back and be proud of what he did as long as he no longer plays football because if he continues to play football he won't remember what he did you've been you've been sitting and waiting to say yes i have been an avenue and i stumbled through i'm sorry i'm sorry we're up against up against the clock here michael sniders our resident film critic we'll talk to you next week thank you sir yep this is the david feldman radio network you're listening to the david feldman radio program you said pathetic hump john ross is back he joins us from deerfield massachusetts john is an amazing comedian he's been on conan he's an amazing comedy writer he's written on lucky louie he created marvin marvin you're in a truck in the rain i'm sitting outside my house in in a truck because the house is full people and kids and you know not good for for a podcast i love the sound of the rain hitting the truck oh great usually you're very sensitive i i listen to your podcast all the time and you're very sensitive about sounds and you know anything that's not exactly what you want or what a tour really we started together yeah we did in the 1980s and we had frets stoller on the show who's written a new book five minutes to kill about the 1989 young comedian special featuring warren thomas who you used to live with he's mentioned prominently i i helped uh friend a lot with that i mean he we had long conversations on the phone and long emails back and forth i got warren started he had never done stand-up comedy um and he i was bartending at a discotheque that's right uh it is silk and you were wearing a comedy button you were wearing a comedy button i had gone to the very first comedy day in the park and they were giving out buttons and i think i got a button from like jimmy celeste and i wore the button on my you know shirt that night and and this place was just uh a zoo this this you know you you just pour and drink and pour and drink so nobody's like hanging but this one guy comes up to me and he sees the button and he says you like comedy and i go yeah you know um i actually you know did it in the city and so he he walked away and came back and uh over the course of the night we started talking and um he actually at the end of the night you know because this place was open after hours and it's like four in the morning and he and he was coming back every time and making me laugh telling me stories about how some girl slapped his face or some guy was about to kick his ass because he was dancing with his girlfriend or something he was just being really funny and so then he come i'm cleaning up my bar the lights are coming on it's four in the morning he comes over to me and he says hey um you know you like baseball and i go yeah because you want to go see a game at candlestick they're they're playing tomorrow and i was like dying to go and at that point i hadn't done anything i thought it was only like going out at night you know what i mean like the comedians were like vampires we never got together during the day or anything and so uh he goes you want to go see game i go yeah all that that would be great so he takes a math book and he he writes in it and he hands it to me and i open it up and i look at it and it says warren five two seven seven seven two four your new negro friend and and i i just like i bust out like laughing and i and i look at him and he's just got that giant smile that impish kind of just teeth all the way and he's just kind of like laughing and and then we went to and i picked him up at his mom's house in albany and we went to the game and like from the minute i picked him up he had me in stitches and i remember we're like waiting in line to get in the candlestick park and you know we're in the car and like to park and we're sitting there and we're laughing and we're talking and so we're sort of distracted so when we pull up to the parking attendant like we don't have our money ready so we're like oh and like i'm like trying to fish around in my pocket and warren's kind of like fishing around in his pocket and it's taking like a while and and more just like leans across me out you know to the windows of the parking attendant goes we're going to hold a fundraising dinner and we'll get back to you and i'm like oh my god this is guys hilarious so then we get into the park and then he starts like doing this bit which he must have done before he couldn't have been completely improvising it but he was sort of improvising it where he was doing he called it the national inquirer play-by-play where he would go as a sharp ground ball the Juan Jury Bay who was picking his wife last night he goes and there's the throw to you know oh scoops nicely by Will Clark who was picking up a 15-year-old and he's just all this kind of lascivious you know stuff mixed in with like play-by-play and it was like seamless and hilarious and i'm just like oh my god this guy did like a genius and so that night uh we went back i went back to his house and i'm sitting around with him and his brother and i said oh my god you've got to do stand up like you've got to be you know go to the clubs and do an open mic and it's really interesting what he said he said i know i i couldn't i i wouldn't know who to be hmm and i will i what do you mean you wouldn't know who to be and he's like i mean what i like would i be rickles or would i be you know and he and i kind of get that because he didn't fit any of the molds you know like he wasn't like a typical black comedian like that's what was kind of even at that point jeff jen hadn't even really started but there still was that kind of like he wasn't prior you know what i mean he wasn't going to talk about you know black versus white he was he was going to just he was so himself he was just himself but he didn't know what that meant quite um and i said look don't worry about that and he was just i can't i can't i can't i said tell you what come with me i'm you know performing tomorrow night or i'm signing up tomorrow night at the holy city zoo and and watch the other people who go on stage and i promise you you're gonna say to yourself look i may suck i may be awful but i'm not gonna be a man as you know and i don't want to name all the names that you know the names i'm talking about you're talking to one of them right now well no i mean there were some people you remember all right so go ahead go go go on and so if it's exactly what happened i mean he watched and he went oh my god you know and so he went up you know the next night and then that was it and you know were you there took off yeah sure was he nervous and yeah i think so i think you know everybody's a little bit nervous but you know he was he's charming he's on like he was unbelievably so the first place he went up was the holy city zoo far as i know yes and what year was this this guy 80 it's either very late 81 yeah that's what i would figure yeah very late 81 and so yeah that that would be about when it was and when did when did when did you move in together that was later i i had when i first i lived in oakland um when i first moved there and that was craziness and then i moved in with warren spotwood oh my god yeah but that was there was another genius warren spotswood yeah right he was a big influence on me he he started taking lsb with him and um that sort of like broke my mind open um and i lived with warren and his wife and their crazy dog and if you remember that english bull terrier and then oh well no no no the wonder dog yeah max max well max well the wonder dog yeah max well the wonder dog warren spotswood used to host a show at cops and he would bring up acts with max well the wonder dog this predated well maybe letterman was dropping tv's from the balcony but max well the wonder dog in between acts would destroy things yeah he was remember the uh the first honda civics that came over uh they were really tiny i don't know if you remember the first honda civics it was like the first kind of compact car they were really small and they had these little tiny donut tires i thought that dog bite and pop a car tire it was unbelievable you know what warren spotswood told me you know what warren spotswood told me that the dog would start to shiver whenever he was walking him by cops that the dog associated stage fright with cops because he performed there when when they drove by cops max well would start barking and then start shivering like a nervous performer what kind of dog was max well english bull terrier the same kind of uh dog that paten had those spuds mckenzie same english bull terrier but he was a sweet he was a sweet dog who just liked to destroy things he was a sweet dog with people i think you had to keep him away from other dogs and he liked like an empty plastic milk carton would make him berserk he would bite it he would he would like try to bite it and it would shoot away from him and it would like squirt down the street and then finally he would like get some purchase on it he would get one paw on it and then a tooth would go in and then it would be like he'd just like plastic would be like you know ripping up like a cartoon and his mouth would get bloody because the you know the piece of the plastic would go into his gums and stuff and it would just be like a bloody mess and it was it was ferocious it was so ferocious now warren spotsford was older than we were he had a previous life as a trombone player in a your mother's mustache your father's mustache oh yeah and they appeared on the at selvon show so he had an entire background in show business that had nothing to do with stand-up he was also the most literate of us yeah yeah from alabama was he from alabama he's somewhere down south he definitely had that you know southern drawl and you know those guys yeah it sound like almost slightly gay you know that kind of like a dandy um but he was um quite the the ladies man i remember you know you used to sound gay whenever you did this and that's the sound of a penis in my mouth is that no a candidate just you eating a fancy canapé at a cocktail party he had a big influence on a whitney brown one spot i believe so and lsd but also lsd uh tell me about lsd because i've never done lsd and i tell people not to do lsd but some people say it has some kind of curative effect and mind altering effect oh it was it does have the mind altering effect and you know they're using it now in like with um terminal patients you know who are having problems um facing death and it apparently works uh amazingly well for that um because they want to die no because they just you know it they see kind of through to the other side and have this acceptance and there's this sort of you do have these moments of feeling like oh i get it all i get you know things that you understand intellectually like that everything is interconnected and all these things you suddenly like really see it and feel it and you think you're going to bring it back to you know your quote you know normal time and and then when it wears off it's kind of like you can't quite touch that feeling again but you did have it and there's it changes you somehow it's almost like i felt like you only have to do it once kind of like the first it's never is the first time you do it it's sort of the most sort of mind blowing and then it's a little bit diminished the next time you do it and a little bit diminished um and certainly it's almost like your brain needs to reset i found like if you tried to do it you know a week after you did it the last time it was not nearly but if you waited six months or a year and did it again it was a more powerful exposure neurotic um exposure neurotic and paranoid you know i i think i'm fairly neurotic and fairly paranoid i mean i don't know lsd was also a long especially the first time i did it it lasted it seemed you know the trip was almost 12 hours and then there was this kind of afterglow but there was a bunch of material that i did early on that came out of that first like i tripped and then the next place to be a substitute school teacher remember and i went in the next day and i you know it was the next day i thought i was fine but i was still you know kind of um in a somewhat altered state and then i did a bit about you know teaching on lsd that i did for a long time i don't even remember it now but it was a funny big part of my my hack it was really crazy um i don't know but it was it was it was a big commitment to do the lsd i only did it so many times mushrooms i felt a little better about because they're natural and like the high wasn't quite as intense and it didn't last so long i got um prevented was a guy who had never done anything like he didn't drink he didn't do anything and then he suddenly wanted to experiment and um i did mushrooms with him and i think that was like the beginning of him like going crazy not not crazy but like really starting to do a lot of different stuff um so yeah so i you know i remember cobs but i remember a guy named frank prinsie used to say to me oh where's frank let's send out the fast thing i would love to talk to frank i'd searched for him in so many ways facebook and everything he disappeared we were friends in san francisco then in la and then he left he went back to buffalo and i've just never been able to you know i would just love to say hi this is what i remember this is what i remember yeah early 80s ross is tending bar at cobs the show would be over at cobs the doors would be locked and you were tending bar and by tending bar you were just giving everybody free drinks do i remember correctly that there were a couple of nights a week where it was announced that ross was tending bar at cobs and all the alcoholics would run down there and get wasted i mean i just had bar but i was i was a conscientious bartender i i only gave you know drinks to anybody that ron kikiki wanted me to give drinks to i wasn't sneaking anything um to anybody i don't think i mean you own the place it was like you owned the place you would go behind the bar and just yeah pouring it was yeah now it was it was just we were big fish in a small pond the fact that you know you just walk in and walk behind the bar and take a beer and go hey uh you know i want to go on next like pump whoever's next and put me on you know and they and they would you know it was um it was magic warren thomas so yeah so then he you know and then then he and i started doing this thing like he was a little bit of a bad influence on me in a way because you know we started doing this thing where we started making fun of other comedians using their act you know what i'm talking about i remember like you remember that and it was like and and i was good at it because it was like it was almost like a sandy van sandy van is walking to the mound and she's saying throw this picture out throw this picture out right like a gray one like remember barry sobo used to do this bit about um jesus you know uh it's my body and i'll die if i want to die if i want to you would die too if they crucified you remember that yeah and so then we would turn that into uh it's my act and i'll die if i want to die if i want you would die too if you're an annoying jew we would take people to act and twist it into you know into a thing that made fun of them and and and and comics would like circle us me and warren they get in a circle around us and start like shouting names and go don't do bob saggett you know or do bob saw a lot do yeah and we would just like ridicule people i know different points what i remember it was hysterical yeah and it it was hysterical except it was mean and you know people started like not liking us and i started kind of not you know realizing oh this isn't a good you know way to be really and i did it a certain point find that um warren's humor was all kind of mean spirited it was all cut down it was all put down it was he was brilliant but he just was pretty mean spirited and not to mention you know it was too much partying like i couldn't see his constitution was crazy yeah but let's go back to let's go back to making fun let's go back to making fun of the other comedians yeah i remember that and i remember thinking why are they watching all these comedians why are they wasting time sitting watching all these horrible comedians why aren't they working on their acts well because you had a hangout to go on i mean you you know you were there and there was no it was just in the air you absorbed all these people's acts you know well a lot of but a lot of i didn't i didn't i didn't sit and watch the acts i hated watching bad comedy i hated you know what you're absolutely right you know that it was a it's a waste of and so did jake i think jake i think i think i remember you said to me when you fell in love with jake i remember you you had you just fell in love with jake and you said to me unlike warren jake doesn't sit and watch other acts and mock them he just works on his bits i'm not only that i mean what i what i found is that jake and i could be funny together like we could have fun and rift together and it didn't seem to be at anybody's expense right like it was just funny and we would bounce back and forth and i could and i felt good about it whereas with warren it only seemed to be oh let's make fun of someone and i didn't like that and i also you know i he this guy could every single night go out and he could operate on no sleep you know and he was unbelievable and i wanted to be healthy and i wanted to be you know emotionally healthy and so yeah i grabbed and jake and and prindy used to lift weights at this one um you know jim and i started going with them and working out with them and it just i was just trying to turn my life around right and so i i kind of had to distance myself from warren who was just kind of going into a darker and darker place and i think the cocaine kind of changes your personality so how many years were you in warren tight you know i'd say from 82 to 84 5 you know it was because jake and i became really close sometime in you know 83 84 you know so there was kind of a crossover where i was really good friends with both of them but i just had to start making the transition and then by 86 jake you know won the comedy competition moved to la and then i followed a year later that's that's a whole funny story when i went back to back to warren for a second back to warren for a second as fred stoller has a new book ad called five minutes to kill it's a kindle single he talks about the 1989 hbo young comedian special that he did with guys like warren thomas yes now i don't think people i think people think this is hyperbole but it's a fact warren would knock you to your knees with his comedy he would stand over you and rift where you were just curled up in a fetal position laughing hysterically and sometimes the police had to be called we got thrown out this is a true story there's a guitarist named stevie ger from san francisco he worn an eye went to a giants game and i was there when warren came up with the booty lick bit do you remember the booty lick bit yeah the guy selling booty lick booty lick yeah so we're talking and i watched him come up with i said uh i bet the concessions are different in in every stadium right like san francisco such a gay community they probably have concessions that are geared towards the gays and he immediately goes booty lick get your booty lick warm fresh booty lick and i start laughing and then it's like young man i'll have a booty lick and then he acts out the guy you know trying to walk through the stands bending over and the guy's and then he acts he does terry gillespie making a funny face doing his booty lick and while the guy's licking him the vendors screaming booty lick warm fresh booty lick and then he starts doing the wife going sydney you've had three booty licks today hey listen bitch it's sunday it's a doubleheader i work all week if i want to have a booty lick and yeah i start well stevie ger and i are laughing so i mean like where you're you know i have a loud laugh already yeah it turned into a scream where like i'm just ah and security i don't remember if they threw us out but i do remember like six times being told to stop laughing because warren wouldn't i mean he was killing me what was your bit about david hang on for one second david rebecca yeah what what do you remember who was david rebecca what were his politics what happened to him i believe in montreal and then what happened to him when he came back to play for the giants do you remember your bit about the heckler don't i never forgot it oh i apparently have david rebecca um got cancer he got a tumor in his arm and uh and then got it got the tumor cut out and then he um rehabilitated and came back but then broke his arm on a pitch like what threw hardened up that his arm broke it was like it was like the it was the baseball version of joe's thysman yes and he broke his arm and it sounded like a gunshot it was a crack you could hear it in the stands it was just horrifying yeah was it in montreal was in a montreal that it happened i don't think so it may have been playing montreal i thought it happened in candlestick okay and then he came back right it was a big emotional thing that he came back but we found out he didn't we find out that he was a member of the john birch society and we find out that a lot of those giants were very conservative yeah and i remember you had this i remember he came back and it was very emotional and he was pitching and he didn't do well when he came back and you were acting out the mean heckler screaming go back and bake that arm a few more minutes bake that arm you were referring to chemo and radiation is baking the arm and you were screaming at him because he's losing go back to the hospital and get that arm baked a few more minutes before you uh but warren would say warren would make you laugh as right yes and i think you know the problem for him he was it was a classic case of you had to be there like he couldn't recreate it he could do it in the moment but he didn't know how to kind of set up a thing like he couldn't do the thing about hey they have different you know foods at different stadiums and what about like or he could but he was just never nearly as like he automatically naturally said things in a funny way he was the exact opposite of every other comedian who like says things and then the next time polishes it and hones it and gets it a little bit better and then the next time you know says it a little bit better and you just keep kind of improving it he automatically the first time he said something that was the maximum funny it was going to be and then every time he said it again it got diminished he couldn't repeat you know things he really had to rip because what robin williams does is a magic trick he is making it look like he is coming up with this stuff off the top of his head and like it was almost like warren didn't get that he saw that that's what he was really doing and like i'm going to try that and it's a testament to what a genius warren was is that he almost could he could almost go on stage and just rip and talk and the more he tried to repeat material that he already did like that always sat a little flat you know what i mean it was it was in it was when he was being authentic and in the moment and just kind of talking as as if he was at the stadium with you and just coming up with this stuff was when he was at his most fun you know i'm reading i just finished mort sol's new biography and it's a comedy that's rooted in jazz where you really don't repeat the same notes and i often wonder had warren been able to find a safer place to perform where he could have just rift do his jazz riffs um that's interesting you open for mort sol at cobs this is what i remember mort sol was playing cobs you were supposed to open for mort sol and then you slept through your set and you took your watch as a public display you took your watch and stomped on it do you remember that yeah it was one of the things where it's like oh this is so important to me i want to do such a good job it's like i want to take a nap and like be like super charged and fresh for this like i'm gonna take a nap and i'm gonna drink a cup of coffee and go in and yeah you know i set the watch to you know the alarm for p.m instead of a m or vice versa whatever it was and i overslept but then there was also the problem i mean i i ended up i think i missed one of the shows but i didn't miss the other show but he didn't want like i so wanted to open for him and then introduce him and he didn't want that he he he wanted distance he he i was allowed to do my set but then we had to take a break and then he wanted like to be introduced for offstage and walk on like he didn't want to be associated at that time um and it was i kind of hurt my feelings i really wanted kind of a bunch of like political right but he doesn't want that but that's but that's what that's the classic story of the political satirist pulling into town and the the booker thinking oh he does political humor we'll get our political our local political satirist to poison the well for our headlighter right we should have had a ventriloquist or ventriloquist the exact opposite exactly you know i also remember about this he was playing cobs and larry brown larry bubbles brown had a trans am yeah the firebird the firebird he said he would pick mort up at the airport so he picks mort up because mort's a big fan of cars you know so yeah so it's a rainy night in san francisco and larry picks up mort and they're getting along and larry made the mistake of finding a parking spot on chestnut and he just pulls in and it's pouring rain and they walk to cobs and it never occurred to larry that maybe he would drop mort off in front of cobs so he wouldn't get wet and mort mort he said he so later that night larry goes mort stop talking to me i don't understand why i said retrace your steps yeah so you said you and i stopped talking what happened i can't believe you don't remember any of this like there's so many people who have stopped talking to me how can i what well you you should drive me crazy in a in a million different ways and i just i remember one time we were on the phone and we were having some conversation and you i don't know how we we were talking about saturday night live and you said that the best cast member of all time was garret morris okay you remember you remember this okay yeah i remember saying that yeah and that that he he was the most talented the most funny of anybody who had ever done um snl and i i was like ha ha ha that's very funny you're like no i'm serious i go yeah that's a very funny joke it's a very funny bit to maintain that garret morris who probably was the least funny of anybody who had ever done the show who wasn't even a comedian like an opera singer or something you know and to say that he was fun that he was the funniest he was funnier than chaser bill barry or anybody that i ha i go no i'm serious i go yeah come on and he go no i am serious and like you wouldn't let it go and it's like how can we have a conversation how can we have fun together it's like you're just going to be an asshole like if that's all he would just kept are you maintaining now to this day that garret morris is still the best person who's ever did sorry well i think i at one point i believe that i thought he was awesome you really believe this is it we're going wrong i feel like i'm back in 1987 or something talking to you but anyway i just remember i i remember thinking there was a period when he used to make me laugh really hard and he was underappreciated what can i tell you okay so that's why we stopped talking it was over garret morris that's not what i think there was a there was a million things you would let me write this down hang on hang on let me write this down because as you know i'm in a personal crisis a lot of people aren't talking to me so garret morris let me make a note to myself never say garret morris was the funniest let me go let me that's that's the specific let me go to no no go to specific i want to hear specifics not i'm gonna say don't say things purposely to piss people off that's that that would be the general so but you would do it a lot where you would say something purposely to instigate and then not back down and and like demand that you actually weren't saying it for that reason and you were being authentic whatever it was give me an example remember we were the big remember the strike um i guess it was the lead up to the strike what year was that the writers out in 2008 2000 and 2007 2007 so it's 2007 and you and i were going to a lot of the meetings you know i do remember this i do remember this yes yeah i do remember that and hang on for a second all i remember is going to a writer's guild meeting before the strike yep and speaking and then you got really mad at me well here's what happened we were there okay and the person was talking i think it might have been pat varone who is tell people who patrick varone is patrick varone was at that time president of the wga he's a writer he wrote for future rama and a bunch of other stuff and and he was um uh you know an organizer and uh and it became that the president and he was talking and you had some problem you were saying that he had had a meeting with roger ailes or something like that but whatever it was you were talking really loudly about him to me but you weren't talking to me you were using me to talk to everyone else in the room like you know what i'm saying like you weren't really you were trying to make some point and you were using me as if i was part of this conversation and but you were really trying to say other things to other people you wanted to be heard and it's like look you want to say things to people say things to people you want to accuse him of stuff but don't like use me as your pawn and you kept kind of interrupting or he was talking and you were trying to say things to the people around us by going hey i heard even whatever it was and i got up and i moved away from you because i just wanted to listen to the speech you know whatever he was saying and i got up and i moved away from you and you got really indignant about that it hurt your feelings or something and then you came over to me and you at the end of this and you said i hope you don't something about i hope you never treat your daughter the way you treat me or like something like that and you impugned my fatherhood the way i raised my daughter and i was like no no no no no you don't talk about how i raised my daughter you know you said something like don't you said something like that i remember that you know what i remember that you and that and i was just like hey you know what you just kept it you were very crazy at that time and you were getting super duper jewy and super duper like proselytizing like you wanted me to come to your temple all the time and you know i've got a bit of a thing with that you know my brother lives in israel and he's super duper jewy and i am basically an atheist and i don't know it and you were kind of crazed i thought i you know i do remember this is what i remember now that you bring it up but patrick verrone was either running for president of the writer's guild or was president of the writer's guild but we were gearing up for a strike and john wells who at the time was the showrunner an owner of he john wells owned er he owned the west wing and it was definitely a bubbling there's no question those are conflicts well let me let me explain to the audience i need to explain to the audience okay go yeah and i remember getting up and speaking oops i just hit the mic i remember getting up at the writer's guild and saying i want to know why john wells is the president of our union he is management he owns the west wing he owns er and yet we have to negotiate with the owners to determine what our benefits are he's one of the owners how can you be excuse me for one second excuse me for one second i i said is john wells a writer because i heard that john wells is not a writer that he takes a writer's credit and he sits around a table and says we'll use this bit and that bit and that bit and this bit but he's not actually writing so why is he allowed to own a television show and take a writing credit and how are we going to get a reliable negotiation going without a legitimate interlocutor and i i think you were pissed off that i use the term interlocutor i'm i'm myself again may i may i speak now yeah you're a hundred percent correct i mean and i share those same you know concerns i don't believe you got up and spoke at whatever meeting we were at together you may have spoke no no i did i remember specific i remember that night now i remember specifically getting up hang on for one second i remember get because i used to get very emotional at these writers guild meetings and yes and i remember specifically that night i remember you were there and i remember what i remember specifically saying can anybody show me a script that john wells wrote by himself you say he's a writer i would like to see a script that the president of this union has actually written and and and some people some people applauded and said you're absolutely right and some people got really pissed off and you didn't want to be associated with me i didn't want to be associated when you were using me you were talking to me to talk to other people like you were saying to me i wanted to see a script that he's written as opposed to getting up and i did i did get up and say that well we have to agree to disagree my pride i i was like fine get up and see whatever you want i did don't say it to me okay well we'll agree to disagree now look it's a tricky situation because you know tb writing isn't like writing you're not like a novelist you're not like a a magazine you're a journalist it is look you know i've some great great great head writers that i've worked with they are like conductors they're sitting at the head of the table and people are saying different things and they're going to get that no not not this and they're and they they can write and they have written but they don't necessarily that's not necessarily the job at that moment but they are definitely writers you know all right let me hang on ownership issue owner