How To Do Everything - Talent Shows & Phone Call Etiquette

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

This week from the archives: how to stand out at a talent show, how to go to the bathroom during an important phone call, and an unlikely way to check the Wifi on a plane. Plus a “where is he now” 12 years later. You can email your burning questions to [e-mail] To Do Everything is available without sponsor messages for supporters of Wait Wait…Don't Tell Me+, who also get bonus episodes of Wait Wait Don't…Tell Me! featuring show outtakes, extended guest interviews, and a chance to play an exclusive WW+ quiz game with Peter! Sign up and support NPR at plus.npr.org. How To Do Everything is hosted by Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag. This episode was produced by Blythe Haaga. Technical direction from Lorna White.And if you’d like us to be your out of office emergency contact, here’s the copy:“I am OOO from (INSERT DATES HERE). For any urgent concerns, please email Mike and Ian at [e-mail]. Please bear in mind that Mike and Ian don’t know anything about anything and their help may in fact make your urgent concern worse, but they did promise to answer any email they get from this out of office message.”Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. Learn more at RWJF.org. Hey there, it's Ian and Mike, and this is an archive edition of How to Do Everything. But as we were listening back to it, getting it ready, we decided we had to add something new. So what you're going to hear is the original episode and then a little follow-up. Controversy in Michigan, specifically at the Violet Elementary School Talent Show. It involves young Eric Henzy. He's a first grader. He and his mom, Emily, are with us now.

Emily, can you just lay out what happened? Well, my son came home from school with his talent show permission slip, and he said, Mama, I want to be in the talent show. And I said, well, what are you going to do? said armpit fart okay he's good at it you know it's not hurting anyone so i filled the the form out and it uh i put body farts by eric and i got a call from the principal the next morning she said she could not allow him in the show um that bodily noises were inappropriate she's standing firm and he's not going to be in the show oh man well uh can we talk to Eric for a second? Sure, he's right here.

Okay. Say hello. Hi. Hey, Eric. So tell us, we hear that you are a pretty amazing body farter, armpit fart. Can you tell us how you do it? I put my hand up my shirt and I put it on my armpit work, and then I keep on putting my arm up and down and it makes farting noise. Oh, man. Where did you learn to do that?

I'm Sebastian. Who's Sebastian? He's my friend. So do you practice it a lot? Yes. All right. And do you do it, have you done it in school before? Yeah.

Really? Yep. So what happens when you try it out in school? If my friends only hear it, they'll say do it and do it again. I think it is a great injustice that Eric is not being allowed to perform at his talent. show. He deserves a chance to shine. So we are going to have our own little talent show right here. Welcome to the talent show to end all talent shows. And now from Michigan, a young man with a talent the likes of which the world has never seen. Young man, are you ready to show the world

what you can do? Okay. Let's bring him on. Hi, my name is Erikenzy, and I am seven years old. Here's my armpit farting. Oh, McDonald's had a E, I, E, E, I. And on their farm, they had a E.I. E.I. With a... There, there, there, there, everywhere. Obamacama Tata.

E.I. E.I. Wow. Wow. Is this all part of the act? If armpits could speak, they would say thank you, Eric, for blessing us with your golden hands of music. Hey, like we said, this is an archive show, but while we were listening back to Little Eric, we both wondered, what's that guy doing now? Where is Eric now? Hello?

Hi. Eric, how are you? Oh, I'm great. How about yourself? Good. It's Ian and Mike. You sound like a man. Yeah, I've grown up.

It's been so long. We talked to you 12 years ago. Yeah, it has a long time. Well, let me ask you this. What impact did your appearance on our show have on your life? Okay, well, it kind of just went around, like, in school, like, a lot of a group of people knew about it, and all the teachers and stuff, it started, like, just growing slowly, and people just kind of bring it up year after year. How long did your armpit fart career go on? I mean, it still is?

Did I hear your mom say it still is? You could say that. I was like, I could still do it. Oh, well, yeah. At graduation, they. did bring it up because that's like what started it all because they banned me from a talent show and they brought it up and just like we're going to rewrite a wrong and then I had to go walk on stage and be like to an armpit fart show it was so funny I wonder yeah are your armpit

farts deeper than they were back then uh no there I would say they're a lot like less and probably because I did a lot more when I was a kid sure you got a little rusty yeah I'm not used to doing it anymore. I mean, I still do it sometimes just as a joke, but... Well, I mean, we would love to hear a little bit of your armpit farting now. I think your mom's there. Maybe she could hold the phone and just a little. I will.

Well, it's not going to be that good, but... Okay. Believe in yourself. Yeah, that was my armpit. I don't know if I could do my legs or anything anymore, but... I just want to say, having heard your first appearance on the show, there was such passion, and it went on, it was such a... It really was such a performance.

I can see the maturity that has taken place in you, Eric. And I think... I speak for Ian. I say, we're really proud of you. Thank you very much. This is How to Do Everything. I'm Ian. And I'm Mike. Coming up, how to test your Wi-Fi. But first... Online with us now is Mike Sacks. He has a book called Poking a Dead Frog Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers. One of the people he talked to for the book is David Sedaris.

And there's a how-to here. Mike, you interviewed David Sedaris for a really long time. Can you tell us what happened? Well, I forget if it was the middle. middle or the fifth hour. It was about a six-hour interview, a little over six hours. And let me just stress this. This was not an in-person interview. I was at work, which I will not mention where I work, but let's just say it's a tall skyscraper in Times Square.

All right. And the interview's going great. He's an amazing guy. He's incredibly nice and incredibly forthcoming, very, very honest. he's giving me everything I need and my sense is not to break up the interview not to say hey can I call you back because at this time it was about 2 or 3 a.m. in Paris

so what I did was which I've never done before or since I instead of breaking up the interview I ended up urinating into my trash can I should also say to the office where I work was empty except for the cleaning woman who was vacuuming the other stuff of the office, it was about 10 o'clock hour time, and I was also behind a high cubicle. So in my defense, this was not a retail establishment.

This was, there was privacy involved here. It had to develop, right? There had to be a point, I don't know, maybe an hour before when you started thinking, this is going to be a problem. You have to do what you need to do, and my Navy SEAL training kicked in. Not that I was ever in the Navy Seals, but I've watched a lot of documentaries about them. And that's how I decided to take care of that situation. Well, it's a pretty great technique, because we all have moments when we're in long phone conversations that we don't want to end

and have to use the bathroom. And now here, you have a great solution. I think it's a good solution. I know Johnny Carson used to use it, Dick Havitt as well. Maybe even Obama, when he gives interviews with news programs. I'd recommend it for anyone, really. I think anyone would understand if you had to do this. they'd give you at least one out in life.

Dick Cavett really did this? No, he never did it. I doubt he did it in private, I wouldn't say he did this, no. So I might understand that David Sedaris is in your ear talking while you're peeing in a trash can. Well, you know what? At that point, he may have been on speakerphone, so he may have been beyond my ear. He may have been within my soul at that point. I don't remember where he was exactly.

Wait. Did you hit the mute button at least? Well, who do you think I am, some sort of fire hose? Now you're making me out to be some sort of vagrant who just travels the rails and interviews people and then pisses out the door. This is not a normal thing. Okay. So you did hit mute? Yes, I did. Okay.

Did you, at any point, betrayed him what was going on? No. He doesn't know to this day. Really? You may want to get his reaction. Support for NPR, and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. Learn more at RWJF.org.

Hello, David. Yeah. Did you know that was happening? I had no idea. I mean, he must have been pretty quiet about it. But the thing is, he could have said, oh, do you mind? Just give me a couple seconds while I run into the bathroom. You know, because we talked, I think, for like six hours.

I probably did it, too, but not into a trash can. I probably, you know, went into the bathroom and used a traditional toilet. But I probably wouldn't have said anything about it. You know, if you just hit the side of the bowl and you don't hit any water, Yeah. Is that a situation you've been in before where you've had a long interview and then had to pee at some point? Oh, yeah. I do it all the time, but I, sometimes if I'm talking to someone in my family, they'll say, are you pee?

They'll say, yeah. But otherwise, people don't even, you know, if you hit the side of the bowl, like I said, there's no reason for anybody to even, no. I don't see anything wrong with that. But I'm always surprised when I go to the airport and I hear God. in a stall talking on a cell phone. Yeah. That is amazing to me that they would be defecating in talking on the cell phone. So you draw the line there.

It's completely out of bounds to me. I'm shocked sometimes I go to a restaurant and I'll... You know, you step into the restroom at a restaurant, and I think, who on earth? Like, who on earth would say, eh, no, I'll just defecate at the restaurant. Now, you said you've peed on the phone with people before, and maybe during an interview. I'm thinking, you know, I've heard you on fresh air. Have you ever peed on the phone with Terry Gross?

No, because that's always in the studio. Okay. I mean, again, if you're quiet about it, I mean, it depends on the interview, too. If it's a radio interview, like I wouldn't do it now because the sound would change. when I went into the bathroom. Right. I mean, I was going to iron while I talked to you,

but I got on my ironing done before you called. But I would see how that's, it's just, I guess, multitasking. That feels like... Multitasking with your penis in your hand. Yeah. The ironing doesn't feel as much

as a violation of, like, the social contract as peeing does. You know, the more I think about it, the mic peeing in the trash can, there's almost kind of a greater intimacy between you guys now, you know, rather than just talking on the phone,

that, you know, he shared in sort of this audio space with you, what is, you know, generally a pretty private moment for people. Well, but it was just a one-way bond. You should have said to me, you know what I'm doing right now?

It said what? You would have said, I'm peeing into my trash can. I mean, that would have been, And, I don't know, that would have brought us probably a little bit closer. I mean, it wouldn't have bothered me any. Yeah. What would you have thought if you're talking to him,

and then you hear this kind of stream of water against, say, a metallic can? What would you say to him? Well, because I'd never met him before. I mean, it depends. I went in the conversation. If we'd already been talking for, like, three or four hours, I would have said, Are you peeing into something? Yeah.

Well, David, thank you so much for your time. Oh, my pleasure. Did you pee while we were talking? Nope. Didn't have to. Nice work. Me neither. I did.

Hey, whatever your question may be, whether or not it involves defiling one of America's great humor writers or not, get it to us at how to, at npr.org. Boeing was recently testing a new on-board Wi-Fi system. They wanted to see how it would work with passengers on board, but they didn't want to

put a bunch of humans in the plane. Adam from Boeing is with us now. So Adam, what did you do? Well, the testing that we did to verify a Wi-Fi, or actually really any signal test, was validated with potatoes, lots of potatoes, 20,000 pounds of them. And we took those potatoes down to a DC-10, a mothball DC-10, was never going to fly again, that was sitting down in the desert in Arizona, and we put the potatoes on board the airplane,

did a very long battery of tests, about two weeks long, taking all sorts of measurements on the airplane and got some great data. And with that data, we essentially developed a brand new way to test signal propagation, which is a fancy way to say how signals bounce around an airplane. Well, so where did the, do the potatoes prefer to sit on the aisle or in the window? It depends when they book. Yeah. Okay. Always. They, the plane, 150 seats had potatoes, and they essentially mounted them up, so they looked a little bit like people. The idea was that you can gather data in an empty airplane, but they realized pretty quickly that an empty airplane has a different kind of look when you're talking about how,

signal moves around, then an airplane full of people. And the closer you can get to people, the better, and that's where the potatoes actually came in. It's not just the shape of the potatoes. It's actually the way they interact with the signal, too. Wait, so how many potatoes does it take to make one person sitting in one of those seats? We were just talking about this the other day.

If I'm not mistaken, I think it's something like nine bags. The ratio is really a pound to a pound. So a pound of potatoes. is roughly equivalent the way it affects a signal to the weight of a person. So 150 pounds of potatoes is 150 pounds worth a person. Yeah. Well, let me ask you, did you guys get any criticism from people saying that those potatoes were taking jobs from, you know, Americans who could sit in the plane? I...

We've heard it hinted that. I don't know many people who would want to sit motion list for 10 hours or more on end for two straight weeks in an airplane that's parked on an Arizona desert. So you said how many potatoes in this DC-10? 20,000 pounds. So that's where, did you eat them afterward? No, we didn't, but they were donated to a local food bank. Oh, wow.

Why did you tell them what you'd done to them beforehand? No, we didn't tell them that they were well-connected potatoes or anything like that. They were donated without a explanation. Wow. Well, that's fascinating. And really makes me wonder, it'll give me, you know, I'll pause now before I log on to the wireless on the plane and think of the potatoes that have gone before me. That's right. You know, these are some of the luckiest potatoes that you'll ever meet, I suppose.

Well, Adam, thank you so much for your time. This is fascinating stuff. Hey, thanks for your interest, guys. We appreciate it. That does it for this week's show. What we learned today, Mike? I learned that the cruel hand of censorship can strike even in the first grade. Yeah, I feel like when we decided that free speech was something that should be protected.

It was just people like Eric, the little guy. Yeah, exactly. He's literally little. He's in first grade. Who, you know, their right to speak or whatever that sound is called, let's stand up for that. Yeah. That would actually be a rally that would be the most hilarious rally, protest rally ever. Yeah. Just a bunch of guys up there letting it rip.

I mean, even as the Beastie Boys said, you've got to fight for your right to farty. I'm sorry about that. How to Do Everything is produced by Blythe Hega with technical direction from Lorna White. Our intern this week is Miles Dornboss. Also, we'd like to thank Bill Curtis for emceeing the How to Do Everything talent show.

And we want to thank Mary Gaffney for helping us record this. Yeah, because we don't know what we're doing. Nope. Get us your questions at how-to at npr.org. I'm Ian. I'm Mike. Thanks. Hey, Eric.

Have you ever, can you make fart sounds with your hands? By squeezing them together? Because I can do that. Here, listen to us. You can do it with your hands? Yeah, check it out. I can't. Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. Learn more at RWJF.org.