Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Schoolhouse Rock Rocked: Featuring Bob Nastanovich of Pavement

Episode Date: October 11, 2025

Schoolhouse Rock is possibly the best children's program of all time. Join Josh and Chuck in this classic episode as they tell the story of SR, featuring an interview with Pavement's Bob Nastanovich, contributor to the '90s Schoolhouse Rock tribute record.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey, it's Ed Helms host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Shearer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan, Klepper.

Listen to season four of Snafoo with Ed Helm. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the one, the only, Cardi B. My marriage, I felt the love dying. I was crying every day. I felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had. This shit was not given to me.

I worked my ass off for me. Listen to On Purpose with Jay. Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, happy Saturday. And as promised in our Saturday morning cartoons episode, which, by the way, I hope you woke up this morning and went downstairs and at least streamed some cartoons for nostalgia sake. But as promised in that episode, here is our past schoolhouse rock up that we recorded quite

a number of years ago. And we thought it was apropos that we. put it out the same week as the old Saturday morning cartoons up. We really had a great time recording this episode. Schoolhouse Rock was a fundamental source of learning and entertainment for both of us growing up. And for most of Gen X, I would say. So I hope you enjoy it all over again. Here we go with Howl School House Rock Rocked, featuring Bob Nostanovich of Pavement. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio. As your body grows big, your mind must flower. It's great to learn.

Because knowledge is power. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry, and this is stuff you should know, chip off the block of your favorite schoolhouse. Yeah, that was, we just heard the theme song. If you're between the ages of, well, were you into it? Yes. Okay, so you're what, 41? I'm 40, dude.

40? Yeah. So probably younger than you even a bit. Let's say if you're between. I was definitely toward the tail end. Okay, let's say 38 to 50 years old. Actually, yeah, that's not true. So let's say it was up to 85.

Schoolhouse rock? Yeah, nine. Yeah. So somewhere in that range. Let's say 35 to what? Well, 50-ish. All right, that's, we agree on it. A little more, 55 maybe.

So that 15-year period, you were lucky. Yeah, like, if you just heard that theme song and, like, something inside your body happened emotionally in your brain. then that means that you grew up in the 70s and 80s I think the heyday of Saturday morning cartoons personally as a fan of schoolhouse rock one of my favorite favorite favorite things in the world yeah it was pretty great I still love it yeah like I still listen to this stuff semi regularly oh do you yeah it'd been a little while when I went back to to research this I listened to or watched a bunch of them yeah and um they all just came flooding back yeah and the um

the writer of this article actually interviewed didn't he bob doro it's it sounded that way unless he's a big fat liar in his author's note well i just remember when this article went around like the first thing we do when there's an article at house the forks is there's a um email that goes around to everyone where people kind of suggest uh kind of questions you can answer and stuff like that yeah um i don't think we ever really talked about that did we i don't think so nine years in that's the secret uh and people say hey you should think about this you should do this and i said somebody should try and interview bob doro it's like he's 93 years old and you know you can still get in touch with a guy i think yeah and apparently this dude did and sadly i think all

he got was like one quote yeah well he was on his way to like a jazz gig in london when he caught him i don't know i bet you there was more in there than this i was a little disappointed oh you're saying i got you i wanted like more more select pull quotes from mr doro you wanted like i called mr doro he answered hello said mr doro we should have interviewed him for this i don't know why we didn't i don't either apparently it's easy to get to uh and there's well i'll get to that never mind should we get in the way back machine yes let's go back to the 70s the greatest decade in the history of humanity probably i'm not joking i'm a fan of 60s 70s and 80s it'd be tough for me to decide

60s were a little too hippie for me oh yeah love the 70s though i mean i love the 70s and not even as a golden age there was a lot wrong in the 70s Nixon was president during the 70s okay yeah lots of stuff were wrong in the 70s but something about that decade just hit all the Yeah. I just love it. I do too. And it reminds me in my childhood, which is great, because, you know, I had a good childhood. It was fun. I've a lot of, we talked about that in the nostalgia episode on how nostalgia is the correct path in life. Yeah. Even though John Hodgman doesn't think so. Yeah. Nothing to that. So early 70s, there's a gentleman named David McCall, and he was, he co-owned an ad agency called McCaffrey and McCall. And as the story goes, he was on vacation with his family. And he knew his son was having some trouble in math, remembering specifically multiplication tables. Yeah, no matter how much he yelled at him every night, he couldn't get multiplication. But they were in the car, and this kid was singing as the story goes, Rolling Stones song.

And he was like, well, you know that. Why can't you remember the other stuff? I don't think he was that gruff. But it did hit him. He was like, you know, my son remember, he has no problem memorizing things. but there's something about these multiplication tables so I wonder if there's something to sing-song and turning learning into not only just music

because that's not a new thing. People have been doing that forever. Right. But popular sounding music. Right, and like pairing them with concepts to teach, right? Yeah. To make kids understand difficult concepts, right? And it's so weird now, especially after,

the post-schoolhouse rock world. Yeah. That, yeah, of course people do that. Like, that's a technique that you use to teach kids. But apparently, no one else is doing this at the time. Yeah. Let's make learning fun. This was a pretty interesting idea.

And it really, it germinated in just the right guy's mind. Because this guy, McCall, was, like you said, he was a partner in this advertising firm. And they basically specialized in, in, in, you know, doing the same thing, but getting you to buy something. Yeah. He was saying, maybe we could do the same thing that we do to sell people's stuff, but to basically sell education to kids, to teach kids using the same techniques that we use in advertising. Yeah, like they would see a jingle for a product that would get lodged in someone's head,

and they would say, you know, why can't we do that same thing? Like, it would get lodged in a kid's head, and they would have learned something instead of bought something. Right. But you could also buy stuff. If you learn enough stuff, you can buy even more stuff. So he went to one of these, I think he was a creative director, a co-creative director named George Newell, ran it by him. He said, great idea, get someone on it. And he threw a cigarette at him, got out of the office, and commissioned one of their writers.

They had jingle writers on staff, or at least working with them, and they said, go write something. It wasn't very good. Didn't you feel bad for this person? I did, but you know what? It could have died there. Right. They never would have had Schoolhouse Rock. But this person went down in history is the contributor to Schoolhouse Rock who didn't make it.

Yeah. Sad. Or the person who almost killed School House Rock. I guess so. But McCall was like, no, this idea is too good for this. Yeah, which is really, you know, a great thing and a lesson in persistence. So he went to Newell was a jazz piano player and he went to his buddy, one Bob Dorro. one of my heroes, who was and is, a great bebop jazz pianist and composer,

and said, you can write a jingle too. Why don't you try this out? And here's the one quote. We might as well read it from 93-year-old Mr. Doro. I don't know how I lucked out. Apparently they tried other songwriters, but most of them wrote down to kids. When I met McCauley said, here's my idea, give it a try, but don't write down to the kids. And when he said that, I got to chill.

I have a high opinion of children And that was sort of the key right there They weren't Songs like written in a remedial way Because it was children Right Itsy Bitsy spider Give me a break

Oh that's a classic So um But you're right But so this idea germinates In this right guy's head He happens to end up Indirectly getting in touch with this guy Who has a high opinion of children

And he happens to be a jazz composer Yeah Things are starting to like happen. There's basically the hand of the almighty at work here. That's right. So Doro goes home, his daughter, gets out her textbooks, and the first thing he comes up with, to me, one of the best. Man, it is far out. Three is a magic number. Was the very first schoolhouse song written because the first thing they wanted to tackle was math because of McCall's son. Yeah, this composition that he came back with three is a magic number it's a I I when I hear it it's super cool

but I don't I I'm really surprised that everybody was like this is yes figure something out from this oh man I loved it it is it's cool but it just doesn't seem like the basis the keystone of schoolhouse rock to me I'm surprised well it's one of my favorites that's great because it dealt with multiplication and not only that but like you said got a little trippy with the symbolism faith hope and charity heart and mind and body right uh it was about and i've wanted to do a podcast on three the number three because it's very special it is very special it is we did one on zero why not three oh man i forgot about that remember i think my brain melted a bit there that's a good one it's tough zero's tough it is tough um and not at all magic right

Not really. So regardless, if you would have been working there, you would have been like, meh, and everyone else enjoyed it. You'd be like, I'm going to go get a bagel. I'm going to go work on this processed cheese account. I did think of Madman quite a bit when I was researching this. It was sort of that same time period. Yeah. Or I guess toward...

No, Madman didn't make it into the 70s. Yeah, I thought he did because wasn't he supposed to be D.B. Cooper at the end? And that was the 70s? Yeah. Or early, I guess it was 71. I think it did crack into the 70s. Not like Boogie Nights did. That was all 70s.

Into the 80s? No, that's right. It cracked into the 80s with that, geez, that song you recorded? Well, no, I was, well, yeah, that for sure. But I was thinking about when the party, the New Year's E party, celebrating 1980 with Bill Macy. Oh, yeah. Oh, man.

what a great movie that was wonderful yeah movies almost like 20 years old i believe it we're old chuck i know but those those pop culture references are the ones that really hit home for me what the ones from the 70s well when i think of like boogie nights it's like oh yeah that was just like a few years ago right and then someone says it's celebrating its 20th anniversary and i'm like what or like when i see an athlete's son or daughter yeah it's weird to see the it's playing the same sport the rookies are now like the old coaches and managers in the sports now man it's bizarre uh so everyone's impressed at mcalfrey and mccall um then they did a pretty smart thing they went to um mccall was on the board of the bank street college of education uh in new york there and he

took it to them it was just a song at this point and said what do you think is a learning tool uh they used it played it for the students and they were like this is awesome right their response Again, I'm not putting... He's just sitting there with his arms crossed. He's scowling. I've never seen him so mad before. So the students liked it. The agency liked it. So they knew they're on to something. They got their art director, Tom Yo, Y-O-H-E. Oh, you're going with Yo? I'm going all out with Yo-He.

Okay. Tom Yo-He-He-H-E. and said put some animation to this draw out some storyboards because that was the beauty of schoolhouse rock to me was it was a combination of everything it wasn't just the song

the songs are great and we'll get more to the music here in a bit but it was the combination of the visuals with the song and the fact that you were learning something in such a unique way it was just like the perfect storm of awesomeness

yeah the songs on their own would have stood up on their own. Oh, yeah. And initially, like, they plan to just release an album of cool songs like this. Yeah. But it was when Yohei started sitting there, like, drawing some of this stuff out. That's, I mean, Schoolhouse Rock is not one or the other. It's the combination of those two things.

They play off each other so well. Agreed. So they took, now they have these storyboards. They take this to a guy named Radford Stone. He was their account supervisor, the VP. For ABC, and they said there's this young upstart at ABC for their children's programming named Michael Eisner. I doubt if he's ever going to go anywhere. But right now he's running the kids shop over there.

And let's bring in, because this guy knows a lot about kids programming, let's bring in Chuck Jones to the meeting. Shout out to our friend Jessica, granddaughter of Mr. Jones. And sat down in a meeting, played the demo tape, showed him the storyboard. They all turned to Chuck Jones. So what do you think? And he said, buy it. Buy it. That was how Chuck Jones stopped.

No, he didn't. And Michael Eisner bought it. And before you knew it, they were in business. We're going to take a break. I think we should. Josh is going to go collect himself. And we'll be right back. Hey, it's Ed Helms, and welcome back to Snafoo, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups.

On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Yeah. Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads? Yes.

It's going to be a whole. lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow. Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here. What was that like for you to soft launch into the show? Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today. I forgot who's podcast we were doing. Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes. Listen to Season 4 of Snap-Foo with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everybody?

This is Snacks from the Trabner's podcast, and we're bringing you the horror every week all October long. Kicking off this month, I'll be bringing you all my greatest fear-inducing horror games from Resident Evil to Silent Hill. Me and Tony Bringing Back Fire Team on Left for Dead 2. And we're just going to be going over some of the greats. Also in October, we'll be talking about our favorite horror in Halloween. movie and figure out why black people always got to die further. The umbral reliquary invites any

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So So Schoolhouse Rock started on ABC Saturday morning Is what they call an interstitial Yeah we had some of this Yeah it was it's programming Between the programming That's not commercial Right

When the creators of the program You're actually watching Weren't good enough to make 22 full minutes You rounded out with interstitial programming Yeah exactly This is January 6th and 7th Was the first weekend in 1973 So I was but two years old

Oh well I was negative 3 Yeah You were in the upper atmosphere Just playing my liar Coalescing waiting to be born Flapping my wings And this was before Like you said

The original thing was it was just going to be an album called Multiplication Rock Until they realized that the visuals were important They could put it on television And the first four songs at First Weekend were some of the greatest. Aside from three is a magic number, the four-legged zoo, elementary, my dear, and my hero, zero. Great song. Zero again.

Yeah. Not magical, but it is a cool number. Such a funny little hero. Yeah. So you came along. They counted on their fingers and toes. Right. So when was that Chuck, 1973?

Yes. And I think that first one had quite a... So it was up to, so there were 13 episodes then, if it went from zero to 12. Yeah, and I think what they settled on was almost like seasons, themed seasons. So the first season was going to be math-related. Yeah. So apparently Bob Dorro had been off, like, coming up with songs, didn't realize that they wanted a song for each number. And he had started to combine several numbers in a different song.

He didn't get the memo. He didn't, and he finally did, and he was trying to figure out how to break the songs apart, and he came up with one called the four-legged zoo. Have you heard that one? Yeah, it's fine. Yeah. So-so? Not one of my favorites, but, I mean, they're all great. It's just some stand out a little more than others.

Yeah. So what's your favorite of the multiplication rock? Oh, well, three is a magic number. Okay. Yeah. And that was something else I noticed about this. there are um for each season there were at least one standout song per season that just about everybody knows yeah and i would guess three as magic numbers probably that one yeah or maybe

my hero zero that was a big one yeah that was a hit it's so much so that um bob doro was up for uh grammy in 1974 yeah for um i i think the uh whole album right yeah but the Those jerks at Sesame Street one. If you're going to lose, lose the Sesame Street. Yeah, and Doro is like writing and singing these initial first few songs. I think he's saying, yeah, all of them except two, and he hired two other jazz musicians, Grady Tate and Blossom Diery. Great name.

Grady Tate sang Naughty No. 9, and Blossom Deary sang Figure 8. But all the rest of them, the other 11, Bob Doro, sang, and he wrote all of them. so yeah they really struck gold with that guy yeah i mean he was he was that initial genius behind this whole thing yeah and this is another cool thing about uh schoolhouse rock that i noticed um the people involved stayed on for basically the whole run the initial run from 73 to 85 yeah it seemed like a project that everyone enjoyed working on and that was highly collaborative and it just seemed like a good experience i don't think there's like the v h1 special like the dark side of the schoolhouse rock years, you know.

So they move on to, I don't know which one is my favorite, grammar rock or history. But they moved on to grammar rock next. Yeah, that was season two. Yeah, 73 to 74. And we should say, I don't think that these were, like, I don't think there were breaks in the season. I get the impression that from 1973 till 1985 when they had enough episodes. Yeah. They were just running them like every Saturday morning during cartoons. Yeah, I certainly don't remember like breaks.

Yeah. Like it just seems like every week they were there. Right. So 73 and 74 you have Grammar Rock, which debuted. Some people will probably say the biggest of all time, Conjunction Junction. Yeah. That's the one everybody knows. It's a great, great song. A song, as he sang many others, including my all-time favorite, which I'll get to later.

Okay. But I know what it is. I bet you don't. He was Merv Griffin's trumpet player, Jack Sheldon, who just had this voice that's just like... It's the Conjunction Junction. Yeah, it's unbelievable. Yeah.

Very unique guy. And he kind of looked like Will Ferrell to me. Like, he should play him if they did a movie about... They should do a movie about the whole thing, if you ask me, about Schoolhouse Rock. Yeah, I think that'd be interesting. Well, there's no controversy or conflict. It's just two hours of everybody getting along, doing great stuff. He wants to see that.

Right. So Jack Sheldon came along, sang Conjunction Junction. And did you go back and listen to that, like, for this? Oh, yeah. I listen to a lot of these. So that is a sophisticated song. Yeah. If you listen to like the, we remember our poetry episode.

Yeah. If you listen to like the meter and the rhyming pattern, the rhyme scheme, and the slant rhymes they use. Yeah. Like for something that's made for kids, it is not just. rhyme rhyme rhyme rhyme rhyme rhyme rhyme oh yeah rhyme rhyme you know like it's a sophisticated song um and it's pretty pretty cool yeah i think that's i mean i think that's why it worked that was a secret is um it's oh i guess it's that not not talking down to kids yeah and like the music was was good right like if you listen to um i mean those are a little sing-songy but like some of them were like

pop music at the time like the verb song that's one the funniest songs i've ever heard verb that's what's happening yeah and especially that one like I read this great blog post by this African American guy that was talking about how verb like meant so much to him because at the time they didn't have a lot of like cartoons

and stuff that but address the black community at all and so all of a sudden you get this cartoon it's got this super funky music and this kid that looked like him having this great adventure in the city and

it just kind of it's pretty pretty neat thing i think yeah that was season two was grammar right yes so apparently in that same season a lady named lynne errands um was a she was a copy copy department secretary yeah this is where it reminded me a madman just like basically took uh peggy's journey oh okay from like secretary to superstar i've never seen madman yeah it's good i'm rewatching it right now oh really yeah it's that good yeah So, Lynn was, she was a secretary at the advertising agency, and apparently she was playing her guitar on lunch break.

Another reason the 70s were great. Exactly. And who was it that founder, Newell, the creative director guy? Yeah, like in the movie, he's just walking down the hall and here's this beautiful music and stops. He's like, what in the world's going on in there? Right. And it was Lynn Arons. And so they took her and put her on, I guess, part-time on the project.

and they I guess eventually made her a full-time songwriter which is pretty cool yeah she ended up writing 15 of the songs including some of the biggest ones a noun is a person placed her thing great song Interplanet Janet interjections

a victim of gravity about Isaac Newton Interplanet Janet sounds like Rocky Horror if you go back and listen to it yeah it kind of does it bears a real resemblance to it or Rocky Horror sounded like Interplanet Janet well I went and looked Rocky horror was three years before in a planet Janet the movie or the play

the movie okay so the play was even before that was it a play first oh yeah uh meatloaf was even in the play oh yeah before the movie right and not a play I guess musical sure which is a play with songs play with songs and dancing so the next one to come

along was America rock or history rock which kind of vise for the best to me with grammar rock and that one tied into the bicentennial yeah that was big deal which you don't remember but i i remember being a little kid being five years old and uh it took over the country for you know that entire year yeah no there's like a resurgence and colonial emblems and stuff like that you know that if you ever walk past like a very very old person's house today you might see like a flag holder that's a black metal eagle holding like some arrows maybe or something like that that is from 1976 still there like a resurgence in betsy ross and colonial like knickknacks and stuff yeah i was it i was just born but it was there was a it created like a high watermark that i was able to see even you know four five six years later so uh history rock or america rock um featured some

of the best songs mother necessity shot heard around the world uh and no more kings which is maybe my second all-time favorite yeah yeah and that's the one that um there was an album that came out in like 95 96 called schoolhouse rocks i think so schoolhouse rock rocks where they got contemporary artists to cover uh these songs and did you ever listen to that i listened to the pavement one today oh man so I emailed Bob Nostanovich today from Pavement because as I said in the previous episode I tricked him into being my email friend

and I said hey dude I would love to hear if you have any thoughts on No More Kings how you guys were approached if there are any stories what it meant to you what it didn't mean whatever let me know crickets no no he emailed back

and then I said I'll call you on my way to work call on the way to work crickets Yeah, got his voicemail And then as I was coming in the studio He called and left the voicemail saying he was in his minivan Rocking out and he didn't hear the phone ring Oh, that's funny

Which is very funny to me But I told him I'd like to hear what he has to say Because he said he has a tale to tell about that experience Man, we're going to have to record it after this Well, yeah, or if... Maybe it can be like a listener mail Yeah, like if I can get him on tape Then we'll tag it at the end

Okay. If not, if it ends up being an email version or something, I'll just maybe recount it in my own dumb words. Or you could ask them if we could read the email and make a listener mail. Oh, for real? Yeah. Like a real listener mail? All right, it's not a bad idea. So anyway, so listen up for the end for Bob Nostanovich's story about No More Kings.

Because if you listen to that CD, it's like the lemonheads and wean. It's a super 90s CD. Yeah. Moby. moby and they're all most of them are pretty straight ahead until you get to the pavement song and it's just all pavement like malchmus changes words

there's like laser guns at the end and it's just wonderfully pavement yeah like quintessentially pavement yeah like leave it to them to just kind of throw it all out the window and do their own thing yeah I liked it a lot um three ring government I didn't really know that one

that one was good and apparently they So it basically talks about the different branches of the government But puts it in the context of a three-ring circus And it's Really I mean aside from the fact that it compares to the government To a three-ring circus It's not at all offensive

But apparently they sat on that one for years And didn't release it until like 1979 Because they were worried about offending the government Which is a strange thing to worry about Yeah, through today's lens yeah but even still i mean this is like post watergate it's not like everybody was like oh right right you know we couldn't possibly call the government a three ring circus yeah that's true that is weird it seems like that would have been a good time to do it yeah you know uh but the most famous song um from

that year uh by far was sheldon's i'm just a bill is that your favorite no okay um that was uh composed not by Mr. Doro, but by a man named Dave Frischberg. And, I mean, that one was just a mega hit. Sure. It went straight to number one on the billboard charts. It's like, as far as Schoolhouse Rocks goes, that's the cultural icon that signifies the whole thing, I think. Close second would be conjunction junction. Maybe they're tied.

I don't know. But I just feel like I'm just a bill as the most red, recognizable one yeah and it's just amazing when you look back though like the learning that was going on and the teaching that was happening yeah these kids us we were learning how a bill becomes a law right in the in the best way possible like better than any well not any teacher there were great teachers back then I want to say like any dumb teacher that's boring their kids but it it definitely struck a chord with me sure you know yeah and that's how I remember a lot of this stuff and apparently too adults were also noticing school how

Rock at the time supposedly there were plenty of orders this was before video cassettes yeah before they were widely available I guess in the home I'm trying to think of how they would have played them if they didn't have video cassettes but anyway apparently lobbyists and legislators would get in touch with ABC and be like you got to get me a copy of that I'm a bill thing give me a Betamax because I want to show it to my staff to train them on this kind of stuff. Well, I think they asked for cassettes, at least, at the very least, so they could play them the music.

I see. Maybe that's what they meant. Probably. Okay. An 8 track? Yeah. And then there was science rock was the year after that. That was 78 and 79, which was pretty good. Interplanet Janet, victim of gravity.

I really like that one. It is so weird. What? Interplanet Janet. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. And then the telegraph line song, which I think that was written by this orange too I think oh yeah

and that one was really like I mean it was you literally learned about the nervous system and how the body communicates to the brain by listening to that song and that's one that they wanted

to play for med students yeah and they did amazing some of them all right well let's take another break and um geez we'll we'll cover the the sad last season

of schoolhouse rock after this Hey, it's Ed Helms, and welcome back to Snafoo, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Yeah.

Ernie Shackleton sounds like, like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads? Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow. Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched.

You're here. What was that like for you to soft launch into the show? Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today. I forgot whose podcast we were doing. Nick Kroll. I hope. This story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes.

Listen to season four of Snap-Foo with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everybody? This is Snacks from the Trapner's podcast, and we're bringing you the horror every week all October long. Kicking off this month, I'll be bringing you all my greatest fear-inducing horror games from Resident Evil to Silent Hill, me and Tony bringing back fire team on Left for Dead 2. We're just going to be going over some of the greats. Also in October, we'll be talking about our favorite horror and Halloween movie

and figure out why black people always got to die further. The Umbro Reliquary invites any and all fooling, brave enough, to peruse its many curiosities. But take heed, all sales are final. Weekly horror side quests written and narrated by yours truly. With a full episode read and a commentary special. And we will cap it off with. horror movie battle royale Jason versus Freddie

Michael Myers versus the 80th thing with the little tongue muster October we're doing it Halloween style listen to the Trabner's podcast from the Black Effect Podcast network

on the IHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your broadcasts think back to the early 2000s you're flipping through TV channels and then you hear this

I was rooting for you we were all rooting for you how dare you learn something from this but looking back 20 years later, that iconic show so many of us love, it's horrified. Robin, first of all, is too old to be starting a model. She's huge.

I talked to cast, crew, and producers who were there for some of the show's most shocking moments. If you were so rooting for her, what did you help her? With never before heard interviews, the curse of America's next top model examines why this show was so popular and where it all went wrong. We basically sold our souls and they got rich. Listen to the curse of America's Next Top Model on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So Chuck, Schoolhouse Rock for the first four seasons was the epitome of creativity.

Even their process was creative. Yeah. Like the songwriters would, I guess they would say this season our theme is, you know, it's going to be science or going to be grammar or whatever. So go forth and figure this out. And the songwriters would come up with songs and they'd pitch them to the creative team. And so there was this process of creativity. and it started with the creatives.

That's the key here, right? That's what made it just so legitimate and so wonderfully creative this whole time. It started with the creatives, right? Yeah, and they would, pretty cool, they would get them vetted by that Bank Street School of Education so they would make sure everything was like, you know, it was right. Yeah, and then ABC would be like, oh, let me say it.

And then they'd say, oh, I guess it's fine. And then they'd start to storyboard it once they had the lyrics set in stone, right? That was the first four seasons. The fifth season, they said, die, creativity, die! And they reversed the process. And they said, hey, songwriters, here are your assignments now. We think kids should know more about computers. So we're going to just screw this whole thing up, okay?

Yeah, this is a part I don't get. It says the ABC program exec, Squire Rushnell, commissioned this because there was the idea that children were afraid of computers. I guess. I don't remember anything, but they're being, like, excitement about computers. I don't remember any kids being like, I don't want to go near that.

Yeah. I remember kids being like, oh, that's cool. Let me sit down and... Usually it was the parents that were afraid of computers. Well, I think herein lies the problem. Yeah.

With season five. So we should say season five, too, if you notice, we jumped quite a bit from 1979 and 1985. Schoolhouse Rock was running all those years on Saturday mornings. Yeah.

They just weren't any new ones. They were the same ones that they were rerunning of it. Yeah, the classics. In 1985, Squire Rushnell says, give me four episodes, or six, is it four or six, on computers? Yeah, and we're going to call the season a scooter, computer, and Mr. Chips. What do you think of that? So it's what, like a computer with a bag of chips?

It's like, no, Mr. Chips is a computer. Well, what's Scooter Computer? He's just a kid. And there you have it. And they said, well, what about the goodbye Mr. Chips, that great book? And he went, no one's ever read that. What's a book? so uh it was a little confusing we have disdain for him it's a little weird i know i feel bad if that's

not really how it went down but it sounds kind of like that classic story you know sure like an executive takes over the creative and it just goes downhill it's usually how it happens um and i do feel a little bit bad because you know the originals were still involved they got mr doro back on board yeah and uh i think they did the best they could but i think one of the issues is um other seasons you know math and science and history it's all civics it's all baked in like that stuff is classic and didn't change when you're writing songs about uh data processing and basic computer language a couple years later like no it's not relevant anymore right you know yeah so it's sort of that's why no one's ever heard of it plus again they they were like so wait scooter computers

the boy or the computer he's hanging out with right and why is the computer on roller skates yeah Just stuff like that, you know, it was an undignified end to something really great. Agreed. And so they pulled the plug on the whole thing in 1985. They said, hey, this Mary Lou Retton lady, we like her. She's got gumption. She's got apple pie coming out of her ears. Gross.

We love her, and we want to put her on TV. So they put her interstitials on. Yeah, ABC Funfit. Oh, I'll bet that was the same time when Reagan made Arraceals. Arnold Schwarzenegger is, like, fitness czar. Do you remember that? I totally remember that. The presidential fitness test, right?

Yeah. Man, I failed that so many times. Yeah, I think I was always sick that day. It's like, I've got to climb a rope. Yeah. Still to this day, I've never climbed a rope in my life. No. Made it this far.

Yeah. Man, I'm going to be chased by a tiger on the way home. Yeah, I was going to say, that's how you're going to meet your demise one day. You're going to be in like a burning building and a rope's just going to fall from the ceiling like a cartoon. Reagan In the late 80s There was a student at Yukon, go Huskies

That said I want to bring schoolhouse rock back They started a petition I could not find this person's name for the life of me I couldn't either Sorry person But ABC said you know what People want this And I guess it took them a little while

To get around to it But in 1993 They brought it back Rerning All those classic tunes and cartoons and cartoons and added some new stuff

by Bob Doro and the gang Yeah they brought back the originals And this season was called Money Rock And they did a substantial

number of new episodes But again Written and performed by all the original people But a good Starting or 20 years later Yeah And they had things like

750 once a week Which is about Maintaining your budget Tyrannosaurus debt which is about the national debt uh-huh um and plenty of others i remember the tale of mr morton that was another lyn aaron's offering what was that one about i can't remember exactly i didn't go back and re-watch it but i remember he's like lost all his money on scratchoffs or something i don't think so um but you know again the reason why this was that it worked so well is because these

were men and women who were used to selling products for a living and it was just sort of a natural a natural thing for them to do as an ad agency. It seems weird at first when you're like, an ad agency came up with Schoolhouse Rock, but it kind of makes perfect sense when you think about it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, they were selling these ideas to children in ways that were comprehensible to children,

that were approachable by children, and they just kind of took the kid's point of views and packaged it for them, I think, is a good way to put it. Yeah. So besides the schoolhouse, Rock Rock's CD which I still have actually yeah that 90s thing

created a bit of a resurgence of it yeah the resurgence in popularity for sure boy that blind melon three is a magic number was great yeah yeah I didn't hear that one did you like them yeah I think soup their second album is one of the great underrated records of the 90s I don't recall that one

man it was good I think I only heard their first album but they I that was good too they I think they made like the pop charts right out of the gate and just kind of were unfairly labeled as a pop group even though they really weren't they were because a lot more to them no rain song and the catchy video with a little girl and everything yeah yeah soup was good man you should check that out oh well it's very good very sad what happened to him yeah oh deed and they didn't find him for a while right yeah i don't remember that part but maybe i think i think that nobody missed him for a little while

or something like that what a waste yeah um in 1993 though there was another resurgent I guess that was before the CD when they took it to the stage with Schoolhouse Rock Live which kind of started out as most great theater like this in a sort of a basement black box theater in Chicago

and it just grew from there to eventually an off-Broadway run Yeah not just that it started in the basement theater of a vegetarian restaurant in Chicago Just to add that extra little dose to it Yeah, why not? But yeah, it made it on to off-Broadway. Yeah, it ran for four solid years, and then they had a touring version.

I remember wanting to see it, but, and I think I was living in New Jersey at the time. I should have gone and seen it. I think you had no money at the time. I think you still might be able to catch it. There's a group called the Theater Bam, Chicago. Theater Bam, Chicago. And they're still doing shows? They're still touring, as far as I know.

I need to do my free-to-be-you-and-me live show. That's one of my dreams. I talked about that before. Isn't that Rosie Greer one? Yeah. Did he do the whole album or just that one song? Just the one. It was conceived by Marlowe Thomas.

That's pretty great. But, yeah, that was another, like, that one hits me square in the face still from childhood. Right in the bread basket. Right in the bread basket. In 97, they had a 25th anniversary package of VHS tapes. Yeah, so think about this. Like, it goes off the air in 1985, then all of a sudden, 93, 94, 96, 97, there's, like, schoolhouse rock everywhere. It will never die.

No, and I think, like, this was one of the first instances, because, dude, admittedly, Generation X is extremely nostalgic as far as generations go. Yeah. Very nostalgic. I would propose that Schoolhouse Rock was the thing that kicked it off. Oh, yeah? As far as Gen X nostalgia goes, yep. Well, it definitely was something that was so drilled into our consciousness. Like, it's a touchstone.

Right, but I mean, this resurgence of it, I think, is the first example of just how nostalgic as a generation, Generation X is. Yeah, for sure. That's mine. You got Sharknato. I'm predicting that that will be rooted out by historians in years to come. You're going to dig that one out of the vault. maybe at the place of your death like a plaque next to that rope

that you couldn't climb that'll be a memorial I'll be like rope you already forgot in 2013 Kennedy Center had a sing-along for their 40th anniversary, 2,000 people in attendance

pretty amazing I would have done anything to have gone to that and then it's been parodied and homaged over the years and everything from the Simpsons to Saturday Night Live. Did you see Conspiracy Rock? No. Conspiracy theory?

Dude. That was a TV Funhouse bit, right? Yeah, by Robert Smigel. It's one of the all-time greats, man. He nails the conspiracy theory or nails Schoolhouse Rock. Yeah. But it's all about how these major corporations like GE and Westinghouse own the media. They own like ABC, NBC, all these media outlets and how they can use it to shape

opinion and squash opinions that disagree with them or their products and choose what you report on. It is so good. Go watch it right now. It's on YouTube. But apparently there's a bit of a conspiracy theory around

it as well because it aired on the actual Saturday Night Live episode, but then when they re-ran it and I think released that episode on DVD, it wasn't there. They edited it out. And supposedly it was just because

Lauren Michaels didn't think it was funny there's just no way that that's all it was it was so I'm thinking no it was such a smack in the pace to NBC and like all the other ones yeah yeah

well and they just had one a couple years ago on that was an homage to I'm just a bill that was pretty great too yeah this was better you gotta see it man yeah I have a feeling I have and I just don't know it he nailed it i'll let you know i'll text you and say i have seen it and you'll say who's this

i don't have your number in my phone so i i actually ran across a little bit as great as schoolhouse rock is i actually ran across criticism of it what yeah oh boy are you gonna should just leave the room maybe about to get angry you might want to all right so they were teaching to kids in ways that kids could understand. Awesome ways. And when you're coming at them with multiplication or grammar, whatever. Sure. But apparently, especially with the history rocks or America rock season, depending on what you

want to call it, that's where the criticism tends to come out. So there's one called elbow room. Did you remember that one? Got to get you some elbow room. Right. Where it's about there's so many white settlers that we just got to spread west. word. Oh, okay.

I'd see where this is going. Not a single Native American is shown in this westward spread. Yeah. They actually mentioned that it's God's will manifest destiny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the whole thing kind of, I don't want to say it came under fire because it's not like everybody's like, oh, yeah, elbow room, forget Schoolhouse Rock. Yeah.

Very few people are, but there is criticism of Schoolhouse Rock in that it really kind of fed American children this, the popular line on. things yeah and it was just exactly the kind of stuff where when you grow up you're like wow I was really misled right this was first explained to me as a child yeah yeah so well we talk about that a lot too about how schools especially in like the 70s and 80s uh whitewashed a lot of stuff yeah so this was part of that I can see that I mean it was and I'm not justifying it but it was definitely of the times for sure you know which is why you know I think that they that these creatives were like,

we can't say this to kids. Right. You know, I think that there's definitely been more of an awakening in recent years, but I want to know this. There wasn't a trail of to your song in other words.

Right, yeah. And this is another name for what they were talking about. Like, forced removal was turned into, got to get some elbow room. You know? So catchy, though.

I want to know, Chuck, because I'm not in school and I don't have a child in school. I don't have a child at all. Well, I have a four-legged child. But are they still

misleading kids like they did when we were young, do we just assume now that we know the deal that they don't do that any longer, or are they still doing it? So any history teachers out there that are like fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade, because that's what I remember really being just overtly lied to. And then as we got a little past that, they started to be like, well, maybe the Native Americans didn't really want to leave. Right. And then it just got a little more legitimate so i want to know teachers out there let us know i bet the answer we'll get is that we've come a long way and it probably depends on your district oh yeah and maybe even your teacher yeah i can see that um i bet there's not like a one sweeping answer for that one but there's

definitely been progress you know i would guess you know who'd let us know is tyler murphy yeah he would know let us know well i know what he's doing he's doing all the right things oh yeah he's up on the desk yeah yeah opening minds great stuff so you ready for my favorite yes please uh rufus xavier sasparilla

what was that one about pronouns oh yeah I have a hard time expressing how much joy the song brings me still yeah I listen to it a lot yeah if I'm ever down

that's the song that's pretty great it's amazing it's the word play is unbelievable and it's another Sheldon song right like how it's very fast

how he like every I looked up to see if people did it live and stuff and everyone always slows it down because nobody can oh is that fast well it's just very complex

and the whole idea of the song is is the complexity of all these nouns that you can replace with pronouns I got you I got a friend named Rufus Xavier Sasparilla and you know did they go to the zoo

and there's an Ardvark and an armadillo and all these big words he's like i could say that or could say he did this and we did that and she said this nice uh yeah it's a word that takes the place of a noun like kangaroo can we play it you know what we wouldn't because of law uh-huh they should make a actually one about copyright infringement right it was served out as a bill yeah so we probably can't play enough of it to do it justice so i just say go and listen to that song in full because it's delightful all right i'll do that man they go to the zoo there's animals they all pile on a bus they yeah this girl and rufus xavier sasparilla they yeah exactly it takes a place of now uh you got anything

else no but uh there there probably will be a tag on this one uh with mr nostanovich or or with me just recounting his tale gotcha of no more kings so uh if you want to know more about schoolhouse rock go read this article on how stuff works.com, and since I said that, it may be time for listener mail with Bob Nostanovich. All right, so now as promised, or as hopefully promised, we have via telephone in the studio, Mr. Bob Nostanovich, who is actually a member of two of my favorite bands of all time, both pavement and silver Jews. And it's a real treat to have you here, Bob. We did a show on Schoolhouse Rock and talked kind of at length about pavement's efforts toward that, I guess, late 90s CD, and got in touch with you, and you said you had a couple of stories to tell.

It was a, we were in Memphis. We were supposed to be making a Silver Jews record, and the singer of Silver Jews, David Berman, decided he did not want to make the record, and he went home. And we'd already booked a week of studio, silver juice had and then subsequently we were Stephen and myself and Steve West were unceremoniously fired from Silver Juice that's beside the point we were kind of like at all the studio time that David was supposed to pay for sort of bail them out pavement sort of took that and made a record so Stephen Stephen thankfully had three songs and we made

Pacific Trim EP but I guess most significantly in regards to this project Jackie Ferry, dear friend of ours was supervising the schoolhouse rock population and she gave us our choice of songs and it was

fairly obvious to us that no more kings had a lot of appeal. It was always our favorite one. We were kids Boston Tea Party theme kind of we were able to use the vocal stylings of Steve West to our advantage I believe for the first time in band history what did he do for that song and it all turned out to be we were very pleased with it like we're very pleased with all of it but and I think that it's an outstanding

compilation and it's one of those things in pavement's time that I feel like we actually did a good job on. Now, what did Steve West do for that one? He played drums, and then all the deep voice rambling in the background. Ah. Mostly him. He's got an incredible voice, speaking voice. He's one of the people that you can hear from 150 feet away with a win.

We've got a beautiful deep voice. So we, he's doing all like the. ranting and raving. It was all pretty jubilant. We had a good time. It was the only time the three of us ever recorded together as payment. But I feel like we made a good choice, and we just loved that song. It was one take.

Oh, really? It was an overdub. Yeah, one take on the instrumental and just some vocal dubbing. I probably took eight minutes. Wow. And it was just the three of you? you? Oh yeah. Yeah, just the three of us were the only ones there because we thought it was to be silver shoes and that was in silver shoes. So Canberg and Ibold were at home. And I don't

even know if they were contacted. We made that Pacific Trim EP, that song Give It a Day during the same session and a couple other songs are on the B side of that thing. But now, the school house rock was this kind of thing and probably in mind like, well, we have anything to do. It seems like I got this one song. He's like,

well, we have to do this thing for Jackie. We have to do this thing for Jack. We probably sort of planning on doing it anyways, but Jackie at the time was a BJ on MTV. Uh-huh. And she later became our, um,

she was the nanny for Courtney and Kurt for Francis Bean, Cobain. Oh, wow. And then she was a tour manager for, pavement. In fact, she has, she's been battling cancer for over a decade.

But one interesting artifact that she owns is the actual cardigan button-up cardigan sweater that Kurt Cobain wore it in the famous MTV unplugged performance. Oh, wow.

Holy cow. Yeah. So, yeah, she's quite a character, but it was her project, and you know, she was a good friend, and we wanted to do the best we could for her, and

didn't really care about anything else. We didn't even realize, we didn't know whether there was a tiny thing, like a limited edition of like 200 or whatever, but funnily enough, my wife, that was the first payment song she ever heard because her sister... Oh, really? Yeah, her sister...

bought the school house rock thing when her sister was like 14 and what my wife went would have been about 10 and she heard that as first time she ever heard pavement that's pretty funny so yeah she likes it we were talking a little bit about um just your take and kind of just the different takes of all the artists on that compilation and a lot of them were pretty straightforward and um i think i really like the pavement one the most because it was uh It was kind of the perfect mix of very straightforward at times and then just totally pavement-pavement-tized at times. Yeah, it's very, we don't, I mean, we'd be straightforward, I don't think we're kind of good enough to do things straightforward. Like, I think if you think of a band like Nickel Creek covering our song spit on a stranger, they can, and they kind of Americana did or whatever.

Sure. Like, in order to do like straight things, you've got to be. you got to be good or else you're going to kind of humiliate yourself. Like, for example, like, R.E.M. doing, like, Pilons crazy. They could do that pretty straight. Right. Because they have that sound. They just, you know, but I think, like, I've heard a lot of cover songs where it's a great song.

And, like, somebody with a great voice, you know, usually, like, a female will sing it pretty straight. Just the fact that it's somebody with a gorgeous voice, you know, covering a classic. It sort of works. No, none of us are good enough to do that. We had to devise our own take on it, you know. Well, I thought it totally worked. Was the schoolhouse rock, I mean, was that something that you guys were into, or was there much decision? I mean, besides the fact that it was your friend asking, was it something that you thought was kind of cool?

Did you feel like you should do it? Yeah, I thought it was a great idea. At the time, we thought it was a great idea. And at that point in our lives, I'm guessing it was like 96, 97, somewhere in there. Yeah, yeah. We've forgotten, you know, like that point where, you know, we hadn't seen or heard any of that. The only one that I could really remember off the top of my head at the time was like Conjunction Junction, you know. Yeah, of course.

What's your function? But, like, you know, those are some of the first songs when we were little kids, like under 10 years old that got stuck in our head. Yeah. So, yeah, I just thought it was, I mean, if anything, the only negative I thought it might be a little bit childish and corny, but, you know, as it came together, it just seemed like a very worthwhile project to me. And, you know, she was pretty earnest, Jackie, and I'm happy it all worked out.

I think it's actually become like sort of a one of the more significant things that pavement ever did sort of outside the realm of pavement. Yeah, for sure. Of still being pavement, like, you know, I don't even know. I'm the kind of person in regards to that band that would find out about things last.

So I lived in Louisville and I was always at the racetrack and, you know, people would say, hey, you know, you're going to be making a new album in like two months. I wouldn't know anything about it. Or like, you know, you're going on tour, you're starting in London. I would like, you know, I just,

wouldn't even know and like so anything that rolled through the door there like request to do stuff I never knew about them you know unless we're gonna do them you know so right you can see where I was on the pavement the pavement totem pole well man I always call you favorite pavement secret weapon yeah yeah I think there was something about your addition to the band that really just sort of mixed everything up, whether it was, you know, the percussive elements or just you coming in with your unique take on backing vocals. Yeah, no, I think I presented the element of really not entirely knowing what I was doing

and that was true. And the funny thing about it is, like, even at this point in my life, from people who are completely unaware of pavement, mostly from this industry, the horse racing, industry like heard i was i was in a band even a successful band they can't even they just doesn't make any sense to them and they'll also um you know they'll have to like look it up on google or whatever to realize that you know we were actually like a band that made records and stuff and then um and then the funny thing is they'll always ask me to you know if it's muso types or something I'm like a one thing I'm really sort of unaware of in the human race I have no feel

for people that like kind of collect musical gear and take music really really seriously and like playing music really seriously and like jam and like are just really like have this incredibly dry approach to like like gear heads who like are really really serious like yeah people ask me to jam and I don't I mean My idea of, I don't jam. I mean, I can't imagine jamming. Like, what does that even mean? Right.

No, I'm the same way. It's always awkward. Like, it's always awkward. Like, people ask me to do something. And then I'll be like, oh, man, like, you know, like, I got to figure out a way to get out of this, you know. Because, like, A, my skills, like, they're not going to really not going to believe I'm in a band. Like, once I show up with, like, whatever, I have, two drums or whatever, and start hitting them. And they're going to be like, there's, there's, no way this guy was in a band.

Like, this is a fake, you know, like. So, very strange. Very strange. Well, you just got to say, no, man, I'm the secret weapon, and the secret weapon doesn't jam. Yeah, like the spice and, like, some sort of bowl of burgu or something. I don't even know. I was just, like, the whole experience was pretty magical. It still doesn't really make that much sense to me, you know.

Yeah. I just, I really enjoyed it for sure. But in regards to that specific project, that's something that went, like, really smoothly. Like, it never got to the point. I mean, it was literally like, Stephen, I'm sure, probably worked on it that morning or something. But when they press record on that Slash Rock thing, that thing was a humdinger. It was in and out the door, Doug Easy. It's like, that's good, you know.

Yeah, that's probably a good approach for something like that, because you don't want to overthink it. and then it becomes a thing, and it's stressful, perhaps. So I think that approach to just get in there and knock it out was probably the way to go. It certainly worked out in this case. Yeah, and it's a song that has no history within the context of the band. You know, it's not like something that we've been working on or something that have been sitting there, something that have been played live. Yeah.

You know, I mean, I think that we had to, you know, pavementize it and give it a bit of an original spin because... That's the only way we can really do it. I mean, like, you know, like we were talking about with a straight thing, you know, you can't, you got to have significant. Yeah, not that, like, you know, Stephen and Steve West aren't talented. I'm not going to like, those guys are great, but, like, in fact, the fact they're able to, like, improvise. Right. Something like that's pretty cool.

So, but I remember being really, really happy that Steve West, who had never really been used. in pavement outside of just playing drums that he was that he sort of fit fantastically on that that recording. So I sort of love that about No More Kings. I love hearing him in there. Nice. All right, well thanks, Bob. I appreciate your Thank you, Chuck. Telling us these stories and

I'm going to think of about a hundred more reasons to have you on in the future. Yeah, anytime. I'm going to call this one sad yet happy email Hey guys my name is Sam I wanted to send you an email thanking you for your show The podcast is actually a rediscovery for me My dad used to play it

Back in 2009 And we would drive up to the mountain to go skiing A very fond memories of laughing And nerding out with my dad and brothers After a great day on the slopes Can't believe you guys are still going strong After eight plus years There is a little more to my rediscovery of your show

though that I wanted to share It's been four and a half years since one of my brothers, who was an amazing skier, died tragically to suicide. Since I was in college at the time, it didn't have enough time to properly grieve. Recently, I've been mulling through many painful memories that I ignored in those first three years. However, your show unexpectedly brought back really happy ones. It has reminded me the fun adventure and learning our family enjoyed while listening to your show when we are skiing. I remember laughing hysterically with my family at your jokes, rolling my eyes when my brothers and dad would try to comment on your show to sound smart

because it was so creepy, one of your favorite episodes of ours was the one on cannibalism. Being a high schooler at the time, I also really liked the show on flirting, because I thought I could put it into practice. Needless to say, it didn't really work. What?

This month I went home for a week to visit my parents and I went skiing with my mom and dad for the first time since my brother died. It was very painful, but also unimaginably special. When my family and I are on the mountain, and I feel like I can encounter my brother as he was when he was healthy and full of life. I could picture him

diving down a slope that was way too steep with the most enormous grin on his eager face. All in all, it was a great day. So I just want to say thank you for the hard work and providing interesting topics to fill my time, making me laugh, but also inadvertently helping me cherish a special time in my life.

Man. That was heavy. That is from Sam and she sends hugs. Sam, that is fantastic. Yes, thank you very much for letting us know. We appreciate that and our best to your whole family. Absolutely. If you want to get in touch with us like Sam did and just lay one on us, we appreciate it.

Lay it on us. Send us an email to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, it's Ed Helms, host of Snafoo, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons.

Wait, stop. What? Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Shearer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan. Clepper, listen to Season 4 of Snafu with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the one, the only, Cardi B.

My marriage, I felt the love dying. I was crying every day. I felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had. This shit was not given to me. I'll work my ass off for me. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everybody, it's snacks from the trap nerds and all October long. We're bringing you the horror.

We're kicking off this month with some of my best horror games to keep you terrified. Then we'll be talking about our favorite horror in Halloween movies and figuring out why black people always die further. And it's the return of Tony's horror show, SideQuest written and narrated by yours truly. We'll also be doing a full episode reading with commentary. And we'll cap it off with a horror movie Battle Royale. Open your free I-HeartRadio app and search trap nurse podcast. And listen now. This is an I-Heart podcast.