The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Katy Tur

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

Katy Tur joins Andy Richter to talk about growing up in LA, going into journalism, and her book Rough Draft.

Hi, everybody. It's Andy Richards here with another episode of The Three Questions, the podcast you've come to know. You're supposed to say and love, but I just said to know, because I don't know. Do you love this? I mean, you're here. You must like it. And I'm very excited because I get to talk to one of my favorite journalists, you know, news people, Katie Turr from MSNBC. How are you? Hi, Andy. I was going to add and love to your intro because to know what is to love it. Thank you very much. No, it's I just tend to, you know, it's the Midwestern self-deprecation thing, which is actually like humility can be one of the most self-aggrandizing things you can do, especially performative humility. It really it really, you know you know that or a cry for help yeah the one that my favorite is people and it's all la people who make these big shows about

talking about gratitude which is like it's like well if you were so grateful you don't have to like tweet about it i know i mean uh you know i mean because you are it's like, well, if you were so grateful, you don't have to like tweet about it. I know. I mean, you know, I mean, because you are. It's like not only are you getting the points for being grateful, but you're also telling everybody how you're also telling everybody how fucking great your life is. Yeah. And how great your life is. Yes. I have all this wonderful shit. So grateful.

So grateful for my portion. Really down to earth for the bubble I live in. Well, anyhow, you're from out here. You're used to this bullshit town. Oh, and now I live in New York. What does it say about me? What does it say about the town, I guess? I don't know.

I mean, well, I mean, well, there. Let's talk about how do you feel about that difference? I, you know, I love L.A. the way that I can't not love L.A. It feels like it is a part of me. I love the eucalyptus trees. I love the way the dew smells early in the morning. I love tacos that come on a corn tortilla with cilantro and onions and don't have cheese on them. I love driving down Sunset with my windows down listening to Tom Petty.

I love driving down Sunset with my windows down, listening to Tom Petty. I mean, there are parts of L.A. that I feel so deeply with and connect so deeply with that I, you know, I worry that my kids will never really know me because they don't know L.A. How could they know me if they don't know where I grew up? That being said, I found L.A. to be difficult. I grew up in a really posh part of LA. I mean, it was less posh then than it is today. Today, it's crazy. There's a Chanel boutique in my hometown. Which hometown? The Palisades. And I'm from the Palisades, you know, that was depicted on Curb Your Enthusiasm with Morse. Right. The Palisades now looks a bit like Disneyland, and it's really weird and unfamiliar to me. That's Rick Caruso, right?

It's a Rick Caruso thing. And I actually, you know, before he was running, and I'm making no judgment on his campaign or his ability as a politician, but they were doing this. There was a farmer's market at the Palisades, and they were doing this presentation about, this is what it's going to look like it's going to be so great it's just like the grove and i remember just arguing with the kid doing the presentation saying you're going

to ruin it it's going to be horrible get out of here it's going to be just like the grove exactly it's going to be just like the grove the grove is nice because it's where it is. It's like, you don't want to live in the Grove, you know? Yeah. So anyway, I grew up in this very, very happy, posh little neighborhood. And I don't know. I just always felt like when I was in LA, I never fit in. Like I was never carrying the right purse and I was never driving the right car. And I, I don't know, I didn't love

like that you drive through neighborhoods in Los Angeles. I mean, it's a big melting pot, they say, but you barely interact with anybody that isn't in your direct social circle. And in New York, you get in the subway and everyone's on the subway. The banker's on the subway, the mayor's on the subway, you know, the bank teller is on the subway. Everybody is on the subway. And I like that about New York, you're a forced interaction. Yeah, I am totally with you, because out here, too, it's like you go from your air conditioned box to your air conditioned box to get it into another air conditioned box. So the chances for interaction are very small. And I like, you know, like you said, but like to me, I was always struck by it doesn't matter how wealthy they are. They still have to

smell urine in the summer. They still I have their nostrils full of the stench of urine. Let me tell you, there is no better way to feel alive than the smell of warm, rotting urine in the summer. Yeah, the heat coming off the pavement, the combining. Oh, man. I think it's a sweet, sweet smell of success. Right. That's one of the most humanizing things we can do as people. So, well, now, do you think when you say you don't fit in, I mean, first of all,

knowing a little, I know a little bit about Los Angeles, having lived here for 20 years, that neighborhood too, is a particularly kind of snobby, snobby neighborhood. Oh, I don't think it was growing up. I'm not even talking about the Palisades particularly. I'm talking about, I don't know, I went to posh private high schools. Um, which one I went to Brentwood and I got a great education. Um, a really top-notch a plus education. I had some incredible teachers and I also have friends that I made there that are my friends for life. But you know, the kids that I grew up with were like they came from backgrounds that I couldn't. I mean, this is going to sound like I'm complaining.

I'm not. I grew up in a nice background for the most part, too, in some ways. But it just felt like they were part of this echelon that you could never reach. And yeah, I don't know. It was weird. It was weird. I just think mostly I just never felt like I was I was I quite fit in. And I what I loved about New York is I could walk out of my apartment in my pajamas. I could walk out of my apartment in a ball gown. I could walk out of my apartment in an Elmo costume and nobody would look sideways at me. It would be normal. I liked that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well now when you were in school i mean what what sort of group did you

fit into was there sort you know i don't know i guess i was like was there and you know i thought i was cool but i think i was a bit of a dork i wanted to be cool i mean i think i was i want to think that i was part of the the more thoughtful sarcastic group of kids that was my niche niche yeah yeah yeah um i took a lot of pictures i remember i had my dad loved photography and he instilled a love of photography in me and you know i had a had a canon camera sony camera and i would um or nikon and i would take pictures of everybody in class and i thought it was cool you know who wouldn't want a photo of themselves and there was one time where a couple of the girls in my class looked at me and they were like, ugh, you're always taking pictures. You're such a nerd.

And it was like this one moment. And I don't know why, but it really stuck with me and made me feel ashamed. And I just remember thinking, like, screw you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, and especially now, like what kids now, especially girls, I'm sure girls in the Palisades are practically fucking cinematographers. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. With their cameras. I know. Yeah. And their ring lights and their, you know,

like knowing where to hold the camera and, you know, I mean, and you're you know like knowing where to hold the camera and you know i mean and you're talking about ring lights you should look at my face right now and the the tomato red that i have because i don't have i don't have a ring light you don't have your ring light yeah yeah i should have yeah no i well i'm in my daughter's bedroom because uh the cleaning person is here today so you know i did i took the like the the stuffed animal off the bed just so it would you know there was so it looked more adult okay good job yeah yeah see that well and also the one direction poster i think is great oh my god she would be so offended there's no one

direction poster here she would be so offended that was the hansen poster that was my day That was the Hanson poster. That was my day. Was that your day? Yeah. Now, not to darken the subject, but you had a pretty rough growing up at home, though. It was a tumultuous household. And you sort of, you go into that a lot in the book, your new book, which is Rough Draft, which is sort of like a memoir of, well, you know, everyone knows what a memoir is. Memoir is your life, you know?

And do you think that contributed somehow to like this? This feeling of discomfort? Yeah, I do. I do. I think my, and going back and trying to excavate my life, which at the ripe old age of 38 is kind of laughable. I went back and I tried to understand how I grew up and tried to confront some of the stuff that I had been running away from physically. I live in New York and not in LA. It was, as you said, a tumultuous childhood. There were really, really great moments, truly spectacular, unique, one-of-a-kind moments that I feel lucky to have experienced. And there was a lot of love in my family that was genuine and real.

But that's exactly what made trying to go back and understand it so complicated because at the same time, there was a lot of anger and there could be emotional abuse, manipulation, and there was sometimes physical violence involved with it. And I think in looking at my friends' families, I would see kids whose parents were married and didn't seem to fight all that much. Who, you know, there was, I crashed my car a few times on sunset. And one of the times I was so afraid to tell my dad about it. So I was so afraid of the rage he would get into that. I went to my friend's house and I, I basically just hated her house and had her dad deal with my dad.

And I remember thinking, yeah, house and had her dad deal with my dad. And I remember thinking, yeah, I just remember thinking like, what must these people think of me? And maybe they didn't think anything of it. Maybe they didn't judge me personally. But I ran away because I wanted to be a person who didn't have all of that following her around. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's certainly understandable. I mean, and it's like, you know, my ex-wife has a story of getting in a wreck in her dad's car and calling him and saying, dad, I've been in a wreck. And his first statement was, you know how much I love that car. Like, no, not, not how are, I mean, you can laugh about it now because it's, it's from the viewpoint, especially when you become a parent, it's, it's just like,

that is just bizarre. What a bizarre thing to say. And, and and really so like it just lays naked just what why are you doing this why did you have children yeah this is like and this is what your priorities are this is you know in a pinch this is what you think is yourself you know what's those memories those those kind of just completely ludicrous or insensitive moments that that become good fodder for storytelling later in life right right sure and that you end up laughing about because like what are you gonna cry exactly exactly exactly and i mean this is the sort of stuff that um the stuff i go back go to try to figure out in the book i mean it is that kind of stuff. It's stuff that I, you know,

would tell in a funny way to my friends here, like little snippets of it, not, you know, the uglier stuff and we'd laugh because what else are you going to do? Yeah. Well, was there a something that sort of triggered you wanting to tell the story and tell it as a book? Yes. Remember we were going through a pandemic? Oh, yeah, that thing.

Sure. So in the middle of it, you know, back at the time when everyone was so freaked out, they didn't want to leave their house. And, you know, I was washed a head of garlic with dish soap. Remember that? I watched a head of garlic. Oh, my God.

To find out that that was all a waste of time. It's just infuriating because I was not washing my groceries. Like I supposedly should have, like, I'm not windexing the box of cereal or whatever. And I always felt like, Oh my God, I'm going to get it. And then to find out later, like, shit, I didn't need to feel guilty at all. That was ridiculous. I washed the boxes. I started to lose it I mean going into the supermarket I was wearing masks and a hood and glasses I'm like going in hazmat suit yeah yeah um so in the middle of this I uh I started to feel really isolated I was broadcasting my show from my basement um I didn't see anybody but my husband and my, at the time he was two,

I was pregnant with my second kid. And I just wonder, am I going to lose my job? Is the business going to crater? And then I started to think, I'm doing this job and I'm talking to everybody about a deadly virus, but I live in a country that can't agree on a life or death issue. They can't even agree if the virus exists. And I started to wonder, is journalism doing good anymore? Am I doing good anymore as a journalist? Is my life as it is currently being lived worth it? I really started to spiral. And where do I go next? What am I doing? Like, how do I, how do I get out of this? And my mom in the middle of it sent me, a documentary was made on my parents and their business, their careers.

And in the process of making the documentary, they digitized all of the thousands and thousands of hours of news footage that they had captured over the years. And alongside all of that news footage was all of my childhood videos, because the news camera in one second would be filming a police pursuit, and in the next would be filming my brother and I in the helicopter going for a ride. And. And so it basically had my life story, my inheritance on it. And I realized that, you know, I was scared to open it up because I knew I would find some great stuff in it. But I also knew I'd find some of the scary stuff that I didn't want to talk about. I didn't even want to tell my husband.

But I realized that, you know, as everyone does at some point, that you got to confront your past to figure out what your future is. as everyone does at some point, that you've got to confront your past to figure out what your future is. Had you been through therapy to kind of confront these things much? Yeah, I had. When I moved to New York, I spent a year with a therapist. And I would walk in and I would cry my eyes out from start to beginning or start to finish. I would just ball, ball, ball, ball. And it was all focused on my dad. And I realized that I had been harboring so much resentment and so much

anger. And after about a year, you know, I was also in a relationship that I shouldn't be in. It was like a mental mess. And after about a year, I just like, I threw up my arms and I said, I'm exhausted by this. I can't do it anymore. And I started to, you know, change things in my life and things started to get better. It wasn't until I got older and I threw a potato at my husband's head, which sounds funny, you know, but I threw, I was so angry at him over dishes that I threw a potato at his head. And I thought, oh my God, you cannot, you got to stop this.

This is, this is your dad. And you're not passing this on to your kids. And also like your husband might be okay with it. My husband might be okay with it right now. He might not be happy about it, but we'll forgive you. If you keep doing this, he's not going to forgive you. Yeah. And did the potato hit him?

No, I bat him. Oh, see, that would be that's a difference right there, too. I mean, you know, we're this we're playing this for laughs, but it is it is true. Like if the potato had landed, it's a totally different thing than like, oh, ha ha. Remember that time? Yeah. Potato at you and it triggered in me like huge regret and, you know, giant red alarm bells and, you know, flashing red lights. And he had to go on morning television with a black eye and had to explain

that his wife threw a potato at him. Yeah. Yeah. It would have been an issue. Yeah. Now it was, was you know when you started that therapy what was what how was this like what was manifesting itself in your life that that made you sense like i need to talk to somebody about this stuff this is this the first time that i did therapy yeah yeah um i so i moved to new york i'd fled los angeles and just to give people some backstory

here my parents you probably knew them if you lived in la um in the 80s or 90s and you saw any police pursuit on television um they started a company called los angeles news service my dad was the pilot and reporter my mom shot all the the videos. So my dad, Bob Turr, would report the live events as they were happening. The OJ chase, the Reginald Denny beating, Madonna giving the camera, the bird on her wedding day to Sean Penn, my parents' footage. And my mom would hang out of the helicopter with a big giant camera on her shoulder and capture the images below. literally hang out of the helicopter just with the seat belt basically strapping her in um did they invent that they invented it you could say that they if they didn't invent it outright they popularized it

there there were news helicopters before but they weren't used every day they might have been the second police pursuit i can't nail this down uh but they also might have been the second police pursuit. I can't nail this down. But they also might have been the first police pursuit. They were the ones, though, that that did it live and proved that it was compelling television. So much so that when the news broke in with this with this chase, they broke into Matlock. The ratings beat Matlock. And that's when that's when the station knew it had a hit on its hands. Get us for these police chases. Right. And now every time there's one.

Oh, yeah. You know, every TV is tuned to it. I've got a hot tip for you. If you're going to lead the police on a chase, head toward an airport because there's a no-fly zone there and the helicopters can't find you. Or to an airport or to a parking garage or parking garage at an airport even better right you're welcome hey you're welcome yeah you're welcome yeah on the lammers i'm joking i'm obviously joking uh well there's a friend of mine lives in a neighborhood that's kind of it backs up against against a golf course and it's near the 101.

And he said that it's like where police kind of try and push people into his neighborhood for high-speed chases because then they can, it's like it becomes a little trap that they can trap them in. Oh, smart. It's like something they don't reveal when you buy a house in there, but there it is. You're gonna get very familiar

with the pit maneuver my friend yeah yeah can't you tell my love's growing so did i mean i imagine this means your parents life is not fully their own no No, no, no, no, no. They live by the police scanner. My mom would sleep with it in her ear. And she would know there was a story by the change in pitch of the officer on the radio or the fire department official on the radio if their pitch changed and the chatter got um louder or more animated um she would wake up and she'd realize there was a story and they'd be out the door so it happened in the middle of the night it would happen during meals i mean i wow we learned to eat our meals within you know minutes right speed eating because you never knew when you were gonna

get called out you'd wanted to you wanted to Have to rush out. Yeah. Where was the chopper, like, in relation to your house? So we lived in the Palisades. The helicopter was at Santa Monica Airport. It was, you know, 15 minutes without traffic, 25 usually with. You could usually bypass a lot of the traffic. And they could get in the air very quickly. Very quickly. And were there days when they just would kind of be up there waiting for

something to happen well you don't generally fly and wait for something to happen because the jet fuel costs so much money but they would be um they'd be hanging around listening to the scanners at the airport on big days like the day the riots broke out the day that they announced the verdicts for uh rodney king these they announced that the officers who beat up Rodney King were acquitted. The city knew that something could happen. So everybody was on alert. My parents were in the air thinking that if the officers were acquitted, some unrest might break out in South Central. They happened to be over, I think, the intersection of Florence and Normandy. And that is where stuff did break out. I mean, there was

looting and fires being set. Then a guy got pulled out of a red gravel truck and my mom captured as people threw all manner of things at his head, including a brick. And I mean, they just knew the city so well at that moment that they could anticipate how. Angelenos would react and where it would react to this. Do you think I mean, it just occurred to me, it's never occurred to me before, but do you think that maybe Florence and Normandy became a center of the activity because they were overhead? Right. Because there was a chopper up there. No, I don't know. I, I, that's a good question. Do they, do you want to get captured on, on film doing illegal stuff, trying to kill a guy?

I guess that's true. Well, you know, I don't know. I mean, the, the guys were all, they were all convicted. Yeah. Yeah. Well, um, now um now you you this is a family business so i imagine you and your brother are being towed along with this kind of stuff and you know i mean i hope you guys weren't in the chopper that no no no no we were not in the chopper that day we um we went in the chop a lot, not on some of the scarier stories, not always at least, but we've been in the chopper over fires and I think over some pursuits, definitely over fires. I remember we would get so close to the flames or the flames would just

frankly be so hot for these Malibu fires that you could feel it on your shins because the door would be open and you just you would feel the wind gusts and the and the flames almost licking at the um at the helicopter skids it was wild it was really wild but then there were also really fun days where we would go to Catalina for lunch or we go to Santa Barbara for lunch or we would just go buzz the early morning surfers along um and the beach goers along the beach. Or just go, you know, like, let's go check out the Hollywood sign for fun. I mean, there were all sorts of things that we did in that helicopter that were, you know, just joy rides for the kids. Special stuff. Yeah, yeah.

So does that mean, I mean, was it kind of just expected that you were going to kind of get into that line of work? No, early on, my dad would point the camera at me and there's a great video of me as a four-year-old, I think, or three-year-old giving a live news report. He kept saying, you know, talk about the lady on the news. And I looked at him funny and he said, give a live report to KNX 1070. And I clicked and I said, there was a fire in San Diego. And I went on and just imagined what story it might be. So early on, he'd put a camera on me or we were driving when I was older. He'd say, do a live report about what you're seeing in front of you. Just like talk off the top of your head about the world around you. And I didn't like it at all.

I hated it by that time. I was so annoyed by it. And what age is this? This is like 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. I mean, he did it for years. And I think it was actually probably pretty good training because I do that for a living now. But at the time, I thought it was not cool and not fun. And I thought my dad was so annoying.

And then the 13, 13 is rough. And then the business fell apart for them when I was 14, just completely fell apart. And at that point, I had no desire to follow in their footsteps. I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a lawyer, something stable, something that everybody would always need. When you say the business fell apart, is that because news outlets started getting their own choppers? My parents were unparalleled in their ability to scoop the competition. Hands down. They were better than anybody else.

But my dad had this rage within him. And the rage would come out at my mother. It would come out sometimes at us. It would come out at the people that he worked with. It would come out at people in positions of authority. I mean, there's video of my dad getting into like fisticuffs with cops. There's audio of my dad saying to my mom in the helicopter, I don't know how to communicate with you except through violence. And a lot of the time as these like very tense fights would happen and my dad would be berating my mom um the stations would

be able to hear it because we'd be feeding video back and the and the comms would be on they could hear it and i think he just became too much of a live wire too much of a liability for the station they don't want to deal with them any longer they could hire somebody else they could get their own chopper they might not be first to every story but but they didn't need Los Angeles News Service. Wow. Now, did that affect the finances at home? Oh, yeah. They never bought a house. We were always renting, but they went from decent paychecks because the stations didn't pay them a lot, but they made a lot of money on the footage. They owned everything. So they could resell it.

Yeah, yeah. It went from, you know, a living that could afford two Porsches, renting a nice house in the Palisades, two private school tuitions, trips to Hawaii in the summer and to Mammoth in the winter. We went from that to not really being able to afford anything. The Porsches left. The helicopter was gone. The hangar was gone. The rent would go unpaid for months. Bill collectors started calling. We learned not to answer the phone. They got rid of our healthcare. I mean, TV, no more cable. Yeah. Wow. That's, yeah, that's, that's, that's having lived in a household as a child with a widely variable income. I can relate to that. And I know like, again, the stress of that, the stress of that landing on you, especially in high school, you know, you're, you're going out. I mean,

cause I, when you say I learned at an early age, I don't know if I should be saying, I learned at an early age, uh, to sense a bill collector. Like I got a bill collector radar at an early age. And in thinking back on that, thinking, oh my God, I. Because remember when the phone. I wouldn't let my kids answer the phone if I thought a bill collector. Remember when the phone would ring and you'd tense up.

You know, there wasn't, there wasn't excitement for me that who might be on the other line, who might be calling. Could it be one of my friends, a family member, whatever, a guy that I like? It would be, oh, it's going to be somebody who's calling about the credit card bill or somebody. Or maybe it's our landlord calling about the rent. And I remember just having this terror about what might be said on that phone call, what we might lose next. Yeah. that phone call what we might lose next yeah now that i imagine

makes you be in a hurry to get out the door yeah i mean college um i went to state school which lucky lucky for me i lived in california so state school was uc santa barbara um took out a bunch of loans and uh went up there. But I was still very connected to my parents. So I was home all the time. I didn't really know how to say goodbye. It was when I graduated from college, when on my graduation day, my mom was there sitting alone and my dad was in another part of the graduation sitting alone.

And I remember thinking, why aren't they sitting together? And I go up to my mom and I say, what's going on? She said, we're getting a divorce. And I said, what do you mean you're getting a divorce? Why are you telling this to me today? Tell me tomorrow, like not today. I found out later that she made the decision because the night before she had come home and she'd asked my, this is after they lost the helicopter and my dad was trying to film

a documentary and he was editing it at his edit bay in the house. He had all, he would spend his money on camera equipment and edit equipment, stuff that he would say were investments in a future business. And these things like he would buy it with the intention of using it, but it would never really pan out too much. So we just end up with debt for technology. But anyway, my mom comes in and asks him how the edit's going. And he turns around and just punches her in the sternum. Like not hi, not hello, not it's going well, it's going badly.

Just punches her in the sternum. And she at that point said, I haven't, I've had enough. Like Katie is done with school. I'm done. We're, she's launched. We're good. And it was shortly after that, that I, that I decided to pick up and move to New York. So, well, had that been something you were considering? And so, well, had that been something you were considering? No, you know, I stayed in L.A. for about about a year. I got a job at KTLA in Los Angeles and I liked it. But, you know, the legacy of my parents was following me around.

One of my first days at KTLA, I walk in and the assignment editor looks at me and says, oh, God, I remember the way your dad used to yell at your mother in the helicopter. And I thought, oh, great. And the news director would say to me like jokingly, but also not totally jokingly, it's a miracle you can walk straight. And so I just thought I got to go somewhere else. I got to go somewhere else. And at the time, New York had a little station called News 12. Still has it. News 12, the Bronx in Brooklyn, which was a place that you could start with no experience. You could be a reporter with no experience. Just send a reel that you had made. And I'd made like, you know, a mock dummy reel of me doing news reports. I got sent to the news director and the news director said, okay, we can bring you in for a tryout. And I got a job there. Now, again, I, you know, going back to you, you majored in

philosophy, right? I did. I did. I did. And had you, were you, did you have your eye on journalism the entire time? So I first majored in art studio. I was a painter and a photographer, but I said, don't worry, mom and dad, I'm going to go to law. I was a painter and a photographer, but I said, don't worry, mom and dad, I'm going to go to law school. This is just, I just, I'm going to start out with this degree, but I'm going to go to law school. Don't worry. I can do anything and go to law school. After a couple of years, oh, first it was med school and I did pre-med on the side, but I got, I failed out of calculus. Like I just got an F on one of my calculus. I said, I can't do this. And then, so I'll don't worry. I'm going to be a lawyer. And after a couple of years, I missed words on a page. And so I became a philosophy major because I thought philosophy

is interesting. It talks about the big questions of the universe. I enjoy thinking about those things. And also it's great prep for law school. It's a great prep for learning how to argue. Sure. Yeah, how to think. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's what I was going to do. It was not intended for journalism.

Well, did you have, I mean, was it, did you have mixed emotions about going into this? You know, I mean. Into journalism? No. I mean, I hadn't, you know, I hadn't fully confronted everything that I'd grown up with, but at the time I just thought what an adventure this is going to be. I don't want to sit in at a desk with stacks of paper around me and reading through legal briefs. That sounds kind of boring. I want to, I want to drive into the middle of a fire and

feel the flames around me. I want to, you know, I, I love the movie broadcast news. I wanted to drive into the middle of a fire and feel the flames around me. I want to, you know, I love the movie Broadcast News. I wanted to be a field producer and go to war-torn areas or a National Geographic photographer, see the world. I wanted adventure. And the news felt like a good pathway to a life filled with discovery and adventure. Yeah. Now, do you think you would have been that way regardless of who your parents were? That's such a good question. I don't know. You know, I think about this all the time. I look at people who get into this business who have no connection to it, whose parents were accountants or something like that. And I just wonder wonder how'd you get into news like what sparked it in you because for me it just felt so ingrained right and you had an

experience to the adrenaline of it yeah exactly you know to the thrill of it like you you got a contact high from all of this going on with your parents your whole life absolutely but you obviously separated yourself enough from you know this is this being your parents thing that you could see yourself in it without it being your parents. Yes, I could. And I but I wanted to make that separation even clearer, which is why I moved across the country. on how to do this, on how to be a journalist, what you need to get a story, what you need to push for answers, to stand up to authority when you need to. I know the basis of how to put it together, how to shoot a camera, how to edit, how to write, how to present. But I also felt like I learned how to not do it from them as well, to not do it on my own, but to do it within a system. I'm going to go into a network and I'm going to be a reporter at a network with all of the support that that provides and the opportunity that that provides.

I thought that would mean that I would have more job security than they did. would have more job security than they did. Yeah. Do you think there was an aspect, because you're sort of leading into a question that I would have, which is, do you think there was an aspect of that you were going to do this, but you were going to do it right? I was going to do it right. I was going to make friends.

I was going to make friends. People were going to like me. I wasn't going to yell at everybody, but I was going to be a bulldog. I was going to go out there and get the story. But I mean, I knew that the bar was pretty high. My parents have won a Murrow Award. They won two, a Peabody Award, multiple Emmys, Golden Mics, AP Spot News Awards. They've won every award you can imagine in the news business.

It's really hard to compete with that. And they also created a new thing. But still, if you do it right, you know you're doing it right. And they know you're doing it right. And they will see you having a career that is absent of tumult. And to where your professionalism rises above theirs, you know, and that's got to be, you know, I don't know.

I'm just projecting my own sort of like, I'll show them. No, I don't think it was so much that. I mean, it was, I think there's, that's a hard question. I do think that they worried that they didn't want me to get into this business at first. And I think that they worried that the business would tear me apart the way it tore them apart. And to be fair, this business is not kind. And I say that, you know, I talk about job stability. There is no job stability.

They could decide tomorrow they don't want me on television any longer. They don't think that I'm good enough. And I'd be gone. They might have to pay the rest of my contract, but there's no reason for them to keep me on TV. I mean, and it's the kind of business that there's very few people that walk away from it willingly. Very few people that say, okay, I'm taught. It's time for me to retire. I'm going to go live my life. Pete Williams, who's in the office next door to me, our justice correspondent,

legendary guy is retiring in a couple weeks. He's walking away from it. That is so rare. Usually you have to get pulled out and tossed out. Why do you think that is? Is it the adrenaline? Is there just such a charge from doing it? I think it's the adrenaline.

It's the curiosity. It's the love of learning. But I do think there's an addictive quality to that little red light above the camera that says you're on air. People are listening to you. Don't you feel that to a degree? I would say no. Really? I would. Yeah. I do like performing for, I do like making stories. I like making comedy. I like, but I prefer acting to being myself. So, yes, I really do like, I still have like a completely childlike excitement about being on it at a movie studio or like you know we're

gonna blow up a car today like all of that stuff is still tremendously fun to me and i really do i was just talking to my daughter about this this morning it's like i i have kind of i think structured my life in a way i mean i'm a responsible grown-up relatively speaking but i do my my main pursuit is my own good time and you know like i try i try to do things that i'm where i know i'm going to enjoy myself and and i've got and that has i mean that was always an instinct, but as I've gotten older, it's more refined because I also know as a producer, that's where I'm best. It's like if I'm having a shitty time, it's going to be hard for me to really entertain people or do a good job as whether it's a game show host or as an actor in a show. If I'm miserable, it's not going to be so good.

If I'm happy and having fun, I'm going to be at my best. Yeah, I think you're right about that, but I don't think it's not going to be so good. If I'm happy and having fun, if I'm going to be at my best. Yeah, I think you're right about that, but I don't think that's a majority. I don't think a majority of us in front of the camera or in public facing positions, entertainment news, whatever positions, I don't know if we're all so in touch with our, with ourselves, the way you sound like you are well you know i'm talking we're talking i have a vacation home of therapy you know a vacation home's worth of therapy in this brain and you know and lots of lots of really amazing pharmaceuticals over the years so i mean i can't take full credit for it but yeah i, I mean, I also too. I mean, it's not it's not I've said this so many times. It's not a coincidence that I was a sidekick. I don't need it. Yeah, a lot of people need it. And I like it. I like with people, you're 22, one, 2019, whatever you get on stage with people. And there are people who realize, holy shit, that guy is making up for something. That guy is, somebody did not give that guy the attention

that he needed. And now he's out here trying to get it. And my feeling was always like, all right, go ahead. You go out there, go out there and get there and get it because i also had and i mean i quickly learned you go get it you go sweat because i'll come in at the end and i'll come in at the end and top you you know i mean also the armchair analysis uh psychoanalysis of donald trump um oh yeah yeah definitely yeah i mean but I mean, yeah, he's I don't even want to. I mean, Jesus, we'll get to that for sure. Right. But now, you know, it is television. You know, you're a journalism, but you're also television. So in television, I don't care what kind of television is, it's entertainment.

Yeah. And how, like, do you have to cope with that early on that kind of tension? Definitely, definitely. And I think it comes out. And how do you do it? Well, it comes out in a few ways. One, you have to learn how to perform what you're saying. And that is, it's just a fundamental skill of communication. So if you are dead behind the eyes, if you have no life in your read, if you have no connection to the words that you're reading, people aren't going to pay attention. You have to have a certain performative command in front of the camera. That's, and as I learned when I was at my first reporting job at News 12, the Bronx in Brooklyn,

I was called into the news director's office and he said, you're great. We're going to hire you. There's just one thing, two things, really. Three things, actually. Your boobs look too big for your clothes. And I said, okay, you need different clothes. And I remember being mortified, but saying, you know, nodding my head and understanding your hair isn't right. And he handed, he slid over the table, a binder full of a binder full of women with glossy pictures of haircuts that he said I should get, there were short, severe bob cuts with streaky highlights. And oh, by the way, you can't be Katie. Your name is taken.

You're going to have to be Catherine. As in Katie Couric was Katie and I couldn't also be Katie. Right, right. that made me realize that there is a persona that is expected of you in this, in this business. But it didn't take me long to realize that the persona, if that persona is unfamiliar to you, if the persona isn't you, if it's not authentic, then you're sinking fast. It doesn't work.

Yeah. Yeah. So the trick is to be just a bigger version of yourself, I guess. Right. Well, and how do you cope? Well, I guess it's not really your concern because there is there's the performance aspect. But then there's also, you know, what a lot of people get frustrated with, which is the editorial aspect of the entertainment of news, like the stories that are chosen to be covered. And I mean, how much of a struggle is that for you where sometimes you feel like you're being pushed to cover things that are sort of not necessarily what one would prioritize in terms of importance? So I wouldn't say I'm ever pushed to cover something. It was often a matter of resources. I would love to cover, I wish I had more stories about climate change in my broadcast. And it frustrates me that I don't. And I can have Michael Mann on every day to talk to me about

what's happening around the world. And I often do have him come on, but I need somebody who's on the ground showing me what's happening. I'm more than just a talking head on my show, or I need to be going somewhere and doing a documentary about it, or just seeing it happen in real time and doing the interviews. And I'm not in charge of making the decisions on where to send reporters. And so I'm limited in that way. And believe me, it's very frustrating. I'm limited in that way. And believe me, it's very frustrating. We cover day of air news mostly during the day side hours. So it often lends toward the top political story of the day, which is why if you turn on any cable show right now, it is in Fox, you're probably going to see the January 6th hearings front and center because that is, that is the, in some ways, one of, one of the, or if not the

most important story in the country right now, because it's a story about our democracy and whether our democracy is going to survive. On other days, it'll be something like Uvalde, On other days, it'll be something like Uvalde, where, holy shit, something terrible has happened. And we've got to train our cameras to it, even though it's painful, so that people understand what is happening with these guns. resulted in it seems like congress actually moving on some form of gun legislation uh there's some room later you know there's some room in the show for me to to pick out stories that i don't think are being covered enough um and i like to focus on paid parental leave which i think is an important issue for anybody who wants to start a family in this country which is less and less or fewer and fewer people now because the birth rate's going down it's not easy to start a family in this country, which is less and less or fewer and fewer people now because the birth rate's going down. It's not easy to start a family. It's not financially easy to start a family. But, you know, mostly, Andy, what we're limited by is resources.

Do we have enough reporters to cover all the things that are going on and our resources depend on um it's ugly but they depend on ratings if we have enough viewers and we can sell enough ad time then we get more money for news organ for the news organization and for news gathering it's you know it's it's the way that we have structured the news business here we're not government government funded. We're not the BBC. Yeah. And I know, I'm not saying too, because,

you know, I think there are people that are always like, you know, that they just, they just think that, you know, the news business, like,

why aren't you just talking about the thing, you know, like basically sort of a laundry list of mostly liberal causes. Yeah. And that I think tends to be a very common critique of the news. In your circles, but there are other circles where the most common critique of the news is they're not covering conservative stories or they're not covering crime. So it just depends on what circle you're in yeah that's true but i i mean i to me i always i i having been in television for so many years i

appreciate your your if you have a restaurant you got to serve what people are going to eat and so the news is what, you know, like people, there isn't like some Machiavellian plot to keep people ill informed. It's like, no, it's quite the opposite. Well, okay. That's fine. But I mean, in general terms, you know, like a legit news organization wants to tell people what they want to hear about. So to bring it back to I discussed this in the book. And so my parents, as I said, popularized television news gathering from the air, live, immediate, in your face. Now, now, now get these police chases on the air. Look at the ratings.

People are coming in. They're watching. And there are colleagues of theirs that have said that they are responsible for the downfall of TV news. They're responsible for the way TV news got ruined. And they don't really dispute it. And I don't really dispute it because they were the first to show that reality TV as news was compelling and drove viewers. And I think you can draw a pretty straight line from that to the way we cover politics, the way we covered Donald Trump in 2015 and 2016, the way we're covering politics now. I pick out in the book, the bar summary. Remember when the bar summary came out before the Mueller report?

Yeah. And I very stupidly, in retrospect, volunteered to cover it. It was on a weekend. I said, I'll come in. I was 10 months pregnant, Andy. I was about to give birth to my first kid. And I said, I got to be there. I want to cover it. I've been doing the story day in and day out. I want to see how it ends. And so we get the summary on a Sunday after all this buildup, all everyone's watching, you know, you're going to get it in 30 minutes. Viewers tune in. Let's get people to come on. There's graphics, the bar summary of the Mueller report, and we get it. And it's just a few paragraphs. There's no underlying evidence. There's no words from Robert Mueller directly. There's some cagey language and it's completely misleading. It says that there's no obstruction,

there's no collusion, and that's all we had to go on. We had this basically a political document and it's all we had to go on. And we are stuck reporting in real time on it without context, without any way to push back, again, without any documentary evidence. And we, by doing that on a weekend, but we had tons of viewers, but by doing that and putting it out there, we give this political document, this misleading political document, a three week or so headstart on the truth, on the actual findings of the Mueller report. Yeah. Yeah. And you left the house for that. And it's actually one of my biggest regrets in my career. And it's not necessarily something that would have,

it's, it's something that I think is a good example of where we are failing, but it's also not something that is so easy to fix. Right. Because say we didn't go up with it. Say we held back and I said, we're going to wait for the document. What it would do is it would give Fox news and Breitbart and gateway pundit, whatever, all of this fodder to say that we hate Donald Trump and we won't report good news about him. And that would further distance us from a portion of the country who wants to believe that we are political actors, not unbiased journalists. Yeah. Well, you brought him up again i'm sorry no that's i'm sorry do you volunteer for that beat because you were i mean for people that don't know

you were what are they embedded with his campaign what an ugly word in that case you know andy i came on conan with you Like gum stuck onto a wall. I came on Conan with you after that. And I was so touched by the way you guys introduced me. You showed a highlight reel, but, and it was, you know, crazy and also funny, but also scary. But it was really, I felt it was meaningful and I felt like you saw the coverage. And so I want to say thank you for that. Oh, you're welcome.

I don't know if you did it. No, I mean, i felt for it no i mean i you know i don't but i mean you know i couldn't i agree with the sentiment so it's but yeah but they but no that was a segment producer and i think it was anybody with anybody with eyes and a heart looking at you over that time, just and just imagining what it must be like and seeing some of those, you know, you know, I think the average viewer got a little tired of Trump rally and you had to go to every single one. So I did not volunteer for it. Here's what happened.

I was a foreign correspondent. I lived in London. I had a French boyfriend. I drank wine at lunch. I was living the life. I lived in London. I had a French boyfriend. I drank wine at lunch. I was living the life. I think I said out loud, I am never going back to America. There's nothing they can do to bring me back. I would take, I would take no assignment. And I happened to come home for a couple of days just to say hi to people. and i was in the newsroom talking to a producer when um donald trump had announced but after it it was a couple days later macy's dropped him

univision dropped him that pageant dropped him so everything was falling apart for him it seemed and they said katie can you cover this? You're just standing around. I mean, they weren't going to put a political reporter on it. They were going to put somebody who just happened to be in the newsroom, me. That's why I covered it. And then I covered it the next day, just the fallout from his words. And then, you know, it didn't seem like he was quite going away yet. So they said, Katie, why don't you just stick around for a few weeks? You know, you'll go back to London after the summer. It'll be six weeks tops. Just follow the Trump campaign. And I remember saying, okay. And the guy who assigned

me to it told me as he was walking to another meeting, it was so unimportant that he didn't even have me in his office. And he stepped into the elevator and then his last words were, and if he wins, you'll be a White House correspondent. Ha ha ha. Elevator doors closed. And, you know, we know what happened. I ended up following him. What was supposed to be a six week assignment ended up being 510 days.

I left milk in my refrigerator. I left clothes in my dryer in London. I didn't really go back ever after that. I think I slept in my own bed, totaled eight nights. And I was there from the very, basically the very beginning, all the way to the very end. And then when it came time to say, do you want to be a White House correspondent? I pulled myself out of the running even before they could ask. I said, there's no way in hell. There's no way in hell. I'm going to this. Yeah. Yeah. What did that do to you as a person? Oh God, post-traumatic

stress. I got, you know, I don't like talking about it, but I got death threats and I still get some nasty, disgusting people sending me stuff online. And it scares me. It scares me because now I'm a mom and I've got little kids. And so I get scared for my family. It made me more pessimistic as a person. The ugliness was depressing. Yeah. It was really depressing and it it the misinformation the intentional way people were using anger to sow division for their own personal gain bummed me out it still bums me out. I still see it today. I, you know, I worry about the state of things. Yeah. Having been through that and having had that front row seat, to coin a phrase, why do you think, why do you think he is? Why do you think that this guy that had been like, is why do you think that this guy that had been like you know like his game show got canceled because he was not you know it was it was losing in the ratings he needed he you know that was

that's one thing i love about lawrence o'donnell is that he knows show business and he knows the news and he's got enough people to really and he knows politics and i just remember where on a previous time when when trump was going to run for president and he said it a couple months before he's like on x date he said donald trump will announce that he's not running for president because that's when his his uh whatever that game show was well that's when his uh game show contract is up and he needs the money to sign a new contract and it happened it happened that way the previous time when he didn't run for office and and so it's like here's this guy and that if you're from new york is a clown, is like a clown version of a rich guy. How does that how does it happen?

What are people what do you think people that are there that are giving you nightmares? What is it about him? Here's what they here's what they would say about him. They thought that they would point to a show and they would say, he's a successful businessman. Look at everything he has. He would fly in on his private jet with the guy's name across it. Everything was gold. And they looked at him and they thought, God, that is success. He must know what he is doing. And they said that they liked what he was saying. They liked that he was saying things that other people were too afraid to say, that immigrants were coming and making this country terrible,

that it's okay to be angry about it, that it's okay to point the finger. It's okay to make dirty jokes about your colleagues because it's funny. You don't have to be so PC. The liberals are trying to demonize you and make you feel bad about who you are. And they would say they connected with that. They connected with that strong attitude that he had. They felt like the world, they were told the world was complicated and it was full of nuance and these problems that we're facing were big and hard to solve. And Donald Trump came in and said, no, they're not big and no, they're not hard to solve. All you need is a guy who's willing to say the right thing and willing to do what's necessary. I can stand up, make deals. I can stand up to all these foreign politicians. The strong man,

I can take them down. I can negotiate in a way that no one else can. I know what I'm doing. Look at the business I did. I can bring it to the country. So there's that. I mean, there's other factors at play here. I'm sure you can name them. But I don't think we're going to have a real handle on the shift toward Donald Trump and what led to him and whatever happens after this until we get farther away. I think we're so in the weeds of it. I think it's hard to see, but I do think that there, the seeds were planted long ago. A friend of mine, Steve Kornacki wrote a great book called, I know I'm promoting my book, but he wrote a great book called The Red and the Blue, and it details the rise of partisanship. And he puts a big focus on Newt Gingrich and C-SPAN and when C-SPAN put cameras in Congress and how that started to change things.

It's good. It's interesting. That's interesting because I would have said Fox, not C- have you know i would have said fox not c-span i was in ball and fox but they have they played a big part that c-span you read read the book it's good okay i will i mean i'm gonna wait a little bit i'm gonna wait till we're done um yeah no i mean that's i i mean i was just interested to get your take on it but i was at the time when he started doing it, the thing I just kind of felt. And I mean, it was it was a little fun to just watch him. Just crush the rest of the Republican field. I mean, in some I mean, it was fun.

It was a bummer in some ways, but it was kind of like. Because the thing that struck me about it was that like he was taking dog whistles and making them bullhorns you know he's like oh you want to you want to dabble in racism here try this on for size oh you want to dabble in you know partisanship here how about this the other guys suck you know how you want to dabble in uh you know like political violence yeah political violence or you want to dabble in like i don't i don't play by the rules i make the rules here's all of it turned up to 10 or 11 you know um but yeah enough about him uh um, now the book, Rough Draft. Are you happy you've written it? Like, do you feel like there's been some kind of personal growth at the other end of it? I mean, you have to sit and talk

to people like me endlessly. And it's like, you know, you don't need therapy now. You get to talk about all this stuff while promoting a book. Exactly. I get to just talk to you, which makes me feel great. No, I think it's a privilege to be on the show with you. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm in awe of the invite. I do have to tell a funny story. So the invite came over Twitter, right? Yeah. So when the book came out, it's an emotionally difficult topic for me.

I went into a bunker. I said, I can't see anything. I'm not reading anything about it. I'm not going to be on social media. I'm in my bunker. Tony, I'm giving you the keys to everything. My husband. Yeah.

Yeah. And so your invitation, me accepting your invitation was Tony accepting your invitation. Tony said that he misread it and he thought you were inviting him on the podcast. Oh, that was him that said that. Oh, that's I DM'd you. DM'd me. Yeah. Yeah. And then he was so embarrassed because he misread your invitation. Oh my God. That's hilarious. And he looked so silly and I laughed at him. Yeah. Because at the end of it, I said, you know, I asked you if you wanted to be on to promote the book. And then, and I said, you know, and all my best to your kids. And I said, oh, and your husband, too, like as a joke.

And I guess he read that and thought, he wants me to be on, which he'll be on. He'll be on soon. Don't worry about it. I mean, he fell into my trap, you know, and I need guests, but that is, it's hilarious that that was him doing that. I had a good, good long laugh about it. So thank you for that. Well, but has the book been, has it been like a cathartic thing? It has, it has, you you know it was a really hard thing to write it was a hard thing you know again to confront to deal with um i i'm happy i wrote it and i'm happy i went to the places i refused to go for so long because if i kept running away

i was doomed to repeat the cycle that my dad repeated from his own childhood and i didn't want to i didn't want to throw potatoes at my husband's head. I didn't want that to be the example for my kids. Yeah, you don't want your kids growing up in that house. Exactly. And so putting it out there and laying bare just the truth, the good and the bad and the ugly, has been helpful for me. It's also selfish because I want my kids to know me, you know, and they can't know me unless they know about LA and they know about

their grandparents and everything that they did. And I want them to have a concrete record of it. Look at how amazing your mom's life was, the full scope of it. And then look at all of the things that your grandparents did. Yeah, there was some bad stuff, but there was some crazy, cool stuff as well. And this is your legacy. Yeah. That's great. I'm glad. I'm glad because I can imagine it's spilling your guts is a risky thing to do. TV journalists there to be some sort of, I guess, professional distance from sort of. But I wonder if that's what the problem is. Awards and all kind of. But I wonder if that's what the problem is, that people don't know us. And it's hard to trust us if you don't know us.

And I'm kind of of the school that the more you know about me, the more you know where I'm coming from and how I grew up and who I am, what my values are, then you can understand how I'm reporting the news. Yeah. I think it's easy to demonize somebody you know nothing about. They're just a byline or they're just some face on the TV. they're just a byline or they're just some face on the TV. It's easy to say, well, that person has bad intentions or that person doesn't actually care about what she's talking about or she's just reading the teleprompter. But if I tell you, here's who I am, here's everything,

here's me, know me, I hope it's helpful in gaining some of the trust back that we've lost. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, it's like that pitfall. It's a pitfall of the neutrality that people are supposed to have. It does end up making you feel like, you know, when you, when you report on an outrage, the notion that you're not supposed to convey any outrage is, is I think you can do it. I think you can, you can do it and still be a little inhuman i think you can you can do it and still be and still be unbiased i think you can do it and still do it fairly you

can say i think for the uvalde investigation that they found it could have been stopped within three minutes and then they waited in the hallways for over an hour, more than an hour with their ballistic shields. I think you can say what the F without that being unfair. Yeah. There's no both sides in that way, you know, which is probably why we're getting gun legislation out of it. Well, the second question of this deal is, is where are you going? I mean, do you think, is it kind of more of the

same i mean you got two little kids to raise so obviously that's coming and as they get older do you see do you see like there being a collision between being on camera every day and and raising them especially like maybe when they get into school and their mom well i mean i guess you're you're familiar with what it's like to have like your mom and dad be on tv to milk it for as long as i can because i know that they will turn 10 11 or 12 and they will think i am deeply uncool. So I will take them looking up to me and I will savor it for as long as I can. Where am I going? I'm raising my kids. I am going to work every day and I'm trying my best to find a way to communicate information to an audience of people that might

disagree with the information or might be distrustful of the information. I want to find more ways to get to more people. I'm actively trying to think of a way to talk to my contemporaries. How do I get my friends to watch the news? What do I need to, what sort of show does that look like? Is it on cable news or is it on different sort of outlet? Is it on the radio? Is it on streaming? Who knows? What is it? So I'm thinking about that. And, you know, if all hell breaks loose, looking to find a passport in Europe somewhere, find a Greek passport. Yeah. Yeah. My girlfriend has a UK uk passport she's a dual citizen you lucky man you got to marry her to get that yeah i'm we're probably gonna stick together just for that

reason i don't like her much you know but she has an exit ramp for you yeah yeah yeah um well i you know that then the third one is uh, I didn't want to say any more books. Oh my gosh. Not in the near future. Not that's enough. I don't know. We'll see. I kind of want to write one with my husband. Maybe that'll be fun, but not, not yet. I got to get, let me get this second kid out of diapers. Okay. All right. I'm not, you know, I'm not your agent. Don't worry about me. Well, the next one is, you know, the third question is, you know, what's the point of the Katie Turr story? What do you want people to take away? The point is, I work in a business where we're supposed to tell the truth and here is my truth

warts and all and what I found after writing it is that there are a lot of people out there who grew up in weird circumstances and you don't have to to be afraid to talk about it. You don't have to feel like you are somehow damaged. And that estrangement is not uncommon. I think one in four people deal with estrangement of a close family member. I'm raising my hand. Yeah. And you know it's a two-way street yeah yeah

well that's yeah that's good advice and it's and it is true that you know any bit you share i do feel ends up any humanity that you share with people in, you know, in good, in good faith, uh, it is never, it's usually never a mistake. It's usually you just end up making somebody feel, uh, a little more okay because you're, you know, you know, you have a, you have a platform and you're saying, you know, yeah, it was a nightmare.

You know, what a mess that was back there. And they can go, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That sounds familiar. For a long time, I didn't want to talk about it because I thought people would judge me. Yeah. Or they'd look at me and think, oh, that's the victim.

And I don't want to be the victim. Yeah, yeah. I understand that. Well, thank you so much for spending this time with me. I really appreciate it. I know how much, how valuable your time is,

much more so than mine. I mean, after this, I'm just going to stare at a wall probably. That sounds glorious. Take a week off for some wall staring. And tell your husband he will be on soon. Oh, no, you don't have to have him. He's not charming.

No, I will. He's not fun. He's not interesting. I know. I know. And, you know, but, you know, I will. I'll have him on. Andy.

I'll have him on. You don't have to have him on. No, because I'm, but I will, I'll have him on. Andy. I'll have him on. You don't have to have him on. No, because I'm, but I will, you know. But anyhow, thank you so much. And thank all of you out there for listening. And I'll be back next week.

Thank you, Andy. I've got a big, big love for you. The Three Questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco and Your Wolf production. It is produced by Lane Gerbig, engineered by Marina Pice, and talent produced by Kalitza Hayek. The associate producer is Jen Samples, supervising producer Aaron Blair, and executive producers Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Earwolf.

Make sure to rate and review The Three Questions with Andy Richter on Apple Podcasts.