Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Michael Landsberg: Toronto Mike'd #657

Episode Date: June 1, 2020

Mike chats with Michael Landsberg about his work as a mental health advocate, the #SickNotWeak initiative, his work at TSN, hosting Off The Record and moving to mornings on 1050 TSN Radio.

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I'm Mike from torontomike.com. And joining me this week is TSN broadcaster and host of First Up with Michael Landsberg and Carlo Koliakovo on TSN Radio, Michael Landsberg. Michael, did you ever consider being Mike Landsberg? No, I was never a Mike. I was never, ever called Mike by my parents. So it seems totally foreign to me. And in fact, I have made the comment many times that sounds, I've been accused of making it sound elitist, I've been accused of making it sound elitist, but it's not. It's just that Mike, to me, sounds like a guy that I would want to fix my car. That it would be, hey, Mike, you know, it's like my car.

It's making noise here, man. What's going on? I just not, I was just never used to it. And the running joke at TSN has always been, don't call him Mike. You know, back in the OTR days when we would hire new interns, the other interns would always give them the warning, don't call him Mike. But the truth is, it's just a joke. I could care less. Now, I'm a Michael as well. And I always felt Michael was a bit stuffy. I always preferred Mike because I'd rather be the guy who was fixing your car than some guy who sounds like he belongs in an executive boardroom.

Yeah. I mean, I certainly wouldn't want to sound like I belong in an executive boardroom, but I will say that, you know, quickly after I think you meet me, you would probably not think there's a possibility I could be an executive boardroom guy. But it's just, you know, it's kind of growing up. I just, no one ever called me Mike. And it was when I, when I started at work, people would, you know, like typically some people would go, Hey Mike. And it'd be like, wow, that sounds really weird. Don't ever do that again. Right. Okay. So let me call you Michael for the remainder of this conversation. I respect your decision in that regard.

Thank you. Thank you. Although I didn't really care whether you did or you did not. Okay. And Mike, you have the right to choose your own decision, your own path in life. I don't mind Mikey though. It's funny how different people over the course of my life have called me that, and I'm perfectly good with it. I always, since you can relate to this, obviously, but I always felt like the name was too common.

There were too many Mikes or Michaels. Oh, yeah. For sure. One third of your slow pitch team would be named Mike, and half the class was Michael. I guess you felt the same way. Oh, yeah. My parents, I have a brother. His name is David. And at one time, Michael and David

were the two most common names in Canada, I believe. So, yeah, there's nothing terribly unique about it. So let's start by finding out, how is Michael Landsberg doing? How are you holding up? You know, I'm holding up. You're talking about pandemic-wise? Right, yes. Sorry, pandemic-wise.

This time in our history has been very kind to me and very good to me. I mean, first of all, I think there's two things that you first and foremost need to check off your list, and they are by far the most important things. First of all, are you healthy and the people that you care about most, are they healthy? And in my case, the answer would be yes. And then the second thing is, are you still working? Do you have a job or have you been compromised and put in this awful position? And for me, the answer is yes as well. I continue to work with TSN and I continue to get the same wage that I got before. So right away, I'm starting off a million miles ahead because the big things are taken care of. But beyond that, for me,

this has been an amazing time for a couple of reasons. Number one, doing radio for my kitchen table, even though for probably a week or maybe even two weeks, it was a challenge for sure because you don't see anybody around you. It's a totally artificial environment. You don't, you can't play off the energy of your partner. In my case, Carlo, who's sitting there, you're sitting at your kitchen table. It's dead quiet in your house. People are sleeping in your house. And then all of a sudden, you know, you have to bring this energy and everything about your environment says, and everything about radio says, don't. So I think it took me a little while to kind of start to get to be who I want to be

in terms of energy level. But after that, it kind of feels exactly like it did in the studio, but there's no, there's no drive to work. There's no drive home from work. Uh, so I'm loving that aspect. And second of all, as a charity sick, not weak, we started doing a show in the afternoons at five o'clock called isolation nation. And I have no hesitation in saying that it may very well be the best professional experience of my life. It's like I get to put everything that I've ever learned about almost everything into this one show. So the show ends, first up ends with Carlo at 10 o'clock. We have a post-show meeting till 10, 15. And then like instantly I'm engaged in the process of getting ready for five o'clock when we do Isolation Nation. So I have no time to think,

no time to breathe, and I don't want time to think, and I don't want time to breathe. And I'm just loving the whole experience. How does one listen to Isolation Nation? Social media. You can see it on our Facebook page. You can see it on Twitter, our website, all the shows live there forever on YouTube. So it's kind of out there. And I mean, that is the biggest challenge about doing something like we're doing is getting people to know that you're there. It's not like if you put a show on TSN, then anybody who's a sports fan eventually is going to bump into it, right? And say, oh yeah, okay. Do I like this? Do I not like this?

Do I want to come back? But social media can be really anonymous. So that is certainly a challenge. It's something that we've done better with, but it's all a learning process. There's no real formula as to how to do it. Well, Michael, welcome to my world. That's pretty much, you're right. Awareness is everything. And if you don't have a

TSN brand behind you pushing it through their channels, that is half the battle right there. You know, it's just a fact that, I mean, it's kind of like just podcasting in general. I mean, we don't call ourselves a podcast because, you know, we're kind of a TV show that's on social media. And the beauty of what we're doing is that it's built around the concept of mental health, but also for me, built around the concept of my belief of educating people, people about mental health is that you must make it fun. You can't have it be somber and stone faced and sad. And all of the things that typically are surrounding mental health talk,

because to me, that seems like a loser. Sure, there's a small, small, small group of people that would say, yeah, I'd watch that. I mean, I do a video blog every day, or at least I did until we started this show. And now the show represents the Daily Lands blog in a lot of ways. But so we're still on seven days a week, 364 days a year. And I know every day that we do a video blog, the lands blog, that there's a couple thousand people that will watch. But growing past that is really difficult because it's a narrow world out there that goes, man, I want to hear somebody talk about their own experiences with mental illness. So I think to make this mainstream, to reach out to an audience that would never join you,

if you told them what you were getting or what they were getting, you need to do other things. It's kind of like, you know, I call it the fortune cookie theory. You know, fortune cookies are not, no one would pay attention to the fortune in the middle of the cookie unless it was inside a cookie. So you have this idea, oh, we'll put a fortune in there and then we'll wrap it with a yummy, crunchy treat. Well, that's what we're doing. We have a message that's inside, but we try to wrap it with what I would say would be kind of typical Landsberg, smart ass, irreverent, tongue in cheek, sometimes stupid, sometimes bad, sometimes good. And all the time, at least an attempt to be unique. Well, we're going to dive deeper into this, the Sick Not Weak work you're doing, which is tremendous, by the way. Huge kudos to you. It's helped so many in this country, and I really want to dive deeper into it. I did hear you say the family was well, so that means my pal Corey is doing okay, your son Corey?

doing okay? Your son, Corey? Yeah, Corey's great. Corey is going to drop his dog off here, his dog, Carl. He got his dog, or he and Liz got their dog about two weeks after we got our dog from this place called Doodle Creek, which is a couple of hours away from here. We got a ginormous golden doodle and he got a much smaller one. Golden doodles all relate to the size of usually the father, right? Because golden retrievers are all the same size, but poodles can range from this big to this big. So they're buddies. I guess they would be sort of cousins, and they hang out together. But he's great, and we're all good.

So we're all thankful for that. So, Corey, if you're listening, thanks for helping to set this up uh cory help put me in touch with you michael and uh finally your long anticipated uh toronto mike debut can finally happen here so thanks for doing this let's do it you ask and i will answer uh and you ask and i believe unless i can't think of or anticipate what you're going to ask me, but I will give you the honest goods. I have no desire whatsoever to be politically correct. I think the greatest asset that I can have, certainly on social media, is just being open and honest, no boundaries. You know the best thing about Isolation Nation? Tell me.

And I'm not bringing it up because I'm looking to promote it because that's not in any way the way I am. But the best thing is I have no employer. There is no one to tell me what the boundaries are. There is no one to say, okay, well, you can't say this. You can do whatever you want. And the audience ultimately decides whether they want it, but it's the ultimate freedom, right? Because I lived, and this is a real challenge for guys like me. I've lived inside the conventional television radio box all my life. Well, now with a show on social media, I can live outside the box, but I don't know how to escape the box. And that's why I look to work with people who can say, okay, why don't you do it this way? Because I'm just so programmed to

think I can't do that. But the truth is we can do anything. And that's an awesome feeling. On that note, since you brought this up, a real quick question before we take you back to Cable 10. Okay. That's where we're going back in a moment here. But right now, you know, there's a lot of chaos and anger spilling out Black Lives Matter movement. And we see riots on the television or protests. And sometimes they spill into violence and looting. And we see this on our televisions. And it's a very, you know, scary time.

And I had an episode yesterday in which we completely dealt with this. And we see this on our televisions and it's a very, you know, scary time. And I had an episode yesterday in which we completely dealt with this. I just spoke with Garvia Bailey and Donovan Bennett. We talked about being black and being black in this city, in this province, in this country. And I'm curious, are you at TSN, are the rules about tweeting about anything political? TSN, are there rules about tweeting about anything political? Could you share a political opinion or something of that nature on Twitter? Is that against any TSN rules? It's not against the rules until you break the rules. And by that, I actually mean it's not against the rules

until you do something that somebody doesn't like. I have, I have never, I have never heard any, any kind of complaint from management. Now, a lot of what I, what I tweet is mental health related. So like, you know, it's, it's hardly reflecting badly on the company to have a guy out there spreading a message, which is 99.9% of the world would say is a really positive message. Absolutely. So I'm not necessarily testing the limits all the time, but I am, and this is pretty obvious to anyone who follows me on social media.

I hate Donald Trump. I am obsessed with American politics. I have to prevent myself from tweeting every hour in response to something that he would do. Not suggesting that he would ever see it, but just making the statement, you know, how wrong this is and how I believe the United States is heading in a direction which is disastrous. That in 1945, when World War II ended, the U.S. owned the world, right? Because everyone else, everything else, all of the other powers were devastated by the war. And the Americans were the leaders in almost every area. And to me, it's like gradually they've given that back.

And now they're giving it all back. And now America is just not any, no resemblance to what they were. So I have tweeted lots of times about Donald Trump. I have tweeted about this past weekend, the way I see it. And I, you know, I think I have a, you know, I've always leaned left. But now I think I have a little bit more of a, what's the word I'm looking for? A little bit of more radical, even though I'm hardly radical. But when I see the violence, for instance, I understand why people would be led to violence. That doesn't mean that I say it's a good thing. But one of

the things that we all saw with Eric Garner, for instance, that was 2016, I think, or 2014? 2014, I think. Yes. So you saw this horrible video of him being choked out by a cop yes well that cop was still employed by the police department and paid until last year that they chose not to file charges so if you're if you're an african-american and you're concerned about your future and how you are treated by the law. And you watch this horrible thing, you know, with a man being, I mean, I don't know if strangled is the right word, but, you know, had a foot on his neck and he died. And he's, you know, when you see that and then people tell you, you know, it's OK to protest, but you can't you can't be you can't be violent about it. You have to be respectful of property. There's a right way to do it. Well, you know, to me, that's the way the status quo works is they maintain the status quo by telling you back away from the things that you want to do.

And as a result, six years after Eric Garner, nothing has changed. So how can you tell somebody, an African-American who is going, you know, this has to change. I'm worried for my kids' lives that they should quietly protest when you know that quiet protesting has led nowhere. has led nowhere. And Michael, Colin Kaepernick just happened and we all saw, to me, the most peaceful protest you can imagine, taking a knee during this national anthem and they blackballed him out of the game,

cost him his livelihood, death threats. That was the result of what I thought was a very profound and proper and very, very, very peaceful protest. So like yourself, I see the violence and I'm not condoning violence, I'm not condoning this, but I totally understand. I mean, the peaceful protest didn't work.

I don't know how you, I don't know, I'm not here to fix this one, but this is a systemic problem. I don't know, totally behind the peaceful protest. Like really Roger, like, you know, there's this, there's a thing in the world called humility that is probably the greatest asset a person can have. So if the NFL had come out and said, you know, after watching what we have seen over the last six days on the streets of America, and after we watched the incredibly offensive violence of police against an African American, it is important for us to step up and say, you know what, we do not support that. And it's also important for us to step up that we had a man named Colin Kaepernick who did everything that he was supposed to do, everything that the president now tells us we're supposed to do, protest peacefully. And we didn't back him up and we let him down and we let

society down. How is that going to hurt them? That to me is going to score you points because everybody is thinking about that. Everybody's laughing. How could you say what you said about how you support peaceful protest if you screwed over a guy in your league because he was peacefully protesting? what we see from the head of the United States, the president of the United States is so abhorrent. It's so personally disgusting. I get so incredibly angry just thinking I cannot believe he was elected and I cannot even fathom the possibility that he could be reelected in 2020. It's just... It is. It's really scary because the stakes are incredibly high. Because if he has four more years, it will take America decades to recover from it. I think they're already damaged in a way where it's going to take decades. how the Senate in the United States has manipulated the Supreme Court and how they prevented Obama from nominating a Supreme Court nominee. And they waited so long. Then when Trump

came in, they opened the door to the right wing, which is going to create incredible tension in the United States, especially over the abortion issue. So I just, you know, I'm shocked. See, here's what shocks me. It's not that a billionaire would vote for Donald Trump, because if you're greedy and you say, OK, well, I have a billion dollars, but I want two billion dollars, then I understand why you'd vote for Donald Trump. Right. Like, I think it's horrendous that you would be that greedy. But I understand because he cut vote for Donald Trump, right? Like, I think it's horrendous that you would be that greedy, but I understand because he cut your taxes. He cut the inheritance tax.

He cut all kinds of things. So he put money in your pocket. But if you are the lower 20% in terms of income, if you believe that Donald Trump is there to help you, you have been brainwashed. I mean, look at the people there was on the streets of, I think it was in Los Angeles yesterday. There was a group of MAGAs. And first of all, you could have picked them out of the lineup.

None of them had sleeves on their shirts. None of them, like there was no women in this group. But I'm looking and I'm going oh my gosh these are truckers these are these are people that do you really think that donald trump is looking after you that he's got your back those are it's just bizarre precisely the people he doesn't give a shit about uh it's he's a snake oil salesman and people are like give me more give me more and i i find it all rather disgusting, to be quite honest. And I don't understand.

Depressing, yes. And on that note, so, I mean, if you have mental health challenges with anxiety and depression, and now suddenly we're social distancing because of a global pandemic and the world around us literally seems to be on fire. Do these environmental happenings that we're all living through affect a mental illness that you have?

Does it pile on? Yeah, I think that, and I have no particular expertise other than speaking about this a lot and hearing from people a lot. So it's not like I'm a psychiatrist or a psychologist. I try to always, like when I go to give a speech, I tell people, look, I know my boundaries, right? I'm not going to ever tell you something that is outside of my comfort zone. The only thing I really know is I'm a professional patient. I have suffered from this illness for 20 years. I understand intimately what it feels like.

And because of my background as a broadcaster, I can put into words sometimes what other people are not willing to put into words or but, or, you know, perhaps struggle to find the right words. So when I give you an answer to your question, I'm not sure it's right. But I think that there's a whole percentage of the population that is now feeling something like many of us have felt who were diagnosed with an illness. And I'm not sure it's the same thing because it's situational, but the anxiety over the world and over whether we're going to get sick and whether our jobs will be there and all of those things. And the depression or the sadness that comes from all of that as well. And to some extent, the panic that comes from, oh my God, like sometimes you

just go like, this is crazy. Where's the world going? What are we going to be left with? And the OCD of saying, okay, well, you know, I washed my hands two minutes ago, but I want to wash them again. So I think there's this hybrid that has settled in on a big portion of our population. has settled in on a big portion of our population. I'm not sure it qualifies as mental illness the way it would have before COVID-19, but there's no question that it's mentally unhealthy. And then there's all the people like me who brought existing conditions into this.

Has this multiplied our illness? Has it magnified our illness? And then there's the question, what are we going to be left with? Will there be dramatically more mental illness? Will there be PTSD from this? Will there be an increased suicide rate? Will there be increased addiction?

And I think the answer is probably yes, yes, yes, yes. How much? I'm not capable of saying, but I hear all the time. I don't know about you mike people uh i don't know do you drink uh just casually i'd say yes right and this was not i'm not i'm not judging you um but i have heard from so many people who say yeah i'm a casual drinker but now i'm a casual drinker times three because i'm bored and because, you know, I, I just, I just, I need, I need some kind of. It's medication like self medication of sorts, I suppose.

So I I'm hearing that from a ton of people. So I fear for addiction and I fear for suicide probably more than anything. And I mentioned my conversation yesterday with Garvia and Donovan and what they opened my eyes to is this I'm, I to is this, I'm trying to paraphrase, but without messing up the quote, but the trauma of being black and living with this every day. And as they were so eloquently describing,

because this is something I can't relate to, you can't relate to, but waking up every morning as a black person at this time in this country, and this trauma that they describe it actually it sounds like a description i'd hear from one of my loved ones who suffers from anxiety or depression and and then all that and this erupting now then again you mentioned the whole the economic factor of the covid and so many people listening to us right now have lost

their job or what's the word people are using furloughed is that the new word uh yeah yeah which sounds like a like a layoff to me I guess it's slightly different maybe technically but and then of course the fact that we can't go in and see our friends and hang out with our fam extended family and we can't give people hugs and and have that kind of human interaction that some people uh crave and need it's just to me that what's a interaction that some people crave and need. It's just, to me, it's a perfect recipe and perfect storm. And it tells us there should be a great audience for what you're doing, your isolationation and what you're doing and hearing from somebody who can relate and offer some perspective.

Right. And our show is all guest driven. You know, and I mean, I've been in the guest business for, I don't know, since we started off the record, right? Where it's all about who you can get. Right. And I have to say that there's never been an easier time in history to get guests than right now. Because first of all, you get in touch with someone and they're going, oh my gosh, I'm bored out of my mind. And it doesn't matter how successful you are, unless you're a musician

and you have a recording studio in your house, chances are you're not being stimulated by the things around you. So you have people that are looking to do something. Then you have people who have nothing to do. You have people that they know where they're going to be. I mean, we're on at five o'clock every day. They know where they're going to be at five o'clock.

And then you also have the topic, which is really important to people that maybe it was never important to. And then you have the fact that people want to be perceived as being community-minded right now. It's very healthy for your image, if you have any fame or notoriety whatsoever, to appear to care about the world around you. So we have this really good opportunity of doing something of significance and getting people on that you would go, wow, that's pretty cool.

Especially now, getting hockey players, for instance, that you could never get wow, you know, that's pretty cool. Especially now, I mean, getting hockey players, for instance, that you could never get at this time of the year, but you know, none of them are really doing anything. So I'm going to make a point to you that comes from something you just said. And it occurred to me when you were talking about Canadians who are Black, because you had two Black Canadians on your show yesterday, correct? Correct. I was thinking how white people make the mistake of believing they can understand what it's like to be a visible minority in Canada or the United States. And I was thinking it's exactly how I preach about mental illness.

Let me ask you, Mike, have you suffered from something that more than just mild sort of anxiety or depression? I have not. No. Okay, good. So if I was, well, I am talking to you, but if you were, let's say you're in an audience because I give a lot of speeches, right? So you're one of 400 people in the audience.

And I say, how many of you have suffered from a mental health challenge like I've just described for myself? Depression and anxiety, life-changing, life-affecting, life-threatening, all of that. So out of the 400 people, maybe, I don't know, 25 put up their hands, right? Right. And you would not be one of those that put up your hands. So I say, okay, I know there's more than 25, but that's why I'm here. I'm here to try to empower you to have the confidence to be able to put up your hand. But that's not what I'm talking about right now. So you have 375 people allegedly who've never

experienced what I'm talking about. How many of you think you understand what it might be like for your husband or your wife or your son or your daughter or your coworker or whatever. And I say, don't even raise your hand because many of you won't be honest about this. But I'm telling you that you can never understand what depression feels like unless you have been through it. But unlike other things, you kind of believe that you do understand it because you kind of think that you've experienced it, but you've been strong enough to overcome it. People, I call it healthy brain-itis. It's like the healthy brain believes that it can understand depression, for instance, because it believes that it's been through things like I've been through. But because that person who's thinking it believes

they are stronger than me, they will overcome it. Because we use the same words to describe bad times with depression that we do just bad times, right? So people go, hey, you know what? I've had bad times in my life. I've not wanted to get out of bed in my life. I've not wanted to socialize at times in my life. I've been sad in my life, but I didn't have to get out of bed in my life. I've not wanted to socialize at times in my life I've been sad in my life, but I didn't have to go to a doctor. I don't have to see a psychiatrist I'm not on medication I don't have a diagnosis because I'm just I'm just living my life and that's what happens in life can't always be perfect That's what the healthy brain thinks and my job in that scenario is to convince people that you don't understand it, that

everything you just described is life. My mom died a year and a half ago. That makes me sad, but it does not make me depressed. The two in my brain have nothing to do with each other. And I thought of it when you were talking about how we could never understand what it's like to be physically different than the majority of the population and to be pulled over by a policeman, for instance, or a police officer. How could I ever decide that I know what that would be like for a Black Canadian? So it kind of ties in really well to mental illness.

Yeah, you're right. I suppose what we can do is listen, right? How can I understand the plight of those of mental health challenges? Simply listening and having empathy? First words. Here's the thing that, because, you know, let's say this is, this is a husband and this is a wife, or this is a husband and a husband. It doesn't matter the gender or the nature of the relationship necessarily, but they sleep beside each other. And if you have one person who has a diagnosed mental illness that is tough to treat. So, I mean, if you had a diagnosed mental illness and you were treated for it and you got better, then that's not really an issue here. But then you have the other partner who loves this person, whose happiness is tied to this person, right?

If this person is miserable, If this person is miserable, then this person is going to have a tough time being happy. So the barrier that exists between them exists at least in part because they don't understand each other, because they may think, the healthy brain may think that it understands. So you can narrow that gap, cut it in half instantly by saying the words,

I don't understand you. I thought I did. I thought, well, you know, if I buy you a present that it will make you happy. I thought if I was tough with you and showed you tough love and said, you know, you got to suck it up sometimes. I thought all of that because I don't understand. And if you say the words, I don't understand what you're experiencing, all of a sudden now the gap between you shrinks immeasurably because now this person's going, oh God, thank God you understand that because you feel minimized when you hear all of these suggestions about how to get better. You feel like, oh my God, you know, like you think that it's as simple as going out for a nice dinner.

And here I am incapable of feeling joy in my life. And you think that you can treat it with that. So I, you know, to answer the question question the easiest way I can to start with, it's simply saying, I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry I made all these stupid suggestions and I'll probably do it in the future. But I want you to know that I fundamentally understand that I don't understand you.

I was saving this for the end. I'm going to actually do it now while we're having this discussion. This is a letter I got from a, I think a longtime listener of Toronto Mike. I think he was there for episode one. So this is exciting, but I'm going to read the letter

I just got verbatim here. This is Blind Dave, now Beaches and Books from Twitter. I don't post much anymore, but I'm still an active reader. This is for you, Michael, actually. I want to thank you from my heart for your work with Sick Not Weak

and for breaking down the barriers of mental illness. I have lived with mental illness since my teens and was not properly diagnosed until my early 40s. Needless to say, I didn't have a clue why I couldn't just pull up my socks, quote unquote. I now have a much better grip on the crushing depression and blackness that has followed me for decades. I still have my moments and some days I don't want to be on this planet, but at least today it is manageable. You took the time, this again, this is you, Michael, you took the time to

communicate with me in some of my darker times and that in itself is a blessing I will carry with me in some of my darker times. And that in itself is a blessing I will carry with me always. Your personal stories are sad, heartwarming, and inspirational. Please know you are a very fine gentleman and you deserve health and happiness always. All my best, Dave. Wow. That's, uh, it's about the best thing I've ever heard. You know, I mean, there's, there's so much to thing I've ever heard. You know, I mean, there's, there's so much to unpack in that for me. Uh, and, uh, you know, I, it's very difficult for me to shut up while you're doing that because I'm much better at giving a compliment than taking a

compliment. You know, when I, when I, uh, when I go to give a speech, which before pandemic was probably twice a week, I would, you know, people say, well, okay, we wrote an intro for you. And I'll go, no, no, I know what you probably did. You probably went online and took my bio, and it's probably going to be five minutes long. And don't take this the wrong way, because it sounds offensive, but I'm probably going to want to kill myself while you're reading that thing. So how about this? How about, first of all, you leave it up to me to justify my presence on the stage. So you could say, hey, you may remember him a long time on TSN. He's been there all of his life.

And now he speaks also about mental health. Please welcome Michael Landsberg. Like, what else are you going to say that's going to have any impact on people? Because you could give the greatest resume in the world, but if I suck as a speaker, then I suck as a speaker. So just leave it up to me. And I've actually written out, the last speech I gave before pandemic, I actually wrote out an introduction, which was, there was tons of insults in there that were directed at me and I wrote them. And someone's reading going, you really want me to read this? And it's like, yeah, because first of all, it's funny that someone would write an intro for themselves that was insulting to

them, right? Second of all, it shows my humility. Third of all, it shows that while I may take my illness seriously, I don't take myself seriously. So when you're reading that, I'm like biting my tongue going, don't jump in, don't jump in. But obviously, I love that. It's not that I don't love a compliment as much as I do something that says that I did something that made a difference to people. That's great. I think the greatest compliment I could give you is that you're a day one TSN employee and you're making your Toronto Mike debut. And we're 40 minutes deep into our conversation.

And we haven't talked even a little bit about your career in sports media. And I think that speaks to how you're so much more now than the TSN guy who, you know, was on sports desk, hosted off the record and now has the morning radio show on 10 50. You're so much more. This is, if I will, it's greater. It's a greater purpose for you. Oh, you know, without a doubt. You know, one of the things, here's the way I would put it,

that until the 9th of, was it the 9th? I think it was December the 9th, 2009, Stefan Richer was a guest on Off the Record. And until that show, you could take all of the Off the Records that I did before that, all of the sports desks that I did before that, everything that I had done essentially before that and say, none of it was particularly important. You could say, hey, you know, I watched the show with Claude Lemieux and Darren McCarty together making up. That was really good TV. And it was good TV. Or you could

say that, hey, you did a lot of shows that were really crappy. And I could say, yeah, you're right. I did a lot of shows that were really crappy. But whether they were crappy or good, they still weren't significant or important. And then on this day with Stefan Richer, by chance, I lucked into reading that he had suffered from depression in the 1990s. And I asked him, would it be okay if I asked you how you're doing? Now, keep in mind, Mike, I've never spoken about depression on off the record or on any of the platforms I had, not because I was ashamed, because I wasn't, but I thought no one would care. I thought they'll just think, oh, he's obnoxious and he's arrogant. And now he's complaining because he wants us to like him. So I didn't realize like how stupid must I have been

to not realize the stigma was so pervasive that somebody talking about their own struggles could be powerful for people. So we went on the air, we talked for 90 seconds. I mean, I could tell you the story of where that went to the next day, the next evening when I was having dinner with my family. I remember the moment in this restaurant where my wife said, you've been on the phone since we got there. And I said, well, I'm texting people. And I showed her a message that I had gotten from someone who said they had seen Stefan Richer and I talking about depression the night before. So these are not, I mean, I was used to getting a ton of mail. And most of the emails would say something like, hey, Landsberg, you suck. Those are not things that you necessarily have to respond to, right? But these were like incredibly deep and profound and sensitive and giving emails. So here I am a guy until that day had never really done anything that you would say, well, that was good for people. That was good for mankind.

And now all of a sudden I speak about it. And now all of a sudden I find out that I have something inside me which can make a difference to somebody else, that I have this poison that I have something inside me which can make a difference to somebody else, that I have this poison that I've carried in me, and for somebody else it can be their medicine, right? Because the empowerment comes, the opportunity to change your life comes when you hear somebody talking about their own struggles without shame and without embarrassment and without sounding weak. Sorry, I'm just taking a deep breath.

Take a deep breath. It's the essential, you're not alone. It's helpful for people who are suffering likewise to hear about you being so open and honest without stigma, you know, sick, not weak. I don't know who came up with that hashtag. It's perfect. Is that yourself? You want to take credit for that one? You know, I kind of lucked into it.

I was giving one of the first speeches that I gave and it was, so everything is after 2009. Right. You know how this is the year 2020 AD after death, right? For me, this is year 11 after Stefan, after Stefan Richer, because my life changed on that day. So I think that this much time later, I've learned. Like, Mike, it's crazy how much thought I've given to this and how much I know because I have it inside me, because I've spoken to others. And this is not knowledge like a doctor gets knowledge.

This is an understanding of what something feels like. And I remember my first speech was at Mount Sinai Hospital or one of my first speeches. And so I was talking, a friend of mine had asked me to come and speak. And there was, so I'm in a lecture hall, right? So I'm at the bottom, and there's the screen behind me, and a blackboard behind me. And there's, you know, steep seats that students sit in who are in medical school, right? Right. And I said, you know, Right. And I said, you know, how come nobody here is really expressing the stigma? And we know that statistically, unless you are the most enlightened group on the planet, that 60% of you believe that mental illness and physical illness are different. That you believe that something like depression is not something like diabetes or cancer or lupus, that you believe that somehow, you know, it's kind of self-imposed. So someone, you know, stand up and challenge me on this

so we can talk about it, right? I'm not going to be offended. So finally someone did. And at the end of what we said, I said, look, I understand what you're saying, but what you need to know is that I am sick. I have an illness. The illness that I have is called depression, but you need to know also that I am not weak. I am sick. I am not weak. And it kind of just, and it's too long ago that this was probably 2011, maybe. It's too long ago for me to remember how I processed that, but it kind of stuck. And where in the timeline does Bell Let's Talk Day come into play? Bell Let's Talk Day, I'm trying to remember when the first Bell Let's Talk Day was. I think we just celebrated, I think Corey's dog just walked in. So there will be some aggressive barking going on here.

That's okay. So the bizarre thing about this, Mike, was, so here I am a couple of years into being a mental health advocate. I had signed a deal, a licensing deal with CTV to produce a documentary. This was before Bell had bought CTV and TSN. So I had gone to CTV's sister station and met with Suzanne Boyce, who was Yvonne Fitzon's number two, so to speak. And she was, she still is a wonderful woman who was very sensitive to the subject I was talking about. And somehow, like I remember walking out going,

oh my God, this is going to happen. I convinced her to give us a licensing deal to produce a documentary. And I thought this was like the coolest thing in the world. And we produced a documentary called Darkness and Hope, Depression, Sports and Me. And in the interim, just as we were, interim, just as we were, no, I'm sorry, just before we released it, Bell bought TSN CTV and created Bell Media. Now they had owned TSN CTV before, then sold it back and then they bought it again. So I remember thinking, oh my God, this is crazy that I work for this company that is now this is crazy that I work for this company that is now just made this donation of $62 million for the next five years to support the profile of mental illness and to try to reduce the stigma. So I'm going, wow, this is like crazy. Cause like, that's, that's what I do. Right. I talk about this. So I, uh, I sent an email to George Cope saying, you don't know me, but blah, blah, blah.

And I don't know, a half hour later, the phone rings and I look down and I see, it's George Cope. This should be interesting. It's like, oh my God. So I go, hello? He goes, hey, Michael, it's George Cope. I go, yeah, I'm aware of that. It came up on the phone.

What's going on, George? And I knew it wasn't like he was going to fire me. First of all, if he wanted to fire me, he wouldn't call me. He would call someone who would call someone who would call someone. I was pretty distant from that. So he said, I just want to let you know the story behind Bell Let's Talk. I want to let you know the story behind our donation. And I will let you know that you are in the right place and that together we'll make a difference. And I thought, wow, that was just really cool and

really lucky. Did you really think he didn't know who you were when you said you don't know? I did. I did. I really, and then I found out that he was a huge basketball fan, which can you imagine, oh, did he score or what? You know, he's a huge basketball fan. And before he leaves his job as president and CEO of Bell and Bell Media, the Raptors win the championship. And he's there like all part of it. Very cool. Very, very, very cool. Well, okay. Now I'm going to take us back and we won't spend the normal amount of time. Otherwise, this will be like a four-hour episode here. So we're going to truncate it a bit. But I do, if you don't mind, we're going to just take the journey. I know it doesn't matter what happened

before 2009. Just ask me anything you want. Don't preface it. Okay. So I want to get you to TSN, but first I want to ask you about the cable 10 days. Oh, cable 10 days. That is not a question that I had asked too much. I started, So my life changed in third year at the University of Toronto. Is this barking too loud for you? It depends how inconvenient it is to make. I don't want you to, you know, ideally that barking wouldn't be happening. But I totally understand you can't control a dog's barking. So I'm okay with it.

As long as I can hear you. Okay. I'm okay with it. As long as I can hear you. Okay. So my life changed on a fall day when I was in third year at the University of Toronto. And I was parking my mom's car on Harvard Street. And I was going to take a test or an exam. And I remember parallel parking. I remember that it was raining. And I remember turning around to parallel park. And I remember thinking, what am I doing? Why would I go take this test? I'm going to fail this test like I failed everything else.

I don't need to find out that I'm not capable of succeeding here at this. I don't need to be told it again with an F. So I said, you know what? I'm out of here. And tomorrow I'm going to come in and I'm going to walk into University of Toronto radio, and I'm going to see if I can do what I, the only thing I ever wanted, which was to be a broadcaster, which was to talk about sports on television or radio. So I did that. I came in the next day and I can remember what the studio looked like. And one of the guys that I was on with, how cool is this? Was Steve Paikin.

Oh, Steve Paikin, who's by the way, listening to us right now. He listens to every episode of Toronto Mike, great FOTM. So, I mean, he says that to you, but he's also a known liar. So, you know, he and I were, I mean, he says that to you, but he's also a known liar. So, you know. And a Thai Cats fan. He and I were, I mean, like we literally started together. And I went into U of T radio and there was another guy named Franz, Hans Froenlau, who Steve will remember this guy. And I said, hey, I want to talk about sports. He goes, okay, talk about sports.

It's not like, you know, it's not like you had to prove yourself to be on campus radio. If you could string together seven words in English, then you were on. And if you could only string together five and it was in Polish, you'd probably still be on. So I remember though, pushing down the button, I remember that the red light illuminated on the button. I remember it had a really spongy feel. Like that's a long time ago now. And I remember it had a really spongy feel. That's a long time ago now. And I remember it because as soon as I did that and opened my mouth, my life changed. Wow. And this is CIUT and this is on St. George, right? It is on St. George. And it's in this old building and it was on the second or third floor.

And then all of a sudden now it was like, wow, there's a place for me in this world. Like instead of wandering, looking for something that I could make as mine, you know, I came from a family where my dad was an orthodontist and my brother had already graduated from medical school. And I only had one uncle and he was a chartered accountant. So like I was, I mean, that's all I knew. And I went to U of T because everyone that I was friends with at collegiate and in high school went to University of Toronto and they all had plans and I had nothing. So broadcasting saved in a lot of ways, gave me a life. I won't say saved my life, but it gave me a life. And I found that university campus radio gave me my shot. And then

Steve Paikin and I, and I don't remember how this came about, we went up to Cable 10, Willowdowns, which was, I guess it was Willowdowns when we started and then it flipped to Newton Cable. And we did a show there called Time Out. Time Out. I think it was Time Out. And it was like 90 minutes of call in of the two of us taking, well, we took like an average of three calls a show for 90 minutes. And one of them was my dad. So it's not like we were enormously popular, but I learned how through Campus Radio

and through Cable 10, I learned how to ad lib. Okay. I'm going to ask you about a few... Because I've done 650 of these episodes. And you're right. You probably don't get asked a lot about the Newton Brook Cable 10 days, but I love talking about about all that so i'm going to bring up a couple of names of people you might have crossed paths with and we'll find out what about and he may be a bit younger than you i'm doing the math in my head but did you ever cross paths with at ciut or cable 10 with mike wilner oh yeah oh yeah i mean he is he is me. No, actually I shouldn't say, oh yeah, because I don't think I, I bumped into him then my recollections might be, you know, like from something much more current. Right. Um, but no, I probably did it because he was a few years younger than you. So maybe you missed each other possibly. Yeah. And maybe, you know,

in the hierarchy of life, I was now a, a veteran veteran cable 10 person so i had a swagger to me that you know i wasn't going to have anything to do with the rookie i mean i had a show that had 11 viewers he can't come into my world and all of a sudden act like we're equals and because he had a show of a guy named aaron lobel called uh let's talk sports it was called and uh again i i distinctly remember, I used to watch Cable 10, okay? I don't know what that says about me, but I loved it. And it had that Wayne's World feel,

and it really was a chance for someone like yourself to put in your reps and learn the trade with only 11 people watching so that you could make a jump to something like TSN where 12 people might start watching you and then eventually grow from there. Yeah, that's a good point. And it's what you just said,

the words that you use to describe what you get from doing something like that is put in your reps. You know, I, my, my best advantage was my sense of understanding of how crappy most of us are at the beginning. And when I, when I transferred to Ryerson after failing out of, well, I guess it wasn't a transfer. I failed out of U of T, went to Ryerson. And I went to school with, there was about 20 of us that wanted to do sports. And only one other guy actually did anything in sports. And the reason why I made it and they didn't was that I knew I sucked and they

thought they were great. And that sense of self-awareness is so important. I knew, oh my gosh, you know, like I could listen to my own tapes and think, oh my God, I'm, you know, not very good, but I'm going to practice enough that I'm going to get good. And it may not be good enough, but it's going to be as good as I can do. And all of these guys that I went to school with all thought, oh, the world's going to be waiting for me. And when I graduate, they're going to say, where have you been all our lives? Who is the person who made it? His name was Fred Wallace. And he ended up doing, he did some play-by-play for, I'm trying to remember what junior, one OHL team. Okay. So one more name I'm going to drop. So I wanted to drop Wilner. He's

a good FOTM, but also I want to ask you if you cross paths with Steve Kersner. It's funny that you say that. I assumed that you were going to say that. Ed Vesok was a guest on Isolation Nation last Thursday. Wow. Yeah. And he was, I think Ed and Steve know each other. So he was a great guest. I mean, Steve is such a smart guy and so well-read. guy and so well read. And, you know, he has, he has, uh, an understanding of the, um, the social media Cree, which is no boundaries. Right. Uh, he was, he was a great guest. Uh, I don't remember

him from Willow Downs, um, which became Newton. I think that I left shortly after he was, uh, after, uh, shortly before he started. And then I went to McLean Hunter on Queen Street and had a two-year run there, which ultimately got me my job at TSN because I put together a demo reel of stuff that I had done at McLean Hunter. And somehow I convinced TSN to give me an audition based on God knows what I've produced there. Well, okay. So now we got yet TSN. I'm going to play 15 seconds of yourself.

And I think this might've aired day one or before day one. I know what you're going to say. We taped it. I think it was like the Tuesday night and it was me and Terry libel and Jim Van Horn and John Wells. And when you play this clip, the first thing that people will notice is it doesn't really sound like me. My voice sounds high.

And I can explain to you why in a second. But yeah, go ahead, roll it. Our philosophy at TSN is to bring you sports events both live and on tape and to keep you abreast of the latest up-to-date news from the world of sports. We'll also be taking you behind the scenes to give you all the inside information, both on and off the field through a variety of magazine shows. Go ahead. So you sound, in that clip, you sound a little more like me and less like Michael Landsberg.

sound a little more like me and less like Michael Landsberg. You know, also I sound a little bit more like anyone but Michael Landsberg. I mean, not even the tone of my voice, but just how the formality of it is

clearly something that I have strayed from for sure. Flatter? Was it flatter back then? Like now you have more range, I'd say, in your emotions. Flatter, like with a flatter back then, like now you have more range, I'd say in your emotions. Oh yeah, by a mile. I mean, I think range is something that it takes a while to get.

And I think that there is a process that those of us who get the chances that I got that you go through. And that process is trying to figure out how do you, what's the best me? What's the best, most comfortable me? If I was to say, okay, I'm going to wear on the outside who I am on the inside, what would that be? How would that be reflected in my presentation? Because there's a sense of genuineness that you have, even if people go, like, I remember saying, that you have, even if people go, like, I remember saying, I used to watch Sportsline with Jim Taddy and Mark Hepsher. And I would watch Mark Hepsher and Jim Taddy. And I would say,

you know what, especially Hepsher, I don't really like him. But I would say, I really respect the fact that he does a really good Mark Hepsher, which is all you can do, right? I can't do a really good Bob Costas. I can't do a really good anyone but me. And you may look at it and say, wow, you know what, Landsberg and many have, I don't like that guy, which is fine. But at least I'm being genuine. I'm doing the best me I can be. And back then I didn't know, well, I mean, I didn't know really who I was on the air, but also, you know, the boundaries were pretty narrow. Keep in mind, I was 25 years old in an environment where everybody else was way older than me. And back in those days, sports on television typically was middle-aged men with great voices talking in a certain way that was anything but how I talk,

which was three games in the National Hockey League tonight. The Maple Leafs take on the Montreal Canadiens. This is game three of their series this year. Like just the facts. And here I am, you know, coming in with a totally different attitude. So I think that it took me a while to feel comfortable enough to allow that part of me

out. A quick fact, a fun fact, I think about Mark Hebbs here is he has a podcast now called Hebsey on Sports. Do you want to take a guess who is who's his co-host and producer on Hebsey on Sports? I'm going to say, let's see, Steve Paikin. Good guess. It's Toronto Mike, yours truly. You're speaking to him. Right. So you understand how I phrased that? I would say it in front of him, right?

I mean, I wouldn't care if he said it to me. If he would say, hey, I used to watch Off the Record. I used to think you were a jackass. But I respected the fact that you had the guts to ask questions that people should be asked or whatever. So I think that the ultimate compliment in this business is you are doing a really good version of you. And what you have to expect with that is people to say, if you're doing a really good version of you, and if you are different than other people, then there's going to be people that would say, I don't like who you are, which is okay. So John Wells, Jim Van Horn, yourself and Terry Leibel. I mean, Jim Van Horn

was a rock jock on 1050, right? So he was already a savvy veteran, if you will. By the way, great FOTM, shout out to Jim Van Horn. We spoke recently on this during the pandemic and checked in with Jim. And the stash still looks fantastic. You still got that rock in here. But what was it like? Just give me a taste of the launch of TSN and working with these day one-ers. You know, I mean, John had just come off hosting the Olympics for CBC. And I think that, I mean, I could give you a standard answer,

which would be all, you know, it's great and great to work with these veterans and wow, but that's boring. You know, I'll give you the straight goods as I promised. Real talk. Real talk. I would say the first couple of years when we all kind of did the same thing, we all did what was then sports desk now called sports center, obviously, you know, and we all work together in different configurations. You know, I would say that there was some tension between John and Jim and me, because I think that I shouldn't say,

I think I know that we looked at things differently, not to suggest that I was right and they were wrong, but my idea was it was kind of all about the fun of reporting sports. And their idea was different than that, not to suggest that they didn't want to have fun or couldn't have fun. But there was a difference. You know, we had these big debates and arguments about how to do highlights, you know, for games, which ultimately I always thought was your signature on a sports talk show was how you did the highlights. So there was, you know, there was, I mean, not tension that you could go, oh, my God, you could cut it with a knife. But there was certainly a difference in approach, which made for interesting times. Well, you know, it was such early times for this medium.

Like you mentioned Sportsline with Jim Taddy and Mark Hebbshire, but that was pretty much all we had in this market anyways. Totally. You know, TSN launches. So you're right. There's no clear blueprint that you're kind of figuring it out. It was the start of, I mean, TSN obviously was the start of 24-hour-a-day sports, but it was also the start of the focus of an entity, of a network being only on this one thing, sports. Like, you know, on Global, you had Sportsline, but Sportsline was still, you know, a tiny fraction of what they did,

whereas we only did one thing. And I think that sports broadcasting was really in its infancy at that point. And, you know, I guess because I had never really done it before, I guess I had no sort of loyalty to the old system. I had no belief system that was based on, well, you know, I've done it like this for 10 years, so I'm going to keep doing it. So I was kind of like an empty blackboard waiting for someone to tell me what I could write on the blackboard. It was a cool time for sure. It's mind-blowing that we're talking, I guess this is 84, I guess. Here we are in 2020

and you're still at TSN. That's a great run, my friend. You know what it is? It's a couple of things. I'm going to say this and I'm going to leave off the part that would be for TSN to answer. So I'm not going to say, oh, I've stayed at my job because I'm really good at my job. I'm not going to say that. That's not for me to say, nor is that the kind of thing that I would ever say. But there's two things, reason why

I'm still at TSN. Number one, I would say that a sense of priorities in my life where I knew that I had something that I really liked and something that valued me. And I was not going to give that up for the first knock on the door. So many people make the mistake of going, oh, well, I'm not appreciated where I am, which is something you hear almost everywhere with somebody who's on the air. They feel like they're underappreciated. And then someone comes and knocks on your door and says, wow, you know, you should come work for us. We love you, man.

I don't know why they have you doing that 2 a.m. show. We, you know, like you, you'd be our guy. You're the greatest, man. And you hear that and you go, oh, okay, well, somebody else looks at me differently. But the problem is your new employer becomes your old employer pretty quickly. And if you think that any place is going to see you differently, you're probably making a mistake. And if you think that you're underappreciated, you're probably making a mistake because that is life. People don't necessarily continually feed your ego. So that was one thing. I never like pursued, you know, greener pastures, so to speak. Before you do the next thing, were you pursued by the team 1050?

And that was, you know, one of the things that I made was making reference to, right. Right. Uh, and to be honest, I don't really remember now I knew the management at the time, the guys that, that created that. And I I'm going to say, no, I wasn't pursued by them. It's possible that I, I said that like, there's no way. I mean, I had no interest in that whatsoever. But even beyond that, that would be an example of, you know, I mean, I always felt like I was appreciated the right amount. You know, I never needed to have my ego stroked. I never needed to hear, oh, Michael, you know, we think this about you.

I never needed to hear that, oh, Michael, you know, we think you're better than, you know, whoever was doing another show at TSN because there's, you know, you can tell how someone views themselves by how they view others. Meaning if you ask me, who do I like at TSN? Who, who, who do I think does a really good job? If my answer is, well, I think James Dufty does a great job. And I am always been a fan of Detition and Jennifer Hedger is awesome. And I go through this list of people, then you go, oh yeah, well, he probably has a pretty good sense of self-awareness. But if I can't name anyone who I think is doing a really good job, which is kind of typical of people, then maybe I've lost perspective on my own relationship and lack of importance in the world. So the second thing

for me was that I'm a good guy. I'm a good worker. I'm a good employee. You know, I would say, I'm a good employee. You know, I, I would say, I mean, for a guy who has done this, you know, most of his adult life, I've done some kind of show almost every day. You know, I've, I've, you know, there's, there's a thing called high maintenance. And then there's a thing called low maintenance. And then there's me. Never asked for anything that was not something that I should have asked for. Never gave them any trouble. I was just, you know, I just went about my business with the confidence of not needing to knock on their door to say, tell me how great I am. So I think the biggest reason is that, and when shit happens too, you know, who keeps their job and who loses their job? When crap goes bad, when the economy goes bad, the one that you would protect the most would be the one that you go, hey, I really like that guy.

And that guy's been really loyal to us. So we should be really loyal to him. Right. And is it at all in your – I ask this because uh again i talked a lot of sports media people and is it do you find at all you would keep your salary under a certain threshold to prevent a target from appearing on your back did that ever occur to you working in sports media yeah no it didn't and and part of that reason could be because maybe I was never offered the kind of money that would make you a target. You know, I mean, it's,

it's, it's, and I don't think people thought that way. Although I guess the last handful of years, I thought that way about Bob McAllen. I thought, oh my gosh, you know, when they successfully bid on the NHL, I remember thinking, oh my God, that's got to be the worst deal ever. You know, you figure out they got to sell like $600 million a year in advertising in Canada. You can't possibly do that. So I remember thinking, wow, you know, if they got to cut back, you could cut back 20 people who make $50,000 or one Bob McCallum, which is not his fault. Right. So, you know, in a lot of ways, you should never turn down money.

You should always try to get paid what you can get paid, but you have to be aware that when times get tough, maybe you're more vulnerable than you would be. Now, Michael, it's interesting. We talked about George Cope earlier, but David Schultz came on this program to talk about his journalism, his research into the great NHL deal that Rogers signed. And he tells me that Bell had agreed to the same money in the same term. So that same dollar value for the same term could have gone to Bell Media. Just an interesting slice of history. I guess so. It's not like I... I mean, I'm sure Schultz knows more about it than I do, right? Because it's not like upper management

called me in to say, hey, Michael, we just want to let you know how this all went down. I know that there was huge disappointment at TSN when that deal went down, that it was like a morgue walking in there. And I mean, some people ultimately knew that they would lose their job because they worked on the NHL, right? But there was a status thing. There was a million things about it. But I remember thinking, God, that is so much more money than I would think you could ever make back. And that as a vanity project, you know, like, shouldn't you pick something that wouldn't cripple your bottom line? So yeah, that could have been us. I mean, that could have been me there, but for the grace of God, couldn't have gone. I in that, you know, they probably would have canceled off the record long

before it got canceled because they would have said, okay, well, you know, let's just, just do more sports center. I think Rogers was banking on a uh a few more playoff rounds for the toronto may beliefs i think that was the uh the essential uh uncontrollable element in that deal i guess so i i mean it just seems to me like like that deal was always going to be a loser like that you could never unless you thought it was worth it to your brand to be the national hockey league broadcaster and if that's the case then there's the value to it and maybe i don't know that value but if you're talking about money in or sorry money out and then money coming in there's no way that that deal could ever make sense and now we know one person at tsn was approached by

rogers when that deal was signed. And that person, James Duthie, who you already mentioned, a fine broadcaster, chose to stay at TSN. And then TSN showed great loyalty to the hockey guys like Bob McKenzie and Darren Dreger and James Duthie and locked them up. And they're still there today. So it sounds like it must be a pretty okay place to work. You know, I've worked for really good employers, people that ultimately I felt, okay, well, let's, you know, to be totally candid. Was it 2016 that Off the Record was canceled? 2015. 2015?

Yes. Oh, God. It seems like a ridiculously long time ago now, but you know, they, they came to me, uh, and, um, Mark Millier and Stu Johnston said, uh, you want to go out for dinner? Stu called me at home on a Sunday and I went, okay, this isn't good. He goes, what do you mean? I go, Stu, you and I are friends. I know you like me, but you've never called me and invited me for dinner before. He goes, no, no, no. I think it's pretty good for you. So I said, okay.

We went to a restaurant on, I'm trying to remember, it's on Yonge Street just before Wilson or York Mills. It's the Miller, sorry, the Miller, it used to be the Jolly Miller when I was young, and now it's the Miller. So we met there, and we're just making small talk because, I mean, I worked with Mark since we both, I think he graduated a year after me at Ryerson, right? So we'd been buddies, and he produced all kinds of shows that I did. we'd been buddies and he produced all kinds of shows that I did. Uh, so we're sitting there, we're just talking and I go, okay, let's just talk, say after you tell me why you asked me to come for dinner, given the fact that we've never had dinner together. Right. So that's when they

said, Oh, well, you know, we want you to do morning radio. And I said, this was my reaction. I knew a hundred percent in my mind, first of all, that off the record was done. I thought it would have been done two years before because TV, you know, TV evolved, right? TV changed, TV died. And I, you know, I, I knew, like I said this to my family that eventually they are going to decide, okay, well, let's just put sports center on at five o'clock because it's not going to cost us much to do another half hour of a show that we're already doing an hour of. And so I totally expected this. And then it was like the morning radio thing was, I guess I wasn't positive about that, but it was, yeah, I kind of figured that this is what it would be.

So, you know, but my point is that they could have said at that same dinner, Michael, you've had a great run here at TSN, you know, off the record was on for 18 years outside of the beach combers. It was the longest running Canadian television show. So, you know what? It's been a great run and we're going to give you a great package. But, you know, you're, you know, this is, you know, like you're going to move on to the next phase of your life. They could have done that and no one would have criticized them for it.

But instead of that, they said, OK, well, what do we want to do with Michael? they said, okay, well, what do we want to do with Michael? Can he bring something to us in another role that we do see a future in as opposed to talk shows on television? And they created this job for me, which was mornings at TSN 1050. So that is loyalty to me. That's a company saying, hey, you know what? Let's look after a guy who helped look after us. saying, hey, you know what? Let's look after a guy who helped look after us. If you weren't a mental health advocate and a key face of the Let's Talk, the Bell Let's Talk campaign, do you think you might have had a different ending in 2015? You know, I guess it's possible. I don't think so because I think the dominant thing with that was possible. I don't think so because I think the dominant thing with that was what I said before,

Landsberg's a good guy. I'm sure one day, or it's possible one day I'll get fired. It could happen today and you'll go, wow, that was really weird. But then it would be my fault, so I hope it doesn't happen today. I don't think it would happen because of this, but just the natural sort of progression of life and of of media which is evolving for sure but i think the dominant thing was the fact that they would have gone you know he's a good guy and you know we like him and he's you know he's been here all along and he's never given us a headache i don't think he's ever taken a day off he's never embarrassed us and you're famous like there's a huge element to you. I mean, not that this could help a Bob McCowan, but he was probably making a million a year or something.

But Michael Landsberg is a big name in this country. And that has a huge value, I would think, for a company like TSN. I guess it did, but also the optics of it. I don't know what contributed to it. I mean, I used to joke all the time and still joke that, you know, you fire me and I'm, I'm, you know, like you're going, oh my God, what happens if he plays the mental health card? Oh my God. You know, it's, it's kind of, like I kind of laughed and joked about how it kind of gave me more security. But, the end, if I was fired and within two hours or two days or two weeks or two months, people would forget and say, oh, yeah. And if they saw my face somewhere, they'd go, ah, I remember that guy. Yeah, except every February when it's Bell Let's Talk Day, they'd be inundated with you fired Michael Landsberg tweets, etc. Especially when I got out in the media

and I start saying they fired me because of my mental illness. Oh my goodness. Quick, before we leave off the record, because that's a long running show. Is that true? That's that you threw out about being... Yeah, longest running talk show

in Canadian history, for sure. The Beachcombers ran for 18 seasons and we made it to 17 and a half, which was a joke, right? I mean, like a joke comparing ourselves to the Beachcombers. I mean, they have nothing in common. I just thought it sounded kind of funny. I remember on our last show to say, oh God, we're so close. Bruno Gerusi, damn you. I thought I had you. But I mean, the truth is that is it an accomplishment to have hosted a show for 17 and a half seasons? Of course it's an accomplishment. No one's going to say, no, it's not. But is it an accomplishment if you take into account the fact that TSN, for most of that time, owned the marketplace? So if we started September 8th, 1997, we put a show on called Off the Record. If we had done

the same show on Sportsnet when it started up, I think two years later or whenever it was, if we had done the same show on Sportsnet or on Global or on CBC, would we have flourished? And the answer is not a chance. You know, it's not like I'm sitting here going, okay, well, you know, we were so good at this that we killed the competition. I mean, we averaged many different years. We averaged more than 100,000 viewers in the late afternoon. That's ridiculous. You could never do that now.

But is it because I was such an amazing host or is it because people just came home from work and they turned to turn on TSN? So again, that's back to self-awareness. asking what's your favorite guest and incident on Off the Record? And then he also adds on that the inspiring work you do, and he says, thank you, you really put yourself out there. That's from Paul. Well, thanks for saying that. Putting yourself out there is easy for almost everyone in a certain context, right? It just happens that the one context that I put myself out there on, mental health,

most people find that difficult to imagine themselves doing, which is why there's so much value in it, right? Like if I went on, it's talking on the radio or on television or on social media, talking about my struggles with depression and how it made me feel and the real struggles that it has dealt to me over the course of the last 20 years. And no one went, wow, good for him for talking about that. Wow, good for him because that must be hard. If it wasn't perceived as being hard,

then it wouldn't be important, right? Like if everyone looked at it and thought, oh my gosh, like, hey, I could do that. The point is that this is incredibly easy for me, that there's no courage here that's needed. There's nothing other than my desire to make a difference in other people's lives. That is genuine. And that's a reason to say, hey, good job. But as for being courageous, And that's a reason to say, hey, good job. But as for being courageous, there's not a hint of courage that this takes. Nothing.

But it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy because your work and your effort over these many years now have helped to reduce and hopefully one day completely eliminate any stigma attached to mental illness. So it's becoming easier to talk about this because you put yourself out there and you talk about this. Right. And I agree with that with anyone who's doing this. Here's how I would refer to it. What I do, what we do at Sick Not Weak is really important. It will change lives and it will save lives. I know that 100% for sure. But that doesn't mean it's difficult for me to do it. That doesn't mean that it's intimidating for me to share. That doesn't mean that it takes courage. So on one hand, it's the easiest thing in the world and the most natural thing in the world for me. And on the other hand, it's hugely important, which means that easy for me, important for you. It's a perfect combination.

Do you have a favorite guest for Paul or a favorite incident? Well, incident, I was, you know, I don't think about the past much. You know, when OTR became a hit, I remember telling myself, this does not define you. This is not who you are. You are not the host of this talk show. You're Michael Landsberg. And that happens to be your job. Because if you let your job define you, then if that is taken away, or if it starts to not go well, then what is, how do you define yourself? Right? So I prepared myself for that day. And when I

walked out that day from our last show, and then walked back in, I don't think it was the next day, but pretty close to that, into where radio lives in A really bad way to live your life. But having said that, of course, you know, I remember some things I remember. I mean, there's there's the more famous the person. the more the better story it is right like if i tell you a story about this guy he was a canadian actor named lindsey merithew and i don't remember what show he was on i remember his publicist reached out and said you know will you put this actor from this tv show on your show so whoever booked him said yeah let's do that and he was terrible He didn't say a word for the first three blocks of the show. And as we were going to the last commercial, I said, you know, we're going to take a break. And when we return, we'll find out, does Lindsay still have a pulse? And which is a total dick thing to say, but I thought it was important to say, because like, I couldn't have been the only one that realized he wasn't talking. And when we came back, I said, Hey, you know, I said that before.

And that's a silly thing to say, you know, it's been a pleasure meeting you. He goes, yeah, no problem. And I went, are you giving me the fingers you rub your face? And he went, no, why would you say that? And then I said, good for you, man. Good for you. You finally stepped up. You're having some fun. You made a statement. That is awesome. But the story isn't nearly as compelling if there's no celebrity attached to it. Like Vin Diesel going to the brass rail with Vin Diesel. That leads itself to for someone going, oh my gosh, you should tell me more about that. Spike Lee, who is a guest on the show. Cool thing. Me telling Spike Lee how he should perform on the show, saying, okay, here's how it's going to work.

I'm going to throw out the first question. Here's what it is. Spike, how do you feel about this? Do you say yes or no? And he said, well, I say yes. Okay, you jump in right away with a yes. Who doesn't believe that? And whoever else was on the show goes, well, I don't believe that.

I go, well, okay, well, you don't let Spike ramble on. When he gets like 15 seconds into his answer, you jump in and say, wait a second here, right? I mean, this was, I became sort of known for doing that kind of thing and setting up conflict. Right. So the coolest thing about it, though, was that Spike was answering to Dave Stewart. Dave Stewart, Dave Stewart, Blue Jay pitcher at the time. No, Dave Stewart was assistant general manager of the Jays. And I knew that the two of them were friends. So Spike is giving, answering my questions, talking to Dave.

So I said to him, I said, what gives here, man? You're, you're talking to me, but you're looking at him. You know, it's kind of insulting. And he gave me, I don't even remember what he said, but it seemed to me like he was doing that because he was more comfortable looking at Dave than he was looking at me. And you could read anything you want into that. But that was, you know, for me, just really cool, like kind of directing Spike Lee.

You know, I've been thinking a lot about Spike Lee this last these past few days. I keep thinking about Mookie throwing the garbage can through Sal's pizzeria's window because Radio Raheem killed by police, racist police. And it's it's 1989 that movie was made and it resonates very strongly in 2020. Yeah. You know what? He was on CNN last night. I watch CNN or MSNBC basically all the time. And they had him on and he took some Eric Garner video. He used the movie that he had made and some video from George Lloyd and put it all together

and put it into something that was pretty seamless. So that was last night. Yeah, wow, wow, wow. Sean Hammond, also a big fan. And it's funny, you talked about directing and how you kind of direct the conflict or off the record. And this question from Sean relates to that. He says, love him.

That's you, by the way. I don't think he's talking about me. He loves you. Love him. Could you ask him something about Off the Record? When he had a WWF superstar, which is now WWE, were you told, Michael Landsberg, how to direct the conversation or did they want people to have a little glimpse of the inside? That's the Sean Hammond question for you. Yeah, it's a great question. And I'm going to give you an answer like everything else I've done, which is 100% the truth. And that is that we got access to all of these superstars. I mean, kind of a hokey word to use because everybody in WWF at the time was known as a superstar, but we got that because Bret Hart came on our first week and it was on a panel and people liked that he was treated seriously, right? Like, like it wasn't a freak show. You know, I didn't, I, he, I was, I was

not talking to the hit man. I was talking to Bret Hart. And then throughout that fall, there was the Survivor Series, the Screwjob, the, you know, all of that went down and Bret grew to trust me with his story. So he kept coming back on off the record to tell his story. And Vince said, the record to tell his story. And Vince said, I want to come on. Now, keep in mind at that time, TSN has the rights to broadcast Raw. So, you know, they're a broadcast partner, so to speak. So Vince comes on and I challenged him. I said, I don't understand. And, you know, i won't get into the the you know the minutiae of the survivor series but um brett was leaving wwf to go to wcw and they didn't want him taking the title with him so they had told him they had worked it out that the match was going to be a draw. And the way it worked was that Brett got pinned and he thought it would be a two count and he would push out of it. And the ref went

and took off outside of the ring. And Brett's going like, what the hell happened here? And Brett got really, really mad. He spit on Vince from the ring. Then they went backstage. Vince claims that he allowed Brett to hit him saying, okay, well, you know, I'm a, I'm a man. I can take it. And there's no doubt Brett hit him for sure. Whether he allowed that or not, I don't know. But that story became the story in the history of wrestling. The screw job became the biggest thing. So we were kind of the hub for talking about it because first of all, nobody else was, nobody else could because nobody else had people talking out of character. So Vince said, I want to come on. So I said to him, Vince, I don't understand. You say that you say you didn't lie to Brett,

but I don't understand because you agree that you worked it out, that it would be a draw in advance. that you worked it out that it would be a draw in advance. And now you tell the referee or the guy who's ringing the bell, ring the bell, ring the bell, ring the bell. So Brent ended up losing that match and losing the title. So how could you not have lied to him? He said, well, I didn't lie. And then I said to him, okay, well then explain to me an alternate way to understand this because I don't understand it. If you told him draw and you made sure that it was a loss to me, you lied to Brett. And he said, okay, I lied to Brett. And I thought at the time when that, when that went down, that Vince was going to be pissed off and this would be the end of our relationship with him. But not only was he not pissed off, but he respected the fact that I had challenged him and that I had the guts to get in his face. And I remember afterwards saying, hey, if I can do that,

I can do like anything when it comes to asking tough questions, because who's more intimidating than Vince McMahon? I totally relate. Absolutely. One more question on the, I don't know, I think it's off the record. You'll tell me, I'm hoping you might recognize this name. John Harris Jr. is asking if you still twirl your index finger when you want the next question on a prompter. Well, I don't use a tell prompter anymore, so I can't do that, but it would be now was he was John an intern?

I'm not too sure. Maybe. We used to have interns always working teleprompter, which was, you know, if it wasn't, if I wasn't the easygoing guy, that would be like the worst job on the planet. I have worked with guys that if the prompter is a little slow, well, everything would be like the worst job on the planet. I have worked with guys that if the prompter is a little slow, well, everything that happens is the prompter's fault. Like if the weather is bad the next day, it's the prompter operator's fault because it's an easy scapegoat, right? But so I would do this, like keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.

Right. Okay. So we've got you to radio here. So it was Naylor and Landsberg at the beginning, right? And then why the change to Carlo Kuliakovo? we, Dave and I, we're not a particularly interesting match. And I say that not as a reflection of anything about Dave, but to me, radio, sports talk radio, really, I have no interest in it. If you have two people who never played the game, so to speak, talking to each other, it's like, who the hell cares what you say, honestly. So me and Dave Naylor are talking.

I mean, it's like, I don't give a shit what I have to say, let alone what does somebody else think? So it's two guys with the same limited background, all espousing their words about something that they've actually never done. And to me, that was never very interesting. So, and I don't think Dave loved it. I think that we weren't necessarily a great match because I think, you know, the way I work is, you know, we can be heading in one direction. We're going north, north, north. And then all of a sudden I hear something and I take it south, south, south. And I think that that was probably not that much fun for Dave. I mean, we loved each other. Like Dave and I never had an angry word,

never had a word that wasn't friendly. You know, I think he's a great guy. I think he thinks I'm a good guy. It just, it wasn't the perfect match. And then they needed someone to move into CFL. So that made sense. And then we lucked into Carlo. Now, since you arrive at 1050 TSN Radio in 2015,

you guys have great strides, like huge inroads, you know, five 90 at a huge headstart, you know, much like TSN had over sports net. Yes. A huge headstart.

And, uh, the last books that leaked on the internet and I saw some demo comparison showed not only had you caught five 90, but in some key shows had surpassed five 90, which I think if you had said that even three years ago, people would have said, what are you smoking, Michael? Like, that's pretty amazing. Yeah. And good for you for the way you phrased it, which was TSN.

I mean, I made reference to the record at Sportsnet, we may have lasted six months and then gone to hell because we weren't the legacy. Our Sportsnet was not the legacy station. And viewership is a very tough thing to get people to change, and especially sports talk radio. I mean, it's like you have this relationship with the hosts of that kind of radio that you don't have with anybody else. So there's a few things. I mean, we started off not being on the radar at all.

Second of all, the Blue Jays, when we first started, you know, all of a sudden hit it big. And then 162 times a year, people are listening, you know, to the fan, you know, for baseball. And that is a massive win right is that simply you leave your uh radio on 590 and when you wake the next morning you have it already on so you're gonna i don't even know well we'll get to that in a minute but uh in more than 162 because there were actually these things called playoff games in the city which are pretty pretty yeah and also you get

comfortable with the voices on the station that you're, you know, you listen to the game. So that tends to be the place that you go, okay, well, I want to hear game talk, you know, where are you going to go? So that was certainly a complicating factor. And, you know, I think, I think the, I mean, they made so many changes that, you know, some of them, I imagine were based on the fact that, especially in the last year, since Carlo joined us that, you know, some of them I imagine were based on the fact that, especially in the last year since Carlo joined us that, you know, that we were, you know, gradually climbing, but it's not surprising to me. And it's, it's when I, when I talk about it, I, I defer to Carlo, right? I say, okay, well, what changed? It wasn't me, right? Like I was around for however, a couple of years before Carlo arrived and the show was, you know, hardly on anybody's radar. And then Carlo comes and now the show is, is number one at its time slide. I mean, it's not like there's a lot of stations out there doing it, but, but people are listening now in numbers that they never did before. And the reason can't be me

because I was there all along. There's probably a bunch of different reasons, one of which is that you have now a show, Overdrive, which is the afternoon drive show, which seems to have some traction in the marketplace

that TSN hadn't had on the radio. And that's huge. But also, uh, let's face it, your competition on, uh, the fan five 90, they made a lot of changes to their morning show.

Like some, one day I decided to write it out. Like, like since it was Landry and Stelic, like all the changes. And I mean, uh, Dean Blundell burned through there,

you know, Greg Brady came back for a second tour of duty and he's gone now. And, uh, they had Ashley docking in there there they had elliot price both have been removed and now you've got scott mcarthur and mike azigomanas but just the fact that they keep tinkering and changing things i think that's tough on an audience like people like a consistency and at least you've been you've got five years almost now uh at 10 50 Yeah. For a lot of people though, my existence at 1050 really didn't begin until Carlo joined because nobody was listening. Right. So it's not like, ah, I've been listening to Landsberg for like four and a half years. No, people weren't listening. So, you know, I think that without a doubt, you're right about consistency and,

you know, they made some, some good choices in that group that you just said. And I think that, without a doubt, you're right about consistency. They made some good choices in that group that you just said, and I think a couple of bad choices in that group that you just said, group of people that you just said. But the truth for me is that I have literally not heard a second of Fan 590 outside of when the Leafs are playing or the Raps are playing and the game is on the Fan 590 and I'm in my car, I will listen. Final question on the

radio front. Is there any, and I guess you could call it Schodenfreude or any kind of like, hey, this is a good thing for us when the Fan 590 does something like relieve somebody like a Bob McCowan of their duties, like because he was such a juggernaut in that dry afternoon drive for literally for decades.

And suddenly he's gone like that must that must be a good thing for the station. Sure. I mean, the reason why he was gone was a good thing for the station, right? Because, you know, he was making this huge salary by Canadian standards, this massive salary. And it was justified at one time because of their ratings, right? And I guess what they could sell advertising for. And it became difficult to justify because the ratings fell and overdrive started to catch them. And at a certain point, you know, you're worth a million dollars because you're doing a certain share of the audience. And when that share is cut in half and now they got to cut dollars from their budget, the person who by standards now is overpaid is going to be the first person, you know,

that you look at to go. So, but, you know, I'm always really wary of never disrespecting the competition ever, and also never taking any satisfaction in anybody losing their job. Because that is a terrible blow to, often to an individual, to a family, you know, someone loses their job, that can really change the course of their life. Does that also apply to somebody like a Dean Blundell or is that okay? Can I root for that? No, you can. Are you asking me the question? No, I've got my tongue in my cheek here. No, but you could ask me the question. I told you I'll answer any question you want. Well, I know Dean has been kind of an asshole uh

on social etc uh and i just wonder uh if if you were also mourning when he lost his job at 590 was that also something you didn't like to hear about uh i was not mourning but i was not happy so it was like you know when uh uh greg brady right who who I like a lot, I like him personally, I like him professionally. When he lost his job, I was genuinely sad for him. When Dean Blundell lost his job, I was not sad for him, but I wasn't happy about it. It was kind of like, you know, and also, you know, if you think, just leave it at that. And also, you know, if you think, just leave it at that. You know, I mean, he said a lot of things about me over the course of our time in, you know, in media together, or probably since 2011, when Wade Belak died, he said a lot

of things regarding me that I thought were incredibly offensive. Right. And then he would go on the radio, and I guess he was still at the edge at that point. He would on the radio and say, you know, you Landsberg's gutless. He won't come on and fight me. And I thought, it's not that I'm gutless. It's just that it was so undignified. And so so, you know, if someone is is like I've never been in a fight in my life. I don't know when the last time, Mike, you were in a fight. never been in a fight in my life. I don't know when the last time, Mike, you were in a fight. Grade school, maybe? Yeah. But if you were walking in your area and some guy was in a gutter covered in mud and said, come down here and fight me, you'd probably go, I'm okay. Even if he was yelling things about your parents and your family and your religion and all of that, you'd probably go, you know, I don't think I'm going to get in the mud. I always heard it like,

if you fight a pig, you both get dirty, except the pig likes it. So, yeah. I like that. You can write that down and use it. All right. I took so much more of your time than I said I would.

I got to thank Corey for hooking this up. He did me a solid. Well, closed by me just saying, you've won like a lot of awards you've you've been well you've got you got like i and i don't know what they all mean but you got a uh i don't even know a service medal for mental health advocacy that you got from the governor general of canada that was cool that sounds like a big deal to me like are you proud of yourself and your accomplishments here and the recognition you're getting no um it's weird i mean i was happy about that one because my my family came it was in

london ontario my family came so they were all there and my parents got to watch it at the time my mom was still alive and so it was a big deal for them but you know i'm I'm pretty pragmatic about awards you know if you win one chances are it doesn't mean anything and if you don't win one it doesn't mean anything either that's just my way of justifying James Duthie's success okay I'm not bitter I'm good with this so it you know have I won a lot of awards no have I been awarded things? There's a difference. I, you know, I've never really been in a category where I had to beat people, you know, so I I've gotten awards that are like, I got an award from the Canadian screen awards for humanitarian of the year, but that meant nothing to me because I didn't beat anyone. I wanted to be able to go, Hey, Ron McLean,

look at this, man. I beat you. Hey, James Duthie, are you enjoying your time in the crowd now? So it was kind of a hollow. Well, Michael, I can tell you, for your Toronto Mike debut, you absolutely kicked ass. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Well, let's put it this way. If you said come back tomorrow, I would say to you, you got to seem a little hungrier.

You seem pretty desperate, man. But if you said next week, hey, I really enjoyed talking to you. Let's do part two. Do that in a heartbeat. Someone who asks you questions that are well thought out, that are based on things that happen in your life, to me is like, first of all, a compliment. If you started and your first question was, so Michael, how do you like broadcasting? Then it would be like, fuck off.

Sorry, can I say that? No, you can swear. You can swear on this program. Well, I said shit before, but then, so it would be like, no, why am I going to waste my time? But when you are thoughtful about your questions, then it's kind of, first of all, it's a compliment to your guest that you've taken the time to figure it out. And second of all, it's interesting for the guests. So anytime.

Well, maybe one day I'll win one of those prestigious awards. I won't hold my breath. Maybe one day I'll win one of those prestigious awards. I won't hold my breath. Yeah. Well, you know, like I told you, I haven't won them. I have been awarded them. There's a difference. I'll take it.

Thanks again, Michael. And maybe I will hit you up in the near future. So thanks again for doing this. Thanks for having me, man. And that brings us to the end of our 657th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Michael is at Hey Landsberg.

Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U. The Ke is at stickeru. The Keitner Group are at thekeitnergroup. CDN Technologies are at cdntechnologies. And Garbage Day are at garbageday.com

slash torontomike. See you all next week. This podcast has been produced by TMDS and accelerated by Rome Phone. Rome Phone brings you the most reliable virtual phone service to run your business and protect your home number from unwanted calls. Visit RomePhone.ca to get started.