WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 817 - Lesley Stahl / Demetri Martin

Episode Date: June 4, 2017

Marc interviews an interviewer when Lesley Stahl spends 60 minutes in the garage. The veteran journalist tells Marc what it was like to cover Watergate, interview U.S. Presidents, report on the struggles of real people, confront the changing nature of journalism, and become a grandma. Also, Demetri Martin returns to talk about his new movie Dean and the new challenges he's facing with his standup. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Lock the gates! Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fucking ears? What the fuck, Tuckians? What the fuck, Arikans? What's happening?

I'm Mark Maron. This is WTF, my podcast. I am broadcasting today from a hotel room in the amazing metropolis that is New York City. I love New York City. I love being here for about three days. Come the fourth day, I'm exhausted, my feet hurt, and I'm paralyzed with how limited my life remains even in a huge city. I come back to the same few blocks that I'm familiar with, and I walk around them.

I walk across the island to mostly downtown, and I eat at the same places twice. I get awfully hard on myself about not branching out more, but I did a little bit. But look, let's talk about other things. First, today on the show, have a veteran journalist leslie stall to talk about the sort of arc of time in her career that's happened since she started and being involved in the watergate investigations and and you know on through interviewing and being a grandmother and whatnot uh i had the opportunity to talk to her she's an interviewer i'm an interviewer why not interview her right also Dimitri Martin stopped by and and we had a great great conversation just a little talk with me and Dimitri

about his his new movie Dean which is now playing he's in it he wrote it he directed it and and Dimitri and I have always known each other but I'm not sure I think that our relationship has evolved over time and this this time that you'll hear right now that we talked i really felt uh for the first time a sort of kindred spirit with the dude and i've known him i feel like since we were kids or since he was a kid since he started and he started a little after me but i was always a little judgmental as some of you know i'm i'm want to do on occasion but generally i move through it. Oh my God. I think there's somebody half naked walking on the roof across the way. Is that, is she, what's happening? Okay. All right.

Now she has pants on. All right. New York city folks, New York city. I'm high enough to see rooftops. Dimitri will be here. And that woman is now going back into her penthouse apartment. So what have I been up to? The last week shows were both pre-recorded before I left for a press junket in London, England. And now London, England is back in the news and it's horrible. And my heart goes out to the people that lost people and also to the people of the UK in a general way. There's a lot going on there, terrorism-wise and politically. So it's a tough time over there. And I was there for three days. I was there in between these two horrible events. And heading there, I was nervous and scared. But when I got there, I was astounded at the sort

of continuity of civil life that was going on. England's a beautiful place. London's a beautiful city. And just last week, last Wednesday, I was standing on one bridge in front of the Tate Gallery, which is the one place I make sure I go when I'm in England. and I was looking at that London Bridge, you know, wondering if I should get over there because it's sort of an astounding, beautiful piece of architecture and engineering that's been around a long time, and now it's a place where something awful has happened again in England, and I'm terribly sorry to hear that, but being in London, it was a pretty amazing thing. For the three days I was there, and I was happy to see that for the most part, people are seem to be continuing life in the face of terror, as we all are to some degree in different forms or another.

But I am in New York. I came to New York after London. My body clock is completely dysfunctional. It has no idea what time it is, what day it is, what time of day it is, but it's starting to level off. As some of you know, I came here to promote the new book, Waiting for the Punch. We were here at Book Expo and Book Con on Friday. Last Friday, I was to host a one-on-one conversation for a live audience with Senator Al Franken. Some of you listened to my podcast I did with Al Franken.

Well, I did it again live, and it was great. It was a great time, great experience. It's nice that Al feels a little wiggle room in the funny area these days. He's feeling a little more able to be funny. He's a little more grounded as a senator. He's doing great stuff, fighting the good fight in the context of the U.S. government. And he's got great stories, and that event went beautifully. It was interesting.

Before Al and I got on stage, we were back in the green room, and I got Al talking about the Grateful Dead, just hanging out. We're talking about our concert experiences, about the new Grateful Dead documentary that's a little longer than an actual Grateful Dead concert coming in somewhere around four hours. But if you're at all prone to the dead, if you have any of that machinery in your head that locks in with the Grateful Dead, that movie is definitely worth seeing. And it's always fun to get Al, Senator Franken, all lit up about the Grateful Dead because he'll just go on about it. And it's definitely a place where he's not thinking about politics and he's not thinking about what he's saying. And he's just excited about the music. And we did a little of that before we got onto the stage,

and we got onto the stage, and it was great. It's great to work with a guy on stage who knows how to be funny in a very specific way, is completely confident in that. And outside of him being a senator, I always loved him as a comedian and a comic mind, and to sit on stage with him and just give him the space to work you know as he's improvising uh was uh was a real treat folks that's what i'm trying to tell you it's a it was a real treat and the event that brendan mcdonald and myself did we had a

several hundred people there got their free books and brend just drove the show, set it up, gave me context, let me babble, and then pulled it around, did a little Q&A. It was great. We're actually a pretty good comedy team. He's really my best straight man, Brendan, and no one knows me better than that guy. So that was fun. Got some good laughs. Got to talk about the book and about the show. Got some good laughs. Got to talk about the book and about the show. You can definitely get a link over at WTFpod.com to pre-order Waiting for the Punch. Go do that.

We gave away about 800 books the other day. And people, and then there was a signing. Got to meet some of you. A lot of different types of people coming up. People traveling. People coming from Newfoundland, from Ireland, from Syracuse, from New Jersey, from Florida. Coming up, some kids coming up to high school students with their mothers with questions about podcasting, how to start a podcast, what effect their podcast is having on their high school community. Some people who are new to recovery thanking me telling me they're they're doing it uh some people just love the show families people getting books for their boyfriends or

girlfriends or kids it was uh it's humbling and exciting the uh the reach of this show and god damn it i appreciate it i i appreciate it in this world that it seems to be coming unraveled at the seams. I appreciate it. I appreciate that this means something. So I'm sitting in New York. I got Sarah with me and we're doing the thing and it's been busy. And I always get this urge. This urge. I feel like I've got to go do something new.

I've got to get something new into my head. I've got to go see some stuff. I'm got to get something new into my head. I've got to go see some stuff. I'm in New York. I've got to see some stuff. I always get this itch to go to Lincoln Center because years ago when I was staying at a hotel right across from Lincoln Center, by coincidence, I just walked over and saw a symphony. And I was just amazed at the ability to do that. So I always come to New York, even if I've only got a few days, and see what's going on at Lincoln Center. And I wanted to see jazz at the Lincoln Center, right? And there is a Lincoln Center jazz orchestra. And it's Wynton Marsalis is the manager

and artistic director. And they were doing something called World of Monk and that would be Thelonious Monk. I like Monk, but again, as some of you know, I'm sort of a jazz novice. I'm just starting to really listen to it. My brain was always wired for it, but now I'm really getting into it. I'm not in a nerd way, not in that I know all the nuances or all the players, but I like listening to the music. It's relaxing and it takes me to a different place. It's not beholden to words or hooks or anything. You just have to kind of get in. It's like a pool.

And you just got to get used to the water and just float in it. So I bought some nice seats. And we went up and we saw what turned out to be the last night of the world of monk it was spectacular man we were at the rose theater i didn't know what to expect but oh there's the woman again she's half naked and she's taking garbage out it's all right i'm not supposed to be looking but i'm just looking out it doesn't i'm not looking now so i we went and I didn't know what to expect, but I just wanted to sit in a space dedicated to art, dedicated to music, listen to some jazz, have my mind blown. And it was phenomenal. And now with everything that goes on in the world, every time you enter a train, every time you go out into a public place, every time in your theater. There's part of you in the back of your brain if you're in a big city.

It's like, is this where it happens? Is this where it ends? Is this where something horrible happens? Is this where the terror happens? That's a real fear. It's a tangible fear, especially if you're in a big city. And then you've got to transcend that. On top of everything else, you have to sit down in a space and let go of that and the phenomenal thing truly phenomenal thing about jazz music is that is it is a fundamentally american you know musical framework that can carry and elevate any type of improvisation from anywhere in the world it was

truly uh just an intersection it was just such an amazing testament to the creativity of the human spirit and there were just no words no words except when Wynton would talk in between things just pure expression just you know right to to to the roots of jazz but completely integrated what it was just a fucking astounding experience and i sometimes you know i i wonder about the power you know like does do people have the power does art have the power does expression have the power to fight against the the sort of like brutal consolidation of uh of of narrow-minded thinking and and it's like no one act does but all acts together all voices together you know even in their sporadic places that you know just the elevation of of human creativity and the human spirit to to just

continue to exist to push through like fucking flowers you know on a garbage dump it's like got a little faith because of uh because of jazz man so now uh we're gonna go back to the garage and uh listen in on my uh conversation with dimitri martin uh his new movie dean is now playing he's in it he wrote it he directed it and uh this was that really the best conversation I've ever had with the fella. And I've had many. And I like him. Okay. This is me. marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category,

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An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. Global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun. A new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Dimitri. The truth is, and I might have talked about this years ago when I was here,

and now lately I've turned every green room into therapy. I go in and I'm like, I want to dig deeper, and I'm really trying because I love one-liners. I love jokes. But you know what I mean? I want to talk about what I feel. I want to talk about below the neck stuff. Yeah.

It's hard. It's hard. If that's not where your head goes, it's hard to get comedy out of that. Well, if you say you turn every green room into therapy, like who are you talking to? Other comics? Yeah, just other comics. It's like comedy therapy. You know what I mean?

It's not like I need help with my life. I'm like, yeah, you know, I just want to dig deeper. I want to connect in a different way with the audience rather than, I feel like what I have to offer is, you know, my jokes, but it's not that human. There's just like a ceiling. Well, you did it in the movie. I tried. I watched the whole movie.

Oh, thanks, man. I don't do that. You know what's funny? No, before on the way over, before I came over, I was like, oh, did they send him a screener? Because I was saying, yes, I'm trying to promote my movie. And then I'm like, I was ambivalent. I was like, shit, I don't know if I want Mark to watch this.

Just because we don't know each other well, but you've known me a long time. I'm like, oh, boy, here we go. But like, that's all you. You know, that's interspersed with, you know, I could tell in the writing of the script that, you know, there's some of your style of writing. But also you put a lot of the comic art in it. I did. The cartooning. And I think that that you're able to go deep with somehow.

It's true. I feel like I feel more entitled or something. It's just a few little lines. Yeah, it's true. I think for me. But they're very simple too, though. They're like your jokes, but they're just, you know, they seem. It's more emotional.

Obviously, these cartoons in the film, which are your cartoons, they have a theme that's not yeah a beat per se that's true yeah it reminds me of uh not gahan wilson who's the other guy gross s gross yeah yeah yeah a little bit is that possible i think so yeah you know i i'm late to the new yorker stuff i loved uh gary larson when i was growing up right it's not a big reach but i'm from jersey shore so there were like two bookstores in my mall. Yeah. And I'd go to this one and they always had like Farside books.

So I was like, cool. So I like that stuff. Later, all the New Yorker guys. Now I have books of Saul Steinberg and all these guys, which is great. I love that stuff. Have you had stuff in the New Yorker? No. Why not?

I had like a fiction thing. The cartoon guy, he invited me. He emailed me years, I don't know, four years ago. Hey, I'm a buyer of your work. You know, we're doing a special issue, a cartoon issue, and we feature new people. Come to the office. I was like, cool. So I brought my, you know, some drawings.

Yeah. And then he just kind of gave me a lecture and rejected them. And I was like, okay, yeah. What kind of lecture? You got to get better at drawing. You know, you're not good enough at drawing. Oh, really? You know, yeah. These kind of aren't funny enough and all that kind of stuff? You got to get better at drawing. You know, you're not good enough at drawing. Oh, really? You know, yeah, these kind of aren't funny enough and all that kind of stuff.

Really? Yeah. And, you know, it's all subjective. It sure is subjective. Definitely is subjective. Well, I thought, like, how long did it take you to make the film Dean? Long time. I started writing it six years ago.

Right. Five, six years ago. And then I stopped and I had, like, 50 pages. And then I started writing again. And then it five six years ago and then i stopped and i had like 50 pages then i started writing again and then took a while to get the financing and then i actually shot it and it took a while to edit it because i was just trying to save it i was just trying to not be embarrassed by it so it took me like i'm serious like we edited at my house and i was just like it went from being really hopeful like cool i'm gonna make a movie to oh shit like i just don't want to be embarrassed what did you feel defensive you know so you shot it how long ago like three

years ago really yeah almost three years ago so the film is not unlike the book that you're writing in the movie yeah and yeah totally and in fact uh i just got my publisher to agree to let me do another book of cartoons to come out in the fall. Yeah. Because my book of stories was due. I got three extensions on that thing. It was due like two months ago. And I just, it's not done. I'm not good enough.

The book, oh, you mean you don't think you're good enough? Yeah, the story is just, I think it's hard in life, but sometimes it's just the truth that some things just aren't good enough. And it's just to tell yourself, I'm not good enough. I'm just, I'm not good enough at writing fiction. Well, I think the problem there is like the idea of it hanging over you is the worst. And also I think that if you're not, if your soul thing isn't writing fiction, like if you're not writing stories all year long and when they give you the book deal, you're like, oh, I'm almost done.

I've got enough for, you know, if you have to write stories. It's a nightmare. It's got to be a nightmare and it's humbling i like to try to multitask and hey i'm a writer and i'm an actor it's if you're not doing that thing all the time you get your ass handed to you it's hard i'm serious and you know what is i'm trying to write like like kind of kurt vonnegut like mid-century style. Sure. Like a story, like 15, 20 pages. So a couple of them, I'm like, hey, I worked it out. It's like, you know, I got to. And then others, I'm just like, it's just not good enough. It's just not, I'm going to be embarrassed by it.

Well, what's your editor say? Where's the pages? You haven't even showed him anything? No, I haven't shown him anything. So you're just at home kicking your own ass? Yes, and then I tried. Making your wife read it over and over again? Oh, yeah, exactly.

You know it. How old's your kid? I got two now one's three and a half and the other's 10 months old oh so you can't lay it on them yet no exactly come here and i have the fear i have the just primordial earning fear you know i'm afraid man that you're not gonna make money yes yeah i'm afraid i never was well the last time, the last time I saw you, you're very selective. I was sort of impressed with the idea that, and I realized something, though, because I think the last time we worked together was at Red Rocks for the Oddball Fest. And you were like, yeah, I haven't really been doing it.

It's all right, Stan. But what have you been doing? You did a benefit, but what do you do? Like, you know, it seems like you're still kind of like... Kicking around. Doing all these things, but you're doing gigs? I'm doing gigs, yeah. I'm trying to do this new hour.

I'm telling you, it sounds... Oh, because you're going to shoot in Seattle. I'm going to shoot in Seattle, so I'm trying to do a new hour. I have a bunch of one-liners, but I'm... I don't know if it's having kids or something, but, like, it feels, I don't want to say pointless, but I'm lost. I feel kind of lost. So that sometimes that's just life. Yeah, for sure.

So I'm doing that. Well, isn't it funny with comedy where like for me, because I like jokes and even like you said, the drawings for me, it's like, that's just what I wanted. That's like the track. Yeah. So guys like you and I don't know, just list them off. People who are kind of more opening a vein up there yeah i never didn't like that it's just like it just didn't it doesn't connect for

what like aesthetically like that's what i want and now i gotta tell you i'm older i'm like when you talk about doing sets to work it out yeah you feel like doing it well that's what i've been doing lately oh yeah how's it going over? Bumpy. I saw Louie at Meltdown like a month ago. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about, the therapy thing. I saw him.

He came in when I was on stage. Yeah. You know when someone's older, it's like the senior comes in, you're a freshman. With the large Louie waddle. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The statesman Louie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Louie the statesman with his glasses on.

Yeah, right. And so I come off and Louie's there, surprised. I'm like, I just ate shit trying whatever. Yeah. Yeah. The statesman Louie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Louie the statesman with his glasses on. Yeah, right. And so I come off and Louie's there surprised. I'm like, I just ate shit trying whatever. Yeah. I was like, I'm trying. He's like, the audience doesn't care. I'm like, I'm a one-liner. He's like, they don't care.

He's like, you got to figure it out. It's going to be quiet for a while. Just try it, you know? It's going to be quiet for a while. I mean, it has been. It's just like, and people are kind of talking me out of it all. Your jokes work. Like, what are you doing? He has a way of saying things. It's going like, and people are kind of talking me out of it all. They're like, your jokes work. Like, what are you doing?

He has a way of saying things. It's going to be quiet for a while. Well, because he did that. Right. Because like, you know, he was primarily a joke, an absurdist, noise-driven joke comedian. Yeah. And at some point he was just like, it's time to stop. Yeah.

And open it up. And that's what made him famous. How has your crowd changed from this? Oh, it's good. My crowd's a very sweet crowd. They're like, you know, mildly disgruntled, all ages. That's nice. You know, thoughtful, intelligent, good tippers.

Like, it was. And it's 50. You get a pretty good mix gender-wise, right? You get a lot of women. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I get, like, all ages, too. It's interesting.

I have a certain demeanor, you know, philosophically aggravated and, you know, intellectually aggravated or whatever it is to how I do. And people who know me from this know me pretty well. But it's really kind of like, I usually say it's not a demographic, it's a disposition. And they feel very familiar to me and they know me. And if they're there for me, I kind of know them. That's cool. Yeah.

And, you know, and I do all right in some cities. I can sell a few tickets. So it is a different game than just doing the clubs. Where are you playing? How's your crowd holding up? I'm decent. I have certain cities I do well in. Right.

I think Seattle's a good one for me. Boston, Chicago, New York, kind of direct flights I'm pretty good. That's good. But then it thins out pretty quickly for me, you know Boston, Chicago, New York like kind of direct flights I'm pretty good that's good but then I'm it thins out pretty quickly for me and I'm kind of still in theaters and then in certain markets I'm barely so I'm kind of more comedy

club yeah I like clubs for working out stuff yeah clubs are good clubs are good for everything if most of them are there to see you no no exactly yeah like I you know if I had my way man if I could do like 2500 seaters and do a couple shows a year exactly seriously i mean yeah with kids now i just want to be home man you know i don't want to go anywhere i forget you even live here yeah i'm like near westwood

very cool neighborhood what if way out you really what did you buy a house in westwood you're there yeah oh my god but it's. It's like a mid-century thing. Yeah. My wife does commercial interiors, so she made it nice. Oh, good. Yeah, she classed me up. It's nice. Oh, that's sweet.

So, well, what do you do? What are you just sitting there trying to write? Yeah. Doodling? Pretty much. So you wrote this movie, like the first draft was six years ago for Dean. Maybe five years ago, yeah. How old are you now?

I'm going to be 44 next month right so like did it feel when he finally got around to doing it that this is like this guy's 35 in the movie oh yeah i was like fuck me i sold my first script that i sold a pitch in 2005 of this movie no another like a concepty DreamWorks. They paid me a bunch and I was like, oh my God, I'm going to write movies. And then, of course, went to the turnaround thing, never got made. And then I sold another one to like Sony. Got paid, never got made. So then eventually- Full screenplays, not ideas?

I sold ideas, but then I wrote the screenplays. Oh, okay. So like they owned it and had to give me notes and stuff. So by the time this came around, I was like, I just want to try to make a movie. So that's why it's no big concept. It's grounded know emotional whatever but it was hard the budget was like under a million bucks it was a 20-day shoot it was really really hard it was great to see uh kevin klein yeah he's good right he's great yeah and and mary steenbergen yeah they were great you were good i did okay you did it's you know good actors make you look better yeah and you know you did you held your own there for it for a bit with the Kevin

I I went I you know I went too small like I learned because I got to the edit I didn't have time to watch my performance what the hell am I gonna do anyway what's my range you're gonna keep running back looking at playback it's and it's insulting I can't do it to Kevin Kline be like hold on buddy I want to see how I did you know well the thing is it's like it's one of those stories where you know it's a heavy story yeah and and you know like i thought you cast a while i thought like rory was great yeah he was he was great i loved right yeah he was great and i thought that that woman who played the the psycho uh ex the psycho friend briga briga briga what's she from she's in love too my girlfriend said i think she

was in love again after we shot this and now she's on um she has a show she stars in the show called good news or something like that it's just oh yeah i just talked to uh michael higgins yeah great news that's it yeah yeah oh good uh he's a funny guy but um no but like you know once when it started getting going like there was a uh you know, it was heavy. And then, like, I didn't know what was going to happen. And, you know, grief is tricky. But I thought that stuff, you know, between you and your dad worked out really well. You know, come, like, you know, the third act was really, you know, it was moving, you know.

And it was hard not to get emotionally involved in that. And it was hard not to get emotionally involved in that. And also the stuff where you're just in this fragile place. And that scene with her, the last scene with... With Gillian. Yeah, with Gillian was like... There's only a couple of things from my real life. So I lost my dad, actually, not my mom, when I was 20. He was 46, so he went young.

Oh, my God. We were shocked. My mom was widowed at 41. It was a shock to our family. I don't think we've really recovered to tell you the truth. Yeah. How many is in your family? You got a brother? I got a brother and a sister. Yeah. And that's really young. What heart thing? No cancer. He got kidney cancer. Oh yeah. Turns out my town in New Jersey, Tom's river. Yeah. There was like a chemical plant. Then they illegally buried toxic waste, like just directly in the ground in drums like in the 70s or something.

Really? So all these people died of kidney cancer. Really? Yeah. My girlfriend in high school, her dad died at 39 of the same cancer. And then we had these neighbors. They bred Labrador Retrievers. Like seven of their dogs died of kidney cancer from just drinking the water.

And was there a class action suit? Was there anything? I think there was. Actually, I was in the Barnes and Noble on the promenade, I don't know, two years ago. Yeah. I saw a book like in the health section or something. Yeah. It just said Tom's River.

It was my town. This huge book about the whole thing. And I almost bought it and I was like, I'm just going to get upset. Like I kind of know the story. Like, you know, forget this. I don't want to. But yeah, it was like a shock to our family. It was, I'm just going to get upset. Like, I kind of know the story. Like, you know, forget this. I don't want to, but yeah, it was like a shock to our family.

It was, you don't expect that. Yeah. And then my mom got Alzheimer's when I had my Comedy Central series eight years ago or something when it first started. Yeah.

She was diagnosed with early onset at 56. Jesus. So she's been four years now of the last, I'd say four or five years. She can't talk.

She doesn't know who anybody is. It's horrible. It's horrible, man. So in a way, of course, it's like there's nothing new here. It's the first time filmmaker. Oh, here's my story. Yeah. But it's fiction.

And like you said, I put the drawing. So I tried to at least do something cinematic with it. Yeah, yeah. And it's not reportage. It's not my actual life it's just what kind of my experience with grief and I don't know how to do it in stand up I gotta tell you I don't know how to

I know people do that and they talk about that kind of stuff on stage I don't know how to do it I just don't know how to I'm still drawn to just the jokes well it seems to me that like given that how old were you when your father passed 20 yeah I mean like, well, it seems to me that like, given that, you know, how old were you when your father passed? 20.

Yeah. I mean, like something like, you know, do you go to therapy? No, I've never gone. But. Because like, you know, you have sort of like your personality is pretty compartmentalized, right? Yeah. So like, you know, you're obviously, you know, you've designed everything you do to manage feelings. Yeah.

You know, which we all do to, you know, you seem pretty good at it. Yeah. I'm not great at it. Yeah. So you might not have. Do you know what I mean? You might not have this sort of like capacity at your, you know, at your. Fingertips. Fingertips to communicate that way.

I think that's true. I also think being in my 40s, maybe just being around long enough, I'm 20 years into stand-up about. You know, I talked to my wife about it who's not a comic. Right. And she tells me stuff that's interesting. She's like, you know, your haircut, it's shorter now and stuff, but it's still, for a while I think there's literally hiding behind it. Yeah. Like half my face is kind of hidden

so I think I'm emoting and expressing and connecting with people and she's like you seem aloof like you just seem disconnected I'm like I feel like an open wound

she's like what you know what I mean so it's just like that's interesting though because you you feel that inside but you know

it's just there's a disconnect right it's not kind of translating interesting and even in the green rooms when I when you're losing it on your openers?

Exactly. Have you been there? Sure. But, you know, it's just like, I feel like I'm trying to make an effort to talk to people more. I often just show up at the set. I look at my little notebook, say hi or whatever, and then I do my set. And I realize, oh, suddenly I'm not the young comic. Like, everybody's younger than me in a lot of these rooms.

And it's like, then I'm a dick. Because I didn't talk to somebody, you know? So you're like, oh, shit. Like make an effort, talk to people. Yeah, make an effort. Tell them how frustrated you are. Tell them how lost you are. Or me.

My canceled Comedy Central show. Oh, that was a long time ago. Isn't it weird? When you go to New York, like if I go to the cellar, it does feel like there are kind of ghosts there. Like even I feel like I've been around long enough where I'm like, wow, this has changed. Yeah, and they changed the structure of it a little. Yeah, I haven't been there since they did that.

Well, they were working on it when I was there and I'm like, uh-oh, this feels weird. Yeah. Yeah, it's a little, you know, it's like going, there are ghosts, but there's also that kind of weird New York thing where it's like, oh, he's there are ghosts but there's also that kind of weird new york thing where it's like oh he's still here yeah that thing yeah like there's actually living ghosts yeah yeah comedians yeah no definitely and they're hanging out like you can kind of kill at the table and you know a lot of that pressure is gone it's different because well yeah because manny's gone patrice is gone giraldo down the list gone. It's different. Well, yeah, because Manny's gone. Patrice is gone. Geraldo. Like, down the list. Geraldo's gone.

Yeah, that's true. So, like, it doesn't have, it's not what a, well, I don't know. I don't go in there that much. I should go in more. I usually stop by. I never really go up. I just go and see who's there and hang out a little bit. Yeah.

Yeah, that's sort of what I do. Like, I don't rush to go do the 10 minutes there. But I'm not in New York that long ever. You know, like, I don't, I should go, maybe I should go for a little longer. It's nice to do, drop in, do a little thing. Yeah. But what, so what's the plan for the movie? What happens now? So it's a platform release, right?

It's a small movie. Yeah. It's like a counter-programming thing for the summer. It's like all these superhero movies and then my thing will be out there. I think there's going to be, I'm sure, plenty of indie movies through the summer. But the idea is I'm touring so they're piggybacking some of the cities I'm in so there'll be a screening. Oh, you'll go? Yeah, I'm going to go to Boston and then I'll do stand-up one night and then the next night they'll show my movie somewhere and I'll do like a Q&A and that kind of thing.

Oh, that's great. Yeah. I think that's a good way to do it. I think so. I want to make more movies. I want to write my books. Maybe you're similar. I tell my wife, she said this to me.

I was like, I try to like diversify enough so that if I'm in trouble in one area, then I can kind of stand on another leg. Right. But unfortunately for me, I'm more motivated by escaping pain than kind of moving towards pleasure you know what i mean maybe that's most comedians but for me it really is true so i'll do stand-up all i want to do is stand up and then i i'm doing it i'm on the road and i'm miserable i just want to go home yeah i like being on stage but the travel you know i just i get fucking pissed like i hate the tsa thing i just hate all you know i'm tsa pre but it's still a pain in the ass you know i just i get fucking pissed like i hate the tsa thing i just hate all

you know i'm tsa pre but it's still a pain in the ass yeah then i come home and i'm like i'm just exhausted i just wish i could just write just have a career where i just write books in my house and then i'm writing and i hate it it's like homework it's hanging over my head i feel not good enough and then i'm like i wish i could just get cast in something yeah acting's like the easy money right then i get a part in something and i'm just like i feel like could just get cast in something acting's like the easy money right then I get a part in something and I'm just like I feel like a piece of meat

I have no creative you know it's just a wheel of self-hatred that just rolls around you know yeah I well my relief from that is doing this

and also that I've like stand-up has been more fun because I'm not there's like I'm not freaking out like I don't have a kid I don't have a wife right right right I've paid for there's, like, I'm not freaking out. Like, I don't have a kid.

I don't have a wife. Right, right, right. I paid for the house. So, like, the financial thing is not hanging over me in the future. So, now all that's hanging over me, it's like, well, the equation, everything is set up for you to be happy. How's that going? Yeah, that's the worst. You're at the end of the line.

You're just at the cliff. Like, you made it uphill to the end. Yeah, there you go. Where's the happy time? I had that once when I first moved out here it's the same exact thing we moved to santa monica i went for a really long walk in the summer yeah all the way down through venice and as i came back two things happened in the same walk i was coming north and it was like sunset it was beautiful it was perfect and the beach was empty because it was, I don't know, late. I remember thinking, just like you just said, I remember thinking, I'm going to fucking die.

Yeah. Because everything was, I was in love. We moved out here. I had the show at the time. And it was just like, oh, my God. And I wasn't even, it's not like I was Spielberg. And I'm like, I've succeeded. Oh, my God.

And I wasn't even, it's not like I was Spielberg and I'm like, I've succeeded. It's a hard reality when you realize that, you know, some of this stuff is really up to you. Yeah, for sure. It's, to me, it's a balance. It's a struggle between I'm not working hard enough and I should be working harder. Like, why don't you just try harder, you know? I know. That's where I feel lost, I think, is like, I don't even know what.

I do that to myself, too. But, you know, and it happens at certain times, you know, like, in terms of my popularity and my earning ability, I'm okay with it. Sure. Like, I don't really want to be any bigger. want to be any bigger and in terms of crossed over like i feel like in the in some ways comedies like hip-hop where the people yeah it's its own community podcasts have certainly changed the landscape but there's some people who cross over like again when i started you guys i saw guys i'm like okay he's kind of famous to me people were famous they were a big deal then i realized oh now they are like louis you know the easy example where you're like, whoa, whoa. He's like in popular culture. World famous.

Yeah, I'm still not there yet. I still hold the place. I feel like you have. A little bit. Maybe I'm wrong. Certainly the podcast, it's not the comedy world. It is a different world next to it. No, yeah, and it's all fed each other, and I have my own show and stuff, but, you know,

it's on IFC, which is fine. But, like, somehow or another, and I think it's probably not a bad karma, that I've been able to occupy these spaces without a lot of, you know, sort of mainstream attention. Yeah. Like, you know, like people find me and they're excited. To me, that's nice because if you're... Yeah, if you're still discoverable. The weight isn't on you. And if you're a certain amount of known, then the people who know you overlap a lot with the people who like you.

Right. But if you're really famous, then people who hate you, they know you. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, so I'm good with that. But there's still this sort of fundamental thing where I get hard on myself, especially like I'm working towards a special and I'm like, yeah, that joke, like this hour, you know, like I threw it together. Is it really, you know, is it a good hour?

And it's like, it's fine. Yeah. You know, like. I feel, I'm at a point where I'm like, there's so much content. If you do something really, really excellent or really, really horrendous, that's your only chance of being remembered for a little while. Everything else is gone in the middle. That guy did the worst thing ever.

No, I get that's true, but this keeps me busy. I get to talk to people, and you're doing fine. I'm doing fine, but whether or not we feel okay is acceptance, and that's fleeting for some reason because like certain people like myself like you know when i'm you know i i tend to find there's something not comfortable but certainly familiar about being hard on myself yeah right now it's like it's always been there and it is it maybe it is comfortable in as much as it's like i dent it's part of identity like for me it's as I know myself if that goes away then maybe I'm

it's kind of scary it is but if it goes away then maybe you can really experience it because it is a control thing yeah I mean it's very subjective

right I suck yeah right right it's like you know well the comic

I mean the beauty of it for us is we know you do two shows in one night yeah there's the classic experience of like first crowd loves you you eat the comic, I mean, the beauty of it for us is we know you do two shows in one night. Yeah. I mean, this is the classic experience of like, first crowd loves you, you eat shit, same material. I mean, it's the same room.

It's the same conditions. Well, it's a great joke. You know, that old joke. No, no, no. About the, you know, comics, you know, just did, you know, he's out on the road and he did a couple of shows the night before and he's at the mall the next day. And, you know, some, you know, hot chick comes up. He's like, she goes, I saw you last night. You were great.

And he goes, which show? That's amazing. It's so true. That's just amazing. It's so good. Yeah. Well, let's look. We're doing all right.

Your kids are healthy. You got a life. The movie's good. People enjoy it. And you're working on the hour. You're doing the work. You know, happiness. Maybe that'll come. Maybe it won't. The movie's good. People enjoy it. And you're working on the hour. You're doing the work. Happiness, maybe that'll come. Maybe it won't.

Who the fuck knows? That's right. Okay. Good talking to you. Thanks, Mark. All right. So that was, did you hear the love? Did you hear us coming together in a way we never had before?

Maybe you're not as attentive to my relationship with Demetri Martin as I am when it happens, but it was good. I was happy to talk to him and go see the movie, Dean. It's now playing around. So Leslie Stahl is somebody I never thought I would talk to, and I was able to talk to her. So Leslie Stahl is somebody I never thought I would talk to, and I was able to talk to her. Her book, Becoming Grandma, The Joys and Science of the New Grandparenting, is now available in paperback. And it was nice to talk to another person that talks to people professionally.

This is me and Leslie Stahl back in the garage. Well, you know, Leslie Stahl, you're an interviewer, and I get nervous when I interview interviewers. I have not interviewed many of them. I want you nervous. You do? Good for me. Is that your tactic?

No, it's not my tactic, but I'm rarely interviewed. Yeah. So I want to keep you just a little off balance. Am I going to be able to? I'm always off balance. That's not going to be a challenge for you to keep little off balance. Am I going to be able to? I'm always off balance. That's not going to be a challenge for you to keep me off balance. But you know, like I watch, like I have certain questions that I don't want to get into like specific interviews, but let's start with like, how did you, where'd you come from? I came from Swampscott, Massachusetts. Really? Yeah. That's

north of Boston, right on the ocean. It is spectacularly beautiful. Yeah. And it's one of the reasons I love it in LA, because I can go out to Santa Monica and look at the ocean and feel at home. Different ocean, though. Yeah, but it looks exactly the same. Does it? Exactly the same. I spent a lot of time in the New England area, and that ocean, there's a ruggedness to the kind of like Marblehead.

That's where I'm from. Marblehead, Swampscott. It's a great place. Yeah. Oh, so you know my town. I do. That's where I'm from. Marblehead, Swampscott. It's a great place. Yeah. Oh, so you know my town. I do. I know New England pretty well. Well, the real difference is the temperature.

That's right. The water is unbearably cold up there. Yeah. And the humidity in the summer is awful. Yeah. So you just, how many people in your family? How many kids? Like from you sisters?

Me and my brother. And you just grew up in Swampskate? We just grew up in Swampskate. You don't strike me as like a New England person. Really? I always felt like maybe a New York person. No, no. No?

No. What did your father do up there? Well, my father went to MIT to study organic chemistry. Wow. And then went into business with his father and his brother. Uh-huh. And initially they made leather colors. Yeah.

For tanning or dyeing leather? For leather. Yeah. They made the colors. Yeah. And then they moved a little. They stayed doing that and went on to make shiny things. And they made, for example.

He specialized in shiny things. Shiny things. For example, they made something that should have been a roaring success and wasn't. Yeah. The pour-on floor. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sure.

And it was. Like anyone can do it? Or just like a linoleum that you could pour? Yes, it was like linoleum. You'd pour it. It would harden. And we had it in our kitchen. Of course you did.

It never scuffed. It was beautiful. Uh-huh. And it just didn't take off didn't catch on they also invented the shiny look uh you know raincoats that look like leather and had a huge oh lovely shine yeah yeah they invented that and that was a big success yeah so he had a patent on the shiny stuff he had patents on the shiny stuff and pour on floor and uh they made some kind of inks they also made the the paint that goes down the middle of highways.

They made that? They made that. The reflective, shiny paint that they need to redo in L.A.? Yeah, you know that bright yellow? L.A., they never expect rain. Well, they probably didn't buy my father's if they have to redo it. But then he sold his business when I was in my early 20s. And that was it?

He retired? He didn't retire. He went to work for the company that bought his company. Because he wanted to? I think he did. He was too young to retire, but he wanted to sell the business. And he became the head of a whole new division and went around the world buying companies. And he told me it was the happiest time of his whole career.

So he's an entrepreneur and a world traveler and a big business guy. Yes. That started out in Swampscott. Started in Swampscott. And his little company called Stahl was an international company. So he traveled constantly

and took my brother and me with him a lot. So you got to see the world. Even before I got to CBS News, where we travel all the time, I traveled all the time. Yeah. And what did your brother end up doing? My brother was in real estate. Okay. And then, sadly, he died when he was 55 years old. Oh, I'm sorry. Larynx cancer. Oh,

my God. Sorry to hear that. Where did you where are you from? I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My parents are from Jersey originally. So like I'm genetically Jersey and my roots are in Jersey and I spent a lot of time there as a kid. But don't you think that when you go to school, that then your peers are more formative than your parents? Well, I think that I've grown to believe that however you're wired emotionally and whatever those shortcomings or strengths may be, you're put in pretty early. And then... Really? Yeah. I think I disagree a little bit. Yeah? Because I think high school and mean girls and all of that, I think maybe shaped me more than anything. Even my own basket of jeans.

Really? Well, I think that. I don't know if it's true. You think it shaped your sense of self? A sense of, yeah. My sense of self, my interests, my insecurities. Well, they can certainly make you aware of those when your feelings are hurt. Yeah, I spent a long time looking for something to be and for how to act and what I was interested in.

I think those come from influences, and I think those are very defining. But just judging by my life and relationships, the more emotionally and intimate things in my life, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm them. Yeah, I've been there. Or I've accomplished the anti-them. Right. One or the other. Yeah, yeah. That comes from that fight.

Yeah, there's a determination like, well, I'm not going to be that. And then, you know, eventually you do. Yeah, that's pretty sad. Is it true, though? Sometimes, yeah, sometimes you hear your mother or your father in your head, but it depends on how determined you are not to be. Right, and that's exhausting. It's very exhausting.

After a certain point, you've got to, like, embrace the good things about them, and hopefully they'll outweigh the negative things that are coming out of you. Right? Right. So that's how I grew up. So what was the process? You had a curiosity, I guess, and you had some experience global traveling. But where did you go to college?

What led you to journalism? I'm sure you've answered these questions before. You must have wanted to do something know, I'm not a kid, and in my day, God, I can't believe I'm saying this, my day. I say that, and I'm 53. Oh, doesn't it sound like my grandfather? So much has changed, though. I mean, like in the last decade, it's like profoundly different. Well, yes, but I'm going back.

So no one ever even mentioned journalism to me. Never wrote for the school paper. Yeah. Never took a journalism course. Came to New York. Was going to be a doctor. Really? Really.

So when you say I'm a New Yorker, I did go to New York in the early 60s to prepare for medical school. Uh-huh. And what did you study undergrad? History. Okay. And then I didn't have enough science courses. I went to Columbia, majored in zoology, hated it. For graduate school?

Yep. Zoology? Well, I didn't have enough science credits. So that's what you thought, you'd lock them down. Yep. Hated it, hated it. I wouldn't touch anything. You know? The TA said to me, hated it. I wouldn't touch anything. You know?

The TA said to me, Leslie, you can't be a doctor. And it was just too icky. Yeah, really? Just like dead animals and bugs? Well, parts of animals. Sorry. Sheep hearts. Sheep hearts of animals?

Sheep hearts. And they gave me my own dogfish shark. To work on for the semester. No good. No good. So then I ended up answering an ad in the New York Times. Went to work for Mayor Lindsey. Oh, yeah.

Mayor Lindsey. Mayor Lindsey. He's before my political awareness. But I remember seeing pictures of him a lot in the 70s. Gorgeous. Yeah. Was he a good mayor? He was just an okay mayor.

He had a strike and things conspired against him, but he was a good guy. And what year are we talking? 67, I was working for him 66, 67. Doing what? Worked on his speech writing staff. Really? Yeah, as a researcher.

Uh-huh, uh-huh. And then went into the newsroom one day where all the reporters hung out and asked one of them, what do you do all day? Who are you? What do you do? Yeah. And he told me, and when he finished, I had a burning, almost passionate desire to be a reporter. And it was a flash. What did he tell you?

What was it that really provoked you? He told me, you know, basically, fundamentally, that you could be really nosy. Yeah. And gossipy. And you could write it down and tell other people what the secrets you found out. And they pay you. I thought, whoa. No one told me that.

That I could make my hobby a profession. We're laughing, but it's kind of true. And then I went looking for a job. As a journalist with no experience. Yeah, exactly. And NBC News was gearing up their election unit for the 68 presidential campaign. Humphrey and Nixon. Yeah.

And I got the job because I was a researcher already and they were hiring me as a researcher. Yeah. And really those were the only jobs there were for women. At that time. Yes. Yeah. This is pre-affirmative action. Right.

So they hired me. I told, oh my goodness, I jumped. And what'd you learn on that campaign? Oh, it was a wonderful job. I loved it. Were you a political person? Not really. My mother and father disagreed violently.

Oh, yeah? On what sides? My dad was a Democrat, a liberal Democrat. My mother was a conservative Republican. And they never voted the same. And they argued. And I grew up in that household. And I thought, whenever my mother spoke, she made sense.

Whenever my dad spoke, he made sense. It is kind of a tricky balance. And usually it goes the other way. Usually the man is the conservative, I would think. But maybe I'm generalizing. Well, they say that as women age, they get more liberal. And as men age, they get more conservative. Sure, as they feel it's slipping away, that they need somewhere to be angry about.

Well, maybe it's as women realize they may be widows. They want more government support. I don't know. There's a bunch of reasons. What were their backgrounds? What kind of family was it? Are you Jewish? Jewish, but no religion. Right. Well, yeah, like most of us. Yeah, okay. Totally mainstream. Yeah, culturally Jewish. Exactly. Right. Well, yeah. Like most of us. Yeah. Okay. Totally mainstream. Yeah. Culturally Jewish. Exactly. Right.

No, really. Yeah. All right. So there you are. And that was a big election. And Nixon was not appealing. Except to my mother. Really?

Oh, yeah. How that guy charmed anybody is fascinating to me. I know. Yeah. But he did. Well, I'm not sure charmed is the right word. Yeah, what do you think it was? I think that

he conveyed a sense of stability and experience. He'd done a lot, and he was very smart. Yeah. He was a real politician. He was a real politician, but he came off as, I think, someone with depth.

And he was smart. And maybe it was kind of like now where people were looking for some kind of even stability. We go back and forth between wanting someone who's a little older and a little calmer. And then the new guy who's going to change everything. Yes. Yeah. Just turn change everything. Yes. Yeah. Just turn it in on itself. Yeah. What I find interesting, though, is like I came very late to politics and, you know, you really kind of made your bones, you know, reporting in politics. And, you know, I was I don't know if I was apathetic, but I guess I was. I was a more creatively driven person. And then somewhere in the very late, after Reagan, you know, and I'm 53, so I should have been more active.

And this is something that resonates with me now because of the election is that if you're progressive or liberal or you just want to, you know, you're doing other things, you're an arty person, you just want things to be okay. And you don't activate your civic responsibility. You take things for granted. Or maybe I should just say I do. And this is one of those elections where it's sort of like we all sort of took things for granted, a lot of people. Well, I do think it's very much determined by the time in which you come of age. Yeah. And if you came of age in the 60s.

It would have been different. Well, of course it was the draft yeah and there was a vietnam war and uh nixon and watergate all these things conspired to make even the youngest person freak out but yeah freak out and be concerned about the leadership of the country and all of that and then there were i actually was my formative years were in the Eisenhower years. Right, in the 50s. And we were called a silent generation.

Why was that in retrospect? Were you comfortable? Did you think everything was okay? Yeah, and we had daddy running the government. You didn't have to worry about it. Yeah, he was a general. A general's running the government. And he was older and calmer, very much calmer.

And he was older and calmer, very much calmer. And the economy was really going slowly but steadily upward. Incomes were going steadily upward. The middle class was just exploding. Wasn't that the establishment of the middle class? Wasn't that where it really became defined during those times? The man in the gray flannel suit, yes. during those times? The man in the gray flannel suit, yes. But we also at that point had the unions coming on strong

and forcing the car companies and the other large companies, GE, to pay a decent wage because the unions were strong. And it just was a time of great promise. We were still coming out of World War II. We were still, our parents were still coming out of world war ii we were still our parents were still thinking about um the depression it just was a completely calm right then there was relief it seemed like america was going to uh you know fulfill its promise to these people right and people were looking inward yeah instead of outward okay you know we had been through World War II.

We did have the Korean War. I was too young to really be that aware. Well, you might have an opportunity to see another one. Thanks. It's awfully kind of you to remind us. If you missed the first one. No, but I do think the times will create a political person. Right. So when you got that job as a researcher, what, you're in your early 20s?

Yeah. And it's 1968, and things are starting to blow up, in terms of culturally. Exactly. And did you feel that happening? Oh, yeah. All around. Well, there were marches. There were anti-war marches.

And just beginning, just beginning. And Lindsey, who had been my boss, was very much involved in that. He was one of the first people in Congress to vote against the Vietnam War. So yeah, it was in the air. And then we had the 68 Convention. Right. And the hippies and the big marches and the violence. And the violence. And Mayor Daley in Chicago causing mayhem and the violence. And the violence. Yeah. And Mayor Daley in Chicago, you know, causing mayhem at the convention. So, yeah, that was kind of the beginning of everybody's new awareness of politics. And then when they, I guess when the kids got shot at Kent State, that kind of sealed the deal that there was a real fight for the country and what people believed it should be.

Right. And there were strikes and demonstrations at virtually every university. And they were coming out of the silent generation. Yeah. And it's the baby boom generation. Yeah. So that's a huge number of people. Was it scary?

You know, because now, like, you know, I can't picture it because I was way too young. But, like, there's a tangible fear in the air to me. And I'm an older person now, but I just wondered then, was there like a fear of the government? Well, my recollection, and things, you know, things get accordioned in, in your memory. Right. Compartmentalized. Yeah, and what's really big.

But my memory is that that sense of fear that we're having now is more similar to what was going on during Watergate than the 60s, so the early 70s, when the country was completely polarized, much as it is now, and half the country loved completely polarized, much as it is now. Yeah. And half the country loved the president. The other half hated the president. And there was no in between. And people were still demonstrating against the Vietnam War. So there was actually more violence in the country than now.

Was the polarization as vicious? Yeah, it was. And Agnew, the vice president, was running around the country attacking the press. There are similarities. And, you know, when I say my brain has been accordioned, it may have been worse then. You always think it's worse now. Sure. But it may have actually, there may have been more strife and more division, serious division in the country than even now.

Well, because I think it seems that then the momentum of the younger people was massive. Right. And now it seems like a lot of the younger people are either detached or not sure how to activate. Like you see these marches and a lot of people are coming together. But back then it was all like 18 to 22-year-olds. Well, they had the draft. Yeah.

Yeah, it was terrifying. This is not now. Right. So they really had skin in the game, totally. Right. And they were the baby boomers, so there were huge numbers. Right. Although I just read a poll this morning about 18 to 24-year-olds really turning

seriously against President Trump. So maybe there's an activation going on right now. Yeah. What that looks like, I don't know. It could be just tweets. Yeah. Well, there's no draft. That made a giant difference. Yeah. That makes sense to me. So how did you get from research to reporting? Slowly. Yeah. Very slowly. Actually, my first ambition was to be a producer because my perception was that the producers,

generally speaking in television, were doing a lot of the reporting and writing. Yeah. And that's what I was interested in. You ultimately do that now, though, right? We do it now, but in those days, that's where my head was. And I was probably wrong in my perceptions back then. But that's what I thought. So I was trying to become a producer.

And it took me a long time. But I didn't care. I loved every job I had in journalism. So what was the big break? Oh, if any young people are listening, they'll appreciate that the big break was a failure. And, you know, you come out of the ashes and you're actually stronger. What do you mean it was a failure? Well, I had fallen on my face and had to build back.

How so? Well, after the election. Yeah, in 68. In 68, NBC News sent me to London, where they made me something called a field producer, which meant absolutely nothing. I did nothing. Nothing meaningful in my own eyes. And the then president of NBC News said to me when I complained about it, he said, you know, you young people, you think you can start at the top? Well, if you start at the top, you're going to fall flat on your face.

Nobody starts at the top at a network. If you really want to be a journalist, go get a job at a newspaper, go to a wire service, or go home and go to a local television station. So I applied everywhere. New York Times, UPI. I was living in London at the time. So I tried to get a job there and no one would hire me. Came home to visit my parents and went over to the local CBS affiliate in Boston, and they hired me. And it was a step backward.

It was a big step back to go from the network as a field producer to become a producer on a show in Boston that was very similar to 60 Minutes in its format anyway. But you were not in front of the camera at Aspirations. No, no. I wanted to be a producer. So you wanted to amalgamate research and find the through line and set up the segments. And even write it in those days.

That's what we did. Everything except record our voices. And I was so happy. To me, I had fulfilled my dream and I had clawed my way back and had done what that man said. I had to start at the beginning and learn the profession step by step by step. No leapfrogging. Right. Take every baby step.

But it was necessary, obviously, to learn to get the skill set. Exactly. You know, if you were a field producer, what did that really mean? Nothing. It meant mean? Nothing. It meant nothing. Nothing. Really nothing. I would go out with a camera crew and say, could you take a picture of that?

That was it. And then they'd organize it later. So the real producing happened later. Oh yeah. Right. All right, so you're learning your trade, you're producing segments. And I'm living in Boston, which is one of the great reporting town cities in the country because it's a capital yeah it's where

all the great universities and medicine and in those days politics because busing was the big story and we had the busing queen louis louise day hicks that was her name louise day hicks everything was there right there and one day they decide, well, the FCC denies the renewal license to the owner for lots of reasons you don't care about. The owner of what, the busing company? The owner of the television station. Oh, the television. Okay. Yeah.

And my station was taken off the air. Oh, really? And right before that happened, my wonderful boss said, you know, I'm going to give you some on-camera experience. Why did they shut the station? Was it political? It was that the owner engaged in what they called an ex-partate communication, some kind of a bribe to one of the FCC commissioners to re-up the license. It was something like a cruise or something like that on a yacht or something.

Let me take care of you. Yeah. On the station. Yeah. Sure. And he blew the whistle and that was it. So everybody at the station was then looking for a job. And I got a call from an old friend in New York from my NBC days saying,

you know, there's this thing called affirmative action. And all the network news stations, outlets, are desperate for any woman who has any experience or any minority who has any experience. So you took the gig doing on-camera stuff before you got to New York? Yes. Okay. So you had a little of that.

And my friend said, you have to put together a reel of your work. Did you like doing it? Right away? Putting together the... No. Like being on camera? I wasn't very good at it. I remember having to do what we call a stand-up

for the end of the piece where the correspondent finally appears on camera. Which you do at the beginning of the piece now, on 60 Minutes. Oh, on 60 Minutes, yeah. But this was for hard news, as we say. And the end of the piece is about 15 seconds, and I couldn't do it.

And the sweet cameraman threw away an entire reel of film. We used to work in film. He just said, well, I mis't do it. And the sweet cameraman threw away an entire reel of film. We used to work in film. He just said, well, I misplaced it. Oh, you were nervous? So that was like 15 minutes. I couldn't do 15 seconds. I couldn't remember 15 seconds in my head.

Oh, my goodness. But I wanted to, the jobs available were on camera. So that didn't make the reel. No, well, I finally got the 15 seconds onto the reel. And the networks were really desperate for women around the country who had done any work. And there were very few because it was pre-affirmative action. And CBS hired me. Great.

That was my big break. Thanks to affirmative action. And the station being taken off the air right yes no definitely affirmative action no question and then you started as you were an on air reporter reporter for which which show was that face the nation which show was that no no that was for the cbs bureau in washington and it was the the diamonds in the Tiffany Network. Okay. I'm going across the row. We had Marvin Kalb, Dan Rather, Roger Mudd, Dan Shore. I remember him.

Remember all of them. I walked into that bureau my first day of work and was completely dazzled. And their offices were like the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue. You know, the doors didn't close. So you walked in and there they were sitting at their desks in these open offices. And I thought I'd gone to heaven. Yeah.

And so that was in Washington? Yes. And so then you were a Washington correspondent? No, they hired the affirmative action babies, that's what we called ourselves, as really apprentices. And we had a different title. We were reporters, and all those stars were correspondents. And we were apprenticed to one of them. Each one got paired off. And we learned by osmosis. Who'd you get? I got Dan Shore. And we learned by osmosis,

just following them around. They didn't instruct us. They just let us tag along. Well, how much did you know going into covering politics the way it worked? Because what I found is that when I started working at Air America years ago, I knew very little about how politics works. Did you know any of that going in? I don't remember that being, I didn't, the answer is no, I didn't, but I don't remember that being my problem as much as writing, how to write a really good television hard news story. Well, who did the reporting on it? Like, where would you get the information? If you're writing a piece about a piece of legislation or an international problem, I mean, what is the process? What did you do? Well, in the beginning, I followed Dan Shore around, watched what he was doing. This was 1972, and the presidential election of that year was underway, and the bureau was pretty empty

because most of the correspondents were assigned different candidates in the primaries. Nixon was running for re-election, so there were a lot of Democrats running. Right. There were very few people. Like McGovern and Muskie and all those guys. All those guys. I vaguely remember from Mad Magazine because I was nine years old. So like I remember the characters, but I remember caricatures of them because that's how I got the news.

Mad Magazine. Well, they weren't going to send the new kids out there. So we were very few in the Bureau. And I came right before this unbelievable break-in at the Watergate of the Democratic National Committee. And nobody thought it was anything except a very local B&E. And they sent me break-in and entering. Oh, yeah, right. Break-in and entering.

Yeah. Not at Watergate in those days. It was just the Democratic Party. And no one sent reporters except the Washington Post and CBS News. And they sent me alone without Dan Short, just me. Just to report on the break-in. Just to be there. Yeah.

Yeah, on the break-in. It was in the court. I went to the arraignment of the burglars. And the only other reporter in the courtroom was a guy named Bob Woodward. Yeah. And the two of us were in the reporter section and that was it. And no one else was, it was an empty courtroom. What'd you feel that day?

Were you like, something's up? Yeah. And Bob and I, our eyes were bulging because one of them worked for CREEP, which was the committee to reelect the president. Sure. And there were these consecutively numbered hundred100 bills and phony passports. I mean, it was all smelly. Yeah.

And I would run to the phone, as I was instructed, and record radio. Uh-huh. From the courthouse. From the courthouse. I was reporting what I was seeing. They had a row of phones then for reporters. Yes, exactly. You'd run to the newsroom and pick up a phone.

I've seen it in movies. Actually, I think it was not quite that. I think I ran outside and went to a pay phone. Sure. And put in my dimes and recorded these things for radio. And I only found out years and years later that they never put them on the air. Really? I didn't know that.

Yeah, really. So every hour or so I'm writing these little short 45 second summaries of what was happening in the courtroom with all this stuff about the creep and the money. Yeah. Went nowhere. Didn't even go out on the airwaves. That's sad. You were doing big things and just no one was listening.

Yeah. But I was learning. Yeah. The good part was I was learning. But you stayed in the saddle with Watergate through the whole thing. Exactly. And you were there scooping it to some degree. Well, in the beginning, every time the story died, which it did every couple of weeks, it just died, it was over, Woodward would say to me, don't give up. Don't let them take this away from you. Well, of course they did.

I was the junior. And as it became a big story in the courts, in Congress, wherever the story went, the White House, I was always number two. But I stayed with it. To shore. To shore. And then to Fred Graham, who was covering it in the courts. And Dan Rather in the White House. And, you know, it just kept moving.

Right. It was this blob. But Woodward and Bernstein, like you were talking to Bob Woodward. And they were the ones that ultimately broke it, right? Yeah. But they kept breaking it. And it would die. And then they'd break it again.

And each time they broke it again, it got closer and closer to the president. Well, tell me how that worked then because, you know, we're witnessing it now. I'm too young to remember Watergate. I mean, what was the pushback from the administration that would make it go away? Well, the whole operation of the White House was built to keep it away from the president. Right. And obviously there was this deep throat guy having Woodward meet him in garages and things like that. The leaker.

The leaker. Mm-hmm. And every time the White House put up a wall, the leaker managed to get a little hole in the wall. Yeah. And push it further and further toward the White House. Yeah. And it was incremental. The story went on for two and a half, close to three years.

And it was, if you telescope it, unrelenting. But to live through it, it was more- Drawn out? Oh, way drawn out. And as I keep saying, it kept dying. And I kept saying to my friend Bob, I can't stay on this. There's nothing. I have to go cover other stories.

I have to advance my career. Don't let go. Don't let go. He kept saying that. He wanted as many people as possible working on it? No. He was my friend and telling me that this was going to explode one day. And he saw you as sort of like, you know, he was a newspaper guy and you were a TV person.

No, no. We were dating. Oh, okay. I was his girlfriend. And he was just, he never gave me a story. He never told me anything. He just kept saying, just don't let them take this away from you. That's interesting.

Journalists dating. Yeah, you thought we never did, right? I didn't know. Maybe I should have known, but was that a competitive situation? No. No. Are you still friends? Yes. Well, that's nice. Yeah. All right. So let's talk a little bit about your job currently and how this works in the sense that you spent all... How long did it take for that thing to... Three years. You know, you spent all, how long did it take for that thing to?

Three years. Three years for it to take him down. Yes. So what we're seeing now, like, I think I want to talk about, because, you know, you do get scoops, you do produce, you do report. But, like, in terms of, like, the leakers and the whistleblowers, like, especially in a time like, you know, now, and I imagine in a time like then, it doesn't seem that people really know that they're necessary. That, you know, in a sense that you have to have them when, you know, especially when the whole thing is rigged against you. And I'm saying rigged, but just saying by this one party dominating and everything is insulated, you know, executively, that if you don't have whistleblowers and you don't have leakers, it's a real

problem. Well, I think whistleblowers and leakers only become heroes in history. At the time, particularly when we're talking about the White House, those officials who are on the record

will put up a huge battle against the leakers. Because they know- Always, while it's going on. Yeah. Because they know that they could bring them down. Yeah. So we're seeing now, and for the last several presidencies, it's not just President Trump. It was Obama.

It was Clinton. It was Clinton. It was George W. I mean, this dislike of the press, dislike of anybody within their administration who talks to the press secretly. I mean, they're seen as betrayers and traitors. And I guess that's the way it's always been. So Deep Throat is only a hero in hindsight. At the time, somebody like him would be castigated. Don't forget, when there is a president, that means, except this time, that most people voted for him.

Right. Except this time. Yeah. But generally, the public is on the side of the president in the beginning. They just voted for him. You want to think you made the right decision. Yeah. You support your guy, your team.

You're on his team. Right. And so when you begin to see that the press or whoever you're going to blame for the negative stories are going after your guy, you're going to dislike them intensely. And that's where we are right now. And that's where we were during Watergate. So after Watergate and after that, I mean, I imagine, you know, when you bring a president down, that the nation must be just sort of like, what the fuck just happened? Like, what was the... Well, it was incremental enough. That they knew it was coming?

Yeah. And there were impeachment proceedings going on in Congress. For like a while. For a coming. Yeah. And there were impeachment proceedings going on in Congress. For like a while. For a while. Yeah. And it was the drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. And the public, I think they were exhausted. And when Jerry Ford came in, I was in the midst of it and couldn't believe how quickly things just settled down.

How important who is president is to the mood of the country. Yes. So here we had all the turmoil, constant churning, churning, churning, arguing, screaming. These hearings were on television all day long. Right, I remember that. And then reprised every night. And then Jerry Ford, oh, such a normal man. He made his own English muffins in the White House.

And he had, you know, kids. It's the little things. Kids, and the first lady was talking about dealing with sex with her children. And it was normal. Oh, is that what they felt, people felt? They were normal people. He hadn't even run for president. He was an appointed vice president.

And he didn't have that craziness that people who run for president have. And really the whole, that bubble that was just expanding, expanding, just burst. Yeah. Just settled down. So as you did this, as you covered the White House, because I was trying to think what was baffling. When I watch your interviews with presidents and I watched the one with President-elect Trump shortly after, that outside of the investigative pieces, which we'll talk about, just in talking to these guys who have this amazing power and you know that they have this power. And on some level, you know that, you know, you're going to, they're going to attempt to use you as a facilitator of whatever bullshit they want to put out in the world.

Yeah. So, like, as a reporter, knowing that's the score, because I've talked to politicians before. I talked to Obama, but I was careful not to talk about politics because that's not usually what I do here. But when you're doing that, what is going to make it different? How are you not just going to fulfill their agenda? Like when you walk into that.

That's the game. And I use that word, game. Because he has the president, and it's always been a he, he has his agenda for this interview. And, of course, we're trying to get past the talking points. Right. We're very desperately trying to get past the talking points. Right. And you just go back and forth.

It's a tennis match. Right. Here's my question to break through the wall of your planned remarks. Right. Here's my question to break through the wall of your planned remarks. Right. And to give you a question you weren't expecting. Because they plan for, especially a big interview like 60 Minutes, they plan for it. He probably had people, anybody coming on, a senator or whatever, they have their staff throwing questions at them ahead of time.

And so you're trying to get around that. Even for a second. even for a second, even for a look, right? Right, right. Because I noticed like in you talking about your interview with Trump most recently in terms of the president-elect interview, was that you were observant of his body language, you were making assumptions based on your experience with past presidents. And, like, I wonder how you feel about that in retrospect, your assumptions about what happened that day in talking to him. Well, it was surprising all the way around, that interview.

I had already interviewed him the day he named Pence as his running mate. So I had been in the room with a guy who had the sense of a cat who was ready to pounce, just ready for combat. Did you know him before from New York? A little. I'd interviewed him before, but I didn't know him really well. Does anybody? He had insisted that my boss and I go and meet him in his office before the first interview. I felt it was somewhat of an audition. I actually felt it when we were in the room. How he could work you. I mean, that's what he's a hustler. So like he's got to see the mark to figure out how he can charm you, right? Oh, he did charm us.

Believe me. I hear he's very good at that. He was excellent at that. And he gave us a little tour of his office, which is huge. This is the best office in all of New York. It's huge. This is the best office. Look at my view.

It's the best view in the world, you know, that kind of thing. It's the best view in the world, you know, that kind of thing. But so I expected the first Trump that I saw when he was still running, but I interviewed him again, the one you're talking about, three days after the election. A different man walked in. Oh, here's something interesting about him. He didn't, at least in those days, come with an entourage. He walked in the room alone and sat down alone and didn't have the usual people around him whispering in his ear that you see with so many politicians. And he was calm.

Instead of leaning forward, ready to pounce, he was leaning back. And I just had the strongest impression, even though he denied it, that he was in shock, that he had not expected to win. And this was only three days later, and it was still, you know, the idea that he had this huge responsibility now was just washing over him. It was a strong impression. Uh-huh.

But he denied it. Oh, yeah. Totally denied it. Sure. Oh, he knew he was going to win all along. Yeah. Well, what did you learn? What have you learned from interviewing, I guess, like, what is it, Carter through Trump?

You've interviewed all of them. Did I? I didn't interview George W. Oh, really? Yeah. But all the others. Did you try? Well, I was at 60 Minutes by then, and he was taken.

Another correspondent was assigned. With Clinton, I interviewed him in a group. The whole team interviewed Clinton when he was president. He didn't like 60 Minutes. And he and Hillary were unhappy with the interview, the brilliant interview that Steve Kroff did with them when they were still running. A lot of people, a lot of analysts say that made him president. Yeah.

But they didn't like it so. Oh, really? Yeah. So we did, though, 60 Minutes did interview him. Mike was there. Morley was there. Ed Bradley. Yeah. And Steve Croft and I, five on one. on one uh-huh yeah and they didn't like it well that interview i think they

liked because like i know it's a it's a challenge like you're coming from like ideological press where you don't you know where you theoretically you have to be unbiased in your approach right and and trained to be right and and know, people are going to make whatever assumptions they're going to make. And like we've already established that, you know, the idea is to try to cleverly and get around their talking points to at least get a moment of authenticity or thoughtfulness or catch them in, I don't know, a lie or not a lie, but just- Kind of like what you're doing right now, that kind of thing, right? Right. Yeah.

But what I'm curious about in that, you know, having interviewed these presidents and then seeing the arc of their careers after your assumptions and after your interviews and whatever information you got, what have you learned about these men who are in this position, you know, outside of that, you know, they're cagey and some of them are smarter than others, but is there a common thread to how they hold that job? No. No. No. It's all different.

Yeah. I once asked somebody about this in this particular case, but it's a lesson for anybody at the top of a big organization. This was about football coaches. of a big organization. This was about football coaches. And I wanted to define what makes a successful football coach in terms of temperament, personality.

And I was informed that there is no formula. You know, you can have a football coach who screams and yells at everybody and never invites them in for a one-on-one chat. And then you can have the coach that's dancing in the locker room with the guys. Right. And they're both wildly successful. that's dancing in the locker room with the guys. Right. And they're both wildly successful.

And I would say the same with presidents. You have introverts and extroverts. You have schmoozers and guys who close the door and don't want anyone coming in. Yeah. And so that question about what does it take is pretty much indefinable. But there's got to be some like... Ambition is maybe the only thing. But some of them, I guess, are better leaders than others.

And sometimes that depends on who they surround themselves with probably a great deal. Right. I agree with that. And then in terms of... But it's also the times that they're in that require an outgoing or an ingoing or a person who wants to quiet things down or whip things up. Yeah. It can't just be the isolated figure.

He's right for this time but wrong for that time. Yeah, I get it. And things will change in the middle of a presidency. Yeah. He'd be right at the beginning and wrong at the end. I mean, we've had a lot of that. Sure, sure. But like being in it all the time, like I your interview with uh with notanyahu in israel yes and he's like you know he's he's um he's a

very grounded no bullshit kind of character no no i mean i don't to be honest i don't think there we were talking about what's the common thread. Yeah. There's bullshit with all of them. Right. Sure. That's the one common thread. That's the one common thread. You found it. You put your finger right on it.

Right. So you've got to get around. That's another word for talking. Right. But I told you it's a game. Right. And I really like politicians. You'd have to to stick around and cover that world so much.

Why do you like them? Well, most of them, and when I meet someone who isn't this way, I'm basically hurt. But most of them come into this business to do good. They don't set out to destroy or take the country in the wrong direction. Their motives are pure in the beginning. And I don't look upon them as crooks or evil people. No? No. I guess you couldn't.

In the beginning. Right. But yeah, but doing good is relative to ideology as well. Well, yes, but doing good is definitely related to ideology. But I want to see, at least in the beginning, I want to see that their heart's in the right place, even if you don't agree with the direction that they want to take us. And you have found that, you have seen that at the beginning. Generally speaking, yes.

Generally speaking, not 100%, but generally speaking. And really, when I said to you we're trained not to be opinionated, we are. And I've been at this, do I have to admit how long? No, I don't have to, but a long time. And sometimes I think so long that it's hard to find my own opinion sometimes. Really? Sometimes not, yeah. Like even when, I guess that is relative

to your own place in life too. Like, you know, where you are, you know, how you feel about. Grandmother and stuff like that. Grandmother, you know, different, you know, periods of economic stability, whatever it is, you know, what's important for you from a politician is going to be different. But, you know, we all have a general sense of this is bad. Well, I guess where I am right now is I worry about the future because I have grandchildren in a way I never thought about it before, even for my own child. So I really do worry about what kind of world my little kids are going to be. How old are they now?

Three and a half and six. So I think about the environment a lot, which I hadn't been doing before, but I guess we're facing a crisis, so maybe everybody's there. I'm worried about, really, really worried about technology and the Internet, what that's doing to us and babies' minds and all of that well what is it done to journalism oh my god it's it's changed it can you can you do it instead of 180 can it just be spinning around all the time so you don't know where you are at any moment i mean think about i told you i started in film yeah so in film you had to wait for the film to be developed. Yeah, there's no time for processing.

That's it. That's the big difference. And it doesn't seem to be any real. It takes a lot of energy to source properly, even as a consumer. So I've actually been nostalgic for three networks in the sense that. Exactly. I am too. Everyone was sort of on the same page and you could go figure out things and we weren't

getting all the information. And now we think we're getting all the information, but sometimes that's not even good because, you know, what's the credibility of that information? And there's absolutely, everyone has a voice on a social networking platform. So there's no, there's no, it's an enemy of tolerance and processing and thoughtfulness about what's happening. There's no time. That's right. It just honors the emotions.

The no time is distressing for a consumer, but also for the journalist. You see something and boom, you're typing it in or you're talking it in. There's no time to ask for the opposing view. There's no time to ask for the opposing view. There's no time to look for the context historically. I don't know. Do you think like when, it seems like a lot of, there's a lot of great journalism going on now. It seems like there was that right now, because of this presidency, it's sort of woken up,

you know, the responsibility of news outlets to really do their job. I agree. And it seems like people are really stepping up. I agree. And they're not being intimidated. They're not being forced to agree. They're really being courageous. Yeah.

There's a little sense of Watergate in there. Sure. Absolutely. I mean, there's a little sense of like there's Watergate, but there's also this pressing kind of apocalyptic vibe going on now. Yep, absolutely. Scary. Yeah, it is scary. And I think it's been scary before, but it seems more scary now to me.

There's too much going on. It's coming at us too quickly. Every day, three new things, and we're just not built to absorb that much. Are you thinking that's intentional on behalf of this administration? Partly. I think it's to perhaps. I'm not covering Washington, so I'm a consumer

of that news exactly as you and all your listeners are. But it does look like there are attempts to distract us from X. I'm going to have your mind look at Y. Right. I feel that there's a lot of that. Well, and I think that some of that is on the, I think that the journalists are somewhat

responsible for that as well. That in being thorough, you know, at all levels, and also competing to get information out there and create, you know, these bits and pieces that you know you're getting all the pieces at once all the time yeah and speculation about the pieces and and then analysis of the pieces like if you if you've got three or four news outlets coming in on your phone it's it's non-stop and you have it you feel you have an obligation to report every one of them right and so and no time to put context around any of them and it i don't know because i'm not right reporting on it but it feels deliberate but it seems that some of the stuff that you do does you know take the time to process and when

you do an investigative piece when you spend that time with not in yahoo or you you do the piece on gitmo or the nuclear power plan or the one I watched about police informants. Isn't that something? Yeah. But like, you know, in some of the interviews where you get these great scoops, you know, that a lot of that, there's time to put it together. A lot of time. Yeah. We have the amount of time we need for each piece, unless it's hard news and then you just go with it. But usually we take months.

And you know what you want to do. You're producing, you've got this story, and you're like, there's got to be more to this story. Exactly. And that's why I have the best job, certainly in broadcast journalism. Yeah. And we're still doing it the same old way. Right.

Everything's the same. We still go out with two camera crews we still take a lot of time to get the opposing views and the context and those things make a difference i mean all those stories difference you know changed policy changed uh you know safety situations in these like that the police informant thing was just horrifying. Because I had this moment where I watched How old was that? Was it last year or the year before? Two seasons ago. Well, the moment that

you showed that college interview with the guy who was in charge of this informing unit. Oh, the police. Yes. What I sensed in it was this sort of like I'm going to get these college kids. Who do they think they are. It was a little bit of that.

Right? Right. And that is sort of a thread that's going on in politics now. Anti-elitism, anti-intellectualism, you know, a bitterness towards education and towards people that seem to have a better go at it. This is what is stunning to me about working at 60 Minutes as opposed to covering the White House. We deal mostly with what you might call, and my hands are going quotes, ordinary people. We're not dealing with the president or the vice president.

We're dealing with a family whose kid commits suicide because he's become a police informant and he's being called upon to tell on his friends or his family's going to find out he took some dope. Yeah. And the kid can't handle it and he kills himself. It's way down at the granular, horrible life that kids find themselves in. It's real life.

It's real people. And that's where stuff has to sort of start changing. You know, that's where that, it's the most important there. And it hurts to cover these stories. And when you're interviewing a politician, it doesn't hurt to ask some tough questions. It actually feels okay. But these stories that you're bringing up, really, I suffer. You suffer watching it.

Yeah. And it's even worse when you're in the room with a parent. Yeah. Or someone else who's faced a tragedy. Yeah. You do a lot of that. Yeah, but it does, you know, when you take the time to flesh this stuff out and you have the arc of the injustice or the dubiousness of what's happening that it has an impact and things change. You know, 60 minutes still means something.

You know, things change. I'm not so sure. I never it's I don't want to say never, but it's pretty rare that we do a piece, and let's say it has a huge impact, but the things really change. I worry about that all the time. Well, yeah, there's a lot of lip service paid to, like, we're going to check it out. We got a guy on it. We're reinvestigating. And then it goes away.

It goes away. Do you ever follow up? Yeah, we follow up. We try. And that's why I'm distressed because we follow up and find out that there was a little bubble of news and

finger pointing and then right back to normal. And this is true in Washington with legislation and so forth and then it's true in the case of these local police. Well, how do you not get depressed and disillusioned? Here's the sad, horrible sort of downside. We move on, too.

And we're working on our next stories. And our next stories are absorbing, completely, totally absorbing. And we don't go back there very often. So mea culpa. Yeah, I understand that. I don't know that there's another way to be. You can only do what you can do, right? Yeah, and you know something?

It's not our role. Our role is to keep moving forward, and someone else needs to pick up the ball when we shine light somewhere. That's right. What happens at 60 Minutes, though, is we go into reruns in the summer. Uh-huh. And I'm already working for next season. Right.

Because I'm finished for this. They all haven't run yet, but I'm done reporting. Uh-huh. And now, well, let's talk a little bit about the book before you. Oh, please. My book. The grandma book. The grandma book.

Yeah. This is like, now, my book. The grandma book. The grandma book. Yeah, this is like... Now, were you a good mother? Not particularly. But this is interesting. You know, I have this theory about... First of all, the book's called Becoming Grandma, The Joys and Science of the New Grandparenting. Yeah.

But you asked me if I was a good mother. I was a working mother. And we don't think we're good mothers because we have this image, we working mothers, that a good mother's there. Yeah. I think my daughter would probably tell you I was a good mother.

I wasn't on her case 24-7 because I wasn't there 24-7. And she turned out okay. She turned out great. Yeah. But no, I don't think I was a good mother. I wasn't there 24-7. And she turned out okay. She turned out great. Yeah. But no, I don't think I was a good mother. I wasn't a bad mother. Right.

I loved her. I took care of her. I guess, you know, it's interesting. I don't know what your relationship with your mother is. And, you know, I guess people do the best they can do so they say. But, you know, I think what we underestimate is, you know, kids are pretty resilient too, and they're their own people. So a lot of times they find their way if it's not abusive.

Well, and somebody was taking care of my daughter. My husband worked at home. Yeah. We had daycare for, you know, a nanny. Yeah. And I think that my self-worth was not tied up with her success. It meant a lot. She was, you know, I wasn't on her case. I was not a helicopter mom at all. And I think maybe we need to let these kids find their way more themselves.

Although I did keep her pretty busy. I was hoping that if she had something to do after school every day, you know, she had gymnastics and painting and all of that stuff, she wouldn't notice that I wasn't there. That's what they do, camp. You go to camp. Go to camp. My parents sent me to two camps in one summer. So you wouldn't notice they weren't around. Right, exactly.

Well, what are some of the advice you have for new grandmothers? What is your approach to this? Mark, it's not an advice book because I am the last person, believe me, anybody wants to take advice from as a parent or even a grandparent. It's kind of a 60 Minutes research project on, first of all, why do grandparents have this physical love for their grandchildren? It's a full body ecstasy. It's a second chance. Second chance is part of it. Less responsibility in some ways.

That's another one. Seeing your baby have a baby and seeing that they do a good job is part of it. When we're parents, we're policemen. We have to whip you little kids into shape. You can't do this. Clean up your room. Eat your vegetables. And when you're a grandparent, your job, your whole job is to say yes. And yeah. Yeah, they're great. My grandmother was very important to me. And grandparents are very important. And it's to say yes and just love.

Period. That's it. And who else is going to love you that? Who else is going to think that you put your right shoe on your right foot? It's amazing. That you're a genius, right? Who else is going to tell you you're perfect? And every human being needs one person to say that to them or to feel that, to convey that.

Wow. I didn't think when I started the book that there was a whole book about grandparents. And then I would talk to someone. They'd take me in a whole new direction. I kept going in new directions. Step-grandmothers, surrogate grandmothers. Oh, that's great. Grandfathers.

There's a neurobiology to grandparenting because when we hold our little babies, our brains change, and we are infused with a hormone called oxytocin, and that makes you just feel good all over. You can get addicted to grandchildren. Exactly. We are addicted to grandchildren. Do you know how many animals have grandmothers?

How many? Only three. Is that true? Well, in the animal kingdom, when you can no longer reproduce, you die. Right. So elephants, whales, and humans, we're the only three. Oh, I wonder if they all feel the same. We're the only three. Oh, I wonder if they all feel the same.

We do. That's true. Oh, watch. And the role in all three cases, the deliberate role why we have grandmothers. Yeah. Babysitting. Exactly. Sure.

Just leave them with grandma. Yeah. And they're happy. They're happy babysitters. And you don't have to pay them. Well, and we don't say no. That's right. Well, look, it, and you don't have to pay them. Well, and we don't say no. That's right. Well, look, it sounds great. It was great talking to you.

I hope I did a good job with the interview. Did I? I loved it. I loved it. I think I learned some things. It was smart. I appreciate you coming, and take care and enjoy your grandchildren. Thank you, Mark. All right, that was me and Leslie Stahl.

It was nice talking to her. All right, no music today. Except for that. Take care of yourselves and other people around you. Boomer lives! Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer.

I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead

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