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- [00:01]
Lacy Healy
Hi, it's Lacy Healy. When members of Congress and even the vice president are sworn into office, they say an oath to protect the country from all enemies, foreign and domestic. But what does a domestic enemy look like?
- [00:15]
Gary Steingart
January 6th was coming from the top.
- [00:18]
Luke Burbank
Some of them are bad people, but most of them are just normal people.
- [00:22]
Lacy Healy
It was if we weren't all stressed out enough. This season on things that Go Boom, we're turning our eyes on the US how violence starts, how it stops, and how we stop it before it starts. A new season of Things that Go Boom is available now. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:40]
Luke Burbank
Livewire is.
- [00:41]
Unknown
Brought to you by Progressive Insurance.
- [00:43]
Luke Burbank
Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game?
- [00:46]
Unknown
Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills.
- [00:53]
Luke Burbank
Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and.
- [00:58]
Unknown
Affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law.
- [01:01]
Luke Burbank
Not available in all states.
- [01:03]
Gary Steingart
I mean, are people that determined to live to 88 rather than 86? Is that really that important? You know, your 80s are going to be terrifying anyway. You'll probably have Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. I mean, I've had friends who have died in their 50s, you know, not from drinking, just because at any moment, the grim reaper can appear and take you away. So are we really that desperate to win? It's so American, right? It's like, win two more years of your life, you're going to give up on one of the few things that gives you pleasure.
- [01:36]
Luke Burbank
From Livewire radio and prx, this is Damp January. Hi there. I'm your host, Luke Burbank. Going on this journey with all of you, the listeners, to find out where various people are at with their drinking. The voice that you heard right at the top of the show, that is the writer, Gary Steingart. He is an unapologetic martini enthusiast. I was thinking that Gary is actually kind of the ideal guest for this, our third episode of Damp January. Let me explain why. Okay, so in the first episode, we talked to my mom, Susie Burbank, who is a sober person. And then in the second episode, we talked to a guy named Shaughnessy Bishop Stahl, who spent years and years trying to find the cure for the hangover. He says he actually has it. But if you listen to that episode with Shaughnessy, you can hear that Shaughnessy, like me, is very conflicted about his drinking. And I think what happened was with my mom being sober and then Shaughnessy feeling bad about his drinking, people got the idea that this is in fact, a sobriety podcast, which it is not. We intentionally named it Damp January to indicate that the goal of this series is not necessarily for me, Luke Burbank, to be sober by the end of it. And if that sounds a little defensive, it's only because it is. Because I have to tell you, I have been receiving the nicest and most supportive messages from so many people in my life. I'm talking about people that I know very well congratulating me on finally getting sober, which I want to be clear as of this recording is not the case. Although I will say, when a lot of people are really quick to support you on the sober journey, that they mistakenly think that you are on, it could indicate something. I can't argue with that. So, anyway, back to why Gary Steingart is the ideal guest for this episode. Well, because after you hear this conversation, there will be no confusion about if this is, in fact, strictly speaking, a sobriety podcast. Because our chat is, if anything, I mean, at least from Gary's kind of perspective, like a ringing endorsement for drinking, which is a very hot, very spicy kind of take on the subject of alcohol these days. Right. Like that. It's basically fine. When we were making our list of potential guests for this series, Gary came to mind because, for one thing, I had just finished reading his book Our Country Friends, which literally has a glass of red wine on the COVID of the book and is a book about a bunch of people getting kind of drunk at a house in upstate New York. But also because, as I mentioned, Gary loves his martinis and he does not care who knows it. He was like the New Yorker's martini correspondent for an article back in 2024 where he went and had tons and tons and tons of martinis around New York and then sort of raided them. And so he was somebody that I was just curious, like to find out what his deal is. So here is our Damp January conversation with the writer, Gary Steingart.
- [05:11]
Unknown
My question to you is, where does drinking fit into your life?
- [05:14]
Gary Steingart
Yeah, I like to think of myself as a moderate drinker. When I was younger, I drank quite a bit. I could drink five glasses a day of something and still function. But in my 50s, that's not gonna be. That's not gonna happen. So I probably drink, as I was just telling one of my many, many doctors, between 10 and 14 glasses of alcohol per week. And because I have high blood sugar levels, always in the sort of pre diabetic, sometimes verging into diabetes, but always bouncing back into pre diabetes levels, I try to Drink alcohol, which doesn't have that much sugar, hence the martini is very good. Some people have been whispering about the Bloody Mary as a kind of very nutrient rich, happy drink. In terms of wine, red is better than white. Vodka shots always go down easy. So, yeah, because I do spend a lot of. I walk about two hours a day, sometimes a little more, six, seven miles I walk, I try to swim for about half an hour. I'm trying to live into my 60s, which for Russian men is not a preordained outcome.
- [06:34]
Unknown
So I'm curious, at what age did you start drinking?
- [06:38]
Gary Steingart
I started drinking in high school. I went to a high school that was very hard. It was a math and science kind of nerd school. Stuyvesant High School. So we were the sort of counterculture to all of the academically minded people. They called us the hippies because we were also very high, but we also were sitting and drinking a lot. I mean, it was a lot of cheap beer, cheap liquor, that kind of stuff. There's a park called Stuyvesant Park. That's where I had my first drink, my first kiss. All of these momentous events happened in that lovely park. The two were not disconnected, I think. And so, yeah, we were. You know, everybody else was trying to get into an Ivy League school and my group just decided that wasn't going to happen even remotely. So. Although I did get into the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. Yeah, didn't go there. But anyway, the point is that I discovered. And also I was living in very, very far Queens at this point, almost Long Island, Little Neck, Queens. And for me, the discovery of Alco went hand in hand with discovery of Manhattan, which I'd really only visited very few times because we were very suburban, if you will, even though we were technically in New York. So I fell in love with New York. And to me, New York, Manhattan felt very sophisticated, of course. And having a drink and a joint with that kind of doubled or trebled the sophistication.
- [08:05]
Unknown
What do you like about it now at age 52, drinking, like, what does it do for you?
- [08:10]
Gary Steingart
You know, the thing about. And there's all these doctors telling us that zero is the best number of drinks to have, but already life is so. I mean, we're all worked so hard. Neoliberalism really just whips us every day. It's just. It's hard. We're all atomized. We're all zooming and booming and whatever. You know, there's no. Already the interpersonal experience has been so downgraded in the way we live. Alcohol is one of the few things that is, I think, necessary. Also remember, this is obviously a diverse society, but there's a kind of Protestant Puritanism that undergirds everything that happens in America. Those were people that desperately needed a drink in order to communicate. This is not one of those happy Mediterranean type cultures. This is, without a drink, what do you have? So for me, that's all a big part of it. It's very important to try to get us to communicate. And, you know, I sometimes go to one of the bars I'm in, and there's all these people on a Tinder date, and it's just so sad. You know, this algorithm matched them, and even the gift of alcohol can't really connect them because they're such disparate people. But in the olden days, we met through vast circles of friends, of which alcohol was just one thing that kind of made people, you know, bond more, whether romantically or through or in friendship.
- [09:33]
Unknown
Is there a part of the drinking experience that you really look forward to? Like, for me, it's maybe the second drink when you're kind of settling into a certain kind of buzz and you're not drunk yet, but you're also feeling a little unburdened.
- [09:49]
Gary Steingart
Well, it depends which drink you're talking about. Now, yes, you're right that if, let's say, I'm drinking red wine, which can be quite delicious, by the second glass, I am feeling that incredible onrush of sort of social satiation. I feel like I'm in the right place. But martinis, because if, especially if you have them dry, you're basically just drinking a gigantic thing of gin in a container. By the end of even that first gin martini, especially served at a place like the Hotel Chelsea in New York, which uses the Dukes of London recipe, which is gigantic and incredibly dry, even one of those can really get you in the zone you need to be in.
- [10:29]
Unknown
Let's talk about the martini, because that's something that you focus on a lot in your life. On Instagram, you've done sort of martini reviews in the New Yorker. What do you love so much about martinis?
- [10:43]
Gary Steingart
I think they remind. First of all, there's a ceremony to them, and I love to sit by the bar and see them do it. And with a dry martini, it's very interesting because you rinse out the glass with vermouth and then you dump out the vermouth. It appeals. It's almost. It feels so contradictory to my immigrant nature, which wants to save up Every single thing. You know, I paid for this vermouth. Now I'm gonna dump it out. So it feels very decadent to me to have it just swirl around and then you dump it out. I worked as a bartender for charity for a day at the Coleman's restaurant. We were raising charity for a hunger philanthropy, trying to end hunger in New York City Harvest, I believe. And it was so much work because, you know, the way I did it, I followed that, that ceremony. And then I would take a little piece of anchovy and I would put it. The skewer. I would put a skewer of the anchovy into the drink, or rather onto the drink. A lot of very small choreographed moves. So the ritual of it is great. As I was mentioning, the fact that you're drinking quite a potent amount of alcohol up front is great. And the third thing, as I was mentioning, I think martinis are one of the healthier drinks. If you think about it. If you think of it as just gin or vodka, really, obviously those have some carbs, but they're not sugar rich, you know. So if you're diabetic or pre diabetic or, you know, you aspire to be a pre diabetic, then this is a great drink for you.
- [12:10]
Unknown
You wrote in, I think it was the New York Times that you struggle sometimes to, or you have to stop yourself from writing a martini into the hand of some of your characters when you're writing.
- [12:23]
Gary Steingart
I. Yeah, a lot of my characters have martinis in their hands. The last book I wrote, our Country Friends, was basically a giant, like, you know, three months long dinner scene with endless Gibsons and martinis and other variations on the drink. Because I had, you know, there was a collection of seven, eight people upstate and I needed to lubricate them in order for them to start having affairs with each other. And of course, for that, the martini was very quickly conscripted into action.
- [12:54]
Unknown
And are you somebody who will have a drink while you're trying to write?
- [12:58]
Gary Steingart
Never. Never. No. I find that to be ridiculous. I know the William Burrow school of writing meant you had to do a lot of heroin before you started typing, but who's got the time for that anymore? And I find that it doesn't help the work. If anything, it makes the work stupid.
- [13:15]
Unknown
Do you sort of have it as a reward at the end of your day of writing?
- [13:20]
Gary Steingart
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Maybe not the end of the day, because I think for me, I write usually by 2, 3pm the laptop is put away. So that's A little too early. I do try to do a nice 5pm Martini. I spend half the year in the country and there 5 o'clock is dinner time. People wake up super early when our roosters begin to crow and then we try to go to sleep by 9:10pm I know it sounds ridiculous to city folk, so a dinner with a martini at five. Yum, yum, yum.
- [13:51]
Unknown
You sound incredibly unhung up on this whole topic. I'm wondering, do you have any rules for yourself? Do you have guardrails or things you observe not drinking certain times or not certain amounts?
- [14:01]
Gary Steingart
Yeah, I want to stop. I mean, my problem is I usually do fall into the 10 to 14 drink per week category and I try not to do more than three drinks if I'm drinking. Try to space it out nice and even usually. But a lot of my professional life is doing articles that I love to do about different places and that will often involve hanging out with people who just want more and more drinks. I just did a piece that took me to Asia and I was hanging out with these people who were taking me to all these bars, karaoke bars, et cetera. And you know, everyone or you know, the drinks keep coming and, and you, what do you say? I mean, in Russia, alcoholics used to say, you know, I have liver damage or something because it was one of the few excuses you could use not to have a drink. But even then, you know, people would still drink even with some liver damage. I don't even have that note from my doctor. So I got to keep drinking. So that can become a little problematic. And then I try to, you know, I try to do like a semi dry week when I come back from one of these long trips to these. By the way, another thing I noticed is I was talking about how the Protestant drinking. I do notice that there's some parts of the world where there's a lot more drinking. And I'm thinking particularly of Northern Europe. England, of course, Ireland and East Asia, I would say, are places where people drink a crap ton of alcohol.
- [15:35]
Unknown
Well, you were born in Russia and then came here. Is some part of your Russian ness tied up in this, your relationship with drinking?
- [15:44]
Gary Steingart
I think I'm okay with drinking. People are shocked at how much I can drink. You know, for that article I had to drink 10 martinis basically in a day. And I was pretty much okay. When I got home. We ate a lot of protein to sort of dilute it. Me and the, the guy I was with, Matt Cranick, who wrote the book called Martini And I remember he can drink, too. At the end of it, he said. I said, you know, I need to hydrate. And he's like, yeah, I know. Me too. And he was like, waiter, a gin and tonic, please.
- [16:12]
Unknown
Get that tonic in you.
- [16:14]
Gary Steingart
Get that tonic in you. But, yeah, I mean, one of my great great grandparents was a deacon in the Russian Orthodox Church. And that's probably the drunkest member of Russian society, which is saying something. So, yeah, I think genetically it's been passed down that I could have more than a few drinks.
- [16:31]
Unknown
And to the degree that you're in what you feel is a pretty good place with your drinking, I mean, you're comfortable with it, do you think? And that it isn't excessive to where you're, you know, waking up in jail or losing friendships over it? Do you attribute that to genetic luck? To a certain kind of part of your brain that does know when to turn it off? Like, how are you kind of in this category of drinking when so many people are kind of in a different category?
- [16:58]
Gary Steingart
It's interesting. I mean, I used to be much more drunk than I am now, and still maybe once a year, I allow myself to sort of go past the guardrails. Cause you have to compare it to something. So there's always one time a year. Usually it's just once when I wake up next to my shoe or something like that. And I'm thinking, what the hell just happened here? But for the most part, you know, it's a very busy life. And I have to wake up, catch a flight, blah, blah, blah. It's too hard for me to even consider going back to the days where I would drink very habitually, because that was the crowds I was in. I was always in a kind of artistic, academic, writerly, journalistic crowd. And those people really put it away. And now I think the other sort of guardrail is that I'm upstate so much. And also you have to drive to get a drink. Then you can't drink too much before you drive back. So all these things create all a different system of guardrails.
- [17:59]
Unknown
And yet you kind of observe the guardrails, for instance, saying, well, you've got to drive to the place where the alcohol is. So that means you maybe don't do the alcohol, whereas other people would not let that be an impediment. And then they might end up in trouble over that. Is this something that you have ever kind of struggled with? Or is it just that you've been able to just kind of pump the brakes when you need to.
- [18:21]
Gary Steingart
I mostly am able to pump the brakes. Not always. Not always, but I always. I think the problem is with age is the recovery process from drinking too much. I think it really does take away a day. When it used to not take away a day used to take away two hours longer of sleep. Also, I have a kid, so I have to take care of the kid. You know, it's just. I wish that I had a, you know, like a clone who could sleep until 5pm the way I would like to, instead of having to wake up at 7am um, but sadly I don't. That would be great. That's a great idea for a novel. Like a second body on which to unleash all of that.
- [19:09]
Unknown
Instead of harvesting their organs, they just. What, they go do the stuff that you don't want to do so you can sleep. Essentially.
- [19:16]
Gary Steingart
Yeah. Yeah. That's all I really want. No, it really is at this point, a battle for sleep. I want more sleep. I would kill for sleep. Oh, God, I can't wait for retirement.
- [19:29]
Unknown
Have you been in the position where you had to kind of let someone else know that their drinking was out of hand?
- [19:36]
Gary Steingart
No, no.
- [19:37]
Unknown
Are you the wrong messenger for that?
- [19:39]
Gary Steingart
I am the wrong messenger for that. I mean, yeah, I've seen people. Just once I saw someone collapse onto a glass table which then kind of split, and I thought, can somebody talk to her? Because that's not good.
- [19:54]
Unknown
But you've never been drawn into, like an intervention, though, in your friend group or whatever with all of these people?
- [20:00]
Gary Steingart
Nobody would ever consider me for an intervention. No, no, I'm sort of the, you know, because everyone has a story. Remember, Gary, when you. In 2003, we were in Rome, you went to this party, blah, blah, blah, and I'm like, okay, I am not. I can't enforce this message.
- [20:17]
Unknown
You know, you sort of mentioned the medical stuff earlier about how doctors are, you know, telling us that probably zero drinks a day is the best for our bodies. Does that give you pause at all? Or what is your take on the idea that it's medically not great for us?
- [20:35]
Gary Steingart
I don't understand. I mean, are people that determined to live to 88 rather than 86? Is that really that important? You know, your 80s are going to be terrifying anyway. You'll probably have Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or, you know, an always returning form of cancer. I mean, I've had friends who have died in their 50s, you know, not from drinking, just because at any moment the Grim Reaper can appear and take you away. So are we really that desperate to win? It's so American, right? It's like to win two more years of your life, you're going to give up on one of the few things that gives you pleasure? It makes absolutely no sense. Also, I wonder if there's a kind of, you know, I mentioned, you know, in a kind of joking way, neoliberalism earlier. I wonder if all of this is a corporate way for us to become even better, more productive workers. You know, no drinks, you wake up even earlier the next day, you work harder. The more articles I see about how bad alcohol is, oddly enough, the more I hear about how caffeine contains fiber and four glasses of it is actually good for you and will reduce cancer. It's really. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but something here strikes me as a little, eh.
- [21:40]
Unknown
Do you feel like our kind of societal move, at least among a lot of age cohorts, towards much more temperance? Do you feel like that we're going to lose something essential about ourselves if we all get sober and start rising and grinding and slaying all day?
- [21:57]
Gary Steingart
Slaying? Yeah. Slaying all day. Yeah. No, I think people drink less. I mean, I was absolutely shocked. I live not far from the East Village that there are now these sober bars. I don't know if you've heard of them.
- [22:10]
Unknown
Sure, I've been to them.
- [22:11]
Gary Steingart
Oh, my God. You know, people go, young people, maybe they're very secure in. In their own selves and don't need a little help before they can loosen their tongues and say what? Or maybe they're scared of saying what's underneath. You know, I. I don't know. To me, this seems like a bunch of really empty calories, but what do I know? Maybe. Maybe this is the future, but it seems very strange to me also, you know, alcohol doesn't help writing, but it certainly opens up the varieties of communication, and that can be very helpful to a creative person.
- [22:49]
Luke Burbank
Yeah.
- [22:49]
Unknown
Have you had experiences where you've been, you know, drinking and collaborating with people? I mean, that's a very formal way to put it, but basically, like out of a night of drinking, you then wake up the next day with thoughts about your writing that you actually implement?
- [23:05]
Gary Steingart
Not just that, I sometimes take down notes during the drinking. So for Absurdistan, I flew to all these former Soviet republics. That book was pretty much journalism. I just wrote down what everyone was saying while drunk off their asses, like success. I was sort of embedded myself with these hedge funders for three, four years. Pretty much wrote down what was Happening there. A lot of the dialogue of our country friends was dialogue I'd had with my own friends while they were imbibing. So maybe that's another reason why the guardrails are good, is because two drinks, I can still very effectively write down what people are saying at four drinks less.
- [23:44]
Unknown
So would you say, and I think I know the answer to this question, that alcohol has measurably improved your life?
- [23:51]
Gary Steingart
Yeah, measurably, measurably. I mean, I'm trying to think of what it would be like if it was just complete sobriety. Yeah. I don't know. For once, I'm speechless. I don't know where to begin. Like, what would. What would happen? And, you know, and I can spend a week without drinking or 10 days, it's not, you know, but at some point, the need to connect is so great. Like, I never drink by myself, you know, because I can entertain myself. I'm not shy around myself. I can entertain myself. I can start a dialogue with myself without any problem. In a sense, that's all a novel really is. But when it comes to other people, no, it's impossible.
- [24:33]
Unknown
I see. So it has that kind of social lubricant quality for you.
- [24:37]
Gary Steingart
Absolutely. And the key is really to make sure that you're not. I mean, I know that on the one day a year or so where I take things too far, that I'm not really communicating. I'm just. I've left the building before. I've left the building.
- [24:51]
Unknown
Is there a voice inside your head that kicks in that says, okay, Gary, you're communicating now, but if you have one more drink, you're going to cease communicating. Like, what's that sound like when you're making the decision to maybe stop at three drinks versus six drinks?
- [25:07]
Gary Steingart
Well, I think the voices. You've run out of opportunities to have fun here, the fun has all been sucked out of the situation. There's very little. What else? Is there going to be more? Is the conversation going to get any more interesting? Are you going to meet someone new and interesting? And if those things are satisfied, then I retreat. Sometimes I'm thinking, oh, someone else is gonna show up. So I'm gonna have a glass of water to try to temper the alcohol a little bit. So, you know, there are breaks that you can use.
- [25:39]
Unknown
Do you. I mean, this. It's presumptuous of me to ask you this, and it might be presumptuous of you to answer it, but, like. Because I think people just kind of find themselves wherever they are on this kind of continuum or spectrum of their relationship with alcohol. But you, as someone who does have the ability to recognize, is this party going to become more fun? I do have to get up tomorrow, things like that. So for a person who has this under control to a degree that they find satisfactory, do you have any advice for people that might struggle, that would really like to find themselves in the range you're in, but are in one where they don't sort of have that voice or they don't have that control?
- [26:19]
Gary Steingart
Yeah, I mean, I think you can even keep a diary for yourself. Sorry, now I sound really like either a doctor or a corporate taskmaster. But you can keep a diary where you can list on one hand the amount of drinks you've had that night or that you remember having versus the, you know, from 1 to 10, rate the amount of fun you had. Try to keep, you know, a running tally there. I think there's something called Excel. It's a thing on your computer.
- [26:46]
Unknown
Yes, the listeners have heard of it.
- [26:48]
Gary Steingart
Yeah, they've heard of it. Try to keep a tally. Does more drinks mean more fun? And then be honest with yourself about that. Obviously, a third column could be how you feel the next day, you know, but the idea of, you know, when and when did the fun stop? When were you drinking? Because, you know, here's the other thing, right? And maybe this is what I've gotten good at is trying to stop drinking when I'm bored and drinking to make myself feel less bored. Like, if I go so blotto, then the boredom around me will be eradicated. This happened a lot when I was researching my hedge fund thing because those guys would go hard, but often I'd be like, all right, I get it already. It's boring. So what am I getting from staying up till 4 in the morning? Right?
- [27:34]
Unknown
I forget who said, you might remember this, but somebody famously said, I don't drink to be interesting. I drink to make other people interesting.
- [27:41]
Gary Steingart
Yes, exactly. Who was it? It sounds. Wasn't wild when somebody said it anyway. Yes, exactly. Exactly.
- [27:48]
Unknown
And so not drinking as a way of curing boredom will probably actually temper a lot of the drinking. Because it turns out that that's oftentimes why we do it. Just because we're either in a situation with people that are fairly dull or for people that do drink alone, they're just feeling bored and, you know, sitting in their living room.
- [28:07]
Gary Steingart
Exactly. So, you know, so if you have a friend group that you keep going out with and you keep drinking yourself because you want things to Be more interesting. Maybe you need another friend group that is more interesting. Right.
- [28:17]
Unknown
Are you going to have a drink tonight?
- [28:19]
Gary Steingart
Yes. I'm meeting with a German journalist who's interviewing me about the election. So that is boy, German journalist plus election equals. Yeah. And we're going to a very fine restaurant for which the German publication will be paying. So I could see a couple of drinks tonight. I could see a very nice bottle of wine tonight.
- [28:45]
Unknown
And what's the progression? Will you have like a martini before dinner to kind of warm things up? Take me through the night.
- [28:53]
Gary Steingart
I believe we will meet at the restaurant. It's an Austro French restaurant, so there might be schnitzel. I think I will start with the martini. Dry as hell. Then I think I would like to order. Now this is interesting because I do believe that red wine has slightly less sugar usually than white wine. But because of the food involved, I may have to go into a Gruner or a Riesling territory that will match the food very nicely. So I do see myself ordering a bottle to split with this gentleman. I think a bottle contains five drinks, five glasses. So that would be two and a half glasses, plus the martini, three and a half.
- [29:31]
Unknown
Sounds like you've thought this all out. You've got a whole plan together, which is maybe part of your secret to how you are able to imbibe as much as you do, but also maintain what sounds like a pretty happy, healthy life.
- [29:42]
Gary Steingart
I think so. You know, I try to do a book. Every four years I publish a book. In the olden days, you know, writers would do a book every year. I don't know what the hell they were doing, and they were drunk out of their minds. But for me, because a lot of my fellow writers don't keep up that schedule. Some of them don't drink enough, frankly, and some drink too much. But I think for. In order to, you know, leave this world with 12 books behind me, hopefully this is the right amount of alcohol.
- [30:09]
Unknown
I feel like the major takeaway from this, along with the idea that the martini might be the perfect drink, is that you think long life is overrated.
- [30:20]
Gary Steingart
Completely overrated. Completely overrated. Because of the way the medical system has developed, they can keep us going for a long time, but we're just a collection of parts at that point. The Holy Spirit has left the body. There's nothing left.
- [30:38]
Unknown
Elvis has left the building.
- [30:39]
Gary Steingart
Elvis has left the building. And I hope that on my final day, somebody gives me a martini. I hope there's a doctor that just says, all right, we've run out of space and time here. Let's medicate this whale and put him to bed.
- [30:52]
Unknown
Well, that's probably a fitting place to wrap this up. Gary Steingart, thank you so much for talking to us on Damp January.
- [30:57]
Gary Steingart
Thank you so much. Enjoy your Damp January cheers.
- [31:03]
Luke Burbank
That is Gary Steingart right here on Damp January. January Episode three. A big thanks to Gary for coming on the show. Also, one thing that we should probably clarify is when he was saying that martinis are a healthy drink. To quote one of the characters from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I don't think there's any science at all to back that up. In fact, the Surgeon General of the United States this month, a guy who I've met by the way, and I've watched him play ping pong before, which is a whole other story. He is calling for labels on alcohol, much like we label tobacco products to point out the cancer causing qualities of alcohol. Anyway, a big thanks to Gary for coming on the show. Go read all of his books. They are truly incredible. Also thanks to everyone who has emailed us@dampjanivewireradio.org that's where Anya said hi. She said, quote OMG. The episode of Damp January with youh mom was the most beautiful podcast episode I've ever heard. I was drinking a glass of wine left over from New Year's Eve while listening. And then Anya includes a cry laughing emoji. Thank you, Anya. My point in reading that message is there's no right or wrong way to listen to this podcast, my friends. We just hope that you do and maybe tell your friends about it and also reach out to us. Let us know how you think we're doing or how you're doing, kind of.
- [32:30]
Unknown
What your relationship with alcohol looks like.
- [32:32]
Luke Burbank
All right, next week on the show, you guessed it, we're back to confusing everyone about if this is or is not strictly a sobriety podcast. Because we will be talking to the incredibly funny, the incredibly smart, and the incredibly sober Moshe Kasher drunk person is.
- [32:52]
Moshe Kasher
Yes, so far out there in terms of I don't wanna talk to you if you're incredibly drunk. I mean, drunk people are obnoxious. They don't pick up on any social cues except for the social cue when you say to them, hey, you're being obnoxious. They pick up on that really well.
- [33:11]
Luke Burbank
Moshe got sober in his teen years. In fact, in his book Subculture Vulture, he describes himself as the boy king of aa, which is not a title a lot of people can claim, but this sobriety did not stop Moshe from becoming obsessed with rave culture and Burning man and even being a drug dealer. He'll tell us the whole story next week. It's really crazy. So that's coming up right here on Damp January. Damp January is a project of Livewire Radio, written and hosted by me, Luke Burbank. Laura Hadden, of course, is our executive producer. Our producer and editor is Melanie Savchenko. Hazik Bin Ahmad Farid and Trey Hester are mixing the show each week. Ashley park is our production fellow, and Benjamin Kleek is the guy who composed our theme. Also special thanks to Livewire's executive director, Heather D. Michel, as well as the whole team over at prx. Mostly thanks to all of you for listening to the show and for telling.
- [34:16]
Unknown
Your friends about it and posting things.
- [34:17]
Luke Burbank
Online about what we're getting up to. Very good luck to you, whatever your relationship with alcohol is looking like these days. We are going to be back here next week with another episode of the show, so please do join us for that. In the meantime, stay hydrated, people. Yes, that is because they've asked me to stop saying damp so much, which, honestly, I. I think is a good note. See you next week. Dear Livewire, when we first met, I was really shy. I had no idea we'd spend so.
- [35:18]
Unknown
Much time together or that you'd be one to fill my heart with.
- [35:21]
Luke Burbank
With joy and make me want to be a better person. Oh, I'm sorry.
- [35:26]
Unknown
I didn't know you were here.
- [35:26]
Luke Burbank
I was busy reading a review from one of our many, many rapturously smitten listeners. Oh, wait. Actually, no.
- [35:34]
Unknown
Sorry. This is from Elena. Anyway, the point is, it would be really helpful if you wanted to leave us a review.
- [35:40]
Luke Burbank
Feel free to say really nice things.
- [35:42]
Unknown
About us, and we'll even read them now and then on the show so.
- [35:46]
Luke Burbank
You might hear your review of Livewire.
- [35:48]
Unknown
Read on the program itself.
- [35:51]
Luke Burbank
Reviews help other people hear about the show, and then we can keep doing this for a long, long time.
- [35:55]
Unknown
Long time. Because we love having this job.
- [35:57]
Luke Burbank
Thank you so much. If you've left a review, and if you're about to leave a review, you can go ahead and do it right where you get the podcast.
- [36:10]
Gary Steingart
From prx.