Selects: How Schoolhouse Rock Rocked: Featuring Bob Nastanovich of Pavement

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Should Know

Episode: Selects: How Schoolhouse Rock Rocked – Featuring Bob Nastanovich of Pavement

Date: October 11, 2025
Hosts: Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant
Guest: Bob Nastanovich (of Pavement)

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Episode Overview

In this nostalgic episode, Josh and Chuck revisit the origins, cultural impact, and lasting legacy of Schoolhouse Rock—a beloved series of educational songs and animations that shaped the childhoods of millions from the 1970s onward. They explore the show's unique conception by ad executives and jazz musicians, break down its memorable songs and seasons, discuss its revival in the ‘90s (including a beloved tribute album), and examine some criticisms leveled at its historical content. The episode also features a delightful interview with Pavement’s Bob Nastanovich about the band’s cover of “No More Kings” for the 1996 album, Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks.

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Main Topics & Key Insights

1. The Genesis of Schoolhouse Rock (06:16 – 11:21)

• Origin Story:

  • David McCall, co-owner of the McCaffrey and McCall ad agency, was inspired to combine catchy music and education after noticing his son could remember Rolling Stones’ lyrics but struggled with multiplication tables.
  • He leveraged advertising techniques—specifically jingles—to “sell” educational concepts to kids.

• Notable Quote:

  • “Maybe we could do the same thing that we do to sell people stuff, but to basically sell education to kids.” – Chuck Bryant (07:42)

• Musical Direction:

  • Ad exec George Newell was tasked with making the prototype work and turned to jazz musician Bob Dorough, noted for his respect for kids’ intelligence and creativity.
  • Dorough’s Perspective:
    • “When [McCall] said that, I got a chill. I have a high opinion of children. And that was sort of the key right there. They weren’t songs written in a remedial way because it was children.” – Bob Dorough (09:39)

2. Building the Formula: Music + Animation (11:22 – 15:16)

• First song, “Three is a Magic Number,” set the template—addressing multiplication while being musically sophisticated and even philosophical.

• Art director Tom Yohe was brought on to add storyboards and animation, making the songs visually engaging.

• Notable Moments:

  • Hosts share deep nostalgia for Schoolhouse Rock’s seamless fusion of visuals and music, noting its unique “perfect storm of awesomeness.” (14:19)

3. The Heyday: Seasons and Song Highlights (19:44 – 34:41)

Math Season (Multiplication Rock)

• Debuted January 1973 as ABC “interstitials”—non-commercial programming between cartoons.
• Standout songs: “Three is a Magic Number,” “My Hero Zero,” “Four-Legged Zoo.”
• Dorough wrote nearly all the music, with singing help from jazz singers Grady Tate (“Naughty Number Nine”) and Blossom Dearie (“Figure Eight”).
  • Fun Fact: Schoolhouse Rock lost the Grammy for children’s album to Sesame Street in 1974.

Grammar Rock (73:54 – 26:43)

• Home to the biggest hit: “Conjunction Junction,” sung by jazzman Jack Sheldon.
• “Verb: That’s What’s Happening” noted for its funky sound and importance to Black children seeing themselves represented onscreen.
• Introduction of Lynn Ahrens, secretary-turned-songwriter, who created classics like “A Noun is a Person Place or Thing” and “Interplanet Janet.”

America Rock / History Rock (28:31 – 34:41)

• Timed to US Bicentennial (1976). Songs: “Mother Necessity,” “Shot Heard Round the World,” “No More Kings.”
• “I’m Just a Bill” (by Dave Frishberg, sung by Jack Sheldon) became a pop culture touchstone.
  • Quote: “That’s the cultural icon that signifies the whole thing. …I just feel like ‘I’m Just a Bill’ is the most readily recognizable one.” – Chuck Bryant (33:11)
• Songs proved educational for both kids and adults—legislators requested tapes to train their own staff.

Science Rock (34:41 – 35:16)

• Topics ranged from astronomy (“Interplanet Janet”) to the nervous system (“Telegraph Line”).
• The content was advanced enough to be used by med students.

4. Behind the Scenes and End of an Era (39:44 – 43:32)

• Early seasons: creative team-driven, collaboratively vetted by educators.
• Downturn:
  • Fifth and final original season (“Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips,” 1985) was dictated by ABC execs, focusing on computers—resulting in content quickly rendered obsolete and seen as lacking heart.
• The switch from creative-first to exec-assigned killed the project's spark.

5. Revival & Legacy (43:33 – 48:35)

• Schoolhouse Rock’s reruns and ‘90s revival:
  • Student-led petition at UConn prompted ABC to bring it back in 1993 with new episodes (Money Rock).
  • Schoolhouse Rock Live debuted as a stage show, running Off-Broadway.
  • Tribute album “Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks” (1996) featured 90s bands: Pavement, Lemonheads, Ween, Moby, and more.
• Schoolhouse Rock’s nostalgia is a defining point for Generation X and has sparked celebrations for decades after its original run.

6. Criticism and Historical Context (50:51 – 53:59)

• The series faced retrospective criticism over whitewashed historical narratives (e.g., glamorizing westward expansion, omitting Native American perspectives in “Elbow Room”).
• Hosts reflect on how history education (including Schoolhouse Rock) often glossed over uncomfortable truths but note that critical awareness has improved over time.

7. Bob Nastanovich Interview: “No More Kings” (56:11 – 69:39)

• Bob Nastanovich (Pavement) shares:
  • How Pavement recorded “No More Kings” for the tribute album:
    • Recorded during a studio session originally booked for the Silver Jews.
    • Connection via friend Jackie Farry (album supervisor), who gave them their pick—“No More Kings” was a favorite growing up.
    • Recording was quick (“one take on the instrumental…probably took eight minutes” – 59:23), and drummer Steve West did all the distinctive deep-voiced background ranting.
• Notable Quotes:
  • “It was one of those things in Pavement’s time that I feel like we actually did a good job on.” – Bob Nastanovich (58:32)
  • “We had to pavementize it…That’s the only way that we can really do it.” (68:38)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If you just heard that theme song and something inside your body happened emotionally…you grew up in the 70s and 80s.” – Josh Clark (03:20)
• “The people involved stayed on for basically the whole run…the initial run from ‘73 to ‘85.” – Chuck Bryant (23:17)
• “It wasn’t just the song…the combination of the visuals with the song…and you were learning something in such a unique way.” – Josh Clark (14:19)
• “Supposedly…lobbyists and legislators would get in touch with ABC and be like, you gotta get me a copy of that ‘I’m Just A Bill’ thing. …to show it to my staff to train them.” – Chuck Bryant (34:07)
• “As far as Gen X nostalgia goes…I would propose that Schoolhouse Rock was the thing that kicked it off.” – Chuck Bryant (48:17)
• “That’s the cultural icon that signifies the whole thing…‘I’m Just a Bill’ is the most readily recognizable one.” – Chuck Bryant (33:11)

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Timestamps: Important Segments

• 06:16 – The ad agency roots & inspiration for Schoolhouse Rock
• 09:39 – Bob Dorough’s unique approach: not talking down to children
• 11:22 – Creation of “Three is a Magic Number”
• 15:38 – Pitching to ABC, Chuck Jones, and Michael Eisner
• 19:59 – Debut on ABC; format and initial song lineup
• 23:17 – Continuity of the creative team across seasons
• 24:29 – “Conjunction Junction” and Jack Sheldon's vocal magic
• 28:40 – America Rock/History Rock and “No More Kings”
• 33:11 – “I’m Just a Bill” becomes the most iconic song
• 34:41 – Science Rock and extending educational reach
• 39:44 – Season 5 (“Scooter Computer”) and the decline in quality
• 43:33 – The '90s revival and Money Rock
• 46:39 – Schoolhouse Rock Live & Off-Broadway
• 48:17 – The show’s importance in Gen X nostalgia
• 50:51 – Criticism of whitewashing history, esp. in “Elbow Room”
• 56:11 – Bob Nastanovich interview segment begins
• 58:32 – “No More Kings” recording process & context

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Additional Highlights

• Cultural Legacy: Referenced by media like The Simpsons and SNL (notably Robert Smigel’s “Conspiracy Rock”).
• Generational Impact: Schoolhouse Rock influenced not only how children learned, but also shaped their sense of nostalgia and pop culture identity.
• Educational Philosophy: The refusal to “write down to kids” is credited for Schoolhouse Rock’s enduring appeal and effectiveness.

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Conclusion

This rich, nostalgic episode reveals not only the backstory and making of Schoolhouse Rock, but also its vast cultural footprint. The hosts’ affection and critical insight, the stories behind the tribute album, and a rare interview with Pavement's Bob Nastanovich make this a must-listen for those seeking to rediscover this “perfect storm of awesomeness”—as well as those curious about the subtler effects of children’s media on generations of learners.

Transcript

[Josh Clark]

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[Josh Clark]

Hey everybody. Happy Saturday. And as promised in our Saturday Morning Cartoons episode, which by the way, I hope you woke up this morning and went downstairs and at least streamed some cartoons for nostalgia's sake. But as promised in that episode, here is our past Schoolhouse Rock EPP that we recorded quite a number of years ago and we thought it was apropos that we put it out the same week as the old Saturday Morning Cartoons ep. We really had a great time recording this episode. Schoolhouse Rock was a fundamental source of learning and entertainment for both of us growing up. And for most of Gen X, I would say. So I hope you enjoy it all over again. Here we go with the Powell Schoolhouse.

[Commercial Announcer]

Rock Rocked, featuring Bob Nastanovich of Pavement.

[iHeartRadio Announcer]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

As your body grows bigger, your mind must flower.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's great to learn cause knowledge is power.

[Bob Nastanovich]

Your schoolhouse rocking.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. And this is Stuff youf Should Know. Chip off the block of your favorite schoolhouse.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that was. We just heard the theme song if you're between the ages of. Well, were you into it?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so you're what, 41?

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm 40, dude.

[Commercial Announcer]

40.

[Josh Clark]

So probably younger than you, even a bit, let's say. If you're Between.

[Chuck Bryant]

I was definitely toward the tail end of it.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, let's say 38 to 50 years old, actually.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's not true. So let's say it was up to 85.

[Josh Clark]

So Schoolhouse Rock.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Yeah. So it's somewhere in that range, say 35 to what?

[Josh Clark]

Well, 50ish.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, that's. We agree on a little more.

[Josh Clark]

55 maybe.

[Chuck Bryant]

So that 15 year period, you were lucky.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Like if you just heard that theme song and like something inside your body happened emotionally in your brain, then that means that you grew up in the 70s and 80s, I think the heyday of Saturday morning cartoons. Personally, as a fan of Schoolhouse Rock, one of my favorite, favorite, favorite things in the world.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it was pretty great.

[Josh Clark]

I still love it. Yeah, Like I still listen to this stuff semi regularly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, do you? Yeah, it'd been a little while. When I went back to research this, I listened to or watched a bunch of them.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And they all just came flooding back.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And the, the writer of this article actually interviewed, didn't he? Bob Doro?

[Chuck Bryant]

It sounded that way. Unless he's a big fat liar in his author's note.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I just remember when this article went around. Like the first thing we do when there's an article at House of the Forks is there's a email that goes around everyone where people kind of suggest kind of questions you can answer and stuff like that. Yeah, I don't think we ever really talked about that, did we?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't think so.

[Josh Clark]

Nine years in, that's a secret. And people say, hey, you should think about this, you should do this. And I said, somebody should try and interview Bob Doro. It's like he's 93 years old and you know, you can still get in touch with the guy, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And apparently this dude did. And sadly, I think all he got was like one quote.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, well, he was on his way to like a jazz gig in London when he caught him.

[Josh Clark]

I bet you there was more in there than this. I was a little disappointed.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, you're saying. I gotcha.

[Josh Clark]

I wanted like more. More select pull quotes from Mr. Doro.

[Chuck Bryant]

You wanted like I called Mr. Doro, he answered, hello, said Mr. Doro, we.

[Josh Clark]

Should interviewed him for this.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know why we didn't.

[Josh Clark]

I don't either.

[Chuck Bryant]

Apparently it's easy to get to.

[Josh Clark]

And there's. Well, I'll get to that. Never mind. Should we get in the wayback Machine?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. Let's go back to the 70s, the greatest decade in the history of humanity.

[Josh Clark]

Probably.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm not joking.

[Josh Clark]

I'm a fan of 60s, 70s and 80s. It'd be tough for me to decide.

[Chuck Bryant]

The 60s were a little too hippie for me.

[Josh Clark]

Oh yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Love the 70s though. I mean, I love the 70s. And not even as a golden age. There was a lot wrong in the 70s. Nixon was president during the 70s. Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Lots of stuff were wrong in the 70s, but something about that decade just hit all the boxes.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I just love it.

[Josh Clark]

I do too. And it reminds me of my childhood, which is great because, you know, I had a good childhood. It was fun. I have a lot of. We talked about that in the nostalgia episode on how nostalgia is the correct path in life.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Even though John Hodgman doesn't think so.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Nothing to that.

[Josh Clark]

So early 70s, there's a gentleman named David McCall and he was. He co owned an ad agency called McCaffrey and McCall. And as the story goes, he was on vacation with his family and he knew his son was having some trouble in math. Remembering specifically multiplication tables.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. No matter how much he yelled at him every night, he couldn't get multiplication.

[Josh Clark]

But they were in the car and this kid was singing, as the story goes, Rolling Stones. Rolling Stones song. And he was like, well, you know that. Why can't you remember the other stuff? I don't think he was that gruff.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't think so either.

[Josh Clark]

But it did hit him. He was like, you know, my son, remember, he has no problem memorizing things. But there's something about these multiplication tables. So I wonder if there's something to sing song and turning learning into not only just music because that's not a new thing. People have been doing that forever. But popular sounding music.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. And like pairing them with concepts to teach. Right.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

To make kids understand difficult concepts. Right. And it's so weird now, especially in the post school house rock world. Yeah. Of course people do that. Like that's a technique that you use to teach kids. But apparently no one else was doing this at the time.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Let's make learning fun.

[Chuck Bryant]

This was a pretty interesting idea and it really germinated in just the right guy's mind because this guy McCall was like you said, he was a partner in this advertising firm and they basically specialized in doing the same thing, but getting you to buy something. He was saying maybe we could do the same thing that we do to sell people stuff, but to basically sell education to kids, to teach kids using the same techniques that we use in advertising.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Like they would see a jingle for a Product that would get lodged in someone's head and they would say, you know, why can't we do that same thing? Like it would get lodged in a kid's head and they would have learned something instead of bought something.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

But you could also buy stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you learn enough stuff, you can buy even more stuff.

[Josh Clark]

So he went to one of his, I think he was a creative director. A co creative director named George Newell ran it by him. He said, great idea, get someone on it. And he threw a cigarette at him, got out of the office and commissioned one of their writers. They had jingle writers on staff or at least working with them. And they said, go write something. It wasn't very good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Didn't you feel bad for this person?

[Josh Clark]

I did. But you know what? It could have died there. Right. Never would have had Schoolhouse Rock.

[Chuck Bryant]

But this person went down in history as the contributor to Schoolhouse Rock. Who didn't make it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sad.

[Josh Clark]

Or the person who almost killed Schoolhouse Rock.

[Chuck Bryant]

I guess so. But McCall was like, no, this idea is too good for this.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Which is really, you know, a great thing and a lesson in persistence. So he went. Newell was a jazz piano player and he went to his buddy Juan Bob Doro, one of my heroes, who and is a great bebop jazz pianist and composer, and said, you can write a jingle too. Why don't you try this out? And here's the one quote, we might as well read it from 93 year old Mr. Doro. I don't know how I lucked out. Apparently they tried other songwriters, but most of them wrote down to kids. When I met McCall, he said, here's my idea, give it a try, but don't write down to the kids. And when he said that, I got a chill. I have a high opinion of children. And that was sort of the key right there. They weren't songs like written in a remedial way because it was children.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Itsy Bitsy Spider. Give me a break.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, that's a classic. But you're right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So this idea germinates in this. Right. Guy's head. He happens to end up indirectly getting in touch with this guy who has a high opinion of children and he happens to be a jazz composer. Yeah, things are starting to, like, happen. There's basically the hand of the Almighty at work here.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. So Doro goes home, he has a daughter, gets out her textbooks, and the first thing he comes up with, to me, one of the best.

[Chuck Bryant]

Man, it is. Far out.

[Josh Clark]

Three Is a Magic Number was the very first Schoolhouse Rock song written because the first thing they wanted to tackle was math, because of McCall's son.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. This. This composition that he came back with. Three is a magic number. It's a I. When I hear it, it's super cool, but I don't. I'm really surprised that everybody was like, this is. Yes. Figure something out from this.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, man, I loved it.

[Chuck Bryant]

It is. It's cool, but it just doesn't seem like the basis. The keystone of Schoolhouse Rock to me. I'm surprised.

[Josh Clark]

Well, it's one of my favorites. That's great because it dealt with multiplication. And not only that, but, like you said, got a little trippy with the symbolism. Faith, hope and charity, heart and mind and body.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

It was about. And I've wanted to do a podcast on three, the number three, because it's very special. It is very special.

[Chuck Bryant]

We did one on zero. Why not three?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, man, I forgot about that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Remember?

[Josh Clark]

I think my brain melted a bit there.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a good one. It's tough. Zero's tough.

[Josh Clark]

It is tough. And not at all magic, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Not really.

[Josh Clark]

So regardless, if you would have been working there, you would have been like, meh. And everyone else enjoyed it. You'd be like, I'm gonna go get a bagel.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm gonna go work on this processed cheese account.

[Josh Clark]

I did think of Mad Men quite a bit when I was researching this. It was sort of that same time period.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Or I guess toward. No, Mad Men didn't make it into the 70s.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I thought he did, because wasn't he supposed to be DB Cooper at the end? And that was 70s. Yeah, I guess it was 71.

[Josh Clark]

I think it did crack into the 70s. Not like Boogie Nights did.

[Chuck Bryant]

That was all 70s into the 80s.

[Josh Clark]

No, that's right. It cracked into the 80s.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

With that. Jeez, that.

[Chuck Bryant]

That song you recorded.

[Josh Clark]

Well, no, I was. Well, yeah, that for sure. But I was thinking about when it. When the. The party. The New Year's Eve party.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh. With a Girl.

[Josh Clark]

1980 with Bill Macy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, man, what a great movie. That was wonderful. Yeah. The Movie's almost, like 20 years old.

[Chuck Bryant]

I believe it. We're old, Chuck.

[Josh Clark]

I know, but those. Those pop culture references are the ones that really hit home for me.

[Chuck Bryant]

What, the ones from the 70s?

[Josh Clark]

Well, when I think of, like, Boogie Nights, I was like, oh, yeah, that was just, like, a few years ago.

[Bob Nastanovich]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And then someone says it's celebrating its 20th anniversary, and I'm like, what? Or like, when I see an athlete's son or daughter.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's weird to see the is.

[Josh Clark]

Playing the same sport.

[Chuck Bryant]

The rookies are now like the old coaches and managers in the sports now, man. It's bizarre.

[Josh Clark]

So everyone's impressed at McCaffrey and McCall. Then they did a pretty smart thing. They went to. McCall was on the board of the Bank Street College of Education in New York there, and he took it to them, and it was just a song at this point, and said, what do you think is a learning tool? They used it, played it for the students, and they were like, this is awesome. They're responding again. Except for little Josh.

[Chuck Bryant]

He's just sitting there with his arms crust. He's scowling. Never seen him so mad before.

[Josh Clark]

So the students liked it, the agency liked it. So they knew they were onto something. They got their art director, Tom Yoh. Y O H E. Oh, you're going with Yoh.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm going all out with Yohi.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Tom Yohi and said, put some animation to this, draw out some storyboards. Because that was the beauty of Schoolhouse Rock to me, was it was a combination of everything. It wasn't just the song. The songs are great, and we'll get more to the music here in a bit, but it was the combination of the visuals with the song and the fact that you were learning something in such a unique way. It was just like the perfect storm of awesomeness.

[Chuck Bryant]

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

[Josh Clark]

Agreed. So they took. Now they have these storyboards. They take this to a guy named Radford Stone. He was their account supervisor, the VP for abc. And they said, there's this young upstart at ABC for their children's programming named Michael Eisner. Doubt if he's ever going to go anywhere, but right now he's running the kids shop over there. And let's bring in. Because this guy knows a lot about kids programming, let's bring in Chuck Jones to the meeting.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Shout out to our friend Jessica, granddaughter of Mr. Jones, and sat down in a meeting, played the demo tape, showed him the storyboard. They all turned to Chuck Jones, said, what do you think? And he said, buy it. Buy it.

[Chuck Bryant]

That is how Chuck Jones talked.

[Josh Clark]

No, he didn't. And Michael Eisner bought it and before you knew it, they were in business. We're gonna take a break.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think we should.

[Josh Clark]

Josh is gonna go collect himself and we'll be.

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[Ed Helms]

Hey, it's Ed Helms and welcome back to snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu Every single episode.

[iHeartRadio Announcer]

32 Lost Nuclear Weapons you're like, wait, stop.

[Chuck Bryant]

What?

[Josh Clark]

Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s.

[Ed Helms]

Basketball player who still wore knee pads. Yes, it's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Scheer made me feel good.

[Bob Nastanovich]

I'm like, oh, wow.

[Ed Helms]

Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched you're here.

[iHeartRadio Announcer]

What was that like for you to soft launch into the show?

[Josh Clark]

Sorry, Jenna.

[Ed Helms]

I'll be asking the questions today.

[iHeartRadio Announcer]

I forgot whose podcast we were doing.

[Ed Helms]

Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich.

[Chuck Bryant]

So let's see how it goes.

[Ed Helms]

Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your PODC.

[Josh Clark]

You all right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'm all right.

[Josh Clark]

We're back. So strange. So Schoolhouse Rock started on ABC Saturday morning as what they call an interstitial.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we had some of this.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's programming between the programming that's not commercial.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. When the creators of the program you're actually watching weren't good enough to make 22 full minutes, you rounded out with interstitial programming.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Exactly. This is January 6th and 7th was the first weekend in 1973. So I was but two years old.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, well, I was negative three.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. You were in the upper atmosphere Playing.

[Chuck Bryant]

My lyre coalescing, waiting to be born Flapping my wings.

[Josh Clark]

And this was before, like you said, this was the original thing was it was just going to be an album called Multiplication Rock until they realized that the visuals were important. They could put it on television. And the first four songs that first weekend were some of the greatest, aside from Three is a Magic Number. Four Legged Zoo, elementary, My Dear and My Hero, Zero. Great song.

[Chuck Bryant]

Zero again.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not magical, but it is a cool number.

[Josh Clark]

Such a funny little hero.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Till you came along they counted on their fingers and toes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. So when was that, Chuck? 1973.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I think that first one had quite a was. So it was up to. There were 13 episodes then if it went from zero to 12.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I think what they settled on was almost like seasons, themed seasons. So the first season was going to be math related.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So apparently Bob Durrow had been off, like, coming up with songs, didn't realize that they wanted a song for each number, and he had started to combine several numbers in a different song.

[Josh Clark]

So he didn't get the memo.

[Chuck Bryant]

He didn't. And he finally did. And he was trying to figure out how to, like, break the songs apart, and he came up with one called the Four Legged Zoom. Have you heard that one?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's fine.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So.

[Josh Clark]

So not one of my favorites, but, I mean, they're all great. It's just some Stand out a little more than others.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So what's your favorite of the multiplication rock?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, well, three is a magic number.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that was something else I noticed about this. There were. For each season, there were at least one standout song per season that just about everybody knows.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I would guess threes of magic numbers. Probably that one. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Or maybe My Hero Zero. That was a big one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

That was a hit.

[Chuck Bryant]

So much so that Bob Durrow was up for Grammy in 1974 for, I think, the whole album. Right.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But those jerks at Sesame street won.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you're gonna lose, lose the Sesame Street.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And Doro is, like, writing and singing these initial first few songs, I think himself, he's saying.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, all of them except two. And he hired two other jazz musicians, Grady Tate and Blossom Dearie.

[Josh Clark]

Great name.

[Chuck Bryant]

Grady Tate sang naughty number nine, and Blossom Dearie sang figure eight. But all the rest of them, the other 11, Bob Durrow sang and he wrote all of them. So. Yeah, they really struck gold with that guy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I mean, he was. He was that initial genius behind this whole thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And this is another cool thing about Schoolhouse Rock that I noticed. The people involved stayed on for basically the whole run, the initial run from 73 to 85.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It seemed like a project that everyone enjoyed working on, and that was highly collaborative and it just seemed like a good experience. I don't think there's like the VH1 special, like the Dark side of the Schoolhouse Rock years, you know, so they move on to. I don't know which one is my favorite, Grammar Rock or History. But they moved on to Grammar Rock next.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Season two.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. 73 to 74.

[Chuck Bryant]

And we should say. I don't think that these were like. I don't think there were breaks in the season. I get the impression that from 1973 till 1985, when they had enough episodes, they were just running them like, every Saturday morning during cartoons.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I certainly don't remember, like, breaks.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Like, it just seems like every week they were there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

So 73 and 74. You have grammar Rock, which debuted, some people will probably say the biggest of all time, Conjunction Junction.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's the one. Everybody knows.

[Josh Clark]

It's a great, great song. Sung as he sang many others, including my all time favorite, which I'll get to later.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. But I know what it is.

[Josh Clark]

I bet you don't. He was Murphy, Merv Griffin's trumpet player, Jack Sheldon, who just had this voice that's just like.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's the Conjunction Junction.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It's unbelievable.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Very unique guy. And he kind of looked like Will Ferrell to me. Like, he should play him. If they did a movie about. They should do a movie about the whole thing, if you ask me. About Schoolhouse Rock. Yeah, I think they did.

[Chuck Bryant]

There's no controversy or conflict. It's just two hours of everybody getting along doing great stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Who wants to see that?

[Chuck Bryant]

Right?

[Josh Clark]

So Jack Sheldon came along, sang Conjunction Junction.

[Chuck Bryant]

And did you go back and listen to that for this?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, I listened to a lot of these.

[Chuck Bryant]

So that is a sophisticated song.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you listen to like the. Remember our poetry episode. If you listen to like the meter and the rhyming pattern, the rhyme scheme and the slant rhymes they use, like for something that's made for kids, it is not just rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Rhyme, rhyme, rhyme. You know, like, it's a sophisticated song and it's pretty. Pretty cool.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I think that's. I mean, I think that's why it worked. That was the secret is, I guess.

[Chuck Bryant]

It'S that not talking down to kids.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And like the music was good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Like, if you listen to. I mean, those are a little sing songy, but like, some of them were like pop music at the time. Like the Verb song. That's one of the funkiest songs I've ever heard. Verb. That's what's happening. Yeah. And especially that one. Like, I read this great blog post by this African American guy that was talking about how Verb like meant so much to him because at the time, you know, they didn't have a lot of like, cartoons and stuff that addressed the black community at all. And so all of a sudden you get this cartoon. It's got this super funky music and this kid that looked like him.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Having this great adventure in the city. And it just kind of. It's pretty neat thing, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That was season two was grammar, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

So apparently in that same season, a lady named Lynn Ahrens was a. She was a copy copy department secretary.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. This is where it reminded me of Mad Men. She like, basically took Peggy's journey from like, secretary to superstar.

[Chuck Bryant]

I've never seen Mad Men.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's good. I'm rewatching it right now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, really?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's that good.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So Lynn was. She was a secretary at the advertising agency and apparently she was playing her guitar on lunch break. Another reason the seventies were great.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

And who was it that founder? Newell. The creative director guy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Like in the movie, he's Just walking down the hall and hears this beautiful music and stops. It's like, what in the world's going on in there?

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. And it was Lynn Ahrens. And so they took her and put her on, I guess, part time on the project. And they, I guess, eventually made her a full time songwriter, which is pretty cool.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, she had like 15 of the songs.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Including some of the biggest ones. A noun is a person place her thing. Great song. Interplanet Janet. Interjections.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a good one.

[Josh Clark]

A Victim of Gravity about Isaac Newton.

[Chuck Bryant]

Interplanet Janet sounds like Rocky Horror if you go back and listen to it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it kind of does.

[Chuck Bryant]

It bears a real resemblance to it.

[Josh Clark]

Or Rocky Horror sounded like Interplanet Janet.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I went and looked. Rocky Horror was three years before Interplanet Janet.

[Josh Clark]

The movie or the play?

[Chuck Bryant]

The movie.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so the play was even before that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Was it a play first?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah. Meat Loaf was even in the play.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Before the movie. Right. Not a play, I guess musical. Sure. Which is a play with songs.

[Chuck Bryant]

Play with songs and dancing.

[Josh Clark]

So the next one to come along was America Rock or History Rock, which kind of vies for the best to me with Grammar Rock.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that one tied into the bicentennial.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that was big deal. Which you don't remember, but I remember being a little kid being 5 years old and it took over the country for that entire year.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I know. There's like a resurgence in colonial emblems and stuff like that. You know, if you ever walk past, like a very, very old person's house today, you might see like a flag holder. That's a black metal eagle holding like some arrows maybe, or something like that. That is from 1976. Still there, like a resurgence in Betsy Ross and colonial, like, knickknacks and stuff. Yeah, I wasn't. I was just born. But it was. There was a. It created like a high watermark that I was able to see even, you know, from four, five, six years later.

[Josh Clark]

So History Rock or America Rock featured some of the best songs. Mother Necessity, Shot Heard Round the World and no More Kings, which is maybe my second all time favorite.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And that's the one that. There was an album that came out in like 95, 96 called Schoolhouse Rocks Rocks, I think so Schoolhouse Rock Rocks, where they got contemporary artists to cover these songs. And did you ever listen to that?

[Chuck Bryant]

I listened to the Pavement one today.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, man. So I emailed Bob Nastanovich today from Pavement, because, as I said in the previous episode, I tricked him into being my email friend. And I said, hey, dude, would love to hear if you have any thoughts on no More Kings, how you guys were approached, if there are any stories, what it meant to you, what it didn't mean, whatever, let me know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Crickets.

[Josh Clark]

No, no. He emailed back. And then I said, I'll call you on my way to work. Called on the way to work.

[Chuck Bryant]

Crickets.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Got his voicemail. And then as I was coming in the studio, he called and left the voicemail saying he was in his minivan, rocking out, and he didn't hear the phone ring.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that's funny.

[Josh Clark]

Which is very funny to me. But I told him I'd like to hear what he has to say because he said he has a tale to tell about that experience.

[Chuck Bryant]

Man, we're gonna have to record it after this.

[Josh Clark]

Well, yeah, or if maybe it could.

[Chuck Bryant]

Be like, listener mail.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, like, if I can get him on tape, then I'll tag it at the end. If not, if it ends up being an email version or something, I'll just maybe recount it in my own dumb words.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or you could ask him if we could read the email and make a listener mail.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, for real? Yeah, like a real listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

It's not a bad idea. So anyway, so listen up for the end for Bob Nastanovich's story about no More Kings. Because if you listen to that CD, it's like the Lemonheads and Ween.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's a super 90s CD.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Moby Moby. And they're all. Most of them are pretty straight ahead until you get to the Pavement song.

[Chuck Bryant]

And.

[Josh Clark]

And it's just all Pavement. Like, Malcom has changes words. He. There's like laser guns at the end. And it's just wonderfully pavement.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Like quintessentially pavement.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Like, leave it to them to just kind of throw it all out the window and do their own thing. Yeah, I liked it a lot. Three Ring Government. I didn't really know that one.

[Chuck Bryant]

That was good. And apparently they. So it basically talks about the different branches of the government.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, but.

[Chuck Bryant]

But puts it in the context of a three ring circus. And it's really. I mean, aside from the fact that it compares the government to a three ring circus, it's not at all offensive. But apparently they sat on that one for years and didn't release it until, like 1979 because they were worried about offending the government, which is a strange.

[Josh Clark]

Thing to worry about through today's lens.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But even still, I mean, this is like Post Watergate, it's not like everybody was like, oh, right, right. You know, we couldn't possibly call the government a three ring circus.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's true. That is weird. It seems like that would have been a good time to do it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think so.

[Josh Clark]

But the most famous song from that year by far was Sheldon's I'm Just a Bill.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is that your favorite?

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

That was composed not by Mr. Doro, but by a man named Dave Frischberg. And I mean, that one was just a mega hit. It went straight to number one on the Billboard charts.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's like, as far as Schoolhouse Rocks goes, that's the cultural icon that signifies the whole thing. I think close second would be Conjunction Junction. Maybe they're tied, I don't know. But I just feel like I'm Just a Bill as the most readily recognizable one.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And it's just amazing when you look back, though, like, the learning that was going on and the teaching that was happening. These kids, us, we were learning how a bill becomes a law in the best way possible. Like, better than any. Well, not any teacher. There were great teachers back then, let's say, like any dumb teacher that's boring their kids. But it definitely struck a chord with me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

You know?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And that's how I remember a lot of this stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

And apparently, too, adults were also noticing Schoolhouse Rock at the time. Supposedly, there were plenty of orders. This was before video cassettes.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Before they were widely available, I guess, in the home. I'm trying to think of how they would have played them if they didn't have video cassettes. But anyway, apparently lobbyists and legislators would get in touch with ABC and be like, you gotta get me a copy of that. I'm a Bill thing.

[Josh Clark]

Give me a Betamax, because I want.

[Chuck Bryant]

To show it to my staff to train them on this kind of stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I think they asked for cassettes at least. At the very least, so they could play in the music.

[Chuck Bryant]

I see. Maybe that's what they meant.

[Josh Clark]

Probably. Okay. An eight track.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then there was Science Rock was the year after that. That was 78 and 79, which is pretty good. Interplanet Janet. Victim, Gravity.

[Chuck Bryant]

I really like that one. It's so weird.

[Josh Clark]

What? Interplanet Janet. Yeah, yeah, it's a good one. And then the Telegraph Line song, which I think that was written by Ms. Ahrens too, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And that one was really like. I mean, it was. You literally learned about the nervous system and how the body communicates to the brain. By listening to that song. And that's one that they wanted to play for med students.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and they did.

[Josh Clark]

Amazing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Some of them.

[Josh Clark]

All right, well, let's take another break and geez, we'll we'll cover the the sad last season of Schoolhouse Rock after.

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[Ed Helms]

Hey, it's Ed Helms and welcome back to snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new SNAFU Every single episode.

[iHeartRadio Announcer]

32 Lost Nuclear Weapons Wait, stop.

[Josh Clark]

What? Yeah, Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid.

[Ed Helms]

70S basketball player who still wore knee pads.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Ed Helms]

It's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Scheer made me feel good.

[Bob Nastanovich]

I'm like, oh, wow.

[Ed Helms]

Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched you're here.

[iHeartRadio Announcer]

What was that like for you to soft launch into the show?

[Ed Helms]

Sorry, Jenna. I'll be asking the questions today.

[iHeartRadio Announcer]

I forgot whose podcast we were doing.

[Ed Helms]

Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich.

[Josh Clark]

So let's.

[Chuck Bryant]

Let's. Let's see how it goes.

[Ed Helms]

Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, Chuck, Schoolhouse Rock for the first four seasons was the epitome of creativity. Even their process was creative.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's what made it just so legitimate and so wonderfully creative this whole time. It started with the creatives, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And they would. Pretty cool. They would get them vetted by that bank street school of education. So they would make sure everything was like, you know, was.

[Commercial Announcer]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then ABC would be like, oh, well, let me see it. And then they'd say, oh, I guess it's fine. And then they'd start to storyboard it once they had the lyrics set in stone. Right. That was the first four seasons. The fifth season, they said, die, creativity, die. And they reversed the process and they said, hey, songwriters, here are your assignments. Now we think kids should know more about computers, so we're gonna just screw this whole thing up. Okay.

[Josh Clark]

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

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I remember kids being like, oh, that's cool. Let me sit down.

[Chuck Bryant]

And usually it was the parents that were afraid of computers.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I think herein lies the problem with season five.

[Chuck Bryant]

So we should say season five, too. If you notice, we jumped quite A bit from 1979 to 1985, Schoolhouse Rock was running all those years on Saturday mornings. They just weren't any new ones. They were the same ones that they were rerunning on.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, the classics.

[Chuck Bryant]

1985. Squire Rushnal says, Give me four episodes or six. Is it four or six? On computers? Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And we're gonna call the season scooter computer and Mr. Chips. What do you think of that?

[Chuck Bryant]

So it's what, like a computer with a bag of chips? It's like, no, Mr. Chips is a computer. Well, what scooter computer? He's just a kid. And there you have it.

[Josh Clark]

And they said, well, what about the. Goodbye, Mr. Chips, that great book. And he went, no one's ever read that.

[Chuck Bryant]

What's a book?

[Josh Clark]

So it was a little confusing.

[Chuck Bryant]

We have disdain for him.

[Josh Clark]

It's a little weird. I know. I feel bad if that's not really how it went down. But it sounds kind of like that classic story, you know?

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

Like an executive takes over the creative, and it just goes downhill.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's usually how it happens.

[Josh Clark]

And I do feel a little bit bad because, you know, the originals were still involved. They got Mr. Doro back on board, and I think they did the best they could. But I think one of the issues is all the other seasons, you know, math and science and history, it's all civics. It's all baked in. Like, that stuff is classic and didn't change. When you're writing songs about data processing and basic computer language a couple years later, like, no, it's not relevant anymore.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

You know, so it's sort of. That's why no one's ever heard of it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Plus, again, they were like, so wait, Scooter computers? The boy or the computer he's hanging out with.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And why is the computer on roller skates? Yeah, just stuff like that, you know. It was an undignified end to something really great.

[Josh Clark]

Agreed.

[Chuck Bryant]

And so they pulled the plug on the whole thing in 1985. They said, hey, this Mary Lou Retton lady, we like her. She's got gumption. She's got apple pie coming out of her ears.

[Josh Clark]

Gross.

[Chuck Bryant]

We love her and we want to put her on tv. So they put her interstitials on.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. ABC Fun Fit.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I'll bet that was the same time when Reagan made Arnold Schwarzenegger as, like, fitness czar.

[Bob Nastanovich]

You remember that?

[Josh Clark]

Totally remember that. The Presidential Fitness Test. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Man, I failed that so many times.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I think I was always sick that day. It's like, I gotta climb A rope? Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Still to this day, I've never climbed a rope in my life.

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

Made it this far.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. You know what I mean?

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm gonna be chased by a tiger on the way home.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I was gonna say, that's how you're gonna meet your demise one day. You're gonna be in like a burning building and a rope's just gonna fall from the ceiling like a. In the late 80s, there was a student at UConn, Go Huskies. That said, I want to bring Schoolhouse Rock back. They started a petition.

[Chuck Bryant]

I could not find this person's name. For the life of me, I couldn't either.

[Josh Clark]

Sorry, person, but ABC said, you know what? People want this. And I guess it took them a little while to get around to it, but 1993, they brought it back, rerunning all those classic tunes and cartoons and added some new stuff by Bob Doro and the gang.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they brought back the originals and this season was called Money Rock. And they did a substantial number of new episodes, but again, written and performed by all the original people. But a good starting of 20 years later. And they had things like $7.50 once a week, which is about maintaining your budget.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Tyrannosaurus Debt, which is about the national debt and plenty of others.

[Josh Clark]

I remember the tale of Mr. Morton. That was another Lynn Aaron's offering.

[Chuck Bryant]

What was that one about?

[Josh Clark]

I can't remember exactly. I didn't go back and re watch it, but I remember he, like, lost.

[Chuck Bryant]

All his money on scratch offs or something.

[Josh Clark]

I don't think so. But, you know, again, the reason why it worked so well is because these were men and women who were used to selling products for a living. And it was just sort of a natural thing for them to do as an ad agency. It seems weird at first when you're like an ad agency came up with Schoolhouse Rock, but it kind of makes perfect sense when you think about it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, they were selling these ideas to children in ways that were comprehensible to children, that were approachable by children. And they just kind of took the kids point of views and packaged it for them, I think is a good way to put it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So besides the Schoolhouse Rock Rocks CD, which I still have, actually.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That 90s thing created a bit of a resurgence of it. Yeah, a resurgence in popularity for sure.

[Josh Clark]

Boy, that blind melon 3 is a magic number.

[Commercial Announcer]

Was great.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Did you like them? Yeah. I think Soup, their second album, is one of the great underrated records of the 90s.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't recall that one, man.

[Josh Clark]

It was good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Think I only heard their first album, but they. I do. They. I think they made, like, the pop charts right out of the gate and just kind of were unfairly labeled as a pop group, even though they really weren't. They were, because a lot more to them.

[Josh Clark]

No Rain Song and the catchy video with a little girl and everything. Yeah, yeah. Soup was good, man. You should check that out.

[Chuck Bryant]

I will.

[Josh Clark]

It's very good. Very sad what happened to him.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he OD'd. They didn't find him for a while, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I don't remember that part, but maybe.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think. I think nobody missed him for a little while or something like that.

[Josh Clark]

What a waste. In 1993, though, there was another resurgence. I guess that was before the cd, when they took it to the stage with Schoolhouse Rock Live, which kind of started out as most great theater like this in a sort of a basement black box theater in Chicago. And it just grew from there to eventually an Off Broadway run.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, not just that. It started in the basement theater of a vegetarian restaurant in Chicago, just to add that extra little dose to it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, why not?

[Chuck Bryant]

But, yeah, it made it onto Off Broadway.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it ran for four solid years. And then they had a touring version. I remember wanting to see it, but. And I think I was living in New Jersey at the time. I should have gone and seen it. I think I had no money at the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think it still might. You still might be able to catch it. There's a group called the Theater Bomb Theater. Bam. Chicago. Theater. Bam. Chicago.

[Josh Clark]

And they're still doing shows, they're still.

[Chuck Bryant]

Touring, as far as I know.

[Josh Clark]

I need to do my Free To Be youe and Me live show. That's one of my dreams. I've talked about that before.

[Chuck Bryant]

Isn't that Rosie Greer one?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did he do the whole album or just that one song?

[Josh Clark]

Just the one. It was conceived by Marlo Thomas.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's pretty great.

[Josh Clark]

But, yeah, that was another. Like, that one hits me square in the face still. From childhood.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right in the bread basket.

[Josh Clark]

Right in the breadbasket. In 97, they had a 25th anniversary package of VHS tapes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So think about this. Like, it goes off the air in 1985, then all of a sudden, 93, 94, 96, 97. There's, like, schoolhouse Rock everywhere.

[Josh Clark]

It will never die.

[Chuck Bryant]

No. And I think, like, this was one of the first instances, because, dude, admittedly, Generation X is extremely nostalgic as far as generations go. Yeah, very nostalgic. I would Propose that Schoolhouse Rock was the thing that kicked it off.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

As far as Gen X nostalgia goes. Yep.

[Josh Clark]

Well, it definitely was something that was so drilled into our consciousness like it's a touchstone.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. But I mean, the resurgence of it.

[Josh Clark]

I think, is the.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is the first example of just how nostalgic as a generation, Generation X is.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's mine. You got Sharknado. I'm predicting that that will be rooted out by historians in years to come.

[Josh Clark]

You're gonna dig that one out of the vault, maybe at the place of your death, like a plaque next to that rope that you couldn't climb. It'll be a memorial.

[Chuck Bryant]

It'll be like rope.

[Josh Clark]

Geez, you already forgot, right? In 2013, Kennedy center had a sing along for their 40th anniversary. 2,000 people in attendance. Pretty amazing. I would have done anything to have gone to that. And then it's been parodied and homaged over the years in everything from the Simpsons to Saturday Night Live.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did you see Conspiracy Rock?

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

Conspiracy Theory, dude.

[Josh Clark]

That was a TV funhouse bit, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, by Robert Smigel. It's one of the all time greats, man. He nails. Nails the conspiracy theory or nails Schoolhouse Rock. But it's all about how these major corporations like GE and Westinghouse own the media. They own, like abc, NBC, all these media outlets, and how they can use it to shape opinion and squash opinions that disagree with them or their products. Choose what to report on. It is so good. Go watch it. Right now. It's on YouTube, but apparently there's a bit of a conspiracy theory around it as well because it aired on the actual Saturday Night Live episode. But then when they reran it and I think released that episode on dvd, it wasn't there. They edited it out and supposedly it was just because Lorne Michaels didn't think it was funny. There's just no way that that's all it was. It was. So I'm thinking, no, it was such a smack in the face to NBC and like all the other ones.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, well, and they just had one a couple years ago on that was an homage to I'm Just a Bill. That was pretty great too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, this was better. You got to see it, man.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I have a feeling I have. And I just don't know it.

[Chuck Bryant]

He nailed it.

[Josh Clark]

I'll let you know. I'll text you and say I have seen it. And you'll say, who's this? I don't have your number in my phone.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I actually ran across A little bit. As great as Schoolhouse Rock is, I actually ran across criticism of it.

[Josh Clark]

What?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, boy. Are you gonna. Should I just leave the room?

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe?

[Josh Clark]

I'm about to get angry.

[Chuck Bryant]

You might want to.

[Josh Clark]

All right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So they were teaching very broad concepts to kids in ways that kids could understand.

[Josh Clark]

Awesome ways.

[Chuck Bryant]

And when you're coming. When you're coming at them with multiplication or grammar, whatever. But apparently especially with the history rocks or America Rock season, depending on what you want to call it, that's where the criticism tends to come out. So there's one called elbow room. Did you remember that one?

[Josh Clark]

Got to. Got to get you some elbow room.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Where it's about, there's so many white settlers that we just got to spread westward.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay. I see where this is going.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not a single Native American is shown in this westward spread.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

They actually mention that it's God's will. Manifest destiny.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So the whole thing kind of. I don't want to say it came under fire because it's not like everybody's like, oh, yeah, elbow room. Forget Schoolhouse Rock.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Very few people are. But there is criticism of Schoolhouse Rock in that it really kind of fed American children the popular line on things. And it was just exactly the kind of stuff where when you grow up, you're like, wow, I was really misled when this was first explained to me as a child.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Yeah. So, well, we talk about that a lot, too, about how schools, especially in, like, the 70s and 80s, whitewashed a lot of stuff. And so this was part of that. I can see that. I mean, it was. And I'm not justifying it, but it was definitely of the times, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, which is why, you know, I think that they. That these creatives were like, we can't say this to kids.

[Commercial Announcer]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, I think that there's definitely been more of an awareness awakening in recent years.

[Josh Clark]

But I wasn't a Trail of Tears song, in other words.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Yeah. And this is another name for what they were talking about. Like, forced removal was turned into got to get you some elbow room.

[Josh Clark]

So catchy, though.

[Chuck Bryant]

I want to know, Chuck, because I'm not in school and I don't have a child in school. I don't have a child at all. Well, I have a four legged child. But are they still misleading kids like they did when we were young? Do we just assume now that we know the deal that they don't do that any longer or are they still doing it? So any history teachers out there that are like, Fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade. Because that's when I remember really being just overtly lied to. And then as we got a little past that, they started to be like, well, maybe the Native Americans didn't really want to leave. Right. And then it just got a little more legitimate. So I want to know. Teachers out there, let us know.

[Josh Clark]

I bet the answer we'll get is that we've come a long way and it probably depends on your district.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And maybe even your teacher.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I could see that.

[Josh Clark]

I bet there's not, like a one sweeping answer for that one. But there's definitely been progress.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, I would guess. You know who would let us know is Tyler Murphy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Murphy, let us know. Well, I know what he's doing. He's doing all the right things.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah. He's up on the desk.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Opening minds. Great stuff.

[Josh Clark]

So you ready for my favorite?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, please.

[Josh Clark]

Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla.

[Chuck Bryant]

What was that one about pronouns? Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I have a hard time expressing how much joy this song brings me still. Yeah, I listen to it a lot.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

If I'm ever down, that's the song.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's pretty great.

[Josh Clark]

It's amazing. It's. The word play is unbelievable. And it's another Sheldon song.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Like how it's. It's very fast, how he, like, every. I looked up to see if people did it live and stuff, and everyone always slows it down because nobody can.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, is that fast?

[Josh Clark]

Well, it's just very complex. And the whole idea of the song is. Is the complexity of all these nouns that you can replace with pronouns.

[Chuck Bryant]

I gotcha.

[Josh Clark]

I got a friend named Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla, and, you know, they go to the zoo and there's an aardvark and an armadillo and all these big words. He's like, I could say that, or I could say, he did this, and we did that, and she said this.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nice.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It's a word that takes the place of a noun, like kangaroo.

[Chuck Bryant]

Can we play it?

[Josh Clark]

You know what? We wouldn't. Because of law. They should make actually one about copyright infringement.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was started out as a bill.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So we probably can't play enough of it to do it justice. So I just say, go and listen to that song in full because it's delightful.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, I'll do that, man.

[Josh Clark]

They go to the zoo. There's animals. They all pile on a bus.

[Chuck Bryant]

They.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, this girl and Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla.

[Chuck Bryant]

They.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly. It takes the place of a noun.

[Chuck Bryant]

You got anything Else.

[Josh Clark]

No, but there probably will be a tag on this one with Mr. Nastanovich or. Or with me just recounting his tale of no More Kings.

[Chuck Bryant]

So if you want to know more about Schoolhouse Rock, go read this article on howstuffworks.com and since I said that, it may be time for listener mail with Bob Nastanovich.

[Josh Clark]

All right, so now, as promised, or as hopefully promised, we have via telephone in the studio, Mr. Bob Nastanovich, who is actually a member of two of my favorite bands of all time, both Pavement and Silver Jews. And it's a real treat to have you here, Bob. We did a show on Schoolhouse Rock and talked kind of at length about Pavement's efforts toward that, I guess, late 90s CD and got in touch with you and you said you had a couple of stories to tell.

[Bob Nastanovich]

It was a. We were in Metro. We were supposed to be making a Silver Juice record, and the singer of Silver Juice, David Berman, decided he did not want to make the record, and he went home. And we'd already booked a week of studio time Silver Juice had. And then subsequently, Stephen and myself and Steve west were unceremoniously fired from Silver Jews. That's beside the point. We were kind of like all the studio time that David was supposed to pay for, sort of bail him out. Pavement sort of took that and made a record. So Stephen, thankfully had three songs, and we made Pacific Trim ep. But I guess most significantly in regards to this project, Jackie Fairy had, dear friend of ours, was supervising the Schoolhouse Rock compilation, and she gave us our choice of songs. And it was fairly obvious to us that no More Kings, you know, had a lot of appeal.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Bob Nastanovich]

Always our favorite. We were kids. Boston Tea Party theme, kind of. We were able to use the vocal stylings of Steve west to our advantage, I believe, for the first time in band history.

[Josh Clark]

What did he do for that song?

[Bob Nastanovich]

And it all turned out to be. We were very pleased with it. In fact, we're very pleased with all of it. But. And I think that it's an outstanding compilation. And it's one of those things in Pavement's time that I feel like we actually did a good job on.

[Josh Clark]

Now, what. What did Steve west do for that one?

[Bob Nastanovich]

He played drums and then all the deep voice rambling in the background. Mostly him. He's got an incredible voice, speaking voice. He's one of the people that you can hear from 150ft away, right. With a wind. We've got a beautiful deep voice. He's doing all, like, the ranting and Raving. It was all pretty jubilant. We had a good time. It was the only time the three of us ever recorded together as payment and. But I feel like we made a good choice and we just love that song. It was one take.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, really?

[Bob Nastanovich]

Yeah. One take on the instrumental and just some vocal dubbing. Probably took eight minutes.

[Josh Clark]

Wow. And it was just the three of you?

[Bob Nastanovich]

Oh, yeah, yeah, Just the three of us. We're the only ones there because we thought it was gonna be silver shoes, not silver shoes. So Kanberg and Ivold were at home and I don't even know if they were contacted. We made that Pacific Trim ep, that song Give it a Day during the same session. And a couple other songs are on the B side of that thing. But no, Schoolhouse Rock was this kind of thing that popped in mind. Like, well, do we have anything to do? And it seems like I got this one song. Well, we have to do this thing for Jackie. We have to do this thing for Jackie. We probably sort of planning on doing it anyways. But Jackie at the time was a BJ on mtv. Then she later became our. She was the nanny for Courtney and Kurt for Frances Bean Cobain.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, wow.

[Bob Nastanovich]

And then she was a tour manager for Pavement. In fact, she has. She's been battling cancer for over a decade. But one interesting artifact that she owns is the actual cardigan. Cardigan's button up cardigan sweater that Kurt Cobain wore it in the famous MTV Unplugged performance.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, wow.

[Commercial Announcer]

Holy cow.

[Bob Nastanovich]

Yeah, so, yeah, she's quite a character. But it was. It was her project. And no, she was a good friend. And. And we wanted to do the best we could for her. Didn't really care about anything else. We didn't even realize. We didn't know whether it was a good tiny thing, like a limited edition of like 200 or whatever. But yeah, funnily enough, my wife. That was the first Pavement song she ever heard because her sister.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, really?

[Bob Nastanovich]

Yeah, her sister bought the Schoolhouse Rock thing when her sister was like 14. And my wife went. Would have been about 10. And she heard that it was the first time she ever heard Payment.

[Josh Clark]

That's pretty funny.

[Bob Nastanovich]

Yeah, she likes it.

[Josh Clark]

We were talking a little bit about just your take and kind of just the different takes of all the artists on that compilation. And a lot of them were pretty straightforward. And I think I really like the Pavement one the most because it was. It was kind of the perfect mix of very straightforward at times and then just totally Pavement. Pavementized at times.

[Bob Nastanovich]

Yeah, it's very. We don't. I mean, we. Straightforward. I don't think we're kind of good enough to do things straightforward. Like, I think it's like. You think of, like, a band like Nickel Creek covering our song Spit on a Stranger. They can. And they kind of Americana did or whatever. But sure, like, in order to do, like, straight things, you got to be. You got to be good, or else you're going to kind of humiliate yourself. Like, for example, like REM Doing, like, pylons. Crazy. They could do that. Pretty straight.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Bob Nastanovich]

Because they have that sound. So they just, you know. But I think, like, I've heard a lot of COVID songs where it's, like, a great song, somebody with a great voice, usually, like a female will sing it pretty straight. Just the fact that it's somebody with a gorgeous voice covering a class, it sort of works. But now none of us are good enough to do that. We had to devise our own take on it.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I thought it totally worked. Was the Schoolhouse Rock. I mean, was that something that you guys were into, or was there much decision? I mean, besides the fact that it was your friend asking, was it something that you thought was kind of cool, or did you feel like you should do it?

[Bob Nastanovich]

Yeah, I thought it was a great idea. At the time, we thought it was a great idea. And at that point in our lives, I was guessing it was like, 96, 97 somewhere in there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Bob Nastanovich]

We'd forgotten, you know, like, that point where, you know, we hadn't seen or heard any of that. The only one that I could really remember off the top of my head at the time was that Conjunction Junction, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, of course.

[Bob Nastanovich]

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

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure.

[Bob Nastanovich]

While still being Pavement. Like, you know, I don't even know I'm the kind of person, in regards to that band, that would find out about things last. So. Because I lived in Louisville and I was always at the racetrack. And. And, you know, people would say, hey, you know what? You're going to be making a new album in, like, two months. I wouldn't know anything about it. Or, like, you know, you're going on tour, you're starting in London. I would like, you know, I just wouldn't even know. And, like, so anything that rolled through the door there, like, request to do stuff, I never knew about him, you know, unless you were gonna do them, you know, so.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Bob Nastanovich]

You can see where I was on the Pavement, the Pavement totem pole.

[Josh Clark]

Well, man, I always call you Pavement's secret weapon.

[Bob Nastanovich]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I think there was something about your addition to the band that really just sort of mixed everything up, whether it was, you know, the percussive elements or just you coming in with your. Your unique take on backing vocals.

[Bob Nastanovich]

Yeah, no, I just. I think I presented the element of really not entirely knowing what I was doing, and that was true. And the funny thing about it is, like, even at this point in my life, when people who are completely unaware of Pavement, mostly from this industry, the horse racing industry, like, heard I was. I was in a band, even a successful band that can't even. They just doesn't make any sense to them. And then, right, they'll also, you know, they'll have to, like, look it up on Google or whatever to realize that, yeah, we were actually like a band that made records and stuff. And then. And then the funny thing is they'll always ask me to, you know, if it's musotypes. There's something. I'm like, one thing I'm really sort of unaware of in the human race. I have no feel for people that, like, kind of collect musical gear and take music really, really seriously. Like, playing music really seriously and, like, jam and, like, are just really, like, have this incredibly dry approach to, like, gearheads who, like, really, really serious. And like. Yeah, people ask me to jam and I don't. I mean, my idea. I don't. I don't jam. I mean, I can't imagine jamming. Like, what does that even mean? Like, right.

[Josh Clark]

No, I'm the same way.

[Bob Nastanovich]

Really awkward. Like, it's always awkward. Like, people ask me to do something and then I'll be like, oh, man. Like, you know, like, I gotta figure out a way to get out of this, you know, because, like, right, hey, my skills, like, they're not gonna really not gonna believe I'm in a band. Like, once I show up with, like, whatever, I have two drums or whatever and start hitting them, they're gonna be like, there's no way this guy was in a band. Like, this is a fake, you know, like. So it's very strange. Very strange.

[Josh Clark]

Well, you just gotta say, no, man, I'm the secret weapon. And the secret weapon doesn't jam.

[Bob Nastanovich]

Yeah, like this, like, the spice and like some sort of bowl of burgoo or something. I don't even know. But I was just like. The whole experience was pretty magical. It still doesn't really make that much sense to me, you know? Yeah, I just. I really enjoyed it, for sure. But in regards to that specific project, that's something that went, like, really smoothly. Like, it never got to the point. I mean, it was literally like, Stephen, I'm sure, probably worked on it that morning or something, but when. When they press record on that school ass rock thing, that thing was a humdinger. It was in and out the door. Doug Easley is like, that's good, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. That's probably a good approach for something like that, because you don't want to overthink it. And then it becomes a thing and it's stressful, perhaps. So I think that approach to just get in there and, like, knock it out was probably the way to go. It certainly worked out in this case.

[Bob Nastanovich]

Yeah. And it's a song that has no history within the context of the band. You know, it's not like something that we've been working on or something that's been sitting there, Something that had been played live.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Bob Nastanovich]

You know, I mean, I think that we had to, you know, pavementize it and give it a bit of an original spin, because that's the only way that we can really do it. I mean, like. Yeah, like we were talking about with the Straight Thing, you know, you can't. You got to have significance.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Bob Nastanovich]

Not that, like, you know, Steven and Steve west aren't talented. I'm not going to. Like, those guys are great. But, like, in fact, the fact they're able to, like, improvise something like that is pretty cool. So. But I remember being really, really happy that Steve west, who'd never really been used in Pavement outside of just playing drums, that he was. That he sort of fit fantastically on that recording. So I sort of love that about no More Kings. I love hearing him in there.

[Josh Clark]

Nice. All right, well, thanks, Bob. I appreciate your telling us these stories. And I'm gonna think of about a hundred more reasons to have you on in the future.

[Bob Nastanovich]

Yeah, anytime.

[Josh Clark]

I'm gonna call this one sad yet happy email. Hey, guys. My name is Sam. I wanted to send you an email thanking you for your show. The podcast is actually a rediscovery for me. My dad used to play it back in 2009 when we would drive up to the mountain to go skiing. I have very fond memories of laughing and nerding out with my dad and brothers after a great day on the slopes. Can't believe you guys are still going strong after eight plus years. There is a little more to my rediscovery of your show though that I wanted to share. It's been four and a half years since one of my brothers who is an amazing skier, died tragically to suicide. Since I was in college at the time, I didn't have enough time to properly grieve. Recently, I've been mulling through many painful memories that I ignored in those first three years. However, your show unexpectedly brought back really happy ones. It has reminded me the fun, adventure and learning our family enjoyed while listening to your show when we were skiing. I remember laughing hysterically with my family at your jokes, rolling my eyes when my brothers and dad would try to comment on your show to sound smart because it was so creepy. One of your favorite episodes of ours was the one on cannibalism. Being a high schooler at the time, I also really liked the show on flirting because I thought I could put it into practice. Needless to say, it didn't really work. This month I went home for a week to visit my parents and I went skiing with my mom and dad for the first time since my brother died. It was very painful, but also unimaginably special. When my family and I are on the mountain, I feel like I can encounter my brother as he was when he was healthy and full of life. I could picture him diving down a slope that was way too steep with the most enormous grin on his eager face. All in all, it was a great day. So I just want to say thank you for the hard work and providing interesting topics to fill my time, making me laugh, but also inadvertently helping me cherish a special time in my life.

[Chuck Bryant]

Man, that was heavy.

[Josh Clark]

That is from Sam and she sends hugs.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sam, that is fantastic. Very nice. Thank you very much for letting us know. We appreciate that and our best to your whole family.

[Josh Clark]

Absolutely.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you want to get in touch with us like Sam did and just lay one on us, we appreciate it. Lay it on us. Send us an email to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[iHeartRadio Announcer]

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts. My heart radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Ed Helms]

Hey, it's Ed Helms, host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new Snafu. Every single episode.

[iHeartRadio Announcer]

32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop.

[Chuck Bryant]

What?

[Ed Helms]

Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Scheer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan Klepper. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

Sami Gente. It's Ana Ortiz.

[Ed Helms]

And I'm Markin Delicato.

[Josh Clark]

You might know us as Hilda and Justin from Ugly Betty.

[Chuck Bryant]

Welcome to our new podcast, Be My Best. Yay.

[Josh Clark]

We're rewatching the series from start to finish and getting into all the fashions, the drama and the behind the scenes moments that you've never heard before. But you were still bartending. I didn't know that. The bar back is like, is that you and I turn around and it's.

[Chuck Bryant]

A commercial for Betty.

[Josh Clark]

And I was like, I gotta go.

[Chuck Bryant]

I quit.

[Josh Clark]

Listen to Viva Betty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[iHeartRadio Announcer]

I'm Bridget Armstrong, host of the new podcast the Curse of America's Next Top Model. I've been investigating the real story behind that iconic show.

[Josh Clark]

I ended up having anorexia issues, bulimia issues.

[iHeartRadio Announcer]

By talking to the models, the producers, and the people who profited from it all.

[Josh Clark]

We basically sold our souls and they got rich. If you were so rooting for her.

[iHeartRadio Announcer]

And saw her drowning, why don't you help her? Listen to the Curse of America's Next.

[Chuck Bryant]

Top model on the iHeartRadio app, Apple.

[iHeartRadio Announcer]

Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

This is an iHeart podcast.