South Beach Sessions - Dave Barry

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz – South Beach Sessions - Dave Barry

Episode Information:

• Title: South Beach Sessions - Dave Barry
• Release Date: February 13, 2025
• Hosts: Dan Le Batard, Stugotz
• Guest: Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist and novelist

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1. Introduction and Warm-Up

The episode begins with a light-hearted exchange between Dan Le Batard and Dave Barry, highlighting Dan's swift car financing experience through Carvana. This sets a humorous tone for the conversation.

Notable Quote:

• Dave Barry [00:05]: "You, the person who agonized four weeks over whether to paint your wall's eggshell or off white. Bought and financed a car in minutes."

2. Celebrating Dave Barry’s Career and Personal Wisdom

Dan leads the conversation by praising Dave Barry’s career, emphasizing his wisdom beyond humor and his positive influence on Dan’s personal life, particularly in seeking marital bliss.

Notable Quotes:

• Dan Le Batard [02:03]: "The happiness that you two had, the camaraderie that you two had, the friendship that you two had... seemed like you had done nothing but choose bliss."
• Dave Barry [04:11]: "But they feel... I just see a colleague who seems to be really happy with a friend of mine who also seems to be really happy. Why wouldn't I celebrate that for them?"

3. Dave Barry’s Family and Personal Struggles

Dave opens up about his upbringing, discussing his father's battle with alcoholism and his mother's struggle with depression, which ultimately led to her suicide. He reflects on how these experiences shaped his understanding of love, resilience, and humor.

Notable Quotes:

• Dave Barry [05:58]: "My dad was an alcoholic... became sober and helping people more through AA than what he had done before."
• Dave Barry [07:27]: "The lesson which still stings me is don't ever think you know what your parents are going through..."

4. Coping with Tragedy and Finding Purpose

The conversation delves into a pivotal moment in Dave’s life when his daughter Sophie was diagnosed with transverse myelitis. He describes the intense emotional turmoil and how this event fundamentally changed his perspective on life, emphasizing gratitude and prioritizing what truly matters.

Notable Quotes:

• Dave Barry [20:29]: "The lesson... is don't ever think you know what anybody's going through..."
• Dave Barry [31:01]: "Every single day, when something bad happens... I think about Sophie and lying there."

5. The Golden Age of Journalism and Dave Barry’s Career Highlights

Dan and Dave reminisce about the golden era of American journalism, particularly their time at the Miami Herald. Dave shares anecdotes about the freedom and creativity he enjoyed, including extravagant expense account anecdotes and memorable stunts like creating a rivalry with the Orlando Magic.

Notable Quotes:

• Dave Barry [42:08]: "They don't spend money that way anymore. Why would they spend money that way anymore?"
• Dave Barry [44:27]: "We rented a bus... had to stop on the way to get more alcohol because we ran out on the way up."

6. Interaction with Readers and Community Impact

Dave discusses his deep connection with his readers, recounting instances where fans recognized him in public and appreciated his work. He contrasts his relationship with readers to that of his colleague Dan, highlighting the supportive nature of his readership.

Notable Quotes:

• Dave Barry [38:42]: "People do feel they know you... I'm the only one in the room who's an outsider."
• Dan Le Batard [36:01]: "You make me laugh in print. I will love you forever because you're someone who makes me, for those moments. The medicine of laughter."

7. Legacy, Memoirs, and Reflections on Humor

The hosts explore David's views on legacy, the challenges of writing humor across generations, and his motivations for penning a memoir. Dave reflects on his inspirations, such as Robert Benchley, and discusses the enduring impact of his humorist contributions.

Notable Quotes:

• Dave Barry [71:25]: "Robert Benchley... is a very silly humorist, but brilliant, really smart."
• Dan Le Batard [57:10]: "How do you forgive yourself?"

8. Humorous Anecdotes and Nostalgia

The episode concludes with nostalgic and humorous recounting of past experiences, including early collaborations with Dan, mishaps during synchronized swimming at the Atlanta Olympics, and memorable moments from their high school sports show.

Notable Quotes:

• Dave Barry [56:50]: "Bruce Springsteen got on stage with us... I wish nobody filmed it."
• Dan Le Batard [72:21]: "And I'm going to face an Olympic softball pitcher."

9. Closing Remarks and Reflections

In the final moments, Dan apologizes for steering the conversation towards heavier topics but reassures Dave of their enduring friendship. They share laughter over old recordings and emphasize the balance between humor and personal depth in their lives.

Notable Quote:

• Dan Le Batard [73:27]: "Dave, it's lovely seeing you. It is always lovely seeing you."

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Conclusion:

This episode of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz offers a profound and heartfelt conversation between Dan Le Batard and Dave Barry. Moving beyond humor, Dave shares intimate details of his personal struggles, family dynamics, and the transformative experiences that have shaped his outlook on life. The dialogue seamlessly weaves in nostalgic anecdotes from their illustrious careers in journalism, illustrating the deep bond between the hosts and their guest. Not only does the episode celebrate Dave Barry’s legacy as a humorist, but it also provides listeners with valuable insights into resilience, gratitude, and the essence of meaningful connections.

Key Takeaways:

• Resilience Through Adversity: Dave Barry’s ability to find humor and purpose amidst personal tragedy.
• Legacy in Journalism: Reflections on the golden age of newspapers and the evolving landscape of media.
• Humor as a Connection: The powerful role of humor in building relationships and impacting readers.
• Personal Growth: How pivotal life events can reshape one’s priorities and outlook.

Suggested Listening: For those who appreciate a blend of humor and heartfelt storytelling, this episode is a testament to the multifaceted lives of those who bring laughter into the world. Dave Barry’s candid reflections provide both laughter and inspiration, making it a memorable addition to The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz series.

Transcript

[Dave Barry]

Wow. What's up?

[Dan Le Batard]

I just bought and financed a car.

[Unknown]

Through Carvana in minutes.

[Dave Barry]

You, the person who agonized four weeks over whether to paint your wall's eggshell or off white. Bought and financed a car in minutes.

[Dan Le Batard]

They made it easy.

[Unknown]

Transparent terms, customizable. Down and monthly.

[Dan Le Batard]

Didn't even have to do any paperwork.

[Dave Barry]

Wow.

[Dan Le Batard]

Mm. Hey, have you checked out that spreadsheet I sent you for our dinner?

[Dave Barry]

Options finance your car with Carvana and experience.

[Dan Le Batard]

Total control. Financing subject to credit approval. Lookie here. An old timey newspaper writer. They still make those. A dinosaur from the golden age of newspapers. When a man could win a Pulitzer prize for being funny. He's a New York Times best selling author. He's a colleague of mine for dead. He is Dave Barry. He's a novelist whose last novel. I will tell you. I will give you one of the greatest compliments I think I can give you.

[Dave Barry]

Actually read it.

[Dan Le Batard]

Made me feel like I was reading Carl Hiaasen.

[Dave Barry]

Oh, it is.

[Dan Le Batard]

I'll take that. Right.

[Dave Barry]

I'll take that compliment.

[Dan Le Batard]

But you would say that swamp story. And I want to talk to you about your career. I want to talk to you about your life because I find you, beyond the laughter to be uncommonly wise about what matters in life.

[Dave Barry]

Well, that's not accurate, but okay.

[Dan Le Batard]

That love. That love is what matters. You have been. You in seeking marital bliss, were a bit of a mentor to me on what could be possible.

[Dave Barry]

Well, I told you to get married. But that's because I'm married to a Cuban Jewish woman who can't. Who couldn't stand. Could not stand the idea that you were walking around not being married. And I, like, I'm being. I'm a guy, and I'm thinking, well, he's dating a lot of very attractive women. Why should he get married? That was my feeling, but I would not say that.

[Dan Le Batard]

Right. No, you.

[Dave Barry]

But Michelle was pretty much determined that you should marry somebody in. Preferably like, immediately.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes.

[Dave Barry]

Because I remember once, and I. I hope your current wife, who's a beautiful woman, is not listening to this right now or ever. But. But we. We. We went out to dinner with you. You may not remember this. My. My wife Michelle and I went out and you with your. The woman you were dating at the time, I do remember there was like, Venezuela.

[Dan Le Batard]

We were in Miami beach. And it was. I remember several lovely evenings with you having too much to drink one at Marlin Spring training. And this evening that you're talking, right?

[Dave Barry]

And Michelle was like, hectoring you to marry this woman immediately. And the woman was, like, all for it. I think Ms. Vin, whatever she was, she was very attractive. Not as attractive as your current wife, but very attractive.

[Dan Le Batard]

Wait, please stop doing this.

[Dave Barry]

But you resisted. I was impressed. I would have, like, eventually just given up and said, okay, let's go get married right now here at the restaurant.

[Dan Le Batard]

Okay, so. But after. Aspirationally, I will tell people that your marriage was aspirational.

[Dave Barry]

Oh, you wanted to. You wanted to marry my wife.

[Dan Le Batard]

The happiness that you two had, the camaraderie that you two had, the friendship that you two had, the understanding and acceptance that you two have, the laughter that you two have. You seemed, from where I was standing, to have found bliss after someone who had written about his previous marriage in print. And it seemed like the reader felt totally betrayed by your first marriage not succeeding, like somehow you had done something wrong when all I saw you do was choose bliss.

[Dave Barry]

Yeah. Well, thank you. That is a nice way of putting it. And you're right. I did get a lot of grief. Because when you write a humor column or any kind of column, you wrote a column for years, people think they know you and they really don't know you. They know what you present to them. In my case, the wacky, funny, hilarious guy. And I had written for years about, you know, my family, my son and everything. And then when I got a divorce, and I won't go into why, but, I mean, there were, you know, it was 110% my responsibility, my fault. I got a lot. I mean, people were really not happy with me. And to this day, there are people.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well.

[Dave Barry]

But they feel.

[Dan Le Batard]

Let's talk about the connection a newspaper writer makes through laughter because the audience somehow felt let down by you. But I was watching. I don't know you at this point. I just know what you're getting into and how much happier it seems to make you. So none of that is important to me. I just see a colleague who seems to be really happy with a friend of mine who also seems to be really happy. Why wouldn't I celebrate that for them?

[Dave Barry]

But then you waited a long time before you personally got married. I have to say I did. Yeah.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, I didn't believe in. I didn't believe in the institution. I'm telling you, I'm not kidding when I say I have seen precious few marriages that I look at and say there's a level of depth there of love that could survive just about any test to its strength. Yeah. Yeah.

[Dave Barry]

I thank you that. That is true, that we did have. We Have a wonderful mar. We still have a wonderful marriage. But it was like, that was a good test right from the start. Like, wow, so many people think I'm an idiot for this and hate me for this. I must really be in love with this person to do this. Which turned out to be true. So, yeah. Thank you. And I'm glad I inspired you. Glad you got married.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, I want to talk to you about.

[Dave Barry]

Thank you for inviting me to your wedding. It was a star studded affair. Sometime we should talk about that.

[Dan Le Batard]

I want to talk about.

[Dave Barry]

I explained to Pat Riley what I think he's doing right, what I think he's doing wrong. And he had to listen to me because we were at a wedding. What are you going to do? Right.

[Dan Le Batard]

I'm sure he was pretty annoyed by all of the guests like you that were doing the same thing that you were doing. Your learning around love and the things that are important. Can you share with the audience some of the teachers that you have had on love?

[Dave Barry]

Oh, well, this is going to sound obvious and corny, but my parents, both my parents had issues, problems. My dad was an alcoholic. We recovered and became. He was a great guy always. He was always a man of the community, a helper of people. He was a Presbyterian minister who ran an inner city organization in New York City and was active in the civil rights movement. So he was this good guy, good man. Everybody loved him. Dave Barry was like the guy you called when your kids were in trouble and that he wanted your, you know, your marriage was. They called my dad and my dad would always be there for them. And then he, when I was in my late teens, early 20s, became an alcoholic. He had always had liked to drink. And it became, it took over and he. He kind of bottomed out, got. Got into AA and spent the rest of his life, the last 20, 25 years of his life, sober and. And again helping people more through AA than what he had done before. So that was my dad, my mom. This is gonna sound like I have the world's worst. Was a really, really wonderfully funny person who suffered from depression and ultimately, after my dad died, committed suicide. She could not stand life without him. And boy, I don't know how we got here so fast to this tragic.

[Dan Le Batard]

It happens around here. There used to be tissues around here. We did get here awfully fast.

[Dave Barry]

Okay. But anyway, my point is, if you just looked at that, you know, my upbringing said, well, his dad was an alcoholic and his mom committed suicide. It must have been a horrible. But it wasn't I had a great childhood. They were wonderful. They were funny people. Everything I know about humor, I learned from them. Especially from my mom, who was, like, this really dark person, but could use her humor. She was just funny. And they loved each other. I mean, they really, really loved each other. In fact, that was kind of why my mom didn't keep going after it after my dad died. But that was my, I think, my template for love. It isn't about when things are great. It isn't about just the initial attraction, which everybody experiences, but the fact that through really rough times, the only thing that really, in the end, counted for each of them was the other one of them, you know? And so that's like a strong role. But then, like, isn't that most people's parents? No. Okay, give me this.

[Dan Le Batard]

Look. Well, and I don't want to just dismiss him as just an alcoholic, but if I give you just the bare bones of someone who committed suicide and ran depressant and another person who had alcohol, I could just say, without judgment, people are flawed. People have weaknesses. They did the best that they could. But, no, the way that you frame that, a lot of people could do a quick snapshot and said, oh, his funny comes from pain, but not necessarily right.

[Dave Barry]

Yeah. And I've heard that a lot through the years. You know, when people find out, like, my backstory, they go, well, like, he's the. You know, the clown who's hiding his tears. But the truth is. I mean, the truth is, I was happy. I was a happy kid. I never. Like, when things went wrong for my parents, I was kind of out of the house.

[Dan Le Batard]

You always gave off happy as an adult, though. I think that's part of why maybe even your newspaper readers felt somehow like, what do you mean? His marriage isn't totally, 100% happy like you? In my experience, you always gave off happy. It was nice to be around you.

[Dave Barry]

Yeah.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah.

[Dave Barry]

And. Well, first of all, look at my job was, you know, like, I was getting paid pretty good money for a newspaper person to just do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, anywhere, with whatever expenses.

[Dan Le Batard]

But grateful, though, all the time. Not everyone's grateful. Like, what. I've told you this before, but what I marveled about you was you were this amazing giant in the industry, and it seemed to come without ego. It was always, always with humility.

[Dave Barry]

Again, I'll credit my parents. They're both from the Midwest, and that, like, nobody in our family was ever allowed to brag. I mean, what we did in our family was we made fun of that, you know, you're never too big to say thank you to whoever, you know, whatever person is waiting on you in a store. You're never too big. You know, you're never going to be more important than the people around you. That was a fundamental value in my family. So, like, I would have felt stupid when I achieved success as a newspaper person if I had pretended that I achieved it because I was somewhat a superior human being instead of basically a guy who was good at making people laugh, which is a nice skill, talent, whatever, to have. But it isn't like it's not curing cancer.

[Dan Le Batard]

I mean, you were as surprised to win the Pulitzer Prize as anyone.

[Dave Barry]

Whoa. Yeah. I did not expect to win the Pulitzer Prize. That is not false modesty because it's distinguished commentary. Is that the look up distinguished in the. No, it's not what I was writing, I was writing about people discovering snakes in their toilet. That was important.

[Dan Le Batard]

You were writing about Florida. You were writing about just funny things that were everything provided funny for you. I've told people before, writing funny is the hardest thing. It's the hardest kind of writing. And we've talked before about it's not exactly easy for you. You will spend a day on a joke.

[Dave Barry]

Oh, yeah. Writing the trick with humor, it's like magic. You know, when the guy pulls the coin out of your ear and it looks like you really pulled the coin out of your ear. You don't see that the guy spent 16 hours practicing that one particular movement with his finger. Writing humor is the same way. It's supposed to look like it was just coming out of you, but it doesn't just come out of you. When you read somebody who thinks they're funny, and I've read a lot who think they're funny, but they're not really putting the time, they're putting the effort. It's really obvious with humor more than any other kind of writing. So, yeah, I'm gonna agree with you that even though that's what I did, writing humor is hard.

[Dan Le Batard]

When did you realize that you were good at it? Like, when did you stop having doubt?

[Dave Barry]

Well, I thought I was funny a lot sooner than the rest of the world did.

[Dan Le Batard]

Because you were a class clown, right?

[Dave Barry]

I was literally elected class clown. Pleasantville High school, class of 1965. And I'm darn proud of that game.

[Dan Le Batard]

Is it just because your mom was funny? Like, there wasn't any deflection going on there. You weren't trying to avoid intimacy. Your mom was just dark humor. Funny and so you were funny.

[Dave Barry]

Well, I was a little puberty impaired guy. And you know what I really wanted to do was be like a football star or something and have girls really be interested in me just because I was. But I wasn't any of that. So what I could do was make people laugh. I was good at that. So that's what I. You know, it definitely was insecurity that made me want to entertain people. It probably still is. I mean, you. I think most people who. Who do humor for a living are usually they're insecure or, you know, and the other thing is we're. We're kind of deflectors. We don't want people to know too much about us because then they won't like us. So what we do is make them like us by making them laugh. Which is kind of a good way to keep people friendly with you, but not let them get too close.

[Dan Le Batard]

Excellent way to avoid intimacy. I do it with questions. It's not even that. It's just asking people about themselves.

[Dave Barry]

I know. I notice that anytime I say anything about your personal life, you immediately turn.

[Dan Le Batard]

It back to me. Well, you made it about Miss Venezuela. Like, I don't need that in my life. Let's knock it off.

[Dave Barry]

If you're listening, it wasn't you. It was Nan. Miss Venezuela. Was it Miss Venezuela?

[Dan Le Batard]

Can we move on, please? Thank you. I do appreciate you burrowing in there. Maybe we'll get back to it later. That night, only a sash. It was such a wild night. When you say that. Insecurities in childhood. What were they? What were they?

[Dave Barry]

Well, I couldn't, you know, like I wasn't good at sports and, you know, that was what you wanted. I mean, I did. I played Little league because that's what you did.

[Dan Le Batard]

And a way to be popular. Easy access, shortcut to however it is you get. The popular sports is easier than laughing.

[Dave Barry]

And I wasn't like one of the boys that the girls all just seemed looking at him and said, boy, he's cute, you know, I wasn't that guy, you know, so. And like I said, I didn't reach puberty. Talks in my early 30s and I was really late bloomer.

[Dan Le Batard]

You were a child.

[Dave Barry]

Yeah. I still have no hair on my arms.

[Dan Le Batard]

Look, look.

[Dave Barry]

Look at my arms.

[Dan Le Batard]

You still look. You cannot believe your age.

[Dave Barry]

I'm a hairless.

[Dan Le Batard]

You've always looked the entire time I've known you. You've looked young for your age.

[Dave Barry]

Well, yeah, but I'm now really old.

[Dan Le Batard]

How old are you right now?

[Dave Barry]

I'm 77 years old.

[Dan Le Batard]

Nobody would believe that.

[Dave Barry]

Well, but it's true. And you ask me anything about what happened in 1950, and I was there, man. But anyway, the. The point is, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't, like, good at anything except being funny. So that really was a, you know, logical thing for me to do. And I always did it, and I kept on doing it. And I got told many times that you can't be just funny for the rest of your life. But whoever said that's wrong? It's like, because I've never turned the corner into maturity.

[Dan Le Batard]

Who is the teacher that you have the most show. You know what? You're really wrong about this. I was able to.

[Dave Barry]

I want to. I want to go. Yeah, I really want to go. Mrs. Basage. I want to go find her. She's dead a long time, but I dig her up. Dig her up just to tell her, oh, you can't choke your way through life, huh? Mrs. Basich.

[Dan Le Batard]

And just yelling.

[Dave Barry]

Take a look.

[Dan Le Batard]

You're just yelling at her.

[Dave Barry]

Wanna see my house, Mrs. Passage nicer than your house. Yeah.

[Dan Le Batard]

You're just gonna physically dig her up to scream at her face.

[Dave Barry]

I'm kind of hoping they didn't cremate her, because then there'll be an accident because she was pretty skeletal when she was alive, and I don't think she would look all that different as a dead person.

[Dan Le Batard]

Do you look back at the time when you're talking about. Because I don't know what age this was. That your mother kills herself and you're making it the romantic story of, well, she loved my father so much.

[Dave Barry]

Oh, no. But the time. Okay, when. When my. Okay.

[Dan Le Batard]

A terrible segue by me, admittedly, while we're LAUGHING, Right from Mrs. Bassett. Terrible. An. Admittedly terrible segue by me. But I've been stuck there since you said it because you just sort of skipped past it as if, like, oh, there's no trau. Like, well, wait a minute.

[Dave Barry]

No, it was traumatic. But I was, like, in my 40s. I had become a successful humor columnist at this point. My dad died, and my mom just was not dealing with it well. And we went through this phase. And, like, if you have older parents and then a lot of people know what this phase is, where the dynamic starts to shift from they're your parent till, like, you're both neutral, sort of. Then you become sort of there. So my mom had this house in Armagh, New York, that my dad and she. That my dad built with his hands, that I grew up in. And she, you know, we all told her, you can't keep the house because it's in the middle of the woods and it's too big and you need to sell your house and move on with your life. And so she sold the house, and then she didn't know where to go. And she would come to Florida, live with me for a while. Then she would go out to California where both my brothers lived and lived with one live with. Just couldn't. And so I vividly remember the last time I saw her. She called me up and said she wanted to go to Connecticut and look at this community in Connecticut that some friends of hers had lived in. So I said, okay, your mom's your mom. So I fly up and meet her in Hartford, Connecticut, rent a car, we drive to this place. And all the way there, I'm like. She's telling me, you know, stuff about she misses, dad, she misses. And I'm like, mom, you gotta. You gotta look ahead. You gotta. You know, you still have friends. You have money because you sold the house. And, you know, we. You know, and she's, like, sad, and I'm, like, pushing her, like, mom, you gotta do that. You gotta do, like, I know what she's going through, right? So we finally. We get to, I think it was Essex, Connecticut or whatever. And immediately, I can see, you know, that she doesn't want to be there. That's not really where she went. What she wants to be is, like, a couple of years ago, earlier, back in Armwich with my dad, which will never happen. You know, he's gone, But I'm like, mom, you gotta. And so, like, the next morning, we have this really tense breakfast in the motel. And I'm like, mom, you have to. You have to make a decision. This is ridiculous. You can't keep moving from, you know, the brother to brother. Just. You stay with us if you want, but you gotta pick. You gotta pick what you want to do, you gotta do. Because I know now, you know, I'm 40 and I'm a successful columnist, and you don't know what you're doing anyway. And I bought her a map. I'll never forgive myself for this. A map of the United States. Like, pick a place. I'll take you there. We'll figure it out, okay? And I, you know, and so she hugs me goodbye. Put her on the plane. She's going back out to one of my brothers in Sunnyvale, California, which she also hates, to try to figure out what she wants to do next. And then A couple weeks later, my brothers and I all got birthday cards from her. You know, happy birthday, I love you. And it wasn't our birthdays, but she's just, you know, telling us she loved us. And the next thing I know, I get a phone call from my brother. My mom's in the hospital. She's taking an overdose of Valium and vodka, and she's on life support, and her brain has ceased functioning and. Can we. Do they have permission to unplug my mom? So the lesson which still stings me is don't ever think you know what your parents are going through, or don't ever think you know what anybody's going through, especially don't think you know what an older person is going through at the end of life. And the last thing I did is borrow a fucking map just so I can't remember what question you asked me. But that was just. That was the low point for me of being her son. Now, since that time, I've made, you know, I understood she wasn't blaming me, and I wasn't the cause of why she committed suicide at all. But I will forever blame me for not at least being a little more aware of. Of what was going on.

[Dan Le Batard]

I'm deeply sorry about all of that. I want to ask you some questions about how you go about forgiving yourself. But I will tell you this about my own father, because you know him, you know some of the family, and with your wife, the Cuban Jew, you also know some of my family dynamics. My father, when he was going through whatever it is he's gone through twice now, where he has some sort of short circuiting that has to do with losing his identity or his job. I was minutes away from. And I've told this story on our show before, but I was minutes away from going to pick him up to take him to a psychiatrist because he was acting in ways the family didn't recognize. And as I was headed to go pick him up, my mother calls me from the hospital. Firefighters have come and gotten him off a balcony. He doesn't remember how it is. He's, you know, 76, 77, 78 years old. He's hanging from a balcony. And so I came very close to pulling up on my father on a sidewalk minutes too late to get him the help that he needed. And that could have been where I started reexamining all the things, like a map that I had given him incorrectly while trying to reach him a number of different ways. How do you forgive yourself?

[Dave Barry]

I never really have. I Mean, if I'm being honest, I. You know, I can right now. I mean, the guilt I feel, I can just summon it up in a second. The only thing is, like, I knew her really well, knew my mom really well. And my mom was not a judgmental person. I mean, she judged herself hardly harshly, but she never judged anybody else. And, you know, somehow she would have seen humor in what I did.

[Dan Le Batard]

But at that point, the reason I'm from finding forgiveness from over here is just at that point, what knowledge can you really have of what it is to love so deeply that grief would be a loss that you cannot replace? Like you did. You hadn't.

[Dave Barry]

You hadn't lost experience anything like that. I still haven't. I don't know. I don't. Like I say, I have not. I have not really ever totally resolved in my mind what, you know, my behavior toward my mom then. Except I know she didn't judge me. You know, she would have never judged me for that. You know, she would have viewed it as totally her own fault that she was lost, didn't know where she wanted to go. She wouldn't blame anybody but herself for that.

[Dan Le Batard]

But you would recognize that. How long have you now been married to Michelle?

[Dave Barry]

30 something. 31 years. 30? Yeah.

[Dan Le Batard]

How long were your parents together?

[Dave Barry]

Oh, longer than that.

[Dan Le Batard]

The thing that my brother's death taught me, among many, is that when I now look into the eyes of my wife, who represents the greatest love I've known that wasn't my brother, I now have the understanding that whatever loss is there, either she loses me or I lose her is going to be the most. Most unimaginable pain that I am risking. And that is what the deepest of love is.

[Dave Barry]

Yeah, well, yeah, that's about. That's what love is. This is also something everybody with kids has the same issue, you know, someone like you have, then you're hostage now to this relationship that will never, ever go away. You cannot ever. You can't erase it. And in the end, never. Nobody ever asks. The old saying, nobody gets out of here alive. So sooner or later, any love you have, any kind of love you have, is going to result in unimaginable pain to either you or the person you. You love. How did we get to this level of conversation?

[Dan Le Batard]

We will get to the funny stuff in a second. I have not had this conversation.

[Dave Barry]

Dying.

[Dan Le Batard]

D. The original question was, what did you ask Pat Riley at my wedding? You.

[Dave Barry]

And I did tell Pat, and I will tell you right now what I told him. And, and. And you Judged. You judge whether you think it's right. I pointed out to him I've been watching sports a long time. I know he's a big deal. He's par. Riding him. I've been watching basketball a long time. The team that scores the most points wins the game every single time. Dan.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes. Yes.

[Dave Barry]

That's what I told.

[Dan Le Batard]

He took it away from my wedding. It was the thing. It was the nugget.

[Dave Barry]

But has he, as he employed. No, Pat, I know he's listening.

[Dan Le Batard]

He came with a gift to my wedding.

[Dave Barry]

Outscore the opponent.

[Dan Le Batard]

Pat left with that gift, thanks to you. Another thing there, you taught me that I saw with great intensity just watching you is because you had Sophie, your daughter, later in life. The amount of intensity that you and Michelle brought to the love of her was something awe inspiring to behold.

[Dave Barry]

Thank you. You want me to write down another?

[Dan Le Batard]

That's right. Another deep. Another deep. And I want. But the reason. Listen, Dave, Dave, we'll get to the funny in a second, but I want people to know in this setting, some people that I have learned from and what they've learned, because I'm not kidding you when I tell you beyond being an inspiration, in a lot of ways you've lived a life that from over here seems to have things in it that are the nutrients everyone can gain something from.

[Dave Barry]

Well, yeah, but I mean, it's not. I really didn't invent any of these things, but yeah, like. Well, Sophie, she's an incredible gift, but we went through the worst thing that ever happened. This is what I was just talking about. Hostage. When you're a kid, you become a hostage. The worst thing that ever happened to me involved Sophie, which was when she had just turned 18 and she was going to go to Duke. She'd been accepted at Duke. That's where she wanted to go. And the day or two days before, on August 18, 2018, she's getting ready to go to Duke and she wakes up and she can't move. Can't move from her chest down. She cannot move. And like at first we're like, this is like, okay, some kind of nervous panicked, you know, it's not like her. But maybe that's what it is. Pretty quickly think, no, it's something else. And so we take her into the hospital and neurologists, thank God, diagnosed immediately what it was. And it's something called transverse myelitis. And so like our daughter's in there getting scanned and this, she comes out, this neurologist and sits down with me and Michelle and Says it's not good. Except first thing she said, she said, this is. I think this is. I'm pretty sure this is called transverse myelitis. And it's when your immune system attacks your. Your spinal cord. And a third of the time people recover completely, a third of the time, they only partly recover. And a third of the time, they never recover at all, never walk again. This is what we're being told is our daughter is in the other room two days from going to Duke. And so just to get quickly through to the good part, she did recover. It took a couple of months, a lot of intense therapy and everything. And she recovered and got to Duke a semester late. They wanted to make her a year late, but she said, no, I'm class of 2022 and I want to be. And she graduated with honors and is now fine. But we went through the absolute, most unimaginably horrible time. I mean, no, that's not true. People have lost their children, which is obviously worse. But at the time, I could not imagine anything worse. I remember, like, the day, the next day, Michelle never left the hospital. She stayed in the hospital, like, 45 straight days with Sophie until Sophie was able to come home the next day. I would go home every night to walk the dog and bring clothes in to Michelle and Sophie. I remember the next morning, I'm driving to the hospital, to Baptist Hospital, and drove by Sophie's elementary school, and there were little kids walking across the street just where Sophie used to walk across the street. And I'm thinking, like, I'm thinking, my daughter's never going to walk again. This is it. And I had to pull off the road. I'm just sobbing. And every night when I would leave the hospital, I would just proceed to get in the car and just cry for, like, half an hour. I'm crying now. And so the result of it was that, first of all, I decided she was the most amazing human being on the face of the earth. She never complained. She never said, why me? She, to this day, never says, oh, I'm a victim of transverse myelitis. She has become a person who counsels other people who have trans. But she'll never. You would never hear her bring it up, ever. I'm bringing it up because it changed my life. But. But the lesson of that was going right back to. You were talking about the amount of love you feel, the feeling that the three of us had, Michelle, Sophie, and me in that hospital room day after day, where there's all these tubes in and out of her and doctors come in all the time, and can she move yet? It was, like, 11 days before she even moved a toe. Like, during which we thought she's. This is it. When did she. And every day they'd come and say, has she moved? Nope, Nothing. They'd come and say, sophie, can you feel anything? Nope, Nothing. You know, day after day of that, when it finally, finally came through, what we all three came away from, and Michelle and I talk about this, like, almost every day, is that if you think that you have trouble in your life, you probably don't. You know, like, the things that we go around worrying about and the things people get upset about, they don't matter. Did you get up this morning? Can you walk around? You know, do you. Do you have. Are the people you love still around? Are they alive? That's all that matters. It doesn't matter if your roof is leaking and your car is messed up. It doesn't matter who got elected President of the United States. Whether you like them or you don't like them, that does not matter. What really matters is the things absolutely closest to you. Your kids, your loved ones, and are they okay? Are you okay with them? That's all that matters.

[Dan Le Batard]

When you say it changed your life, is it because you now live yourself since that hospital room?

[Dave Barry]

Absolutely. Every single day, when something bad happens that I think is something bad, I think about Sophie and lying there, and she couldn't move. And that's. You know, that looked like. For a while, that looked like that was it. You know, she'll never get to Duke, and she'll never walk again. And thank you. Because there are people who. Plenty of people who didn't. Who were in the same situation and didn't get out of it. So every single day that anything remotely bad happens to me, I think about that immediately goes to there. I go to there.

[Dan Le Batard]

You were not like that before that hospital experience. You carried yourself as somebody who had some wisdoms about how to be happy.

[Dave Barry]

Okay, well, I'm not. I was never like a. Just like an idiot about, you know, anything that bothers me is the worst thing in the world. I mean, we all know people like that. And I was never that, but I was like. I was. I could get. Be upset for days about pretty minor things before. It takes an incredible amount to get me upset about anything for more than 10 minutes now because of, like, my mind goes right back to that. And so that did change me. That changed me more than anything else that ever happened to me. Wow. What's up?

[Dan Le Batard]

I just Bought and financed a car.

[Unknown]

Through Carvana in minutes.

[Dave Barry]

You, the person who agonized four weeks over whether to paint your walls eggshell or off white. Bought and financed a car in minutes.

[Dan Le Batard]

They made it easy.

[Unknown]

Transparent terms, customizable down and monthly.

[Dan Le Batard]

Didn't even have to do any paperwork.

[Dave Barry]

Wow.

[Dan Le Batard]

Mm. Hey, have you checked out that spreadsheet I sent you for our dinner?

[Unknown]

Options?

[Dave Barry]

Finance your car with Carvana and experience total control.

[Dan Le Batard]

Financing subject to credit approval.

[Unknown]

The big game happened. Football's done. And man, what a time football was. I enjoyed every football week this season opening up a Miller Light. That sound of the can opening the. The cheers. With my dad, it's football and Miller Light. Nothing says football like the great taste of Miller Light. Great tasting light beer. For people who love beer, it's always the perfect time for friends, family, and a great tasting light beer tastes like Miller Time. Miller Light is brewed for taste. It hits different than other light beers. It's a taste you can depend on, folks. No games, no gimmicks. Just a great beer for people who like beer. Simple ingredients. Malted barley for rich balanced toffee note flavors that iconic golden color. The original light beer since 1975 and still the best one. Miller Lite great taste. 96 calories. Go to millerlight.com beach to find delivery options near you. Or you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer. Tastes like Miller Time. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.

[Dan Le Batard]

One of the reasons that I say that your happiness seemed to be aspirational, at least as that love ran through Sophie, is because all the time I was overwhelmed at how proud both of you were about talking about. This isn't the normal parent stuff of our kid is the best. Our kid really is the best.

[Dave Barry]

She really is. This, though, I'm gonna just say it. He is the best. My other kid is two. I have a son, Robin. He's an incredible kid, too.

[Dan Le Batard]

He really gets. He gets the short end of the stick. You wrote about him. He got the different.

[Dave Barry]

He got the Dave Berry the Wiener Mobile at school. So, like, that was.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes, he got the. He got celebrity journalist Dave Barry as the father.

[Dave Barry]

Well, he told me he was. He went back to his school for the reunion last spring, and he said the thing that most people still remember was that I picked him up in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. So that was a gift not many fathers can give their children.

[Dan Le Batard]

No, it's great when the Father gives the child the gift of father. Yes, Your father being funny.

[Dave Barry]

The gift of humiliation.

[Dan Le Batard]

Here's your father not caring at all about you and your experience. But your father gets the applause of being funny around his son.

[Dave Barry]

Hey, that's what put him through school.

[Dan Le Batard]

First born second Favorites. Yes, this is the way that we're. Well, I mean, but you also, you have more appreciation in your 50s for the honor and responsibility of being a parent in a loving household that doesn't have conflict between the parents.

[Dave Barry]

Yeah, no, I'm big believer in having kids later in life because of that. Yeah, because you have more. You appreciate it more, and I think you have more time for them.

[Dan Le Batard]

You're less selfish.

[Dave Barry]

I think so. And you also usually have more resources. The other view of it is if you have your kids early, then you can start partying in your 50s.

[Dan Le Batard]

Right. You can get your life back.

[Dave Barry]

You can move to the Villages and get a really cool golf cart and drive around drunk.

[Dan Le Batard]

I don't think that the audience necessarily knows how intimate, rare, and antiquated the funny local columnist's relationship with his community is. You make me laugh in print. I will love you forever because you're someone who makes me, for those moments. The medicine of laughter. I like reading that guy. Can you articulate it as someone who's lived it? What it's like to be in this era for 50 years, a voice that reaches people with laughter and what that connection is when you meet the people. When you walk in today and everyone's saying, do you know what a legend this person is?

[Dave Barry]

Well, that just made me feel old here. Everybody here is 19 years old.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's right. But no, they don't even know what newspapers are. Dave.

[Dave Barry]

Yeah, I used to have this thing that would happen to me when I was like, there, there's fame and then there's newspaper fame, which is kind of like somewhere below the local TV weather guy. Not everybody's reading the news, but I used to. I'll never forget. Like I said, Nordstrom. I think I'm in Nordstrom. Trying to buy socks, I think. And the salesman just turns out to be a huge fan of my column. Like, oh, God, you're Dave Barry. Like, oh, man. And this random woman is standing nearby, and he's like, you know who this is? And she goes, no. And he goes, dave Barry. And she goes, clearly knows no. Okay. And he goes, well, Dave, tell her. Tell her. What am I supposed to tell her? I'm really hilarious. Like, I can't think of anything funny right now. I'M trying to buy some socks. But anyway, that's kind of what it's like. No, no, but that is not the.

[Dan Le Batard]

Connection between you and the reader.

[Dave Barry]

I had a lot of. I had wonderful relationship with my readers. I always did. I relied on my readers for a lot of source material they would send me, you know, if something would happen, like, okay, Miami being Miami. I don't know if you remember this, but I got a call from a reader once saying, I'm on the people mover. For those of you who don't live in Miami, People mover is this train that moves around downtown Miami, moves people. And he goes, I'm on a people mover and there's a shark on the people. Like, I go, what? He goes, yeah, it's a. And it's not dead, Dave.

[Dan Le Batard]

This is. They call you with these kinds of. They call me all over Miami.

[Dave Barry]

So, like, I'm on that story. I mean, like, I'm on that story right away.

[Dan Le Batard]

You're doing real job.

[Dave Barry]

That is what I'm born to do, man. That's my kind of. And it turns out there was a shark on the piece, if you remember this.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes, I do this. There was a live shark on the people mover.

[Dave Barry]

What happened? Just. It didn't get on by itself. Okay, let's not give the shark that much credit. But these two homeless guys catch a shark in Biscayne Bay, like a nurse shark, like six feet long, and they decide this is a chance to make some money. They're going to sell it to a restaurant. Now, why they think a restaurant is going to want a shark? I don't know.

[Dan Le Batard]

A live shark.

[Dave Barry]

A live shark. So they don't have a car. There are two homeless cars. But they get on and the people move, which I think was free at the time. And it's not designed for marine life. That's why we call it the people move.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's correct.

[Dave Barry]

But it was rush hour, and there are people, like on there with this thing, and they go over to the river where there's a bunch of restaurants on the river, and nobody wants to buy their shark. Predictably, like, who knew? So then they leave it on the streets of Miami. And then the Herald, it was the front page of the Herald the next day because people would come to work the next day and there's.

[Dan Le Batard]

Why is there a shark.

[Dave Barry]

A shark in downtown Miami?

[Dan Le Batard]

That's right.

[Dave Barry]

At that point, it was dead. They don't. They don't go that long.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's right.

[Dave Barry]

I mean, they're hardy Animals.

[Dan Le Batard]

But not that long.

[Dave Barry]

Overnight. No.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes. And.

[Dave Barry]

But there was a quote from a shopkeeper. This is so Miami is like, yeah. Like, when I first saw it, I thought, oh, damn, it's a dead body. Because, you know, and it was. It's always really relieved it was just a shop.

[Dan Le Batard]

Again, this does not speak to your relationship with your. Except that they call you. They call me, and they. They probably call you because they think they have your sense of humor, which why they think they know you.

[Dave Barry]

They do, and they all think they know me, and they think that I'm just wild and wacky all the time, which I'm not. But yeah, that's like, to this day, if somebody will recognize me in publix, I'm like, maybe in the supermarket aisle. And they'll try and decide which size granola to get. And they'll say, the people who recognize me will. You gonna write a column about this, Dave?

[Dan Le Batard]

And I'm like, well, that's not very true.

[Dave Barry]

No, I'm buying granola. But yeah, people do feel they know you. I'm sure it was the same with you when you wrote a column. Of course, in your case, they thought they knew you and they hated you.

[Dan Le Batard]

Correct.

[Dave Barry]

That is, they thought you were very arrogant. How would anybody get that impression?

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes, the opinionated, strident, obnoxious, counterintuitive player apologist was popular. I had a different relationship with my readers, I would say, than you did. Your relationship with your readers feels like a real feel good thing. It is to me. You have, aspirationally, one of the best careers a journalist could ever have.

[Dave Barry]

I will not argue with that. I really do think that for this period from like mid-70s through mid-2000s, I had the best job in American journalism. I had the most freedom. I was well compensated. I was in 500 newspapers, and I could do anything I wanted. And, you know, I wanted to. If I read in that there was going to be a sommelier of the year competition at the Waldorf Astoria, I could just tell Gene Weingarten at the mic, gene, I got to go to New York and rent a tuxedo and go to the sommelier of the year competition. You would never even question.

[Dan Le Batard]

You wrote often about wasting expense account money like that. You were just doing things to fund your curiosity, laughter, habits.

[Dave Barry]

Yeah, I went to New York York with Chuck Fadley, a photographer, and this was in 1986, and we rented a helicopter for $8,000. I don't know what it costs now, but back then, that was a lot of money. $8,000 to take a picture of a garbage barge from the air.

[Dan Le Batard]

You told a great story, though it ended up being worth it because you were making fun of New York because they said Miami was paradise lost. And so you showed. Here's New York just a garbage ship in your waters.

[Dave Barry]

That's right.

[Dan Le Batard]

And so you were. That was worth $8,000.

[Dave Barry]

Can you imagine what you would have to do today to get the Miami Herald to give you $8,000 to do anything? Like they don't. No, it's not possible. We did it. We didn't even ask. We didn't even ask. Would it be okay for us to rent a helicopter to take a picture of garbage?

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, but you had a minute.

[Dave Barry]

We'll charge this. Do you guys take American Express?

[Dan Le Batard]

Hold on. You had a carte blanche. I need to explain to people it's not merely the golden age of American newspapering. This man at a place that has Tropic magazine, which is an award winning ancillary journalistic arm of the Miami Herald, where all the best journalism was done by the best journalists this market has ever had, you had a carte blanche that not most people had. I remember being introduced to it. You came to spring training. I was the first year covering the Marlins. And you're like, let me take you to dinner. And I thought it was because you wanted me to give you Marlon's information. And all we did, we took an agent out to dinner, spent way too much money, and you ended up writing about alligators who jump up and grab bait off of a line. And you didn't end up writing about baseball at all.

[Dave Barry]

Gatorland. No, I didn't. I didn't.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, you just spent money like you spent. You spilled over the bar. That seemed to me like journalistic excess too. I had never seen somebody spend like that with newspaper.

[Dave Barry]

No, I remember when I asked you. Cuz I remember I was hanging around. We were hanging around the Marlins spring training and we're talking and I remember asking you, do you want to go to dinner? And you're like, oh, okay, now you're going to ask me inside information. And you're like, you were fine with that. Okay, I'm the young sports writer and you're the star columnist. So you'll just pick my brain.

[Dan Le Batard]

But that's not what it was.

[Dave Barry]

No, it wasn't the goal at all. The goal was just to go have a few drinks. Do you. I mean, speaking of tropic things that we could do that I don't know how you could do them. Now. But when the Miami Heat became a franchise, the only other franchise in Florida was the Orlando Magic. And they were both brand new, as I recall. And we decided to start a rivalry. When I say we Tropic magazine. So we ran a cover story of me spinning a basketball on my middle finger. And I wrote this just absolutely vicious attack on the city.

[Dan Le Batard]

On Orlando.

[Dave Barry]

On Orlando.

[Dan Le Batard]

City of Orlando. And.

[Dave Barry]

But this is where it was like, went beyond just like a regular newspaper thing and just into performance art. We rented a bus and we ran a competition in Tropic for people to come up with anti Orlando slogans. We were determined to start a bitter rivalry because we figured there's only one other team we could beat in the NBA, which would be Orlando. And so we got our bus. Like 40, 50 people get on the bus. The winners of the people who had written the most vicious anti Orlando cheers rode up to Orlando on the bus, had to stop on the way to get more alcohol because we ran out on the way up. And we get there, and they remember Pat.

[Dan Le Batard]

Pat Williams was their general manager, a deeply religious man who had about 18 adopted children and was a very kind.

[Dave Barry]

Man, but he loved the whole idea of the rivalry.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, he loved your column and he loved the fact that you were for no reason creating a rivalry with the Orlando Magic. You specifically. Yeah.

[Dave Barry]

So we show up having written this vicious story, and the Orlando Sentinel columnist Bob Morris, they printed it. And here they come with these Miami people. And then. And they had. Pat Williams had cordoned off a section for us to sit, and they put crime scene tape around it. And then they put baking soda all around, which they claimed was cocaine. Of course.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes. Subtle humor.

[Dave Barry]

But my point is, like, that was fun.

[Dan Le Batard]

It was. That was the glory days of money newspaper thing.

[Dave Barry]

We just rented a bus.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes, it was great.

[Dave Barry]

And we rented a hotel up there.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes, it was great fun. And now newspapers.

[Dave Barry]

You're saying that was why the newspaper went right down the term.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's correct. You bankrupted newspapers with your expensive account.

[Dave Barry]

I never thought of it that way.

[Dan Le Batard]

Of course, they don't spend money that way anymore. Why would they spend money that way anymore?

[Dave Barry]

Wow, it was so much fun.

[Dan Le Batard]

You must be mortified by the state of American newspapers. For as much as you are a humor columnist, you saw the Miami Herald be an inspiration to the nation's journalists on how to tell truth to power, how to stamp out corruption. And now there's just an infestation of it in South Florida that can't be stopped because there are no governors.

[Dave Barry]

But it's not just here. It's everywhere. I mean, it's really sad what's happened to newspapers. I always say it's really bad to be in an industry run by English majors, but that's kind of what happened to us. Well, the Internet. What Internet? We didn't really catch that wave is what I'm saying. We ended up being destroyed by it. But it's everywhere. I mean, there are. There's no local journalism left. There's big papers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, but there's very few successful local papers. They're just all struggling. They're all out of money.

[Dan Le Batard]

There can't be a new Dave Barry. Correct.

[Dave Barry]

No, I agree. I think there are a lot of funny people, but they're writing substacks and they're writing Twitter and they're writing for TV shows. But there's no. Yeah, I was pretty much the end of that line. And I was lucky enough to get to know, like, Art Buchwald and Russell Baker and Erma Bombeck, the kind of generation ahead of me when it was, you know, every newspaper wanted to have a humor columnist, and there were a million local humor columnists, and I was one of the more successful of those.

[Dan Le Batard]

No, you were the most successful.

[Dave Barry]

I was for a while.

[Dan Le Batard]

Tony Kornheiser told me one time we did at the Atlanta Olympics, I think you and I both wrote columns doing rhythmic or synchronized swimming with the US Women's Olympic Games.

[Dave Barry]

And I'm just gonna say, this is gonna sound like I'm blowing smoke up your ass, but you wrote a funnier column than I did about that. But just so the listeners know what we're talking about, Dan and I were covering the Olympics in 1996 in Atlanta, the bomb Olympics. And I think it was my idea. But you agreed to go along.

[Dan Le Batard]

Tony Kornheiser told me, don't do that. You don't want to be writing comedy opposite Dave Barry. That's Tony Korniser. Like, he was he. If he wasn't the second best humor columnist in America, he was pretty close.

[Dave Barry]

Yeah, he was wrong. You wrote a really funny column, but we went to the Emory University pool and both almost drowned trying to stay up with. I don't know if it was the U.S. national.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, I kicked a girl in the face. It was bad. I was not good. I was not graceful enough.

[Dave Barry]

Somewhere is my favorite picture of all time of me, and it's you and me trying to keep. All around us. Are these women like. Like ballerinas with their hands over their heads, and there's you and I disappearing beneath the surface of the Emory University pool by accident.

[Dan Le Batard]

I've also got my nose pin upside down because I didn't know how to do a nose pin when I don't think that's what it's called either. I don't think it's a nose pin. But Tony Kornheiser mentioned to me that you don't want to be writing opposite Dave Barry as a humor column. This because there was nobody doing it as well as you. Just the lane of All I do is write funny. The expectation of it's always gonna be funny, even though in fact it was. So this is one of the things I remember about your range, is that when you wrote on dark, heavy stuff, as you sometimes did, and did extraordinarily well, they'd have to put your name at the end of the article instead of at the beginning because your byline meant it was gonna be funny.

[Dave Barry]

Okay, if you say so.

[Dan Le Batard]

They did. I remember you wrote a couple of dark, more serious pieces when my mom.

[Dave Barry]

Committed suicide, wrote about that. And when my son Rob was in a bike accident, I wrote about that. And people I. You said very nice things sometimes about when I wrote serious things. Like, why don't you write more serious? I'm like, because the only times I did it was some horrible thing happened that I had write, you know, get it out of me that I want to. I don't want more horrible things to happen to me. I want to go back to writing, you know, booger jokes. So who's scoring big in the NBA this season? You are. With all the new ways to get in on the action at DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NBA. From Monster Slam to Dishing the Rock to clean the glass, get behind your favorite players and the prop bets you can make on DraftKings, the home of NBA player props. New DraftKings customers betfactor to get $150 in bonus bets instantly, take it to the rack with DraftKings Sportsbook. Every point counts. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app and use code beach that's called B E A C H for new customers to get $150 in bonus bets. When you bet just five bucks only at DraftKings, the crown is yours.

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[Dan Le Batard]

Kansas, 21 and over.

[Unknown]

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[Dave Barry]

Boyd.

[Unknown]

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[Dan Le Batard]

Do you remember the first things you were paid for? I remember that I got $15 an article to cover city council meetings about sewage for the River Cities Gazette. Yeah.

[Dave Barry]

Paid to write.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah. The first time you realized the possibility. Wait a minute. I can make money doing this. And think of it as a care that you can be funny for the rest of your life.

[Dave Barry]

Paid to write humor. Yeah, it was like. It was kind of not quite the same. I went to work when I got out of college for a little newspaper in Pennsylvania, Westchester, Pennsylvania, the Daily Local News, which was tiny, which is. By which I mean to say it's about the same circulation the Miami Herald is today. But they. It was like you did everything there. You know, you wrote a lot of obituaries and covered meetings and police and fire and stuff like that. But you could write what they called it, an ad lib, an op ed little column if you wanted to, and like a 500 word thing. You were like. And most of the people would write about their cat or whatever. And I wrote what I thought was humor, wrote a. A couple of those. And so technically, I guess I was getting paid to do that. What I do remember is I wrote maybe three or four of them, and then the editor said, you know, they used to be funnier.

[Dan Le Batard]

Which is actually.

[Dave Barry]

Something I've heard for the whole rest of my life. Whatever phase I am in my life, somebody will come up and say, you used to be funnier, Dave.

[Dan Le Batard]

Is that how your career started? Like, what are the. What are the real roots of how this became a career for you?

[Dave Barry]

Well, when I was in, like, high school, I wrote humor pieces for my high school newspaper, like, one or two, because it only came out one or two times a year. And in college, I wrote what I thought were funny things for the Haverford College newspaper. Years later, I went back for a reunion, and somebody had gotten my columns from the newspaper when we were students and blown them and put them all around the wall of the gym. And I went around reading them. And, like, I didn't get any of the jokes. And I mean, that's because I was smoking a tremendous amount of marijuana. I think back then, when I wrote these columns, they didn't read.

[Dan Le Batard]

They didn't hold up.

[Dave Barry]

I didn't get any of the jokes. But then, like, what I really started doing was at the Daily Local News, these ad libs when I would write every week. And when I left the paper, I kept writing them. So that's really how I always wanted to write. Humor. I just never thought you could make a living doing it, you know, I always thought I would have to do something else.

[Dan Le Batard]

I wondered when I started if it was somehow awkward praise for me to tell you that your novel sounded hyacinth. Ish. Excuse me. Yes, either one ish. Or ask both of them that. Obviously, as a work of fiction, he's extraordinary. You grew up here in South Florida. It was the golden age of an unbelievable amount of talent that we had at our newspaper. And I just realized, though, that comparing you to him because he was first might not be the best way to compliment you. Even though I mean it as the highest of comparison.

[Dave Barry]

No, I am honored. I often get confused for Carl. People will tell me how much they love my book, and then it'll turn out that it's actually Carl's book.

[Dan Le Batard]

Okay, do you go with it? What do you do?

[Dave Barry]

Do you just. I say, no, you're thinking of Carl hias. And then they always go, no, I love too. But anyway. But no, Carl's my very good friend, has been for many years. And I'm honored to be in any way mentioned in the same sentence as Carl. He's a. He's a. He's brilliant. The guy's brilliant.

[Dan Le Batard]

As are you, though. But what. What do you feel about the writing of novels? Like, what are the things that move you professionally now to spend your time doing something as difficult as writing? You don't have to do it. Right.

[Dave Barry]

I do kind of, though. I mean, I really. I don't want to retire. You know, my wife's an active sports writer. I just. I'm not going to sit around the house. So I. Well, I am still sitting around the house, but I'm writing while I'm sitting around the house. I don't know. I just, you know, writing is. It's. You don't have to retire from writing because it's not hard. I mean, well, it's not physically hard. So I like it. I like writing novels. I like writing other stuff. I mean, I just finished a memoir. Memoir, which is very much like this interview. Many of the things we've discussed I talk about in this memoir. But I can't stop writing. I like to do it.

[Dan Le Batard]

Let me ask you this question, because I have not been able to summon either the strength or the bandwidth to tackle what would be the loneliness of a project like writing a book or a memoir.

[Dave Barry]

Memoir.

[Dan Le Batard]

When you decided to tackle your life as a memoir, who are you doing that for? Why are you doing that?

[Dave Barry]

That's a really good question, and I don't have a really good answer. I'm doing it because I discussed it at length with my agent and my editor, two women who I really trust and respect. And they both said, you should write a memoir. And my big concern was, and this is, this is not false modesty. It's like, who's gonna care about my, you know, who is gonna care about.

[Dan Le Batard]

Your deep feelings are things that decades worth of listeners will care about. Your deepest feelings of a life well lived, written well, a lifetime of readers will care. What do you mean, who's gonna.

[Dave Barry]

I appreciate that. I hope you're right. I hope you're right. I just like, it goes back to what we were saying about my parents from the Midwest. You just don't toot your own horn.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, but we were taught by journalism. Don't make it. I, I, I don't make it first person. But you were breaking some of those rules in everything that you were doing.

[Dave Barry]

But it was always like a humorous Persona doing that. This is like pretty serious parts of it. I mean, part of I, I talk at length about my humor career and the, the things my readers got me to do. It looked like going to Orlando and that sort of thing.

[Dan Le Batard]

David. Dave, you have been a thousand of those.

[Dave Barry]

Like, you know, where I was born and raised and how I went to school. I just still to this, I mean, the book hasn't come out yet, but I am worried about that.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, they can edit out the boring stuff.

[Dave Barry]

It's too late.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's too late. You've lived an interesting life. And the reason I would be interested in reading a memoir of yours is at least in part because I would be curious how it is that you are about finding joy now. What it is you've learned combined with more time, just in general. A life lived, written. Now, 50 years you've been writing, right? 50 years you've been writing.

[Dave Barry]

Yeah.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's 50 years of connection with readers.

[Dave Barry]

Well, I'll tell you, I mean, okay, this name dropping here, but Steve Martin is a friend of mine.

[Dan Le Batard]

I know that about you. Hold on just a second. The soundboard doesn't work because the producer of the show, Matthew Coogler, is pretty, look at that, pretty incompetent. Yes, you're Friends with Steve Martin. Yeah.

[Dave Barry]

So I sent him the memoir to get a blurb, because that's what you do. And, you know, usually it's like pro forma, they write a blurb. Like, Steve blurbed one of my books by saying, I love it. I haven't read it, but I. You know, it's like. And he wasn't kidding. He hadn't read it.

[Dan Le Batard]

But, you know, he's written a few of those. He's been asked to write a few of those.

[Dave Barry]

Yeah, he knows about. So anyway, but in this case, he wrote me an email and said, I'm really liking this. Can I call you? And I go, yeah. And he called me up and said, I just want, you know, I really like your. Your memoir. And I'll tell you why I like it, because you talk about how it works, how the humor works, and how, you know, he said, and people really like to know stuff like that, like how. So that gave me a lot of hope. If he liked it, then maybe other people will like him.

[Dan Le Batard]

Steve Martin, not unlike you, by the way, gives off from afar something of like, boy, that person's figured out how to be happy in life. That person has figured out some of the things that really matter so that they're not as affected by some of the superficialities as they might be.

[Dave Barry]

That guy, he's amazing to me. He, like, is, you know, wildly successful still. He has a hit TV show now. He's older than I am. Not many people are old, older than I am. And he, like, he had the. He was by far the most successful standup comedian who ever lived. You know, he was the first guy to ever do stadiums and stuff like that. And he threw it away. Nope.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's an amazing story. He decided he didn't want to do the most successful standup career any of us.

[Dave Barry]

He just stopped and he said, I'm going to make movies now. Successful at movies, art, Collects art, Very successful. Writes books. Anyway. So, yeah, he's an amazing guy. And you're right. I mean, I don't know him intimately. You know, we're friends.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, you've written for him, haven't you? You wrote for the Oscars for him, right?

[Dave Barry]

Yeah. Which was really interesting. I mean, that was a. I was terrified, you know, because I hadn't met him at that point. He. He and I had corresponded for years, but I'd never met him. And I was quite surprised when he asked me to come. This is in 2003, when he was hosting the Oscars, and he asked me to come Write jokes for him. And I had never written jokes for anybody but me, you know, I sit in a room and my name goes on it. And so I got out there and we were in this hotel room, conference room, and every single person besides Steve Martin and all the other people with Steve were all professional joke writers. I mean, the guys who wrote for the. Bruce Valanche was one of them. And John Max, who's.

[Dan Le Batard]

This is what they do for a living. They write for him and others like this.

[Dave Barry]

They only write for others.

[Dan Le Batard]

You're the only one in the room who's an outsider.

[Dave Barry]

Yes, only one who's not. Didn't live in la selected by you.

[Dan Le Batard]

Just because he thinks you're funny and he's read your newspaper column.

[Dave Barry]

Yes. Yeah, because he likes my, he likes my writing always, you know, he's, and, and so I, I, I thought that you, the way it worked was you had to, to have a, you know, that everybody's gonna be hilarious. And they are, they're very sharp, very funny people. But I thought it was like, immediately as you sit down, you say a joke and everybody goes, wow. And writes it down. And not at all what happens. I mean, there's a little of that at the beginning because people have some stuff prepared, but it very quickly devolves into what about, could we do something with, you know, and it's this real vague idea. And, and then somebody else would go, okay, well, we could do it. And then, you know, or somebody will say something that's really stupid, but somebody will say, well, we could maybe. And then they tweak it and tweak it and tweak it and tweak it.

[Dan Le Batard]

And tweak it and like, it sounds tedious.

[Dave Barry]

It does, but it's not.

[Dan Le Batard]

It sounds miserable. No, it's, well, it's not as fun as I imagined.

[Dave Barry]

No, it's not fun. It's not fun. It's really work. But then every now and again, somebody comes up with something, and then Steve Martin gets up and delivers his joke, and you realize, 10 people wrote that joke. You can't even really name how it started.

[Dan Le Batard]

Did you get many of them on yourself?

[Dave Barry]

I did, I did. I mean, once I got used to the idea that I didn't have to be genius funny guy, immediately I could just try something. Because in my world, if you try something that's stupid, everybody's gonna say, that's stupid.

[Dan Le Batard]

Like, in the newspaper, you get one shot at it.

[Dave Barry]

The editor will go, that sucks.

[Dan Le Batard]

What's wrong.

[Dave Barry]

Yes, but out there, it's like much more supportive, you know, and they call it being good in the room. He's really good in the room. That's to say, you may never have heard of him, but he's, you know, he has a good sense of humor. He has a good memory for Joe, you know.

[Dan Le Batard]

So where are the places that you've arrived that you look at as sort of the landmarks of how the hell did I get here doing this, like as. I imagine that would be one of them. But you were a regular guest on the late night circuit, so you had a TV show after you, right? You had. For how many years did the TV show in your name last? Just called Dave.

[Dave Barry]

Dave's World. Four years.

[Dan Le Batard]

Okay. Forgive me for not knowing the name.

[Dave Barry]

That's all right.

[Dan Le Batard]

Rest in peace, Harry Anderson. But that four years about your life. What are the bronze, silver and gold medalist of, like, career perks where you're like, how the hell did this little thing I was doing over here become this?

[Dave Barry]

Well, I ended up on stage playing guitar with Bruce Springsteen. All my life I wanted to be a musician. I was never any good at it. And when I. That's what I wanted to be. I always wanted to be a rock musician. I was in rock bands in college. You know, I was always. I've been always a very mediocre.

[Dan Le Batard]

Still now Rock Bottom Remainders is with Mitch Albom and. And Stephen King.

[Dave Barry]

Stephen King's in our band. Amy Tan, Scott Turow. A lot of good authors.

[Dan Le Batard]

Matt Groening.

[Dave Barry]

Matt Groening. Warren Zvon used to play with us back in the day. Roger McGuinn of the Birds. It still does play with. But anyway, is.

[Dan Le Batard]

Are all of these names not going to fit in bronze, silver and gold. Like, this is such a common part of your life that the music part of it, that the rock band part.

[Dave Barry]

Of it is to me that. Okay, that is to me like that was. It'd be like if you always wanted to play shortstop or something for the Yankees or. Which probably you did not.

[Dan Le Batard]

I did not. No. I wanted to be good at sports. But it wasn't. It wasn't.

[Dave Barry]

Whatever sport you wanted to be good at if you'd been on a professional level of that sport. That's what this has been like for me to be in this horrible man. And you've heard us, you've heard. You heard a kind of a mutant version of us.

[Dan Le Batard]

But I think I've heard Hyacinth in that band too. Right?

[Dave Barry]

Carl plays with us.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's 10 great authors just cannot play.

[Dave Barry]

Music very well, right?

[Dan Le Batard]

Not great musicians, but.

[Dave Barry]

But because of who we are, we get to do it sometimes. Like, so this one time in la, Bruce Springsteen got on stage with us and I gave him my guitar. So to this day I can say this guitar. Bruce Springsteen played this guitar. And we only had one song left at that point, which is called Gloria G L O R I A Gloria. And I happened to sing that song. It's not a hard song to sing. And so there's this. I wish nobody filmed it. This is poor before iPhones. But when we do this song, I'm singing G L R I and in my ears, Bruce Stingson going glo back up to me. Bruce Springsteen did see, like, that was.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's pretty good.

[Dave Barry]

That's my goal.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's your gold. What about silver and bronze? I thought you were. I thought you were going to go up the scale. You didn't do it. You just gave me the best one right out of the box.

[Dave Barry]

That was it. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, it's. I've. It's been. It's been all wonderful, but it's kind of like you. You get to know all. All these famous people now because of what you do.

[Dan Le Batard]

It. It is a good amount of fun. It is something that was wildly unexpected from just wanting to be a sports writer. All I wanted to do was be able to make some money writing about the games. I didn't think there was anything else in it. I was never seeking money or anything else from it other than the doing of it.

[Dave Barry]

I had fun on you there. I always felt like you always were very ambitious right from the start. Like when you did that high school sports show where you had me on as your, I think, your first guest.

[Dan Le Batard]

I'm gonna get the video of that right now. I wouldn't say that I was necessarily ambit. I was simply super Cuban exile, motivated to work so that I could have the freedom of a career. Right, but you didn't just.

[Dave Barry]

I mean, as soon as you could move from a fairly limited, like print audience to a much wider electronic audience, you made that move. And you always.

[Dan Le Batard]

It was just a curiosity, though, about what growth could look like. Right. Like, I didn't come into newspapering thinking that aspirationally a television career would ever be possible. And in fact, Mitch Albom was a guiding light in terms of, like, watching a television show simulcast in Detroit that was a radio show and not understanding how it is that any of that existed for him in Detroit. I was fascinated by the sports reporters, by how Do I get into some of these places that these other journalists have gotten into so that I can expand whatever my career is outside of just Miami? Because as much interesting stuff as there can be in Miami can also be very limiting. It's not something that feels of the rest of the world. It seems like it takes longer to discover things in Miami. In fact, the newspaper age that we were growing up with, we had to be great and greater than the Washington Post and the New York Times for 10 years for people to recognize us as great as those places.

[Dave Barry]

Yeah, we were always second tier, third.

[Dan Le Batard]

Tier, but not in the work. The work was just as good. Like I simply will not have anyone tell me that the Washington Post or the New York Times was doing anything better than what you guys were doing in the 90s. We had one of the best newspaper staffs ever assembled.

[Dave Barry]

I agree with all that.

[Dan Le Batard]

It can't be disagreed with, I don't think.

[Dave Barry]

No. And I don't know that people even today realize how lucky we all were. I mean, I guess we, those of us who were there, know, but the people. Do you think Miami ever really appreciated Miami? No.

[Dan Le Batard]

Most of the people didn't read the English that were reading the newspaper.

[Dave Barry]

They thought we were communists.

[Dan Le Batard]

No, we were writing. We were writing for Cubans from Miami who thought that you were a communist.

[Dave Barry]

Yeah, yeah. True, true.

[Dan Le Batard]

The memoir though. Can you take me through the. Going through the process of going through the pages of your life as a writer?

[Dave Barry]

It was interesting. I mean, I had to go back and dig up all these old photos and letters and stuff like that. I mean, trying to be accurate, trying to, and write to people who were there and say, is this the way you remember this happening? Like, you know, when you, you were the editor of my high school newspaper, do you remember that I wrote a column for you about, you know, like that kind of stuff.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's cool. It's a cool rummaging though.

[Dave Barry]

It was. I enjoyed it. But there was always this feeling, like I was saying earlier, like, who's gonna besides me is gonna care about this stuff? Well, we'll find out, Dan, won't we?

[Dan Le Batard]

What about your legacy, Dave? Like you've got a legacy in this market and you're leaving one with a memoir that details your life. That's my legacy you do have. I don't want to take it too seriously because you're always self deprecating. But your legacy, like, how do you imagine you're going to be remembered? And I asked this question as someone who understands that Conan O'BRIEN will stand over the grave of Calvin Coolidge and be like, when was the last time anyone talked about Calvin Coolidge? Like, we're all dust here. There's not much of a legacy, but we don't have to be that nihilistic about it.

[Dave Barry]

I have thought about. About it, and I think that based on the humorists that I loved when I was a kid, there was a guy named Robert Benchley I was obsessed with when I was a kid. My dad had all his books. He was a very popular humorist in the 20s, 30s, 40s. He wrote for the New Yorker and Life. And he was a brilliant, brilliant guy. And silly. That's what I loved about him. He's a very silly humorist, but brilliant, really smart. And I pattered him myself, after him more than anybody else. Now nobody but me knows who Robert.

[Dan Le Batard]

But you're the one referenced in his place, though.

[Dave Barry]

I understand. But that's my point is exactly that I think that. And this is not. Again, it is not false modesty. It's just the way the world works. What is funny to one generation is less and less funny because the references become vaguer and less familiar. And with humor, that's the case. So I don't.

[Dan Le Batard]

I don't.

[Dave Barry]

I think that the. My main legacy is going to be that I popularized. I didn't think of it, I didn't invent it, but I popularized international talk like a Pirate Day, which is observed every September 19th. Because I wrote a column once because two guys said, hey, we should all talk like pirates on September 19th. That's funny. I'll do that. And it's still going on.

[Dan Le Batard]

Chum bucket.

[Dave Barry]

Yeah, that's very good. Like 50 years from now, they'll still be doing that, but I don't think they'll know who I.

[Dan Le Batard]

Let's go ahead and play this video that he wants to play here. You want to do the play by play here. This is the Miami Herald High School sports show. You say this is a very ambitious Dan lebat.

[Dave Barry]

This was a young. Young and sweaty. Very sweaty.

[Dan Le Batard]

And I'm going to face an Olympic softball pitcher.

[Dave Barry]

Look how much sweat.

[Dan Le Batard]

Look how. Look how good I feel about myself, though.

[Dave Barry]

Yeah. And this. This woman is going to throw the ball very hard.

[Dan Le Batard]

Claire Sua, she sets me up with a fastball first.

[Dave Barry]

Nice. Good. But you take a good cut. You got. Thank God we're not showing my ad, which is mostly me backing away. Here we go. Watch this closely.

[Dan Le Batard]

Changes speed. That is comedically perfect there. Oh, wow. A snort from you and un, as I recall, when I was sitting on the floor, I also got a snort. That snort echoes 25 years because I was going to show those girls what's what. And there it is right there. She threw me a change up. And the most embarrassing thing that can happen is me stumbling down the entirety of the third baseline.

[Dave Barry]

Now I do point out to the other, the other team. There you go. You got me made. You were, you were not going to leave till you hit the well.

[Dan Le Batard]

But she threw about 70 more past me after that. I am very sweaty here. And yeah, there it is. It all goes to there. That's not enough. Can we just.

[Dave Barry]

The young who knew where this man was going to go from there.

[Dan Le Batard]

Dave, it's lovely seeing you. It is always lovely seeing you. I'm sorry that we, we got you all emotional off the top instead of just doing the fun stuff, the light hearted stuff, the superficial stuff you wanted to do.

[Dave Barry]

No, no, no, I, I, I enjoyed it. And I knew you were going to do that anyway because you always do.

[Dan Le Batard]

I do love you, buddy too, man.

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