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- [00:01]
Oregon Lottery Announcer
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- [00:31]
Priceline Advertiser
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- [01:04]
Mike Pesca
It's Thursday, July 9, 2026. From peach fish Productions, it's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. First we make our habits, and then they make us. Twelve years ago, we debuted a show that developed a new format. It was not as if it had never been done before, but for this new idea of a daily podcast, we had to figure out how to present it. And the format was I'll come and talk to you at the top, then we'll do interviews and then something called the spiel. And that format never really changed. So this is my last show where you will be hearing my voice up top as you have heard it every episode in which I didn't enlist a guest host. Still, my interviews in the next few weeks will be played. There will be a mix of old and new. We're going to go back to some great ones. There'll be some fun segments, different guest curators will introduce maybe some of the best bits or some of their favorite segments. But now I must deliver my last P. Oh, wait, are you saying. What the hell are you talking about? Yeah, I think I've never said this before on the air, but in house, we call this top of the show segment the P. Why? It's nothing scatological. It's that every other show I've ever worked on and every other show in existence would have the A block, the B block, the C block, and damn it, I wanted to do something different. So we weren't going to do the A, the B And the C. We were going to do the P, the Q, the R and the S because in the beginning we had, we would often have two segments in the middle before the spiel. So the S, well that's the spiel and the Q, that was a Q and A and the R. Whenever we had another segment there in the middle. These are interesting segments. That was a stretch. I'm going to say. That's a stretch. So what's the picture? It's Pesca, I guess. A little Pesca up top. And we toyed with it a little while. Format stayed the same. But what was a really good P? And I do remember this, that on May 29th or 30th I got a note from Andy Bowers, the person who brought me over to Slate, the man who commissioned and was pitching me on the idea of doing a show and every day news show. I think you could do it. I think I could. I said I just like my job at npr. And then I said all right, damn it, I'm doing it. And it was that late day in May when I riffed on some item in the news at the top of the show and Andy said, yes, I think that's it. I think that's the ideal. So I'm now going to play you that it lasts under three minutes. Here is how I top the show. May 29, 2014. It's Thursday, May 29th. From Slate, it's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. So the Ritz Carlton hotel is inviting fans. Fans anyway, well heeled travelers to submit six word stories that they call six word wows about staying in the Ritz Carlton. And they'll be turned into ads. Here are some examples. Honeymoon Lost. Camera Priceless. Memories Reimagined. Dinner till dawn. Laughter. Years regained. Dinner till dawn. Here's your 4:30am Pork chop, sir. All right, I got one. I got one. Sat on bed naked. How many others did too? Don't think. And that is why they don't do 11 word essays. Anyway, this whole six word fiction, it's sometimes called flash fiction. I guess back when flash mobs were seen as cool and not as a new way to say wilding to scare Fox News viewers. Anyway, six word fiction stems from this story about Hemingway. Probably didn't happen, but Hemingway composed the world's shortest short story and it was the following for sale Baby shoes never worn.
- [04:47]
Advertisement Voice
Ah.
- [04:48]
Mike Pesca
Now let's for a second put aside the fact that the Ritz Carlton is launching an ad campaign inspired by a terse tale of infant Mortality. But there's this. Anyone who has ever had a baby has also had at least one pair and possibly many pairs of baby shoes that were never worn. There's no tragedy involved, right? There's no story involved. Right? Now, on ebay, I looked up baby shoes for four year olds. There are 13,147 never worn pair on sale. So then I said, all right, well, what about specifically? Let's think about Hemingway killed himself in Ketchum, Idaho. I went to Craigslist in Idaho. In Boise, never worn baby shoes. Size 5. Tag still on an original price 42, exclamation. It just isn't the sad tragedy that Hemingway imagined. For sale baby shoes only becomes a short story when we ponder it. And when I tell you this is a short story of great import. It's actually a remarkable feat of filling in the blanks of the meaning of a thing, being almost entirely influenced by the context of the thing. Baby shoes never worn is a literary genre with a deep debt to a ubiquitous ebay offering. For sale pillow mint. Never licked. It's so true. If you've had a kid, you just know there are all those baby shoes hanging around. And Hemingway deserves absolutely no credit for any of it. Don't be sad. Don't be sad. Just maybe be sad at all. The excess of how much the environmental cost of all those little tiny baby shoes are also, what a ripoff in terms of price per square inch of shoe. Totally, totally uncalled for. On the show today, I'll bring you our last Antwin Tig, meaning our time together. And now, as that tear comes to your eye and mine, I'm going to call it on this, the P. The last P. And I'm going to lead into what is, of course, the ultimate in poignancy. An ad for a mattress or maybe a quasi bedding site. All right, see you after the break. The nighttime sleep routine. Everyone will give you the lip service about how essential it is. But if your lips are still flapping, you're not sleeping, are you? So what we've done in my house is we've gone with Aliza, Aliza Queen Mattress. And my bed feels something like a sleep sanctuary, not gum flapping, except to say, from night one. With this Leesa mattress, I felt the difference. Premium material that delivers serious comfort and full body support no matter how I sleep. And I sleep like this. It's a artistic rendition. Just take the Leesa sleep quiz and you'll find your perfect match in less than two minutes. Each mattress is designed with specific Sleep positions and feel preferences in mind. It's fantastic. It's American assembled in the usa. It's been awarded the best hybrid of best memory foam mattresses by the New York Times Wirecutter and is featured by West Elm as their go to mattress partner. And now me and the Gist sleeping so beautifully on a Lisa. Go to Lisa.com for 25 off select mattresses. That's the extended Memorial Day sale. 25 off plus an extra $50 off with promo code the Gist exclusive for just listeners. That's L-E-S S A.com promo code the Gist for your 25% off Memorial Day or extended Memorial Day sale and the extra $50 off. Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout. Lisa.com promo code the Gist so I collect, or did collect comic books and I was trying to sell them and it was dispiriting because sometimes I had, in some cases I held on to them for decades or, or I bought them in the late 90s and saw their price go up. But then when I take them to a store, you know, I understand they have rent to pay. I thought they'd pay a quarter of what. Maybe a comic book of such vintage and good condition was listed. But this is not true. This is why whatnot is really helpful. First of all, they're a community and I have just been looking at some of their videos about caviar, the fish videos. You could buy a whole bunch of fish and crab on whatnot, but forget buying. Just wade in and see what they're selling. Whether businesses are big or small or don't even exist, people selling on whatnot sell 10 times more than other major marketplaces because it doesn't really always feel like a marketplace. It feels like a show. And the people who are doing the selling, sometimes there's another, there's another version of this where people talk about all the clothes they got in a storage locker and they'll just go through a bag of clothes. Look at these pants. Look at these shoes. There's a lot of just really off the wall, unexpected joy there across whatnot, the number of sellers making over a million dollars a year has doubled. Search whatnot W H A T N O T in the App Store download and you could start selling right away. Here's something I hate. I mean, I hate having to make a call to customer service. But these days, man, are you inviting on yourself just endless frustration, no one getting back to you. And then on the other side of it, if you do run a business and, and this isn't your strategy because I know a lot of businesses, mine included, want to be responsive to customers. They just know that missed calls or not following up, it's just a killer for businesses. That's how you leave money on the table. That is why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q U O, the business communication system built so you never miss a call. Quo is the number one rated business phone system on G2 with over 3,000 reviews. It's built for how modern teams work and more than 90,000 businesses, from just a guy working alone to really big teams, rely on it to stay connected and professional and consistently reachable. And don't you want that as a point of pride, not just for the business case, but for who you are and how you represent yourself as a business? It works wherever you are, right from your phone or computer, keep your existing number and teammates in minutes, sync your CRM and let the call routing handle itself as you scale. It's so very, very easy. And they give you the voicemails and the transcripts and it's all in one clean view. You don't have to press a million codes to chase it down. Money is on the line. Always say hello with quo. Try quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com gist that's q u o.com/gist. The 2026 primaries are taking shape and you could trade the biggest political races on Calci. On Calshi. You could trade major primaries, election outcomes and the biggest political storylines as they happen. Will Spencer Pratt become the mayor of la? I don't know. Probably not. But that probability has a number. And if the public's assessment of the probability is different from mine, I could have fun with it and not just sit thousands of miles away and say, how's this thing going? I could say, how's this thing going? And I'm making some money off it. Hey, look, I don't want to talk about specific candidates. In the presidential race, there are all these Democratic candidates who are like 2% and if you, quote, invest in them, they go up to 6% chance of winning and you feel great about yourself, right? So from 2 to 6, $100 trade, if you put in $100, I mean, you're getting $300 right there at Kalsheet. And let me tell you one other thing. This is a hedge against disappointment in a way. That's how I use it psychologically. If I see someone who I think is undervalued and just might win. And it wouldn't necessarily please me, you know, making a couple bucks on it on the side is that silver lining that maybe gets me through election day? For a limited time, download the Kalshi app and use code gist to get $10. When you trade 10, you gotta do that. There's no way.
- [13:36]
Advertisement Voice
Why?
- [13:37]
Mike Pesca
Why would you leave $10 on the table? K A L S H I Kalshi trade on anything 18 and over. Only restrictions and eligibility requirements requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Prices, values and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see kalshee.com regulatory it's an Antoine Tig Our name for occurring bad breath not due to illness. No, that's of course simple chronic halitosis. To quote the Lavoris commercial from, I don't know, the early 1980s.
- [14:13]
Advertisement Voice
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- [14:40]
Mike Pesca
It is funny how some phrases get stuck inside your soul. Operation, the Wacky Doctors game from Milton Bradley and also pretty sneaky sis. Gotta be of a generation. But I don't need to tell you if you are what those were in service of. So with that philosophy in mind and how your worms work and how sayings work, I do try to say some familiar things on the show. This is how radio and broadcasting does work and should work. You know certain shows that will tell you that each week, as you know, we choose a theme and develop stories around that theme. So to that end, the Antwin Tig. Our word for 21 days and then we got away from that time. Cadence. More like 21 weeks. But the ant twin tig and the lob Star, these were some go to concepts, some go to precepts that make for good communication. What do I know, right? For years people would say how do you do a successful podcast? I would humor them and pretend I had a successful podcast, but then not tell them the real secret, which is don't waste the listeners time. And here we are in what's going to be a 20 minute Antoine Tig segment. But all these podcasts with the chit chat up Top or any time you hear a host say to the other host, so what else? Then again, what do I know? The so called Hangout podcast has become a champion of the genre. But I also think I'll give you another example of how I as a broadcaster or someone with strong opinions about how not to waste the audience time and how to orient the audience. I was talking about this with my ad partners at AMP and they are great. We haven't always had great ad partners. I love these guys and they're, they're Reggie and Marcus and they're old radio guys. And I was saying you just listen to so many podcasts now.
- [16:31]
Pharmaceutical Advertiser
Boom.
- [16:31]
Mike Pesca
To get simple online access to personalized affordable care for ed, hair loss, weight loss and more. An ad is midsense. You know all these other podcasts, they throw an added here to tell you about the Jordan Harbinger show, which is a show by a guy I like, a show I enjoy, and I could give you all the attributes of the show. All right, I'm not going to do that to you. These are the most popular podcasts. They don't even have what's called ad markers. Me, I will say we'll be back in a moment and then I'll even. Here's a little peek behind the curtain. I'll rerecord the sentence that I asked, the question that I asked in the original broadcast interview. I just think this is what we owe the listener. But it takes time, it takes energy. Maybe it takes away from all that other stuff that the Hangout podcasts have cracked the code, they've cracked. I've loosened some of these ideas or ideals. You know, I worked at NPR for a long time and they're every clip had to come in seamlessly. But now you listen to very popular shows or watch them and Megyn Kelly or Ben Shapiro, not just right wing guys. I think they do this on Pod Save America. They'll say, they'll say right into Mike, throw to SOT4 and they throw to SAT for and no one's the worse off for it. So what I'm saying is we should all be flexible, change with the times. But have you noticed the times have all been trending towards less and less formality and less and less great production. I wonder if it even matters. I do firmly believe that regular segments, recurring segments, knowing what you get with a show is very important. And that's why I always had certain recurring segments with the gist. I know you weren't going to get, say, ideological consistency, right? Ben and Megan, those are the people you turn to if you need some hell raising and telling us why the libs are all wrong.
- [18:23]
Advertisement Voice
And.
- [18:23]
Mike Pesca
And we could name the other shows from the left. I think I just did Pod Save or the entire Midas touch. That's my go to tell me how Trump's an idiot today, but not me. I'll confuse you on that score, but you know what I'll give you? I'll give you. Is that bullshit first with Maria Kanakova and then these last few years with Sadie Dingfelder. Thanks to both of you extremely bright women so much. And we had fun with a lot of our segments. We may have gotten away with them, but when we talked about bears and did bear News.
- [18:56]
Advertisement Voice
Bear.
- [18:56]
Mike Pesca
The bear Bear news, there was a jingle or vexillology corner I forgot, but was reminded we had a jingle for a while there too.
- [19:07]
Pharmaceutical Advertiser
It's time for some vexaliciousness.
- [19:11]
Mike Pesca
Vexaliciousness with Mike and Ted. Here's Ted. All right, Ted, thanks for joining me. That was my original producer, Andrea, always a performer, born performer, and she had a hard job. It is hard for a single producer of this show who Corey Wara knows this very well. Listen to the credits of any other daily show. Listen to the daily. Which is you might not know this, a daily Show. And the credits seem to essentially be listing the new Haven phone book. There are many people working on the show. I know them. It's also very unfair because they're very, very good. They're not bad people. They're all very good people, but so many of them. Others absolutely instrumental to the gist over the years as a couple of my greatest producers and some really good executives who oversaw Pierre Biennome, Mary Wilson, great producers. I'm gonna thank Joel Patterson, so important in helping me launch season two. Being with the show for many, many years. Another Joel who was an executive, Joel Meyer. I used to make the joke about urinating and rubbing himself on trees. He took it well. He took it in stride. Actually had many, many fine qualities beyond taking a joke. But, you know, taking a joke, very important in this world. Andy Bowers was the executive who brought me over to Slate and said, we're gonna give you a. And he said, yes. And I said, I don't want to do it. He said, I think you can do it. I said, I know I can do it. I like my job with npr. But then Andy convinced me and it was great. He was great there for a while. Thank you to David Plotz, the first editor of Slate. Who, along with Jacob Weisberg, hired me and then Julia Turner took over. Another great editor, another great boss. Her show, the Culture Gabfest, also just ended. Sad end of an era type stuff. And so this is why. This is one of the reasons, I guess this is all appropriate for an Antwin Tig, which is a listener segment. And I mixed feelings about airing them. Maybe you could glean if you're a dedicated listener and said, wait a minute, it has been much more than 21 days since this 21 day period because I know the listeners love them and that connection with community is really important and it's really important to build that. But I always. And maybe you're getting from some of the considerations I've been letting you in on. How much to do recurring segments, how much to be casual, how much to invest in production time, how much to not waste the listeners time versus be a less formal show. These are all pretty well considered. I don't know. We always got it right. But the Antoine Tig and how much to service the most dedicated listeners, of whom I assume you are, was a question. Because if the trend is for subscribers, that's what you do. You do it over and over and over again. However, a subscriber only model or a primary subscriber model has its downsides. And for a period there was a lot of broadcasting that didn't realize this. But when you have subscribers only, there is audience capture and you have to guard against that. But the audience drags you and I think perpetuates whatever tendencies are going on in the first place. So whatever you do, you do more of that to service the audience. And I was always mindful of what I want to very much appeal to the people who listen and love it, but I have to appeal to the people who might not even know it exists to give them a way in to make it seem like not everything's an inside joke or inside reference or we're doing things because of the one or two or three thousand most dedicated listeners. And it's good to have advertisers, right? It's good to have a broad base. Also, practically a daily show, it's harder to do subscriptions with because the best way to do subscriptions is to withhold some content. So as you know, with just plus listeners, I gave extra content, but you're already getting maybe an average of 38 minutes five days a week. And then the Saturday show, do you need that extra content? So a better way to do it would be to do a show two days a week and then you do a paywall show. But I don't want to do that. And I did have the advertisers to fall back on. Advertisers. We all know the downsides of how advertisers can. I think there is a perception that they can skew content. Yes, maybe. I think it often works more subtly than that. Look, when I was with npr, we of course didn't air ads, although we kind of did. We. We aired a lot of those underwriting credits. But underwriting credits certainly never shaped coverage. But. But what happened was we'd get grants. We'd get grants from charitable organizations, nonprofits, and that absolutely shaped coverage. So if the science desk got a grant for sustainability coverage, damn it, we were doing a lot of sustainability coverage. Do people even still use the words or think of the concept of sustainability? Is it because of pessimism that we've scrapped sustainability or because we nailed it? It's one or the other. It's because either we totally failed or it works so well that we don't talk about it. This is basically how progress works or how fail works. With subscribers. You have a base you don't have to chase, you have to satisfy what they want. But you're talking to the audience you have and maybe closing out the possibility you'll get new audience with advertisers. Those are some high level observations. I talk about our recurring segments. I talked about my philosophy of having regular recurring phrases segments. Go to's. Of course, the constant go to was the interview. And I used to think about that sometimes, like Letterman used to talk about Paul Schaefer, that no matter what happens, the world's most dangerous band would be there to consistently give a great performance that, you know, I'm not patting myself on the back with interviews, but they were consistent. They were a go to if I was off on the spiel or was either not nailing my points or making points you hated. I thought, I'm proud of myself. On a consistency in the interviews, Greg Saban writes in and said, your interviews were always pointed. Your attempts at comedy were largely successful. I largely. Thank you, Greg. William Sidney writes in and says, I want to paraphrase Virginia Woolf, go right ahead. To the lighthouse we go. What Mike Pesca thinks about it appears to us of extreme interest because he thinks for himself and fate contrived that the men of his generation should have few opportunities to do so. I don't know if that's true, but damn it, if someone's going to write in the voice of Virginia Woolf About Me I'm going to let them this was Sidney as well. But the thing I will miss most is your interviews. You clearly do your homework on the subject and your guests have no idea you find the time to read so much and listen to podcasts and watch sports and be a father and husband. Well, it's the fathering. I've just, I've just outsourced that to local, local vagabonds. They raise the children and we hope for the best. He writes your interviews about by far the most thoughtful and in depth that I know of. You always show respect to your guests but are not afraid to hold their feet to the fire or make the interview a little uncomfortable. And I've always appreciated that. Yes, yes. If you have been listening, you do. If you heard a couple and you don't like them, you probably don't. But that's I interview as an interviewer what I'd want to hear as a listener and not a hard time for no reason, but ask the hardest questions that the guest can get, challenge them the most and then when they rise to the challenge, everyone's better off for it. I get a little bit of credit. They prove their point. You get educated. But you know what? Let me give you a half a twin tig an elven twig that doesn't make sense. I would be 11 and 21 or at least let me show you my commitment to having some of this show be advertising based. Back after this. One thing I love about summer is how easily everything feels when it's not burning. If you get a good summer day, maybe in the low 80s and you're feeling relaxed and the days are more relaxed, then you want some comfortable thing to wear or go anything piece that is relaxed. And that's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on well made essentials that are naturally like an everyday staple that you live in all season long and everything. Quince is priced 80% less than similar brands directly with ethical factories. I love their T shirts as well. The quince piece that's changed how I get dressed this summer is linen shorts. Never thought I was a linen short guy, but as I wear quince I don't think about the ethical factories. I don't think about cutting out the middleman. I think about how good they feel, how good they look. It's not just clothing. Quince has become a trusted favorite for everything from home to travel to everyday essentials. Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quints.com the gist for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N c e.com the gist for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com the gist.
- [28:31]
Oregon Lottery Announcer
Choose to lean into it Every Mazda
- [28:35]
Mike Pesca
is engineered to give you effortless control.
- [28:40]
Pharmaceutical Advertiser
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- [29:45]
Mike Pesca
we're back with the Antoine Tig of the Last Gist. Howard Letterer writes, I must have purchased and read 30 books because of your show. I thank you for that. I'm better for them. By the way, I'd say my favorite book from the list is Wagner. Such an amazing read. I've been thinking of all the things I wouldn't know about the Gist says Kevin August. Don Winslow, Leon Neefak blocked and reported the Fifth Column. Maria Konnikova that book I'm reading now about how to get rich in American history. Yes. Joseph Moore. Great, great writer. Great book. You didn't know Don Winslow. That guy's everywhere. That guy's popping off everywhere Barack is. V Writes Love listening to the gist over the years and glad I was there when philosop got the Antoine Tig for inspiring you to coin the show's motto. Right. The Portuguese speaker philosophy Pop. And then Barack writes, I laughed when you were singing your version of 99 Luft Balloons about the Koreas. Totally forgot that I did that. Vaguely remember remembered singing something about the loft balloons that I related to the careers. Went back, found it. We're gonna play it. Not now, a couple weeks. But you know what I Do give the lob star of the Antoine Tig for the best listener person who wrote in and I was gonna do a global thing. It's all you. It was in us all the time. Or giving it to my wife. I do. Don't worry. She's. She's got lobsters. I'm just gonna give it to Barack's V. Thanks, man. Thanks for reminding me of something I forgot that you loved about the gist. And by the way, we will be doing more shows. We will be playing old segments, we will be playing new segments without me up top. But if you remember some great ones, funny ones, weird ones from the past, write in the gist@mike pesca.com so I do want to address this question about reading the book. I was taught early on in my career as a producer working with hosts that you don't have to read every page of every book. But here was the phrase that J.J. sutherland taught me. Your eyes should fall on every page. And it's good because when they do, for some reason a word will jump out and then you read it all. Now sometimes I love this book about Christianity and the careers, but man, it was 600, 700 pages. Sometimes you get a big doorstop and you just hope it's mostly index and footnotes. So that 800 page book is 600 pages. But it was worth it. And that was a great interview. Always felt is what I had to do as an interview. It's one of the reasons. Look, it's not the reason or even close to a reason that the gist is going away with Mike Pesca as the host, but it's a lot. And I could do it without reading the books, but I don't want to do it without reading the books. I think it would be a lesser show, although, as I was saying, with all these ads that show up out of nowhere and maybe we queue the mattress ad once again. Like what is a lesser show in the eyes of the modern audience? I don't care about the modern audience. I care about you people, you geriatric old fools. Hey, who else reads the book out there? Marc Maron used to read the book, do the work. Tyler Cowen. Ever listen to conversations with Tyler? That guy is so well read to start off, but then he reads everything the guest has written. Ezra will do that. Ezra Klein. He'll go ahead and read the source material. Coleman, use another one. Reads the book Ben Graeber writes in. Please help us and point us to others who might help us fill the void. This was the Most common question request I got of the I think it's now hundreds of emails that I received. So yeah, sure. Everyone I just mentioned Marin's not on the air. Listen to Tyler show. I don't have to tell you about Ezra. Derek Thompson does a good show. Coleman does a very good show. Of the celebrity interviewers, I think Julia Louis Dreyfus is the best. She's the most earnest. And Dax Shepard is a good interview. That is a good, fun show. But why do I need to compliment or praise celebrity interviewers? Who else do I listen to now? I'll tell you who I listen to. I listen to Matt Glaciers. His show Politics with an Ex. I definitely listen to Yasha Monk show specifically. You should listen to the Good Fight. That's a show. The Good Fight Club. It's a panel discussion he has geniuses on. Well, it's not because I was on there twice. He has real geniuses on the Fifth Column. Those guys are friends of mine, interrogating guests in the news from somewhat libertarian, but kind of heterodox and funny perspective. Sam Harris is a genius. You know, it's like the news. Sam Harris from David Frums doing a great job of the daily shows, Daily is quality. The Journal is the best daily show. I think if it's just a money show, you want. Unhedged by ft. Another great politics and culture interviewer is Nick Gillespie, GD Politics. Galen Druke is doing a very good job sort of getting the old band back together. What FiveThirtyEight politics podcast used to be a substack with audio is. I might be wrong. I've plugged that a lot. I might not be wrong. I listen to a lot of city specific shows. For Chicago, it's the Mincing Rascals. For my city, it's FAQ nyc. Bradley Tusk, friend of mine, also has a really good show called Firewall. The Texas take is good for Texas Takes Law. Advisory opinion is the go to. Those guys are pretty conservative. David French less so these days. Then I check in with lawfare and if Lawfare, which is a broader spectrum of intellectual and ideological opinion, if they agree with advisory opinion, you know, you're onto something. Other really good shows, I'll tell you two that are over the air now. I was on NPR for over 10 years and then I was untimely ripped, as they said in Macbeth about. Yes, about Macbeth because he was not a woman born. It was untimely ripped. I was never invited on NPR again. The network, no show. I tried. I asked. There were some talks for some of their shows. But no, I was never on NPR again. But that doesn't mean I was never on public radio again. Jeremy Hobson has this really good show called the Middle. We played one on Saturday. Listen to it when I'm not on the show. And the best broadcaster over the air is Colin McEnroe. The Colin McEnroe show out of Hartford, WNPR. His Friday shows called the Nose are great on culture and he'll just take a topic and run with it. Couldn't recommend Colin show more highly. What else have I given you besides the interviews and the books and all the eyes falling on all the pages? I've said some things I regret.
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Mike Pesca
We used to do. I was wrong week not doing that here. Let me tell you a couple of things I was right about and you could thank me. One, I was right. My perspective on global warming, which is that it's totally serious and there are still some things we could do. But also don't get so freaked out. You don't do anything. And don't get so freaked out that you take the worst of the projections. I think all that is turning out to be true. Look at all the people who make the projections. Look at the UN look at the Gates foundation. And they're pulling back from the most dire projections, warnings, verbiage. This is the way to approach an unbelievably real threat. Little thing, I was right about mmt. All I ever did was mock modern monetary theory. If you're saying what. Yes, because it's been discredited. Except among the people for whom it will never be discredited. You know, it's like every Republican tax proposals claim that it will pay for itself. This is how MMT works on the left. And back to the environmental thing. Those dumb paper straws were just stupid. We have better straw technology now. And you could assail me for getting the little details wrong and prattling on about this, but it's hard. It's hard to be so damn right. You know, with the pennies we could have gone either way. I turned out to be on the right side of the history. Maybe it's because Donald Trump wished it into being. Our lives aren't that much better. But the straws. Remember the era of the bad paper straws. We're going to memory hole that, aren't we? We're all going to say oh yeah, I hated the paper straws. When that guy was probably one of those guys were like I use a canvas bag and I drink from a Paper straw. And it's fine. You just got to beat the iced coffee until the thing melts in the drink. Also, by the way, housing more right on that than wrong. It's all the supply side constraints that are really causing most of the housing problems. Let me tell you another thing. Inflation's a problem. Remember when they thought it wasn't, it was. And keep into account all the people who said inflation is not going to be a problem because they were wrong. Remember the people who were wrong. Sometimes you don't get your way if you're Bernie Sanders and say, I'm not going to put my name on the bill, on the infrastructure bill, because it's not a $3.5 trillion bill would have been have been terrible if Bernie got his way and everyone voted for it was wrong. And everyone who voted against the good bill because they wanted that $3.5 trillion bill was wrong. And if they got their way, it would have sucked for all of us. By the way, everyone who voted against the infrastructure bill, kids are thinking, I'm just picking on the left. It was all the Republicans. Someone could have voted for the infrastructure bill. I don't expect it to be Chip Roy, but a couple Republicans, you know, regrets. I did, like a couple other people, get the 2016 presidential election wrong. But you know, it really taught me that as far as predicting and prophecy, you could do whatever you can to put it in perspective. If you're a communicator, people will just hear the top line. So I had the Trump anxiety hotline. Remember that feature was fun while we did it. And I would say things like, look, he only has a 25% chance of winning, but he won. And so I was wrong. I was wrong to communicate in a way where years later people still said, oh yeah, and you told me Trump wasn't going to win. The odd thing about our politics is that the people these days, some of the least tuned in people, will, I believe, be its deliverance, the political system's deliverance. People will continue to say, oh, politics, politics. I could barely bring myself to care or to stomach politicians or to vote. You know what? That's understandable, that's logical. That's in fact self protective. And these normal, sensible, but not terribly plugged in Americans who I once thought were a bit dangerous for their lack of investment in democracy and politics, I realize now are valuable for their un poisoned normalcy. It's an odd place we're in. I have this idea that politics as a story or as entertainment or as a hobby will get more and more tawdry, and we'll turn more and more people off and we'll get more and more extreme. But politics as actual things done by government, and not the government, which usually means Washington, but governments around the country, state, local. I think we'll be trending for the better. When people will say, oh, politics, you'll get the ugg. But actually, lives will improve because of government intervention. You know, people will begin to treat politics like they treat the Bravo network. Remember when Bravo started, they actually played opera and the lively arts. I don't know if we needed that. It seems nice. Now. What do they play? Women screaming and pulling their hair is overseen by Andy Cohen, who's best pals with Anderson Cooper, who somehow is in charge of our normal political coverage. Okay, maybe better analogy Family Matters. How at the end, it just became Urkel. Politics has just become Urkel at the best. Last thing I want to talk about podcasts, this medium. I wrote an op ed in the Washington Post praising politics as a place to bring people together and to have those normally hot discussions and to have a lot of comedy. That's true comedy. C O M I T. Yeah, that still goes on. And I still believe in podcasts. I am going to be in a position to take podcasts to a good place. Podcasts, not this one. In the upcoming days, on the gist, I won't be there won't be my voice up top. But we will play some of the best interviews and segments that we've done ever. And we have many more, you know, half dozen to a dozen unaired segments. And we'll be playing them to recent stuff. Other trustee guides will orient you in what you know now to be the P. Yes, all my secrets are out. So I did a spiel on the show, maybe in the first year, and the thesis was podcasts are radio. There was a confusion or a resistance to podcasts. Oh, what is this? And I was saying it's radio. If it's audio, it doesn't matter if you flick it on, if you click it on, if it comes on when you turn on the car, or if you have to press two buttons on what was then an iPad, it's radio. Now, looking back, we have to hope that it's more than radio, because radio is going the way of Morse code. But I still think there's something kind of magical, glorious, or just practical about people wanting to listen without looking. People who want to talk without being seen for an audience who wants to listen without looking, they can look somewhere else. They can just close their eyes. They can concentrate on the words. Or maybe you're not even concentrating too much. Maybe you're falling asleep. Maybe you're not even listening, you're just hearing. I was talking to an old friend, a mentor, you could call him. Yesterday, we reunited. It was very good. We had not spoken for a while and we were reminiscing about radio and audio and how nice it was to think that there is still a market for it. I think that there's more than a market for it. I think that there is a human need for that sound. That sound that I've been trying to provide you for however much of these last 12 years and two months that I've been speaking into a microphone and you have been there with your ears as my audience. And I can't thank you enough for all of that. So for the last time, I will say the Gist was produced by Cory Wara. Thank you to Kathleen Sykes. Thank you to Jeff Craig. And I can't thank enough the person who. Let's face this, there would be no Gist Season two without our CEO Foto O and now chief puppy trainer, Michelle Pasca. OOM Peru. G Peru. Do Peru. And thanks for a dozen years plus of listening.