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- [00:00]
Unknown Speaker 1
Foreign.
- [00:04]
Mike Pesca
It's Friday, Aug. 1, 2025, from Peach Fish Productions. It's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesk. A big find from the scientific slash horticultural world. A Chinese researcher discovered that the potato originated some 9 million years ago from a natural cross in South America between a tomato plant and a tuberosum, a plant similar in appearance to the potato, which led to the revelation and headline, the potato is the daughter of the tomato. You're not going out of this house unpeeled, missy. All eyes will be on you. I hate you. You're just bitter. You haven't been ripe since you were my age. Don't you get starchy with me, young lady. And then Mama Tomato turns to Papa Tomato and he says, I don't like it. Her hanging out all hours of the night under those heat lamps getting, who knows, fried. She's not the tot we knew and loved, and she's falling behind in her studies. Don't worry, dear, she'll catch up. That's what I'm afraid of. Classic comedy. And it's all free for you here on the Gist. And also on the Gist list, we get into more of it. Mike pasco.substack.com Did I plagiarize from Quentin Tarantino? Yeah, a little bit. It's okay. It's good stuff. The guy knows how to write. You know who else knows how to write? Questionably, the late night shows. You know, if the late night shows were doing the bit, I was thinking, how would they do it? Would they make these puns, these jokes? What they'd probably do is a riff on the daughter thing, and they'd cut to a mocked up photo of a tomato looking like Trump, which isn't that hard, and a potato looking like Ivanka sitting on his knee in that infamous photo. And then Seth or Jimmy or Jimmy or the other Jimmy, one of the hosts of the Daily show must be named Jimmy. Would do a Trump impersonation and say something like, look at this fingerling. So croquetish. You know, if she were a little bit older, I'd date her. And it would get a laugh because it always gets a laugh. But, you know, I've been watching the late night shows because people said, mike, what do you think? What do you think of Colbert getting canceled? And I'm a little sad. I used to love Colbert. Don't watch that much anymore. Why? I would say it's predictable and it's preaching to the choir. Sometimes it gets there. If you're a member of the Choir, there's a great joy to being preached to, but in general, the. The word I would describe for most late night shows is inessential. Now, I have two one and a half exceptions. Jon Stewart, I love and Seth Meyers are just really, really good. His closer look is well done. We had Sal Gentili on the show. He was the writer, and he was tweeting about a closer look. And I said, oh, yeah, let me catch up again and again. The execution is very good. But I watch both of these shows on the same day. It was Monday. It was the day after that Trump birthday letter to Epstein was revealed, which the Wall Street Journal called body. And that word bawdy was a word Myers picked up on.
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Unknown Speaker 2
He did him such a favor saying it was bawdy like he's some fancy count with a powdered wig and a dirty mind. Jeffrey, do pray tell, have you received my birthday letter with its lascivious poem?
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Mike Pesca
And same night, also a word Stewart picked up on.
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Unknown Speaker 1
My God, a bawdy doodle. At long last, sir. Have you no decency? What are we doing the news in Victorian England now? This scallywag sent me a ribald daguerreotype. My God. Alert the constable.
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Mike Pesca
Stewart also noticed in all the coverage, 12 word phrase pronounced oddly by Wolf Blitzer below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.
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Unknown Speaker 1
Pubic hair. Oh, my God, you broke Blitzer. Pubic hair. By the way, not to be, you know, the grammar police, but pubic hair. Pubic hair. That's the way that inflection. Pubic hair. Pubic hair.
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Mike Pesca
What's the deal with all the curls and Meyers noticed?
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Unknown Speaker 2
Well, and in case anyone was wondering, no, I did not want to hear Wolf Blitzer say the words pubic hair. And why Wolf? Why did you raise your voice when you said the words pubic hair? Do you think it was extra important? We hear that, but you sound like my gym teacher subbing in for health class. All right, everybody, listen up. For the exam, you're gonna have to remember the three main regions of the female anatomy. The ovaries, the uterus, and the. What's it called? The pubic hair.
- [04:42]
Mike Pesca
Both were well executed. They deserve the laughs they got. And it is parallel thinking. It's not plagiarism. Pubic hair leads itself to comedy. Cut to Clarence Thomas saying and intimacy. Now, I got to tell you, this wasn't a deep research project. I didn't go through many, many nights and found the parallels. I just watched one night of comedy. Well, maybe two, including another clip. I'M going to play. And the overlap was astounding. So the explanations for the Colbert cancellation have pretty much been two things. Cost and content. That Colbert was somehow being censored. I don't think that is true. I think cost is true. Here, take it this way. More than a million people watch the clips I played to you when they were on YouTube. Seth Meyers shows after a week get over 2 million views, which is more than his show on TV gets. However, one viewer on YouTube is worth something like a twentieth of a viewer on TV in terms of advertising. And you can't sustain those costs with just popular YouTube channels. I also do think, and here was another critique, that the late night shows all have the same worldview and therefore they are all trying to appeal to the same audience. That is definitely true. The critique from the right is usually that leftism isn't funny. I think the real critique is that they're all rushing toward the same joke, anticipating the same audience mindset. It's the enemy of surprise. And it's also enemy a very, very crowded niche. Here was how the non Jon Stewart hosted Daily show, which is say every day except Monday. And the night I was watching was hosted by Desi Lydic. How she handled that Sydney Sweeney ad that some on the online left were calling racist.
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Desi Lydic
Anyway, but then there was another reaction online which is that the ad wasn't just selling jeans, it was also subtly promoting white supremacy. And as you can imagine, that spawned an incredible right wing backlash.
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Mike Pesca
What these left wingers don't know is.
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Unknown Speaker 2
That they are revealing themselves to be.
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Mike Pesca
The actual racist here. Racist against white people. They're mad because she's young, hot, healthy, white and blonde.
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Desi Lydic
Liberals just. They just hate hot people. They just do.
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Mike Pesca
Yeah, that's a great point.
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Desi Lydic
It's a great point. It's a great point. I thought they just hated meat and freedom, but they also hate hot people. They do.
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Mike Pesca
And off she went with her comic premise, mocking only the right wing reaction to the left wing reaction. There were no jokes made about the premise that maybe it's a little wacky to claim a jeans ad is eugenic. And it is true there were jokes to be made about the right wing reaction, including the old standby of mocking a Fox host. In this case, creepy old man Stuart Varney. Why do you think people are so mad about that ad? It seems much less sensual than the one Brooke Shields did back in the 1980s.
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Desi Lydic
Sensual. Brooke Shields. That was sensual.
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Mike Pesca
But these were the only jokes the Daily show made in a 10 minute segment is this just how the writers naturally see the world? Is this just what kind of jokes they, the audience wants according to research? I don't know. I don't know either of those two things. I do know they close themselves off to the comic possibility of anything that might have been a bit risible about the critique of the jeans ad as eugenic. You're leaving half the comedy on the vine and that's a tomato callback. But this leads me to my big prediction about late night. It's Mike's big prediction. I don't, I don't have a big prediction, I don't have a sounder, but I do have this insight. Conventional wisdom is that they're all going away, they all cost too much. And then if you believe the right center, right, whatever, they're all unfunny because they're all of the left. But I think once they act, Seth, and once they ax maybe one of the Jimmies, two of the Jimmy's, once they ax Colbert, there'll be one or two men left standing. And in that case it's not everyone going after the same pie, it's just one or maybe two people going after the same pie. And at that point a late night show or two could be viable. There is an opportunity for one or maybe two lean late night shows to keep on keeping on in the world of the lewd and the lascivious and the somewhat predictable but also somewhat satisfying Trump joke on the show today. Oh, I'm not going to let the Sydney Sweeney thing pass. That'll be in the spiel. It's a lot about genes in this spiel. But first, the nih, like seemingly all institutions, is under fire. Leading it today is a critic of the nih, J. Bhattacharya. And also in place until a couple of days ago was another critic leading One of the FDA's main agencies, Vinny Prasad. He was outspoken about what he described as the NIH's tepid methods. But then he got crosswise with influential loon Laura Loomer and Prasad's been removed. The nih, like other giant organizations, is certainly flawed and could use reform. It's also something of a health granting miracle that has saved and improved millions and millions of lives. Joining me next is Elias Zerhouni, who is appointed director of the NIH in 2002 by George W. Bush, served through the Obama administration and is out with a new book, Disease knows no politics about his history and his experience with the NIH. Elias Zerhouni up next, Dr. Elias Zerhouni was the 15th director of the NIH. He is out with a new book, a memoir about his fascinating life story. Disease Knows no Politics. Hello, welcome to the gist.
- [10:54]
Elias Zerhouni
Thank you for having me.
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Mike Pesca
So at the risk of robbing my listeners of really an amazing life story and talking about growing up in war torn Algeria and the Pied noirs, which I didn't know about, not going to get into that in this interview, but it's well written, it's captivating and I recommend it. I know from reading the book that you share this critique that the the NIH or just public health in America hasn't always done a good enough job of telling its story, of emphasizing how the benefits far outweigh the costs, while still acknowledging the costs. Maybe part of not doing the storytelling well is to downplay the failures over the years, sometimes very glaring failures when people are paying attention during COVID So if I said, hey, pitch me on what the nih, what public health, what kind of miracles has it been able to deliver such that we shouldn't have a fundamental tear down, what sort of things would you point to?
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Elias Zerhouni
Well, first of all, there is a truth to saying that there is a disconnect between what NIH does and how health care is evolving because the two are not the same. You know, we provide the knowledge and 99% of all the drugs that are used in the world are coming from NIH research. I mean, everybody knows that. The problem that we have is there is a disconnect in society between the public and science. I mean, if you went back to the Sputnik era, there was a huge support for science and technology. Not so anymore. There is a distrust that has come up and NIH has not responded in a coordinated way to really explain to people what happens. The people who listen to the NIH are the patient groups, the ones who suffer. But the general population does not really connect with the elite expertise and so on and so forth and now is aggravated by the COVID pandemic. So I think we are in the face. You're putting your finger on the very important aspect. If you can't explain to the public what you're doing and why is it helpful, then why would the public fund you through taxpayer dollars? That's really what this government is saying right now. Let's cut it and we can do better with less, which is really delusional in my view. We can't, and we certainly cannot compete and keep our number one position in the world by doing that. Yeah.
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Mike Pesca
And it's a 40% cut that is on the table. Rhetorically. Yeah. What would be the consequences of that, would you say?
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Elias Zerhouni
I tell you. I'll tell you what, I'll share a secret with you. I always tell people, look, don't look at budgets. Look at what the budgets are buying. Right. What is it that we're buying, really, with the federal budget? We're buying knowledge. But more important than buying knowledge, we're convincing hundreds of thousands of scientists, bright people, young people, to dedicate their lives to finding solutions to the health problems of the American public. When you cut, I can tell you the number. Every $1 billion of cuts for the NIH reduces the number of scientists we can support who can dedicate their lives to our research by 7,500. That's what NIH supports around the universities, which are under attack as well, and around the country. And this research is what feeds the biotechnology industry and the economy of health care. It's always, always what I tell people. Progress comes from brains, from people who are willing to spend their lives giving their lives to find out, discover what we do not know today. That is the key. 40% will remove about 100,000 people, if not more, from the roles of the army of people who want to fight the fight about healthcare.
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Mike Pesca
Yeah, I think you need another Rubric after the 7,500 scientists for the billion people. So how many lives will be saved by 7,500 scientists? Or improved? I don't know if there's a clean number, but an approximation of that, where you link it to the regular person's life, so that a billion equals this many scientists and equals this degradation of American life.
- [15:28]
Elias Zerhouni
Right. So Congress always asks me that question. I mean, it's amazing you're putting your finger on the real things, because they used to tell me exactly that. They say, you're talking about saving lives. How many are you saving, really? For what? Investment? So I showed statistics that if you looked at cardiovascular research at the time, people were dying, about 1.5 million people died every year in 1975. And then we discovered that high blood pressure is not good for you. Cholesterol is not good for you. And then we discover statins, we discover medication against high blood pressure. What was the result? The result was, instead of a million people dying in 1975, today we have 500,000. So imagine if nothing had been done. You'd be seeing 2, 3 million deaths a year.
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Mike Pesca
Yeah. By the way, the population's increased significantly.
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Elias Zerhouni
Exactly. And what was the cost of it? The cost of it I showed was about four to five dollars per American per year. So for four or five dollars per American per year, we saved about a million lives a year. Yeah, right. And that's why the life expectancy improved.
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Mike Pesca
Yeah. Another story that's not told. I get both inspired and depressed at cancer cure rates. I mean, cancer still exists as so bad that it's an analogy for horror. You know, in sports, a player could be a cancer in the clubhouse. But, you know, compared to 1975, when Reggie Jackson was called a cancer in the clubhouse, that might have been in cur. Now, so many forms of cancer have such great survival rates. I don't think that people know that if they have cancer, if they have one of those cancers, they might be told, you know, you'd be a dead man 40 years ago. But as walking around and knowing it and living it, it's just a point of ignorance. I don't know what could be done about that.
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Elias Zerhouni
Well, what can be done is that people are experiencing it and people are surviving. So you have more and more patient advocates for cancer research than you do for anything else, because the number of people who have survived cancer that would not have survived cancer before increased by 50, 60%. So people don't realize that although our healthcare system may not be the best overall in cancer care, we beat every other country in terms of cancer statistics.
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Mike Pesca
Yep. And Amir from a foreign land gets cancer, and where does he come here? And it's not just cancer. It's pulmonary, and it's so many diseases. They. First they go to Johns Hopkins, and then they go everywhere.
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Elias Zerhouni
We're good at very acute, very, very bad diseases. Where we're not so good is on chronic diseases.
- [18:09]
Mike Pesca
Right. And I want to get these. I want to get to that, because that is one of the big critiques, and a valid critique of whatever you want to call it, the Maha movement or it's informing the people who are staffing the administration, people like Jay Bhattacharya and. And the new surgeon general designee and Robert F. Kennedy. They talk about how poorly we do with chronic diseases. And that is true, and that is valid. But. Well, you talk about this. What's the big but?
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Elias Zerhouni
Well, first of all, let me say that I agree with the fact that we have a problem in nutrition, and we try to create a nutrition institute at the nih, but it was turned down because there's many, many agricultural interests, other interests, food company interests that do not want good science there to tell them what to do. The second is obviously the food supply and the food supply has been distorted over the years, especially by subsidies. So, for example, we subsidize corn syrup, and Americans consume an enormous amount of sugar, from about 20 pounds in 1920 to about 2, 300 pounds today. And then chronic diseases with their impact and their effect. I mean, look, if you just corrected obesity and diabetes, you would improve life expectancy significantly. All right? So those things are real problems. I think the people in charge now are addressing a real issue. It's going to be difficult. It's not as easy as a slogan or two, but it's going to require work, which is not just nih. It has to be the total system.
- [19:53]
Mike Pesca
If there was a way to get real momentum behind addressing chronic diseases in the food supply, why did it take RFK Jr and those of his ilk to do it? If a reasonable person such as yourself and your successors.
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Elias Zerhouni
Yeah, I mean, you tend to ignore the success of your predecessors and actually belittle your predecessors. So you look bigger, you look better. But that's not. That's not what happened. We were all concerned. I mean, we put out a plan, a plan for obesity years ago. We want. We warned about the drug epidemic. In 2006, I had a letter to Congress and to the Surgeon General saying there's an epidemic starting. So to say that we were completely, you know, out of the field is not true. I mean, if you look at the progress in diabetes, the GLP1s came from NIH research. I mean, the thing that you're talking about today, that. Oh, really, miracle drugs, well, they didn't come out of thin air. So to say that nothing existed. And now I'm here, you know, the great Superman going to save the world. It's just a political thing. Again, disease knows no politics. Don't play politics with disease.
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Mike Pesca
I think it has something to do with our information systems that the salience of the issue somehow is tied to maybe RFK juniors and those like him, maybe his de emphasis or the appealing radical notions that he have disproved notions about other parts of science. And without. Without one, you don't get the other. You know, it's frustrating, but I think it has more to do with the appeal of or human intellect or how we pay attention to the rebellious shocking statement as opposed to a statement of steady progress by some of the top, most respected people in the field.
- [21:51]
Elias Zerhouni
You know what they say? They told me when I was in Washington, they said, elias, what's worse than a controversy? No, controversy is a lot worse. So we thrive on controversy, we thrive on conflict. And confrontation. And the society has changed this way because fundamentally our education system has not followed the emergence of the new technologies as well as it should have. And so now you have always this sort of streak to say, well, I don't understand what these people are doing, but I don't trust them. And so we have a failure of basic education as well.
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Mike Pesca
I think that's. I won't gainsay that, but I think we're narrative creatures, and there's something about the narrative appeal of what RFK Jr. Is selling that has purchased. Obviously, I don't know if overall it beats what Elias Erhani is selling, but at least to some very impassioned portion of the public, it does.
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Elias Zerhouni
It does. And I hope that he would have the same power of convincing the country and its systems to address at least the nutritional imbalances and maybe some of the chronic diseases. That would be fantastic. That would erase all of the negatives. You can think about him.
- [23:09]
Mike Pesca
So tell me about. You are the 15th now the 18th head of the NIH. Jay Bhattacharya. I've done a lot of. I've never met him, but I've watched hours of panels that he's led, and I've read a lot about him, and I think he has a lot of valid critiques of the system. Do you know him on a personal level? Have you ever met him?
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Elias Zerhouni
Not really, no. He called me and we talked, but I don't really know him. The one thing I can say is that, fine, critique is always something people should listen to, but now it's time to say, okay, where do we go? Let's build forward. I think that's the effort. I think that I hope he's going to and he's his undertaking, you know, I can tell you, I mean, he's not someone who doesn't want to leave a positive legacy. He's not here just to cut budgets. It's imposed on him in many ways, makes his job more difficult. So I empathize with the issues that he has to deal with. But I think, I hope he will take the bully pulpit and the power of this position for influencing.
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Unknown Speaker 1
A new.
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Elias Zerhouni
Direction, maybe and a better direction. That's fine. The jury is out. But I think we need to stop looking in the rearview mirror and criticizing the past to justify where you are today. Let's see what you will do.
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Mike Pesca
What has he said? Not his association, but what has he said that worries you?
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Elias Zerhouni
I think the resentment of past issues that he had with Tony Fauci and the NIH and the characterization of disagreement as basically a campaign and.
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Mike Pesca
Yeah, so if it's grievance oriented, that won't get us to a good place.
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Elias Zerhouni
Right, that's what I said. Actually, you should bury the hatchet, Frank, and go on. I mean, you're in a unique position, thanks God, that you're committed to it and you want to make something happen, positive, show it, stop criticizing others. You're in the job now. When you're outside, you can, you know, attack the tent from the outside, but now you are the tent, and it's time to get to work and make sure that we don't damage this beautiful system of science and technology which has carried the country for 75 years forward. But whether it be in healthcare or any other field, including AI, right now, I would love for him to, for example, consider AI as a priority because the scientists will need AI to make fast progress right now. And I know he's interested in that. So that gives me a lot of hope in the new leadership.
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Mike Pesca
He's a physician, but his main background is in health economics. Is that interesting? Do you think that puts him in a good position to lead the nih?
- [25:53]
Elias Zerhouni
Yeah. You know, I don't consider your specialty to be the defining thing. When you come to a position of leadership, I think it's more important that you have the ability to manage complexity, have the heart for what you do, have the spine for stand up for what you want to do and have the brains to be able to do that.
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Mike Pesca
Now you're talking about the organ model once again.
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Elias Zerhouni
Yes, I'm a doctor.
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Mike Pesca
But also have sufficient immune system to survive.
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Elias Zerhouni
That's the resilience part of the spine.
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Mike Pesca
Right. Do you think that there is a flaw to the university system of health research? We're seeing a downside now in that the universities, these great centers of research that once all but cured certain kinds of cancers, now maybe are on the precipice. The same with Alzheimer's and diseases of mental degradation, but they're tied to other more controversial departments, you know, critical studies or name it. I understand going back to the founding of universities and universities have been good to you, why this was the case, but just as a pure assessment of the best thing that can be done for health research. Would it be better if there was a disentanglement of those disciplines?
- [27:21]
Elias Zerhouni
Well, that's a tough question because universities tend to really reflect the society in which they evolve. Right. And you, you. It's a mirror image of, in fact, of the civil society and the needs of society. And they try to become relevant to all the trends and all the tendencies. What's happened is that you get off track in many areas, but certainly not in science and technology. You can criticize some of the uses of monies in science and technology, but frankly, this is what has maintained the country and that's why we have the 10 out of the 20 best universities in the world are American universities. So you don't want to lose that. However, I agree that there are issues social sciences, ideological positioning in many universities where there is a rejection of the opposing views and so on. That has gone too far in many ways. And the fact that merit was no longer the primary driver of how you funded research is really something that needed correction in my view.
- [28:27]
Mike Pesca
The name of the book is Disease Knows no Politics. It's not just a catchy title, it was the creed of Dr. Elias Zerhouni, the 15th director of the National Institute Institutes of Health. Thank you so much.
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Elias Zerhouni
Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. Great conversation and great points you made too.
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Mike Pesca
And now the spiel. A young ingenue by the name of Sydney Sweeney has given rise to a long overdue conversation. The nation fixates on the prominent issues springing forth from the very center of her being. We are transfixed by the spheres of knowledge she has inspired. Sweeney has summoned us into a renewed focus on issues as vital as decolonization and decentering the double Ds of discourse. She has twin peaked our curiosity. Thank you, wise Athena. Okay, so if you miss the news cycle, Sydney Sweeney has apparently been called a literal Nazi for doing a jeans ad. And if I have the story straight, the sequence goes like this. Sydney Sweeney first enters America's consciousness via her role on HBO's Euphoria. Then she spends some time managing the inbound and outbound train schedule at Treblinka. And then she appears in season one of White Lotus, pausing only to orchestrate the Night of the Long Knives, arranging the assassination of Ernst Rohm and his less than loyal essay colleagues. That apparently is the trajectory that I am to glean from the arguments. All of this because she was in a jeans ad that said Cindy Sweeney has for jeans. I have nothing further to add on the political, racial or certainly genetic front. But American Eagle is insisting that I think only of Sydney Sweeney's looks. That's how they want to redirect the conversation. No, no, no, no, no, please. It would help us if you don't talk genetics. If you just comment on a young lady's looks, it's usually fraught, but here It's a life preserver. So I will sidestep this once contested terrain and do their bidding. I will now talk about Sydney Sweeney's appearance. And I'm going to say it. I'm going to say it right here. Sydney Sweeney has weird lips. I mean, individually they're fine, but they never meet. Do you notice this in pictures, there is so ever so slightly parted permap out. She's in a state of suspended inhalation. And while we're on it, she's selling jeans. Right? So jeans aren't for the body part parts that Sydney Sweeney is most known for. So, yes, Sidney Sweeney is buxom, but she's not whatever the butt version of buxom is. It should be, but some. And if you think she was, I'm here to debunk the badonk. I think we've gotten away from saying badonka donk, but I'll. I'll let that stay unaddressed as I move on. And just note that the word buxom, it's an interesting word. It is really the only body part parts that enjoys such a bevy of specific vocabulary to describe the prominence thereof. There is no word for generously apportioned. Elbows, shoulders, knees, anything that comes in twos. And even if a man is jacked or yoked, that's not Peck specific. I think we all understand why the breast. It's very important as life giver and moneymaker. But Sidney Sweeney, though muse to msnbc, she is not particularly prominent in the patootie. I have been loath to get into Sydney Sweeney talk. It was demanded of me by her corporate sponsor. But I have to say, celebrity jeans have been on my mind. Sydney Sweeney is not the celebrity. I think you know which celebrity I must be talking of. It's Larry King. Larry King has good genes, or had. He's dead, but he also didn't have good genes, you know by looking at Larry King. But as with many a dead celebrity, Larry King's possessions are now at auction. And I could not resist a couple of bids there. In the catalog supplied by Julian's Auction House, you will find certain items of great value. Signed Books by Paul McCartney, assigned print by Frank Sinatra. You will find items of great curiosity. A signed book by Jerry Lewis as the catalog notes signed in black, felt tip on the title page. Larry, always your friend. With the same odd quote marks around the word friend as previous book. Huh? For a minimum bid, you could get in on an inside joke by two of the greats there with no bids are so many awards. If you're a prominent guy like Larry King, you get awards and you can't throw out the awards. But really, no one wants the award. Probably not Larry King the day after he won the award. These are three medals. One from the Chief of Staff of the United States Army. All right. One from the Anti Defamation League for winning the First Amendment Freedoms Prize won by the American Jewish Historical Society for winning the Emma Lazarus Statue of Liberty Award. He won an award from Arizona State, receiving the Hugh Downs Award for communications excellence. The second from AIB for lifetime achievement. The third from the National Film and TV for outstanding contribution. There was the American Cardiology Award for tireless efforts. One from Brigitte and Bobby Sherman's Children foundation, won by IAW TV for best hosted series. The Veterans Foundation Incorporated for respect and appreciation. Turner Broadcasting System for winning a trumpet award won by the Banff World Media Festival. To go to Banff Canada and soak in that which is the world media. He won a lifetime achievement award in 2012. And still more than a decade. I can't list them all, the dozens and dozens of awards, all with only the minimum bid. But there in the King catalog, you will also find clothing. Larry King's ex clothing. Clothing once worn by the King of late night. The suspenders, of course, go at a premium. And then I came across Larry King's jeans. Yes, a group of two pairs. First by paper, denim and cloth, size 32. The second by Adriano Goldschmid, size 32 by 32 Larry King. And I have the same size and jeans. I would not expect that troubling for me. But you can imagine the fun I would have at parties going up to people saying, guess whose jeans I'm wearing? I don't know. Rory Calhoun? No, it's Larry King. I thought it might be Larry King, given that you are holding his 2011 ward from the BAMF Media Festival. I would probably have to pair that with the jeans. You could imagine if you know my wife, how it would never get old for her. When I wear my Larry King jeans out in public and tell people about it incessantly. You know, when I was younger, there was a store in the mall called the Chess King, and I never could afford that, but I could afford an opening bid of $25 for Larry King jeans. And then tragedy. Not for Larry King. He's already dead. For me, I was outbid. The jeans are now going for $50. Are $50 Larry King jeans really worth it? It's not the right question, because for me to get back in on this, I'd have to pay 75. Is that worth it? For what is, let's be honest, a gag. And I decided it was not my imagined reaction that I played out with you. It's probably more optimistic. The actual reaction would probably be more of an ew than an ooh. And the gag is still, I'd say 80 to 90% complete because I got this email. Dear Mike, it's not too late. Your bid on lot number four, 27, Larry King 2000's trendy designer jeans, has been outbid. Your bid was 25. Don't let this one get away. I mean, I could forward that email to friends and associates for years to come, and they can email me back, please remove from this list. But I'm fine with that, even if I now must say Mike Pesca has no Larry King jeans. That's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the Gist. I assembled the Gist list alongside Kathleen Sykes. I mean, not really alongside. She's in Utah. I'm here. But we collaborate, as do Astrid Green and the team. She runs our socials. And Ashley Khan is our production coordinator. Who's in charge? It's Michelle Pesca. As I'll tell you, she is loathe to say Oom Peru. G Peru. Do Peru. And thanks for listening. Who wears the pants.