HTDE: The Breakfast Rule

Summary

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! — "HTDE: The Breakfast Rule"

Original Air Date: March 4, 2026
Host: Peter Sagal (NPR)
Notable Participants: Mike Danforth, Ian Chillag, Lorna White (Technical Director), Mary Norris (The New Yorker), Keith Houston (punctuation historian), Mark Davis (Unicode Consortium)

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Episode Overview

This episode of NPR’s Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me! centers on "The Breakfast Rule": the internal guideline used by the team to determine whether potentially gross or off-putting content should make it onto the air—especially when listeners might be eating. The hosts share real examples of lines they’ve drawn in editing, discuss grammar predicaments involving unique names, and take a delightfully wonky dive into how new punctuation could come into existence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Inside "The Breakfast Rule" (00:16 – 07:28)

• Definition:
  The "breakfast rule" is a litmus test used by the Wait Wait production team: if content would gross you out during breakfast, it's probably too much for broadcast.
• Lorna White’s Role:
  Lorna is described as the show’s "last line of defense" for questionable content.
  "I'm comfortable with being the mom of the show." — Lorna White (00:45)
• Colonoscopy Comedy:
  The panel listens back to a past comedy segment about colonoscopies and discusses what aired and what was cut. A recurring joke—"salad coming out of your butt"—was deemed too visual for the air.
• Debate Over Edits:
  Some panelists would have kept the content, but Lorna confirms it crossed the breakfast rule.
  "Salad coming out of your butt. It's a little too visual." — Ian (05:23)

Memorable Quotes:

• "I had no idea how it all fit in there." — Peter Sagal on colonoscopy prep (03:35)
• "Salad coming out of your butt. That is too much." — Mike (06:48)
• "If you're dating someone and you can't eat breakfast without being disgusted by the thought of them, I think it's time to break up." — Ian (07:03)

Notable Moment:

• Running joke: Panel repeatedly (and gleefully) says "salad coming out of your butt," both celebrating and violating their own breakfast rule (06:45–07:03).

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2. Listener Question: Unique Names & Grammar Headaches (09:53–17:10)

• Listener Submission:
  Autumns (pronounced "Autumn's," with an apostrophe-s as part of her legal first name) asks what to do about the inherent possessive in her name—how does one make something belong to her (e.g., "Autumn's car")?
• Family Naming Backstory:
  Her name, Autumn’s Hope, comes from her dad’s aversion to "hippie" names.
• The Grammar Challenge:
  Discussion with guest Mary Norris ("Comma Queen" of The New Yorker) and editor Ann Goldstein, who both struggle with the double possessive.
  "As a name, her name is a possessive... That seems like a mistake." — Mary Norris (13:05)
• Consensus:
  Anything goes—no formal rules—but double apostrophe-s is generally just "worse."
  "You can drive yourself crazy with this stuff." — Mary Norris (14:12)

Notable Moment:

• Mary Norris’ playful wrestling with the past tense of "spring" as the hosts try to "spring" a question on her (16:32–16:46).

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3. The Punctuation Conundrum: Could Autumns Get Her Own Mark? (17:10–23:37)

• Punctuation History:
  Keith Houston explains the centuries it takes for new punctuation marks to become standardized, the story of the exclamation point, and role of the Unicode Consortium. "If you want to be able to type it on anyone's computer... you have to convince the Unicode Consortium that it's a good idea." — Keith Houston (19:22)
• Path to Unicode:
  Mark Davis (co-founder of Unicode Consortium) is called in. He explains that nearly all new characters require broad, demonstrated usage to be considered for encoding. "There are very few character emergencies that we've had." — Mark Davis (22:17)
• Exceptions:
  Examples where the process was expedited: new currency symbols and era names for Japanese emperors.
  "If she became the emperor of Japan, she could get her symbol into unicode." — Mark Davis (23:32)

Notable and Amusing Quotes:

• "The person in charge of exclamation marks and question marks is named Mark. I think that's an amazing thing that's happened." — Ian (21:03)
• "That would be very hard to do... the chief issue is that you have to really show a lot of usage." — Mark Davis (21:56)

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4. What Did We Learn? Reflections, Jokes, and Show Wrap (23:42–25:21)

• The hosts reflect on:
  • Naming creativity in an age of abundant keyboard options (24:16)
  • Digestive metaphors for editing (25:14)
  • The hazards of leaving too vivid an image in the listeners’ minds "The reason I agreed with the decision to cut Negeen's joke is that the image in my head was actual salad in its leafy form..." — Peter Sagal (25:04)

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Important Timestamps

• Breakfast Rule Explained: 00:16–01:31
• Colonoscopy Comedy ("diarrhea vacation"): 02:12–03:55
• What Got Cut ("salad coming out of your butt"): 04:24–06:48
• Listener "Autumns" calls in: 09:53–12:22
• Mary Norris on apostrophe conundrums: 13:05–16:21
• The Unicode Process explained: 17:10–21:26
• Mark Davis on Unicode emergencies: 21:26–23:37
• Panel reflection and wrap-up: 23:42–25:21

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• "My diarrhea vacation." — Quoted from The New York Times article, recounted by Peter Sagal (03:33)
• "Salad coming out of your butt. I think I would have kept that if I were editing it." — Mike (06:11)
• "That seems like a mistake." — Mary Norris on the name "Autumn's" (13:14)
• "If she became the emperor of Japan... she could get her symbol into unicode." — Mark Davis (23:28)

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Episode Takeaways

• The "breakfast rule" is a practical—and often very funny—production safeguard against gross-out moments in public radio.
• Unique names with possessive punctuation pose surprising challenges in grammar and daily life.
• Creating new punctuation marks is a long, difficult, and bureaucratic process... unless you become emperor.
• A running thread of self-aware, meta-humor reinforces the show’s tone: smart, silly, and a little irreverent.

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This episode is a must-listen for comedy fans, grammar nerds, and anyone who’s ever wondered how public radio tiptoes around bodily functions and the boundaries of taste—especially before noon.

Transcript

[Announcer]

This message comes from Stars, the global phenomenon. Outlander returns for its final farewell. Claire and Jamie's story comes to an unforgettable end. Don't miss the final season of Outlander. Friday, March 6th, only on Starz.

[Ian]

We want to share a little behind the scenes thing from our other jobs producing. Wait, wait, don't tell me. It's something called the breakfast rule.

[Mike]

Here to talk about this with us are host Peter Sagal, who you all know, and Lorna White, who is our technical director.

[Ian]

Hi.

[Peter Sagal]

This is very exciting to be on the air with Lorna. This rarely. No, this never happens.

[Ian]

This never happens unless it's a mistake.

[Mike]

Oh, well, there you go. This isn't a mistake. But it could have been.

[Ian]

It could turn into one.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Ian]

Could turn into a mistake very quickly. Lorna, I should say, is with us because when it comes to avoiding mistakes that might get the show canceled, Mike thinks of Lorna as the last line of defense, if you're comfortable with that description. I'm comfortable with being the mom of the show.

[Peter Sagal]

I'm not comfortable with it because I don't know what it means. What is Lorna defending us from?

[Mike]

If there's ever anything that is on the line and we're still uncertain about whether or not it's gonna offend the audience, Lorna is often one of the last, if not the last, person to hear the show before it goes out. So if. If her radar goes off, then we know we have to address it. And that way, she is the last line of defense.

[Ian]

So we have this rule called the breakfast rule, which is how we decide whether or not something is too gross to go in the air. If you were eating breakfast while listening to whatever story, how grossed out would you be? Recently, there was a question on the show that made the show, but there was a part. I was editing this, and there was a part that happened at the end that I found to be the funniest part. But it also felt like, I don't know if we can put this on the radio. So I'm first. Let's just take a couple minutes. We'll listen to what ran on the radio. This is the edited version, Peter.

[Peter Sagal]

Times are stressful. We know that. But the New York Times has offered advice for achieving, quote, nirvana. Just do what?

[Ian]

Subscribe to the New York Times.

[Peter Sagal]

No,

[Ian]

I'll take a hint.

[Peter Sagal]

It's okay. I mean, not only do you achieve absolute inner peace, you also find out

[Ian]

if you have polyps. Get a colonoscopy.

[Peter Sagal]

Yes, go get a colonoscopy. A writer was finally forced by his advancing age to get a colonoscopy, and he discovered that they're actually wonderful. A secret known only to all the people who have gotten a colonoscopy. Why do you think we're special? Smiling all the time?

[Ian]

I'm sorry. I've had two. I do not agree with this sentiment. I like the being knocked out and not being awake for it. But have you prepped for a colonoscopy?

[Peter Sagal]

Here's the thing. So most people who enjoy colonoscopy, it's all about the drugs. They give you the procedure. You're out, you wake up, you feel good, it's okay, you feel good for the rest of the day. This guy even loved the prep. That's when. Yes, that's when you have to drink gallons of horse laxative until your organs liquefy and exit your body. He says, quote, it was as liberating as a spa day. He called it, quote, my diarrhea vacation.

[Mary Norris]

Oh, my God.

[Peter Sagal]

And I will admit, it is kind of fun to discover that your own body is a clown car. I had no idea how it all fit in there.

[Ian]

You know, people get on the New

[Keith Houston]

York Times for so many.

[Ian]

So many, like, political left and right

[Mary Norris]

reasons who they support.

[Peter Sagal]

This is the last straw for me.

[Ian]

I'm not interested in their opinions on colonoscopies.

[Peter Sagal]

Yeah. This guy is gonna be so amazed if he ever takes an actual vacation. You mean I don't have to spend all day lying next to the toilet? This Wisconsin Dells is heaven on earth.

[Mike]

Okay, that's fine.

[Ian]

All right. For me, the D word is always on the line whenever that shows up. I'm never sure I want to hear it, but okay, so I'm going to play now what we cut, and it'll just pick up at the very end of what you heard, and you'll.

[Peter Sagal]

Wisconsin Dells is heaven on earth. Of course, he got into trouble because my diarrhea vacation is the trademark for Carnival cruises and they got mad. I had norovirus once. Really?

[Mary Norris]

I would not describe it as nirvana.

[Peter Sagal]

No, it was quite painful.

[Ian]

You did say that like a character in a film noir movie. I had norovirus once. It's the most fantastic week of my life.

[Mary Norris]

Those were the days, my salad days,

[Announcer]

where salad, little E came out of my butt.

[Peter Sagal]

Huh? Yeah.

[Ian]

So, Lorna, would that have crossed your line? Oh, yes, I think it would have, based on how visual it is.

[Mike]

Oh, it does paint a picture.

[Mark Davis]

Yeah.

[Ian]

Salad coming out of your butt. It's a little too visual.

[Peter Sagal]

I will say that it was fun for me to listen to that because I remember the material that ended up in the air, because it ended up in the air. But my mind just erases everything that happens during a taping, usually. So I had no idea what was going to come next. And what was it that would. That finally ended up crossing the line, the breakfast rule. And it cracked me up that it was Nagin's long walk to that remarkable destination of salad coming out of one one's butt. It was. So that's what it was. Yep. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I can see how that would be a problem, especially if people were eating salad for breakfast.

[Mike]

Salad coming out of your butt. I think I would have kept that if I were editing it.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Really?

[Mike]

I think so. Yeah, I think I would have kept it. What do you think, Lorna? You think I would have kept it?

[Ian]

I would have questioned it. You would have kept it? I would have questioned it heavily. I like what we've done here. That we. So what. What we did is because we. Because one time we removed someone talking about salad coming out of their butt, we have now successfully added 10 additional. 10 additional times saying salad coming out of a butt into the NPR archive.

[Peter Sagal]

It's true. It'll be there.

[Ian]

It'll be the Library of Congress forever.

[Peter Sagal]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Okay. So in conclusion, this is the breakfast rule. Salad coming out of your butt. That is too much.

[Ian]

We just said it again.

[Mike]

Yeah, sorry about that.

[Ian]

And I'll just. One more time. Salad coming out of your butt. You can use this in your own life, I think.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Ian]

To decide if something belongs there or not. If you're dating someone and you can't eat breakfast without being disgusted by the thought of them, I think it's time to break up.

[Mike]

A person would violate the breakfast rule.

[Ian]

I know some people that could.

[Mike]

Are you talking about me?

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[Ian]

this is how to Do Everything. I'm Ian.

[Mike]

And I'm Mike. If you have a question for us, you can send it to us at our email. Our email address is howtopr.org Autumns has a question.

[Ian]

Autumns, what can we help you with?

[Mary Norris]

Yeah, so I have a very unique name and I'm wondering how to, you know, kind of change it to make it proper to the situation, I guess.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Ian]

Yeah, I mean, I guess we just said your name. It's Autumns, but I think for the purpose of this question we should have you spell it for us.

[Mary Norris]

Yeah. So it's Autumn like the season. A U T U M N with an apostrophe.

[Ian]

S. The apostrophe is part of your name.

[Mary Norris]

It is. So my first name obviously is Autumn and my middle name is Hope, so it's Autumn's Hope.

[Mike]

Oh, that's nice.

[Mary Norris]

Yeah, my dad decided to make it a super easy one.

[Announcer]

Right.

[Mike]

Wait, so what did teachers call you when you were in school?

[Mary Norris]

Yeah, I always go by Autumn Just because it's less confusing. But every time I got handed a report card or now anytime I do anything legal, people get very confused and they look at me and say, oh, hang on, there's a mistake. And I have to go, no, no, no, no. The mistake was made at my birth certificate. You know, jokingly,

[Ian]

if I were. Do you know? So if I were writing about something that was yours, if I were talking about your car, say, would I write a U, T, U, M, N apostrophe S apostrophe S car.

[Mary Norris]

That is exactly my question. That's exactly why I contacted you guys, because I've always wanted to know that since it is inherently possessive. But of my middle name, how do I go about making it possessive of other things?

[Ian]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Do you have. Do you have any siblings?

[Mary Norris]

I do, and all their names are normal.

[Mike]

No, really? Like what?

[Announcer]

Yeah.

[Mary Norris]

Yeah, really. So my mom wanted to name me Autumn Rain, and my dad thought that that was too hippie, so he put the apostrophe s instead because.

[Mike]

Wait, that's weird.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

I don't know.

[Ian]

Okay, so Autumn's hope was that was the non hippie choice, apparently.

[Mary Norris]

Although it didn't work because I ended up a little too hippie for his taste, too.

[Mike]

What are your siblings names?

[Mary Norris]

Yeah. Clinton, Edward, and then Kimberly Diane.

[Mike]

I feel like those are the exact opposite of your name.

[Ian]

Right.

[Mike]

I don't know. There's a missed opportunity. You could have been Clinton's despair. You know, the perfect person for this is Mary Norris.

[Ian]

Norris is spelled, by the way. There's no apostrophe before the S. Mary.

[Mike]

Mary Norris has been a copy editor and proofreader with the New Yorker magazine for decades.

[Ian]

So, Mary, we just got off the phone with someone named Autumns, and that is spelled Autumn, like the season apostrophe S. The apostrophe is part of the name. First of all. Can we just get your response to this?

[Mary Norris]

As a name, her name is a possessive.

[Mike]

Yes, that is correct.

[Ian]

It is.

[Mary Norris]

That seems like a mistake.

[Mike]

That's what Autumns would tell you, too. And she's had to tell everybody that it's not a mistake.

[Mark Davis]

Oh, my.

[Mary Norris]

It's interesting because the world of the web and, you know, digital world rejects apostrophes every chance it gets. But it wouldn't make sense to spell it without the apostrophe either, would it? I think she should change her name.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Ian]

Okay, well, let me ask you this. If she didn't change her name.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Ian]

Just grammatically, if I wanted to talk about something that belonged to her would I do Autumn apostrophe s. Apostrophe S.

[Mary Norris]

Autumn's Is.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Mary Norris]

Well, I think that would just make it worse, don't you?

[Mike]

Well, what would you do?

[Mary Norris]

Yeah, what I would do, I would draw the line. That's a double apostrophe S. No, I mean, you can drive yourself crazy with this stuff.

[Mike]

Can I ask you, Mary, so we're coming to you as our. Our kind of ultimate authority on this. Right. When you're in a similar situation as we are in, when you don't have an answer, who do you turn to?

[Mary Norris]

I turn to the person who was my boss at the New Yorker at the copy desk. Her name is Ann Goldstein. I turned to her.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Ian]

Can we conference her in? Can we bring her into this call and.

[Mary Norris]

I wouldn't know how to do that.

[Mike]

I could probably figure it out. Hello, Ann.

[Mary Norris]

Oh, hi. Okay. Hi, Ann. Hi, Mary.

[Mike]

All right, Ann, we have called you here with a specific purpose. Mary says you're the person above her that she calls when she has a grammar question. Is that right?

[Mary Norris]

Yeah. I mean, I don't consider myself above her, but she. She would call me here.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Mary Norris]

Office hierarchy, anyway. Well, yes, in the office hierarchy. That's right.

[Mark Davis]

Great.

[Ian]

Okay. And what do you think about that name? Someone with that name on their birth certificate, Autumn, apostrophe s. Okay.

[Mary Norris]

It's not a clerical error.

[Mike]

She insists that it's not.

[Ian]

I think people often think it is. Yeah. But no.

[Mike]

So if you were going to write it out about. You were going to say, whose car is that? And you know, it's Autumn's car. How would you spell that?

[Mary Norris]

Oh, that's really a trick question. I guess I'll put another apostrophe on. Wait a second. I have to look at this. Yeah, well, the thing is, if you put another apostrophe. Yes, it looks like a typo.

[Mike]

Well, it may look like a typo, but is that not the right answer?

[Mary Norris]

You could argue it either way if the truth is the matter. I guess at the New Yorker we would put apostrophe s. That was. We made a ruling about the apostrophe s at a certain point.

[Mike]

Okay, so what's the consensus? Do we have consensus here?

[Mary Norris]

I can see. No, I mean, the consensus is that anything goes.

[Mike]

All right. Thank you both. Mary, thanks again.

[Mary Norris]

It's so interesting. That's a very interesting question. I'm glad you sprung it on me. Sprang it on me? Slang it on me. Excuse me.

[Mike]

Oh, hold on a sec. Mary, is it sprung or spraying which is it?

[Mark Davis]

Spring.

[Mary Norris]

Sprang. Sprung.

[Peter Sagal]

Oh, gosh.

[Ian]

You know what we should do? It seems like the available punctuation marks are not sufficient for Autumn's unique needs. Yeah, we should make her a new

[Mike]

punctuation mark, something she can use whenever she needs to indicate that she has possession of something. Something is hers.

[Ian]

We're gonna ring punctuation expert to try and help us. This is Keith Houston. Keith, when was the last time we got a new punctuation mark?

[Keith Houston]

Oh, the last. The last successful punctuation mark, I guess, was probably the exclamation mark. It looks like it was around about the 14th century, but it's not really clear. It's not really clear where it came from. I think there's a suggestion that it comes from an exclamation of joy in Latin, which was IO so I, O. And you can imagine how with. With, you know, maybe the I ends up above the O. Perhaps the O gets smaller and smaller until it turns into a dot. And at this point, this is where. In the mid 14th century, this is where. This is where it was first proposed. And it seemed to be. It seemed to become more common into the 15th century. And then after that point, you're pretty close to. Well, that's only printing. That's when printing appears. And so it was lucky enough to appear at the point at which it could be standardized.

[Ian]

Okay, so, Autumns, first of all, let me just as you're. As someone who has looked at punctuation throughout history, what is your reaction to Autumn's name?

[Keith Houston]

It is a bold. A bold choice for a name, I think, on the part of her parents. And I can see her problem. Yeah, it's not. Not an easy thing to deal with, especially when you're dealing with possessives or plurals.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Keith Houston]

And your name ends in apostrophe s.

[Ian]

So if we were. If we were to come up with a new punctuation mark to something just for Autumn, where would we begin in creating a new punctuation mark?

[Keith Houston]

First of all, you have to describe what the mark needs to do and then figure out what it's going to look like. So I don't know. Imagine perhaps we want a mark which looks like, I don't know, a plus symbol with a diagonal line through it or something. And this indicates something belonging to Autumn. For example, if you're lucky, that might already exist. There is this organization called the Unicode Consortium. This is when it gets really exciting. We get to talk about big NGOs. The Unicode Consortium has responsibility basically for standardizing the set of characters that computers can exchange, and in doing so, they more or less. They don't control language. That's far too strong a way of putting it. But they are the final gatekeepers before a new mark of punctuation or a letter or a number or any other symbol can be used on the majority of computers around the world. So you need to design your mark. You need to describe what it's going to do, and if you want to be able to type it on anyone's computer, if you want Autumn's special mark of punctuation to be available everywhere, you have to convince the Unicode Consortium that it's a good idea. And they have a whole set of criteria. You have to write this little formal document, send it off to them, Perhaps they'll call you to ask to discuss it, and if you're lucky, the Unicode Technical Committee will decide to include it. And at some point in the future, it then becomes ratified, it becomes a standard mark. And then if you're. Further, if you're even more lucky, then all of the companies that care about what Unicode say, like Google and Facebook and Apple, all the companies that actually control the text that we can see and we can type, perhaps they decide to add it to their fonts, and they can do that because Unicode has said this is a standard mark.

[Mike]

Okay, okay. But it starts with Unicode.

[Keith Houston]

Yes. And it ends with Unicode in some ways.

[Ian]

Is there somewhat at Unicode you recommend we call to start this process?

[Keith Houston]

Mark Davis was one of the founding members of Unicode. He would be the perfect person to talk to about this.

[Ian]

I think it's amazing just that the person in charge of exclamation marks and question marks is named Mark. I think that's an amazing thing that's happened.

[Keith Houston]

I've been writing about punctuation for 15 or 20 years now, and I have not thought of that previously. Disappointed in myself.

[Mike]

Okay. All right. Skyler has managed to arrange it. Mark Davis is on the line with us now. Hey, Mark.

[Mark Davis]

Hi. How are you doing?

[Ian]

Great, great. Can I pitch you a punctuation mark?

[Mark Davis]

Well, go ahead. We'll see what happens.

[Mike]

All right, here you go.

[Announcer]

All right.

[Ian]

Yeah, we have a listener who we need a new punctuation mark to denote possession that we would like in. In. We would like it to be part of Unicode, part of the universal system we all use as soon as possible. Can we do that?

[Mark Davis]

That would be very hard to do. And I can outline some of the reasons why it gets very tricky to do. But the chief issue is that you have to really show A lot of usage before it becomes a candidate for inclusion.

[Ian]

It's. It's kind of an emergency.

[Mark Davis]

Well, there are very few character emergencies that we've had. Okay, I'll give you an example of one is when there's a new currency symbol, and those tend to be things that are emergencies. Another one was when the Japanese emperor died, because in the Japanese calendar, the era name for each emperor is a new symbol, and then that gets encoded. And that was something we rushed out very quickly so that it could be added to all of the operating systems so they could actually show people dates with the right era symbol.

[Mary Norris]

And

[Mark Davis]

as I said, currency symbols are another one where there's. Those would constitute emergencies.

[Mike]

So if our caller autumns, if she were to become the emperor of Japan, it's possible then that you would come up with a special punctuation or a special character for her.

[Mark Davis]

I can say with almost 100% occurrence that if she became the emperor of Japan, that she could get her symbol into unicode.

[Mike]

All right. Okay. Well, there's a path forward, even if it's an unlikely path.

[Mark Davis]

Okay. There you go.

[Mike]

Well, that does it for this week's show. What'd you learn, Ian?

[Ian]

Well, I learned that maybe I was not. I didn't think creatively enough when naming my children.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Ian]

I. I felt. For whatever reason, whatever shortcoming, I felt confined to the 26 letters of the Alphabet.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Ian]

When really there was all that punctuation I could have played with.

[Mike]

That's true. When you think about it, when you're typing on your phone, There's a button you can push, and that opens up a whole nother keyboard full of opportunity right there.

[Ian]

Yeah. Meet my daughter, Jennifer.

[Mike]

And. Yeah, this is my son. It's an unpronounceable, super strong password.

[Ian]

Peter.

[Peter Sagal]

Yes.

[Keith Houston]

Peter.

[Ian]

What did you learn today?

[Peter Sagal]

Oh, I learned about what it is that triggers at least one of the things that could trigger our breakfast rule, which is foods remaining in their original form, Emerging from the human body. Right, right.

[Mike]

So the picture you have.

[Peter Sagal]

Yes. Is the reason I.

[Keith Houston]

Right.

[Peter Sagal]

The reason I agree with the decision to cut Negeen's joke Is that the image in my head was actual salad in its leafy form, multicolored, you know.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Peter Sagal]

And that's what I thought of. And that's a distressing image in my head. And so that's why I agreed, you know, with your decision not to broadcast it. Yeah.

[Ian]

I guess, like, digestion is the editing

[Peter Sagal]

of the body in a weird way. Yeah. We want to make sure you don't want to. You don't want to see it in its raw form.

[Ian]

How to Do Everything is produced by Skyler Swenson with technical direction from Lorna White.

[Mike]

Our interns this week are Anne and Mary, who are joining us just for this one week from the New Yorker.

[Ian]

Send us your questions, whatever they may be, to our email address. That's howtopr.org I'm Ian.

[Mike]

And I'm Mike.

[Ian]

Thank you.

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