July 6, 2023 • 37 mins
Comedian, podcaster and all around great guy, Mo Rocca, joins Elvis for a conversation about how he approaches interviews, what nostalgia means to him, and his hit podcast "Mobituaries."
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you Moe Raka for being here. Oh hold on,
oh a bigger name online.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Three.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
My husband Alex is calling, hold on? What hey?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hi?
Speaker 1 (00:10):
How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I?
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I'm doing the podcast with mo Rocca. Say hi to moy.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hi Alex, good to talk.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Did you call when I was doing Kesha as well?
It's cold, perfect time. It is all right. I love you.
I'll call you back. Say bye to MOI I was
a T and T a sponsor. No, not at all. Hi,
it's Elvis. Thank you for listening to my podcast. This
is podcast number two. Hopefully there'll be three and four
and five and six. If you missed podcast one with Kesha,
(00:41):
roll back and listen to it. We talked about spaceships,
we talked about a ghosts and she played with a
dead man's skull. Today's gonna be a little different. This
is gonna be a little different podcast with someone I'm
fascinated with, Mo Raka. I've been witnessed to Morocca since
god back in the days. He was on MTV and
VH one in those remember the eighties documentaries and things
(01:02):
like that, And then I noticed Moroka on CBS Sunday Morning.
He also does a lot of work with CBS Television
and now he has his own podcast, his own podcast
called Mobituaries, which is fascinating for some reason it maybe
he'll explain in a few minutes. Growing up watching his
father become so exhilarated reading obituaries in the newspaper every day,
(01:22):
he in the beginning felt it odd, and then he
discovered there's a whole story to be told about people
who have left us, but their legacy lives. And he
goes to find those legacies and puts it in a
great Moroca storytelling way. And you're gonna hear that, I promise.
He's such a sweet guy. I'm fascinated by each and
everything he says. He's the smartest person I know, the
(01:45):
host of his very own, huge award winning podcast, Mobituaries.
Let's listen in to Morocca Moroka. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I always love to be with you.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Elvis, thank you for having me our second guest on
my podcast. What's the name of my podcast? We have
a name, right, what's the name of it?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Thinking out loud, I'm torn about being second because, on
the one hand, I'm like, who was.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
First, Kesha?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Kesha was first? Okay, and she's got a symbol in
her name. I don't have that, I mean, right, because
she's so Tollerci.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Well, we have to add a symbol. By the end
of this podcast, we'll have a symbol added to your name.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
She little Moroccas.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Now Mo Raka has a podcast out called Mobituaries, and
we've talked about this on our show before. I just
couldn't wait to get you back to go a little
deeper into this.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
You were dying to have me back for this exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Growing up fascinated with obituaries, and you got that from
your father, as I recall, right, tell the story.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well, my father, that was his favorite section of the newspaper.
I grew up outside of Washington, d C. There were
two daily newspapers when I was little, the Washingtonton Posts
in the Washington Star. And he would say, oh boy,
the obituaries is my favorite section. And he would say
it like that because he was not gloomy at all.
And I think he liked the obituaries because a well
(03:04):
written obituary is a real ride. You can really get
lost in it. It can be really exhilarating, and I
think it's like a like a trailer for an Oscar
winning biopic. It has that kind of sweep, you know,
coming this fall, the trials, the tribulations, the ups, the downs,
you know.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
And there's something to be said for the fact that
this person just passed away. So there's an energy there, yes,
and there are a lot of family members and friends
and colleagues hopefully are grieving, so that person is still
somewhat a little alive when you read that obituary.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
That's a great point. It's well, it's also right, it's
like a first draft of that person's history, because I
think that there I'm not sure that I've seen any
corrections issued for obituaries, unless so're for major figures. But
I do think that newspapers, even the New York Times,
get a lot of things wrong in these obituaries because
(03:59):
you're talking to overwrought, highly emotional relatives sometimes and you know,
there's only so much fact checking you can do because
a lot of the stuff there's not, you know, public
record for.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
So yeah, you go down the list of all of
the different episodes of mobituaries and it's just a wide
variety of people who were very famous, people you've never
heard of, and also concepts that have died or products
that faded away. In deciding how to come up with
(04:31):
these different facets of history to put on your Mobituaries podcast,
how did you decide, Okay, it should be beyond people,
it has to be things as well, like what was
your first your first thing that you had on mobituaries.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
So I think that they're two sort of main criteria,
and I think you must appreciate this as well, that
it has to be interesting to me, because the audience
can sniff out if it's really not. They can tell
if you're faking it, especially right and when it's just
(05:07):
audio and you're just hearing, you're really focused on it,
So it has to really get me in the gut.
But I also think in everything there has to be
an element of surprise. So I think the surprise could
be that it's a seemingly silly subject like sitcom characterists
(05:28):
that have died, but then it ends up being surprisingly
not profound, but you know, a little more substantific. It's
more of sort of like, oh, that's interesting that creative
choice that Gary Marshall made on Happy Days to kill
off the oldest brother, Chuck Cunningham. Because the fonds is
becoming really popular, and they didn't need the older brother anymore,
because why would Richie ask his older brother for advice
(05:48):
on dating girls when he's got the Fonds living in
the garage out back. Or surprise, you know, sort of
between episodes within an episode, or you know, an episode
about the death of a kind of banana which has
a lot of serious stuff about it, but it's also
kind of fun. I end up singing, yes, we have
no bananas with Andre de Shields. But then the next episode, well,
(06:12):
one of the next episodes was really serious about a
dancer who was from the original cast of Cats who
died from AIDS, and I had a very personal connection
to Cats. So I think it's all about keeping people
a little bit off balance, surprising them because that they
know exactly what they're going to get. I don't think
that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Well, another thing to think about here is, you know,
in our business, in broadcast, if do they still call
it broadcast under we call it broadcast anymore.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
I'm a fan of broadcasting.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
You I'm me too. Yeah, And you go back to
the There is a broadcaster genius, man Paul Harvey, right,
he used to have Paul Harvey. The rest of the
story where he would talk about without using names, this
person who was born in Oklahoma, who dated this woman.
They had to divorce each other, and he went on
to this other woman and the invented doctor Pepper. His
(07:08):
name was doctor Pepper. And that's the rest of the story.
I mean, he would take you to this story. Then
you're like, who is he talking about? And at the
end he would like, just am you never knew there
was a doctor Pepper. By the way, there was not
a doctor Pepper. It wasn't I don't think.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
It's not not in the Waco area at all. You know,
maybe there was, but.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
It was fascinating. Theater of the mind is what it was.
And I find obituaries it totally scratches that itch for me.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Well, I love that, and I'm always i mean talking
about it just a scratch. I mean that's how I
look at it too, sort of. You know. Sometimes it's
a subject that I actually want to spend my time
learning about. So I think, well, I want to do
an episode on this because I know nothing about it
and I've always wanted to and now it's a good
time to learn. But can I just ask you about
(07:56):
you know, when we were talking about the word broadcasting. Yes,
a while to really sort of think about the word itself, that,
you know, broadcasting as opposed to narrow casting because the
world is so adomized now. Everything is so split up,
like you know, everyone's watching something different, listening to something different.
There are no water cooler conversations in the way there.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Used to be.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
But you're a broadcaster, right, so you can't like, is it?
Don't you do? You love? I know I do the
creative challenge of trying to get as many people into
the tent as possible.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Oh, absolutely, yeah. You know, we know that we have
this massive pool to go swimming in, right, but we
know that if we talk about this or that, or
we forget to talk about that or this, the pool
decreases because they lose interest. Right, So we find it
a challenge every day to try to remain as broad
as possible, and so we can scoop Actually, yeah, scoop
(08:53):
the uh what was the word I heard it from
the other day, scoop the spectrum. It is what it is.
We want to get as many people who listen without
offending too many people. It's a weird balance, it's.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
A really weird balance, but it's also a really cool
creative challenge of how you keep everyone in without it
just becoming bland, because then no one will be interested.
You know, I have this roommate I had in college.
He's super genius or in Eisenberg, he's so smart, and
(09:26):
he went and he's an English professor now you see Irvine,
And we had this conversation and he said, you know,
I could be teaching little seminars about super specific topics,
but he loves teaching these broad based English literature courses
where there are students that might be science majors, math majors,
(09:47):
and this may be the last English course they ever take.
But it's his job to keep them all in the
tent and keep them all interested. It's just a different
challenge than if you have an audience that comes in
that already knows they're interested in exactly what you're doing. Anyway,
I just love, I love the challenge of keeping as
(10:07):
many people in as possible.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Go to any high school in America and you'll see that,
just like the college system, they have curriculum that is
very specific, very very narrow and deep. When I went
to high school, it was math, it was English, it
was science. Now they break down science into fifteen different genres.
You can choose which science you want to study. So
(10:36):
I think, in my opinion, it's good to have a
mixture of both.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Absolutely you want to go, yes, exactly, between electives and
main courses, between like cheerios, and then the super specific
serial like that's in that variety pack, like the really
really one that's super specific.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah, speaking of cereals, he's not here. Scotty b who
sits in the studio that he has a podcast called
serial Killers where he and Andrew, who you met on
the way up. They review new cereals, breakfast cereals, and
they bring old school cereals out of the off the
shelves and it's just a podcast about cereals.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
What's the latest hot pick?
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Well, no, I tasted one today. It's a cereal from
Mexico called It's Churros and it taste like little churros.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
I love Mexican coke as in Coca Cola because it's
less sweet, it's a little milder. So I hope that
this Mexican chudral cereal is churro cereal.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
It's it's hard to say that.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah, it's a little bit hard to say that. I'm
hoping that it's the American version of it. They it
would there'd be way too much sugar, it would be
too sweet.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
It wasn't too sweet. I kind of liked it. It
is like I said, it is from Mexico. Yeah, imported cereal.
But the point of this is deep and narrow. Is
this topic on this podcast that actually has a lot
of fans?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Oh my god, and I love that in this they
should have called this episode breakfast bad certain anyway, why
not cereal coming from Mexico? Sorry, I'm with you, which
is not appropriate. It's so appropriate Columbian, so I can say.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
This is handed to me. Doctor Charles Taylor Pepper was
born December eighteen thirty from Big Spring, Virginia. So there
was a doctor Pepper. How he's mixed into the story
and the legacy, I don't know. Maybe that should Doctor
Pepper is still around, so it does not qualify for
a obituary podcast.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, and I wonder what his specialty was this, doctor Papper?
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Do we know surgeon? He was a surgeon? Okay, all right,
I'm a Pepper, Y're a Pepper work, So I'm going
to there was another episode you had the station wagon.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Uh huh, yes, yeah, the station wagon is well, I
would say that's that's another major factor for me. And
what I decide what topic I want to do is
you know, we talked about scratching an inch, a feeling
in your gut. It's a kind of warmth and the
station wagon, and I think I'm pretty good at identifying
(13:04):
this a subject a person that will make people go
all and feel warm like John Denver was that way.
I think I think it worked in doing a mobituary
about him. But the station wagon I think gets people
in the same way because I think we associate it
with larger families, with growing up and with the time
where there were no safety precautions. None would be in
(13:27):
the way way back, darting around like pinballs.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Right, well, dad's smoking a cigarette in the front, right exactly,
We're all gonna die, yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Exactly, and those wide turns and just being thrown. So
I decide against the walls, which I loved, especially after
a pizza party.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yes, we had Spunky the dog in the back of
our station wagon. Did you really going through the mountains
of New Mexico toward Colorado? Spunky was in the back
then there was the luggage in that back square area.
And then Travis mcmhanon and I were in the back
seat and day front. I heard Spunky in the back
of the station wagon moaning and groaning, like what what
(14:05):
do we do? We gotta let Spunky out.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Sorry, were you in the way back or were you
in the back sheet?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
No, I was in the back seat. Then comes the
luggage and Spunky was in the way back.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
The back seat was really boring. I'm surprised that you
weren't in the way back.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
It's just the way it worked. And for some reason
Spunky ended up in the way back. We could even
touch Spunky because those were like the limousines at the time.
They were, you know, fifty feet long. So anyway, Spunky
was making noises. I kept saying, Dad, you gotta gotta
pull over. He didn't, and Spunky exploded in the back
of our station wagon. She didn't die, no, yeah, diarrhea
(14:40):
thing and it hit the back of my head, the
back of Travis McMahon said, the back of my mom's
perfectly quaffed hair, in the back of my dad, and
all the way up to the front of the car.
That's my station wagon story. We all have one. If
you're old enough, you have a station Wagon story. But
to say goodbye and offer it its own obituary, I
(15:01):
think it's excellent job.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I love that people really responded to the number of
the memories, the depth of people's memories, and their attachment
to the station Wagon. I'm surprised it hasn't made a comeback,
and under a different name it will.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
So I look at other characters that you've you've done,
like Laura Brannigan, not a character but an artist.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I loved doing Laura Brannigan a obituary for her. We're
very proud of that one because well, one of the
things that was interesting and frankly eerie about it is
that year, I guess twenty nineteen, the Saint Louis Blues
hockey team was on this kind of miraculous winning streak.
They went from last in the NHL and they would
(15:44):
end up winning the Stanley Cup for the first time
in their fifty year history, going from last place to
winning the whole thing after they adopted Gloria as their
theme song. But the reason I wanted to do this
was I loved that song growing up, like a lot
of people, but I noticed in the press coverage about
the Saint Louis Blues, about the hockey team, that there
(16:05):
were fans that were asking for Laura Brannigan to show
up and sing the song. They didn't realize she died,
And I thought, this is an example of someone who
had been a huge deal at one point and then died,
and she died really young, and she just sort of
faded for memory right away, I mean. And so there
definitely was space to do this because people hadn't thought
(16:28):
of her in a long time. They'd forgotten that she died,
they ever knew she died, but they still loved that song.
So it was a perfect kind of combination of factors there.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
So when you go to select your victims, when you
go to select your either personalities or historical figures or items,
what is the checklist you go down?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
So I think the checklist is it helps very much
if I have a personal connection to it or a
personal ane personal desire to know more so, whether it's
because I have some history with the subject, or there's
something that I really have always wanted to know and
it grabs me on an emotional level. I think that
(17:13):
there is some sort of element of surprise there, and
I think it also helps and you can do this
with any subject if there's a way to move beyond
that person at different points in the episode to talk
about kind of the larger issues or that person's Like
(17:34):
with Benedict Arnold, the whole idea was he had been
a hero before he was a trader, and so this
was an opportunity at different points in the episode to
spend a couple of moments talking about other people that
were heroic before they were traders, Like Felipe Petin had
been this hero in World War One in France and
then he was a Nazi collaborator during World War Two.
(17:56):
He went from being you idolized in a great here
road to being a scoundrel. Peanuts have went from being
a favored snack to getting kicked out of schools and
off of airplanes like the actual snack. So they went
sort of from hero to villain. And I'm not judging
there's a good reason that people that you know, there
are peanut allergies. Satan before Satan was cast out into hell,
(18:20):
was you know, Lucifer was you know, was he was
like besties with God. So anyway, so there was it was,
so it was a good opportunity to kind of look
at So so that's that's the fun of doing a
longer form podcast.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Have you ever been digging into the meat and potatoes
of a person and you find yourself emotionally, emotionally stabbed? Like,
oh my god? Have you ever have you ever done
a obituary about someone and you actually became emotional over it?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, that's a good Yeah, I hit a nerve for you. Yeah,
oh boy. I think the Laura Anagan was that way
because I think we found the producer, Alison Byrne, found
a recording, a phone recording of her having a conversation
with someone that had become a friend of hers who
(19:18):
was running her fan club, I think, and and Laura
basically was she was talking about the Titanic theme song
and how Selene Dionne had obviously sung it to phenomenal success,
and Laura was basically saying, Ah, if only I'd had
a chance to sing that, and I could you know that?
(19:40):
To me, I found that very poignant, like the idea
of I just want the chance to show what I
can do. And I've certainly felt like that. I think
I felt like that at times so I found that
very sympathetic.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
And yeah, you gotta be careful assuming someone's alive when
they're not. I mean, if you haven't heard their name
tossed around for a while, it's good to check before you.
For instance, we were on our show talking about actor
Avagoda Ada used to be on Barney Miller Fish and
(20:14):
he no offense and he almost looked like he was
dead when he was alive. It's just the way he looked.
He's had the baggy eyes whatever.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
And we worked at CBS. I take no offense.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Okay, whoops. So I assumed he had passed away and
we were talking about, oh, he was a character fish
and then Barney Miller a great, great actor, great character
actor or whatever, and uh, I basically pronounced him dead
on our show and we moved on. That afternoon, I
went to Barnes and Noble, the one that used to
be up here, Lincoln, Lincoln, cetera. He was in the
(20:46):
he was there. He was alive. A Vagoda was alive,
and we all assumed he was dead. And obviously, thank
god our show wasn't. Wasn't his cup of tea? Can
you imagine waking up and hearing you're dead and crazy.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Yes, And I think, you know, there's a story that
I don't know if it's true that Alfred Nobel, the
guy for whom the Nobel Prize is named, that his
death was misreported, and the first line basically said Alfred
Nobel the inventor. I'm gonna get this wrong, but I
(21:20):
think it was the inventor of dynamite, because he made
his fortune and explosives, and he was so appalled that
that was his legacy, that he wasn't dead that he
then endowed the Nobel Peace Prize and prizes because as
a way of saying like, oh my gosh, like this
is not what I want my life to be, kind
of like an Ebenezer Scrooge type thing seeing the future
(21:42):
and going Okay, I've got to change this.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Do you ever go look, do you ever choose personalities
from history that very extremely popular? Do you ever go
because you found oh we just found out something about
Joan Crawford that no one knows. Wait till we talk
about this in an Hermo bit.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah. Well, first of all, I think it's important to
keep people in, to throw in a couple of really
big names, and it's interesting I don't do it thinking, Okay,
we're going to do it because we because we have
we have this thing that no one knows. We didn't
with John Denver, we actually didn't have something that no
one knew. But I also do I'm going to sound
(22:27):
really pretentious here, but that the son Thai musical Sunday
in the Park with George there's this line, everything you do,
let it come from you, then it will be new.
And I really do believe that.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Say it again, everything you do, let it come from you,
then it will be new. So don't go, uh, it's
already been done. Somebody else did it. Well, no, you
didn't do it, So if you do it, it will
be different. Now I'm not saying remember that like Hollywood,
lord knows. Like remember there was that year where there
was like four different movies about asteroids, thing more than
(23:00):
five about volcanoes. I'm not sure that everyone doing their
own volcano movie was in fact, you know, bringing something
new to it. But but I think in this kind
of a medium and podcasts, where you're not working with
an army of people, you know, it's a lot of work,
but it's also gonna end up being more personal. And
and uh so, yeah, so I don't. I don't. I
(23:23):
don't feel the pressure that, Okay, we can't do this
person because this person is so well known, and the
only way to do it is if we have you know,
some you know, hidden tape that reveals that they had
a secret life. I don't think that's true. But I
think the more you get into it, you'll you'll find
something you know. And I do think it's important to
(23:43):
have some big games.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
So if I rolled through a New York Times this
Sunday to the obituary column or they some of them
are just short blurbs. They just have name, address, phone
number or whatever. I mean, just like the bare minimum.
And some of them are actually written. I mean, they
have editorial staff that will write.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
They have great writer.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Do you read New York Times obituaries every week?
Speaker 2 (24:11):
I don't read them as religiously as I probably should.
So I'll scroll through sometimes and then I'll select a
few to read. I should read them more, probably, And
I do know that the writers there, I know a
few of them that they have a surprising amount of
leeway because I mean, there's so many people dying all
the time that they can't do full out articles for
(24:33):
each one, and so the writers can go to the
editor and say, you know, this person died, and it
doesn't have to be this person died yesterday. It can
be this person died a month ago, and I really
want to do something on one of my friends who's
a writer over there. His first obituary was on the
actor who played doctor Bombay on Bewitched.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Oh my god, do you remember his name?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
I can't remember the name of the actor. But this
writer said, you know, I want to do this, and
it was published, like I think, like more than a
month after that actor died, you know, which is fine,
But so listen, it's a very popular section. It used
to be fun intended a real graveyard. I mean, like
(25:18):
you did not want to be an obituary writer. It's
where you were put out to pasture. Now a lot
of journalists, print journalists, you know, really want to work
on that section because it's like you're working for every
section in the newspaper. You're working for business, you're working
for sports, you're working for entertainment. Because it depends on
who dies.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
And of course it goes back obviously I'm making assumptions here.
It goes back to your love of history.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
It totally does because it's also I think I think
you know Don Hewitt, who created sixty Minutes. I can't
remember the exact quote, but I think he said, every
story has to be about someone. You don't do a
story about a topic. Now do as you pointed out,
(26:02):
Tod do the station Wagon. But I look at the
station Wagon as a character, almost like as a person.
So an obituary is traditionally about a person, and so
it's a great history lesson on that person and all
the things that are attached to it.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
I think, do you enjoy interviewing people?
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yes, I do. There are times in the middle of
an interview I'm going right to the negative where I
kind of go where I think and I hope you
don't feel I know, I hope you don't feel that
way right now. But there are times in interviews where
I think, my god, this is work. I think I
do think that.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
But then you just got to like blame them. It's
not your fault. You're brilliant, and exactly remind them of that.
I make sure to always do that. But but it
is worth it.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
I mean, some of my favorite pieces I've done and
I'm not being quite here. I really can't think of
specific examples they have turned out well, and I thought,
oh my gosh, that's that's pretty surprise. Seeing piece in
the middle of that interview, I wanted to just just
drown myself. I mean, it was so tough. Yeah, I think.
(27:10):
I mean, obviously, it's great if you really connect with somebody, right.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
If you have a personal interest in what they're all about.
And this is why, this is why I love your interviews, mo.
I always feel the best interviewers are the ones who
inject themselves into the interview. And if you said something
it reminds me of a story about when I was
a kid with a station wagon, I feel like, well, okay,
there's a conversation here. Rather than me just asking questions,
(27:36):
you give me a yes, no answers. You inject yourself
into interviews with a very very very brilliant wit about you,
and you definitely always come across as seeming genuinely interested
in what they're saying. And there's a beauty to that.
I don't think it's something you study or learn, it's
something you just have or you don't.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Well, I appreciate that. I mean, I think that one
of the things that has served me well that I
sort of figured out along the way, and that you
certainly know is is I think the power of sort
of disarming someone. So you know that, especially with actors
when they entertainers, when they come into an interview and
(28:19):
they either had the story ready to go, or the
pitch ready to go, or the persona ready to go.
Just pricking it a little bit. And I don't mean
taking the piss out of somebody that's not other people
are really great at that. That's not my style, but
just kind of disarming them a little bit.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
I mean like when the actress Eva Marie Saint, who's
in two of the greatest movies ever made, on the
Waterfront and north By Northwest, somebody had said, oh, she's
not a great interview. I hate even saying that because
she's such a great woman and I still want to
do her. And I noticed that she was born on
July fourth, and I thought, oh, that's kind of fun.
(28:56):
And so the first thing I said to her is
what was it like having a July fourth birthday growing up?
And then she was so surprised and that and she
went and she lit up, and she said, it was wonderful.
When I was a little girl, my father told me
that the fireworks were for me, and she immediately we
were off to the races. Like she she wasn't she
(29:20):
wasn't thinking, Okay, I'm gonna have to trot out the
Hitchcock story for north By Northwest, the Brando story for
on the Waterfront, and so it was just this is
going to be loose and we're just having a conversation.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
I love that. Yeah, which leads me to this.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
You know, I'm speaking in paragraphs, which I don't like
when I'm in conversations with somebody. So I just want
to I want to sort of tell you right now that.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
I was making in paragraphs. You know.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
It's interesting.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
I was.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
I was with a friend the other day. There were
a group of us and I like this person, this
theirfle but I was like, this person's really irritating me.
And then the other friend later said, oh, it's it's
because he doesn't understand how to have a conversation where
it's like one line, one line, one line, one line.
He only knows how to speak in paragraphs. And I said, yeah,
(30:12):
that was what was driving me crazy. But we're in
an interview here. So paragraphs are okay.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Well, I could see how you know, there are different
types of conversations. One is like a tennis match where
you rally your ball, my bile, you're all libel. But
it's okay to have a beginning, of middle and an
end to a thought. I think it's a story. You
are a storyteller, and that's that's part of your curse.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yes, but perhaps and look if we were at a
coffee right now and I was telling you a story,
or you were telling me a story hopefully as well,
then we could be speaking in paragraphs.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
But what if.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Every time I asked you something and then you answered,
or I answered, You asked me something, I answered, and
there was a story attached to it, with a name
and an anecdote. I mean, you'd want to kill yourself.
Not at all are people who do that? And it's
really annoying, like, oh, this coffee is great, Oh yeah,
this coffee is good. When I was in Costa Rica
(31:07):
in nineteen eighty nine, I had coffee and it was
a rappic God that was a really really interesting blah
blah blah, And then you just want to say, why
did I even mention the coffee.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Well, so do you think that's a do you think
that's a fault? I mean a faulty, a fault.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
And I hate to come here and be criticizing people anonymously.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
I just give me a list of names of people
who do this. Go to out them right now out there.
I want to give their phone numbers so that you
can text them and say stop speaking in paragraphs and
having an entire history and anecdote, you know, attached to everything.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
It is eight thirty in the morning, we're having coffee,
just catching up.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
But I'll give you a good example of where there's
before I forget because I'm brain dead. Moving from the
BlackBerry to the iPhone. On the BlackBerry, which had the
quirity keyboard and you can actually feel the button pushing down,
I would write paragraphs. When I got the iPhone, it
was lol, it was interesting. So I easier.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
It's easier to take.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
I know, but I missed that BlackBerry feeling. I miss
being able to emote, I miss being able to.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Expand. Okay, that's fine. I mean I just remember when
I first moved to New York and I was auditioning
for musical theater and there was a vocal coach, and
she was really sought after. She was very very good
named Annie Lebau, and I had to come up with
I was auditioning for character roles, like wacky second banana roles.
(32:36):
And I started singing from a song, a song from
that Bud Frump from How to Succeed in Business with
that really trying saying, and I was doing it super charactery,
really laying it on thick. And she stopped playing the
piano and she whipped her head around towards me, and
she said, be easy to take, and it's bad into
(32:57):
my memory.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
That's the best advice ever.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
And she said, easy to take. People will get it.
They're gonna get it. You don't have to cram it
down their throats anyway. I'm just thinking about that.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
No, it's like we need to give people a little
more credit.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yes, the audience will get it. Like like I'm playing
a nerd. Well, okay, we get it. You're a nerd.
You have a nerd essence. I'm talking about myself right here.
Don't need to like like really like like just lay
it on thick. And so I don't know, I mean
I think like and this anyway, I guess. I guess
in the podcast, I'm trying. Maybe it's an age thing also,
(33:33):
just trying to it's hard work and all that, but
like letting the audience come to you.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
See. For instance, you and I are from but we're
about the same age. I'm a little older probably, Okay, yeah, yeah,
So when you mentioned doctor Bombay on Bewitch, I'm thinking automatically, Okay,
who in our audience has no frigging clue who that
is calling doctor Bombay? How old are you? There's someone
here in the studio thirty three, thirty three do you
know who doctor Bombay is? From Bewitch? They don't get it.
(34:01):
It's okay, doctor Bombay.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
And it was a really it actually was. It was
a really minor character. And I, frankly, I don't really remember.
And I watched it all the time. I remember, I
watched it and reruns all the time. I don't remember.
I remember. And Dora and I used to confuse, and
Dora with Clara I would get confused. Yeah, and Clara
and Clara I confuse And uh, and what's his name?
Who we all love? Who apparently was an impossible person
(34:26):
to deal with? Derwood Dagwood, No no, no, no, no.
Paul Land, Yeah, yeah, did you read his biography? You
got to read that?
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Was it a memoir or is it it was?
Speaker 1 (34:36):
I think it was more biographical because it was it was.
It was definitely they're telling the to you on pauland
it was kind of funny.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
I think it's so interesting people like Paul and Lynn
and Charles Nelson Riley and I've read his two Yeah,
Charles Nelson Riley. Well, Charles Nelson Riley, I think was
had a much more. I mean, you know, I think
pauland it was his his end was very, very sad,
but you know, I think Charles Nelson Riley managed to
(35:01):
and they both had great careers.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah, well ended that. But I have to go back
to a well, I have to go back to follow
up on a question I asked you earlier. I asked
you about interviews. Yeah, do you enjoy doing interviews? My
point is in obituaries, you're basically interviewing someone who's dead.
I think part of it, I feel like you're getting
(35:24):
you go out and get the answers that you feel
they would give you if you were speaking with them.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
You know, I had not thought of that and I
really will take that as a great compliment, and I
really appreciate it because I'd never thought of that, but
giving them a chance to tell their story, and you know,
I've only thought about it in very tangential ways, Like
I did think, without sounding too pleased with myself, that
(35:52):
boy John Denver would like this. I think he'd be
And it wasn't. We didn't canonize him. We didn't canonize him.
We talked about his own frustration with not being taken seriously,
his great disappointment, like his devastation at not being asked
to be part of We Are the World when he
had been, you know, a celebrity who was one of
(36:13):
the first to really put world hunger kind of on
the map, as as you know, the first celebrity to
do that and then was only a few years later,
was considered too out of it to passe to be
asked to be part of this song that had forty
different singers. They could have made space for him, so
(36:35):
all that we included, but I do think that he
would say thank you for for you know, sticking up
for me, or at least telling my story.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
I love it. Podcasts. There's billions of them. The one
I insist you listen to his obituaries. Thank you, Thank
you for all you give us, because it goes way
beyond mobituaries. Thank you for being here, Morocca, thank you,
Thank you for listening. I'm honored to have you here.
My second podcast with Melrocco. That was fabulous. Make sure
(37:06):
you subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening to Thinking
out Loud. By the way, who came up with that name?
Is that the name of my book? What's my idea
to call it? Thinking out Loud? But I'm taking credit
for it. Until next time, Thank you for listening, Feel
free on your own think out Loud. Thinking out Loud
is hosted by me Elvis Duran. The podcast is produced
and edited by Mike Coscarelli. Executive producers are Andrew mcglsi
(37:29):
and Katrina Norvel. Special thanks to David Katz, Michael Kindheart,
and Caitlin Madore. Thinking out Loud is part of the
Elvis Duran podcast network on iHeartRadio. For more, rate review
and subscribe to our show and if you liked this episode,
tell your friends. Until next time, I'm Elvis Durant.
Thank you Moe Raka for being here. Oh hold on,
oh a bigger name online.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Three.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
My husband Alex is calling, hold on? What hey?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hi?
Speaker 1 (00:10):
How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I?
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I'm doing the podcast with mo Rocca. Say hi to moy.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hi Alex, good to talk.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Did you call when I was doing Kesha as well?
It's cold, perfect time. It is all right. I love you.
I'll call you back. Say bye to MOI I was
a T and T a sponsor. No, not at all. Hi,
it's Elvis. Thank you for listening to my podcast. This
is podcast number two. Hopefully there'll be three and four
and five and six. If you missed podcast one with Kesha,
(00:41):
roll back and listen to it. We talked about spaceships,
we talked about a ghosts and she played with a
dead man's skull. Today's gonna be a little different. This
is gonna be a little different podcast with someone I'm
fascinated with, Mo Raka. I've been witnessed to Morocca since
god back in the days. He was on MTV and
VH one in those remember the eighties documentaries and things
(01:02):
like that, And then I noticed Moroka on CBS Sunday Morning.
He also does a lot of work with CBS Television
and now he has his own podcast, his own podcast
called Mobituaries, which is fascinating for some reason it maybe
he'll explain in a few minutes. Growing up watching his
father become so exhilarated reading obituaries in the newspaper every day,
(01:22):
he in the beginning felt it odd, and then he
discovered there's a whole story to be told about people
who have left us, but their legacy lives. And he
goes to find those legacies and puts it in a
great Moroca storytelling way. And you're gonna hear that, I promise.
He's such a sweet guy. I'm fascinated by each and
everything he says. He's the smartest person I know, the
(01:45):
host of his very own, huge award winning podcast, Mobituaries.
Let's listen in to Morocca Moroka. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I always love to be with you.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Elvis, thank you for having me our second guest on
my podcast. What's the name of my podcast? We have
a name, right, what's the name of it?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Thinking out loud, I'm torn about being second because, on
the one hand, I'm like, who was.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
First, Kesha?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Kesha was first? Okay, and she's got a symbol in
her name. I don't have that, I mean, right, because
she's so Tollerci.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Well, we have to add a symbol. By the end
of this podcast, we'll have a symbol added to your name.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
She little Moroccas.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Now Mo Raka has a podcast out called Mobituaries, and
we've talked about this on our show before. I just
couldn't wait to get you back to go a little
deeper into this.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
You were dying to have me back for this exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Growing up fascinated with obituaries, and you got that from
your father, as I recall, right, tell the story.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well, my father, that was his favorite section of the newspaper.
I grew up outside of Washington, d C. There were
two daily newspapers when I was little, the Washingtonton Posts
in the Washington Star. And he would say, oh boy,
the obituaries is my favorite section. And he would say
it like that because he was not gloomy at all.
And I think he liked the obituaries because a well
(03:04):
written obituary is a real ride. You can really get
lost in it. It can be really exhilarating, and I
think it's like a like a trailer for an Oscar
winning biopic. It has that kind of sweep, you know,
coming this fall, the trials, the tribulations, the ups, the downs,
you know.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
And there's something to be said for the fact that
this person just passed away. So there's an energy there, yes,
and there are a lot of family members and friends
and colleagues hopefully are grieving, so that person is still
somewhat a little alive when you read that obituary.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
That's a great point. It's well, it's also right, it's
like a first draft of that person's history, because I
think that there I'm not sure that I've seen any
corrections issued for obituaries, unless so're for major figures. But
I do think that newspapers, even the New York Times,
get a lot of things wrong in these obituaries because
(03:59):
you're talking to overwrought, highly emotional relatives sometimes and you know,
there's only so much fact checking you can do because
a lot of the stuff there's not, you know, public
record for.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
So yeah, you go down the list of all of
the different episodes of mobituaries and it's just a wide
variety of people who were very famous, people you've never
heard of, and also concepts that have died or products
that faded away. In deciding how to come up with
(04:31):
these different facets of history to put on your Mobituaries podcast,
how did you decide, Okay, it should be beyond people,
it has to be things as well, like what was
your first your first thing that you had on mobituaries.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
So I think that they're two sort of main criteria,
and I think you must appreciate this as well, that
it has to be interesting to me, because the audience
can sniff out if it's really not. They can tell
if you're faking it, especially right and when it's just
(05:07):
audio and you're just hearing, you're really focused on it,
So it has to really get me in the gut.
But I also think in everything there has to be
an element of surprise. So I think the surprise could
be that it's a seemingly silly subject like sitcom characterists
(05:28):
that have died, but then it ends up being surprisingly
not profound, but you know, a little more substantific. It's
more of sort of like, oh, that's interesting that creative
choice that Gary Marshall made on Happy Days to kill
off the oldest brother, Chuck Cunningham. Because the fonds is
becoming really popular, and they didn't need the older brother anymore,
because why would Richie ask his older brother for advice
(05:48):
on dating girls when he's got the Fonds living in
the garage out back. Or surprise, you know, sort of
between episodes within an episode, or you know, an episode
about the death of a kind of banana which has
a lot of serious stuff about it, but it's also
kind of fun. I end up singing, yes, we have
no bananas with Andre de Shields. But then the next episode, well,
(06:12):
one of the next episodes was really serious about a
dancer who was from the original cast of Cats who
died from AIDS, and I had a very personal connection
to Cats. So I think it's all about keeping people
a little bit off balance, surprising them because that they
know exactly what they're going to get. I don't think
that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Well, another thing to think about here is, you know,
in our business, in broadcast, if do they still call
it broadcast under we call it broadcast anymore.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
I'm a fan of broadcasting.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
You I'm me too. Yeah, And you go back to
the There is a broadcaster genius, man Paul Harvey, right,
he used to have Paul Harvey. The rest of the
story where he would talk about without using names, this
person who was born in Oklahoma, who dated this woman.
They had to divorce each other, and he went on
to this other woman and the invented doctor Pepper. His
(07:08):
name was doctor Pepper. And that's the rest of the story.
I mean, he would take you to this story. Then
you're like, who is he talking about? And at the
end he would like, just am you never knew there
was a doctor Pepper. By the way, there was not
a doctor Pepper. It wasn't I don't think.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
It's not not in the Waco area at all. You know,
maybe there was, but.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
It was fascinating. Theater of the mind is what it was.
And I find obituaries it totally scratches that itch for me.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Well, I love that, and I'm always i mean talking
about it just a scratch. I mean that's how I
look at it too, sort of. You know. Sometimes it's
a subject that I actually want to spend my time
learning about. So I think, well, I want to do
an episode on this because I know nothing about it
and I've always wanted to and now it's a good
time to learn. But can I just ask you about
(07:56):
you know, when we were talking about the word broadcasting. Yes,
a while to really sort of think about the word itself, that,
you know, broadcasting as opposed to narrow casting because the
world is so adomized now. Everything is so split up,
like you know, everyone's watching something different, listening to something different.
There are no water cooler conversations in the way there.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Used to be.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
But you're a broadcaster, right, so you can't like, is it?
Don't you do? You love? I know I do the
creative challenge of trying to get as many people into
the tent as possible.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Oh, absolutely, yeah. You know, we know that we have
this massive pool to go swimming in, right, but we
know that if we talk about this or that, or
we forget to talk about that or this, the pool
decreases because they lose interest. Right, So we find it
a challenge every day to try to remain as broad
as possible, and so we can scoop Actually, yeah, scoop
(08:53):
the uh what was the word I heard it from
the other day, scoop the spectrum. It is what it is.
We want to get as many people who listen without
offending too many people. It's a weird balance, it's.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
A really weird balance, but it's also a really cool
creative challenge of how you keep everyone in without it
just becoming bland, because then no one will be interested.
You know, I have this roommate I had in college.
He's super genius or in Eisenberg, he's so smart, and
(09:26):
he went and he's an English professor now you see Irvine,
And we had this conversation and he said, you know,
I could be teaching little seminars about super specific topics,
but he loves teaching these broad based English literature courses
where there are students that might be science majors, math majors,
(09:47):
and this may be the last English course they ever take.
But it's his job to keep them all in the
tent and keep them all interested. It's just a different
challenge than if you have an audience that comes in
that already knows they're interested in exactly what you're doing. Anyway,
I just love, I love the challenge of keeping as
(10:07):
many people in as possible.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Go to any high school in America and you'll see that,
just like the college system, they have curriculum that is
very specific, very very narrow and deep. When I went
to high school, it was math, it was English, it
was science. Now they break down science into fifteen different genres.
You can choose which science you want to study. So
(10:36):
I think, in my opinion, it's good to have a
mixture of both.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Absolutely you want to go, yes, exactly, between electives and
main courses, between like cheerios, and then the super specific
serial like that's in that variety pack, like the really
really one that's super specific.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah, speaking of cereals, he's not here. Scotty b who
sits in the studio that he has a podcast called
serial Killers where he and Andrew, who you met on
the way up. They review new cereals, breakfast cereals, and
they bring old school cereals out of the off the
shelves and it's just a podcast about cereals.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
What's the latest hot pick?
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Well, no, I tasted one today. It's a cereal from
Mexico called It's Churros and it taste like little churros.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
I love Mexican coke as in Coca Cola because it's
less sweet, it's a little milder. So I hope that
this Mexican chudral cereal is churro cereal.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
It's it's hard to say that.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah, it's a little bit hard to say that. I'm
hoping that it's the American version of it. They it
would there'd be way too much sugar, it would be
too sweet.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
It wasn't too sweet. I kind of liked it. It
is like I said, it is from Mexico. Yeah, imported cereal.
But the point of this is deep and narrow. Is
this topic on this podcast that actually has a lot
of fans?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Oh my god, and I love that in this they
should have called this episode breakfast bad certain anyway, why
not cereal coming from Mexico? Sorry, I'm with you, which
is not appropriate. It's so appropriate Columbian, so I can say.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
This is handed to me. Doctor Charles Taylor Pepper was
born December eighteen thirty from Big Spring, Virginia. So there
was a doctor Pepper. How he's mixed into the story
and the legacy, I don't know. Maybe that should Doctor
Pepper is still around, so it does not qualify for
a obituary podcast.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, and I wonder what his specialty was this, doctor Papper?
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Do we know surgeon? He was a surgeon? Okay, all right,
I'm a Pepper, Y're a Pepper work, So I'm going
to there was another episode you had the station wagon.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Uh huh, yes, yeah, the station wagon is well, I
would say that's that's another major factor for me. And
what I decide what topic I want to do is
you know, we talked about scratching an inch, a feeling
in your gut. It's a kind of warmth and the
station wagon, and I think I'm pretty good at identifying
(13:04):
this a subject a person that will make people go
all and feel warm like John Denver was that way.
I think I think it worked in doing a mobituary
about him. But the station wagon I think gets people
in the same way because I think we associate it
with larger families, with growing up and with the time
where there were no safety precautions. None would be in
(13:27):
the way way back, darting around like pinballs.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Right, well, dad's smoking a cigarette in the front, right exactly,
We're all gonna die, yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Exactly, and those wide turns and just being thrown. So
I decide against the walls, which I loved, especially after
a pizza party.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yes, we had Spunky the dog in the back of
our station wagon. Did you really going through the mountains
of New Mexico toward Colorado? Spunky was in the back
then there was the luggage in that back square area.
And then Travis mcmhanon and I were in the back
seat and day front. I heard Spunky in the back
of the station wagon moaning and groaning, like what what
(14:05):
do we do? We gotta let Spunky out.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Sorry, were you in the way back or were you
in the back sheet?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
No, I was in the back seat. Then comes the
luggage and Spunky was in the way back.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
The back seat was really boring. I'm surprised that you
weren't in the way back.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
It's just the way it worked. And for some reason
Spunky ended up in the way back. We could even
touch Spunky because those were like the limousines at the time.
They were, you know, fifty feet long. So anyway, Spunky
was making noises. I kept saying, Dad, you gotta gotta
pull over. He didn't, and Spunky exploded in the back
of our station wagon. She didn't die, no, yeah, diarrhea
(14:40):
thing and it hit the back of my head, the
back of Travis McMahon said, the back of my mom's
perfectly quaffed hair, in the back of my dad, and
all the way up to the front of the car.
That's my station wagon story. We all have one. If
you're old enough, you have a station Wagon story. But
to say goodbye and offer it its own obituary, I
(15:01):
think it's excellent job.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I love that people really responded to the number of
the memories, the depth of people's memories, and their attachment
to the station Wagon. I'm surprised it hasn't made a comeback,
and under a different name it will.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
So I look at other characters that you've you've done,
like Laura Brannigan, not a character but an artist.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I loved doing Laura Brannigan a obituary for her. We're
very proud of that one because well, one of the
things that was interesting and frankly eerie about it is
that year, I guess twenty nineteen, the Saint Louis Blues
hockey team was on this kind of miraculous winning streak.
They went from last in the NHL and they would
(15:44):
end up winning the Stanley Cup for the first time
in their fifty year history, going from last place to
winning the whole thing after they adopted Gloria as their
theme song. But the reason I wanted to do this
was I loved that song growing up, like a lot
of people, but I noticed in the press coverage about
the Saint Louis Blues, about the hockey team, that there
(16:05):
were fans that were asking for Laura Brannigan to show
up and sing the song. They didn't realize she died,
And I thought, this is an example of someone who
had been a huge deal at one point and then died,
and she died really young, and she just sort of
faded for memory right away, I mean. And so there
definitely was space to do this because people hadn't thought
(16:28):
of her in a long time. They'd forgotten that she died,
they ever knew she died, but they still loved that song.
So it was a perfect kind of combination of factors there.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
So when you go to select your victims, when you
go to select your either personalities or historical figures or items,
what is the checklist you go down?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
So I think the checklist is it helps very much
if I have a personal connection to it or a
personal ane personal desire to know more so, whether it's
because I have some history with the subject, or there's
something that I really have always wanted to know and
it grabs me on an emotional level. I think that
(17:13):
there is some sort of element of surprise there, and
I think it also helps and you can do this
with any subject if there's a way to move beyond
that person at different points in the episode to talk
about kind of the larger issues or that person's Like
(17:34):
with Benedict Arnold, the whole idea was he had been
a hero before he was a trader, and so this
was an opportunity at different points in the episode to
spend a couple of moments talking about other people that
were heroic before they were traders, Like Felipe Petin had
been this hero in World War One in France and
then he was a Nazi collaborator during World War Two.
(17:56):
He went from being you idolized in a great here
road to being a scoundrel. Peanuts have went from being
a favored snack to getting kicked out of schools and
off of airplanes like the actual snack. So they went
sort of from hero to villain. And I'm not judging
there's a good reason that people that you know, there
are peanut allergies. Satan before Satan was cast out into hell,
(18:20):
was you know, Lucifer was you know, was he was
like besties with God. So anyway, so there was it was,
so it was a good opportunity to kind of look
at So so that's that's the fun of doing a
longer form podcast.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Have you ever been digging into the meat and potatoes
of a person and you find yourself emotionally, emotionally stabbed? Like,
oh my god? Have you ever have you ever done
a obituary about someone and you actually became emotional over it?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, that's a good Yeah, I hit a nerve for you. Yeah,
oh boy. I think the Laura Anagan was that way
because I think we found the producer, Alison Byrne, found
a recording, a phone recording of her having a conversation
with someone that had become a friend of hers who
(19:18):
was running her fan club, I think, and and Laura
basically was she was talking about the Titanic theme song
and how Selene Dionne had obviously sung it to phenomenal success,
and Laura was basically saying, Ah, if only I'd had
a chance to sing that, and I could you know that?
(19:40):
To me, I found that very poignant, like the idea
of I just want the chance to show what I
can do. And I've certainly felt like that. I think
I felt like that at times so I found that
very sympathetic.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
And yeah, you gotta be careful assuming someone's alive when
they're not. I mean, if you haven't heard their name
tossed around for a while, it's good to check before you.
For instance, we were on our show talking about actor
Avagoda Ada used to be on Barney Miller Fish and
(20:14):
he no offense and he almost looked like he was
dead when he was alive. It's just the way he looked.
He's had the baggy eyes whatever.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
And we worked at CBS. I take no offense.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Okay, whoops. So I assumed he had passed away and
we were talking about, oh, he was a character fish
and then Barney Miller a great, great actor, great character
actor or whatever, and uh, I basically pronounced him dead
on our show and we moved on. That afternoon, I
went to Barnes and Noble, the one that used to
be up here, Lincoln, Lincoln, cetera. He was in the
(20:46):
he was there. He was alive. A Vagoda was alive,
and we all assumed he was dead. And obviously, thank
god our show wasn't. Wasn't his cup of tea? Can
you imagine waking up and hearing you're dead and crazy.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Yes, And I think, you know, there's a story that
I don't know if it's true that Alfred Nobel, the
guy for whom the Nobel Prize is named, that his
death was misreported, and the first line basically said Alfred
Nobel the inventor. I'm gonna get this wrong, but I
(21:20):
think it was the inventor of dynamite, because he made
his fortune and explosives, and he was so appalled that
that was his legacy, that he wasn't dead that he
then endowed the Nobel Peace Prize and prizes because as
a way of saying like, oh my gosh, like this
is not what I want my life to be, kind
of like an Ebenezer Scrooge type thing seeing the future
(21:42):
and going Okay, I've got to change this.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Do you ever go look, do you ever choose personalities
from history that very extremely popular? Do you ever go
because you found oh we just found out something about
Joan Crawford that no one knows. Wait till we talk
about this in an Hermo bit.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah. Well, first of all, I think it's important to
keep people in, to throw in a couple of really
big names, and it's interesting I don't do it thinking, Okay,
we're going to do it because we because we have
we have this thing that no one knows. We didn't
with John Denver, we actually didn't have something that no
one knew. But I also do I'm going to sound
(22:27):
really pretentious here, but that the son Thai musical Sunday
in the Park with George there's this line, everything you do,
let it come from you, then it will be new.
And I really do believe that.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Say it again, everything you do, let it come from you,
then it will be new. So don't go, uh, it's
already been done. Somebody else did it. Well, no, you
didn't do it, So if you do it, it will
be different. Now I'm not saying remember that like Hollywood,
lord knows. Like remember there was that year where there
was like four different movies about asteroids, thing more than
(23:00):
five about volcanoes. I'm not sure that everyone doing their
own volcano movie was in fact, you know, bringing something
new to it. But but I think in this kind
of a medium and podcasts, where you're not working with
an army of people, you know, it's a lot of work,
but it's also gonna end up being more personal. And
and uh so, yeah, so I don't. I don't. I
(23:23):
don't feel the pressure that, Okay, we can't do this
person because this person is so well known, and the
only way to do it is if we have you know,
some you know, hidden tape that reveals that they had
a secret life. I don't think that's true. But I
think the more you get into it, you'll you'll find
something you know. And I do think it's important to
(23:43):
have some big games.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
So if I rolled through a New York Times this
Sunday to the obituary column or they some of them
are just short blurbs. They just have name, address, phone
number or whatever. I mean, just like the bare minimum.
And some of them are actually written. I mean, they
have editorial staff that will write.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
They have great writer.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Do you read New York Times obituaries every week?
Speaker 2 (24:11):
I don't read them as religiously as I probably should.
So I'll scroll through sometimes and then I'll select a
few to read. I should read them more, probably, And
I do know that the writers there, I know a
few of them that they have a surprising amount of
leeway because I mean, there's so many people dying all
the time that they can't do full out articles for
(24:33):
each one, and so the writers can go to the
editor and say, you know, this person died, and it
doesn't have to be this person died yesterday. It can
be this person died a month ago, and I really
want to do something on one of my friends who's
a writer over there. His first obituary was on the
actor who played doctor Bombay on Bewitched.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Oh my god, do you remember his name?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
I can't remember the name of the actor. But this
writer said, you know, I want to do this, and
it was published, like I think, like more than a
month after that actor died, you know, which is fine,
But so listen, it's a very popular section. It used
to be fun intended a real graveyard. I mean, like
(25:18):
you did not want to be an obituary writer. It's
where you were put out to pasture. Now a lot
of journalists, print journalists, you know, really want to work
on that section because it's like you're working for every
section in the newspaper. You're working for business, you're working
for sports, you're working for entertainment. Because it depends on
who dies.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
And of course it goes back obviously I'm making assumptions here.
It goes back to your love of history.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
It totally does because it's also I think I think
you know Don Hewitt, who created sixty Minutes. I can't
remember the exact quote, but I think he said, every
story has to be about someone. You don't do a
story about a topic. Now do as you pointed out,
(26:02):
Tod do the station Wagon. But I look at the
station Wagon as a character, almost like as a person.
So an obituary is traditionally about a person, and so
it's a great history lesson on that person and all
the things that are attached to it.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
I think, do you enjoy interviewing people?
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yes, I do. There are times in the middle of
an interview I'm going right to the negative where I
kind of go where I think and I hope you
don't feel I know, I hope you don't feel that
way right now. But there are times in interviews where
I think, my god, this is work. I think I
do think that.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
But then you just got to like blame them. It's
not your fault. You're brilliant, and exactly remind them of that.
I make sure to always do that. But but it
is worth it.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
I mean, some of my favorite pieces I've done and
I'm not being quite here. I really can't think of
specific examples they have turned out well, and I thought,
oh my gosh, that's that's pretty surprise. Seeing piece in
the middle of that interview, I wanted to just just
drown myself. I mean, it was so tough. Yeah, I think.
(27:10):
I mean, obviously, it's great if you really connect with somebody, right.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
If you have a personal interest in what they're all about.
And this is why, this is why I love your interviews, mo.
I always feel the best interviewers are the ones who
inject themselves into the interview. And if you said something
it reminds me of a story about when I was
a kid with a station wagon, I feel like, well, okay,
there's a conversation here. Rather than me just asking questions,
(27:36):
you give me a yes, no answers. You inject yourself
into interviews with a very very very brilliant wit about you,
and you definitely always come across as seeming genuinely interested
in what they're saying. And there's a beauty to that.
I don't think it's something you study or learn, it's
something you just have or you don't.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Well, I appreciate that. I mean, I think that one
of the things that has served me well that I
sort of figured out along the way, and that you
certainly know is is I think the power of sort
of disarming someone. So you know that, especially with actors
when they entertainers, when they come into an interview and
(28:19):
they either had the story ready to go, or the
pitch ready to go, or the persona ready to go.
Just pricking it a little bit. And I don't mean
taking the piss out of somebody that's not other people
are really great at that. That's not my style, but
just kind of disarming them a little bit.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
I mean like when the actress Eva Marie Saint, who's
in two of the greatest movies ever made, on the
Waterfront and north By Northwest, somebody had said, oh, she's
not a great interview. I hate even saying that because
she's such a great woman and I still want to
do her. And I noticed that she was born on
July fourth, and I thought, oh, that's kind of fun.
(28:56):
And so the first thing I said to her is
what was it like having a July fourth birthday growing up?
And then she was so surprised and that and she
went and she lit up, and she said, it was wonderful.
When I was a little girl, my father told me
that the fireworks were for me, and she immediately we
were off to the races. Like she she wasn't she
(29:20):
wasn't thinking, Okay, I'm gonna have to trot out the
Hitchcock story for north By Northwest, the Brando story for
on the Waterfront, and so it was just this is
going to be loose and we're just having a conversation.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
I love that. Yeah, which leads me to this.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
You know, I'm speaking in paragraphs, which I don't like
when I'm in conversations with somebody. So I just want
to I want to sort of tell you right now that.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
I was making in paragraphs. You know.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
It's interesting.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
I was.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
I was with a friend the other day. There were
a group of us and I like this person, this
theirfle but I was like, this person's really irritating me.
And then the other friend later said, oh, it's it's
because he doesn't understand how to have a conversation where
it's like one line, one line, one line, one line.
He only knows how to speak in paragraphs. And I said, yeah,
(30:12):
that was what was driving me crazy. But we're in
an interview here. So paragraphs are okay.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Well, I could see how you know, there are different
types of conversations. One is like a tennis match where
you rally your ball, my bile, you're all libel. But
it's okay to have a beginning, of middle and an
end to a thought. I think it's a story. You
are a storyteller, and that's that's part of your curse.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yes, but perhaps and look if we were at a
coffee right now and I was telling you a story,
or you were telling me a story hopefully as well,
then we could be speaking in paragraphs.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
But what if.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Every time I asked you something and then you answered,
or I answered, You asked me something, I answered, and
there was a story attached to it, with a name
and an anecdote. I mean, you'd want to kill yourself.
Not at all are people who do that? And it's
really annoying, like, oh, this coffee is great, Oh yeah,
this coffee is good. When I was in Costa Rica
(31:07):
in nineteen eighty nine, I had coffee and it was
a rappic God that was a really really interesting blah
blah blah, And then you just want to say, why
did I even mention the coffee.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Well, so do you think that's a do you think
that's a fault? I mean a faulty, a fault.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
And I hate to come here and be criticizing people anonymously.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
I just give me a list of names of people
who do this. Go to out them right now out there.
I want to give their phone numbers so that you
can text them and say stop speaking in paragraphs and
having an entire history and anecdote, you know, attached to everything.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
It is eight thirty in the morning, we're having coffee,
just catching up.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
But I'll give you a good example of where there's
before I forget because I'm brain dead. Moving from the
BlackBerry to the iPhone. On the BlackBerry, which had the
quirity keyboard and you can actually feel the button pushing down,
I would write paragraphs. When I got the iPhone, it
was lol, it was interesting. So I easier.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
It's easier to take.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
I know, but I missed that BlackBerry feeling. I miss
being able to emote, I miss being able to.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Expand. Okay, that's fine. I mean I just remember when
I first moved to New York and I was auditioning
for musical theater and there was a vocal coach, and
she was really sought after. She was very very good
named Annie Lebau, and I had to come up with
I was auditioning for character roles, like wacky second banana roles.
(32:36):
And I started singing from a song, a song from
that Bud Frump from How to Succeed in Business with
that really trying saying, and I was doing it super charactery,
really laying it on thick. And she stopped playing the
piano and she whipped her head around towards me, and
she said, be easy to take, and it's bad into
(32:57):
my memory.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
That's the best advice ever.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
And she said, easy to take. People will get it.
They're gonna get it. You don't have to cram it
down their throats anyway. I'm just thinking about that.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
No, it's like we need to give people a little
more credit.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yes, the audience will get it. Like like I'm playing
a nerd. Well, okay, we get it. You're a nerd.
You have a nerd essence. I'm talking about myself right here.
Don't need to like like really like like just lay
it on thick. And so I don't know, I mean
I think like and this anyway, I guess. I guess
in the podcast, I'm trying. Maybe it's an age thing also,
(33:33):
just trying to it's hard work and all that, but
like letting the audience come to you.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
See. For instance, you and I are from but we're
about the same age. I'm a little older probably, Okay, yeah, yeah,
So when you mentioned doctor Bombay on Bewitch, I'm thinking automatically, Okay,
who in our audience has no frigging clue who that
is calling doctor Bombay? How old are you? There's someone
here in the studio thirty three, thirty three do you
know who doctor Bombay is? From Bewitch? They don't get it.
(34:01):
It's okay, doctor Bombay.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
And it was a really it actually was. It was
a really minor character. And I, frankly, I don't really remember.
And I watched it all the time. I remember, I
watched it and reruns all the time. I don't remember.
I remember. And Dora and I used to confuse, and
Dora with Clara I would get confused. Yeah, and Clara
and Clara I confuse And uh, and what's his name?
Who we all love? Who apparently was an impossible person
(34:26):
to deal with? Derwood Dagwood, No no, no, no, no.
Paul Land, Yeah, yeah, did you read his biography? You
got to read that?
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Was it a memoir or is it it was?
Speaker 1 (34:36):
I think it was more biographical because it was it was.
It was definitely they're telling the to you on pauland
it was kind of funny.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
I think it's so interesting people like Paul and Lynn
and Charles Nelson Riley and I've read his two Yeah,
Charles Nelson Riley. Well, Charles Nelson Riley, I think was
had a much more. I mean, you know, I think
pauland it was his his end was very, very sad,
but you know, I think Charles Nelson Riley managed to
(35:01):
and they both had great careers.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah, well ended that. But I have to go back
to a well, I have to go back to follow
up on a question I asked you earlier. I asked
you about interviews. Yeah, do you enjoy doing interviews? My
point is in obituaries, you're basically interviewing someone who's dead.
I think part of it, I feel like you're getting
(35:24):
you go out and get the answers that you feel
they would give you if you were speaking with them.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
You know, I had not thought of that and I
really will take that as a great compliment, and I
really appreciate it because I'd never thought of that, but
giving them a chance to tell their story, and you know,
I've only thought about it in very tangential ways, Like
I did think, without sounding too pleased with myself, that
(35:52):
boy John Denver would like this. I think he'd be
And it wasn't. We didn't canonize him. We didn't canonize him.
We talked about his own frustration with not being taken seriously,
his great disappointment, like his devastation at not being asked
to be part of We Are the World when he
had been, you know, a celebrity who was one of
(36:13):
the first to really put world hunger kind of on
the map, as as you know, the first celebrity to
do that and then was only a few years later,
was considered too out of it to passe to be
asked to be part of this song that had forty
different singers. They could have made space for him, so
(36:35):
all that we included, but I do think that he
would say thank you for for you know, sticking up
for me, or at least telling my story.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
I love it. Podcasts. There's billions of them. The one
I insist you listen to his obituaries. Thank you, Thank
you for all you give us, because it goes way
beyond mobituaries. Thank you for being here, Morocca, thank you,
Thank you for listening. I'm honored to have you here.
My second podcast with Melrocco. That was fabulous. Make sure
(37:06):
you subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening to Thinking
out Loud. By the way, who came up with that name?
Is that the name of my book? What's my idea
to call it? Thinking out Loud? But I'm taking credit
for it. Until next time, Thank you for listening, Feel
free on your own think out Loud. Thinking out Loud
is hosted by me Elvis Duran. The podcast is produced
and edited by Mike Coscarelli. Executive producers are Andrew mcglsi
(37:29):
and Katrina Norvel. Special thanks to David Katz, Michael Kindheart,
and Caitlin Madore. Thinking out Loud is part of the
Elvis Duran podcast network on iHeartRadio. For more, rate review
and subscribe to our show and if you liked this episode,
tell your friends. Until next time, I'm Elvis Durant.
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