June 29, 2023 • 29 mins
A woman in Louisiana named Donna Metrejean fell in love with a D.E.A agent in Oregon named Robert Golden. She uprooted her whole life to be with him. But all was not what it seemed.
You can read Jeff Maysh’s story “Undercover Lovers” here: https://jeffmaysh.substack.com/p/undercover-lovers
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm Jeff Maisch and I wrote Undercover Lovers for my substack,
and it's the story of the week.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
A lot of people claim they were bad at dating,
but I have proof. I made it to the seventh
and final round of tryouts for the Real World London.
It came down to me and this writer named Jay Frank,
for the role of Nerd. I lost out to Jay.
Years later, I called the producer, Jonathan Murray, and asked
him why he turned me down. He had no trouble remembering,
(00:50):
he said, we weren't sure what was going on with
your dating life. It seemed pretty dormant. I wish I
could say he was wrong, But actually, my coworker at
Timeout New York once wrote an article about taking me
out to hit on women. He said, quote Joel's hemps
to strike up conversation with various barroom honeys. Had a droopy,
(01:14):
forlorn quality that was as hopeless as it was hopeful.
But it's the sort of reverse charisma that, if worked on,
could one day make him the most virile man at
his total readings. This week's story is about someone who,
unlike me, really knew how to get a date.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Writing is hard. Who's got that kind of time when
you're already busy trying to be you all stand. So
it turns on a Mike made the twitdles enough because
a journalist trand has.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
Got in that jewel jibes single story. Just listen to
smart people speak, conversation, film and information.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
It's a story of the week.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Successful dating, like any other kind of sales, requires confidence, persistence.
The guy Jeff Mace wrote about had these qualities more
than any person I've ever met who isn't currently running
for president. Okay, the story is about a woman whose
name I'm going to mess up because she's from Louisiana
and I don't understand how names work down there. It's
Donna metro Jean.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
That'll do Metro Jean.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Oh I was really close. Yeah, Okay, tell me a
little bit about her.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Donna had this great life as a substitute teacher, and
then the pandemic hit and she she ended up becoming
a cleaner, you know, scrubbing office buildings in Louisiana, and
it was just life got to be a little bit
depressing for her. She felt like her life was just
spiraling out of control.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
And like how old is she? What's her life like
at home?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
She's only fifties. She's in an unhappy marriage but doesn't
really know how to get out of it. She's got
a bunch of grown kids, so she's lonely. She's just
puttsing around on Facebook, friending people from earlier chapters in
her life. Robert Golden was like an old flame. They
met in two thousand and six, and there was maybe
(03:28):
a little bit of chemistry there, but Donna had a
partner at the time, and it just never got off
the ground. He said, it was love at first sight.
She stepped out of this truck and he laid eyes
on her and thought, this is it. This is my
future wife. And he actually proposed. The first thing he
said to her was will you marry me?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
That's the first thing he said to her.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
That's his opening line.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
One are the odds on? That is an opening line,
like I would never have tried that.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I've never tried it.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
It's very raskueller, it's very desperate. She said no, of course,
she said no. Surprised she still friended him on Facebook
after that.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Well, he was a bit of a cat. She was
a younger guy and he was a certified tree climber.
Don't call him a lumberjack. They're very different professions.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Oh okay, I would one hundred percent rather be called
a lumberjack and a certified tree climber.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
I get the sense that tree climbers look down on lumberjacks.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
I don't know, not me. So he's a badass, right.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
He said he'd served in this very elite regiment of
the army. Oh, he'd fought in Somalia.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Okay, does he look like a military guy.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
He's a shortish guy with red hair. Back then he
was kind of jacked, you know, all those climbing trees.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
He described himself as a dish.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Oh that's a bold statement. And what does she look like?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Donna is early fifties. Loves to dye her hair crazy
colors just to get some excitement in her life. She's
bored at home. So one day the hair is pink,
the next it's blue.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Okay, so she's unhappy. She looks robbered up on Facebook.
And then how hot and heavy does he get?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
It accelerates very fast, Okay, they start flirting. Donna tells
Robert that she's deeply unhappy, and he says, you know,
you should come and meet me. I've moved to Portland, Oregon,
and I've got this exciting new job. Just come and
stay with me for a while, Just get away from
your life, and I'll look after you for a little bit.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
This is quite the comeau. Does she consider it?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
She gets in the car.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Oh wow, that's a long drive too, in the middle
of the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
In the middle of the pandemic. She gets her dog,
fills the car up, suitcases, leaves.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Oh my god, that's a commitment. And then tell me
about the scene when they first meet. What's it like.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
They arrange to meet in a truck stop in a
small place called Troutdale. It doesn't sound very glamorous.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
It doesn't.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
And they meet in the parking lot for the first
time in something like seventeen years.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
And they somehow fall into this kiss, a kind of
clumsy kiss, and Robert says, this is it. This is
the woman that I've been waiting for all this time.
They drive straight back to his apartment in Portland. It's
just near the Art Museum, and she moves in.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
It's a pretty nice apartment in a nice neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
It's not it's the worst apartment in the worst neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
And what's Robert's life like.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Well, Robert's life had just changed. He just got this
brand new job that he was really excited about. So
he was feeling really positive about life.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
What's the job?
Speaker 2 (06:42):
He said? He was working for the Justice Department. He'd
got a job working for the DEA.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Oh what's he doing for the DEA?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Portland is in this massive war on drugs. You know,
there's a major problem with fentanol. So Robert said that
his job was to was to fight the war on drugs.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And what's Dinna's reaction to finding out that her new
boyfriend that's a dangerous job.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Donna loves it. She has been obset with cop shows
since she was a kid. She used to watch endless
hours of Colombo and Kojack with her dad. She even
dreamed of joining the force herself.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
So how did Robert get this job with the da Well,
he told.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Donna that he previously worked as a ci A confidential
informant for the DEA. That he's kind of like a
civilian informant working unofficially for the DEA.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Oh, like a rap.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
He's a knarc a nark.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, And then he moved up the narcchan Does that
happen people move up to the narcten and get actual jobs
of the DA.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
It's not the traditional route, but.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Does he still get like the cool dea outfit and
the car from the DA.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
He had a very fancy silver Dodge charger, like the
modern cop car. You know when you see an undercover
cop and the lights go on in the grill, that's
a Dodge charger.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Does he have the cool aids in the grill?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
He does. He flicks a button and the red and
blue lights light up.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Why is that so cool?
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Even when he's driving the car around Portland without the
lights on, the car screams Agent of the Law.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Is he's working undercover? You wouldn't want that car if
you were working as an undercover DA guy.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Well, Roberts seemed to divide his time between undercover work
and uniformed work.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
When he's undercover, does he have cool disguises?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
He's a master of disguise. He becomes a street person
so he can basically become like a hobo and just
blend in among the street people of Portland.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Can he speak like the lingo?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Oh yeah, he knows all the language and he knows
how to ask for drugs. So on the streets of Portland,
everything's got a nickname. So PT is amphetamine.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Whatever the other cool lingo. I should know if I'm
ever in Portland, give me some snowflake. What snowflake?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Snowflake's cocaine?
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Of course, sorry, I could guess these.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
You'd be lost on the streets of Pauland.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I've been to Portland many times and this has never
come up. I've had to know the difference between a
cortado and a latte, for sure, that was important, but
the difference between PT and snowflake has not come up.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
He knew the difference.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
While he's doing all this. Donna has no friends. She's
just moved there. What's she doing all day?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
So Donna gets wrapped up in his world. He's got
this exciting new job, and he starts to share a
little bit about his life. He starts talking about how
exciting it is, this new job, how cool it is,
and he wants to involve Donna in it, so he
starts taking her on rider lungs in the charger.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Oh my god, that must be scary.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
It was scary. They would record on his dash cam.
Various meetings between drug dealers. It was pretty hairy.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, And so she is becoming like a fake cup.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
So Donna had self esteem issues. She said that she
all this time she's in this unhappy marriage, she's felt
like she lost her self esteem. So suddenly Robert giving
her this unofficial training gives her her self esteem back.
He teaches her how to fire a gun. Oh, and
he shows her how to, you know, lean out the
(10:39):
car window and shoot at targets. They're shooting red bull can.
So it's this is really exciting stuff for Donna, who
remembers only just finished cleaning office buildings.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Is she any good at this?
Speaker 2 (10:51):
She gets really good. Soon she can split two red
bull cans with a single bullet. She becomes this ace shot.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
That's amazing. Is she considering trying to become a cup?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
She is considering becoming a cop. Robert talks her into it,
recommends that she go the regular route and get a
college degree, and so she starts studying. She rolls up
into an online course to study criminal science work towards
her degree, and he said he'd help her get a
(11:25):
job at the DEA.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Does he ever arrest anyone while they're together on these
ridal lines.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
One night, they're driving through downtown Portland and it all
kicks off. People are running into the street. There's a
woman screaming that she's being attacked by a guy. And
you know, this isn't Robert's jurisdiction. He's dea. This is
a Portland cop thing. But he and Donna jump out
the car, weapons drawn, They make the arrest. They grab
(11:55):
this guy that's threatening a woman in the street, throw
the handcuffs on him, throw him in the back of
the car, and diffuse the situation. They basically saved the day.
Donna is experiencing real police action for the first time.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Whoa, but he's a de agent. What does he do
with the guy? Does he just bring him to the
actual cabs.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Well, they're driving through Portland and he's explaining to Donna,
this is too much paperwork. I shouldn't be getting involved
with this, you know, I should be focusing on fentanyl.
So they drove the suspect down to the police department
and Robert took the handcuffs off him, kicked him out
into the street, and they both drove off into the nine.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Oh is she panicked just hearing about it? Frees me out.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
This is her dream. This is like she's in an
episode of Kojak. She's the boss. They're having a great time,
and she's also now fallen deeply in love with Robert,
who is the coolest guy on earth.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Oh my god, one hundred percent. They had sex that mate, totally,
maybe that minute in the charge, of course, what am
I thinking? Okay, so how does their relationship progress?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Things get really serious and Robert announces that he's got
a surprise for Donna. He's flown in her children from
Louisiana to see their new life together in Portland. Donna's thrilled.
He picks them up at Portland Airport, flicks on the
(13:25):
red and blue lights, of course, to cut through the traffic.
They drive to a deserted beach and they drive the
police vehicle onto the sand and all of them get
out the car. It's very cold. Some of the kids
are wearing dea sweatshirts to keep warm, and Robert starts
making a speech. He starts saying things like, I've loved
(13:49):
Donna since the first time I met her, and finally,
you know, seventeen and a half years later, we get
to be together. In fact, he says, I want her
to be my partner forever. And he pulls out a
Dea badge and he presents it to Donna and he
(14:11):
explains that he's done it. He's got her a job
at the DEA and they will be partners forever. And
also he asks her, will you be my wife?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
That's a solid proposal. Yeah, when we come back, we'll
find out some things about Robert that we didn't know.
And so called Donna. Okay, so Donna is engaged. She's
(14:47):
lived with Robert for a year. What's happening?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
One morning, she has this terrible feeling in her stomach
that something's not right, and she wanders downstairs and there's
a Portland police officer standing there and she says he's
pointing a gun at Robert. And Robert is under arrest
for impersonating a police officer.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Oh boy, how does he get caught?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
A Portland police officer was just cruising around and he
notices a charger outside a dodgy apartment with a Dea
bulletproof jacket and guns in the trunk. And so the
cop thinks something's going on here. There's probably a raid
or something, and he asks Robert to produce ID, and
(15:41):
the ID is.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Fake and you can tell right away.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
The cop knows that it's not right.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Is this other stuff fake?
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Do he bought everything online? Everything's fake? He got it
on Amazon.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
So Donna sees this, and what is she thinking?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
She thinks it's one of these mix ups like on
the TV shows, Like on Kojak. She knows the bitter
relationship with Beween, the Feds and the local cops. Yeah,
there's always that conflict, and she thinks there's been some
kind of terrible mistake. So she gets out her DEA
ID and tries to sort the problem out.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Do they arrest her too?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Everyone's under arrest. The real Dea turns up and says,
we don't have anyone on our books called Robert Golden
or Donna metro Gene. You're all coming downtown.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
That's what Kojak would say, right, Yeah, that's a lingo. Okay,
So who is Robert Golden if he's not a DEE agent.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Robert Golden had some trouble with the police before. He'd
been arrested for possession of a small amount of narcotics.
He'd been in prison, and he decided to move to Portland.
To get involved in the legal marijuana industry, but quickly
out of money and he ended up sleeping rough on
the streets. He was sleeping in the flatbed truck and
(17:18):
in a tent, working at burger king. Life got pretty tough.
And then of course it got even worse when he
started using street drugs and he hit his rock bottom
and ended up in like a volunteer center for people
experiencing homelessness. And he has this epiphany and he's like,
(17:42):
I need to start over, and so he built his
life back up by the bootstraps.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
That seems impossible. Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
First he was in a tent. Then he saved up,
he was working on jobs and he managed to buy
a car and he was sleeping in the car. Then
he saved up more money and he got an apartment,
and eventually he'd made it. He got his own apartment
and a job in an Amazon warehouse, and he was
back on the straight and narrow. Everything was looking great.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
God, that's so impressive and so hard if you think
about it, Like, to just get a life back together
after being homeward, wasn't our drugs? That sounds impossible.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
It's incredible. It's an incredible story. And then of course
the pandemic hit.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Oh no, then he lost his Amazon job because of
the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, they sacked him at the Amazon warehouse and there
was no money and he couldn't pay the rent. He
was down to his last few dollars when all of
a sudden, he got this massive COVID check from the government.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Oh like the one that like Tom Brady and Marjorie
Taylor Green and George Santos got. Is that the one thinks?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
So Robert got nine grand in a check all at once.
So apparently it was backlogged and he ended up getting
this lump sum. And that was the exact moment that
Donna reached out to him on Facebook and he found
himself bragging about his new job.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
As soon as she Facebook messaged him, he came up
with this idea of saying he was a Dea agent.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
I think it was something he typed in the moment
to impress Donna.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Or it's just like you're at a bar and you
make up something when you're hitting on a woman. He
came up with dea agent.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Exactly because he knew he knew that she loved cops.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
She loved Cop ten right of course.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
And he's got all this money, so he starts buying
bulletproof jackets, and he buys a second hand charger and
installs red and blue lights that you can somehow buy
on Amazon.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Weird, Okay, But now it's all come tumbling down, and
he's facing some pretty serious chargers.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
I imagine a whole bunch of charges impersonating a police officer.
I think at one point they were looking at a
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars fine prison time. It's
a pretty serious charge.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Oh man. And meanwhile, Donna's head must be spinning when
she's being a In question two, she.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Said she felt like she was in a movie because
she was interrogated in this room at the Dea by
two agents that she described as good cop, bad cop.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Oh She only can see things to this one prism
of like law and order, oh man.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
And she slowly figures it out that Robert is not
in the Dea, that he's been faking it all along.
And what's more, she's been running around town with a
badge and a gun with absolutely no nothing to back
it up.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
That's so dangerous if you think about an actual DEA
agent's life. Super dangerous. But if you're a fake DEA
agent arresting people and there's no possibility of backup and
you don't really have the training, that's a suicide vision.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
My god. Does she look back and now that she's
rewriting this story with this new information, have suspicions and
realized she should have noticed some things.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Donna definitely had her suspense, and she went snooping around
the apartment one day and she discovered in a draw
his pay stubs from the Justice Department, from the DEA,
and it kind of killed any of the suspicions that
she had. She could see that he was drawing a
handsome salary, so all her doubts just evaporated. She told
(21:32):
me she felt love blind. You know when it's you're
too close to it to see it.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
That's impressive. So like print out pretty convincing da paystebs.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
I think you can get almost anything online.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, you're right. So what are the consequences? Does Robert
go away for a long time?
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Robert is not in jail for long. They let him
out the next day. He does a night in chain
and they say you can go, But there's a bunch
of pre trial things that you have to do. You
have to take a mental health evaluation, you have to
get a proper job, a real one. He has to
take a drugs test.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Oh is Robert on drugs during all of this?
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Oh no. So when he goes out at Nate to
pretend to be a drug addict, he's actually on the street.
It's being a drug addict. He's method acting, he's putting
the meth in method acting correct. Oh, and she doesn't
notice that he's coming back all methed up.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
She notices that he's very committed to his video games.
It will sit up all night and play them. Remember,
he's not injecting drugs, he's just taking a pill in
the bathroom. But he stays up all night playing these games.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
And does she spend time in jail?
Speaker 2 (22:51):
She is released straight away without charge.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
So does Donna just move right on back to what
is he anna?
Speaker 2 (22:59):
No? She doesn't, of course not. Well, Look, she wants answers.
She's got a lot of questions and she needs some answers. Right,
So he comes home from jail and he gets upstairs,
and Donna wants the truth, the whole truth.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Nothing. But so does he come clean as you tell
her the whole story completely.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
It takes about three days. He tells her everything getting clean,
working his way up from a tent to an apartment.
That is what really impresses her. She hears this story
for the first time and she's blown away. She's like, well, wow,
this is this is more impressive than all that cop stuff.
All she sees is a man who has gone to
(23:42):
incredible lengths to impress her like no other man has
done before. He treats her like a queen at home.
He really loves her and she is his world. They're
having this chat and she's fiddling around with some pretzels,
(24:04):
you know, nervously breaking them into pieces as he's telling
his story, and she realizes as he's talking that this
is actually the man that she really wants to be with,
the real Robert. And she arranges the pretzels into tiny letters,
and the letters spell out will you marry me? What?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
She's just found out that he's been lying to her
for a year. She's got some pretzels in her hand
and she proposes to him. Is that more romantic than
the beach proposal?
Speaker 2 (24:40):
For me? It is?
Speaker 1 (24:41):
What does he say? Once he reads the pretzels? He says, yes,
Are they married now? Are they still together?
Speaker 2 (24:49):
They are still together and they got married.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
And what do they do for work?
Speaker 2 (24:54):
She's still studying for her criminal science degree. But for
the moment, they're working in a delivery app warehouse together.
He moves the packages around the warehouse. She's a delivery driver.
But they get to work together all day every day,
just like when they were cops.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
And they seem pretty happy.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
They are very very happy. Mister and missus Donna Golden.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Is he still winning sentencing or has he done his time?
Speaker 2 (25:22):
He was sentenced to time served. I think he served
less than a month in the end, and he was
ordered to undergo drug treatment, which he did and has
been clean and sober for ninety days and was basically
let go.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Is this a thing that people do, like impersonating the Dea?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, it's huge, So it's called stolen valor. It's very popular.
If you look on YouTube, there is a whole movement
people like to call out people who pretend to be soldiers,
war heroes, cops. I spoke to an expert psychologist and
he said that it's all to do with the news.
So when people see heroic navy seals on television talking
(26:08):
about the capture of Asama bin Laden. Google search results
for impost and Navy seal go through the roof.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Okay, at the end of your story, Robert shows you
something that blew me away. What does he show you
up there?
Speaker 2 (26:28):
So he drops me off at the hotel and we say, oh, goodbyes,
And just before he leaves, he pulls me aside and
he takes out his wallet and he flips it open
and he shows me his ID and it's a picture
of him and it says de Ea.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
So he's full on crazy.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Maybe what if? Now?
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I like that, you believe I'm.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Just saying what if?
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Jeff mays, you wrote Undercover Lovers for ZUBSDAC and it's
definitely the story of the week. Thank you for coming on.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
The craziest part of this entire story is that Donna
and Robert wanted to work together. Working with your spouse
is a horrible idea. The entire reason offices were created
in the first place was to keep marriages intact. Let
me warn all you young people right now with your
(27:31):
work at home dreams. Everyone who's working from home is
not having sex.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
At the end of the show, what's next for joel Stein?
Speaker 4 (27:42):
Maybe you'll take a napper book around online.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Our show is produced by Joey fish Ground, Mo Labard
and The Shavenka. It was edited by Lydia g and Ky.
Our engineer is Amanda kay Wang and our executive producer
is catherinal Erradah. Our theme song was produced by Jonathan Colton.
A special thanks to my voice coach Vicky Merrick and
my consulting producer Laurence Alasnik. To find more Pushkin podcast,
(28:10):
listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your podcasts. I am Joel Stein and
this is story of the week. What have you pretended
to be?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
When I met my wife, she was a big surfer
and she asked if I surfed, and I was trying
to do a joke about surfing the internet or something,
and of course it got carried away. So for the
first couple of dates she was talking to me about
rip curls, and you know, I had no idea what
she's talking about. I can't swim. So it had to
(28:45):
be a point where I had to come clean and
say it was a misunderstanding.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
How did that go over?
Speaker 2 (28:51):
It?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Was fine, Yeah, I guess so. If you're married, you're
about to have a baby any.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Second, literally any minute now.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Well, I'm gonna just keep you on because it would
be so exciting for us if someone gave birth during
our podcast. We need a readings boost, I said to.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
My wife, I'm recording something. Only come in if your
water is broken.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm Jeff Maisch and I wrote Undercover Lovers for my substack,
and it's the story of the week.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
A lot of people claim they were bad at dating,
but I have proof. I made it to the seventh
and final round of tryouts for the Real World London.
It came down to me and this writer named Jay Frank,
for the role of Nerd. I lost out to Jay.
Years later, I called the producer, Jonathan Murray, and asked
him why he turned me down. He had no trouble remembering,
(00:50):
he said, we weren't sure what was going on with
your dating life. It seemed pretty dormant. I wish I
could say he was wrong, But actually, my coworker at
Timeout New York once wrote an article about taking me
out to hit on women. He said, quote Joel's hemps
to strike up conversation with various barroom honeys. Had a droopy,
(01:14):
forlorn quality that was as hopeless as it was hopeful.
But it's the sort of reverse charisma that, if worked on,
could one day make him the most virile man at
his total readings. This week's story is about someone who,
unlike me, really knew how to get a date.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Writing is hard. Who's got that kind of time when
you're already busy trying to be you all stand. So
it turns on a Mike made the twitdles enough because
a journalist trand has.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
Got in that jewel jibes single story. Just listen to
smart people speak, conversation, film and information.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
It's a story of the week.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Successful dating, like any other kind of sales, requires confidence, persistence.
The guy Jeff Mace wrote about had these qualities more
than any person I've ever met who isn't currently running
for president. Okay, the story is about a woman whose
name I'm going to mess up because she's from Louisiana
and I don't understand how names work down there. It's
Donna metro Jean.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
That'll do Metro Jean.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Oh I was really close. Yeah, Okay, tell me a
little bit about her.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Donna had this great life as a substitute teacher, and
then the pandemic hit and she she ended up becoming
a cleaner, you know, scrubbing office buildings in Louisiana, and
it was just life got to be a little bit
depressing for her. She felt like her life was just
spiraling out of control.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
And like how old is she? What's her life like
at home?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
She's only fifties. She's in an unhappy marriage but doesn't
really know how to get out of it. She's got
a bunch of grown kids, so she's lonely. She's just
puttsing around on Facebook, friending people from earlier chapters in
her life. Robert Golden was like an old flame. They
met in two thousand and six, and there was maybe
(03:28):
a little bit of chemistry there, but Donna had a
partner at the time, and it just never got off
the ground. He said, it was love at first sight.
She stepped out of this truck and he laid eyes
on her and thought, this is it. This is my
future wife. And he actually proposed. The first thing he
said to her was will you marry me?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
That's the first thing he said to her.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
That's his opening line.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
One are the odds on? That is an opening line,
like I would never have tried that.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I've never tried it.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
It's very raskueller, it's very desperate. She said no, of course,
she said no. Surprised she still friended him on Facebook
after that.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Well, he was a bit of a cat. She was
a younger guy and he was a certified tree climber.
Don't call him a lumberjack. They're very different professions.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Oh okay, I would one hundred percent rather be called
a lumberjack and a certified tree climber.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
I get the sense that tree climbers look down on lumberjacks.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
I don't know, not me. So he's a badass, right.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
He said he'd served in this very elite regiment of
the army. Oh, he'd fought in Somalia.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Okay, does he look like a military guy.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
He's a shortish guy with red hair. Back then he
was kind of jacked, you know, all those climbing trees.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
He described himself as a dish.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Oh that's a bold statement. And what does she look like?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Donna is early fifties. Loves to dye her hair crazy
colors just to get some excitement in her life. She's
bored at home. So one day the hair is pink,
the next it's blue.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Okay, so she's unhappy. She looks robbered up on Facebook.
And then how hot and heavy does he get?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
It accelerates very fast, Okay, they start flirting. Donna tells
Robert that she's deeply unhappy, and he says, you know,
you should come and meet me. I've moved to Portland, Oregon,
and I've got this exciting new job. Just come and
stay with me for a while, Just get away from
your life, and I'll look after you for a little bit.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
This is quite the comeau. Does she consider it?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
She gets in the car.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Oh wow, that's a long drive too, in the middle
of the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
In the middle of the pandemic. She gets her dog,
fills the car up, suitcases, leaves.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Oh my god, that's a commitment. And then tell me
about the scene when they first meet. What's it like.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
They arrange to meet in a truck stop in a
small place called Troutdale. It doesn't sound very glamorous.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
It doesn't.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
And they meet in the parking lot for the first
time in something like seventeen years.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
And they somehow fall into this kiss, a kind of
clumsy kiss, and Robert says, this is it. This is
the woman that I've been waiting for all this time.
They drive straight back to his apartment in Portland. It's
just near the Art Museum, and she moves in.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
It's a pretty nice apartment in a nice neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
It's not it's the worst apartment in the worst neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
And what's Robert's life like.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Well, Robert's life had just changed. He just got this
brand new job that he was really excited about. So
he was feeling really positive about life.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
What's the job?
Speaker 2 (06:42):
He said? He was working for the Justice Department. He'd
got a job working for the DEA.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Oh what's he doing for the DEA?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Portland is in this massive war on drugs. You know,
there's a major problem with fentanol. So Robert said that
his job was to was to fight the war on drugs.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And what's Dinna's reaction to finding out that her new
boyfriend that's a dangerous job.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Donna loves it. She has been obset with cop shows
since she was a kid. She used to watch endless
hours of Colombo and Kojack with her dad. She even
dreamed of joining the force herself.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
So how did Robert get this job with the da Well,
he told.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Donna that he previously worked as a ci A confidential
informant for the DEA. That he's kind of like a
civilian informant working unofficially for the DEA.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Oh, like a rap.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
He's a knarc a nark.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, And then he moved up the narcchan Does that
happen people move up to the narcten and get actual jobs
of the DA.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
It's not the traditional route, but.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Does he still get like the cool dea outfit and
the car from the DA.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
He had a very fancy silver Dodge charger, like the
modern cop car. You know when you see an undercover
cop and the lights go on in the grill, that's
a Dodge charger.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Does he have the cool aids in the grill?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
He does. He flicks a button and the red and
blue lights light up.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Why is that so cool?
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Even when he's driving the car around Portland without the
lights on, the car screams Agent of the Law.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Is he's working undercover? You wouldn't want that car if
you were working as an undercover DA guy.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Well, Roberts seemed to divide his time between undercover work
and uniformed work.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
When he's undercover, does he have cool disguises?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
He's a master of disguise. He becomes a street person
so he can basically become like a hobo and just
blend in among the street people of Portland.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Can he speak like the lingo?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Oh yeah, he knows all the language and he knows
how to ask for drugs. So on the streets of Portland,
everything's got a nickname. So PT is amphetamine.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Whatever the other cool lingo. I should know if I'm
ever in Portland, give me some snowflake. What snowflake?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Snowflake's cocaine?
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Of course, sorry, I could guess these.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
You'd be lost on the streets of Pauland.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I've been to Portland many times and this has never
come up. I've had to know the difference between a
cortado and a latte, for sure, that was important, but
the difference between PT and snowflake has not come up.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
He knew the difference.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
While he's doing all this. Donna has no friends. She's
just moved there. What's she doing all day?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
So Donna gets wrapped up in his world. He's got
this exciting new job, and he starts to share a
little bit about his life. He starts talking about how
exciting it is, this new job, how cool it is,
and he wants to involve Donna in it, so he
starts taking her on rider lungs in the charger.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Oh my god, that must be scary.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
It was scary. They would record on his dash cam.
Various meetings between drug dealers. It was pretty hairy.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, And so she is becoming like a fake cup.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
So Donna had self esteem issues. She said that she
all this time she's in this unhappy marriage, she's felt
like she lost her self esteem. So suddenly Robert giving
her this unofficial training gives her her self esteem back.
He teaches her how to fire a gun. Oh, and
he shows her how to, you know, lean out the
(10:39):
car window and shoot at targets. They're shooting red bull can.
So it's this is really exciting stuff for Donna, who
remembers only just finished cleaning office buildings.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Is she any good at this?
Speaker 2 (10:51):
She gets really good. Soon she can split two red
bull cans with a single bullet. She becomes this ace shot.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
That's amazing. Is she considering trying to become a cup?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
She is considering becoming a cop. Robert talks her into it,
recommends that she go the regular route and get a
college degree, and so she starts studying. She rolls up
into an online course to study criminal science work towards
her degree, and he said he'd help her get a
(11:25):
job at the DEA.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Does he ever arrest anyone while they're together on these
ridal lines.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
One night, they're driving through downtown Portland and it all
kicks off. People are running into the street. There's a
woman screaming that she's being attacked by a guy. And
you know, this isn't Robert's jurisdiction. He's dea. This is
a Portland cop thing. But he and Donna jump out
the car, weapons drawn, They make the arrest. They grab
(11:55):
this guy that's threatening a woman in the street, throw
the handcuffs on him, throw him in the back of
the car, and diffuse the situation. They basically saved the day.
Donna is experiencing real police action for the first time.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Whoa, but he's a de agent. What does he do
with the guy? Does he just bring him to the
actual cabs.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Well, they're driving through Portland and he's explaining to Donna,
this is too much paperwork. I shouldn't be getting involved
with this, you know, I should be focusing on fentanyl.
So they drove the suspect down to the police department
and Robert took the handcuffs off him, kicked him out
into the street, and they both drove off into the nine.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Oh is she panicked just hearing about it? Frees me out.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
This is her dream. This is like she's in an
episode of Kojak. She's the boss. They're having a great time,
and she's also now fallen deeply in love with Robert,
who is the coolest guy on earth.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Oh my god, one hundred percent. They had sex that mate, totally,
maybe that minute in the charge, of course, what am
I thinking? Okay, so how does their relationship progress?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Things get really serious and Robert announces that he's got
a surprise for Donna. He's flown in her children from
Louisiana to see their new life together in Portland. Donna's thrilled.
He picks them up at Portland Airport, flicks on the
(13:25):
red and blue lights, of course, to cut through the traffic.
They drive to a deserted beach and they drive the
police vehicle onto the sand and all of them get
out the car. It's very cold. Some of the kids
are wearing dea sweatshirts to keep warm, and Robert starts
making a speech. He starts saying things like, I've loved
(13:49):
Donna since the first time I met her, and finally,
you know, seventeen and a half years later, we get
to be together. In fact, he says, I want her
to be my partner forever. And he pulls out a
Dea badge and he presents it to Donna and he
(14:11):
explains that he's done it. He's got her a job
at the DEA and they will be partners forever. And
also he asks her, will you be my wife?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
That's a solid proposal. Yeah, when we come back, we'll
find out some things about Robert that we didn't know.
And so called Donna. Okay, so Donna is engaged. She's
(14:47):
lived with Robert for a year. What's happening?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
One morning, she has this terrible feeling in her stomach
that something's not right, and she wanders downstairs and there's
a Portland police officer standing there and she says he's
pointing a gun at Robert. And Robert is under arrest
for impersonating a police officer.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Oh boy, how does he get caught?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
A Portland police officer was just cruising around and he
notices a charger outside a dodgy apartment with a Dea
bulletproof jacket and guns in the trunk. And so the
cop thinks something's going on here. There's probably a raid
or something, and he asks Robert to produce ID, and
(15:41):
the ID is.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Fake and you can tell right away.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
The cop knows that it's not right.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Is this other stuff fake?
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Do he bought everything online? Everything's fake? He got it
on Amazon.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
So Donna sees this, and what is she thinking?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
She thinks it's one of these mix ups like on
the TV shows, Like on Kojak. She knows the bitter
relationship with Beween, the Feds and the local cops. Yeah,
there's always that conflict, and she thinks there's been some
kind of terrible mistake. So she gets out her DEA
ID and tries to sort the problem out.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Do they arrest her too?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Everyone's under arrest. The real Dea turns up and says,
we don't have anyone on our books called Robert Golden
or Donna metro Gene. You're all coming downtown.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
That's what Kojak would say, right, Yeah, that's a lingo. Okay,
So who is Robert Golden if he's not a DEE agent.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Robert Golden had some trouble with the police before. He'd
been arrested for possession of a small amount of narcotics.
He'd been in prison, and he decided to move to Portland.
To get involved in the legal marijuana industry, but quickly
out of money and he ended up sleeping rough on
the streets. He was sleeping in the flatbed truck and
(17:18):
in a tent, working at burger king. Life got pretty tough.
And then of course it got even worse when he
started using street drugs and he hit his rock bottom
and ended up in like a volunteer center for people
experiencing homelessness. And he has this epiphany and he's like,
(17:42):
I need to start over, and so he built his
life back up by the bootstraps.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
That seems impossible. Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
First he was in a tent. Then he saved up,
he was working on jobs and he managed to buy
a car and he was sleeping in the car. Then
he saved up more money and he got an apartment,
and eventually he'd made it. He got his own apartment
and a job in an Amazon warehouse, and he was
back on the straight and narrow. Everything was looking great.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
God, that's so impressive and so hard if you think
about it, Like, to just get a life back together
after being homeward, wasn't our drugs? That sounds impossible.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
It's incredible. It's an incredible story. And then of course
the pandemic hit.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Oh no, then he lost his Amazon job because of
the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, they sacked him at the Amazon warehouse and there
was no money and he couldn't pay the rent. He
was down to his last few dollars when all of
a sudden, he got this massive COVID check from the government.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Oh like the one that like Tom Brady and Marjorie
Taylor Green and George Santos got. Is that the one thinks?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
So Robert got nine grand in a check all at once.
So apparently it was backlogged and he ended up getting
this lump sum. And that was the exact moment that
Donna reached out to him on Facebook and he found
himself bragging about his new job.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
As soon as she Facebook messaged him, he came up
with this idea of saying he was a Dea agent.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
I think it was something he typed in the moment
to impress Donna.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Or it's just like you're at a bar and you
make up something when you're hitting on a woman. He
came up with dea agent.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Exactly because he knew he knew that she loved cops.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
She loved Cop ten right of course.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
And he's got all this money, so he starts buying
bulletproof jackets, and he buys a second hand charger and
installs red and blue lights that you can somehow buy
on Amazon.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Weird, Okay, But now it's all come tumbling down, and
he's facing some pretty serious chargers.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
I imagine a whole bunch of charges impersonating a police officer.
I think at one point they were looking at a
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars fine prison time. It's
a pretty serious charge.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Oh man. And meanwhile, Donna's head must be spinning when
she's being a In question two, she.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Said she felt like she was in a movie because
she was interrogated in this room at the Dea by
two agents that she described as good cop, bad cop.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Oh She only can see things to this one prism
of like law and order, oh man.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
And she slowly figures it out that Robert is not
in the Dea, that he's been faking it all along.
And what's more, she's been running around town with a
badge and a gun with absolutely no nothing to back
it up.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
That's so dangerous if you think about an actual DEA
agent's life. Super dangerous. But if you're a fake DEA
agent arresting people and there's no possibility of backup and
you don't really have the training, that's a suicide vision.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
My god. Does she look back and now that she's
rewriting this story with this new information, have suspicions and
realized she should have noticed some things.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Donna definitely had her suspense, and she went snooping around
the apartment one day and she discovered in a draw
his pay stubs from the Justice Department, from the DEA,
and it kind of killed any of the suspicions that
she had. She could see that he was drawing a
handsome salary, so all her doubts just evaporated. She told
(21:32):
me she felt love blind. You know when it's you're
too close to it to see it.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
That's impressive. So like print out pretty convincing da paystebs.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
I think you can get almost anything online.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, you're right. So what are the consequences? Does Robert
go away for a long time?
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Robert is not in jail for long. They let him
out the next day. He does a night in chain
and they say you can go, But there's a bunch
of pre trial things that you have to do. You
have to take a mental health evaluation, you have to
get a proper job, a real one. He has to
take a drugs test.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Oh is Robert on drugs during all of this?
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Oh no. So when he goes out at Nate to
pretend to be a drug addict, he's actually on the street.
It's being a drug addict. He's method acting, he's putting
the meth in method acting correct. Oh, and she doesn't
notice that he's coming back all methed up.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
She notices that he's very committed to his video games.
It will sit up all night and play them. Remember,
he's not injecting drugs, he's just taking a pill in
the bathroom. But he stays up all night playing these games.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
And does she spend time in jail?
Speaker 2 (22:51):
She is released straight away without charge.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
So does Donna just move right on back to what
is he anna?
Speaker 2 (22:59):
No? She doesn't, of course not. Well, Look, she wants answers.
She's got a lot of questions and she needs some answers. Right,
So he comes home from jail and he gets upstairs,
and Donna wants the truth, the whole truth.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Nothing. But so does he come clean as you tell
her the whole story completely.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
It takes about three days. He tells her everything getting clean,
working his way up from a tent to an apartment.
That is what really impresses her. She hears this story
for the first time and she's blown away. She's like, well, wow,
this is this is more impressive than all that cop stuff.
All she sees is a man who has gone to
(23:42):
incredible lengths to impress her like no other man has
done before. He treats her like a queen at home.
He really loves her and she is his world. They're
having this chat and she's fiddling around with some pretzels,
(24:04):
you know, nervously breaking them into pieces as he's telling
his story, and she realizes as he's talking that this
is actually the man that she really wants to be with,
the real Robert. And she arranges the pretzels into tiny letters,
and the letters spell out will you marry me? What?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
She's just found out that he's been lying to her
for a year. She's got some pretzels in her hand
and she proposes to him. Is that more romantic than
the beach proposal?
Speaker 2 (24:40):
For me? It is?
Speaker 1 (24:41):
What does he say? Once he reads the pretzels? He says, yes,
Are they married now? Are they still together?
Speaker 2 (24:49):
They are still together and they got married.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
And what do they do for work?
Speaker 2 (24:54):
She's still studying for her criminal science degree. But for
the moment, they're working in a delivery app warehouse together.
He moves the packages around the warehouse. She's a delivery driver.
But they get to work together all day every day,
just like when they were cops.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
And they seem pretty happy.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
They are very very happy. Mister and missus Donna Golden.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Is he still winning sentencing or has he done his time?
Speaker 2 (25:22):
He was sentenced to time served. I think he served
less than a month in the end, and he was
ordered to undergo drug treatment, which he did and has
been clean and sober for ninety days and was basically
let go.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Is this a thing that people do, like impersonating the Dea?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, it's huge, So it's called stolen valor. It's very popular.
If you look on YouTube, there is a whole movement
people like to call out people who pretend to be soldiers,
war heroes, cops. I spoke to an expert psychologist and
he said that it's all to do with the news.
So when people see heroic navy seals on television talking
(26:08):
about the capture of Asama bin Laden. Google search results
for impost and Navy seal go through the roof.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Okay, at the end of your story, Robert shows you
something that blew me away. What does he show you
up there?
Speaker 2 (26:28):
So he drops me off at the hotel and we say, oh, goodbyes,
And just before he leaves, he pulls me aside and
he takes out his wallet and he flips it open
and he shows me his ID and it's a picture
of him and it says de Ea.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
So he's full on crazy.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Maybe what if? Now?
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I like that, you believe I'm.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Just saying what if?
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Jeff mays, you wrote Undercover Lovers for ZUBSDAC and it's
definitely the story of the week. Thank you for coming on.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
The craziest part of this entire story is that Donna
and Robert wanted to work together. Working with your spouse
is a horrible idea. The entire reason offices were created
in the first place was to keep marriages intact. Let
me warn all you young people right now with your
(27:31):
work at home dreams. Everyone who's working from home is
not having sex.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
At the end of the show, what's next for joel Stein?
Speaker 4 (27:42):
Maybe you'll take a napper book around online.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Our show is produced by Joey fish Ground, Mo Labard
and The Shavenka. It was edited by Lydia g and Ky.
Our engineer is Amanda kay Wang and our executive producer
is catherinal Erradah. Our theme song was produced by Jonathan Colton.
A special thanks to my voice coach Vicky Merrick and
my consulting producer Laurence Alasnik. To find more Pushkin podcast,
(28:10):
listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your podcasts. I am Joel Stein and
this is story of the week. What have you pretended
to be?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
When I met my wife, she was a big surfer
and she asked if I surfed, and I was trying
to do a joke about surfing the internet or something,
and of course it got carried away. So for the
first couple of dates she was talking to me about
rip curls, and you know, I had no idea what
she's talking about. I can't swim. So it had to
(28:45):
be a point where I had to come clean and
say it was a misunderstanding.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
How did that go over?
Speaker 2 (28:51):
It?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Was fine, Yeah, I guess so. If you're married, you're
about to have a baby any.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Second, literally any minute now.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Well, I'm gonna just keep you on because it would
be so exciting for us if someone gave birth during
our podcast. We need a readings boost, I said to.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
My wife, I'm recording something. Only come in if your
water is broken.
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