And I think that we just like as women especially, are so accustomed to like even small amounts of pain. Oh, you know that I, I think that if any man lived inside my body for two hours, they'd be like, oh, fuck, no. Yes. This is what you walk around like. Absolutely not. Oh, hi, everybody. Phillips is doing her best, and I am joined by my faithful friends, Casey S. A. Jackson, who maybe is still hyped up on some painkillers but definitely has way less body than she did last time we spoke.

Yeah, I'm not on painkillers because they make me crazy. So I, I am like switch to CBD after like three days. But I'm not high right now because CBD makes me sleepy, so sober and not in pain.

I have to make sure we got some good texts from U.S.A. during and during the painkiller hours.

Yeah that is bonkers. Like all I've had, they had me on hydrocodone, which like also makes you constipated. So I was like, I'm not trying to live that life. I'm trying to say regulate. I feel like one of them makes me sick. Like, no, some of them do. So before the surgery, they gave me an anti nausea medication because some people like when they wake up, they just hurl. Oh, but I'm not one of those people.

But I had your coat on, like, I had it like ten years ago. I had like a periodontal surgery, like a mouth surgery. And like, I literally wake up every six hours insane. I would just be like, oh, I need oatmeal. Please, God, am I like you? Would you cry hysterically, crying hysterically to you when that happened? I, I just cried, so I cried in my mouth. This is when I was living at home and I literally every six hours when you're supposed to take it, I would wake up exactly every six hours crying my fucking eyes out and just be like, could I have Gatorade.

God, why. And then I might be like, girl. Yes. So this time I was like, I think I know how my body responds to this medication. I'm pretty sure I'm going to wake up crying and I just want oatmeal and Gatorade. And my partner was like, OK. And sure enough, every six hours I'd be like, could you please drop the oatmeal, please? Oh my God. And I just cried and cried and cried and cried.

And then I did that for like three days. And then I was like, OK, I feel good enough that we have to stop the madness. Like, you can't continue to be teary about oatmeal.

Centura, did I ever did I ever tell you about my son, also your son Lincoln's surgery.

What happened in twenty seventeen early twenty seventeen.

Lincoln had to have eye surgery and it was a hospital in New York City where they, like, pretty much kick you out while they're still like sewing whatever up. So and like this kid is like six foot to Man-Sized. He has this eye surgery. The doctor tells us, like don't be alarmed when he gets up. He might have, like, bloody tears from this surgery.

What the surgery I need to know what happened was like it was like to correct the muscle strength of his eyes because he's been like a lifelong glasses wearer. So they're like, there might be bloody tears. Don't be alarmed. And then like a minute later, the nurse is like, OK, he's awake, get him out of here. And I'm like, no, he's fully unconscious. She's like, get him, get him dressed, get him up.

And so she put some sunglasses on him. I'm trying to, like, get him dressed. I put my husband says I'm going to run down and get the car and pull it up so we don't have to get him far out of the hospital to get him into the car. So so I get my six foot two sundress put into the wheelchair, push him out. He's wearing sunglasses like, you know, a little cartoon mouse. And we get downstairs.

I get him in the car, in the front seat, I get in the back seat. My husband's like, oh, shit, we forgot all of his, like, bag of stuff. I have to go back up into the hospital. So I'm like, OK, we're sitting like Double-Parked New York City. And so I'm just like looking at Lincoln to make sure he's OK because he's still, like, very out of it.

And I look and sure enough, he has, like, bloody, bloody tears coming down from the sunglasses. And so I'm like, Buddy, are you OK? Does it hurt so bad?

And he just looks at me and goes, I just did what I was like, she's OK, but she's OK. I wish I had everybody seen that kid waking up from surgery, like in the back seat of the car, right. Yeah.

So one of my worst mom moments of all time was when Bertie was like four and a half years old, may have been five guys.

And I didn't realize that.

You take kids to the dentist, you guys. I don't know. We had one. We grew up in a different age. I mean, like I feel like my generation was the dentist generation. No shit here. I went to the dentist very early. I had license in your defense.

They go from having no teeth to having some teeth and like, you know. Well, so she was in she was definitely in preschool when she went to the dentist for the first time because I remember and also if you read my book, you know, I was very overwhelmed as a new mom. And I was like not. And I was working on Cougar Town or whatever. Anyway, found this dentist, took her in. She's like four and a half, I think.

And they're like, oh, she has 10 cavities. We're going to need to take care of this. And I was like, I'm sorry, what that always happens. Those baby teeth, all they do is absorb sugar. So like, they're just made a try shock charges to charge to the game.

Also in my this is in my spiral of like I'm the worst mom ever. I have been giving her gummy vitamins in. Like on the way to preschool, yeah, because I was trying to keep her healthy. And the third is like stuck in all her little baby teeth and just rotted them.

So anyway, they were like, so with a kid this age, we put them under, they have to have twilight sleep. We can't do the gravity stuff. And I was freaking the fuck out. Oh, I actually know how exactly how old she was. She was four and a half because I was pregnant with cricket and and because I remember I had this like, super horrible thought where I was like, what if my baby dies before I have this other child?

Like, truly, you know, like my anxiety gets real dark, you know? And and I just was like, so terrified the birdie was going to die being put under. No, I'm going to cry. But anyway, so leading up to it, I was like. She had seen the American Girl doll store at the Grove and she had been asking about it already, even though she was pretty young for American Girl dolls. But we were like, you're going to go get this thing and they're going to have you go to sleep and then they're going to wake you up.

And then we're mommy and daddy are there, you know, the whole time. And then we're going to take you and get you an American Girl doll at the Grove.

And she's like, OK, so she's like real focused on that.

So anyway, they put her under I'm holding her.

They put her under. It was like that. I talked to the anesthesiologist on the phone, no joke. Five times before, like we became friends and because I was just so fucking panicked about it. And any parent who's listening can anyone can relate. It's scary. Whatever. So she could they come out and they're like, she's great after like an hour, two hours, whatever, however long it took to fill the cavities. And they had to one tooth was so rotted, they had to just pull it and then put a spacer.

Guys, I really was like, I am the worst fucking mother to this day. By the way, though, Britney does not like to brush your teeth. So I don't know. I know it's gross.

So anyway. They're like she's she's getting up like, do you want to come get her arms, like, OK, so we go in. They had taken out her I.V. and her little finger monitor and all the stuff, and they scooped her up and I took her out to the waiting room, like the anesthesiologist is like we'd like to like just hang out for like 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes. Like, we just like to make sure everything's OK, you know, like, OK, great.

So she's this baby and she's like looks at me and looks at me and just starts laughing hysterically. And then she like comes to she wakes up basically like in my arms and she's like laughing hysterically and she's like, I think we.

Now I can walk the walk and work nobody you can't walk, and she's like, Oh yes.

And I was like just acting like a total like your drunkest friend in college at a party who she's like, just let me walk dead, let me walk. And like, I was like pushing him off. And then he would like, let her go for two seconds and she would crumble like to the you know, and I would catch her and then she would laugh hysterically and she'd be like, I got it, I got it. We have to go get a dog.

And it was like, honestly, the anesthesiologist, the dentist, it was just all us there was nobody else in there. Like they said, that's how they schedule it at this place, you know? And everyone was laughing hysterically. And the anesthesiologist was like, top, top tat like that in my top ten makeups of any kid because kids go like like you cry hysterically. I cried hysterically. Yeah. I cry hysterically when I come out of anesthesia.

Birdie apparently just is like hysterical and like.

Yeah, so interesting how people's bodies react. And like, I like I think I think I'm sensitive just in general. But like I my mom maybe like straight up like a pack of oatmeal, like fucking Quaker apple cinnamon. And I was like, Mommy, this is so nice. I thank you so much. And she was like, girl, OK? I was like, can I have Gatorade, please go like this? She was like, yeah, but like, I just I'm like, so grateful.

I'm like, I can't believe someone is putting a good of oh it'll go for me. It's so weird. We're so similar post op that just totally my reaction to cry. I cried so hard I get very, very ill. When I had no when I had my older son I had C sections for both kids. But the anesthesiologist, you know, he stands up by your head like doing things to your arm to make sure that you can't feel anything down in your guts.

And I kept saying, I feel like I'm going to throw up. And he was like, yeah, don't worry. Everybody always feels like they're going to throw up, but nobody ever does. And then I laughed so hard all over his surgery shoes and he was like, Hey, congrats, you really did it.

You didn't you hadn't eaten anything because you knew you were getting a C-section, right? Yeah, I guess by all. And it was liquids. Yeah, man.

But also I got I when I got my tonsils out, I like I thought that I was just going to be able to take a cab home and like by myself and I ended up having to like I ended up writing down my boss's phone number. I work for Dave Letterman and I wrote down my boss's phone number for the nurse so that she called him and was like, I think I have a girl here getting your tonsils out there on this phone number.

And he was like, oh, and she like you, she needs to get home. Yeah. So he sent a car for me. And so I went home and then like an hour later I think I tried to order nachos from pizzeria.

You know, I'm just all in my town too. I should not have been left alone. I really appreciate like I think we've talked about this before, but like any time I see a weird rule, I, like, don't make fun of it because it happened. The rule is weird because some fucking weirdo did it and they had to make a rule. So like when I was signing my paperwork, there was like a rule that was like, we will not put you in Uber or Lyft, make sure that you know exactly who is picking you up.

And I was like, this is the new rule. Somebody came here, got a fucking rhinoplasty and tried to get lift. And I was like, I'm not even mad at it. But it was like, we will not put you in Uber, who is picking you up, put their name and phone number. It is not like this shit like this. You ask like, have you gone to your post op appointment? Yes, right to my post up today.

So after this, I'm going to my postop up straight up. This is the best thing I've ever done in my entire fucking life. My back, my back pain is gone. My hip, my knee pain is gone like that. Straight up smaller. Your boobs are going to be there. Pickups the dream like me. Yes. Perfect. The cups, they're so small. It's like I think that I'm an inch taller, like my neck and clavicle, like my clavicle and shoulders have dropped and like I logit at least half an inch whenever we get to see each other again.

You guys, I am taller and like I can't wait to work out. It's so funny because I've been working out pretty regularly like my whole life. But I just felt like no matter what I did, I was still like my daddy always heard. It was like, do these stretches do this work, do these lifts and it'll strengthen it. I was like, I think I'm strong as hell. Something's wrong. As soon as that weight was gone, like my whole body fucking shifted, like everything is different.

I feel so much better. I mean, my boobs hurt, but my back and my hip and my knee, like, I went down the stairs and I was like, oh, like I literally used to be able to feel going down the stairs. It's so while all your body is all connected, you guys, I don't know the right thing right now. I could feel so much better for people who are joining us. And this is your first episode of Busy.

Phillips is doing her best.

Then maybe you missed out on all the previous 19 episodes in which a few of them we talked about, and especially last week that she a. just got a breast reduction surgery. And this was something that, like you had thought about for many years and now you've taken your health and yourself into consideration in this time. Yeah. And you really fucking follow through on it. And you look you look I have to say, you look like this. I swear to God, you look like a weight has been lifted yet.

But you really looks different, don't you think? I see. Yes. You just look so happy. I feel so much different and happy. Not that you you are always happy. You just you're a sweet little sensitive but but you look like you're just a weight lifted. You literally look like a weight has been lifted off of you.

Generally though, my body feels so much better. And I think that we just like as women especially are so accustomed to like even small amounts of pain are like small amounts of discomfort are we just are we just started to the game like this is how it is. This is what it is legit. I know. You know that I, I think that if any man lived inside my body for two hours, they'd be like, oh fuck no. Yes.

This is what you walk around like. Absolutely not. And and it's also like I'm a person who also like I went to like I did so much work before I did the surgery, I went and got an MRI. I went to a spine specialist. I went to an orthopedic surgeon. I like I got so much. X ray, x ray, my chest, like my heart, my lungs, everything, because I was like, why does my body hurt?

Like, is there like a reason? And literally even after the MRI, the guy was like, it's nothing going on in there. And I was like, finally the answer was, my boobs were too big like that. Your boobs. That is what it was. All that pain, all that fucking money, trying to figure it out. And I think it's just if you're on a journey like a pain journey or trying to figure it out, like maybe it's your boobs, I don't know.

I'm not a doctor. But for me, after, like, I logit went and got an MRI and went to a spine specialist, I waited six months to see a spine specialist. And he told me that there was physically like my spine was fine and literally it was so much weight in the front of me. That is what had been bothering me, dude. And that is due diligence if I've ever heard it. Good Lord, you tried every you know, you're everything.

Everything. I want to make this work. I went to physical therapy for ten weeks. You guys like no joke. All that therapy. My knees still fucking hurt legit. Woke up on Thursday morning. Don't hurt anymore. It's crazy. So I feel so much better I can't wait to twenty, twenty one to like actually work out and feel good in my body because it was really hard. Like I said last week I did go for a ride and my boobs hurt.

It was like these are too big. I can't read d I was so uncomfortable. Yeah.

So happy are you. We're so happy for you I.

I don't know. I love all about all of it, I love it for you. I love it for all of us listening. And thanks to everybody who's hiring, it's been sending me messages. I've been high for, like the last four days. So, like around Christmas, I will respond to you guys because I really appreciate it. But I have been blasted. And as far as as the group text knows, I cannot respond to our blast because I might do say some crazy shit.

And that's not the worst after Christmas. So thank you guys for all the wonderful messages. I'll get back to you. But I was very happy to last four days. You're a real Rush Limbaugh. Oh, truly.

I was so high. You.

Oh, my God. That might be fun.

One size fits all a phrase to describe your beauty routine. Is that a good. That's a good one. I guess it's OK. Yeah. But you guys know, we've been talking about functional beauty since the beginning of the pod. You know how much we love it. We use it in my house.

You know, we all need to have, like, personalized hair care and a function of beauty provides just that. You take a quick quiz. We love a quiz lover. Tell them about your hair goals. You can even choose color and fragrance. Then Functional Beauties team determines the right blend of ingredients and bottles. Your custom formula to order and they deliver it to your door in a cute little customized bottle. They even put your name on it, which is great if you have other people that you live with sisters, roommates, husbands, partners, cats, wives, cats, and you can keep your stuff separate.

They never use sulphates, parabens or any other harmful ingredient. I have a kid that's allergic to sulfates, which is part of the reason why I love functional beauty and.

They have over fifty thousand real five star reviews and counting, we love functional beauty. We've been using it before. They advertise on this podcast and we will use it after they have skin care now, which is amazing. Amazing. I got to get into that skin care. So what are you at home waiting for? Go to a function of beauty dotcom slash. Best to take your quiz and save 20 percent on your first haircare order. Go to function of beauty dotcom slash.

Best to let them know you heard about it from our show and to get 20 percent off your hair care order. That's a function of beauty dotcom slash best.

Listen, like I said, I've been working a lot and there's only so much take out a person can do with.

We love it. But also some teams are like, I just want to cook something and just have it. And I need all the ingredients and it's a lot to get put together.

So Green Chef is an incredible USDA certified organic milk company and they have great, affordable, easy plans and it fits every lifestyle, ketogenic, paleo, vegan, vegetarian, or just maybe you're looking to eat a little bit healthier, especially pre holidays.

Post holiday is just life. Just eat healthy. You feel better. There's a range of recipes to suit any diet or preference. Green Chef is also the most sustainable meal kit. So there you go. They offset one hundred percent of their direct carbon emissions and plastic packaging and every box. So you don't have to feel guilty about all the packaging that's coming with your meal kit. Yeah, and I love that the ingredients are pretty measured and perfectly proportioned and mostly prepped.

So you spend less time stressing and getting things dirty and more time just enjoying the delicious home cooked meals. And I make my son cook it for me, which is so nice because it's so great to just be like, hey, make those feta burgers for us. It's your turn to cook and it's so easy. And he happily does it.

Oh my gosh, we have the burgers there. So they really a couple of days ago they really hit the spot and made me very happy this week. I know. Me too. Delicious. So guys, please go to green chef dot com slash best 9D and use the code best 9D to get ninety dollars off including free shipping green chef dotcom best ninety and use code best ninety to get ninety dollars off including free shipping. Anyway, it's the number one meal kit for eating well and it's the number one meal kit for me because it's the only one that I'm getting.

I love it.

I like guys, I'm really like trying to do my best, like keeping it all. Together, but I I don't know, I also think I do want to recognize the great conjunction and say it was beautiful that you see. No, are you kidding? I'm in fucking New York now. You can't see shit. Oh, yeah. I don't even know where the fuck people in New York charge their Krystal's. I'm so mad. I'm so mad about it today.

I don't even want to talk about. I'm going to cry. I really miss my balcony. Where am I going?

To church. My fucking Krystal's. You can't see the moon. It's too it's too much light pollution. Yesterday we watched too many fucking buildings. I'm surrounded by shit.

The Griffith Observatory. Yeah, they did. They did a live stream yesterday. So I think you can put them outside because the moon is there, even though you there, even though you can see it and then just go to a live stream of either like what is it, JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratory or NASA or the Griffith Observatory. And then you can see it and then just put it in that direction. But the moon, the moon be out.

We just can't see it because of everything that the moon it the moon in New York City is like Anderson Cooper in New York City. You know, he's there. Even though you can't see him, you never see him. You just but you just have to say about Anderson Cooper. Interesting. I just mean, I look up the opposite of Chloe Sevigny. Oh, I used to see her everywhere. Right. Everybody sees Chloe seven everywhere. Yeah, they're best walked past are like 17 times.

Oh, right. She's a tall celeb. Most celebs are mid-sized. I think she's my size.

I thought she was like six foot. No, no. She's like my size. Regular. Yeah. Regular height. You're above average height. I'm above average but not super. You're above average height for fame. Busy for fame. Yeah. Everybody who's famous is like five foot. They're all small. Everybody. Right. I was just talking about this with our friend Chelsea Juventus, who has an excellent celebrity book club podcast.

But Mariah Carey memoir is OK because that's who we were talking about, because we were talking about the relative heights of celebrities. And she knows that I've at least stood next to like a billion celebrities. And I was saying that the one that always catches me off guard is Mariah Carey, because in my mind, she's very small, she's very petite, short lady, but she's not she's like five foot eight.

Oh. And she wears, like, amazing big heels. And so I've seen her a thousand times. I've stood next to her a thousand times.

And every time it surprises me, I knew that Mariah Carey, like she was smiling because I was like five, four or something. They're all bitty Whitney, like Whitney Houston was like five, five or five, six.

And I think of her as very tall. Yes, I like a model, but no, but Mariah. Mariah as tall that you guys see that person, the guy, the sound engineer that did the all I want for Christmas is you. But then he like spliced in. Yes.

Whitney Houston's you from the bodyguard. It was an amazing, amazing. And then you start crying and then you're like, what's happening to my life?

Yeah, it's amazing. Was not good. I was like, but also I was not expecting it. I like it literally was the thing where I was like, OK, yeah. I wonder how you mix. How, how do you mix it again. I was probably high so it did not help I every night and I cried every day. Well it's harder on OPL. Listen, I feel like Gingery you got knocked out for most of it, but like since we talked last week, I don't know about the rest of all of the people listening.

Casey, you and I haven't even really discussed, but I know for me that this past week has been without a doubt, the longest week in the longest year in the longest year on record. This past week was like every day was a millennium. Yeah. And yeah, dragged the fuck on and every day personally contained some fresh hell that I was like not expecting. Absolutely. And everyone that I was talking to you like at work. We've finished our work, we finished out shooting.

And and it was real hard, it was like I forgot and I don't know, and then I was like trying to ask. Mark, if he remembered if during Cougar Town, if I was this. Exhausted and tired, and he was like, I don't think you were, but then again, like, I also don't think I was paying that much attention.

That's fair. But this this is a year unlike any other year. It is. And but like just like doing like the work and then the covid stuff on top of it. And then just the emotional exhaustion of my house is empty.

Oh, good, good. At my house in Los Angeles is gone from. Oh yeah. It's weird. They're minus the things that are now theirs that were mine that they want to keep me.

They kept the photo booth and they kept some of my cadenzas and they did they keep that wallpaper in that bathroom. Yes. That wallpaper is cute as hell.

And they asked for the piece of art that matched the wallpaper that the artist Jeff McFetridge gave us. Oh, my friend, I like that because that means they're going to keep. Yeah. And then they asked for the hand towels that were cross stitched that matched which that intended. That's me. So I gave them one.

Yeah. I would think you're better than me. I would have been like you can have everything else but my mama made this but I'm glad you gave them one. But I mean like not that anybody's seen your bathroom, but I remember going in there and being like, oh, this is a this is cute.

And then I think I'm just I think of Instagram seen it's a helicopter by my son house sat for a busy recently over the holiday and he was very excited to take selfies in that bathroom.

I never would like even when we whenever we have left, always like for going on location, going to Charleston in the summers, like whenever we've left the house, I never leave our house empty, empty or like with just like a person checking in on it because of the bling ring. Because I just know I assume that you are seconds away from being bling rings. Yeah. And and I do post up regardless of like how safe it is or whatever.

I do tend to post my location, you know, like people know where I'm at or previously, you know, people have known where I have been. And so I never wanted our house to be empty. So, like, somebody is always staying there, staying there, staying there. And I needed to go see his family. And so our son Lincoln was excited, I'm sure, to just have a pad for a giant crash pad. Well, I also and I also loved Lincoln getting it because, like, look, it's not throwing a party.

He's like, oh, I trust him implicitly.

Like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to read my favorite book in this basement.

I like both of the plans are like I feel like his plans would be like I'm going to make nachos and eat them and balcony.

And then he, like, made his plans. They're so cute. I love him.

He's been like he he has been really lucky because he went from, like, celebrity dog sitting to, like, having to housesit for busy. And so every time I'd be like, what have you what you get up to today?

And he'd be like, I got a burrito delivered and I did my laundry, I had their laundry machine. I'll never forget. Like one time I was out of town back when we still lived in Connecticut, I was out of town and I got home like a day early. And I was walking home from the train station and I was talking to my husband, who was out at work saying like, oh, I'm gonna surprise the kids. And he was like, you're going to surprise two teenage boys, like, you know, a day early.

That's not a great idea. And but besides eating soup, sorry.

OK, great. We can just hear the scraping and the singing of those, you know, they just cut that out because my audio is separate. I know the audience never needed to know about the soup. I mean, we'll see. We'll see.

It's hard, you know, honestly busy. You just giving it away, you know, for day. Good morning. That you could charge pay really good money for a cool hot lady to pursue. Anyway, less interesting than the soup is that I, I came walking up my street and was expecting to find my two teenage sons, like having a ragia and they were both like in the picture window watching like Scooby Doo folding their laundry.

And that was like, you guys are getting wild if you raise some good kids what she did. So they're they're very respectful. I'm not they it's not like they never have fun, but they just, you know. Well, I feel like right before this, like I ordered two Lego sets that a. To put together like it was like the first day I wasn't fucking bonkers on drugs and I was like, I'm going to put together my Lego calendar.

So that's my fun plans for the day. And I'm just like a full grown up. I mean, listen, we're all doing all the things that we can do to keep occupied in this in this moment. I we got Mark and I got into like a little bit of a not a whatever. It wasn't a fight. But like, the girls have just been, like, wanting to open Christmas presents, you know, and I'm just like, fine.

Yeah, yeah. I like actually just there's no reason to wait. Just fucking to open them. Yeah. You know what I mean. And like. Yeah, well then what are we doing.

I was like, dude, what have we ever been like or what a day open one. Well that's yeah. We've been limiting it one day, limiting it to one a day. I feel like Mark is like truly like a dad. Like I don't know how to describe like a dad, like a dad because like my dad would be like, no. And I'd be like, please. And he'd be like. It's not Christmas, so like I fully understand just being like give, because that would be me.

But when I think about, like my dad being like I went and bought this, the expectation that for you to open it on the 25th and it's like but cannot is fake. Can I have it now? You know, I like some structure in 2020 like these.

When you think about like what we've all gone through and how hard it's been for us.

And then you think about like the other night, cricket was just crying in her bed before bed. And I was like, oh, honey, you're so tired. And she's like, that's not it, Mama. And I was like, Baby, what is it? Can you tell me? You know, you can tell me anything. And she just was like, I can't. It's just too much because it's everything. Oh, and I was like, oh, fuck, man, I said, Cricket, I, I don't know how to even explain this to you.

You'll understand when you're older, but like what we're going through right now, no one has ever no one alive has ever really gone through anything like this.

Certainly no one that I know like and there's like two hundred year old people who've done it and they were like two and it happened.

Well, I mean, Emily's parents, Emily's Emily's grandparents survived the Holocaust, so.

Fair enough. Oh, yeah. They I guess I was talking about Sarah Palin. I was talking about the Spanish flu. Spanish flu. But I just had panic y I mean, like we have like our we have like people whose grandparents or great grandparents survived really horrible situations. And they, you know, we're obviously able to like share with us. Yeah. And younger generations like what they went through. But in terms of like what we've experienced in our lifetimes, I was like cricket.

I've never I can't even imagine what it's like to be seven years old right now, like there, you know, and what you're thinking what you're thinking about all the time, you know, in this past year. And she just was like just like just sobbing. So anyway, my point being, like, open the fuckin Barbie doll, you know what I mean? Like, this year of all years, maybe next year we're like we wait until the twenty fourth we can open up out of town presents from the friends or family.

That's what we always did in my family growing up on the on Christmas Eve, we could open up out of town because everybody.

You fucking close. Right. Right. Barbara Jean. Always that really Barbara Jean always really fun gifts. She was always super fun. But but then Christmas is Christmas, like all the fun happens on Christmas. But this year I'm just like guys go to town. Yeah. So we've been letting them open presents. I just feel like and I've been buying like presents for so many people and like weird fun stuff. And I don't know, I met those guys in Philly that have that organization like the mentorship organization.

He reached out to me on Instagram and I was like, send me your wish list for your kids. And I put it up on my insta. And then I just like, bought the rest of the toys for them. I just I'm like, what? Who just give what? What's going to make somebody feel like. Even if it's like a molecule better for one moment and if it's a thing like I know we live in this, I know that this is all part of the problem.

I get it. I understand. But at the same time, we're just like we're just such. Yes, we're just just I saw this tweet that I think it was like to boogie, but a million people tweeted it to and it was like full capitalism just as soon as my packages get here. And I feel like that is where we're all at, we're all just like, oh, but if I could just I don't know. I really I'm going to order those cookies.

I think that we're all just like everybody deserves something. Everybody deserves something nice. I saw this thing where, like somebody who worked at a grocery store, it was really mad because, like, this always infuriates me. But like, there's this thing like I we've talked about it before, like how America hates poor people, but people think that poor people should, like, be suffering because they're poor. And like this lady was like, I work at a grocery store and people with EBT cards come in and buy crab and steak in 40 hour cakes.

And I'm like, poor people deserve to have cake for their birthday, right? Like, are they just supposed to have spam? Yeah, it's like, are you because you're poor doesn't mean you can't buy yourself a steak. Like you deserve something nice. And I think right now, at this point in time, if you could do anything, if you could buy somebody a fucking cake, a piece of steak, a pound of crab claws, a toy, a Barbie doll, if there's any way that you are able to make somebody happy, like just fucking let's do it now.

We also need to address the fact that, yes, fuck capitalism. Right? That's yeah. I mean, a lot of people feel that way, but also the way that our lives and our country is set up. You're not able to do anything else kind for yourself without capitalism.

You need money. You need you need money. And also people are stretched so thin, no matter who you are, no matter what level of socioeconomic anything, you're stretched so thin and everything is really, really difficult at this time.

So, like, if you want to use the few dollars that you have to buy a cake or if someone wants to buy a cake for you, you deserve that. People aren't just, you know, living the simple life out on Walden Pond or whatever. Yeah, different thing. People aren't just like witling dolls for themselves, for joy, like. Yeah, no one has time for that. So like, if you want a fucking bath bomb or a cookie because you've worked really hard at your high paying or low paying job all day, like that's just how we're set up right now.

It's how we've been set up. Friends. Yeah, we've been alive all. Yes. Like our generation and younger generations, like we are a product of like the ad age, like it's all Don Draper's fault. Fuck that guy.

Well, it's really interesting. You know, like our merch is a good example. Like we thank you.

Everybody who ordered that was amazing. That's all right. Yes. I love our money. It's so nice.

And we love it and it makes us happy. But so many people are like, why does it cost this amount of dollars? And I'm like, I feel I feel like I've spent the last week on Instagram being like this is the same as what all podcast merch costs. But we searched for someone that was like an eco friendly, woman owned company that did good things for the community. The company that makes our merch does incredible things for sick kids in the hospital.

That's their main.

Yeah, that's that's how she started in honor of her little brother who passed away.

So that's their main business. And so, like us doing business with them allows them to do their main business even more. But yes, I totally get it. It is not the same as just buying a t shirt at Walmart or whatever. It is more expensive, but there are reasons.

But yeah, yeah. But thank you to everybody that that. But also I do love it. Yeah. It makes me happy.

And so many people are giving it because it makes them happy, they feel connected to this group chat. I think that that's the thing. I think that we have been like indoctrinated into thinking that like we don't deserve joy if it cost anything. And the fact of the matter is, all joy cost money, because that is like where even if you're like, I just want to not all joy, but like even if you're like, I want to do some crafts paper for free right away, free now I want to make something.

I work for myself several years gluten free, free, gluten free. I want to bake my own cake, flour and free like even though you make bread, baking is like the biggest of all the I tell you right now, it's more expensive to. It cake the brain red as it by it, as like I said before, as a bread baking bitch, Bradshaw cost a thousand dollars. Also, it's not just expensive resources, it's also like very luxurious amount of time that a lot of my son don't have.

So when people are like, you know, oh, you don't you don't deserve to buy a cake in a grocery store. It's like, I'm very happy for you that your life is set up, that you can make a cake from scratch offensively in your home. But for somebody else like that, time is money. And that's time that they don't have to make a cake. So they just never get cake. There's an interesting thing like with you know, I work with baby to baby in Los Angeles and they have like a nationwide network.

But, you know, years ago when I first learned about, like, what the diaper gap is and I would post about what baby the baby was doing and how, you know, what's the diaper gap while the diaper gap is like the start of everything. G.A. because diapers are prohibitively expensive. Yeah, they're taxed. And and it prevents like a if a if a mom doesn't have enough diapers for their baby, like a lot of times moms have to choose between diapers and food.

Yeah. And if they don't have enough clean diapers for their babies, they can't leave their babies at daycare because that daycare you have to be diapers, you have to leave diapers for your child. And if you can't leave your baby at daycare, then you can't go to work. And then thus begins the cycle of poverty in kids lives. Right. So but a lot of people when I would post about that, about like we need, you know, thank you, Huggies and blah, blah, blah, a lot of like privileged, mostly white people would be like, why don't they use cloth, reusable diapers?

And you're like, well, because in order to use cloth reusable diapers, you have to have either a diaper service that you pay for that comes and gets them and launders them and sanitizes them and cleans them and returns them. Or you have to have access to a washer dryer unit and the time and the money to be able to do the laundry. And I, I truly when somebody first said that to me, this was like years and years ago, I was like, oh shit, why don't they do reusable diapers, like cloth diapers?

That's such a good point. And then when I talked to the organization about it, they were like, well, this is why busy a lot of people are living in their cars or in shelters or they have temporary housing and they don't have access to these, you know, whatever. And so things things sometimes seem very simplistic from a place of privilege, like there's an easier way you should do this. But in actuality, when you go into it, you realize that there's a reason why it's it is the way that it is.

Yeah.

It's really good to always ask yourself, like, what are the privileges that allow me to do this in the way that I choose to do it. And also, like a lot of times, people are suggesting for other people, you should do it this way. And a lot of times I'm like, are you doing it that way?

Yeah. So well, it's the same thing was did we talk about this on the podcast? Because I didn't get to listen to all last week about the Whole Foods. About the relaunch.

Yeah. On the podcast. Right. It's just that's the same thing where it's like you don't know. Maybe there's a reason why. Let's do a little bit of further investigation, you guys. I had just a bad I had a bad week. I was crying, so I cried so much. Shinjiro maybe I was just like feeling your your stuff.

And I feel I, I was not stopped. I was crying like crazy.

I just wake up and be like, okay, I got a crush. I was like, I've never been so grateful for a regulatory.

Let me tell you, it's all so just crying season like I mean, this is the season where I one hundred percent cry at McDonald's commercials for for commercial filled the last night. I really watch Mattilda last night. I was just thinking about Mattilda Shadow tomorrow. Wilson Oh my gosh I love so she's so great. Great. On Twitter as well. A great Twitter follow is a great Twitter follow. She's a child actor that really turned out wonderful. She's also a very nice person and friend.

Is she. Are you. I really love the movie. I grew up. I like to have it on VHS. And I was like, I think I want to watch Matilda because I've never not enjoyed it. A couple of things about Matilda. They don't make kid actors like they used to. Even the extras were cute as hell and killing.

I was like, if I was a captain. Whoever cast this movie is fantastic. Everybody's perfection. The other thing that got me Mrs. Honey's cottage, she said that she paid a local farmer fifty dollars a month to live in that. I passed away, I am a ghost now, I die the ghost. Selling this podcast, we live in hell. That cottage hospital I a month kill me. And then at the end of that movie, at the end of that movie like this is the first time I've truly, truly watched.

It was like an adult who's like going to therapy and to do my feelings at the end of that movie, the last fucking line Daddy fucking DeVito narrates is and they were so happy that they finally found like found the thing they'd always been looking for. And then I just had a family and started crying and then, you know, goes a family and I fucking lost my mind. Oh, my God. I was like, I did it and I just bawled.

So that's where I met today. And I was, you know, opioids. That was pure sobriety. Sobriety, baby. It's the crime. It's the crime season, the crime mother, the crying year. And like, you know, we always talk about how we cry on airplanes, how there's like we think it's like something about the air pressure that, like, squeezes your tears out of your fear.

You like your your height and you're like all your senses are heightened in the air.

Just ball your eyes on a plane. Like the worst I ever tried to a movie with my dog Skip on the airplane. Yeah. I could not stop crying, like so embarrassingly like hysterical. I cry from, like the in-flight magazine articles. Yeah. I cry from like the Sky Mall. All right. All right, you guys, I loved Sky Mall. Did you ever order shit from Sky Mall?

No, no. I wish I wish. I like I think of Sky Mall was like truly still around. I would have ordered something, but Sky Mall was like just your own little personal QVC.

I really like the Hammacher Schlemmer of the Sky, you know, or like or like actually where I got Santeros Christmas present and your son and husband Christmas presents uncommon goods. Yeah.

Is like, oh yes, yes. I love that kind of shit.

I was like so obsessed with Sky Mall. And there was a period of time, I think when I was on Dawson's Creek when almost all of my Christmas presents were ordered from Sky Mall, which Sky Mall dotcom still exists. I'm on it right now. I'm on it right now. And I'm about to make a purchase, but I believe I could get a little I want the automatic pill dispenser. I want the full size electric guitar beginner starter kit.

I want I mean, I want at all Kodak print Illmatic instant print camera. What what am I, Crayola hand sanitizer for kids. What the fuck. Capitalism except Scott Guy. My guy was the best. I knew a girl actually. Nicole Sullivan, the comedian and actress Nicole Sullivan who we love. Nicole once took like this was like early days of sleeping pills and she was on a long flight and she took like an Ambien, one of the ones that, you know, probably has since been only given a warning.

And like two to three weeks later, boxes started arriving at her house.

And it was like like she couldn't stop the boxes and she couldn't figure it out, like, truly just box upon box upon box. I also heard a story that somebody, like some actor from the 90s, early 2000s, bought like a vintage sports car while on waltzed on Ambien.

Oh, my God. So much like I saw, like, you know how like. All right, Tru TV, I think. But like, they used to have those shows where it would be like the twenty wildest things that happened with somebody was sleepwalking. And then I like watched one and there was like people who who slept with sleepwalk and buy stuff. And it's like a big problem. So like they fall asleep and wake up and then they'd be like, I spent fifteen thousand dollars on a home beatboxing studio like this crazy fucking shit.

But when I worked on Best Week Ever, we did a story about this woman had like inexplicably gained all of this weight. And then her husband, I think, set up a camera and she was like eating a full loaf of bread every day on Ambien.

Yeah. That's why, like a full loaf. I also heard I also heard of an actor. I don't want to say the name. I know the actor. I'll tell you all. Flying Blind item, who would order and eat an entire, like, giant pizza. Oh, when.

So when you Adrienn. Whoa. But also so fun.

But I mean the kind of amazing. It's a part, yeah, but you can't even enjoy it. That's the thing like, do you think that that version of you even enjoys it? Like, yes. Oh OK.

Cool that I had pizza last night for dinner was delicious. I don't know. Listen, I'm like, I don't know. I'm doing my best. Crying this week. I finished work, even though I was like barely I barely finished work. Something happened at work that I can't talk about, but I will in the future. And Renee, Elise Goldsberry and I were just texting and she was like, yeah, I'll come on the podcast you and I'll talk about it.

Oh, my God, I love this. For me, it's a lot of. Yeah, I know.

And there's like some weird shit, right, with Universal that we have to, like, get their permission to even have her on the podcast because they're so weird.

But whatever. Fine, we'll get permission and we'll have her come on and we'll talk. We'll tell the story of what happened, which was crazy.

And like, you know how my you know, my age, my longtime agent, Laurie Bartlett, says she has a secret file that's like only happens to biz like like, you know, like shit that only happens to me like like it that this story falls in line with that. But Rene is part of it. So I didn't want to tell you know, we've learned a lot, I will say, in these past 20 episodes about talking to people before you talk about them on the podcast.

Yes, we're learning. Yeah. And there's a you know, I'm sure that would be great for me to be like Howard Stern vibes and just like talk whatever shit I want to about whatever. But I also like really, you know, I respect my friends and family and coworkers.

And so I'm going to just chat with them about what's OK. And you didn't get ninety million dollars to talk shit on Sirius last year. That's right. That's right.

I know, but maybe but maybe Shantaram maybe if I were more forthcoming and just like talked all the dirt just gave it all up, then we would have more people listening and then I would get the big I believe that like only like dirty old men get to do that.

I think for sure 100 percent everybody like women couldn't put it down. They would look at like look at how Wendy Williams has, like, been to the brink and back so many times because I consider her like the female corollary to what Howard Stern has always been doing.

And people have tried to cancel Wendy Williams like every five years or so.

I mean, people get shit for using names in my memoir, Lying, like what a memoir is for, but also but also, like, really didn't say anything bad that bad about anyone that I named in the book. I mean, the Franco story notwithstanding. But that was like a story that had been told publicly many times, including on Watch What Happens live and buy him. Right. Has he and buy him on stage. Yeah. So like, I didn't think I was like fucking doing anything that was going to be controversial.

I saw this, but I like only speaking Twitter now, but it was like very funny because it was like man speaks and it says, how dare you tell everybody about the time I treated you terribly. Why aren't you being nice to me? It was like, that is the truth. It's like, how how dare you talk publicly about the time that I was abusive to you? And it's like, wait, I'm not in trouble because you're mad.

That was like, oh, there was a woman who, like, there are a couple women that, like, came after me on behalf of. Yeah. Men in my book that they felt I had like. Yeah. Wronged whatever. And I was just like I treated you poorly, but like you have to be nice about it. And it's like I was like, you know, like yeah. First off, come the fuck down. Secondly, what were you fighting.

You're like, what, what is this is the hill. OK, ok. You're like, all right, fine, go fuck yourself. Anyway, I'll tell you guys someday. Someday.

Book three three. Well, I don't know. I have a whole book. Yeah, I'm in book two. Will not I look into. Here's a thing you say book three. They're going to fucking run with that. That means book two's already in the works. Ready to go. No I, I don't know.

I feel like, I feel like I might want to write another book. You should thinking about it. You said the board of books that I've read that are bad and those people get caught and those people and those people get to keep writing books. Your book is good. You should write more. It's like there's like not even trilogy's. There's just like rows and rows and rows. I know it. And they're but millionaires. And this, like, your book is good and it's like always like somebody who's great, who's like, I don't know if I could do a second one.

And then it's like some fucking chode who's like, this is my eighty-seven. The book I know well do I do feel like dudes just like vomit on paper and then like, you know, turn it on.

Yeah. And it's like basically done. Yeah. Give me give me fucking three books in the goddamn movie. Busy. All right.

I'm going to work on that. I'm going to work on that right after I wrap all these fucking presents for everybody.

And then I probably cry a little bit more and now I'm OK.

I'm ok. I'm OK. I cried a lot last night. I don't think I'm a cry today, but I have to go to that postop appointment and I can't wait because I have to wear this weird bra for the last four days and I can't wait to take it off. I don't cut it off of you and then you get to see your boobies. Yeah, it's going to be exciting, but I just like it's one because I have not slept.

I mean, I know I have friends who like sleep and bras because they're Tego Betties are very big. But I like I've had to like sleep in this like. This special surgery brought for like the last four days, and I hate it like a compression bra. Yeah, well, we have to get to our interview with Katie, but we didn't. But I guess because last year, last week, last year, my brain last week was so fucking long for me.

Last week you had three things that you were doing your best. Yeah. So maybe, you know, we can order you. What are you doing about that this week? Oh, I was really just going to say, like to everyone who works at home, one thing I really paid attention to this week is like just keeping your workday to work hours, because I had been working like 16 hours a day to the point where I felt like I couldn't see straight and I was going to vomit.

When you're working from home, it's really easy to just start the second that you wake up and never stop until the second that you passed out at night. And that is not OK and it's not healthy, a.k.a. like what I was what I've been doing on Girl five ever. Yeah, yeah. You just have to shut it down at some point. You can't and that's you know, can't see. Right. That's a problem. But I think that's also a really amazing job and it doesn't last forever.

So there's like. That's right. At the end of the. That's right. All right. But like if you're working 16, 17 hours a day at like an at home job that, you know, you're doing remotely or whatever you really have to like, you have to stop answering those emails at a certain point and give yourself, like, cut it off. Yeah, yeah. I just got off of a study that was showing that officers are actually getting more work out of people, as I'm sure they're getting more people to work during what would have been your commute.

And like you work through your lunch and you feel guilty because like whatever like you looked at TV for a second or you look pooped for fifteen minutes, you know, and so you put in, like, all this extra.

If you're pooping for 15 minutes, though, for real, we need to talk.

Yeah. That's like an issue between you and your doctor. But it doesn't mean that you have to put in three extra hours at the end of the grade. I find the New York L.A. thing to be really tricky because it's really it's really bad for New Yorkers. It's fantastic for people who live in Los Angeles. I guess I get my emails like Amber often. I get stuff at seven thirty in the morning and then they're done like two. It's perfect.

So I'm really sorry for you, though, but I'm doing I'm loving it. Yeah, it's been hard for me to just because I'm I have been juggling so many different things. And so it's like shooting, just doing. This TV show would be enough to be exhausting, but in addition to that, like working on, like, stuff charity wise that I've committed to, that I you know, because I always overextend, I'm like, Shirrel, participate, host, slash, you know, give you seven hours of my time, whatever you have.

And now you have to write me two books. So I'm not trying to book. But like all all of that stuff.

And then on top of it, I'm definitely I'm envious of when I hear about parents who are able to like they're like, oh yeah, I just had to like, go stay. I just stayed in a hotel overnight, so, you know, so because I knew I had to wake up super early, like, this is a this is a type of this exists like we know people like those guys. Yes. All of us. But like where they like we'll check out of parenting for like twenty four or forty eight hours because they have like a deadline or they've got a thing or they have to do a thing.

I am not that's not a reality for me. Like I can't do that. It's not an option because for several reasons but it's just fucking not. So you know, I'll get home from working whatever a lot and having like my no lunch hour because I had to like, do a fucking interview for Scotch Brite or whatever.

And then I'm like hustling, hustling, hustling. And then I get home and Mark's like cricket, wind it up so you can put her to bed. And I'm like, fantastic. That is great fucking news. Yeah. She's like crying hysterically because of the state of the world. It's a lot. It's a lot. Everybody's going through a lot. Everybody has a lot. I know I'm not alone in this. No, I know we all work hard.

It's it's hard. It's as I usually say, it's wild in the streets. Yeah. Streets being our home because we're not supposed to be out. All right. So yeah. So everybody try to just cut out some time for yourself to just, you know, even if it's just about five minutes, just breathing, breathing air, it's hard. Fucking bathtub situation has really been chapping my butt. Trapping my butt. Is that it feels right.

I mean, Chamsai for sure. But so chapping my butt also on a whole other fucking note, I feel like maybe I have a hemorrhoid.

Oh dang you are girl.

Then you just eat a head of iceberg lettuce every day for a week and see if that turns things around with a hemorrhoid. Really. I don't even know if it is. I can't. I don't know. I can't tell. I just know like it feels it hurts. Yeah. Mark, Mark, Mark. Look at it. I don't want to do that. Exhausting.

I've had like five years. I think it's just a figure because I've had that because of my eyebrows. Spastic colon, which has been on a real tear the last way. Let me tell you. No pun intended. Yeah. No, anyway, guys, maybe this is too much information for, you know, I'm doing it. I'll talk about poop. I'm pooping like crazy.

Well, that's good considering the pain, the pain medication that.

But I'm not taking those anymore. So constipation reverse. It was Poop City USA, baby. Wow. I think what is going to make Biz's haemorrhoid feel better and what is going to. Oh my Segway I think might be better. OK, ok, so my Segway was like, I just was talking about how much I work, have been, have been working and how exhausted I am.

Our guest today is literally one of the most hard working people ever. Right. And she's out there making it happen, putting herself at risk. And she's been doing it legit since she was eighteen years old, nine year old, a child, an actual child. Whereas I was like it was so hard to be on Freaks and Geeks. She was like, I was in Kosovo, which is like that is a true. That's true. That is a true story.

We were so honored to have Lisa Ling as a guest on our pod. Truly a dream come true. It was. It's one of my for all of us.

Yeah. Yeah. We're all huge fans. Absolutely. And and she was like getting ready to zoom out of well not zoom but peace out to get out of town because she was going on assignment again. She was getting her ready. And we really enjoyed chatting with her, so why don't we take Alyssa? Dias Skillshare is a sponsor of this episode. We love them and honestly, if you're still looking for a holiday gift for someone, give a gift that means more, get creative and you can learn how to make the perfect handmade gift with Skillshare online classes.

Or you could gift someone a Skillshare online class. That's what I'm going to do it with someone. Or you could do it with a with a person. Yeah. Know, like, hey, let's take plants at home, uplift your spirits in your space. Taught by Christopher Griffin at Plant Queen. Exactly. Which is something that I'm interested in.

Skillshare, to be clear, is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people.

So it's just like a mall of classes that you can take to do anything you want to do. Maybe there's animation, creative writing, fine art, music and music production classes you're interested in, or illustration, graphic design, photography, they have creativity unleashed, discover, hone and share your voice online, taught by Nathaniel Drew. Love it. I love it. And there's also a class called Find Your Style Five Exercises to Unlock Your Creative Identity, taught by Andy J.

Pizza. I love A.J. Pizza.

I just want to know pizza and maybe we can have him on anyway. I think the Skillshare is awesome, especially that a lot of us are still facing this in a definite amount of time. In our homes. An annual subscription is less than ten dollars a month. So explore your creativity at Skillshare dotcom bust and get a free trial of the premium membership. That's Skillshare dotcom slash best and you will get a free trial of the premium membership. That's a Musong.

Go ahead, explore your creativity at Skillshare dot com slash best class.

I realized I haven't got waxed in a long time. Guess what I needed a theme in a club came in to hand.

Is that a good one? Got a great fun. I like it. Yeah. I mean, it's all right. I've been using the Athena Club razor. I look forward to using it. It's cute. It's the sharpest patented blades on the market. You know what I love about Athena Club? I love that it gets delivered to me because, you know, when I remember that I need to buy razor heads, when I'm out, when I'm in the shower, wishing, wishing I had a new one.

A new one. Yeah. I just love it because I feel like it's given me the closest shave ever and it soothes my skin and I'm not getting any bumps or burn. And I you know, in the dry skin winter months, I have found all of the products, the cloud shave foam to be very helpful, very helpful. And the best part is the razor kit is only nine dollars, which includes two five blade razor heads, your choice of razor handle color.

I went pink. I have blue magnetic holder for easy storage and the new blades get shipped regularly, so I have yet to run out. Athena Club also has a bunch of other self care essentials that you can get delivered right to your door like natural deodorants, body lotions and face wipes. Love those swipes. They're offered in bundles, which is a great stocking stuffer or a gift. I don't know. Maybe you want to do that.

So for the smoothies closest shave all year long, do what we do and switch to within a club. Sign up today and you're going to get 20 percent off your first order. Just go to Athena Club Dotcom use promo code best. That's a t h e n a c l.. You B Dotcom with promo code besty for twenty percent off. Get it.

Hi, Lisa. Hi, you. Thanks for having me on here on Facebook. Yeah, I'm really excited. Well, Lisa Lisa, I've been a fan of yours since I was a freshman in high school. Oh, yes, you watch. OK, what what state did you grow up? I grew up in Arizona. OK, we were big in Arizona and Channel One was so like was like the greatest 20 minutes, 15. How long was that?

It was 12 minutes to be exact.

Two minutes of commercials.

Oh, my God. So for people at home who didn't have Channel One, Channel one was a news program like Current Events News Program that was put in certain public high schools in exchange for we got they put televisions in every homeroom. Exactly.

It was in middle schools and high schools, public and private. But the schools all get got television equipment and broadcast equipment. So all stuff that is completely irrelevant now.

But you had to watch 12 minutes to watch 12 minutes of a news broadcast in order to get all that stuff, which then also had ads right out and say that it was right for the ads for like, you know, teen stuff, Noxzema and tampons and whatever, right it up.

But busy. It was so controversial because it had ads, even though now every kid has a phone. Right. And it's just like the it's the it's the cold hard sell every second of the day. But yet when Channel One was in schools airing this news broadcast, it was super controversial because it had two minutes of advertisements. So sure.

Now schools have like Taco Bell's in them, don't they? Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Ironically, at the time, my school did have a Taco Bell and that's that's why they didn't care about those commercials. And Pizza Hut, we had Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. We had Pizza Hut and Chick fil A. But no. So they gave us a bunch of chicken with no sauce. And I was like, why are you doing this? But I'm just I'm jealous.

I just had different shades of brown food every day at my school. So what I would have done for a Taco Bell, it was actually a really nice bean and cheese burritos still hits the spot.

And of course, like we all know, the the nation knows and loves Lisa from when she joined The View.

Right. Well, that was when I was like, this show is for me. This show for you. It's for me. I like this woman.

Thank you. It was it was funny because I you know, I'd been on on Channel One for seven years, traveling all over the world and covering stories like, in fact, when I got the call that I got the job on The View, I was covering the refugee crisis in Kosovo all my life.

I was like twenty five or twenty six years old. And then in two weeks, I was sitting at that table on The View after having covered all this stuff. And the first question Meredith Vieira asked me on my first day on live TV was, So are you a virgin?

What what? You know. You know, it's the view, right? So it's a good thing that there was no like no Twitter. That would have been great last year. Was that what year did you join The View? Ninety nine, right?

Yes, it was ninety nine. Ninety eight or nine. Yeah.

Yeah right. Oh my gosh. And graduate. Yeah. I graduated from high school in ninety seven but thanks busy things.

You're not that. I mean you're only a couple of years older than me but like but in you know in that classic like teen thing you seemed like an adult because you were covering crises all over the world for me when I was a teenager. You and Anderson Cooper who also was on Channel One, guys, just FYI.

And then when you got the view, I, I realized, like, oh, you really aren't that much older than I am. But then by that time I was like twenty.

So everybody on TV is a grown up. Everybody, but not everybody on TV is a grown up. That's what happened, especially if you were doing news. But I'm just curious, like post college and you wanted to be and you are a journalist, right. Right.

What was the what was the dream, I guess I guess the dream when I was a kid, because I grew up, you know, in a totally non diverse community. And the only Asian person on television who was kind of high profile was Connie Chung when I was a kid.

You know, you guys love me. She's my hero. Before we even go on, everyone out there listening, look up. There's an iconic Connie Chung photo of her being the only woman in a newsroom. Oh, yeah. It's it's truly like representative of everything you've ever felt. It's one of the most iconic that she's there and she's like, I'm sick of all these men and I'm going to change the game. Everyone look up.

It's really fucking I have it most. I have it posted on my Instagram at least. At least it links to Gram if you want to find it, but. An amazing photo, and I asked the only reason I asked if you know her is because I have met young people who do not know who Oprah is right now.

So, you know, because, like, oh, no, kids are watching TV. So I just I just turned to dust in my chair. It's like I know when Paul McCartney did that song with Kanye and Rihanna and everyone was like, oh, my God, that old man, it's going to be so popular. That's totally that's totally, totally.

But yeah, so so.

So as a kid, I wanted to be Connie Chung. But then when I started working for Channel One because they hired me as this young correspondent and started sending me out to crazy places in the world to cover stories, I, I started to realize I just want to I want to be in the field and I want to travel and I want to immerse myself in different worlds and different cultures. I mean, I was really young when when I was doing this, like in my late teens, early 20s.

And it's kind of wild that I'm still doing that kind of stuff, you know, more than 20 years later. But I just I I love being in worlds that are just really different from mine.

I mean, you're so good at it and you're like found. I don't know. I think when you even if you're 19, 20 years old and you find the thing that speaks to you, you know, you've got to keep pursuing that that thing.

Well, that's why I always tell whenever I talk to college kids, I always tell them before they jump into a job, if you can travel even or live somewhere that's different from where you grew up and different from where you go to college, because it's just to me, it's so life changing when you have that experience, when you're young, it totally just expands your horizons in such profound ways. And that's like the biggest piece of advice I always give people, young people.

How did you start working for Channel One as you are? How old were you?

I was 18 when I started working for Channel One and because it was seen in schools, they wanted like young looking correspondents to to come in and be like cute ish reporters and anchors. And over the years, Channel One decided that they really wanted to send its reporters out to cover story. So when I first started at Channel one, I was kind of this like I had tons of makeup on sitting at a desk reading news because I look like every other 16 year old in high school.

But but then when they they decided, OK, we're actually going to go out and try and report stories. They brought in all these producers who had worked at all the networks. And and it's funny because Anderson Cooper was a fact checker at Channel One and he went, yeah, he went to Vietnam to go do some like, you know, to teach English. And he ended up filming a lot of the stuff that he was doing in Vietnam. And it was so good that the head of Channel One decided, I'm going to put you on air like he went from fact checker to on air correspondent, because the stuff that he was reporting or the stuff that he had collected in Vietnam was so good.

And so unlike what we were seeing on television, it was just like first person reporting. So that's kind of how like Anderson had a lot to do with Channel One changing from just being these like, you know, like nine to one hour looking reporters to like to correspondents out in the field. Wow.

Who still look like they could be on the OR to be fair, Shantaram. Yeah, right.

What was your family's reaction to, like, the first time that you told them you were going to go somewhere far flung to cover something?

Well, my parents got divorced when I was really young. And so I kind of I grew up pretty independently, like I grew up with my dad. He was always working. And so I could actually kind of disappear places and say, I'm going off with my friends for a week. And he wouldn't know. So. So for a significant part of my experience at Channel One, neither of my parents knew too much about where I was going. I mean, I went to Afghanistan, Iran, Algeria, Columbia, Kazakhstan, and I would often tell them after the fact because I was always I was already 18.

I was starting college at USC. I was living at home. So. Yeah. So they didn't really know.

I really love that that mentality, especially when you're young, when you're in pursuit of like a dream. I really do believe in the like ask forgiveness than permission. I like told my parents I was moving to Chicago two weeks before I moved. It was like less time for them to be upset because you're like, oh, I already did it.

Well, the funny thing is the funny thing is I have a seven year old and a four year old, so I have a long way before they start openly defying me.

But I'm telling you, I mean, if if they even remotely pull that shit. Well, what I was going to say. Is that you in nineteen ninety nine could get away with that to a certain extent, no one had cell phones, there was no way to track people. You had to wait for someone to call your home phone and leave a message. So it much easier to dodge your parents in the late 90s and early 2000s than it is currently today to dodge your parents.

That's very true, but I'd still be all over them. It's funny because I live in Los Angeles, so my husband and I joke that when we talk about where they're going to go to college one day, even though I went to USC, I go, you know what? I'd rather them go to UCLA because USA is too far.

Oh, my gosh. Meanwhile, I'm in Afghanistan and Iran and my.

Oh, my God. I know I know that my 21 year old and my 18 year old are listening to this right now. And I just want to tell you, if you go to Afghanistan without telling mom, it's going to be a big deal.

But yeah, yeah. If I come out of the country, I tell my parents, like when I had to go to I had to go to Mexico for like a week. If I just go to New York, I'm not going to tell my mom. You don't need to go. Twenty one year old me probably would have gone to Mexico and not said anything. Thirty three year old me. I was like, this is the number I'll. So you were at Channel one for a number of years with busy Philipps watching you and then loving you.

Loving you.

Favorite old thing.

Busy, busy was truly like I like truly everybody like we all loved you and always wanted to see what crazy shit you were going to be in like you were all it because you were like in the trenches and it was just you were incredible.

And while they had legitimate people, they had you and obviously Anderson Cooper and other journalists.

But on it. But like they were like talking to high school kids in a way that that we hadn't been sort of talked to before about current events. We were included in the story as my junior Damian, as opposed to us, like not having a non participatory view. And that's like a thing that adults deal with. Now, I think it's so commonplace for kids and young adult. My 12 year old is like very, you know, socially active.

And these kids have worked on political campaigns like, you know. But back then, I feel like we were sort of left out until that came along and then we took a more interest in it.

Well, no, I mean, I. I hear you. And I actually wish that there was kind of like a like an informational news show that was kind of geared toward a younger generation, because now it's just like I watch news and I'm just like so appalled because it's all opinion, first of all. And second, like, even though kids have access to so much information, like what are they really accessing, you know what I mean? Like, are they really seeking out things that are really substantive or just kind of like swiping right?

I don't know. I yeah, my kids are really young, so I don't know.

It's tricky. I think it's really important that we get some critical thinking curriculum worked into schooling because there's a whole buffet of information and we've seen what disinformation can do in this country in the past few years, especially. So I think that we need to really beef up critical thinking skills for sure.

I agree with you 100 percent, but maybe you should do that that so maybe you should produce it.

OK, I'll keep that in mind.

So then you went from Channel one to The View and Meredith Vieira suddenly asking you in front of the entire country, are you a virgin? What was that change like?

You don't want to don't you want to know what I said? No, I'm kidding.

I was going I want to I would have lived through my teeth, by the way.

I would have been like, yeah, absolutely.

For sure. Well, what else, Gammer? If my mom was watching that, I think that's what I said.

I was like, well, since my dad is watching my conservative Chinese dad.

Oh, my God. But it was what it was.

It was fun. It was totally new for me because I never you know, on The View, you're kind of you have to perform. It's in front of a live audience and your job is to go for the laugh. You know, it's to go for, like, the applause. And I had never done anything like that before. And it's it's definitely it was definitely a rush. But at the same time, there definitely are things that I said and did for the laugh that I regret.

But I don't know that people realize, like there's that pressure to get that reaction and it kind of just drives you. And it's that that that was a that was the thing that was most challenging for me. And also, I think I always just wanted to go back into the field. I felt like I was so young at that time. In my 20s, and if I didn't go back into the field at some point, then I wouldn't get another chance to do it if I if I just stayed, you know, continue doing this job for a really long time.

Well, I know that, like, I went to school for journalism and then I couldn't do it like everybody else made up for it. I was like, this made me sad. I'm going to go into comedy. But I love news genuinely, like growing up. I watch so much of it. Connie Chung was like one of the only like not white people that my family watched at six o'clock at night, including our local news. Right. So when you are really trying to, like, be a journalist that not only is taken seriously, but like gets the type of widespread viewership that I know that you want is the view like where you go to, like, OK, I'm going to do this and then I can go do what I want, like, get enough clout so that I can do what I want to do and be taken very seriously in this world where it's just a bunch of white dudes all the time.

You know, what you totally, like, hit the nail on the head, because I you know, I worked at Channel One for seven years. And when the opportunity at The View came up, I hadn't thought about like a daytime talk show. Right. I just wasn't even something that I ever thought I would be interested in doing. But I did think if I could get this job, because, remember, it was Barbara Walters, Meredith Vieira, Star Jones and Joy.

Right. I mean, you don't you don't get more high profile boss than Barbara Walters. So I thought, well, if I can get a job working next to her, then at some point I will I will better be able to possibly dictate where I go from here. So that was part of the thought process. Like, I'll go here and hopefully it'll raise my profile.

So when you got there, you're like, I'ma do this for a couple of years, then I'm going to go do this. Or why and why you were there or did it did it actually grow into something else after you were there?

I mean, I honestly thought that after the view that I would go start working as a reporter for a network. You know, normally when you want to get into reporting, you have to go to a smaller market like Wichita, right?

No, I don't. Right. Market, what, 11 do you go up? There you go. Oh, yeah. And I thought, like, OK, if I could bypass that process, maybe after working alongside Barbara Walters, I can get a job as a network reporter because my I'll have a bigger profile. And then this opportunity came up at the National Geographic Channel to host like a documentary driven series. And and I was all in. But it was funny because they hired me, having seen my work at Channel One.

But at the time, National Geographic was like the preeminent authority on, like natural history, you know, in the animal world. And like, that's not what I do.

And so they really trusted me to do these more human stories, you know, and and report on things that they didn't really do as much. So that's kind of it. It happened accidentally. And that even though it's such a widely known brand, Nat Geo channel was a brand new cable network with like, you know, viewership at all. So it was a it was a bit of a transition.

That's amazing.

What what can I ask? Because I'm just very curious. Was Barbara Walters when you were working alongside her, was she any type of hero to you? I mean, she's an iconic journalist herself. What was that like to be a young journalist sitting next to an iconic journalist on a talk show?

I mean, it was it was surreal that I was I would look to my left and there's Barbara Walters. I mean, she she I can't think of a woman in in broadcast journalism. Right. Who who has been more of a pioneer than Barbara Walters. So it was so surreal. And, you know, I mean, Barbara has always had a reputation, right.

For for certain things. Right.

And and I remember hearing Debbie Matenopoulos, who preceded me, she was the first young one on The View talk about how Barbara used to, like, kick her under the table when she when she would say stupid things. So so, you know, like Barbara, she definitely just said a lot of stupid things, to be fair. To be fair, the kicks were maybe my now you know what? You know what? She would actually also say that she said about stupid things.

She's glad I did. I should not have been there. But yeah.

So it was also all those things were true. But at the same time, like, I could see that intensity in her and I could totally see it like that is a driven woman. And I could see when she asks questions of people, even when you ask them questions of me, I'm like a twenty six year old from Carmichael, California. You know, like I felt like I felt like I was going to cry every time because it was just like she was so intense about it.

So did she ever have to kick you? She may have kicked me once, she didn't kick me a lot, but but I definitely I can't say I ever emerged unscathed from the.

And that's the key, everyone. But do you remember why you got kicked? I can't I honestly cannot remember at this time, I may have been taught, I think I may have said something that I thought was an acceptable word on television.

I think I may have said, like Tich, I'm right and you're right. I mean, the word I did. Yes, I was actually italia's very funny to me. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I wasn't accepted back then.

Now it's like. It's like you're it's like you're like you're on to like when you come over and you have tea with her and then you like stuff you're telling, you're like them and she's like excuse me, why is it that bad. But it's like to your company is that. Oh yeah that.

Oh my God.

I think you were insane for leaving the View to go to Nat Geo because the view that was like very much peak view.

Yeah. People a lot of people thought I was insane. And in fact, the day that I left, I cried for the entire day because I'm like, what did I actually do? Like, this is nuts because not only was it such a high profile show, but like I had a life in New York, you know, like I was invited to everything and, you know, like sent stuff by designers, the whole thing. And it was it was a good gig.

But I knew ultimately, again, like, if I didn't get back into the field, then I might never get a chance to to to do it again. So, yeah, people thought it was crazy. And I remember I drove that day from New York to D.C. because Nat Geo was located in D.C. and I was going to become the host of a series called Explorer. And that night I was having Chinese food with a friend in D.C. and I opened my fortune after having cried all day.

And it said, Now is the time to explore.

I am not kidding about, oh my God, that day. And so, you know, those cheesy ass fortune cookies.

But listen, we brought me the time. Yeah, you need a song. Sometimes you need a sign and the universe just puts one right there for you to find in the way that you need to find that label.

But usually they're like beams of light.

You know, sometimes, you know, I think it's I think that I personally think that when you follow your gut, sometimes it's not easy and sometimes it does. Cause, you know, I'm going to cry because I've been crying all day and it does cause you to cry all day, you know, but ultimately, when you get the fortune at the restaurant or you find the penny on the ground or whatever it is, you know, OK, I'm still on the right path.

And like, we're just going to keep heading down this path. I love that you have that moment. That's amazing.

It was really amazing. And I saved that fortune forever and ever. Sadly, I'm trying to think of where it is now, but where is it?

But I it's now things get out. Yeah, but I'll never forget that moment.

That's amazing.

Did you feel like I know that this especially for like women in the industry, did you feel like I'm going to take a risk on myself? And were there people out there being like, I don't think that's such a great idea because it's one thing to be like I'm going to leave a local news station to go do that. Geo It feels like a downgrade to go from the high rise in New York to an office in DC. You know, so what really made you decide to take that risk on yourself?

Honestly, when I when I met with Nat Geo, they just talked about how they were going to send me all over the world and constantly. And I was in that place in my life where I was waking up every day, you know, getting me out of the whole thing, sitting at a desk, you know, with with these women. And it was great. I don't want to complain about that experience. But when I went to meet with Nat Geo and they said, you know, we're going to have you on a plane, like you could be out of the country every single month with this job because that's that's how much we want to cover the world.

Right. And I just to me, even though it was less money, it was on a brand new cable network, that's ultimately like what still drives me, like if, you know, now I have kids. But in the past, if you would have told me if I were reporting in India, like, we need to stay, we need you to stay for another month, I'm like, great. But like, I like I love that I and I still do like part of me thinks, like, when am I going to get sick of it?

Because I'm already, you know, closer and closer to 50 than I am 40 at this point. But I still just like I crave those experiences. And I and I just love being in places where my senses are heightened, you know what I mean? And I'm just like, yeah, I feel really alive. And I just really I kind of thrive on that.

Would you say that that that decision to go to Nat Geo was like one of the bigger pivots in your life? Definitely, definitely, I mean, in terms of the kind of work that I do, definitely, because since then I've been doing a similar kind of work since I left. I mean, what I'm doing now is very much like what I was doing even at Channel One.

It was really the view that was kind of like the outlier, like, yeah, you're staying true to the Lisa Ling brand.

Now, if there is a brand. Yeah, well, it's the brand of like the things that make you want to get out of bed and do your job in the morning. Right. Which is learning about other people, other ways of life traveling. This is Life with Lisa Ling on CNN. You just the new season just started, right? It just started. And we only have two more episodes left.

So why is that true? How many episodes did you do this season? So this season got cut short because of covid. So we only did six. We usually do eight and they aired two episodes back to back for two weekends. So we now have have two more left, but you'll be able to see them on on Biomax at some point soon.

But oh, that's makes that success everything. You got the right one girl, because I know they've got to have Wonder Woman and another Wonder Woman. Lisa, you're going to be on there. Everybody watching you on HBO next week.

Thank you. Because, yeah, I mean, I of all the seasons of our our show will be on there on HBO. So this one will go on pretty soon.

Oh, that's good. That's really exciting. I mean, I truly do. I think there is a Lisa Ling brand because I think of you as what you do like it doesn't matter which show you're doing it on. I think of you as like a real life Carmen Sandiego.

Well, yeah, kind of. And I also feel like right now you all our country is just so messed up and divided and there's so much ugliness right now. And look, I've been home for most of this year because of the pandemic, and I, like most people, find myself like on social media and yelling at each other and, you know, just like getting into these fights because everybody's just like so hyper charged. And so I think the importance of getting out there and interacting with people face to face when this is all over, it is so important because otherwise, like if we keep going down this course, it's like it's not going to end well, you know?

So, no, it sort of hasn't been so great right now. You know, I we showed my daughter it's snowed here in New York yesterday, and my little one, who's seven, was like, I've never even been in snow.

And we were like, you were in snow like two years ago in New York. And we looked up the picture and it was actually three years ago, but on the same exact day, which is weird. But she looked at the photo and she was like, oh, so weird to see us without masks on.

Isn't that I was like, oh, I know. It's weird. That is weird. I know.

So my season was supposed to air months ago, but because of everything happening in the news, it got pushed. And so when the trailer came out, like in all my episodes, I'm just like hugging up on everyone. And so my four year old, my four year old, after she saw the trailer, the first thing out of her mouth was, what about covid-19?

Oh, yeah, it's pretty wild.

Wait, so the the documentary series that you did, the road to a vaccine, where was it? Was that on CNN as well? Yeah.

So, no, that was a separate that was a separate digital series that I did for for for Jay and Jay. And you know, I'm not someone who would typically do a branded series, but it was an opportunity to interact with, like the foremost scientists and health care experts in the world. And I learned so much by doing it. And it's going to come back next year.

And I at least I'm not a I'm never opposed to partnering with a brand brand. Brands make the world go round. Brands make the world go around. But tell like just tell us real quickly, like, what are some of the things that you learned in that in the road to a vaccine? Well, just the process.

I mean, I don't think that I don't think most people really had any idea what goes into the process. Right. And once you know that they have to go through three phases of clinical trials. Right. And with tens of thousands of people. And what was most interesting to me is that because this is a global pandemic, they're going to have to produce billions and billions of doses. And that process, it's one thing to create a vaccine, it's another thing to manufacture it and it's another to distribute it around the world.

And I had never even thought about that process. And so, you know, everybody's excited about this Pfizer vaccine and it is exciting news, but they're only going to be able to produce like. Maybe a billion doses first round there, seven billion people on the planet, right? Seven, almost eight million. So so that process is so interesting. And the Gates Foundation, you know, Bill Gates Foundation, they are already producing a bunch of different vaccines from different companies, even though they haven't even gotten approval because they want to get a head start on the manufacturing of it, because they have to manufacture such large scales of it.

So all that stuff to me is fascinating in a way that it wasn't a year ago because I just didn't I didn't think about it, you know.

Yeah, I think it's interesting, too, because we don't really know how the sausage gets made for most anything I like.

We don't know how the sausage gets made, let alone the vaccine. So I think it's so interesting because we are a country that is very, very used to the immediacy of our needs being met hoteling. But this is the thing that is you can't do that. And I think it will be very interesting to see how a country that is very much rooted in the I want it now, Daddy. Yeah. To me now, Veruca Salt of it all, the greatest country in the world in quotation marks has to make the sausage the same way they make it everywhere else.

And I'm excited for people to see. Yeah.

To see that we're pretty we're pretty far behind other countries right in the in the pecking order.

You mean. You mean you mean in terms of getting the vaccine. Yeah. Well, you know, I know California, they have purchased a pretty, pretty big load of of of vaccines which will be will be administered to health care workers I think this month. But still, you know, like it's going to go through it's going to go to health care workers first, then it's going to be given to know populations that are vulnerable, like like, you know, people in nursing homes and things like that.

But, you know, it's going to be it's going to trickle out. It's not going to be like we're going to get it tomorrow or maybe even six months from now.

Did you do that thing, The New York Times thing where you find your place in line? I did, yeah.

What were you I was like I think like forty four percent of people are ahead of me. Yeah.

I think I was like more than that. I agree with Lisa. I didn't do it.

I know exactly what you're talking about, but I didn't do it. I should I didn't do it because I know I can't get it out. Like I was like, they're not going to give it to me. I'm like, it's like the one time. And it's like the one time in a woman's life were being over thirty is too young, like, truly. But I guess that's true. Yeah, it's exactly you and I come for everything else.

I interviewed the former vice president of Taiwan in Taiwan is a country that has had no infections.

And I that they whether they have their shit together and I mean, it's just so interesting to hear about, like how compliant people are because the government is so transparent. And one of the things that was most interesting is in the beginning of the pandemic, they gave every one of the like every citizen of Taiwan, including babies, about like seventy dollars a day or like 50 to 70 dollars a day to spend on food. But they had to spend it so it would continue to go back into the economy.

Like that's something that that would be helpful. I mean, if there was like a people had enough food, money to buy food every single day in this country, but they had to spend it and not hurt it, like just that simple act alone would have made such a difference in this country. It still could, but. Oh, well. That's incredible and also makes too much sense. Exactly, exactly. That's like a meme that's like this guy praying and he's like, Lord, what you've done for others, will you please do it for me?

And I'm like, looking at Australia, looking at Taiwan and being like, Lord, what you've done for Taiwan, would you please to do for me? And it's like it's one thing to have to actually figure out the recipe for the sausage, but like somebody already did it.

All we have to do is like be like, can I have your sausage recipe and feel that doing it? That's what makes me so frustrated. Like we're not even starting from scratch. Like they wrote the recipe book for us already. But you have.

But you have to have an administration that even acknowledges there's a problem right there.

Like what are recipes? We just throw stuff in a pot. Yeah, that's part of it. But also what you're saying about individualism, like American exceptionalism and individualism is that like people think like that, all the rules apply to everyone else but themselves here. That's why I, like the anti-tax movement, has gained so much traction. That's why people aren't wearing masks, even though they know that it is a thing that they should be doing like. And I'm fighting with the fucking guy behind me in line at my goals like that, that they just think like this is for everyone else.

I'm special.

And also, by the way, really good people like I know we've set ourselves up to be like so adversarial and like this guy is not wearing a mask and this guy is having a barbecue. But like so many good people I know are like I got covid. I was so careful. The only thing I can think of is like I had a hair appointment and then like I got my nails done and then, like, I do go grocery shopping every single day.

And also like I had coffee with one friend, but we sat like at least five feet apart. And then I'm kind of like, that's what you got it one of those ways. Yeah. You know, this doctor was talking about a patient that came in with they had covid. And the guy was like, I was so safe. Like we had like 15 people over for Thanksgiving. And anybody who had tested positive for covid, we put them in a room by themselves right now.

And it was like, now, even when we're trying, it is bad. But like, I don't know, it's just very interesting to watch. I actually wanted to ask you this question because it's something that Casey and I have talked a lot about, and it's something that really interests me with the way that the twenty four hour news cycle has become a bunch of people with opinions and talking heads, choosing journalists in quotation marks or choosing sides to be on.

What do you see as the way forward in terms of getting in for disseminating information to the American public specifically, you know, and and getting back to what is truth?

Yeah, you know what, Busi? I wish I had the answer to that question because it is scary how much conspiracy theory there is now. And because we had a president that basically characterized all legitimate news sources like CNN and New York Times, Washington Post calls them all fake. Right. Totally delegitimizes bona fide news outlets. Then it sends people elsewhere to get their information. And, you know, if you hear people getting their information from from from from YouTube channels, then, I mean, and that's because because so many people have just disavowed legitimate news sources.

I mean, I just don't know what the way back is, quite honestly. I mean, I, I. It's really scary and I and I think that the most important thing like the Biden administration can do right now is just be totally transparent with people and and allow the American public to, you know, to to to be witness to the things that they do. And the decisions are made because I just don't I don't know what the way back from that brink is at this point, because so many people just completely tuned out logic, you know, to real reporting.

Is there a move to be made by journalists joining forces with ad agencies, for instance, and saying we will no longer, you know, give our services to. Well, that's that's kind of what's happening.

That's kind of what's happening. There's so much pressure on big tech on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube that they are starting to take like remove content that is conspiratorial, that is not grounded, in fact, at all. So I think we do like that. That's kind of our one last hope. Right. But at the same but at the same time, if you have you guys watch the social dilemma on Netflix, you watch you have discussed. Yes.

Oh, my God. Yes.

At the same time, while they take off some of this stuff, they also are creating the algorithms that feed all this stuff to people. Right. And so the news that I get or that I look for and the news that someone who is more conservative, right wing gets is totally different. And so I'm. And so that's what's really scary. So, you know, there's a movement to break up big tech and and to make it more accountable.

And I honestly think that that is that has to happen because I do think that that is is one of the only ways out because it is duplicitous. And these algorithms like if you can create these algorithms, you can uncreate them. You know what I mean? You can, because to me, it's it's there is a way out of that. We just have to put in the pressure.

You know, it's interesting because YouTube and all of social media has democratized, you know, voices and platforms for everybody. But I think it's also made it really confusing, again, to like good people because, like, I can look on YouTube and see things from CNN. I can watch television networks on YouTube, but then I can just like look in the sidebar and click on something that looks very official and real. And it's really not you know, it's just like some guy.

Well, and that's the thing. Like when you have the president of the United States, when you have the leader of your country essentially not only condoning it. Right. But but supporting it and reading it. I mean, that's this is what this is. I mean, I just I, I, I think that more of the American people voted to vote him out than, you know, because that was ultimately because I just think like to feed that conspiratorial beast to continue doing that.

I can't see how we would end in anything other than civil war, you know, and it's still it's still such a big threat. But at least he's not calling the shots. Right. And and Twitter now finally has the balls to pull off things that are not are not true, like blatant lies. Right.

The journalistic integrity. Give it to give it to me. Yeah. aMission. I miss her.

It's so it is so it is so difficult because I at the end of the day, keep coming back to the question of something my mom used to say to me when I was being really jerky to what end Elizabeth was. And, you know, but like I keep thinking about that, too, about Donald Trump, about all of these, like, sort of totally outrageous conspiracy theories that just get bigger and bigger and wilder and crazier where I'm just like to what end?

What are you getting out of this? Like what is happening aside from, like the four deadliest days in American history in the past week?

Like four of them, the like toppling a toddler and most likely days are passed. We've surpassed Pearl Harbor. It was like Pearl Harbor was four and now Pearl Pearl Harbor is like eight. And then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, it's like six, five, six and seven and insane.

But I just. Yeah, I just I guess I wonder to what end. I wonder that for a lot of the, you know, conglomerates that own and continue to put money into. Some of these. Legitimate news networks, you know, and and and how sensational news gets eyeballs, but to what end? I know, I know.

So I wanted to ask you, like especially for little journalistic babies are people who just want to be more informed citizens. What are you looking forward to as we leave this, this, this what should I say of misinformation, this misinformation, misadventure with misinformation? What do you hope for as we move forward into a world of, like, actually becoming informed citizens?

Well, I think look, I mean, if if if if Trump will go away somewhat quietly, I think that news outlets are going to need content because first, for for the last four years, it's been all Trump all the time. Right. And my hope my hope is that outlets, whether they're broadcast television or or or websites or in the digital space, that there will be more real reporting and people really taking the time to get to know people who are different from them.

I mean, I know like I talk about this all the time, but it's just it's so important that we you know, when covid is over and it will be that we leave our bubbles and really, really start to communicate and start understanding each other. Because if we don't do that, honestly, the consequences, I think are dire. And and it takes one person right. To have kind of an enlightened experience and to really take the initiative to want to understand someone else's life who who is different from yours.

And I think if enough people start doing this, we can at least get to a point of mutual compassion and understand our shared humanity and all of this. I think I mean, that's that's that is my hopeful.

I think it's very hopeful. I've said that the one thing that I'm looking for and why I actually think Joe Biden is the perfect person right now is that I think we need a return to empathy in this country and for more people to understand what it means to be empathetic and and empathy can be learned. It really can be. If you have kids, you know it. You have to teach some kids. Some kids are not born very empathetic. Say, like, well, like, you know, push a kid down on the playground and then be like what I wanted.

That's why you have to, like, really teach people sometimes.

OK, real quick, because I know you have to go to I just wanted to ask how covid how the pivot of covid the French of covid how it affected you and how you're doing. And you have two small children that are age and all of it. I just want to I just wanted to ask you about that.

Well it I couldn't work for a long time or I couldn't go out in the field. So I had been home for a very long time. My husband also got covid like a few weeks ago. He got a very sorry.

He had a very, very mild case. So, you know, like the last five days of his quarantine, he didn't even have any symptoms. But, you know, I made him stay in my my little one's room because I was not giving up my room right now.

I mean, that was that was really hard because I couldn't I couldn't have any of my kids interact with anyone outside of the house. I couldn't no one could help me. I was trying. I was doing everything. My mom has been a big help for me through things. So, you know, then I'm trying to feed him and sanitize everything all the time. So my I've always had mad respect for single moms, but my level of all of single moms has grown exponentially.

In fact, I was just looking at this article today on Yahoo! About whether about whether stay at home moms should be paid. And I'm like Abam. So Routley, I mean, yes. What would I had to do while my husband was guaranteeing just me with my kids and totally unable to ask for anything or do anything? I just thought like if I had to do this every single day without a without a partner or without without access to friends, I honestly don't know what I do.

So my my my level of respect for moms and and we just really need to honor moms at this time because what moms are carrying on their shoulders right now is just incomparable.

Yeah. And we know that more women are even if it's a household where both people work, we know that women are again taking on more of the domestic labor during this time.

Yeah, because gestational are. Yeah. Because otherwise it won't get done right. It just won't get done.

It's true. But now you are sort of back to work. You are. Back to work and the you guys can everybody can watch your show on CNN, and I personally am going to check out the road to Vaccine Yet You series. It's on the Johnson and Johnson website, I assume.

Right? It is. If you if you if you go to my my Instagram page, I link to it so you can buy it. You can find it there too.

I'm going to I'm just going to I want to watch it. I'm curious. I want to, I want to see. It's interesting. It's real. I mean, honestly, I'm really, really proud. It's just chock full of information about, you know, about the vaccine, but also just this climate, the virus. And it's an opportunity to hear from the foremost scientists in the world.

So sehnalová. Check it out. So back to science lover. Yes. You're so incredible and such. I love you. No, I don't know you. I like you've been in my life since I was in high school. But you just you've been in all of our lives for so long and you've had such an impact. And I know the stories that you've been able to tell and bring to people. I mean, it has been so you have told so many life changing stories.

And Lisa, I just I'm really I'm really a huge fan of yours, and I thank you for doing all the work. Well, thank thank you. And can we do it can we do this in person one day? Yes. Yes.

Oh, wow. That would be so fun. Lisa Ling, I hope the next time you get Chinese food that you have another life changing picture.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Now I want a fortune.

Thank you, ladies. Thank you. You're not eating everything you're doing. You're not even going to recognize me soon.

I'm going to be so peeped out that I get it all head to toe, head to toe. Be safe. Yes, I am. I am unabashedly.

And thank you so much.

Thank you so much. It's so nice to talk to you. Bye bye. Listen, what is time, we don't know. Time sort of feels like it means nothing at this point. Does it make sense of doesn't exist? Time is just a construct. But as the year comes to a close, there's one important timeline that modern fertility wants to help. You better understand your reproductive one. What's going on in those oves? What's happening? What's happening down there?

We don't know.

But that's where modern fertility and the modern fertility hormone test comes in. You know, knowledge is power. I'm a firm believer in that. And when you know more, you can make better decisions for your body and your health and your future. And, you know, fertility shouldn't be something that's a big question mark in your life. And that's why modern fertility was created. It's the easy and affordable way to test your fertility hormones at home with a simple finger prick.

You mail it in with a prepaid label and boom, you get your personalized results. Within ten days, traditional testing with your doctor can cost over a thousand dollars, but modern fertility only costs one hundred and fifty nine dollars to get the same information. And if you go to modern fertility dotcoms, best you can get twenty dollars off your test. Also, if you have HSA or FSA, you can use those dollars on modern fertility. So you'll get insight into how many eggs you have, hormone levels, other important fertility factors.

The results go deep into what every hormone means. And you can also talk one to one with a fertility nurse to review your results and your options for next steps. So right now, modern fertility is offering our listeners twenty dollars off the test. When you go to modern fertility, Dotcom's best. That means your test will cost one hundred and thirty nine dollars instead of the hundreds or thousands it could cost at a doctor's office. Get twenty dollars off your fertility test when you go to modern fertility dotcom.

Best modern fertility dotcom slash best.

Isn't Lisa Ling delightful? She's amazing. I just have always been such a big fan of hers. Me too. What do you what do you think Shintaro had to leave? Oh, no.

We talk about it. I know how hard it is working and I had to leave to actually go to the jump, she had to jump onto a work call. Yeah, that was non-negotiable. Yeah, but Lisa Ling, also really funny.

That's what I love when someone is just everything and then like a little funny on top of it, I am just a huge fan of hers and obviously have been since high school, as you heard me say repeatedly. And that was basically all I wanted the interview to be about.

But Casey, what are you going to do for, like the holidays for New Year's and like this week? What are you doing?

And he just like nothing. Yeah, that's all I know. But like, what are you doing? We you know, we're going to open gifts. We're going to that. We have been saving our gifts. We always keep them. We don't put them under the tree. Like ever since the kids were little, we never put them under the tree to just, like, remove that temptation to be.

Oh, so you're saying that maybe if I had done it differently, I wouldn't be in the current shinsho that I'm in. All right.

You know, again, knowing myself and knowing my kids, I've still fully obsess over things like that as an adult. Like, I just can't stop thinking about it. And so we always just keep them put away and then put them out like on Christmas Eve. So we're still like wrapping gifts, but it's just going to be the three of us. And then we're going to zoom with my older son and probably my mom, my in-laws. Like, I don't think they're really celebrating this year.

They're keeping it like even lower key than normal. They're not like big holiday bitches. So. Yeah, so that's it, really. How about you, Sam? Sam, we are going to cook Italian food for Christmas Eve, which I always do. I like my family's tradition. Yeah. And also it was Marc's family's tradition as well. Yeah.

The interesting thing, it's so funny because so many people who are not Italian, I think have Italian food and then Italian people have fish.

Right.

Well, that's it's the seven seven seven fish. Yeah.

Well, Marc's aunt's mother in law Marks and has been married to this man, Fred, for ever, like. Yeah, a long, long, long time. And Fred is like fully Italian. And his mother, like who's passed now was like from Italy. Italian.

Yeah. And so they spent every Christmas Eve with Fred's family and Fred's mother would cook all the Italian food. Yeah, there's a part of my family that is very Italian. Everyone's named Mario. And and yeah. So we spent many Christmas Eves with them just eating endless fishes, which I won't even eat one fish, never mind seven.

So I don't like I'm not interested in that.

Yeah, but there me there were also times when like the matriarch of the mini Mario's family would be like fuck it, I'm like taking the year off and she would like leave it to the daughters and then they would just get like different fried fishes from like the local dairy bar snack stand. And so that those delicious those were my favorite years because I just like eat French fries all night. I do love fish and chips. Yeah. Yes, I do love fish.

You know what Marx Brothers is getting us for Christmas? I know what it's already what? Well, first of all, in one of the stranger moves and I'm sorry if my brother or sister in law is listening to this, they had gotten us like a panini press, but then their dog, like, ate the box. So rather than I mean, truly, this is the story. So then we get this box delivered to the house and Mark from his brother Mark opens it.

And it's like a panini press that's like been destroyed from shipping. Like there's like like it was so weird. I was just like, who would just put a panini press in a in a brown paper box? What are these called? What is what am I packing? What what are they called boxes. What is called shipping box. Shipping shipping box. Yeah. Shut up, Casey. I'm having a you know what I mean. OK, so I was like, who just fucking like wraps and tissue paper but the shipping box and sends it to New York.

And so yeah, it was like total. I was a junk like you can't even donate. It literally was destroyed by throat being thrown around all the shipping facilities I'm sure. God. So then his brother felt bad and Marcus like and actually we have a panini press. My mom, my mom got it for us like last year or the year before. Yeah. When it was on Oprah's Favorite Things list, of course. And by the way, of all the things like going to storage, coming to New York, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, in which I was like scolded for the things that I wanted out, I wanted too much out here.

And I was told no. And it has to go to storage and I'm like, fine, but I really want my fucking stuff. I wanted my telephone that you gave me the phone. I want my shit, dude. Anyway, too much stuff. It's going to storage. Fine. But then turns out the panini press is coming because Mark and Sarabeth love the panini press anyway. And and Berdy loves the Panini press. But anyway, it doesn't matter.

So he's sending us an air fryer. Oh, it's the best. I'm so excited. Ah, I can't find our friend Nelson, who was a co executive producer on Busy Tonight. And it has been a long time friend of mine and is just one of the best people in the world, like literally my one of my top top ten favorite men. Yeah, yeah. He like what I always say, there's there's like two to three good guys in the world and he's one of them.

He got us an air fryer, not even for like anything. He had just gotten one and he loved it so much that he got. That's the kind of guy Nelson has got. Yeah. And so he sent us an air fryer. And here's the funny thing. My son, Lincoln, he loves toast. And we never had a toaster here in L.A. because we left everything back in Connecticut. And so last Christmas, we went all around trying to look for a toaster.

And for whatever reason, there were no toasters available in Los Angeles last Christmas. Popular left.

Yeah, it was it was like it was insane. And so we had to buy like one hundred fifty dollar toaster for this kid. But we were like, he's worth it. He loves toast. He's a good boy, he deserves toast. So we got him a toaster.

Good boy. It deserves toast. So we got to a toaster and then we have that on the counter. And then Nelson got us this air fryer and at some point Lincoln made toast in the air fryer. And then Lincoln came to us and he was so serious.

And he was like, I got to I want to talk to you about something. Do you mind if we just keep the air fryer out instead of the toaster?

I know you worked so hard to get it for me. Oh, well, it was very cute, but, yeah, you can do anything in that area.

It's great. All right. Well, I'm very excited about it. I also have purchased a couple of gifts for myself. I am not the fucking mom from the SNL. I got a robot sketch. So that means if I meet you made me laugh. But I learned well from my own mother in that if you're fucking if you're the mom, guess what? You buy yourself the books, you buy yourself the shit you want and Santa brings it to you and it's under the goddamn tree.

Yeah. I'm sorry, guys. That's just the way it is, because you cannot trust anyone to make your Christmas dreams come true as a mother except yours. I bought except yourself. I bought gifts for my kids to give me also. Also, can I tell you I got. I think it's nice for the girls to exchange presents, and so I so I asked them what they wanted to get one another and they kind of were both like.

I don't know, like I don't know, they just don't have any ideas, so I had to help Riot. So I'm like, OK, cricket. Sometimes in past years they've had ideas truly, like, you know, like Berdy.

One year was like, I got to get cricket the. The thing the park patrol station and I'm like, OK, fine, that's great this year, both of them are like at a loss and cricket was like, I don't know, something one direction. And I was like, good call. Yeah. And so anyway.

I said, what do you want to get cricket? She's like, I don't know, Mom, I don't know. Wanted to do a new art project and needed more paint. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, I took Berdy to Blic Art Store and they had these pens.

They're called Pascha Pens. And what they are, I don't know what they're they're like they're like pens. But one of cricket's favorite YouTube ers uses them. And I've heard her crickets say Pascha pens so many times. Yes. So and we had looked for them before somewhere else and they didn't have them. And I bought her some other off brand pen, you know, and she was like, this is fine, but it's not the thing. Right?

So it's like, oh, my God, they've got Pascha, I'm going to get these for cricket for Christmas. And so I, like, loaded up all the pens and the paper so that it doesn't bleed through or whatever. And then we were checking out and Oberti had like grabbed something sort of absentmindedly, like this unicorn thing for cricket for Christmas. And then as we were checking out, like, I think I should give cricket the Pustka pens and the paper.

And I was like. I had to swallow real hard and I was like, hmm, yeah, you can do that, sure.

OK, so then yesterday they decided to do their gift exchange. I'm telling this, the wheels are off. You've opened your gifts. You nailed it. Cricket. I didn't send you the picture. I said maybe I'll post it. Cricket hugged that dangling brush I made like her. Cute, like I'm pleased face.

Gosh, I got cricket like an electronic tangling comb that so many adult. It's meant for kids, but so many adult women I know that have long curly hair say it's fantastic. Well, I'm going to try it out. I'm not guaranteeing anything, but I will try it. Let me know how it works.

We're down to once a week. She lets me tangle her hair. It's a nightmare. Anyway, so. So they exchanged gifts yesterday and I had ordered for birdie.

I was super excited because I had ordered all of these prayer candles.

You know, those fake four. Oh yes. Yeah, I have. I got Harry Styles, Louis Tom and Timothy Shalabi and Florence Pugh.

I got those like, you know, and so I was like, well, cricket can just give those to birdie, you know? So they exchanged presents. And when I tell you cricket was like last night quietly, she hasn't stopped using them for like over twenty four hours.

She's written two books. She's illustrated, written and written two books with her. And last night she quietly said. This is the best gift I've ever gotten in my life, and I was like. For me, I know that you're just thinking it. I know, but she was like so but maybe also part of it is that she was like so touched that it was from Bird. Yeah.

You know, that was you gave a lot of gifts because you gave Bird the gift of giving that gift to get the better gift. You gave Crickett the gift of getting something really special from Birdy. From her bit. Yeah. Yeah. Older sibling. Yeah. So you know. I know but it's hard for me because I want all the credit, you know.

Yeah. Well here's the thing.

You will never get the credit from your children, but everyone listening to this knows that was all you put out because it was all me also like get over it Busi.

Why do you need the fucking credit. Of course it's all you. You gave birth to them. You like did it all. We do it all the moms do it all. I get why you want credit. Because it's when you feel like you nailed it and you really like got something that's special to someone. When I work for Dave Letterman, a huge part of my job was thinking of special gifts for people like and he was really into gifts like that was his not.

That's the way that he showed that he cared about love language. Yeah.

It was his love language. And so there were so many kids. Mine. Yeah.

And I think it was like there were so many opportunities to brainstorm with him and be really creative about gifts. And so it felt really good to give someone. And it wasn't always an expensive gift. Sometimes it was like very lavish because he's wealthy, but sometimes it was just like something really thoughtful that you had to track down a movie that was out of print or something that he'd heard you mention in passing or something that was really funny, like an in-joke between like one I don't want to say for who, but like, one time I had to ask someone's wife, what did we think her husband, a staffer, would like for like a big, important birthday?

And she was like, oh, maybe like a spa weekend, you know, Bulba. And I was like, wow, that's so boring. So this staffer wore a certain type of sneaker. And so I convinced Dave to, like, fill up his entire office with, like, a lifetime supply of the sneaker. Oh, my God, that's so cool.

And it was so fun for me. But then I was like, that wife probably hates me, but it was fun to, like, convince Dave, like, let's stack up all these boxes of sneakers.

You're really good at gifts, too, though. You're a really good gift giver. Thank you.

That's one of your gifts to my kids were huge hits while I gave bird sealing wax and stationery. Yeah.

And Birdie wrote a letter, a thank you letter to you and everything I know, which was, you know, I only asked like seven times but but but to you know, Bertie's credit. Here it is. There it is. So I have to address it. What's your address? Why don't you just say it on the podcast? Because, you know, I like to tell you like to tell people exactly where you live. Crazy guys. If there was an episode of our pod in which Casey describes exactly where she lives and I was like, I was listening to it, I think I don't know, like when it came out on my way to work or whatever, I was like, huh.

You didn't cut out the part where you talk about your where you live. And she's like, yeah, I don't know. I figure, like, if anyone is going to come get me, they can just got me.

I don't know, I you were just like nonplussed by it.

I figure it's pretty public where I live and also, like, I've never really had that experience of someone trying to come and find me to do anything scary because I'm not like known like that. But I have had you know, I have had people kind of, I guess, show up where I live before for various things, but nothing ever scary. So if anyone wants if anyone wanted to be scary, all they would have to do is put in a teeny bit of effort beyond me describing where I live.

But yeah.

Oh, my God, we didn't even talk about the Elle article.

That was wild. But girls, kind of course, you at everybody read it.

Everybody ready.

How do you say his name strickly. Martin Sherko. Shkreli, Shkreli. Correlli.

The the guy that like, wow, the pharmacy, pharma, pharma brat that, like, increased the cost of some medication by five thousand percent and is currently in prison for four, seven years for what is it for fraud?

What would do this woman journalist that was covering his his legal battle kind of fell in love with him.

My mind can't even be wrapped around the situation that she fell in love with this notoriously loathsome person and sort of blew up her life. She she lost her job. She gave up her job. She divorced her husband. And then, like, in the end, like, spoiler alert, Martin Shkreli, he, like, blew her off via the journalist doing the story. He was like, I wish her the best in her endeavors.

I mean, it is a wild article. And there was a there was an update. There was a twenty four hours later. Did you read that part that she's ready to start dating? Oh, oh, I didn't see that. I saw I just like I read on Elle, they had like a follow up with the journalist who wrote the article and then her. Kirsty Smith is her name are Smith. Smyth's Polly Smith. Right. Probably. My wife is very pretentious, so hopefully I don't know.

She's fell in love with firm bro, you know. True. True. I would just say, like, it's fascinating because that. And then you sent me that Twitter thread of your friend that's talking about like extreme crushes that people get and like what extreme crushes do to people and how it makes them, like, behave irrationally or against their own, you know, best interests. At times it's like drugs. And oftentimes it's like not even about the person that it's with.

It's like more about getting out of whatever you're in. Yeah.

And even I think she was making the point or somebody was making the point that sometimes maybe even the mate that you choose, you choose knowing that they're the kind of person that would be susceptible to something like this, so that you're almost self-selecting someone that at some point will probably leave you because you're like, oh, you're not into like staying in this situation forever.

It's really interesting. But yeah, I mean, who here's the way a lot of people were dunking on this woman, which I get because I know and like calling her mentally ill, ill and thing.

Yeah. I mean, which nobody should be diagnosing mental illness in anyone who's not there, that person's doctor.

But many people were like, you know, this is this is how could this happen? And I'm like, we've all had bad judgment in that area. This just happens to be very public and it happens to have, like, ruined her life. But like, how many of us have come close to ruining our lives? Probably. Well, and he's clearly he is clearly a sociopath. Yes. I think or a psychopath, I can't remember, I read that book a long time ago.

Yeah, he's psychopath test guys, if you haven't read it, I highly recommend John Rumson's book The Psychopath Test.

Yeah, we can diagnose everyone as a sociopath and like a lot of super successful people, kind of like ride that line of, you know, of Peru being nearly psychopathic.

But I know that, like, I've in my life made a ton of terrible decisions.

Everyone I love has made a ton of terrible decisions, but I feel like she's probably super not alone in having poor judgment in that situation.

Yeah. And also, you know, I always find it difficult to judge anyone who's making. A choice that they feel like I mean, even in this extreme situation, something that she felt really deeply and it's not for me to, like, unpack all of the reasons why and the whatever that maybe she'll get into at some point in her life later. But as a story, it's fairly captivating. It's really fascinating.

She said in the story, she said this line that really has stuck with me. She said that they don't like chicken wings and that they can't that that also stuck with me, that it smelled like chicken wings in the in the prison when she visited him. And she when they kissed for the first test. Yeah. That that it smelled of chicken wings. The line that stuck with me is that before he went to jail, she he was like socializing with people that were kind of like young people that were kind of like fans of his.

And she was going along in, you know, supposedly, I guess, in the interest of like doing her journalism. But then she found herself being like at his side and she said, I felt like a politician's politician's wife.

I know I the same thing stuck out for me to like it's like that feeling of like being important and being in proximity. And this is a person who's like spent their entire journalistic career covering other like, you know, people in the public eye, people in the public eye, you know, people on trial of note, notorious, infamous, horrible. Yes. And then all of a sudden here she was and she was like in proximity to it.

And she was like, huh? But yeah, I like it. Yeah, it's wild, I I've been watching the flight attendant have, you know, but you're the second person today that's asked me.

I've been watching it. I thought it was really fun show. But there's like a storyline in there where my husband and I were talking about it, where we're like, why would that character do that thing?

But it's kind of like fits so well if you've been watching. It really fits the the Martin Shkreli romance story that sometimes you just do a thing to, like, check that you're alive or to make yourself feel seen, you know, and like, if it's if you feel unsign enough, your decision to do something to feel seen might just be very extreme.

Like, for instance, me starting to do Instagram stories. Yes. Yes, it's true. Four and a half years ago. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, everyone thought I was fucking insane. Just FYI, young people legit were like like here's a what why are you way doing that?

Like, it's like, what are you doing? Okay, it's like you're in the real world. It's like being interviewed. And it turned out good, it turned out well for you, but I guess people well, like people are going wild for this story. People are here to see it. It's just a matter of how it's received in the end. So, yeah, it's not so different.

I mean, in. I hope it works out for everyone. I hope so, too. She said that she was ready to start dating, I believe. And if you read that Elle profile, you saw that she had like some very nice photographs taken to make it like a fashion shoot a little bit. It was very strange. It was very strange. It was very strange.

But I guess that's what Elle has to do to make it, you know, their brand for their magazine. But she took a lot of nice pictures in dresses from the vampire's wife, a very hip brand.

I have some vampyres wife, Judith. Yeah, you do. Oh, it's what I wore on our Christmas show when Oprah called me. Yes, that's right. So now this woman has, like, really nice photos for her profile on Match.com. Is she working with Match.com now? I don't know, but I'm assuming she'll join like a kettle of fish, or is that what it's called? Plenty of fish fucking no idea.

Are you asking me where I'm leading? We're not on listing on the singles, not on the social media sites. I just know the one for famous people. Oh, yes.

Where everyone gets mouth matched with Matthew Berry. I thought I had something else to tell you, but I can't remember exactly what it was.

But oh yeah, we're just going to open presents, Italian food.

That's what we were talking about before we went on this, before we got on a journey and.

And that's it, man, I don't know, oh, we ordered brisket from Louis Barbecue in Charleston, we delivered. Yeah. So we're going to eat that on Christmas and. You can get anything delivered these days, guys. That is one thing that's kind of nice. It's true. We usually have like a rib roast, but I don't they're kind of hard to get around L.A., so I don't know if we're going to do that. Lincoln wants ham.

I'm not into ham, but also who cares? Who cares?

So who cares? So what? Who cares? Yeah, I know what presents I'm getting for myself and I'm very pleased with them and I don't know. You haven't gotten your present box for me yet, although you guys did get you you did get the picture. Oh my God.

Busi got us the funniest thing. She did get us masks with Ben Affleck wearing a mask. Did you? Not going to be sure to. Yes, I did get a T-shirt, too.

But the mask is like it's so meta that the mask the mask is hilarious. The star, but the whole. Oh, my God, we're OK. I have to tell you a story about getting OK because I gave Eric Gorian one of those Ben Affleck masks as well. Although you know him, he's probably too nervous to ever wear it.

But, you know, I put together the crew gift for the girls five to give the crew before Christmas, and it was a little bit of a rush job. And Ray was helping me remotely. But I was like doing the design with Molly Closs, my friend Molly. Yeah. And I was like, OK.

And then also, like, make sure you order extras of every size in case, you know, we need them and then order a few kid sizes because there are a couple of kids that are actors on the show. And then I said and also get Eric a onesie. And Razack got it, got it, got it, because because he's Eric's girlfriend, Eric's partner is Eric's partner is expecting their first child. Yes. Victor Victoria is going to have a baby in in just a little bit.

So then I get this text from Rae. All this shit is like it's down to the wire and it's coming. It's going to be there Friday, but like down to the wire. I get this text from right at work on Thursday. And he's like, I kind of messed up something with the guests, but I think it's OK. And I was like, what did you mess up?

And he's like, I ordered Eric like an adult ones, not a not a baby onesie.

And I was like, Are you fucking kidding me? That is the funniest thing I've ever heard. And it's perfect. So much better.

Do not stop that one. Zefram coming. Anyway, then Friday was such a cluster fuck, I don't I didn't see where the ones went, so I don't even know if Eric got it. I forgot to ask him and I don't know. We'll find out, but. Yeah, it was pretty funny. Well, I'm sure he'll send us all a photo of him in an adult onesie and maybe he'll let us share it with everyone.

Oh, that's a good point. Maybe. Well. Everybody, the next time we talk to you, Christmas will have already come and gone. Are we doing like a. A New Year's twenty twenty recap episode, yeah, we'll be back next week and we'll just we'll just be talking about twenty twenty and our hopes for twenty twenty one.

You know what I would love? You know what I would love? Just like month by month. Like let's just go through it. Yeah. All right. I just just for twelve hours. One hour per month. Do you remember do you remember a year ago when you and I were like about to fucking have this business and do this whole thing, and I was we were making it happen and it was like. Happening, yeah, I do remember I mean, I kind of do it feels like it was 10 years ago and it also feels like it was a second ago and it also feels like maybe it's still happening and it also feels like it never will.

But I think that's how everybody feels.

It's been such a strange time. Yeah. Yeah, it's really I mean. It's been strange, I think it will continue to be different.

Yeah, and, you know, and and I just I think so much of like, you know, every once in a while I give myself five minutes of be like, oh, this year, like, so much didn't happen. But then I'm like, some people lost everything I know.

And I feel that way too. Like I always like, you know, I'm always nervous that like sounds like I'm like complaining when I was like talking about how tired I was and how last week was really hard. It was just like a lot, you know, like it was just it was emotionally a lot. And then on top of it, I was like stretched very thin because of all the work. And then it just compounded the emotional stuff that I was going through.

Yeah.

I mean, well, two things can be true at one time. A hundred things can be true at one time. So, so many people are like, oh, I don't want to sound like I'm complaining or whatever. It's not nobody's complaining.

Everybody's just living what they're going through and like saying what they're going through and just it's not a contest. And so it's very valid to be like I'm just exhausted and or I'm just sad.

I'm exhausted and sad or like, oh, gosh, like I'm feeling pretty good, you know, it's like. I feel like sometimes people are so hesitant to share their successes because they're so conscious of what's happening for other people that had just haven't had a win in a really long time. But like, even when I'm having, like, the shittiest time, I still want to hear about my friends wins because, like, that's a win for me, you know, and like, even when it's hard, I'm still happy, you know what I mean?

It's it's all very, very complicated.

It's all complicated, super complicated. And it's also like. Guys, at the end of the day. We are. I know you're going to do it. She's going to get we're just doing our best.

We're just doing our best. Listen, guys, let's make a date to get together again next week at the same time, we'll talk about 20, 20, maybe we'll work on we're. Let's have a cocktail. Let's have a cocktail next to beverages. We can have it from one of our cocktail sponsors. All right.

Or we can have it from someone else and not talk about it no better. Oh, by the way, I was going to say, is Warner Bros. Still sponsoring us because we should send a grip of Warner Bros. To L.A..

I know we should. I mean, I don't know. That's a good question. I probably still have their contact info, though, because I did do that commercial for them. Let's all get into it. I'll send her some bras and anyone else out there that wants to send Shintaro a new trousseau. That's what my mother would always say. Now, busy if you what about your wedding trousseau? I'm like, what are you fucking talking about, Mom?

It's not like I'm not like it's not like fucking Victorian times. I'm not, like, getting traded for my fucking trousseau. What what is it? You're so my wedding chest filled with the things that I'm going to, like, take with me into the marriage.

Your hope chest and your dowry is not what it was.

Your wedding dress was like filled with the things you would take into the marriage, like you're the silver and the Chinon like that's like where it all comes from. And apparently your fucking underwear, your underwear, your trousseau.

Well, on that note. You guys, I hope you get everything that you wish for, for Christmas and remember, if you're concerned that you might not, it's not too late to order it for yourself.

And also, if you're you know, if you're not feeling Christmas this year, that's OK, too. It's a weird year. If you're not feeling Christmas any year, that's OK, too.

If you're feeling a little lonely and you are wishing that you had someone to talk to you on Christmas ritual and say, hey, we'll be around, we'll say hi.

And, you know, if you want to let your kids open a gift every fucking day for the past week. That's OK, do it. That's a fine knew everything, but also, by the way, guess what? I've been doing this fucking house every goddamn day. But you know what? I didn't feel like posting about it, and so I didn't. So you know what? I'm sorry. So what who cares what they've been they've been up to a lot of stuff, but so what?

Who cares? I'm not posting it. I don't give a fuck. I'm not taking pictures. I'm just not doing it. I was too tired. There you go. And for everybody who is like staying home to stay safe this year, even though it means that you're going to have like, kind of a weird holiday. Thank you.

Oh, for sure. I'm staying home. I'm not doing shit and I'm sad about it. Yeah. Yeah, because it's weird. But also it's just like one year and then also what is anything, you know what I mean.

Yeah, it'll be great, it'll be fine. We love you, we love you, Casey. I love you. I love you, too. And I miss you. And I'm glad to see your face. I know me too well.