Hey, there are folks from Italy once again. And in this episode, Rabak and I explain why we really want to get back home. Also in this episode, while we kind of don't want to come home at all, and with a with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Robys explain the setting again, where we are and why you were you were hoping I wasn't going to say we should record this podcast from where we actually are.
Yes, because the real field temperature is ninety nine degrees feel, you know, I love the real feel, the humidity. Yes, it's hot in Rome, and I know it's hot in a lot of places, but yes, it is a hot city here. And so yes, we have a lovely air conditioned apartment that we're staying in, but we are instead out on the terrace enjoying the heat that you say recharges you.
It is. I don't know if I'm a freak about it. I'm just the weird dude in that way. But yes, I like when the sun hits me. It's almost like it's an energy boost. It does. It feels like a character on a video game where you get recharged and you see the energy that battery level go up. That's how it feels to me when the sun hits me while you're trying to escape and walk in the shade.
Yes, so I feel the opposite where I feel my energy being like depleted, like it's being sucked out of me. So yes, it's a very different experience. But I am in the shade, that's the good compromise. I'm not in the sun out of balcony. Yeah.
So I'm feeling good and we have had a great trip. The trips has been fantastic. There was you finally snapped at me the other day. We're not going to get into that now. We'll get that into that on a later episode. But it's been so weird to be here and out of pocket. When it comes to news, we are actually in a place that we cannot watch live local television, so we'd have to really go through an effort to try to find it to figure it out.
So we haven't been keeping up necessarily with the news other than news alerts and whatnot.
Be being yes, and thank goodness for those, because we haven't even passed one newspaper. You mentioned that, you know, we're walking the streets here and for days now and I have not seen one newsstand. I haven't seen one newspaper, which is maybe it's a New York thing. I don't
know that you have the expectation that you would. So when we woke up this morning in Rome, yeah, we woke up to the shocking news that I guess most people saw when it happened, as it happened, former President Trump out on the campaign rally with an assassination attempt. And we watched the video and it felt weird to be so far away.
And I haven't Yeah, I'm the early rise or anybody listened to us. No, I'm always up and awaken. I try to leave you alone. This was one this morning. I said I needed to tell you were dead asleep, yep, And I just wanted to pass that along. Do you remember, though, you had a little time now to take it in and we talked about it and what did it being all these things, but with that first reaction of your was when you heard it, Well.
It just makes you feel sick, sick that we're in a place where that could still happen. And that's scary to me because I actually, because I am older than you, I so remember the last presidential assassination attempt, which was President Ronald Reagan. And I believe I might be fact checked on this one, but I was in second grade, so it was nineteen eighty one, nineteen eighty two. It was between the two of those, and I remember as a kid being scared and feeling threatened and feeling just
it was. It's alarming, and it makes you feel insecure in every way.
It doesn't happen to us. That's the thing. We see this stuff happening overseas. We have seen it happen other countries and places that are unstable. The fact that someone actually took a shot at President Trump and almost killed him. Now for a worst case scenario, it was a millimeter away, best case scenario, even it was inches away.
Either way, an inch away the most it could.
We almost had a president's or candidate killed. It's just that feeling of that January sixth feeling, or you're watching live images of Wait a minute, this is the United States, this is happening.
How is this happening?
How is that happening? This is not a political thing. This is not a whatever you think about him, everything about Biden, that's not what it's about. How the hell are we here?
But the scary thing is you know that that's what it's all going to be about. That's the thing. You know, whatever the intention and whatever the motive, you know, we may never fully know. We'll have to wait and see on that. I know, we just got worried that the shooter at the alleged shooter was reportedly a registered Republican, So I mean, who knows what was behind the shooting. But regardless, this is going to be a disgusting political football that is going to be thrown around in such
a sad way. I think it's just been really sad to watch all of the coverage and where we are as a nation. It's it's credibly alarming, and to see it result in this kind of violence for whatever reason is deeply, deeply disturbing. There's no one who loves our country who shouldn't be massively concerned about where we are and where we're headed.
You know, we talked about that. I wonder and everybody ask yourself an honest question. When you heard that President Trump that somebody took a shot at him, what was your reaction? Also when you heard that he has survived the attempt, what was your reaction? I don't need do You don't need to go post it, you don't need to go talk about it. Daniel, just ask yourself where you are personally to hear when you heard that somebody took a shot at a guy that's running for president,
and if you're react, I don't know. I just wonder how people being honest with themselves.
The concern that I think you're referencing is when you're asking yourself, was there a part of you, yes, that was deeply disturbed and scared and upset and saddened, or was there a part of you that had an opposite feeling? Like that's an indication that we're not looking at people
candidates as human beings. And I think because we get so desensitized by our political beliefs or what news we choose to look at or use for our point of reference, you get into this tribal mentality where it's us versus them, and then you almost you feel something that is less than human about other people. And that is what's scary to me.
And so yeah, here we are, right. If there's somebody on the other side of that say, oh, they took a shot at our guy, then I guess came on, like you take a shot at their guy. This is what we're doing now, and I just it's not what we do. I don't know what's going on with this young man, how disturbed he might have been, how he could have been influenced. All those answers will come, but there's just it's nineteen fifty years ago. It's just it's not what we do. It's not at all what we're
supposed to be doing. And the image that we you and I, we don't have politics here, right, but that image now of President Trump, blood coming down his ear, his face and he's actually putting his fists in the air saying fight Now, that image is iconic. It will go down in the history of this country. But there's somebody out there, there's somebodies out there who see that
as maybe a rallying crime. You get concerned about he just gave me my marching orders, and you're worried that there's another disturbed individual out there who will see it as such.
I think you and I and I know that I can speak to my career in journalism and having covered gosh, I just feel like so many school shootings and terror attacks, it's just it's scary. It's alarming. We know, like as journalists, we don't cover suicides because we don't want to inspire other people to do the same for some sort of
glorifying effect. The same is true now. When we got to a point where we were covering so many mass shootings, school shootings to whatever, domestic terrorism, we stopped talking about the shooter, which I'm not even gonna mention his name here on this podcast for that very reason, because you don't want people to think they then get some sort of fame, some infamy, some you know, something that puts
their name in the history book. So it's just it is scary to me with something like this that there are potentially copycat or retaliatory potential here. It's just scary. The whole thing is just frightening. And to be overseas and to be disconnected from the States just feels a little strange.
You know, what does it feel like that to you there? It's been a couple of these have happened, I suppose, but we know, given the positions we had our former jobs, when news happens, we were gone, we were on the road. This is unlike so we've seen so many things like we would have been there, we would have been covering that, and you we don't see it and we say I could have done a better job, and that kind of a thing. But you just look at it and feel like you're on the outs from what you from what
you used to do. Yeah, i'd be honest with yourself about that sometimes how that feels. But you also have to be and you and I have come it to peace with it, but that thing still is kind of there sometimes when the story some stories this big happened.
Yeah, as an adult, if oh, in the last twenty years, if anything major happened, yeah, I would have assumed that I was going to be on a plane heading somewhere. Yeah, So it's it is different and no matter where I was in the world, I'd be on a plane heading wherever. So just you know, to not But it's been interesting watching the car. We've been able to watch a little bit of coverage.
There's only one actually network we can get on our laptop, and it's interesting watching that, right, that's the.
One we can watch here in nationals. So we've been watching Fox News's coverage of the attempted assassination, and that's you know, that's that's what we've been doing for several hours here in Rome, watching it from Afar. But yes, and just interestingly, both of my daughters are in Europe too, so we've all been just texting each other about what happened.
And you know, I don't. It's weird because we're here and there aren't interestingly that many Americans, and it you wouldn't know anything had happened in the world from being out today just seeing everyone. It's a sunday here in Rome. And it's because maybe because we don't have access to newspapers,
we haven't seen them there. It's you would never have known if we hadn't had these smartphones, if you didn't have news alerts on your phones, like you would not know that anything had happened, which is kind of insane.
It stings, I mean, it sucks to be. It's a weird thing to where you you all obviously were not the people that the country turns to, right, it's not that kind of a situation, but you feel like something is going on at home. We need to get home, right, we need to it just it's a weird thing. You feel like that, almost as if like you're something happened with your kid at home. I got to cut the trip short. Need to get back. It feels like a weird thing about the United States is Jesus crime any
I know. That's where we're going. The bad news just keeps coming. Now, that's an awful story there when I say the bad news keeps coming in that since we've got here, legends have been falling. Yeah, legends. And if you all can hear in the back drop, we got another A lot of churches here.
Church, yes, they they happen quite frequently on the hour.
Actually, what would you compare it to in the United States? Church is here as much as the Starbucks is in Manhattan.
I mean it's yes, I know this is is this called the Enlightened City, but I feel like it's a holy It's obviously a holy city. But there are basilicas everywhere. I think we have two basilicas just that I can see right now. There are domes and you laugh because I love saying that word.
You see, Yes, basilically.
There are so many around here. But yes, the church best soul. And then apropos today. Apropos today, just because I think also catching up on news. You know, I don't know if it's there's any truth to this, and if this was anything outside of the New World, but in our world, in the news world, we used to always say people died in threes, and so if there was somebody important who died in the second person, you
always knew there was a third. But we've actually had four people who have passed in the last four days that have been just such a huge part of our culture and our lives in a lot of ways, personally for me one of them, but just in so many ways, people who we grew up with, who we looked up to. And it started July eleventh, correct, when we lost Shelley Duval.
Shelley July eleventh, Shelley de Val, July twelfth.
July twelfth was doctor Ruth. Thirteenth, that was Richard Simmons.
And then July fourteenth, which is we got.
Up to the news Shannon Doherty.
Shannon Doherty. So that's four straight days. Wow, four folks who not just these folks aren't just famous, These folks are legendary. These folks are iconic, part of something arconic. They have they have been cultural game changes. It's bizarre. Boom boom boom boom, and it's been weird to get the the news every day. Of course, go back to Chilley Devall. We have anybody who listens knows where horror movie horror movie fanatics, and if the Shining on your.
List, yeah, I mean she and she just nailed that role and just such an iconic part of that movie. But just anyone who loves horror movies, you know who Chelley Devall is. You saw her genius in that movie and she will be sorely. But she was seventy six, I believe, So she was so young when she did The Shining. I was thinking back to how young she was at that point.
Wow, yeah, I didn't realize how because when you when you just told me short time ago she was seventy six, Like really that's it these days, that seems young and she's just been around so long that I'm shocked that that was her age. And we of course Shining. But as a kid, I mean Popeye was a big deal.
Well she was all its olive oil.
And to uh yeah, I was two or three when that movie came out, Robin Williams as freaking Popeye and it was a favorite for me as a kid. But she she had a unique look to her. She was talented, and olive oil was the character. It seems like I think even the producer director that this was she was born to play Olive Oils.
She really was.
It sounds like a weird compliment, but it is a compliment.
And she she will be missed. And I think we're going to be watching the shining here and the next day to you know, we're going to do that.
Yes, And then so doctor Ruth Nix, that's.
Amazing, incredible, incredible, and she helped so many couples, so many ways. I actually, did you ever get to interview her?
I met so she.
Came on MSNBC. Uh, I don't even know, way back when, and she was just always, oh my goodness. And I remember she was just bold and a believer in talking about sex in a way that nobody was ready to I certainly was it raised that way. And I loved her just pushing a topic and a concept and something that is so important that we don't talk about. I love how she rushed it.
I have it right. She wasn't, she wasn't vulgar. She was just talking about it at a time where women were not supposed to be talking about such things, right, correct? So these days a A, A Megan the Stallion or a right, we talk about we celebrate women who are so open about there about sex, about sexuality. I only mentioned two rappers there, but I mean, yeah, from TV shows to who whatever it may be, she was doing it before all of them.
Yeah, And I remember she made me blush like I just thought, oh my gosh. Wow. But and she lived a long, beautiful life.
What did she say to you to make you blushed?
Well, honestly, oh my god. Being raised the way I was, no, no, no, no, just saying the word sex, like what did you just say? No? She was won and she did change so many people's lives for the better. So she is also and the work she did in the books she wrote live on and that is her legend for sure.
A life, a long life. There's a And again I know Shelley de Vall, Richard Simmons, doctor Ruth Shannon Doherty.
This.
Anytime somebody passes, it's it's supposed to be sad. It's supposed to me, and it should be. We're gonna miss But I was raised in such a way and many folks I know, I've never been to a sad funeral. All right, they're homegoing celebrations and they're almost parties. All the funerals I've gone to, I applaud, I celebrate Shelley Devall, Richard Simmons, doctor Ruth, Shannon Doherty and all they've done. But I you said it to me. You walked in
here a short time ago. Inside you were I think you were reading about Shannon Doherty, and you came in. You gave me a big hug, and you said, I am so happy to be with here, with you here, and I love you. And you said it was because of all this stuff you had been reading. And I get that, and that's okay to get those reminders, but damn, we shouldn't have to have somebody pass before we realize we should live.
Yes, And I think my point is I hate that that always or can be the impetus. But sometimes, you know, when something that sad does occur, when we do lose someone who was or people who were so important to part of our culture and remind us, maybe take us back to a time, you know, when we were younger or freer, or what we learned from them. You know, I think Richard Simmons does that for so many people.
He inspired so many people to lose weight with his story and put himself out there in a way and and and kind of flew his flag that was different than everyone else's and didn't care and did it anyway with those short shorts and just being his sassy self at a time where that wasn't necessarily celebrated. And I always thought he was such a cool individual who I think obviously struggled with so much but shared it with
people so they didn't feel alone. And that was a part of the connection that so many people had with him.
What was that what we were talking about? I think I was talking about Jeff Goblum and Kevin Bacon yea, and people can think what they want about them, but they reached I was asking you, how do you get to this like beloved level? Richard Simmons now you're talking about was just beloved. What time did you ever think about Richard Simmons that you didn't feel good or smile.
Because he was so vulnerable, Like he was vulnerable and then you know, and then at the end of his life, I remember it was just sad to me because he wanted, for whatever reason, to just to not be in the public eye, which I get. He gave so much of his life to other people and too celebrating other people that people wanted him to keep being that person for them, but he needed to do what he needed to do
for himself. And yeah, I just you know, I applauded his choice to do that, and people thought it was strange and wanted to put all these conspiracy theories behind it. But I was able to actually talk. We of course at ABC News, we were trying to get the interview when that was all being speculated speculated about, and I remember getting to talk to his publicist, one of his dear friends, and he assured me, he's fine, this is his choice, and you know, we obviously we let it go.
I was like, that's good to hear. And I remember thinking, like, I hope that's true, and I certainly hope it was till the end.
But yeah, he's seventy six. There's nothing if I just say, Richard Simmons.
To anybody, he smiled.
Whatever comes to your whatever image is going to be a positive one. A You're gonna smile.
And I think about those striped shorts, and I think about the.
Energy he was. I never saw him down. I mean, I know everybody's got their personal whatever, but I just the light he brought to the world from a guy like me who never watched a Richard Simmons workout video, went into the oldies, who never met him, never talked to him, never did anything related to him, but love him.
Yeah, I've love that, and that's that's an impact. That's his legacy. And Shanna Doherty, that one has been hard for me today. And you asked like you're like robes, don't make this sad, and I and I won't make it sad. But I got to do the sit down with her when she announced that in twenty nineteen that she had stage four metastatic breast cancer. And she had such an impact on me because we were diagnosed two years apart initially, and she was declared cancer free. I
was declared cancer free. She chose her, you know, her post cancer treatments, and I chose mine. And every cancer is different, but she and I connected, and she knew she was in a fight for her life, and I just always marveled at her bravery. I loved her as Brenda Walsh on nine o two one, oh, so I was so excited to get to actually meet her. That was the first time I got to meet her. But I was blown away by her and her vulnerability and her willingness to share her story to help other people
get through really tough time. So anyone to me who's willing like she, and if you don't want to, that's fine, but just to see her her bravery in fighting it, but her bravery and taking it very publicly. It helps so many people going through that same battle. But it's still a very sad day that she lost her battle. And you know, we were talking about this. I don't know the origins, but the thing that I have taken away from Shannon was what she said to me. She
referenced a Charlie Brown. I've talked about this before, but she referenced to Charlie brown Snoopy cartoon that she looked at, She said daily, like in the morning, to just remind her. She knew her time was limited. All of our time is limited, but she was acutely aware of it, obviously, and she she quoted it for me. She said, Charlie Brown says to Snoopy, Yolo, Snoopy, you only live one since Snoopy said you know you got it wrong, Charlie Brown.
You only die once. We live every day, and that was how she chose to live these last few years. But all like I said, also very publicly, and for that, I appreciate all that she gave and all that she did.
She's another one you. These are Shelley Duvall, Richard Simmons, Shannon Doherty, Doctor Ruth. I did not watch nine o two one.
No.
I did not read a single Doctor Ruth column. I did not watch a single Richard Simmons video. I love the Shining, I love Popeye, but other than that, it's just not right. But it's amazing that that's how you can tell the impact they've had on a society. There are a lot of people who are not connected in that way, but know who these people are and the smile comes to their face. I applaud Shannon Doherty for
what she did. She is someone we're connected to through iHeart, and we know there are a lot of people at iHeart who worked for a long time, who were close to her, talked to her very often and helping her with her podcast. We're very sad today, Yeah, because you I'm sure they robes signed up knowing that this day would come while they were in the middle of working with her, and this day came, and that is and will forever be. When you lose somebody like that, be sad.
But Jim Valvano, that we all go with now is you beat cancer by the way you live every day. And I don't. But she kicked cancer's ass, if you want to go with that definition.
Yeah she did. And she has helped so many people along the way. She's raised awareness. She was excited about these new drugs. I just looked at her last Instagram message just a few weeks ago where she learned that her cancer had had morphed a little bit and she now had more treatment options. And that is what she was fighting for, that awareness, that funding, because the more options, the more drugs, the more availability, we can continue to
have folks in stage four live longer, better lives. And so I know she was fighting for that, and I'm just in awe of her and just want to be grateful for the impact she had on the fight against breast cancer and what she did for so many women out there, And yeah, it is I know, I know. We don't want to have those reminders be the reason why we live differently. But yeah, any of any of what's happened in the last four days, really it's just
another reminder that life is fragile. Life is something to be grateful for each and every day, even when it's messy and hot and humid and ugly and not the way you want. It's an opportunity to be kind and to love and to experience and to be grateful. And that's where I am today after all of the news from the United States here on vacation. But you know what we're gonna We're going to honor everything that's happened
and continue to enjoy, but enjoy our lives. I hope everyone else gets to do the same.
We will. Yeah, and I guess we've relocated to uh to Italy for now, so we are current residents, but we are trying to get back to the United States soon, so we will probably have another episode from.
Here, probably a little more from here.
Yes, from the inside, how you'd hold up you you said, it's not so bad. It's a little breeze coming through.
It's not that humid though, that's my thing. It's not as it's not as humid as New York and I'll take it.
Your hair is dope, by the way it's holding up. Oh yeah, your hair doesn't do well in humidity.
It does not. I have wavy, unmanageable.
Hair, which no one has ever seen.
Nope, I keep that to myself. Why I you know, wavy hair is not something that is television friendly, or so I've been told my entire life. So I've straightened my hair my entire life. Okay, I but now, but now I got some dope French braids because my boyfriend Dutch. Whoops, So those are Dutch braids versus French braids. Correct? And yes, because my boyfriend can braid hair soraid hair. It's pretty awesome. I might pose something later. I don't want to be
judged on your braiding skills. You've got braiding skills.
Oh no, no, no, not because I didn't want to be judged. I just didn't want to see it as bragging.
A joke.
Folks, Look wherever you are, if you hear the sound of our voices, please be kind to somebody to day. Just take it easy to yourself, right God, and maybe even more so than anybody else. But you just give everybody just a little bit of a break, no matter how they might possibly treat you. Everybody's going through something and it's just we're all in a heap of shit right now. It feels like and we'll get through it like we always do right as a country. But it's
just it's been a crappy few days. Yeah, a lot of ways.
Yeah, in those are the days where you decide what you want and how you want to react to it. So I hope everybody can look at that with love and hopefully with yeah, hope, let's hope. Yeah, let's go with hope.
Hope doesn't sell, and that's then that's shitty that the thing that sells is chaos, controversy, conflict. Yeah, those are the things that sell. I was, I swear I went to I remember this from twenty years ago. I went to a conference or something. Somebody spoke. So that's what the media thrives, conflicts, chaos.
And contract If it bleeds, it leads, it's just it's okay.
So we're selling hope is my wight wants to hear this? Well? Folks, you can keep following. Our official Instagram page for the show is at Amy and TJ Podcast, and we will keep sending our folks, maybe pictures from the trip, and maybe they'll post them there so you'll kind of keep up with us. Why are you laughing?
No, I'm laughing because we haven't sent them anything, are we not? No, not a thing, not a thing. But we told them we would and then we didn't need photos, Okay, So Hannah, Emma shug We sorry, it's coming. Shout