There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here and maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's on the media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Now streaming. When people go missing, I get hired to help find them. When lives are on the line. Coulter, please find my daughter. He is the man for the job. I'm going to do everything I can. Don't miss a moment. Coulter's in trouble. I can feel it. Of TV's number one.
Show. These people are dangerous. I'm doing this alone. Not at all. Every Batman gotta have their robin. Call time! Justin Hartley stars. I made a promise. I would never stop looking. In Tracker. All episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and returning CBS Fall.
good morning i'm jane paulie and this is sunday morning elon musk is truly a person of the moment he's the world's wealthiest man ceo of several high-profile companies And after spending millions to help send Donald Trump back to the White House, not long ago he picked up that chainsaw to cut tens of thousands of workers from government payrolls in hopes of controlling federal spending. Then, on Wednesday, Musk announced it was time for him to get back to business. So, why now?
what accounts for that change of heart this past week elon musk spoke with our david pogue When we interviewed Elon Musk, he didn't want to talk about presidential stuff. Yeah, I mean, I think we want to stick to, you know, the... The subject of the day, which is like spaceships as opposed to, you know, presidential policy. But then he brought up presidential stuff. So, you know, I was like...
disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the Doge team is doing. Elon Musk, out of the government, ahead. It was a time when unelected and extremely wealthy men loomed large over the nation's government.
no we're not talking about today's tech billionaires we're talking about the industrialists who reigned over the late 1800s moraka takes us back In the TV series The Gilded Age, Morgan Spector plays a robber baron with a conscience. Sort of. So is George Russell a hero or a villain? I think George does have a moral code that he tries to stick to, but he doesn't really have constraints on his own behavior.
the privileges and perils of wealth later on sunday morning they may not fight crime in gotham city but former president bill clinton and best-selling author james patterson have become sort of a dynamic duo channeling their creative energies into a third joint novel a collaboration they'll discuss with tracy smith
there's always a lot going on behind those white walls. So for the new political thriller, The First Gentleman, James Patterson leaned on his co-writer, President Bill Clinton. Is there a scenario that you wouldn't have been able to write without President Clinton's help? I couldn't have done it.
any of it without him. He was almost the first gentleman. Yeah, I thought about it for years. And it's the only political job I ever wanted that I didn't get. The latest from two best-selling buddies, coming up. on Sunday morning. Long before Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane's first love was music. He'll sing some Sinatra tunes and share his thoughts with our Lou Burbank. What have you enjoyed the most about this time? Just being a normal family.
Robert Costa will talk with the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, now living and teaching some 9,000 miles away from home, plus a story from Steve Hartman. Faith Saley with an ode to the humble penny. And more on this first Sunday morning of a new month, June 1st, 2025. We'll be back after this.
To begin this morning, a man who truly needs no introduction, Elon Musk. He's talking with David Pogue. He is a truly incredible guy, and I don't say that that often. In the beginning... Donald Trump and Elon Musk got along great. Take over, Elias, take over. Musk spent $288 million to elect Trump and his allies. And they were also going to address the deficit. Trump invited Musk into the Oval Office and Cabinet meetings.
Musk called himself First Buddy. Trump welcomed Musk's idea to create a Department of Government Efficiency. This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. In four months, Doge took the chainsaw to every federal department. 250,000 workers were fired or bought out. Musk even slashed grants and staffing at environmental agencies like the EPA and NOAA after decades of warning about the risks of climate change. But Musk did not enjoy the pushback. We received several 911 calls about a fire.
There were acts of violence, death threats, lawsuits, mandatory rehirings, shouting matches with cabinet members. Tesla profits plummeted by 71%. Number one, it's a great product. And Musk's net worth dropped by $100 billion. That's beautiful. Last month, Musk finally left Washington, but still intended to work on Doge a day or two a week.
And this past Tuesday, he offered us an interview at SpaceX's enormous headquarters at the southern tip of Texas. We knew we were in the right neighborhood when we saw this huge bust of Musk. installed by his admirers and vandalized by his critics. But the interview didn't get off to a smooth start.
I noticed that all of your businesses involve a lot of components, a lot of parts. Do the tariffs and the trade wars affect any of this? You know. Tariffs always affect things a little bit. Wondering what your thought is on... the ban on foreign students the proposal i mean you were one of those kids right yeah i mean i think we want to stick to you know the subject of the day which is like spaceships uh as opposed to
you know, presidential policy. Oh, OK. I was told anything's good, but no, well, no. But Musk was willing to talk about the Doge firestorm. You've spoken about how much of a grind and the stress it was on you. And, you know, Tesla's reputation took a hit. Your reputation took a hit. People are very upset about...
So security and national parks and air traffic and food safety and cancer research, Alzheimer's research. Now they've had a chance to look at it. Yeah. Might there have been a different approach? Yeah, I think the... I mean, what was going to happen was that like it's a bit unfair because like Doge became the whooping boy for everything. So if there was some cut real or imagined, everyone would blame Doge.
I've had people think that like somehow Doge is going to stop them from getting their social security check, which is completely untrue. Well, I guess I was just thinking about the, you know, move fast and break things, you know, before. you really understand what the agency does. Yeah, I mean, I guess part of it is like, depends on where you're coming from. So, you know, I'm like a proponent of smaller government.
not bigger government so now if somebody's a proponent of you know more government programs and bigger government and they see hey dojo's cutting all these government programs then then then they'll be fundamentally opposed to that uh because they just think the government should do more things that's that's just a fundamental i guess ideological opinion um but my frank opinion of the government is that like
The government is just like the DMV that got big. So when you say, let's have the government do something, you should think, do you want the DMV to do it? And then... Musk started talking about the Trump administration. I hadn't even asked him about Trump. I mean, I agree with much of what the administration does, but we have differences of opinion. You know, there are things that I don't entirely agree with.
But it's difficult for me to bring that up in an interview because then it creates a bone of contention. So then I'm a little stuck in a bind where I'm like, well, I don't want to speak up against the administration, but I don't want to... I also don't want to take responsibility for everything the administration is doing. In Washington, federal workers say that DOGE has left the government's operations in disarray. And worst of all...
It might have all been for nothing. Musk claims to have saved the government $175 billion so far, nowhere close to his original target, or even his revised target. And that was before the president's new spending bill passed the House. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it will add $3.8 trillion to our debt over the next 10 years. It's now being debated in the Senate.
So, you know, I was like disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it. and unreminds the work that the Doge team is doing. I actually thought that when this big, beautiful bill came along. I mean, like, everything he's done on Doge gets wiped out in the first year. I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful.
But I don't know if it could be both. My personal opinion. And here's where the story gets a little complicated. Right after our interview, CBS News posted a clip of it to promote this very report. It was that part where Musk criticizes Trump's spending bill. And his remarks became news. It went all the way up to the White House. Big, beautiful bill. Within 24 hours, Musk announced that his time in the Trump administration was officially over. Out of doge, out of government.
He said that the reason was that his limited 130-day stint as advisor was ending. But until that moment, he'd been saying that he still intended to work on Doge part-time. And I will have some participation in that, but as I've said publicly, my focus has to be on the companies at this point. Truth is, the Trump-Musk relationship had already seemed to be cooling. Trump used to post about Musk about six times a week, but by April, he'd stopped mentioning Musk altogether.
a man named Elon. Still, on Friday, they held a media event at the White House to confirm their mutual admiration and to leave the door open for future collaboration. Elon's really not leaving. He's going to be back and forth, I think. I have a feeling.
The Doge team is doing an incredible job. They're going to continue doing an incredible job. And I'll continue to be visiting here and be a friend and advisor to... the president musk might be the first to admit that his doge experiment gave him a black eye like the actual black eye he had on friday which he says he got from his five-year-old son or the matching one on that statue
At least for now, Musk says that his focus will be running his business ventures. Tesla, Starlink, X, XAI, Neuralink, Optimus Robots, The Boring Company, and SpaceX. Are all of your businesses related in some way? Well, I guess you can think of the businesses as things that improve their problem. trajectory of civilization. So for making life multi-planetary or extending life to Mars, the idea there is to
ensure the long-term survival of life and consciousness as we know it. We're going to use this launch to kind of further accelerate. After our interview Tuesday, we were invited to witness the ninth launch of his Starship, the biggest rocket ever built. The two previous Starship tests ended in explosions, or as SpaceX puts it, rapid unscheduled disassemblies. So all eyes were on Test Launch 9,
to see if a starship could return to Earth in one piece. As Musk left our interview to watch the launch, he said something that could summarize all of his enterprises. I can't guarantee success, but I can guarantee excitement. In the end, Elon Musk's giant rocket spun out of control. It did not survive re-entry. There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air.
I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here? And maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts. Now streaming. When people go missing, I get hired to help find them. When lives are on the line. Coulter, please find my daughter. He's the man for the job. I'm gonna do everything I can. Don't miss a moment.
Coulter's in trouble. I can feel it. Of TV's number one show. These people are dangerous. I'm doing this alone. Not at all. Every Batman gotta have their robin. Coulter! Justin Hartley stars. I made a promise. I would never stop looking. All episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and returning CBS Fall. Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! It's Sunday morning on CBS, and here again is Jane Pauley.
You're hearing Seth MacFarlane, the Hollywood hitmaker behind popular series like Family Guy, Ted, and American Dad. mcfarlane is more than just your average writer producer actor director he can sing too with luke burbank we take note Even if you're not a regular Family Guy viewer, you've probably heard the show's iconic theme song.
The song is largely the creation of Seth MacFarlane, whose love for animation might only be rivaled by his love for big, jazzy tunes. The one and only Seth MacFarlane! In fact, he's even got a semi-regular gig at the Vibrato Grill Jazz Club in Bel Air, California. Singing songs from the Great American Songbook. In San Francisco. But one thing he doesn't seem to love, considering he's lived a life in the public eye. Is CBS still here?
is a certain kind of attention. He says sometimes getting in front of a crowd or even our Sunday morning cameras doesn't quite come naturally. Do you think that you're, at your heart, an introvert? Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. I don't even want to be here. No, I'm just kidding. No, I mean, I think we were all kind of picking that up. In fact, sometimes McFarlane says he has to resort to liquid courage. I think I had like four scotches before I walked out on stage at the Oscars. Really? Oh, yeah.
Yeah, no, I do get, yeah, I definitely get nervous. Okay. You might know McFarlane as the voice of Peter. I'm drunk again. No, I'm just exhausted because I've been up all night drinking. Brian Griffin. I see GIFs of people without genitals. That means busy! And Stewie... Where am I?
We're at the playground, Brian. I kidnapped you. On the show Family Guy that he created more than two decades ago. At only 25, Seth is the image of the 90s Hollywood hotshot. I'll do it for you. Young and rich, with a deal worth two and a half million bucks. In 1999, McFarlane became the youngest showrunner in Hollywood history. And less than a decade later, with three network shows on the air, he became Hollywood's highest.
paid writer-producer. But back in college, McFarlane's first love was actually singing. And so my sister at the time was going to the Boston Conservatory of Music for musical theater. She has a beautiful singing voice. And I had gotten it into my head that I was going to maybe go to grad school for musical theater as well. So I applied and got in.
And I was all set to go to their grad program, and I got this offer from Hanna-Barbera to come do an animated short for a series that they were developing, and so I just had to take it, moved out to California. But there was a... an instant there where I could have kind of diverged into a completely different career and never, you know, never even thought about something called Family Guy.
McFarlane loved film scores as a college student and to this day uses a live orchestra to score his TV shows. It's the one part that I don't really understand, even to this day. There's still something mysterious about how a composer sits down to write and then a couple weeks later walks in front of an orchestra, plops down these charts, and they all play it. and you hear this insane magical sound, that still eludes me. The wine is red with lots of bread.
When Frank Sinatra Jr. made a guest appearance on Family Guy. Well, the rest is history. For his latest album, Lush Life, The Lost Sinatra Arrangements, out this week, McFarlane and Joel McNeely. his composer and arranger for Family Guy, combed through the Sinatra family archives for songs that had been arranged for Sinatra but never fully recorded. For McNeely,
The process was almost like speaking to the ghosts of the greatest arrangers in popular music, the men who helped make Sinatra's voice shine. Like, this is Nelson Riddle. This was the first one we... read when we had a sight reading session at Fox. We got an orchestra together just to see what was there. There was nothing to reference. But all this time later, these little black pencil dots on paper, there's his voice.
brought back to life. I mean it was chilling. Can I ask a very basic question but Probably, there's a lot of people watching this that don't know instinctively, what does an arranger actually do? Frank Sinatra, there's a recording of him saying that the arrangers could be in a sense a recording secretary. taking the vision of the artist, interpreting it into this. You know, you take a song like Fly Me to the Moon, for example, which I think was originally a ballad.
So it's the same song, but it's a completely different animal. McNeely says McFarlane is preserving the essential legacy of the American songbook through his recordings and the music of Family Guy. But what about the comedic legacy of Family Guy? Well, McFarlane has some thoughts.
When I started the show I this is this is this is the conversation that like tortures me at night when I started the show My attitude was like it doesn't matter. None of it matters. It's like it's funny. Let's do it and the older I've gotten I look back at shows that we've done and I'm like, gosh, I guess it's a little more complicated than that, isn't it? Comedy and jokes do have an impact. I have to figure out a way to maintain what the show is.
and maintain this thing that people love but at the same time recognize that like all right i am analyzing it now in a different way than i did when i was younger If it's true that you're nobody till somebody loves you, then thanks to Family Guy's legion of fans. Seth MacFarland, it turns out, is a very big somebody indeed. Not long ago, she was leading her government and making headlines around the world. Now, as our Robert Costa discovered...
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is living a very different kind of life in a very different sort of place. I don't usually put my name on the order. It's too complicated. These days at her local coffee shop near Boston, Jacinda Ardern can be just another customer. When you order coffee here, do people start talking politics with you? No, not at all. In fact, the guy behind the counter said to me, you are really familiar.
Oh, I know. Tony Collette. That's a moment that would never happen in New Zealand. where Ardern became the world's youngest female head of government when she was just 37 years old. Now 44, former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been living in the U.S. since she left office two years ago. Experience and debate. give rise to understanding and compromise. She is serving as a fellow at Harvard University and has written a new book, A Different Kind of Power. A Different Kind of Power.
What do you mean by that? I think, you know, there are different ways to lead. But I hope you also see that some of those character traits that we perhaps bring to leadership that we might believe to be weaknesses. imposter syndrome or even empathy actually are incredible strengths. Ardern says her story is about finding her voice in New Zealand, a small nation of about 5 million people.
I never, ever saw myself becoming prime minister. Your father said you were too thin-skinned. Is he right? He was absolutely right. But I guess where I corrected him was your sensitivity is your empathy, and goodness don't we need a bit more of that. In New Zealand, the answer was yes. We want health care to be more accessible. Like we've got a long way yet to go. Ahead of the 2017 election, Ardern suddenly became the leader of her country's left-leaning Labour Party.
Weeks after winning, she made an announcement. We're looking forward to welcoming our first child. Her journey, alongside her then-partner now-husband Clark, soon won her global attention. Were you comfortable with some of that symbolism or was it at times almost overwhelming? I realised the importance of it when I first received a letter from someone on their way.
to work to tell their boss that they were having a baby and they felt nervous about their boss's view of whether they could do their job when she heard that I was pregnant and that that gave her a level of confidence. And I felt like I also needed to show I could do the job and be a mother. But those joyful early days were followed by challenges. This is one of New Zealand's...
darkest days. Mass shootings targeting Muslims in Christ's church left more than 50 dead. A crucible for New Zealand and a call to action for its leader. Every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned in this country Why do you believe you and your colleagues in New Zealand were able to achieve gun control reform in the wake of a horrific mass shooting. But so often here in the United States, such legislative changes have been hard to get.
I can't speak to the US experience, but if we really wanted to say we don't ever want this to happen again, we needed to demonstrate what we were doing to make that a reality. But even after she won another election, things weren't easy. As the pandemic wore on, tensions flared over her government's COVID policies. In 2023, when she stunned many by deciding to resign, she wore her heart on her sleeve.
You can be a nerd, a crier, a hugger. You can be all of these things. And not only can you be here, you can lead just like me. Though she has left office, she has not stopped keeping a close eye on our turbulent times. So what do you make of what's happening with President Trump? on trade and on foreign policy. You know, I think actually we are seeing people experience deep financial insecurity and that has to be addressed by political leaders.
But I continue to hold that ideas of isolation or... protectionism or closing ourselves off to remedy the issue actually doesn't remedy it in the long term and has a long term negative impact for some of the collective issues we need to address as a global community. Kindness, empathy, curiosity, inclusivity. For now, Ardern is not angling to jump back into politics, but she is settling in to her new normal.
What have you enjoyed the most about this time? Just being a normal family. Yeah, being a normal, just a normal family. Do we expect that of our leaders? And when she is asked for advice. In a Harvard classroom or from a world leader, Jacinda Ardern tells them to be kind. That principle of kindness, it's something we teach our kids, why shouldn't we role model that in the way that we conduct ourselves in politics?
And secondly, if you're putting people at the centre of what you're doing, it's a reminder that actually the act of being in politics is an act of public service as well. And I think voters need to see more of that. We are getting there, don't you see? All the things we promised ourselves when we first married. The things you promised yourself. The point is, we're finally getting to where we belong. I always felt I was where I belonged. Because I had you.
You mean you needed me to steer us in the right direction? All that glittered wasn't necessarily gold back in the Gilded Age. Mo Rocca looks back on an era that could hold more than a few lessons for today. Season 3 of HBO's The Gilded Age begins this month. Set in the 1880s, it's about old money. Why don't we just go outside and roll in the gutter? It will save time.
Meeting new, much bigger money. Good afternoon, Mrs. Russell. Mr. White. We have been in New York City for three years, Bertha, watching this house rise from the sidewalk. But we've been stuck down on 30th Street with yesterday's men. as well as the less known world of upwardly mobile black Americans. That's an actual newspaper. And you have to print it. In the years between emancipation and the worst of Jim Crow.
She's a bit of a revolutionary in her spirit, and she also is a daughter who was raised with a lot of expectations. Danae Benton plays aspiring journalist Peggy Scott. Have you ever thought about writing anything political, Miss Scott? I have. Don't ask her if she's a Republican. Well, why should I align myself with either party when I don't have the right to vote? And do you think it was an exciting time for somebody like a Peggy?
You know, honestly, I can't get past how physically uncomfortable it must have been to live in that time in the clothes you were in without air conditioning with the smells of like the horses. But I. I think someone who was moving the way Peggy was moving, fighting for voting rights, fighting for action to see her community look different than she left it. I imagine it was exciting for her to feel.
Like, oh, I was born in this one window where had it been 20 years earlier or 30 years later, I might not have had this kind of mobility.
the gilded age roughly the last third of the nineteenth century was a time of seismic disruption as the united states moved from the agrarian republic envisioned by the founders to an industrialized powerhouse we buy we buy every piece of company stock that comes on the market and not a soul is to hear about it hide the purchases i don't want them traced back to me
Morgan Spector plays George Russell, who is, depending on your point of view, either a reputable captain of industry or a rapacious robber baron. He's kind of an amalgam of the industrialists of this period. He's in railroads, he's in steel, and I think he's also a...
a financial wizard, as I think specifically Jay Gould really was known for at the time. The railroad magnate. The railroad magnate, but also somebody who was incredibly good at inventing new ways of separating people from their money. doesn't really have constraints on his own behavior. When he needs to do anything to achieve an objective, he does it. You refused my bid, and now I will build a new line alongside yours, which would wipe me out. I'm afraid that'll be a consequence, yes.
The clothes and the sets, are they kind of like a time machine for you? Absolutely, yeah. They really do half the work. Like, it's sort of impossible to sit in a room like this and not let it transport you. So that tapestry is the triumph of avarice. This room is in New York City's Morgan Library and Museum, where Colin Bailey is director. It's a lot of space for one person.
After 1907, he basically considered this to be the uptown branch of his office in Wall Street. Yes, this was the personal office and library of J.P. Morgan, one of the most prominent figures of the Gilded Age. The Gilded Age is described in many ways, including as an age of unrestraint. Opulent. over the top a sense of being able to acquire almost anything that he set his heart and mind to acquire.
At the time of his death in 1913, Morgan was worth an estimated $80 million, roughly $2.5 billion today. Remember, he's also a profoundly religious man. And indeed, there's a... Gutenberg Bible here. There are three Gutenberg Bibles here. We're very proud of that. But who's counting? The era got its name from an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, a satire of American excess and corruption.
It's a wonderful phrase, gilded age. The fact that it's gilded age, not a golden age. If you take a iron bracelet, right, not very attractive, but if you dip it in gold, it looks pretty good. Edward O'Donnell is a history professor at the College of the Holy Cross.
The great vexing thing in the Gilded Age is that we have so much progress, so much wealth generation, and we seem to have more poverty than ever before. So if you're in New York City, you can walk down Fifth Avenue and be dazzled by all the wealth and all the incredibly expensive goods in the store.
and then you just go a few blocks away to a slum district and suddenly you are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people living in six-story tenements, some of which that don't have running water. The wealth was powered in part by the mass production of steel.
What's the thing that's changed our world in the last 50 years? It's the silicon chip, right? Steel is the thing that does that in the Gilded Age. It makes skyscrapers possible. It makes the Transcontinental Railroad possible. It makes gigantic factories with heavy, complex, new machinery.
For those who lived through it, did it feel like a lot was changing? I think the average person in the Gilded Age had a real sense that things were changing really fast. Think about something like electricity and electric lighting. I mean, they are... absolute revolutionary new forms of technology. The entire city is going to be illuminated at night. Indoor space is going to be illuminated. You can stay up later and read a book. Unprecedented wealth.
grinding poverty, and a federal government providing few safeguards. There's a great cartoon from the era called The Bosses of the Senate, and it shows, you know, little U.S. senators in the Senate chamber, and looming above them are these huge industrialists, literally in the shape of money bags, scowling down upon them, you know, the copper trust, the steel trust, and so forth.
And is it fair, that depiction? I think it is, because there are no rules. I mean, even bribery is not even very well defined. The greatest powers in America are not the government. It's John D. Rockefeller, it's Vanderbilt, it's all these titans, and they are not elected. If you don't...
like a governor, if you don't like a senator, you don't like a president, you vote him out of office. But you couldn't vote Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, or steel industry king Andrew Carnegie out of their positions of influence.
The idea that Andrew Carnegie has one vote and one of his workers has one vote, therefore they're equal, is not true. Carnegie can send a telegram to the president and the president will answer him and will help him, whether it's to stay on the gold standard or to keep the tariff high. That is a kind of power that nobody but a handful of people in America have.
It should be noted that during his final decades, Carnegie gave away 90% of his fortune to charities and universities and for the creation of more than 2,500 free libraries. It's interesting though, not to put the Carnets and all of them on a pedestal, but you know, they built libraries and now like, I don't know what our billionaires are doing. It's a very different, it's a very different social sense of responsibility.
Or so it would appear. Today's billionaires take note. As literary collaborations go, theirs is truly a thriller. former president bill clinton and celebrated author james patterson tracy smith has the fine print Seems there's always a lot going on behind those white walls where the truth can often be stranger than fiction. But the fiction can be pretty compelling, too.
In the new novel, The First Gentleman, the commander-in-chief is a woman, and her husband is accused of murder. It's the third collaboration from best-selling author James Patterson and his co-writer, President Bill Clinton. Is there a scenario that you wouldn't have been able to write without President Clinton's help? I couldn't have done any of it without him. Yeah, I would have been lost. But the other thing, you know, look, I mean, he's the expert on the first gentleman.
He was almost a first gentleman. Yeah, I thought about it for years. And it's the only political job I ever wanted that I didn't get. First gentleman. Yeah. Because I really thought... Hillary should be president. Of course, Clinton would have been the very first first gentleman had his wife Hillary won the 2016 election.
And he says back then he did a lot of thinking about what his role would be as a presidential spouse. How could I do this job in a way that I would be on call to help if she needed me? But I wouldn't get in the way. That's the way I feel about this relationship. How can I help without getting in the way? I'm kind of the first gentleman of our... This relationship. Can you believe that? I got some land in Arizona I want to sell you.
And sometimes their made-up White House looks almost like real life. In the book, the president keeps working through an agonizing personal crisis. I want to say again to the American people, how profoundly sorry I am. During his 1999 impeachment proceedings, President Clinton kept working too, with some of the very people who were trying to kick him out of the White House.
Do you feel like in the face of your impeachment, you're like the president in the book in that you just had to keep showing up to work every day? I did, and they were amazed by it. You know, they'd come and do business with me. As far as they knew, I couldn't remember what was going on. And we would try to hammer out deals. Because that's what I got hired to do. The American people don't pay you to have personal feelings. They pay you to deliver for them.
Clinton and Patterson have been delivering since 2018, with their first book about a president gone missing, and in 2021, the second about a president's daughter getting kidnapped. Both were bestsellers, but for them, it's really not. all about work. How has your relationship evolved over these three books? We've played a lot more golf. I think it's gotten better. I think it's gotten better. He's been president more times, but I have more holes in one. Is that true?
Oh, God. I have one. He has nine. How many Americans haven't had Holden? That's sick. Yeah, remember, I'm a fiction writer. That's the thing. There's so much political drama in the world today, real-life political drama. Do you think that there's an appetite for political thrillers?
I think so, 100%. I mean, one of the nice things here is you escape, but you don't totally escape reality. It's like, yeah, I love this, I can't put it down, or I keep reading, or in some cases, to me, what's even better, which is...
You don't want it to end. I think it's useful. And because so many people are wandering around and go, oh my God, oh my God, please make it stop. This makes it stop for a little while. It makes the craziness stop for a little while for people. To answer your question, the one reason I hope... I didn't want to answer the question. Appetite is. Oh, he explained why it's important. But I hope that people will still believe in our democratic system enough.
to stick with it and keep pushing to make it work. I'd much rather do something with him because I always learn something. Patterson lives here at his home on the Hudson during the summer, and the president is about five miles away. What have you learned from each other throughout this process? You know, one of the things, this is kind of interesting.
The notion, and we talk about this a bit, of not worrying about stuff that we can't do anything about. And if we can do something about it, try to do it. Their new book comes out tomorrow. And, of course, they hope it's another bestseller. But if you spend any time at all with Patterson and Clinton, you get the sense that their partnership is about something money can't buy. Back when you wrote your first book together, the New York Times said that...
The two of you complete each other in the Jerry Maguire sense. Okay. Well, we kind of do. You know, I have this thing that's been driving me for months now, which is my time here is short. What can I do most beautifully? And in this case... Doing another book with my friend is a beautiful thing to do. Steve Hartman has the story of a family finding light in the dark.
Taken from her garage camera in Strasburg, Colorado, she was trying to piece together what exactly happened that February night. Eventually, she not only found the answer, she found the surprise of a lifetime. I was so proud of him. It all started when Stephanie and her husband left their toddler son, named Bridger, with his great grandma, 78-year-old Sharon Lewis. Do you love it?
Yeah. Bridger and his grandma were walking into the house when Sharon tripped and hit her head on the concrete step. She couldn't get up. She was bleeding profusely and she left her phone in the car. We tried hollering for the neighbor. Neighbors! It didn't work, and he said, Gigi, they don't hear us. I said, I know, so you're going to have to go get my phone. It was nighttime.
And the path back to the car wasn't lit. Total darkness. And you were a little afraid? I was a lot afraid. Why? It's too dark. The dark is just a... frightful thing for a little guy. That's when three-year-old Bridger whispered to himself these three little words. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Now you should know, Bridger had never even opened a car door, let alone face such a life and death challenge. Until... Darkness defeated.
It's been three months since that accident. Sharon has healed and new lights have been installed in the backyard. But perhaps the most significant change has been the family's new fearless attitudes. I... I'm getting my special education license. Because of this. Yeah. It's something that I've always wanted to do, but now it's like taking the chance to do it. Don't be afraid. I have it tattooed on my arm.
Sounds like you learned something from your three-year-old. Yeah, I did. A reminder for the child inside us all that true courage is being afraid and charging into the darkness. Anyway. Now more of Tracy Smith's conversation with former President Bill Clinton. So last time we spoke was November, and in December you had a health scare that landed you in the hospital. Yeah, it was... It turned out to be no big deal, but it was... I basically kind of lost my balance and I...
Knew I was sick and I went to the hospital and checked in. They said I was severely dehydrated and I got great care and I left the next day. And how's your health now? As far as I know, it's great. But when you're older... You have to be more careful to stay hydrated speaking of aging There's this book that came out that talks about Joe Biden and the people around him seeing that he had cognitive and physical decline
Did you ever have a moment with him where you thought maybe he was unfit to run for president? No. I thought he was a good president. The only concern I thought he had to deal with was, could anybody do that job until they were 86? And we'd had several long talks. I had never seen him. and walked away thinking, he can't do this anymore. He was always on top of his brief. You never saw any cognitive decline. So I didn't know anything about any of this, and I haven't read the book.
I saw President Biden not very long ago, and I thought he was in good shape. But the book didn't register with me because I never saw him that way. Why didn't you read the book? I didn't want to because he's not president anymore. And I think he did a good job. And I think we are facing challenges today without precedent in our history. And...
Some people are trying to use this as a way to blame him for the fact that Trump was reelected. At this point, do you think there are any limits to President Trump's power? Oh, yeah. Who's stopping him? The courts, the courts, including a lot of judges he appointed. And, you know, he is looking for ways to basically defy all these court orders.
But I think he'll have a hard time doing that. And if he does, I think it will hurt him in America. I mean, look, we've never seen anything like this before. in my lifetime somebody says whatever I want should be the law of the land it's my way or the highway and most Americans don't agree with that and I think You know, it will help if the Democrats win the governorships at stake in this year and can win the House back next year. But...
I think that he's paid a price for this, you know, name-calling and throwing his weight around. I think... What price? I think it's made him less... popular to the point when, look, only elections are going to change this. But I do think the courts are getting their dander up. I think that him shutting law firms out of representing their clients before federal agencies and in federal buildings because he doesn't agree with their position. That ain't America. We've never done that.
The whole purpose of having a legal system is to have both sides be heard. Do you worry that the only thing that unites the Democratic Party is a hatred of Trump? It's the only thing everybody can agree on. If I thought that were true, I would. But I don't think it's true. I just think that most people don't have any idea. Most people who are criticizing the Democrats right now have no idea how difficult it is.
to decide the right thing to do. I think it's not as easy as people think. That will come, elections will happen, and we will see. President Trump has a right to do what he thinks is right. He's doing it. The courts are doing their jobs. There will be other elections. But someone needs to stand up and say, damn it, what we have in common matters more. We cannot throw the legacy of this country away.
We cannot destroy other people's trust in us. We need to preserve that and find a way to work together and not humiliate other people just so we can win. We got to just calm down. and try to pull people together again. That's what I think. As you've probably heard, the penny is soon to be history. But to hear Faith Saley tell it... we might be the poorer for it.
What is worthless but priceless? Overlooked but treasured? Ubiquitous but ephemeral? What makes us stop in the street to transcend our pride and stoop to pick it up? It's... The humble, shiny, tiny penny. The Treasury announced it will cease making new pennies by early next year. Will they disappear immediately? No. But like so many things in our lives, reliably snowy winters, face-to-face conversations, books whose pages we can In turn, pennies are fading away.
Before you shrug me off as a sentimental fool, old enough to remember visiting the penny candy store on Cape Cod, I do understand that pennies are outdated and inefficient. The government spends about 3.7 cents to make one penny. That's a loss of $85 million last year alone. And around half of us don't even carry cash anymore. I don't think the tooth fairy believes in pennies nowadays. So canceling them makes sense. But.
In a world where it seems like everyone's looking down, a penny can remind us things might be looking up. You know, pennies from heaven? You know who was on the first penny issued in 1793? A woman. It was deemed un-American back then to depict a ruler on a coin, so pennies featured Lady Liberty. It wasn't until 1909
that President Lincoln's face graced the coin. His iconic profile was designed by a Lithuanian-born Jewish immigrant, Victor David Brenner, who created what's thought to be the most reproduced piece of art in history. three pennies were made of zinc-coated steel because copper was needed for World War II. Should we just throw that history away? Well, yes, as long as we imbue each toss with our wishes.
A penny for your thoughts was coined nearly 500 years ago by Sir Thomas More back when offering someone a penny meant their musings were really worth something. These are just my two cents, but... nobody throws a bitcoin into a fountain call me a numismatic nostalgic but in a world full of crypto and virtuality I'll keep my eyes peeled for the tarnished, tangible, inefficient promise of luck. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning.
There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here and maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's on the media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Now streaming. When people go missing, I get hired to help find them. When lives are on the line. Coulter, please find my daughter. He's the man for the job. I'm gonna do everything I can. Don't miss a moment. Coulter's in trouble, I can feel it. Of TV's number one. These people are dangerous. I'm doing this alone. Not at all. Every Batman gotta have their Robin. Call time! I made a promise. I would never stop looking. All episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and returning CBS Fall.