I'm just about to go to work. If this is an emergency. Is it's a third time you've called them? Everything okay with the baby? Yes, yes, beautiful baby.
Thank you. You know I take a lot of pride in that. God, he's nine months old now. But you know, okay, I will respectfully let you go because I don't want to.
There's nothing respectful about you, Johnny, because I told you six months ago I don't want to be on your show anymore. I picked up the phone. It was about something else.
But it's you had said to me that you didn't want to be in the introduction to the episodes, right. What if I were to tell you that this isn't an episode, it's a pre episode.
Oh god, it's a difference.
Well, because it's not going to be a canonical episode. It's an anticipation of the second season, and there isn't going to be another episode coming out for an entire month, so it's very pre on.
I don't want to be on the show period. You're not listening as usual.
The floor is yours. I'm listening, yeah. From Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight, today's pre season episode.
Milt, you have one new voice message, a.
Voice message from my friend Gregor something about my podcast destroying lives. Must be a bad connection, I think, because my podcast saves lives. I phone back to remind Gregor how last season my show repaired his friendship with noted vegan and bald headed techno musician Moby in the.
Sense that you forced me into with like probably one of the top three most awkward afternoons of my life.
So it was a little It was a little awkward in the room, but in the end.
It wasn't a little awkward. It was incredibly awkward. You're like a nightmare therapist who causes fights.
Okay, yes, you felt that way in the moment. I explain how making things right is often preceded by discomfiture. But the main thing was that people were relating to his journey of healing. In fact, I say the episode generated a very lively discussion on the website Reddit.
Reddit.
Well, I finally made it to Reddit. Soon I'll be on four un.
Thank you when Gregor's done giving me the sasmouthing of a lifetime. He explains that in the end, the podcast did more harm than good. He tells me that the episode actually destroyed his father's oldest friendship destroyed. I ask friendship, I ask. The trouble all started. Gregor explains when his dad, an eighty five year old man named Milt, sent the episode to his friend Sidney. Sidney hated the podcast so much that he sent Milt a letter formally ending their
sixty five year friendship, and that was that. According to Gregor, Sidney is a genius and couldn't believe Milt had the audacity to disrespect his intelligence and remaining time on Earth by recommending such a truly terrible podcast. In the time he spent listening to the episode, he could have done something brilliant. Sidney is a professor, the author of countless academic articles, and, according to Gregor, a true literary scholar.
A Joycean scholars and James Joyce.
As opposed to Joyce de Witt, who played Janet on Three's Company Anyway, very.
Very intellectual guy.
Right.
He does not suffer fools. He's very much inclined to dress people down, set them in their place, that kind of thing.
I had ample experience with that kind of thing. Case in point, Gregor proceeds to tell me in painful and gratuitous detail. What Sidney thought of my podcast.
Certainly the sound of your voice could make.
Among other things, he thought at Jujune middlebrow and nothing but a load of chit chat.
As with a lot of things, that says. I kind of agree with him. It is just chitchat. I mean, the podcast was just us talking to each other as not.
But I mean, you know Socratic dialogues. I mean all that was really was two guys talking, right.
Well, I think, yes, that's empirically true. But I mean if you're a guy who's gonna be like, hey, Socrates talked, I talk I'm Socrates, you know, then I don't think I can get any point through to you at all.
Gregor says the letter hit Milled hard. He's lately been taking his meals alone in his office and not speaking much to anyone. It's hard for me to imagine how my show could end the friendship. Sure there were podcasts that could. I'm all a bit positive the Ted Radio destroyed tons, maybe even a few marriages, but not Heavyweight. My heavyweight couldn't hurt a fly. And so I want to see proof. I insist Gregor send me a copy of this breakup letter, which he does, I'm gonna read,
We're gonna go through the letter. Okay, we're gonna parse through the letter, all right, sure, Okay, here we go. So it starts off where he says, after our exchange, without so much as a dear milt, the letter launches into a list of complaints written in the style of an academic monograph, replete with annotation and appendices, and then in parentheses see poem about friendship references to previous correspondents.
So he quotes from an email sent eleven years earlier. Yeah, okay, so here it is high milt and second references to age old intellectual turf wars, not understanding the neurotic elements of the battle about the school superintendent. Okay, so this
is a whole other thing. There are numbered sections which contain lettered sub sections bracketing number C. So it goes back to subsection C bar mitzvah I had invited, And finally there it is like Gregor said the stuff about heavyweight to quote subsection Jay, Jay, you sent me the link to a radio program greg was on. I have listened to similar programs when I was driving. Very rarely, if ever, did I stop my reading or writing to listen to what I call chitchat programs. Seeing that chitchat
thing in black and White was especially piquant. But as we read through the letter, it becomes apparent that this friendship has bigger problems than my podcast. According to Sidney, while he always asks after Milt's family, Milt never asks after his. And while Sydney attends Milt's family functions, Milt
doesn't attend his. And although Sidney takes an interest in Milt's work, to quote Sydney, when I dedicated a published article to you, I quoted William Carlos Williams, so much depends, to which you replied that it reminds you of the adult pads depends so much for the dedications the history.
It seems Sidney isn't so much upset about having listened to an episode of my podcast as he is about having listened to an episode of my podcast starring Milt's son, Gregor, because yet again, Sidney was being asked to care about Milt's family in a way that was never reciprocated. Sidney's real problem, it seems, is that he's always asked to look and listen in on Milt life without being seen
and heard himself. Although the letter reads like a legal deposition, by the end, Gregor and I come to see it as something else, an outpouring of sixty years worth of hurt feelings. Their friendship began in nineteen fifty four in a rooming house in Iowa, where they both attended college together. They considered themselves a couple of outcasts who drove to poetry readings in Milt's model tea over late night bottles
of Chivus regal. Sydney would share his theories with Milt about Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, and Milt would share his attempts at poetry with Sydney. Almost seventy years later, Milt is now a published poet, but when he finishes a poem, he still sends it to Sydney, whose judgment means more than anyone's.
It never changed, the roles never changed. He was still the guy in his life whose opinion mattered most to him. About his writing, he would say, here's the thing I did, and Sid didn't just write back like nice smiley face, double exclamation mark. He'd write these kind of like a very deep, analytical kind.
Of read Sydney remains a kind of big brother to Milt. This at a time when those older than him that he can look up to are dwindling. And now this unique friendship was ending. And the straw that broke the camel's back was my stupid podcast. I mean, well, you see, okay, I mean, obviously you see the irony in this whole situation. Right after waiting a good long while, it was clear that Gregor did not see the irony in this whole situation.
I mean, I have a show that it's raison detra is to unite people, and because of my show, to men in their late eighties who have been friends for the past sixty odd years had a falling out.
I mean, the end of Sid's letter to my dad said go shove off. It wasn't a falling out, it was this is the end. I'll never speak to you again. And as far as you having a radio show that brings together, I always thought you're a disputatious character.
I think my track record speaks for itself.
Your track record. You get into, like a tussle with a raccoon on the way to the liquor store, You're never going to have any success with anything.
No, no to discourage you do you think that, you know, maybe I could do something to help?
Okay, here we go, Here we go.
Because like helping old men like this is sort of what I do.
Every one of your ideas is worse than the previous one, and you're building the terrible idea of pyramids.
Well you want to try, you want to try calling your dad?
Almost to the top.
Let's call them together, and.
Now we're at the top.
Like all Jewish men of a certain age, Milt probably has an answer to telephone in close to fifty years. As expected, Gregor's mom picks.
Up my grandchild. Greg's son said when he heard about this, he said, when a person is older, he needs more friends, not less.
That's nicely put.
The relationship a person has with a friend is so intense and deep. A friendship a buddy.
Wow, yeah, okay, here you go over your.
Oh hi, Milton, I have Johnny on the phone here, john How.
Are you good?
How are you Milton?
I'm good. Let me just shut my music.
Off here, okay, sure, Milt, shush is down. What sounds like a Narlan's Dixieland jamboree marching he is Dan, and I ask if there's a way in which perhaps Gregor and I could help make peace between himself and his friend.
Are you talking about Sydney? Yeah, I mean she's very brilliant. You know, he's written at least two three hundred articles. She's a walking encyclopedia about literature. Nobody knows more than he does. But he's more trouble than he's worth. I don't think you realize how crazy he is and difficult to negotiate with.
I try to explain how there's nothing really that crazy about Sydney at all. Really, all he wants is more give and take in their friendship. But Milt is too dejected to hear me.
I think he's broken up with me. I think he doesn't want to have anything to do with me now from the letter.
He said, I think it's over. Forget about Sydney. All right.
I'm going to fix this, Dad, don't you worry.
I don't want to fix it for you.
I don't want to six sir, all right, you're giving up to giving up?
Just listening to the Dilama on John Oliver, Yeah, yeah, it knows about.
It all right. Mom peals of laughter it's Don Oliver talculator. I can't understand the word. I'll talktilator.
Okay, okay, Gregor, Yes, sir, okay. So you heard your father. That's it.
I thought your mission on Heavyweight was to resolve conflict. My father's just feeling hurt. I got a massage him a little bit, as far as I'm concerned, and of act one.
And what better way to enjoy the end of Act one? But with a message from our sponsors, how was I going to fix this sixty year long friendship. Sydney's letter was an emotional plea that begged for an emotional response. But according to Gregor, his dad, Milt just isn't that kind of touchy feely guy. He's not a card giver, a bar mitzvahgoer. Milt didn't even bother attending Gregor's graduation,
saying he didn't get all the hooplaw. In fact, the only time Gregor catches a glimpse of his dad's emotional side is when he's sharing his poetry.
He'd be doing public readings of his poems at you know, various events that I'd go to. Yeah, and I'd say in ten of those in four of them, he'd break down crying, and someone, sometimes me, would have to step in and read his poem. And then I started to realize that he was using poetry as the conduit, or as an excuse to open the faucets in his emotional core, to be emotionally.
Expressive, sometimes expressive to a degree that makes Gregor uncomfortable.
He'll send me a poem written about my mother. To me, you know, it's not exactly erotic poetry. But it's not exactly not erotic poetry.
What do you mean? Like you me an example?
You know, it's like I wake to the yawning cavern of your body and I'm like, okay, I have to stop here.
Milt's written about his wife, his kids, and his grandkids. It made Gregor wonder had Milt ever written a poem for Sydney. We phone Milt back and ask.
Not that I'm aware of, but you wrote seven thousand poems.
You never wrote a poem about Sydney.
No, but the question must have planted a seed in Milt's mind. A few days later, I receive a phone call from Gregor. His dad had sat down and written a poem especially for and dedicated to Sydney. I'm so excited, I can't even wait to finish my cream, cheese and jelly sandwich, which, before conferencing us all back together, him Milt, how are you good? Good? How are you doing?
I'm fine?
So I hear that you wrote a poem, Gregor was saying about Sid. Yes, normally, Milt males his poems to Sydney to get his feedback. In recent years, emails them. But I ask if with this personal one, he'd be up for phoning Sydney and reading it to him directly. In this way, Milt would be making himself vulnerable with
a grand gesture. I was imagining something along the lines of that scene and say anything where the shiftless, half wit kickboxer holds a boombox over his head, but instead of a boombox, it'd be a telephone, and instead of a young couple, it'd be two very old men. After a long pause, Milt.
Says, I could do that, But then, after.
An even longer pause, he begins to equivocate.
She's extremely critical. And you know he also wrote an introduction to one of my books that was pretty pretty insulting about I write poetry like I'm going to go out say something.
Why would you publish in your own book of poetry and introduction in which someone is insulting your works?
I don't know.
Once again, Milt was presenting his work at the feet of the master, but this time it wasn't just for critique. It was to make amends and win back his oldest friend. And that was scarier. Uh, why don't I Why don't I connect you guys? Gregor? So we're not going to speak right.
I think we stay out of it. I don't see how we could possibly do any good.
Yeah, well, because normally, you know, I like to interlock, interlocute.
Right now, you're an inter locke her.
Call him up.
Let's talk. You tell him and if this whole ship is going to run right into this iceberg er, what's going to happen?
I'm going to get him on the phone. Okay, okay, here we go, calling him up.
Hello, Hello, Hello, hello, hello, Yes.
Who is this is Milt Irlic? How are you?
Is this.
Milton Irlic?
Milton Amic?
How are you.
Okay? Great to hear from you on hold on?
Okay, thank you him, Milt?
What a surprise?
How are you okay?
Okay?
Go ahead, Yeah, I'm okay. But the reason I'm calling you uh Greg Greg's friend Jonathan Goldstein. He wants to wants me to read a poem I wrote to you. He's on the phone right now, I believe Jonathan. Are you there yet?
Yes? Hi, Hi, Either.
It's a group call. That's interesting.
Yes.
Not only had Milt immediately forgotten our game plan, but he'd also yank down the curtain to reveal lurking in the wings Sydney's least favorite podcast host. But fortunately before Sydney could start critiquing my work, Milt begins.
Comment or interrupt anytime you want. The poem is called the Iconic Class and I wrote it, and I wrote it in homage homage to Sydney f okay. Words flow out of their mouths like tropical birds, shive us regal on the rocks, sell thinkers and sellow feelers struggle like sweating sumo wrestlers with a question, how do I live the right life? In impassioned all night arguments, delight in the tropics of Henry Miller and the naked honesty of
Molly Bloom's soliloquy. Utopianists, rebel outsiders longing for communion, and community, the en hoping to change the mind numbing deadness of schools, stamping out a mass of men leading lives of quiet desperation, where men suits sit with glazed eyes transfixed by screens, howl for coffee or coke, waiting for long Sunday afternoons, a transformation where killing stops and the dazzling spectrum of consciousness allows one to become more fully human as slender
fingers of the sun seep into their chamber. I solemnly tread home, knowing the struggle to awaken a moribund culture has only begun. That's that's the poem.
I'm I'm not quite sure. I mean, it's the kind of poem that has so many references to my life until now, he thought nobody noticed. If it weren't so long, I'd have it on my tombstone, you know. Uh just uh.
Do you do you feel uh touched hearing hearing this poem?
Oh?
Of course I do. Uh, of course I feel touched by it. I mean, uh, it's not simply a poem that was delivered the vehicle. There's milt irlic. I mean he brought it to me, and that carries a thousand years of conversations and walks and talks and things like that. So hearing Milt's voice delivering this poem, the weight is a serious weight. It's a major weight, and and that's terribly important to me.
Well, thank you for helping to make me a better poet.
Yeah, you know, we're we're we're we're at a new phase, new phase.
Okay, okay.
There was no reference to the letter, nor to there not speak king. In other words, not a lot of chit chat. But by the end of the call things felt back to normal, so much so that just as we're all about to get off the phone, Sidney says, as he always.
Does, say hello to family, Milt say.
Hello, to which Milt says, as he always does, say he who nothing much of anything, but today Sydney doesn't seem too bothered by it.
Bye bye bye bye, say bye bye.
Okay, bye bye bye bye.
I asked Milt how he feels the whole thing went, and he says better than he expected that sometimes a person just has to take one for the team for the greater good of the friendship.
You know.
One of the essential things about friendship. I've wrote several I've written several poems about the consentment to sure, there's aways always one partner in the friendship that values it more and wants it to work more. It's like in marriage, there's always one part of the marriage that loves the other person more, and because they love the other person more, they can tolerate being loved less. It's the same thing in friendship.
Although I don't ask him out right, I get the feeling mill to saying that in his friendship with Sydney he's that guy, the one who's loving more and trying harder. But I'm also sure that Sydney, at that very moment across town is thinking some version of the same thought. And maybe in all friendships, if you ask who's getting the right end of the deal, the answer is inevitably I am. But if the friendship has a fighting chance of lasting more than sixty years, that answer will also
contain some version of but it's worth it. Before we get off the phone, Milt has a question for me.
The last thing he said regards to who did you hear? Oh?
He said, he said, to give regards to your family.
Oh family, I couldn't hear it.
Yeah you might. You might want to email him to just say to give regards to his family or he might be sensitive. What would this friendship do without me? Okay, okay, take it easy. Bye bye bye, Hey Gregor you're still there.
Yeah, I'll be the first to admit it. I didn't think it would go as well as that went.
I have to say, do you do you see any any parallels in in in your dad and Sid's relationship and our relationship.
I mean, I think, Sai, it's a genius and I'm a genius. I'll take that.
Let me ask you a question. Did you know that I recently had a baby?
I think you mentioned that.
Do you know his name?
Oh?
You're deposing me.
You've never listened to an episode of Heavyweight.
I don't like those earbuds in my ears. They hurt my ears.
Do you think we're gonna end up being friends like for the next like sixty years?
It you'd be one hundred and fifteen. Can you imagine if you were one hundred and fifteen year ord you like your.
Now that the Fernitures return to its goodwill home, Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage to pos take this moment to decide.
If to feld for Things Accident. Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein along with Khalila Holt. The senior producer is Caitlin Roberts, editing by Alex Bloomberg and Jorge Just special thanks to Emily Condon, Stevie Lane, Wendy Dore, Kate Parkinson Morgan, and Jackie Cohen. The show was mixed by Matthew Bole with assistants from Kate Bolinsky. Music by
Christine Fellows and John K. Sampson. Additional music credits for this episode can be found on our website, Gimbletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by the Weaker Than's courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email us at Heavyweight at gimbletmedia dot com. Our season begins on October twenty six.
Why are we repainted? Wow?
You better get yourself a new pair of headphones, my friend, because there's a lot of great stuff coming your way in season two?
Are threatening me?
I'm you know, I'm working on some stories and some of them take place in Canada.
You're working on stories and take place in Canada. I'm not gonna go change my underpants.
I don't like when you say that. And you know my friend Jackie, she's she's coming back. I think she's just alady. Know your friend Jackie, you've met her several times.
Name doesn't ring a bell