What do you do when life doesn't go according to plan that moment you lose a job, or a loved one, or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this is now What a podcast about pivotal moments as told by people who lived them. Each week, I sit down with a guest to talk about the times they were knocked off course and what they did to move forward.
Some stories are funny, others are cut wrenching, but all are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice answers one question.
Now, what.
Would I steal an emmy?
Yes?
I stole an emmy?
Yep. Yeah, my dad's apartment in New York City at a Christmas party every year, and we had just kind of gotten to know each other, so invited you. I will take a shot. Maybe Brooke will come, Maybe she wan. I'm sure she's busy. One fighter to the family and friends Christmas party. That was way too many people in a way too small apartment. And that was the first year. So that was when you showed up with Dan. I believe he was the tree. Is that right?
We were a Christmas tree? I was on his shoulders, and we brought you a bucket of Kentucky Fried chickt yes, and.
Just for a visual for people at one of those small elevators in a pre war New York City building, and here comes the front door opening. Someone ducking underneath up on the shoulders of another person who's wearing gifts on his feet because he's the tree. And I guess you were the angel on the top of the tree.
Star.
You were the star. You were the star. And I remember looking over and so I was like, who is that And someone was like, I think that's brook Shields. I'm like, oh my god. So you went over an entire room until you did. There was some shoplifting that happened of Emmy's and other things that belonged to my dad, but all three were I's so charming. He was all forgiven.
My guest today is one heck of an interviewer. He's also a good friend, a doting husband and father, and a fixture on NBC and MSNBC. Willie Geist is a co host of Morning Joe, a host of NBC's Sunday Today, where he recently celebrated three hundred Sunday sit down interviews. He and I met professionally years ago, and from day one it felt like I was meeting an old friend. Willy is kind quick on his feed, so funny and lucky for me, loves a holiday prank as much as
I do. I'm so happy I had the opportunity to turn the tables on him this time and learn a little in the process. So, without further ado, here is Willy Geist. Hi.
How are you, Brooker?
I'm so good.
How are you good? The last time I saw you was at your premiere and you were going to Thailand for a long time.
I went to Thailand.
How was that?
It was amazing? Okay, first things, first, asked Christina.
She's good. She misses you, and I know we say it every time, but we're just so overdue. It's embarrassing, isn't it.
It's embarrassing in life keeps getting crazier and crazier.
I feel it too, And then I see you and then we go our separate ways, and then it's like another four months and I'm like, ah, well.
You defected out of the city.
So that's really what it comes to.
That is on you, that's on me. The dog, The dog that looks a lot like my dead dog. I know that was a wonderful text. You were like, it's like my dog just died, and you're like, oh my god. They look like they could be siblings. I'm like, yeah, except yours is alive.
I always know the right thing to say.
Yeah, you do, you do. I'll tell you what you do. Know the right thing to say when you're interviewing people, you're coming upon an anniversary. You have what three hundred interviews?
Yeah, three hundred sundays. Sit down. Yeah, oh god.
I actually got a little not nervous, but because I love you so much and I really feel the day I met you that I was like, oh, this is where my little brother went. They've been keeping him from me forever. And when we first met, everybody thought we had known each other forever.
I remember, I will never forget that. It must have been ten years ago. And you came to fill in on the Today Show where I was doing the third hour of the Today Show, and I felt the same thing. And so people know. Usually when somebody comes and hosts with us, it's a lot of like for us, like you want to manage the person, usually a very well known person. It's not what they do, and this is a whole different muscle, and I never felt a moment of management. I was like, Oh, this is just fun.
She's a natural, she's funny, she's cool, she's smart. Like we're good.
It was a huge gift. And then I got to know you more socially. And the first time I met your father, I stole his Emmy.
Gre shoplifting that happened of Emmys and other things that belonged to my dad, but all for you were so charming, it was all forgiven.
Well, thank you. I was so happy to meet your dad. Your dad is such an extraordinary person, and I was looking at so much of his sort of older stuff. He has such an amazing sense of humor.
Yeah, he's He started as a newspaper columnist he came home from Vietnam, and then he had a couple of jobs, and then he started writing for the Chicago Tribune, but not the big paper. He worked the suburban trip and he was covering like school board meetings and all the stuff you do. But he started writing sort of funny columns about living in the suburbs with caught people's eye. And then he got a job at the New York Times off that. So when I was five, we moved
from Chicago to New Jersey. And he's always had a sense of humor. That's always been his things. Really smart, really engaging, but he's always been funny. And I think that was the biggest thing I've taken from him, is sense of humor. Is sort of lead with that, like that's where you start get you places, and he's yeah. And then went on from the New York Times and did the CBS Sunday Morning for more than thirty years.
And there's some teenage relige geist on some of those there.
Is he he was. He did a piece about my sister's little league baseball team. I guess her soft was baseball softball team, and I was one of the base coaches on her team. So I was at first base and I was like yelling at a kid to run. I think that was my TV debut and a piece or two later. But he was always shooting stuff at our house. I think that's part. People are like, did you get into journalism because of your dad? And they say, well, not consciously. He and I never sat down and talked
about like you should get into this sun. It was just it was in our house, it was in our lives. He shot pieces at home and in our town, and he would go out and travel and meet interesting people and have great stories. And I think just watching him genuinely enjoy his job in a way that I didn't always see the other dads.
Is there something about his, like his style that you think you got?
I think so, yeah, I think having I think he has big curiosity for what we do. You have to Actually, you can't sit across from someone who you're like not super interested in or haven't gotten yourself to be interested in. So I think being curious. And I'm always that way.
I mean, we were just on vacation and I come home, I wake up too early, and I come home and I'm like showing Christine, all right, there's a house for sale over here, and I got the bagels, I got the like She's like, you're just around every corner and in every nook and cranny, just like what's around Oh, let's go up here, let's see what's up here. And I think my dad definitely had that. Professionally, his big stories were not he wasn't a war correspondent, but he
was going to like the Iowa State Fair. What are you going to do there? Just show up and find something interesting and funny there. And so I think I took the curiosity and again the sense of humor hopefully. I mean the job I do is different from his, and that he wasn't an anchor of a news show and he wasn't covering politics and international affairs every day.
But I think on Morning Joe, the show I do on MSNBC for four hours every day, you're allowed to be your full self, which is such a gift in its own and through that you can be funny. You know, at a certain point in the show, there's room for humor and music and sports and all the things that I've sort of accumulated over my life and get to show up. So I think my dad comes through me probably the most in those moments. And then I would
say writing. He's such a great writer. He started with writing, as I said, and that's the foundation for everything.
And so you've always written, like when you were a little kid. Your kids are now fourteen and sixteen, right, so when you see your when you think about yourself at their age, were you the same person you are now?
In a way, Yeah, I think writing was always there. You know, I took journalism classes in high school. I think there was a premium and a value placed on being a reader and a writer in our house. You know, my dad didn't know and he couldn't balance a checking account. He wasn't in finance. That wasn't that wasn't our house. We were My mom's a social worker, so we were very creative and open hearted and all those things. But yeah, I think the professional seeds probably were there beginning in
elementary school. And so I guess, yeah, you make me think about it, it probably was always there.
So you say, you write your own stuff, So today, Sunday, today you write all that. Do you write your own Morning Joe stuff in the same way?
Morning Joe is more difficult because it is a daily churn of hard news of this person got indicted, and this thing's happening today, and here's the latest from Ukraine. So we have a staff of people who get here, I mean at midnight, one, two in the morning, we go on the air at six, and since the last night they've been preparing for today's show. So they, I would say, in Morning Joe. The truth is there's not
a ton of writing anyway. On Morning Joe because it's such a freeform, ad lib conversational show, but there are scripts that set up the story that we talk about, so there's not as much writing for Morning Joe. It's just preparation and do you have to do prep?
And then do they give you prep? Like is it a common Are you constantly listening to the news and.
You are as much as you want to turn it off and say, okay, my work day is over, as you know, that's just doesn't not the way it works anymore. It's you've got a phone in your hand and you look down and you've got emails or you've got notifications from a media outlet or a senator's office or something that Okay, I'm going to internalize that. And then at the end of the night we get a nice note from our producers and that we wake up to has
been updated, which kind of boils it all down. Here are the five or six big things that we're going to talk about in some details about them. So the preparation comes from our great producers, but it's also at the end of the day, it's on you when that question is asked of you, or when you have to ask a question to be kind of fluent in whatever
that is. And it's a lot of ground to cover, you know, it's a lot of players on the board to remember who they are and where they fit into the story and remember what they said last time, which may be different than what they're saying today.
It sounds like a twenty four hour a day job. I don't know how Johnny Walker fel it's in it. I don't know how does he a guest on the show. It doesn't seem to make sense to me.
He'll show up at night once in a while to get you to it. Yeah, he shows up at night with his friends from Kentucky. But yeah, I mean the other side has to be said, as we have such an ensemble show that yes, it's a lot of TV and a lot to know, but there's always somebody to lean on. Sunday is just me, but morning Joe, as you can spread the ball around and kind of have a good team game every day.
To me, doing this show is a pivotal moment for me because all of a sudden I was on the other side of the table, which is I thought it would be sort of easier, but it's so much easier for me to be sitting in the chair being asked
questions because I've done it for forty plus years. But in a way, the show in and of itself for me has been a pivotal min But it's also about pivotal moments and are first of all, are there any in your earlier years just want to back up a bit that good or bad would underscore you?
Well. I have college on my mind right now, as we were discussing before we started. My daughters a junior in high school, and we're thinking about that and thinking about my choice to go to Nashville. I went to Vanderbilt. That choice in terms of opening my world, you know.
And friends of mine who stayed in the Northeast and went to all the great schools you can go to in the Northeast had a completely different experience and have had different lives since because of where they went where I went to the South, and all my friends were from Atlanta or New Orleans or Peewee Valley, Kentucky or Albany, Georgia or places I'd never dreamed i'd go to, hadn't
even heard of. And then I lived in Atlanta after college, so all in I lived in the South for about ten years, and I have so much grounding in that, and I think, of course I didn't know it then, but it changed the way I see different cultures and people and places and political parties even and belief systems to live alongside and understand. And that served me well in this job for sure.
How do you think it has changed a house?
Because I think the stereotypes were blown up, you know. I mean the sort of cartoon version of the South that maybe you have growing up in New York City or in New Jersey or wherever, is blown up when you get down and they say, oh, they're just me, but they live down here, and maybe they believe different things in some cases. But I think the commonality of our experience and how disconnected the reality is from the stereotype.
Do you think it's helped specifically with Morning Joe.
Yes, definitely, definitely. I think that's where it has helped. And Joe, you know, my co host Joe of Morning Joe, He's from the South and he was Republican congressman and he understands that deeply. He grew up with it, and I think I have some element of that too. So where everyone picks to go to college. If they decide to go to college changes their life. But I think
it's certainly. I mean it steered me to Atlanta, which steered me to CNN, which you know that you can watch all the dominoes fall from there.
Are you allowed to have an opinion or are you? Do you have to stay neutral? How do you exist in an environment in which, politically per se you don't necessarily agree with but you need to be neutral enough to be able to have sort of both sides.
Yeah, I mean on Morning on Morning Joe. My theory is that there's plenty of opinion. There are plenty of hot takes, right, I mean, that's what the show is. And I think my role and by the way, I'm not it's not a cynical play. I should have this role. It's really the way I feel is to provide information. And I'm always thinking about the viewer. Does the viewer get what we're talking about? If I were watching this
at home, what would be my question? You've talked past us a little bit, or you're down so deep in the weeds. Can you pull us out of the weeds and explain the big picture of what's going on? So in terms of giving opinion, I think honestly, within the last eight years or so, I think maybe there's been more opinion, which is to say, and not for me anyway, not strident, bomb throwing and a hot take. But like you know, I think it's bad to try to overturn
the government. I don't think that's a shouldn't be a terribly controversial thing to say. I think it's bad to beat up police officers at the Capitol. That shouldn't be a controversial thing to say. So to me, there are some things that are just true that maybe people perceive as an opinion or a hot take, which I don't
necessarily intend for it to be. But otherwise, within the context of Morning Joe, everyone who's on there is there for their opinion, and I try to be a little bit of a rudder to say, Okay, here's some of the facts about the case. Let's put a whole bunch of context around this, and then to drop into the conversation questions on behalf of a viewer who may say, wait, who's that person again? Or wait why I don't understand
why that's bad. I just I literally sit back. Sometimes I'm like, I know where we are here, but if I'm watching it home, don't so let me let me put down a little flag to remind people what we're talking about.
Well, you've been all all across the I mean, okay, so I feel like you've been on many many different networks, right, I mean, you were at CNN for sports in your twenties, you worked at Tucker Carlson, he was at an MSNBC. Was that sort of your first on air?
It was, yeah. So I started out of college. I graduated from Vanderbilt, and then I went home to New Jersey and I drove the and I don't mean to brag here, the liquor delivery truck for Hohokus Wine and Spirit World.
Did it all get delivered where it was supposed to go?
You know, some of it fell fall off the truck. You know what I mean. It happens. It happened, It falls off the truck.
Does you get any free booth?
We did have a generous boss who occasionally would allow us to take a bottle home. So I did that.
Sorry I digressed, No, No, that was.
My dad was mad when I left that job because we got like a twenty five percent case discount and everything but I took so then I moved to Atlanta. I knew I I wanted to work in media in some form. I'd done an internship the summer before while I was still in college at the CBS Political Unit, so it was kind of the nexus of media and politics, and it was during a presidential campaign. It was all
very exciting. So then I moved to Atlanta, but CNN didn't have the PA job in news itself, so it was actually at CNN Sports Illustrated CNN Sports Network, and I was there for about six and a half years, learned every job you can learn in TV. I was from the bottom of the logging tapes to producing and everything you can learn to do. And then I moved up to New York, which was a big jump. We
wanted to get back home. Christina and I had just gotten married and took a job at another sports show called IMAX and it got canceled after nine months.
That's a now what moment?
Well, so that I was, yeah, I mean talk about now what moments, and you know what, it was the last day of the show canceled after nine months. We've made a big move, got an apartment and everything. We're like all right, we're New York is now. Was Christina's thirtieth first and I remember we went out to dinner for her birthday and then we went to like a karaoke place after. But I remember being like, let's not
maybe we don't have drinks tonight. I'll just stick with the water and then like the karaoke thing is too expensive and all that. And that was truly like when you asked me that, I was like, that was a real what now moment? Like I don't know if I'm am I done in TV? Maybe you know CNNSI the network I was on, they had pulled the plug, they canceled this show. Maybe it's not for me. I thought I wanted to be on the air, but that didn't work out. What am I doing? And I honestly everything
from law school ran through my mind. I was like the world was wide open, but also very scary. You know, we lived in New York and it wasn't cheap and what are we going to do? And so the twist of fate was that someone in a couple of guys I knew who I'd worked with on this IMAX show,
knew somebody at MSNBC. We were hired as freelancers as producers, and that was how I started at MSNBC as a freelancer in Secaucus, New Jersey, reverse commute through the Lincoln Tunnel to go out where they have all these like it was like an abandoned Liz Claiborne outlet or something that they turned into a TV studio. Its like all those outlet stores, and so that was me. I was all of a sudden, Okay, I guess I'm working in news. But to your question, they had just hired Tucker Carlson
at MSNBC. A lot of people can't believe that he ever worked at MSNBC. He did, and it was his idea that I come on at the end of the show because you thought we had good chemistry in the newsroom, which we did. And that was my debut on television, was doing four minutes at the end of that show every night. And from there, you know, I started doing a little more here and a little more there, little segments that were just kind of throwaways at the end of the show pop culture or here's the thing you
got wrong tonight or whatever it was. And then that turned into you know, other shows saying, hey, can you do a piece for us? Can you do this this? Because I guess it was kind of a funny, lighter thing. So that was I did well enough. I guess on that that when Joe took over the morning time slot on MSNBC, said Hey, do you want to do this show with me?
Which I thought, and you had known him pror a little bit.
I'd done a couple of pieces for his show, but I didn't really know him, and so he roped me and Mika in and that was his calculation that the three of us would work. And here we are sixteen years later, and.
That seemed to really work out for them.
Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, think about it, I'm going from doing four minutes at the end of the show. Now they're asking me to co host the morning show, which is hard news, straight news. So that was a huge leap, huge lead.
I've watched too many times on Morning Joe and on NBC, and what I find so unbelievably striking is that you always just seem to be yourself. You just know it's
not bullshit, like you're not opting for a personality. Are there enough people around you that you feel you'll operate the same way Because so many of them just seem like they're doing shtick or they've kind of opted for that character, and you just kind of go like, I mean, I want to trust you, but I don't know what you're really are meaning right now.
And there it is, though you see right through it, and I think most people do. I think there's no I don't think there's a reward for that anymore. And I think, again, I keep going back to it, but Morning Joe. Everyone you see on Morning Joe, like, that's who Joe is off camera, That's who Nika is off camera, that's who Mike Barnacle or Donnie Detch, that's who your dad was, my dad. Yeah, I mean it's so we have a place and I think it's almost like a radio show. And I mean, the fact is we replaced
don Imus's radio show. He was on Imus in the Morning in the morning, so when we were born into that time slot where Imus had been, his radio show was simulcast and MSNBC we sort of adopted that, like, let's just sit around and talk vibe to a morning show. And so immediately from day one, it was it was not you are a news anchor, now start acting like one.
It was like, just bring yourself to this. We trust you, we think, we know you'll do your homework, we know you're smart, we know you'll report and do all the things you do. I don't know. I feel like there are fewer and fewer people who are playing TV because it doesn't work anymore. Everyone's seen Anchorman like they expose. It's like, you know, you can't still do all the old cliches.
You've talked about professional Now what moments? Is there a personal? Now what moment for you?
Yeah? I know I hate to do the cliche thing, but it is true. But my so I said, Morning Joe started April of two thousand and seven. June of two thousand and seven, my daughter Lucy is born, and honestly, up until that point, despite the semi polished package you see on TV, like, I had some fun in my twenties and early thirties, We had some good times. And so I always talk about it as this brick wall
of reality, which is your dad. And then you have a morning TV show that you wake up at three am, which is sort of the back end was of my day up until then. So those were I'll never forget. And I'm sure you had this as well, walking out of the hospital with Lucy in a green car seat and I'll never forget the nurse going good luck, and
I was like, good luck. Like that's like that was the heaviest good luck of all time that you got to you got to keep this person safe and healthy and happy, hopefully and get her to eighteen and then get her even farther than that. And so that was I mean, it's an obvious one, but man, was that And now, what what do I do now? So my life is different personally obviously it's different professionally. Now I didn't know how it was going to go I was going to turn out, So I think that, I mean,
obviously that was it. And then I as I got along. My dad has had Parkinson's disease for thirty one or two years, I think. And so getting to a point in life and I know you had this too, because you've had a parent that you've had to worry about sometimes in your life. Is to be in that middle zone where I'm concerned about my kids well being and happiness and safety. And now on the other end of it, the people who were always looking out for me, I got to think about them too. Are they okay? Are
they doing all right? And I don't think anyone talks enough about that or prepares you for that, or maybe they do, and I just didn't, wasn't on my radar. But it's the middle zone and I'm still in it to a big extent. Is you're worried on two sides of you now, you know?
And he didn't even tell you, right for decades, right, you didn't even know about it.
Yeah, his Parkinson's. So he was diagnosed at forty seven years old, which is younger than I am now. And it was very, very slow moving. So it's weird to use the word lucky with Parkinson's. But he continued to work full time and travel and be on television, and it was you know, I don't. I was almost a decade before they finally said out loud, my parents' dad as Parkinson's. We knew he was slowing down a little, and I thought it was too young for.
Him to slow down, and to wait, how old were you.
When he was diagnosed? I was seventeen, and by the time they told me, I was in my twenties and living in Atlanta. So but again, he worked until about two thousand and eighteen, like five years ago, he retires, which think about now the strength he had quietly to he was going through all this, his body was changing. He didn't have control of everything he was doing with his movement, and he was getting on a plane and
going to interview people. There was no hiding from it, and coming home and writing a piece and being on TV. And you know, people show strength in different ways. And he's not like the face of Parkinson's and he doesn't have a foundation, but he's.
Like, you've done a lot of work for Michael.
We've done a lot and the Michael J. Fox Foundations don't so much for us. Yeah, and he's but he was really strong. And the hell of it is he when they diagnosed him, they couldn't there was no genetic component. They couldn't find any of the markers they looked for. And the doctor said one more question. Were you in Vietnam by any chance? And he said I was what years sixty nine seventy where were you? And they go, you got it from age and Orange and my dad.
And it turns out we know now through class action lawsuits and government admitting to it, that the agent Orange that they dropped to you know, defoliate all the trees and everything. Our guys were breathing it all in and many many of them got Parkinson's and MS and effectively had their nerves fried by this stuff they were breathing
in over there. So there's that element of frustration to it, and you know, it's there are a lot of layers, but certainly getting that news was a what now moment for me and for my mom and my sister everybody.
I mean, God, did you have you spoken about that, like reporting on that?
Yeah? Yeah, I mean I haven't done my own, but there's like they.
Were very controversial. I mean, that kind of knowledge is.
Needed out there. And you know what it's still I mean, it happened in Iraq and Afghanistan these things called burn pits where they just burn everything. That's all the garbage on the base, but it's also tires and medical waste and chemicals, and the guys from Iraq and Afghanistan are getting sick now from that too. So it's it's frustrating on many levels that he for that time he's spent there, which he wasn't thrilled about obviously being there, even that
he paid so dearly for it. But I do take I do take all the years I've had with him. He's still here. I was just on vacation with him. He's doing great. I mean, for all the years I've had with him, I'm grateful because it's not always that way for everyone. It can accelerate very quickly and be debilitating. And he's he had, you know, twenty five really good years and now getting past thirty.
It's just extraordinary. How do you how do you stay? How do you just stay? Wonderfully? Willie? You're so unique?
You know, I don't. I don't know any other way. It's we have in our call it the makeup room test here where like what's the person really like? And then make make up the hair people they know everything about everybody. So if you're want to know what you like, oh, really, you know, she seems great. So but I think, like the point am I even bring that up?
Was?
I feel like when I hear everyone's like, oh, you're so nice, and I'm like, what's the alternative to that? I don't know. Maybe it's like maybe it's the way I was raised, or I'm surrounded by great friends, and
who are who are like that too? Who are trying to be nice to everybody and be generous and be filled with gratitude, which I always am, even when I wake up at four am today and I commute in and then you get here and you get in the elevator at thirty and you see the Peacocks on the carpet and you're like, oh right, I work for NBC News at Peacock and you know, Bill Murray us to ride this elevator up to SNL Like, I'm what, you know,
come on, snap out of it, you know. So I truly I have gratitude, and Christina and I on a personal level, we are we always stop for gratitude. We're our kids are healthy right now, we're healthy. We just went on this vacation where my parents came with us. We were so grateful to get them there, and my sister and her family, and like you just look and you go, this is all I need. This is it, This is all I need.
That was the amazing and insightful Willie Geist. To hear more from him, tune into Morning Joe weekdays on MSNBC and Sunday Today every Sunday on NBC. That's it for us today. Talk to you next. Week Now. What with Burke Shields is a production of iHeartRadio. Our lead producer and wonderful showrunner is Julia Weaver. Additional research and editing by Darby Masters and Abu Zafar. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. The show is mixed by Baheed Fraser.