On this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest contestant is Josh Gad.  His conversation with host Peter Sagal is charming, engaging, self-effacing and funny, which doesn’t remotely surprise me, since I find him one of the most charming, engaging, self-effacing and funny guests on talk shows.
 
This is the full Wait, Wait… broadcast, but you can jump directly to the “Not My Job” segment, it starts around the 18:15 mark.

​The guest on this week’s Al Franken podcast is conservative publisher of The Bulwark, Sarah Longwell.  As Al writes, “A month into Donald Trump’s second term, how do voters feel about the job he’s doing? We talk to Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark and host of The Focus Group podcast. We discuss how Trump is currently in the ‘honeymoon’ period of his presidency and how plenty of voters are just happy that Trump is doing SOMETHING. Sarah also gives advice to Democratic leaders about messaging and how to fight back against the onslaught of bad policy coming from the White House.”

​We have a new one this week.  The contestant is David Harris from Farmer City, Illinois.  I didn’t have a clue with the hidden song, and it’s very well-known.  I’d say it was very well-hidden, too, but the contestant got it right away.  But even when pianist-composer Bruce Adolph played the piece again, I could barely hear it, except for a few notes.  And I had no idea what the composer style was, since the music wasn’t the style I most known the composer for.   You may do better.

I was reading something just now, and the old saying "To err is human" was used.  Something popped into mind, and I am so annoyed at not thinking of this years ago and contacting Nike through my PR contacts.  But (even though they still sell the Michael Jordan shoes as a major part of their product line) it's too late at this point. However, they should have used as an ad line --

"To Air is Inhuman."

On this week’s Naked Lunch podcast, hosts Phil Rosenthal and David Wild write “What are the greatest TV situation comedies of all time? Phil (who created the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond") and David (who watched it religiously) discuss their own favorite shows, and take your calls about yours.
 
If you grew up in the era where sitcoms of the ‘’80s and ‘90s were what you watched, you’ll particularly enjoy the conversation.  If shows of more recent vintage or before then live high in your appreciation, you might find it a bit frustrating.  For example, and most egregiously, neither The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Andy Griffith Show even get mentioned!  And that’s not a case of them being before when callers (or Phil and David) were born – since, after all, they have been on the air continually for 60 years, including multiple times every single day today.  And to not even mention them.??  As for recent series, Phil (who I admire deeply, and had the opportunity to meet and interview) notes that he really doesn’t watch sitcoms anymore.  So, he was only barely aware of Ghosts, when it gets brought up.
 
By the way, after this episode initially aired a while ago (sorry, it takes me a while to catch up, I have a nice backlog...), I noted on Twitter the huge lapse of not even just referencing Dick Van Dyke and Andy Griffith – and got a reply from co-host David Wild.  He wrote back: “We apologize -- we were not being comprehensive, but reacting to calls. But I know Phil ranks the first at the top of his list, and we both love ‘Andy Griffith’ -- which is the favorite of Brad Paisley who wrote our theme.”
 
It was an extremely thoughtful reply, and of course the podcast wasn’t being comprehensive.  But given that one of those shows was at the top of Phil’s list, and the other was loved by both and “the favorite” of Paisley makes such a glaring omission all the more surprising.  I wrote back a thanks, and added that perhaps the oversight could be “updated” on a later podcast. While I doubt that would happen, I did think his reply was thoroughly gracious.  Though almost more gracious was his follow-up reply – “You call it a ‘HUGE lapse,’ I call it a follow-up episode idea.”

I’m certain that many people know this.  I didn’t.  But I was watching the video podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, and his guest was Amy Poehler.  And what I never was aware of, is that back when he had his 12:30 AM show on NBC, there was a recuring bit when Amy Poehler (at the very start of her career, before even SNL) would play ‘Stacy,’ the teenage younger sister of Conan’s sidekick Andy Richter and who has a massive crush on Conan.
 
During the podcast, Conan mentioned how the writing for the sketches were funny, maybe around a B or B+ -- but that every time, “Amy turned them into an A+++++++.”  (He wasn’t saying this only because she was there as the guest – I later found another video of him as a guest on a talk show discussing those sketches, and he said the same thing.  And besides, there are over a half-dozen of the sketches on YouTube, so clearly the show loved to have her on, doing them.) 
 
Poehler began at Second City in Chicago, where she first began working with Tina Fey.  Later, joined another Chicago improv group, Upright Citizens Brigade (whose members included Matt Walsh of Veep, Adam McKay – the writer-director partner of Will Ferrell, Horatio Sanz of SNL, and Neil Flynn who played ‘Janitor’ on Scrubs, among others), which subsequently moved to New York City, and that’s when she got hired for the sketches on Conan O’Brien’s show, around 1997.  This was four years before she joined Saturday Night Live.
 
I don’t think this is the first one, but it’s one of the first that I can find.  Conan is right, the sketches are well-written, about a B – but she is indeed an A+++++++.
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