On this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest contestant is singer-songwriter and three-time Grammy winner Lucy Dacus.  Her interview with host Peter Sagal is lowkey, charming, incredibly self-effacing and often very funny.
 
This is the full Wait, Wait… broadcast, but you can jump directly to the “Not My Job” segment, it starts a bit before the 22:45 mark.

The guests on this week’s Al Franken podcast are foreign affairs expert David Rothkopf and Paul Rieckhoff, Iraq War vet and CEO of the Independent Veterans of America.  As the show writes, “America is at war with Iran. It's the eighth time that Donald Trump has attacked another country since he began his second term (despite pledging "no new wars" during his campaign). To break it all down, we're joined by David Rothkopf and Paul Rieckhoff.

“We take a look at the difficult history between America and Iran along with the current military campaign Trump has started in the region. Trump and his administration have yet to outline exactly WHY we are fighting, and with Americans already dying, it's no surprise that this war is extremely unpopular. Not to mention, this is costing our country a billion dollars a day and will only become more expensive as the war expands.

“David and Paul discuss the long term impact this might have for America and the Middle East and how it may escalate in the region and could signal a scary moment for the global nuclear arms race.”

From the archives.   This week’s 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 Adolphe 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.

On this “The Weekly Show” podcast with Jon Stewart, his guests are Ambassador Wendy Sherman and CNN's Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour.  As the show writes, “As American strikes intensify and Iran retaliates across the region, Jon is joined by Wendy Sherman, who negotiated the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement that Trump later withdrew from, and CNN's Christiane Amanpour. Together, they analyze Trump's decision to choose war over diplomacy, assess what the administration is trying to accomplish through military force, and examine the possibilities ahead for the Iranian people and the region. Plus, Jon talks about the merger aftermath and his Last Meal order!”
 
As I’ve noted, the show provides a "breakdown" of when specific topics are covered during the conversation, so you can jump to the sections that most interest you.  If you watch the video on YouTube, those time codes are hyperlinked to the video and will jump you automatically to the right spot.
 
00:00 - Introduction
02:20 - Christiane Amanpour & Wendy Sherman Join
05:17 - Military Planning vs. Political Strategy
08:38 - Regional Escalation and Retaliation
16:48 - The "Venezuela Template" for Regime Change
20:01 - Iran’s Power Structure Explained
24:35 - Negotiating with a Theocracy
36:26 - International Law vs. "Might Makes Right"
45:48 - The History of Grievance and the 1979 Revolution
55:01 - Possibility of a "Berlin Wall" Moment
01:00:01 - Unifying a Fragmented Opposition
01:06:41 - The Role of Saudi Arabia and Gulf States
01:13:30 - The Path to Lasting Peace
01:19:08 - Breaking Down the Discussion

The past few years, on Oscar weekend, I wrote the following, about a quest I'd been on.

A long while back, I was on a mini-mission to get the Motion Picture Academy to open their Oscar broadcast with a particularly wonderful song that, though it had a bit of shelf-life in country music (reaching #10 on the country charts), I figured they wouldn't know.  I actually came close -- not to accomplishing my task, but having access to making the suggestion -- when my former boss at Universal Studios, Bob Rehme, years later was made president of the Academy.  Alas, I didn't have the contact information that would have helped and didn't make the effort -- which probably wouldn't have been too difficult, even it was before Google searches -- to track it down (hence never getting beyond being just a "mini-mission").

The idea time has long-since passed, since the group who sang the song, the Statler Brothers, have retired, and also some of the references in the song -- while many are still classic -- aren't all likely as impactful on today's audience.  Still, it's a very fun song, with clever, overlapping references (as best as I can quickly count) to 51 movies, as well as a jammed-in handful of actors and characters, and would make an enjoyable number in the middle of the broadcast, sung by a cobbled-together group of movie stars singing.  And classic movies are just that – classic. 

(Hey, the Statlers themselves could even have come out of retirement.  They did briefly a few years back for an event when elected into a country music Hall of Fame).

But no, it wasn't likely to happen, and now it won't.  But it doesn't stop me from at least presenting the song on the weekend of the Oscar broadcast.  So, here it is -- one of the most affectionate and truly clever songs I've heard about movies. And it fits perfectly into the portfolio of "list" songs that the Statlers were so well-known for.

Indeed, the name of the song is "The Movies."

There's one change from the initial years.  For a long time, when I've posted the song initially, it was a video with Jimmy Fortune who had replaced Lew DeWitt who'd had to retire for health reasons.  But as I mentioned in 2021, I found a video with all four original Statlers, all the more notable since it was Lew DeWitt (on your far right, with the guitar and wearing tinted glasses) who wrote the song.  And that’s the version I get to post now.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth just said the following: 

"​The only thing prohibiting transit in the Straits right now is Iran shooting at shipping.  It is open for transit should Iran not do that."

Yes, really.  

And I'm sure many people might think I'm making that up or misquoting him -- and for something this insane, you'd be right to wonder -- so, here is the video: