The Doctor is In…voking the Fifth

We just had stand-up comedian, documentary filmmaker, and professional truth-teller W. Kamau Bell join the show, where my own writers helped him destroy me. Why does this keep happening? Kamau has a new show, too, Who's With Me?, where he breaks down the current cultural and political dumpster fire and sits down with someone he genuinely admires to give them their flowers, ask the questions he actually wants answered, and land on something real we can all do to make this hellscape a little more livable. He's recently had conversations with Leslie Jones on turning pain into comedy, Robert Reich on the fight for democracy, and Daveed Diggs on chasing creative projects. It's funny, it's got heart, and it's a reassuring pat on the shoulder for anyone who needs it right now. Watch new episodes of Who's With Me? on YouTube, or listen to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Check out the full lineup and get tickets right now at CrookedCon.com. We'd love to see you there. That's CrookedCon.com. Welcome to Love It or Leave It, live from Hollywood. I'm John Lovett, and tonight, I'm pretty in pink. That's not me. I think I put the emphasis in the wrong place. And tonight, I'm pretty in pink. All right. We've got a great show for you tonight, but first, let's get into it. What a week. In a contentious hearing on the origins of COVID-19 and the government's handling of the pandemic, former national health official Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times. I'll just let this guy do the talking, said Fauci as he opened his bag and released a coughing Chinese bat into the hearing room. But first, Fauci explained why he wouldn't be answering questions, saying this of committee chair Rand Paul. The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated falsehoods. Public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote. Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion. Damn, Fauci, 85 years old and still administering jabs. Fauci's silence gave the Republicans an opportunity to do what they basically wanted to do anyway. Which is yell at him for a while. Here's Josh Hawley. You were so focused on getting every award and every drop of cash that you could, all because you wanted to be on TV. You wanted to be the sun god of science. You wanted to be the guy who was in charge of it all. You wanted to blambast Trump. You wanted to make sure that nobody else stole your spotlight. You wanted to be the guy. You had time to sit for InStyle magazine. Somewhere along the line, it became all about you. You became a narcissist and a megalomaniac and a liar. And you know what? Hawley's right. Having a lying, narcissistic megalomaniac obsessed with the spotlight and charged during a pandemic was a disaster. Also, there's something about his tone that's like, it's a mix of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park that's like, you're only obsessed if you could. You never stop to think if you should. Plus, he does a little bit of a theater kid version of Tom Cruise. Being like, Fauci, did you order the code red? You know? Here's Ohio Senator Bernie Marino. It was about six years ago today that I decided I'm going to give up my businesses, sell them all, run for office, run for the United States Senate. Here I am sitting in front of you six years later saying, who the fuck do you think you were for doing that? For six long years, I've sacrificed and campaigned and fought to finally have the chance to sit in this chair across from you to say to your face, what I've wanted to say since the dark days of the pandemic. Fuck you, bitch. I yield my time. Marino recounted a specific story about a mother who was arrested at her son's football game for not wearing a mask. If you're curious, it made the news at the time. It was from September of 2020. Of course, at the time, Ohio's mask mandate was issued by the state's Republican governor, Mike DeWine. And the guidance wasn't Fauci's alone. It came from the White House under Donald Trump. All of this is an effort to rewrite the past in order to turn Fauci into some sort of supervillain, even suggesting Fauci was responsible for the virus itself. Here's Tommy Tuberville. And we're going to go after him with everything we've got because the guy killed or had something to do with killing nine million people. Is it? It's an example, right? So that's yet to be determined how many people. Oh, yeah, we can determine it. Now we can determine it because he was in on the gain of function. He was saying you can. We understand that. Yes. You can always tell when the reporters over at Fox News attended that mandatory defamation training after the after the Dominion lawsuit. She's like, I'm not going down for this. Now, if you're not a consumer of right wing media, you might be confused. You might think I know they don't like Fauci, but I didn't realize they have decided he's a mass murderer. But maybe I ran out of free New Yorker articles. What gives? Great question. The answer is a little long, but I've promised. The producers of this program that I can whip through it in about two minutes. Start the timer. The claim is that when Fauci was at NIH, his agency funded a research grant at an organization that in turn issued a grant to the Wuhan lab where some believe the virus emerged. And that grant funded a project in which scientists created a version of a coronavirus that was more infectious in mice, which could be considered the kind of gain of function research that Fauci denied was taking place. So far, not a great set of facts for Anthony Fauci, who, and this is neither here nor there, is not Jewish. But scientists. I just believe this research cannot be the source of the pandemic because genetically the virus in this study is just not closely related enough to COVID-19, which is certainly a relief for Fauci, as is the evidence that points to the virus emerging from the nearby market and spilling over to humans from animals at least twice. At the same time, there is no question that the Chinese government had engaged in a massive coverup. The only question is what they were trying to hide. Did COVID escape from a lab or from a nearby market? We may never know, but the experts who called it a conspiracy theory were wrong. As were the efforts to protect us from uncertainty and bad facts throughout the pandemic. And that is, to me, the most important lesson of all of this, that the Republican grandstanding prevents us from actually learning. And I'm sorry there aren't more jokes in this part. Not every day can be Lindsey Graham's funeral. Fauci and public health officials were in an unprecedented emergency, terrified that the health care system would come apart, trying their best to communicate with a scared country with rapidly evolving evidence about a novel disease at a time when the president of the United States was spreading misinformation from the White House podium on a daily basis, lying about case numbers, about hydroxychloroquine and bleach, lying about masks, about the severity of the pandemic. Even so, many officials acted like pundits, gauging how much truth and nuance we could handle in order to elicit the best behavior from the public. That was because anti-vaxxers and right-wing trolls undermined faith in public health officials and acted like basic steps to protect each other was the second coming of Mao. But it was also because of a lack of faith in the rest of us. It was true of public health officials and a lot of journalists who, from a place of better safe than sorry, downplayed their own uncertainty and preferred simple directives to ones that more clearly reflected the actual complicated evidence. It may have come from genuine concern, but there was a cost. This hearing is obviously part of a fucked up Republican agenda to smear an 85-year-old doctor who devoted his life to public health so that they can perform for an audience that wants to be told that the pandemic and all that pain and trauma was really the fault of liberals. But that doesn't mean Democrats, with all of our all of our respect for experts and institutions, aren't susceptible to a kind of condescension that is not only counterproductive but politically toxic. And if we fail to learn that lesson, at our peril in the next pandemic and every election in between, stop the timer. Okay. Now, thank you for bearing with me. Here's a joke about Lindsey Graham that I thought of after the show on Tuesday. Lindsey Graham is a lot like a Trojan horse. He loved to be filled by a bunch of Greeks before killing a bunch of civilians. Speaking of dead guys, Mitch McConnell has now been absent from Congress for over a month as he recovers from what he claims was a fall. For comparison, Lindsey Graham, who is dead-dead, has missed fewer than three weeks. McConnell's office released this new proof-of-life photo, once again showing the Kentucky Senator smiling next to his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. This proves nothing. Any AI image generator could produce a comparable image with the prompt, quote, "Elaine Chao pretending her husband is alive." The photo was accompanied by a statement supposedly by the Senator, which said, "I'm not going to be able to live without my wife. I'm not going to be able to live without her. I'm still working hard to get back to my full schedule of work in the Senate," though a bad sign that the statement began with, "as the late Mitch McConnell once said." His office also released a statement from his physician saying that McConnell continues his recovery from a fall at home in June and that he is not yet medically cleared to leave the rehab facility and return to the office. Here's the problem. This statement might make sense if Mitch McConnell was a baseball player with a torn ACL or an astronaut with a bad case of eight lettuce. But he's a Senator. The job of the Senator has literally zero physical requirements. You just need to be conscious and able to communicate a yes or a no. You don't even need to be able to raise your hand in the Senate. Being able to raise your hand is considered showing off. Even Dianne Feinstein was still physically at work. She didn't know she was there, but she was there. And speaking of elder abuse, newly released audio tapes appeared to show then-Vice President Joe Biden sharing classified information with his ghostwriter in 2016. I would say, though, from here on out, as long as Biden's problems are with a ghostwriter and not a ghostbuster, I think he's in pretty good shape. The tapes were released by a conservative group connected to the Heritage Foundation after Biden lost a legal battle to keep them private. You can see why. Said Biden in the tapes to the ghostwriter, who did not have a security clearance, and this is real, quote, the next thing I have here is classified. You can hear Jill Biden yelling, Joe, no, and then what sounds like her squirting him with a spray. But it was too late. Speaking of abuse by an elder, President Trump on Wednesday announced a $22 billion renovation of Virginia's Washington Dulles International Airport at an Oval Office event alongside Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Thank you for being here as we unveil exciting plans for a major and long overdue renovation and reconstruction of Washington's really horribly thought of Dulles International Airport. We are announcing plans. To add more than five million square feet of new or renovated space will replace the current C&D concourses, which are basic disasters, all the while preserving the iconic original terminal. By Thursday, Dulles was completely covered in algae. This guy, this guy moves fast. Here is the president of the United States in the midst of an ongoing war, getting deep in the weeds of the planned airport parking garage. So we're going to have a magnificent garage. What would you say, Sean? How many, how many cars? 30, 32,000 parking spaces. 32,000. It'll be actually the largest garage in the world. 32,000 is big. Oh boy, you could hold a lot of classified documents in there, said Joe Biden. The president, believe it or not, went into even further detail about the garage. Mostly above ground. We don't like down. People don't like going down underneath. I'd guess Trump has gone his entire life without going down. Underneath. Usually the kind of crass stuff kills. But not today. A sophisticated crowd. Here, the president continued. It's an impossible airport. You get off a bus, you go into a train, you get from train, you get onto another bus. It's a worse airport. He says this like he personally experiences airports. The last time Trump went through an airport, you could smoke in there with a gun in your carry on it. And a full. Size shampoo bottle in each hand. And look, we've had a lot of fun tonight. But here's the thing. Trump is getting rid of the dullest airport people movers. And I don't know if you're familiar with the dullest airport people movers, but they are terrible. And so I guess what I'm ending on is make America great again. All right. We've got a great show for you tonight. And we'll be right back with David Diggs. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. Love It or Leave It is brought to you by Zazzle. Gift giving can be tough for a lot of us. There's nothing worse than showing up at the airport and saying, hey, I'm going to do this. I'm up with something generic that you're not even sure you're gift to you will like. That's where Zazzle comes in to save the day. Zazzle is a custom marketplace where you can basically take any product, a mug, a tote bag, a card, a phone case, and personalize it for yourself or someone you love. Browse millions of designs or create your own from scratch and customize the product to your taste. Either way, you're the designer. Everything is made to order. So you never have to worry about an item being out of stock. You can pick it, customize it, and you're done. Over 30 million customers have trusted Zazzle with their most important gifts. Yours is next. You need one on Zazzle. 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So we've invited some exciting new people to join us at CrookedCon, a bunch of creators, a bunch of folks you probably know from YouTube who make sense of the news with humor and just sort of piping hot takes. You'll be able to spot them at CrookedCon and meet them at happy hours and Q&As and workshops. Check out a few of the many joining us at CrookedCon.com. And you can grab your tickets there, too. We will see you in DC. And if you're interested in getting tickets to love it or leave it at Crooked.com slash events, where we're always adding new guests, check out our lineup, including comedians Elliot Glazer, Lisa Traeger, and California Congressman Ted Lieu. All right. Please welcome to the stage the Tony and Grammy-winning actor, rapper, singer, and objectively a man who does not have time to be here, but we're glad he is. It's Daveed Diggs. Hi. Good to see you. Thanks for being here. So, hi. Hi. So, I want to start by talking about The Boys. Yeah. On the final season, you're Oh Father. You're nominated for the song you sing as the character, and the song is so fucking good. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great song. It's cool when a silly song that you get to help create about, like, turning a superhero into God instead of God, like, ends up being a bop, you know, that's okay. Were there any villains that you were inspired by? Were there any villains you loved growing up that you brought to this? How fun to get to play a, like, a godlike supervillain. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, what was interesting, and I was sort of aware that he was going to be one of the villains on the show, but you can't think about your characters like that, right? So, I really, like, actually just studied a whole bunch of televangelists, which was a wild rabbit hole for a Jew to go down. It was super fun. I ended up, like, really appreciating the performance aspect of that. It is, like, I spent a lot of, yeah, my YouTube algorithms got all fucked, man. Can I tell you something? I used to watch, I used to be fascinated by Joel Osteen. Yeah. Yeah. He's good. Genius. He is good. Yeah, damn. Winks a lot. Yeah. But captivating. Yo, it's not an easy sell, God. Yeah. Yeah. You got to get them. You got to get them. You got to really get people hype. It's a lot of smoke and mirrors, a lot of pomp and circumstance, all the good stuff. But what's funny about The Boys is it's, like, it's very, like, it's very silly, but, like, The Boys is an amazing show because it figured out a way to parody what's happening, even though it can be parodied. I know. I know. And I imagine that's one of the reasons. I mean, I was talking to some of the writers before the season started, and they were saying that how it was progressively getting harder as real life got more and more through the looking glass that, like, you know, you don't want it to feel like a documentary, but it's pretty close. Yeah. Without the kind of being able to explode people's heads. Yeah. Which I think is good. I think it's good that you can't do that. Yeah. I think we couldn't handle it. If there's one lesson from The Boys, it's good that we don't have these powers, among other lessons. Right. Right. And there are other lessons. Some. But, yeah, that's the main one, the main takeaway. So you're also in I Want Your Sex, which is directed by Greg Araki, who's on the show. Yeah. Now, you are kind of in, you're, you are in between the, Greg has strong feelings as a Gen Xer about Gen Z. Yeah. And, like, what, what has happened because of them living online and being afraid of, of kind of discomfort, which, uh, what was it like for you kind of navigating what he was doing as, like, a millennial? Yeah. I mean, I think I'm, like, the first millennial also. I was class of 2000, right? So, like, I sort of skew closer to Greg's views anyway, I think. Oh, you think of your, oh, see, because I, I, okay, you're, you, you feel like you're first wave millennial, but you have a, you think you have a Gen X energy? I do. Well, I just think I'm, I think if we're going to compare us to Gen Z, I'm closer to that, that side of it. And so, yeah, so I, I definitely, when I read the I was like, yeah, you're right. Why aren't kids having more sex? Why are we so hung up about this? Yeah, so I think Greg, what's so wonderful about him is just that he, as a filmmaker, he is awfully concerned with the experience of the audience as opposed to the film, right? I feel like sometimes you work with filmmakers and they're very fussy about the film itself. He is a genius and brilliant at structuring the film and all of that, but what he's super concerned about is, like, I wanted to make this film really fun and I want to talk about sex in a really fun way. I want people to leave this film, like, having had a great time and maybe horny. Not so horny. Horny enough to get home, you know? I guess maybe not. Who cares? Let people have a good time. I don't know. Yeah, this is all part of the problem. Why aren't we doing it in the theater? That's part of the problem. Hey, you do. People might not know this, but you have a hip-hop group called Clipping. I do. And that you've been part of basically longer than anything else. I know. Does anybody here know this band? You know about Clipping? Oh, shit. Fans of Clipping. That always makes me very happy. You have to be kind of a weirdo to be in that band. I think it's cool. I am a weirdo. Yeah, you check. You'd be part of it. Yeah, it makes sense. Let's check out a clip rather than explain it. I want to show people a clip from the Tiny Desk concert you did. Gotta admit, that looked like fun. That looked like fun. The fuck is fun when a war ain't done? If a war ain't done, then the war ain't won. You swore to uphold all the pillars of the Federated. Some, some, ah. That song you do. So, for people listening, that is the Tiny Desk concert, and you've taken a bunch of objects like a mug or ball bearings or other things, and there are these mechanisms that are basically turning them into drums and backing instruments. Why'd you do that? We, you know, we've been fans of the Tiny Desk series since it came out, but it, and it's gotten so big, right? They used to happen maybe like once every couple of months, and now there's, you know, four a week or something. They've gotten huge, and as they've expanded, we were like, this is great. I love all of these, but there's not enough desk for something called Tiny Desk. So we were always like, if they ever invite us on, we're going to use as much desk as possible, and we start, like the actual desk in there, and we would always joke about this idea of trying to program little MIDI-controlled, robots to like play junk, like their own, their coffee mugs, and their little awards, whatever, statues, whatever was on their messy-ass desk, we were going to try to convert our beats to be played by that stuff, and then they invited us on, and we were like, oh shit, all right, we got a chance to do this, and it was way too much work. It was really, really hard to do for a one-off for everyone involved. I mean, we had to sort of, Bill and Jonathan, my bandmates, really had to spend like a lot of time trying to figure out how to program those things, and then, the whole staff of Tiny Desk, they usually don't, you come in for a few minutes before the show, and they do a sound check. We had to, we forced them to all come to work the night before, and stay there until like midnight, like setting this shit up. You had to build all these little, build them, and then they have to mic all of that crap individually, you know, so it was a much more technical undertaking than they were ready for, but they asked us to do the fucking show, so you knew what kind of band this was. There's something about like, I feel like what Tiny, part of the reason Tiny Desk is appealing, I think part of the reason it's so fun to see you kind of just manipulate these real objects and make something cool and imperfect is we're all like, what do humans do? What are humans up to these days? And like kind of proving our like, hey, you can't do this with us, you can't do this yet, you robot freaks, you know? But also just like the kind of the ingenuity and kind of, kind of a DIY, like creative process as like what that adds to it. Yeah, yeah. I love, one of the things I love so much about this band is we're always trying to do something new and it is experimental music in the sense that like, we don't ever know if it's going to work or not when we start doing it. And so every single idea is like, let's see what happens. And we're in a, what we've gotten really good at is we know when a thing is done, when we've done it, we've completed the idea. We don't always know if it's good or not, but we know we've completed the idea and usually we'll put that out. So I, yeah, I like that. What doesn't, what, what have you been like, you know what? This didn't work. We tried something interesting and actually we learned a lot. And if you don't ever miss a flight, you're getting to the airport too early, but nevertheless, that's not going out. There's only, there's only maybe two. So the, the rule is all three of us have to agree to put it out. And it's only, there's only really two songs. Songs that we like argue about that two of us are like, this is done. And one of us is like, absolutely not. We can't put this out. And so what that means, there's not a ton of back catalog, which for our, for our fans is sometimes upsetting because it takes us a long time between albums to put stuff out. But yeah, and, and, and it just, this process is slow, but yeah, there's not like we have a ton of songs we're sitting on. Most of them are already out. What's like a, what are you disagreeing about on a current song where two of you want it to go out and one of you is like, no, it's not ready. Like, you don't have to get that. What is something that is, what are you, what are you disagreeing about? That one is, it is lyrically and sonically referencing like a really specific and very, very brief trend in like Chicago gangster rap music. And if it's not a, if you're not from that scene and also, which none of us are. And, and if, if you're not now, you know, nine years ago, it sounds silly. It does sound like goofy, but that it was a real thing at the time. And we, and we, I think mimicked it pretty well. But I think it's mostly one of us is like, you waited, we waited to, this had to come out then. And even then we shouldn't have been the ones doing it. And he's not wrong, but I still think it's a really good song. So I, I'm not the one who doesn't want it to come out. Isn't it? There's something interesting though about like, I think, I think about it with movies and whether they get a release in the theaters, because I'll, I, I obviously will never see the Godfather in theaters or, or any of the movies that most movies spend every, every, every day after a movie is out of the theaters is another day. It will live in the world and never be in the theaters again. But there's something that matters about when it happened and what happened when it happened. Right. Because if that's not, if you had released that song, when it was at the time, it would still be now. Yes. And as relevant now as it, it would be now were released today. And yet it feels wrong to not release it today because it didn't exist then. But he, but if it was now, it wouldn't matter what happened then because there's only now, you know, isn't that an interesting thing? It is. Or is it? It, if I were a little more high, uh, uh, no, it is. And I actually think music is, is one of these things that they are. It's very, it's very particular to music because everything is a time capsule of the, it, all music is, is, uh, is this is what we were thinking right now. They are like, and I think in a way that even movies aren't because, um, it just because we're watching people and we still have relationships with those people, but something about having this captured audio, your voice was only this way this time when you recorded it on this take and you only, this person mixed it and this, all of these things only happened that one time. And I do find albums, people don't care about albums anymore, but in particular, like albums tend to be these, time capsules that I find really fascinating. And, um, yeah, yeah. So it is, it is this constant battle of like, did we miss the boat on that? And does that matter? But I think in some ways it does, I think because it's no longer what we're thinking about. Right. So we should have, it wouldn't be part of the same time capsule. I don't know. I'll tell you who's not thinking about this. Claude. Uh, thank you to be digs. Go see. I want your sex in theaters today, July 31st. Then maybe have sex if you want. Do it. Uh, but only if you want to be, we'll be joining us again at the end of the show. And we'll be right back. Love it or leave it is brought to you by Bombas. Outdoor season is in full swing. Whether you're heading to the park, lounging at the beach or firing up the grill, Bombas makes your go-to summer essentials for all day comfort. Tackle every activity with high performance activity, specific socks, engineer for golf, yoga, gym training, and running made with breathable sweat, wicking fabrics to deliver all day comfort from start to finish. Compression socks usually scream hospital, but Bombas completely changed the game. Their options are, ultra soft, super supportive, and genuinely stylish. A total must have for all of your summer trips. Bombas sandals and slides are made with plush EVA foam for maximum marshmallow like comfort all summer long. I have them. They're fantastic. Lightweight, waterproof, and ridiculously cushy. 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You know my next guest from coming of age movies, but you're about to know him from coming to the stage right now. Please welcome Anthony Michael Hall. Good to see you. Yeah, that's great. Nice to meet you. You know, we were talking about, about you. That's what you have to do to get ready for a show. It wasn't weird or anything. But that you managed to transition from nerd to jock. Any tips? Just eat good. Eat good. Yeah. And, uh, I don't know. No tips. It just took a while. You know, I've, I've went from being too young in the industry to now I'm a guy in his fifties, you know? So it's interesting. It's been a long run. Uh, no tips really. No, I don't really have any tips. What was that period like when you were like, no, like you're no longer young, but they're not seeing you as an adult. You know, there's, there's a kind of a trope of like, uh, uh, uh, for like, um, Disney stars, they do something super sexy to prove that they're, that they're like, that's like the Hollywood thing. Like they like have to do their sexy or they could be that, but like something that's like, I'm, I'm no longer Disney trope prior trope. Like it's, I'm no longer Disney. All right. I'm an adult now. I've made the switch. What, but, but what was it like for you? Honestly, just decade by decade. It's, it's always been a challenge. You know, I, I, I chose a business, uh, that gives you no guarantees. Of course, as we know, right. So I've just had to scrap at it decade by decade, you know? So in the eighties, I was a teenager, you know, my twenties, it was more challenging, I think, uh, to get work. And then you just keep going, you know, you have to have a thick skin in the industry for sure. Um, so I'm just grateful for the journey. You know, I've had a long career and I enjoy the work that I do. Um, but yet truly it comes with no guarantees. So you got to really want it and just kind of keep scraping away at it. Was there ever a moment because a lot of people don't, don't keep up with you. They don't keep at it. They say, they, they, they give, they, they say I've had enough. Yeah. Did you ever have a moment where you're like, you know what? I'm going to become a lawyer or you know what? I'm going into market, whatever. Not where I made that decision, but certainly that self-doubt can creep in for any of us in any industry. Absolutely. So that's part of what you battle, I think, you know? Um, but I think at a certain point you just have to decide to become unstoppable. So that's how I felt for myself because again, with no guarantees, there's no company to fall back on. There's no a team. There's no, you know, so show business is interesting in that regard, but I'm just grateful. And I thank God I've had a creative life and have been able to, uh, you know, persist and keep going. So I think it really requires a certain tenacity though, for sure. But to me, to consider yourself unstoppable. Yeah. That's always such a nice sort of like kind of, well, because you, you, you deal with so much rejection, I think in a lot of different aspects of the industry that are tough to deal with. And a lot of that, you know, sends people packing. I think a lot of times, you know, to, to, to deal with that sort of to outlast uncertainty to some degree, I think is important. Did anybody ever, did anyone ever tell you to stop? Did anyone ever say like, that's enough, Anthony Michael Hall. You gave it a good run. Like your word, give it up. You gave it a good run, but it's over for you. Yeah. No, no, no, no. Maybe they could have helped me. No, no. No, I just, you know, I just, I love what I do. And I've, I've learned to, you know, I appreciate the work. And at the same time, it doesn't define me who I am. I'm still, I'm a person outside of all the work that I've done. I don't agree. Yeah. It's okay. So, so you're on nation. How did you start writing speeches in Washington? That's what I want to know. Oh boy. Is that a long story? No. Well, what I was trying to be a comedian. Were you? And that's something where, boy, a lot of people have told me to stop. And yet I won't. But no, but I was, I was right. I was doing standup. I was thinking about being a lawyer. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I ended up interning on the Kerry campaign in 2004. And there had been several hurricanes that year. And they needed somebody to write statements about the hurricane. It's like, our thoughts go to the people of Louisiana. And so I did those and that led to a job. And then I ended up writing some jokes for Hillary Clinton when I was in DC for a roast of Barbara Walters. Interesting. And that was the thing that kind of got me in the door to start writing speeches and becoming hired as a very junior speech writer. And then I was off to the races. I was off to the races. Very cool. Now, you're on, I'm trying to think of a transition. But, but, but, but speaking of Washington, D.C., you're on Nation's Dumbest on Fox, in which celebrities compete in a series of challenges and try to be eliminated first. Like I said, show business can be rough at times. You know what? To be honest with you, John, this really took me by surprise. I'm a happily married guy. I've been married for five years. And as we know at home, you gotta, you gotta have more than one TV. So I'm not someone who loves reality shows. My wife loves a lot of the dating shows and a lot of reality space stuff. So this was really kind of fun. It was funny for me when I first heard about it. I was like, wait a minute, I don't know if this is me, but I started hearing about the people that are involved and I just really embraced it. I just kind of reframed my thinking and went up to Toronto and shot this a couple months ago. And I had a great experience with all these people. I really did. You know, it was really fun. It was an interesting cross-section of people. We all got along great. And it was really fun and goofy. And Fox paid me a boatload of money. But anyway. Nice. Yeah. I didn't get that much for being on Survivor, to be honest. But I wasn't there very long. So, yeah, and how much time I spent getting ready to go and then being stuck there because I got out so soon. We can call SAG. They're nearby, somewhere at home. Yeah, I don't, I think that they wouldn't help me. Now, did you have a mindset, like, it has to be strange to all of a sudden find yourself on a reality show. You're very comfortable in front of cameras, but you're traditionally a character and it gets edited after. Sure. It's a little bit more. No, it was. It was awkward because typically I have to prepare something and have a role, you know, and I have worked to be done before I get to the set and this was just like, come as you are, you know, and it was really kind of funny getting to the set and there was about literally an army of cameramen. There was about 25 to 30 people and the cameras in the hallway and the whole thing. But honestly, it was very well produced and thought out. It was a show that was, I guess, a hit in Norway and some other countries in Europe. So it's sort of a proven model and we had a great time with it. You know, there were about four challenges per day. Everything from, you know, trivia to math, science, all kinds of stuff, some physical stuff. It was really a lot of fun. So I really enjoyed all the people and that was a real nice surprise for me. I didn't expect to have as much fun as I did. And you were saying backstage that you were bullied by Jojo Siwa. But that Ice-T and Carmen Electra and Andrew Yang came to your defense. Very funny. No, you know, it's like the things that you learn about someone, like Ice-T, for example, right? You know, at some point, he shared some stuff which was amazing. You know, he's like, you know, I never did a drink or a drug in my life but I was robbing jewelry stores since the 80s. You know, and then he was also an army ranger. You know, Dr. Drew, I'd been on one of his shows in years past. Steve-O's a great guy. I had a lot of fun with Steve-O. All these people were great and there were surprises from everyone. You know, everybody surprised me with their sense of humor and knowledge. You know, it was a lot of fun. It was really cool. What's the dumbest thing you did this week? Agreeing to the show. No, I'm kidding. No, the dumbest thing I did this week, let me see. I put my Swiffer pads in the fridge. Really? Well, I have a three-year-old so we're just kind of exiting the potty training thing. We're just trying to get into potty training now. It's tough. It's tough. I've been changing diapers for three years straight. I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted. What's it like having a three-year-old right now? Oh, he's kicking my ass. It's a lot. It's a lot of work. It's incredible. Because, I mean, you're in your 50s. You're a little old. You're an older dad. I mean, if I become a dad, I'll be an older dad. I know that. I'm thinking about that. Life cardio is what I'm getting out of it. Because, like, when we were getting ready for the show, I bent down in front of the desk to talk to Sarah and Raman about a joke, and then I realized I was just stuck down there. Very nice. Because I occasionally get my body into the position of someone in their 20s, but getting up, I'm in my 40s. You can sit like you're in your 20s, but I get up in my 40s. I agree. So what's it like getting down to pick up a three-year-old? How's that back doing? It's a lot of work. You've got to get core. You've got to get some core going. Definitely do. Part of the fitness thing we were talking about, about being a jock. Good thing you're not a nerd anymore. You might have some problems. You're a jock dad. A jock dad in his 50s. That's it. That's it. But it's a lot of fun. I mean, my kid is great. He's all goo-goo-ga-ga over mom, and then he just comes over and promptly swift kicks me in the nuts, or drop kicks me in the shins. It's a lot. It's fun. It's a great time. Honestly, I'm loving being a parent. Speaking of combat, you're on SWAT. Transitions for 800. Now, on SWAT, you play a badass, a nation's dumbest. You ever thought about throwing Jack Whitehall, the host, into a paddy wagon or something? Really kind of like be a crossover rep or something? Hey, I had a lot of fun with Jack. There was a lot of people that I didn't know much about them. Like JoJo, for example. I'd heard about her for years. I knew she kind of grew up in the reality space. Jack, it turns out, is an actor on top of being a stand-up comic. I'd seen his series that he did on Netflix. with his father which is a lot of fun um but he was really cool too he was really invested in the show too you know he was really kind of going through the motions with us and uh he was really in there in the trenches it was a fun shoot it was honestly we did it in 12 days and each day represented like one episode and there were like four challenges uh each episode it was a lot of fun now anthony michael hall you've been in this industry yes a very long time yes you've been bopping around la since you were but a boy we have to imagine you know a lot all the ins and outs of this town and so we want to know them too which is why we're going to pick your brain for a best of the best in a rapid fire segment we're calling anthony michael hall of fame all right first up where do i get the best sandwich in los angeles i go to a place called in new york pizzeria in the marina pizza place and i i get a nice sub over there it's not so healthy but uh i don't know what's your favorite advice oh man there's a lot of great sandwiches in la la is a great sandwich town is it's becoming a great sandwich town what's your what's your fiat is great uh i love that i love the sandwiches there uh uh uh uncle paulie's deli those are great a lot of great sandwich options who is the best director you've ever worked with i've worked with some good ones christopher nolan i had a small part of the dark knight years ago he's pretty good he's pretty good that nolan he's pretty good christopher nolan he is he's pretty good boy he's good when i worked with david gordon green i did a film halloween kills a couple years back he was great he was a lot of fun that was with jamie lee curtis yeah she was great to work with i think gordon green reminded me actually a lot of john hughes very loose and very easygoing very collaborative fun guy to work with cool yeah uh who's the best actor to be stuck with for a long day in which you don't have much to do who'd you have a good hang with over the years well downy years ago we worked on a bunch of stuff together but it's been a long time since i worked with robert he's a lot of fun yeah that's it he went through he went through a phase where he was too much fun and now he's the right and then the right amount of fun right now right right right that's part of it too what's your favorite back is dr doom i guess yeah yeah dr doom dr doom what's the best movie theater in los angeles i'd say the santa rama dome i think it's coming back coming back it's coming back how exciting is that yes what's your favorite movie theater snack uh i'm a popcorn guy even if i've eaten lunch you gotta have some popcorn gotta have some popcorn i'm not around i'm getting popcorn i'm getting popcorn every goddamn time yeah you know i'm doing i'm buying a reese's pieces i'm throwing them on top night you go there just put them in nice shake it up there shake it up what's the best restaurant for a power lunch an old school power lunch power lunch i never have power lunch i ate a i ate a slop bowl at my desk yeah nice i don't have too many power lunches but i've had some interesting uh you know sort of business lunches the grill classic oh the class beverly hills yeah wow you at the grill and a power lunch yes that's so cool see anthony michael hall and nation's dumbest on fox hulu or disney plus you can also watch uh watch swat exiles this september on stars yes when we come back we have a golden egg okay let's do it hey don't go anywhere there's more of love it or leave it coming up hey everyone my name is elijah cone and i've been a producer here at crooked media for a decade i love making our shows with the smart creative people who work here and hearing from all of you who listen every week but the thing that i'm proudest of is that video we made of yvette gromuswami grunting while hitting baseballs no wait sorry the thing i'm proudest of is the work we do through vote save america see we don't want our shows to only leave you feeling anxious about the state of the world we want to give you something you can actually do about it just this year our listeners have raised millions of dollars and filled thousands of volunteer shifts to help candidates and causes in the 2026 midterms and we have no plans to slow down as we head into 2028 as far as i know there's no other media company that does what crooked does we make entertaining thoughtful content that brings people into politics and then we give them a direct way to get involved and if you believe in that mission one of the best ways to support us is by becoming a paid subscriber your subscription helps us keep making the shows you love and building a media company that doesn't just talk about politics but helps people change them and if the mission sounds great but you feel like you need some sweet subscriber benefits to get you over the finish line we've got you covered subscribers get ad-free shows plus excellent exclusive podcasts newsletters and much much more so thank you for listening and supporting what we do head to crooked.com slash friends today to learn more and become a subscriber this is martha stewart have you ever started a new tradition here's a hint do it with lennox this year lennox will make the holiday something truly special how exciting it is every year to unbox all of our favorite decor and smile at the memories the lennox spice village is the perfect holiday gift for someone you love including yourself calling back to the originals from 1989 now you can share the memories and the flavors of the season it's a charming collection of hand-painted houses imagine ginger from a georgian townhouse or pepper from your swiss chalet lennox has brought timeless beauty and quality to tables and homes for generations baking together sharing recipes decorating suddenly simple pleasures become part of your holiday story forever with lennox collect those moments every year or treat your favorite someone remember when you give a gift that lasts beyond the holidays it's an amazing feeling when you give lennox you just might start a new tradition discover the full collection at lennox.com slash spice village and we're back please welcome back to the stage come on back to the security side we're back we're back come on through all right great all right thank you for joining us once again it's time for the egg of truth it's too long too long a sting still going fuck here's how it works we have a collection of uh conversation starters dinner party cocktail conversation starters that we've made up uh and we're just gonna uh uh ask them and we have to answer them honestly because it is the egg of truth first up uh when you feel a pain in your elbow where is that pain is the pain in your elbow in your brain or does it not have a location i actually i was at i was at the doctor today because i'm a hypochondriac and the um and i do i was complaining about elbow pain my yeah mine was like on the in on the inside but it would sometimes rotate to the outside anyway my doctor definitely told me it was in my brain like most of us that would have been my guess too you think the brain you think the brain but it's not because it's in our elbows yeah but then it's also in our brains so maybe it's nowhere does it the shit hurts right but where is the hurt where is the hurt it's societal yeah next question would you rather lose your sense of smell or have a sense of smell so powerful that you're basically in a perpetual smell prison i'd rather lose my sense of smell i think yeah i think that's probably right i think i agree with that it would be bad it would be bad but it's it's the absence of something versus the presence of something i know but do you when you do you also lose taste right you lose a whole bunch of taste you can't smell thing that's i don't know maybe i'm taking smell prison wow i don't know i don't i i should ask my dog about it right that's how they live isn't it yeah he seems all right with it right right but they are a bit confused sometimes because they're like i smell a neighbor you know right he also eats poop so right right that's that's an important part of it as well i was once on an airplane and it smelled really bad and so i put earplugs in my nose um and then i sucked up one of the earplugs into my sinus cavity and then i thought i was gonna have to tell them to land the plane but i couldn't bring myself to do that and so i went into the bathroom of the plane and i with every fiber of my being did a kind of ma like a like holding one side like jumping up in the air and falling and screaming out of my nose as hard as i possibly could and it flew out of my nose and hit the mirror and fell down and if you could bottle the relief you could be a billionaire because that was the greatest fucking feeling in my life because i went from i need to tell the pilots to land to nothing's happening it was terrible i knew people on the plane too it would have been horrible it i was in agony we were still taxiing that's something that happened to me once anthony michael hall that i did to myself what do you do to go back to sleep when you wake up in the middle of the night i've started uh i've started listening to podcasts really yeah not this one yeah well this is this this is too exciting that's a compliment because you're not trying to follow me you're not trying to follow me you're not trying to follow me because i'm all asleep when you're listening to the show you're being entertained you're laughing too hard getting adrenaline from all the jokes i i listen to a podcast that i do really like but that are like i i listen to like sports podcasts that tend to use a lot of numbers you know that seems to do it for me yeah i like it i'm paying but it also puts me right out i used to do c-span for that i would put on c-span and just have the droning of the floor noise and that helped me fall asleep just to quiet the demons anthony michael hall i actually turn on like the ocean wave sounds for my son a man my wife and my son is sleeping with them and i'm like oh my god i'm so tired i'm so tired i'm so tired i'm so tired for the last few months so that helps when i'm when i'm up that's good one thing i saw on tiktok that i've been stealing and doing is um trying to like get my brain in a sleep mode by saying random words by using the first letter and the last letter so like you'd be like abacus september rhododendron november two months i fucked it up already uh that works for you though i think so i feel like that's just how i write my next song probably like this i'm up forever once i start that game final question do you eat food off the ground of course i'm a toddler what do you mean do you put off the ground do my go in my own kitchen it's occasionally yeah if something falls we'll see yeah i think in my own kitchen i just don't know how i would know make it better because he's a good rule he is constantly giving me the end of something the crust of something that he doesn't want and i've just i'm just at the point where i'm just eating it whatever it is it's because there's so much just waste but how would i know he drops shit all the time and picks it back up and starts eating and like i don't know yeah i didn't even think about it until you asked that question kitty a kid will pick a penny up off the ground and put in their mouths yeah not even but not outside and not if either the ground or the food is wet oh and we'll be right back and we're back and we've now arrived at the end of the show which means it's time for second thoughts here's how it works we've all been laughing it up but my producers have been keeping a meticulous list of everything they wish i hadn't said or done during tonight's recording uh occasionally and it clearly hasn't happened today i can also receive a rare kudos none today none today so that's sad for me and i welcome anything that you might regret from tonight's show that you want to express uh fauci isn't jewish but to be clear we'd be happy to have him uh i got mad at the audience for not laughing at a joke about trump not going down on women which does force you to picture trump going down on a woman which means you guys were right oh one regret that they think i should have it to about my conversation with you david is my question was uh about your tiny desk concert why did you do that it seems appropriate you know and so i probably could have come up with a better question no no no i liked it uh i didn't ask uh anthony michael hall if he liked my pretty and pink joke i wasn't in the that film but i didn't take offense either it's 16 candles it was kind of like the second you know what i'll tell you what happened but you do look pretty in pink thank you for saying that i have a new regret here's what happened five minutes before the show we deleted the joke there because it wasn't working and we were like we just it was like an off the cuff like pretty in pink john hughes get it in there i did also admit to inhaling an air plug air plug through my nose into my sinus cavity and then having to force it out in the airport airplane restroom i'm just gonna be laughing about that story for a long time so i think any regrets anthony michael hall other than not asking more questions about what this was i'll take the fifth and leave it there okay and that's our show thank you so much to david diggs and anthony michael hall there are 95 days until the midterms have a great night and have a great weekend love it or leave it is a crooked media production our show is produced by kendra james bill mcgrath kelsey gante and me john love it our production team includes hallie keeper sarah lazarus raman borsellino peter miller david tolls claudia shang jay banks gavin purcell and matt and our staff is proudly unionized with the writers guild of america east hey everyone my name is elijah cone and i've been a producer here at crooked media for a decade i love making our shows with the smart creative people who work here and hearing from all of you who listen every week but the thing that i'm proudest of is that video we made of yvette ramaswamy grunting while hitting baseballs no wait sorry the thing i'm proudest of is the work we do through vote save america see we don't want our shows to only leave you feeling anxious about the state of the world we want to give you something you can actually do about it just this year we're going to be doing a show called vote save america and we're going to be doing a show our listeners have raised millions of dollars and filled thousands of volunteer shifts to help candidates and causes in the 2026 midterms and we have no plans to slow down as we head into 2028 as far as i know there's no other media company that does what crooked does we make entertaining thoughtful content that brings people into politics and then we give them a direct way to get involved and if you believe in that mission one of the best ways to support us is by becoming a paid subscriber your subscription helps us keep making the shows you love and building a media company that you can support and that you can support us by becoming a paid subscriber that doesn't just talk about politics but helps people change them and if the mission sounds great but you feel like you need some sweet subscriber benefits to get you over the finish line we've got you covered subscribers get ad-free shows plus excellent exclusive podcasts newsletters and much much more so thank you for listening and supporting what we do head to crooked.com slash friends today to learn more and become a subscriber this is dr laurie santos from the happiness lab research shows that social connection is important for happiness and something that research comes back to in the next episode of the happiness lab is that social connection is is that the little moments together matter more than we think and that's why i'm such a big fan of rituals think about the glassware you use for all your dinner parties ones that make your events feel right without even thinking about it and that's why i've been using the woodstock tumbler from simon pierce they're hand-blown one at a time with the kind of character you only get from a human hand something made that slowly has a way of reminding you to savor the moments that really matter find yours at simon pierce.com that's s-i-m-o-n-p-e-a-r-c-e.com simon pierce made by hand one at a time this is martha stewart have you ever started a new tradition here's a hint do it with lennox lennox has always meant timeless holiday beauty and the lennox space village is the perfect holiday gift imagine ginger from a georgian townhouse or pepper from your favorite swiss chalet lennox has brought timeless beauty and quality to tables and homes and it's a great way to make your day for generations baking together sharing recipes decorating suddenly simple pleasures become part of your holiday story forever when you give a gift that lasts beyond the holidays it's an amazing feeling when you give lennox you just might start a new tradition discover the full collection at lennox.com spice village