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Are you really buying a car online on AutoTrader right now? Really? At a playground? Yeah, really. Look at these listings from dealers.
Wow, your search can really get that specific. Really? And you just put in your info and boom, cars in your budget. Mom needs a second, honey. You can really have it delivered?
Really? Or I can pick it up at the dealership. One sec, sweetie. Mommy's buying a car. Mommy's.
Uh, I think your kid is walking up the slide. Kyle, again, really? Auto trader. Buy your car online. Really?
Good morning. Jane Polly is off this weekend. I'm Lee Cowan, and this is Sunday morning. Happy Father's Day! From coast to coast, we Americans are celebrating dear old ad.
But along with cookouts and fun, the subject of parentage in this country has become a seriously fraught one. At issue Is birthright citizenship, the promise in our Constitution guaranteeing U.S. citizenship to just about anyone born on American soil? This morning Moraca. takes a look at this contentious debate.
President Trump has long voiced his opposition to birthright citizenship. The guarantee that nearly everyone born on American soil is automatically a U.S. citizen. It goes to the central meaning of what it is to be an American. And I'll say, going way back to the revolutionary roots of this country: the Supreme Court will decide.
Coming up on Sunday morning. As a comedian, writer, and actor, it's safe to say that John Mulaney might be among the funniest people performing today. And on this Father's Day we should also note that he's got two little kids at home. a role he takes very seriously. as our Tracy Smith discovered.
Comics superstar John Mulaney has hit the heights of show business, but he says it's nothing like the experience of becoming a dad. How do you think fatherhood changed how you look at the world? It's like these people came in that just, I don't know, make me like the world a lot more. The world according to John Mulaney. My joke is that I'm like Louis Farrakhan.
I mean a lot to a small group of people. Ahead on Sunday morning. There's no shortage of events marking the upcoming 250th birthday of these United States. One of them, honors a president, who even though he died more than 100 years ago, is still considered one of our most popular. The Rough Rider Himself, T.R.
Teddy Roosevelt. You might think Theodore Roosevelt would already have a presidential library given his consistent popularity and all, but he didn't. The idea of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library had been kicking around for 100 years and it just had never found the right moment. That moment has finally arrived. Why now?
And Why in the lowly badlands of North Dakota?
Well, saddle up and get in his arena. Later. on Sunday morning. Connor Knighton this morning takes a deep dive into the surprising world of seahorses, fish whose males experience pregnancy and give birth. Robert Costa catches up with musician Shooter Jennings, now spreading the gospel of his father.
late country star Wayland Jennings. Dr. John Lepouc will address the growing and troubling trend of childhood obesity. Plus, a story from Steve Hartman. Commentary from contributor Charles Blow.
and more all this Sunday morning for Father's Day, June 21st, 2026. We'll be back. after this. It's among the subjects that have gotten more scrutiny during the second Trump administration. Birthright citizenship.
So just what is it? And why are some trying to restrict it. Here's Mo Rocka. It's called birthright citizenship, and it's spelled out in the first line of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the State wherein they reside.
Everyone born in the United States Is automatically a U.S. citizen at birth, regardless of any aspect of their parentage or lineage, with very narrow exceptions being for the children of diplomats and invading occupying armies. Everyone else is a citizen of birth. Amanda Frost is a law professor at the University of Virginia. On the spectrum of constitutional issues, if there is ambiguous over here and crystal clear over here, where do you place this citizenship clause?
I place it at the crystal clear end. But polls show that the American public is pretty much evenly divided on whether citizenship should be granted at birth to the children of undocumented immigrants. And in January of 2025. This next order relates to the definition of birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment of the United States.
Okay, that's a good one. Birthright. That's a big one. President Trump issued an executive order stating that the 14th Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States. The order would deny citizenship to the vast majority of children born to parents here illegally or temporarily.
Roughly a quarter of a million children a year would be affected. The executive order was blocked by a lower court and is now before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court first weighed in on the issue of citizenship nearly 170 years ago in what's generally considered its most disgraceful decision. The infamous decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford.
This is the decision from 1857 in which the Supreme Court said that no black person, whether enslaved or free, could ever be a citizen of the United States. And Chief Justice Tawney, who wrote that opinion, said if you don't like it, you can amend the Constitution. And that's just what happened after the Civil War in 1868 with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment.
So, the Reconstruction Congress wanted to make it clear that all 4 million formerly enslaved people were citizens of the United States. They also addressed the fact that more and more immigrants are coming to U.S. shores, and they recognized that the children of immigrants would also be citizens. But 30 years later, the case of Wong Kim Ark came before the Supreme Court. Born in San Francisco to Chinese parents, Wong was denied reentry to the US after a trip to China.
Wong fought back, insisting on his rights as an American citizen. For me, Wong Kimmar represents. the common man. Siblings Norman and Sandra Wong are descendants of Wong Kim Ark. He wasn't rich, he wasn't famous.
He didn't have any extraordinary abilities. what he did. was the willingness to stand up and assert his right as an American. At a time of virulent anti-Chinese bigotry, the court ruled in Wong's favor, which seemed to settle the issue of birthright citizenship. But there have been dissenters.
The reality is that the clause is very terse and there are a number of issues that it did not address directly. And the issue that is of greatest concern today is the status of children of unauthorized aliens. And that was an issue that no one who supported the clause or opposed the clause addressed at the time of the 14th Amendment's writing and ratification. The Trump administration has relied on the scholarship of political scientist Rogers Smith to make their case. Smith, who co-wrote a book on birthright citizenship in 1985 when he was a professor at Yale, believes that Congress has the power to limit citizenship for those born to parents here illegally.
In general, do you think the people through Congress should have more say in resolving Ambiguities like the one you see here. Yes, I think that it has been a mistake for more than a half century for Congress and often advocates for various causes to try to push these decisions onto the courts. It just goes straight to the Supreme Court to get what you want. Congress is not playing anywhere close to the role that it is supposed to be playing in the American constitutional system. They should be more actively representing the people.
Absolutely. This was meant for the children of slaves. But while his work has been cited by those who want to restrict birthright citizenship, Smith is opposed to the Trump administration's efforts. How does it make you feel that your scholarship has been invoked by the people trying to limit birthright citizenship. I feel terrible about that, frankly.
It did become an argument that has been used by people who are virulently anti-immigrant and often making the case with derogatory stereotypes of immigrants. The majority of countries with universal birthright citizenship are in the Americas, seen here in green. But most of the world has been moving away from it. In January 2005, Ireland, the last European country to grant it, ended birthright citizenship after 79% of the country voted to restrict it. I wanted to go to Disneyland, and we would always ask my mom, when are we going to Disneyland, when are we going to Disneyland?
And she would always tell us soon. Mariam Sabayo, featured recently in The New York Times, was born in Dublin to Nigerian immigrants. The youngest of five siblings, she was born just one month after the country rescinded automatic birthright citizenship. But then I was trying to connect the dots and wondering, like, what's holding us back here? And I realized, oh, my sister's a citizen.
My other sister's a citizen. My mom's a citizen now. But then I had realized I'm the one that's not a citizen. I'm the reason why we can't travel. Sabayo had no passport.
She was stateless. Even though Ireland was the only country she'd ever known, she'd even learned to speak Irish. Every child born in the state of Ireland has to speak Irish. You pretty much learn Irish from ages seven to like 18. And To really immerse myself in it, and then also think I'm learning a language in a country I don't even.
Feel like I have roots to because I'm having to prove to the nail that I belong here. It was a complicated process, but when she was eighteen Sabayo, now a social worker, finally became an Irish citizen.
So August 2023 you get your Irish passport. Yes. What did that feel like? It kind of just felt like my life was finally beginning. I went a bit crazy booking holidays.
I finally felt like the world was my oyster and we can finally do a family holiday. We can finally just start to live without that excessive worry on the back of my mind. Immigration is a complicated global issue with no easy answers. One clear non-answer is to get rid of birthright citizenship in this country. Amanda Frost believes part of what makes America exceptional is its long-standing embrace of immigrants.
If you look at Fortune 500 companies, about half of them are run by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Children of immigrants do incredibly well in this country because they're integrated quickly into this nation. We do that better than Europe. You disagree with the executive order, but do you also think that there's something good that comes out of these conversations being had? If there's something good that comes out of this, it's that we get to talk about the goals.
Of birthright citizenship, the fact that it was intended to end caste in America, to ensure equality, that it's consistent with these founding American values that rejected a heritable monarchy. They did that we're all born equal. Let's not end this constitutional guarantee that fulfills these founding values of our nation. Not all electric vehicles are designed the same. Toyota Electric is built to work for you.
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Theodore Roosevelt. He consistently ranks among the nation's top five most popular presidents. This upcoming 4th of July holiday, TR. He's finally getting his own presidential library. one hundred seven years after his death.
But it's not where you might think. Nature is transformative here. It transformed Theodore Roosevelt. and it will transform new visitors to this library. That library.
rising out of the prairie grass in the North Dakota Badlands. is a ninety six thousand square foot tribute to our twenty sixth President. It's as grand as his likeness on Mount Rushmore, but A lot more subtle. And that's by design, says architect Craig Dykers. We wanted something that just felt primitive.
And so this form emerging from the earth It felt like it just arrived from the earth. Its gently sloping roof mimics the surrounding buttes, covered in native grasses and walking paths. Yep. walking paths on the roof. The hope is they'll get visitors up and out.
for a commanding view of Theodore Roosevelt's National Park. right next door. You could park three 747 airplanes wingtip to wingtip on top of this building and you wouldn't know it. Inside, a string of skylights will provide almost all the natural illumination the library would ever need. held up by walls.
made solely of earth.
So every layer that you look at here Is soil taken from nearby the building and compressed. into this shape. The grass will grow right up to the edge. Everywhere we look during our privileged sneak peek back in March, It was hard to tell where nature ended. and the library began.
Its $450 million price tag is the biggest thing this small town of Medora, North Dakota has ever experienced. If you're wondering why T.R.'s library is way out here instead of his native New York, It's because were it not for his experiences way out here, Roosevelt said, He never would have been president. Theodore Roosevelt grew up as a sickly, asthmatic child who lived his life through books and his imagination.
So here he is, 24 years old. On the plains and in the badlands of North Dakota, and he's living the life he's only read about in books. But the reason he took up residence here in the Badlands is hardly a happy one, says Edward O'Keeffe. CEO of the library and author of a recent book on Roosevelt. He was a broken man in a broken land, and nature was his healer.
In a tragic twist, Teddy Roosevelt's mother, Mittie, and his young wife Alice. both died in the same house on the same day. Valentine's Day, eighteen eighty four. The light has gone out of my life, Roosevelt wrote in his diary. The date marked by a bold X.
at the funeral of his wife and mother. It was a double funeral. He was so desolate. and so depressed. that they were concerned for his own safety.
After settling his affairs, which included asking his sister to raise his newborn daughter, He headed west alone. He'd been to the Dakota Territory just a year prior to hunt a pair of bison. the two that still hang in Roosevelt's Long Island home to this day. He dug in. and began living a kind of life many Dakota cowboys thought he wasn't prepared to live.
They were wrong. I think he had a life wish. He realized that no matter how rich you are, no matter how privileged you are, That You don't know. What's gonna happen next? If you wanna get something done in this world, if you wanna love somebody, if you wanna accomplish something, You gotta go.
And it's that kind of rugged, raw, and real intellectual journey. But experience. It almost seems like library is a misnomer. Library and museum are the two. Worst descriptions of what the TR library actually is.
It's a call to adventure. For example, you don't have to imagine what it's like to be in TR's boots. You can actually see it. In the Bad Lands. Oh, wow.
Whoa. I'm impressed with myself. It's the kind of place that couldn't have been built even five years ago. Because AI is such a large part of it. We have created the world's first Presidential Archive in AI.
Participants can come here to the TR library and have an in-person conversation with an avatar of TR. You do not come unprepared for a conversation with Theodore Roosevelt. He'll have none of it. It'll be the only presidential library that will have hitching posts for your horse. You can take a nature walk on a mile-long path through the prairie.
You can sit by a campfire and hear tall tales of life on the range. I was there the first time Mr. Roosevelt tried to ride him. and step into his cabin at the Elkhorn Ranch. But for all the fun, there's a serious bent too.
He was a man of his times, and his times weren't always flattering. I wasn't interested in doing a legacy project for Theodore Roosevelt. There's plenty of things named after him, there are plenty of statues, but the idea of just sort of basking in the glow of somebody or saying, this is a great man, let's all look at him. isn't particularly compelling. That's Theodore Roosevelt V.
the President's great-great-grandson. Are you ready to see? Yeah, I am ready. All right, let's take a look. Oh my gosh.
It's perfect. It really is. Normally presidential libraries It's the principle, the president, trying to cement the first chapter of his legacy. In this case, we've got 100 years plus to be able to look back at his legacy, to really understand what that legacy is, what the lasting impacts were. We get to face those issues head on.
including Roosevelt's racist views of indigenous peoples, whom he often referred to. as savages. We had a land blessing out here with the five tribes to bless the land and really bring them into the project so that we were working with them and making sure that their voices were heard and that we were representing things appropriately. The library has taken possession of a statue of Roosevelt that was removed in 2022 from outside the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Critics argued that the message of a white man elevated above both a Native American and an African.
symbolized racial superiority. We are here to preserve the life and legacy of Theodore Roosevelt. I think it's important that we eventually do something that contextualizes it appropriately, but not at the opening. If the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library has any message, It's that courage and strength often come from personal tragedy. Missteps, mistakes.
and misunderstandings. It's not the critic who counts. As he famously said, it's being in the arena that matters. And that more than anything. maybe the hindsight the library.
has to offer. He does not like the critic. He does not like the person on the sideline pointing out. how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. He likes the person who tries and fails.
That's a powerful lesson for today. I want kids in particular. to come in. and to understand that if you want to change something in this world, You have got to be the source of that change. This morning, Connor Knighton is heading into some mysterious waters, inhabited.
by some very curious creatures. With their protruding snouts, curled necks, and long tails, seahorses look a bit like floating question marks. They inspire all sorts of questions, perhaps the most basic of which is, is a seahorse a fish? Yes, a seahorse is a fish, but it's a really unusual-looking fish. Leslie Matsushige is a curator for the Birch Aquarium at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
It has a head like a horse. A pouch like a kangaroo, it has a prehensile tail like a monkey, and they can change their coloration like a chameleon. There are more than 40 species of seahorses in the wild, ranging from a half inch to more than a foot long in size. But seeing one isn't always easy. See the male right there?
But I almost didn't see him because he blends in so well with the coral. That's part of the camouflage. These are all weedy sea dragons at various ages. Birch Aquarium is also home to the seahorse's far more colorful cousin, the vibrant sea dragon. While the three known species of sea dragons are only found in Australia, sea horses live in waters across the world, including the ocean right behind the aquarium.
Do you find that you have guests who come specifically for the seahorses and sea dragons? Yes, they do. That's their favorite. Younger visitors are especially intrigued by these creatures. We are going to start with our first book.
Mr. Seahorse. They just are blown away. I can't tell you how many times I hear the same thing over and over. Look, it's like Dr.
Seuss or something I see in the movie Avatar. And it's really fun just to see people just like so excited. Along with pipefish, seahorses and sea dragons are members of the Cygnathidae family. And speaking of family, they've all got an unconventional dynamic. The males do the work of carrying around the fertilized eggs.
It's quite fascinating, and the women that come through the aquarium and learn about this are just happy. happy about it and fascinated and why does that not happen in humans? After performing an elaborate courtship dance, female sea dragons drop their eggs on the tail of the males and then hightail it out of there. Male Sea horses have a pouch. The eggs are deposited while the couple float face to face in a heart shape.
The males then experience was essentially a pregnancy, developing the equivalent of a placenta. and carrying the eggs inside until they hatch and give birth. Yeah. As soon as he gives birth, the female comes right back over and puts eggs in his pouch.
So sometimes they say the male is pregnant for most of his life, which is another thing that the women are all happy with. For more than 30 years, Birch has been known for its seahorse breeding program, raising the animals for educational purposes and conservation. These guys were actually born just a couple days ago, so they're also the same species of Pacific Seahorse. Oh, microscopic. I don't know if I would.
Mark Yoon oversees the breeding and seahorse care. feeding them a daily diet of shrimp. They need really small things because their mouth is so small that it's really limited what they can actually suck up in there. At first, breeding sea dragons proved to be more challenging. Only after Leslie Matsushige went diving in Australia to study the behavior of weedy sea dragons in the wild did she realize the Birch Aquarium actually needed to make their tanks larger.
When they transfer the eggs, they swim up together, upwards in the water column, and so they really need that distance to make that egg transfer complete. When we visited we met a dad carrying three eggs. Not much, they often carry hundreds, but still a success story. They're so amazingly cute because they're perfect miniatures of the adults when they hatch out. It's hard to believe that something like that would survive in the wild, but they do.
Sea dragons are facing pressure in the wild due to pollution, climate change, and habitat loss. Seahorses are even more vulnerable due to illegal harvesting and importation for use in traditional Chinese medicine and their propensity to be accidentally scooped up during commercial fishing. But here in San Diego, these super dads are ambassadors. helping curious visitors care about the ocean as a whole. If they're drawn to a particular animal or fish, then they want to know more about it.
These animals are currently threatened in their natural habitat. We want people to care. Isn't it crazy that America is turning 250 years old? I mean, look how far we've come.
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These are all you never saw. Been in trouble with the law since the day they was born. To Robert Costa now, and a father-son story that's about a lot more than music. Come on in, welcome to Snake Mountain. AKA Sunset Sound Studio 3.
So, this is your office? This is my clubhouse. I don't know how many records I've made in here. It has to have been 40. 40 records.
Probably. Yeah. They said, Outlook! Shooter Jennings. Is this singer?
Songwriter and the producer of Grammy Award-winning albums for Brandi Carlisle and Tanya Tuckers. You can feel it, there's ghosts in here, there's spirits at the very least. We had real. Donnelly Barton recorded here at Sunset Sound in Hollywood.
So did Fleetwood Mac. But don't break. And Prince. Supposedly, Prince had a bed. Yes, in here.
In this room during Purple Rain. He had a bed in here, and he would sleep. Do you sleep in here too? No, no, I got kids. I gotta go to bed.
Shooter is now using this space to produce a project deeply personal and emotional. I appreciate you having this conversation because I can tell. Oh, yeah, I'll get teared up. It's.
Well, it's your father. I mean, I wear my emotions on my. Face all the time, anyway.
So, for everybody out there, I'm a crier. Raw emotions from the son of a man known for them, Waylon Jennings. Down with any old rabbit. With his black hat, beard, and baritone voice, he defined the rebel, gritty spirit of the country music outlaw movement. Jennings blended honky-tonk, folk and southern rock to create a revolutionary sound.
He had 16 number one hits, including I'm a Ramblin' Man. Hold on. Ramblin' May, puzzles don't let you bang. Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys with Willie Nelson. Just a good old boy.
and the theme song for TV's The Dukes of Hazzard. I mean, your your dad's he's an icon. Yeah, yeah, I know. But dukes of hazard, that was for so many people their introduction to him. Shooter is keeping his father's legacy alive by producing long-lost material which he found stashed away.
I'm proud of him and I'm proud of the work that I'm doing and I'm proud of the legacy he's left behind because there's, you know, he just was a good guy.
So far, there are two albums: Songbird. and the forthcoming diamonds. That when I wait. It's all love. It's like It's like he's saying something, you know, and that was what was so weird about it.
It felt like he was having a conversation with a listener and that. Talking to you too. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, I've been talking to anyone that knows and loves his voice, you know. To you.
It's like emotional, beautiful material about love and life. And that's what he connected with was the music and the lyrics and the dream. That dream began in a small town in the Lone Star State. How did Texas shape him? Texas played a big role in it because he wanted to get out of there so bad.
You know, he grew up in this little town that's just right between Lubbock and New Mexico, and it's like flat in every way. Like he says in his book, if your dog ran away, you could watch him go for three days, you know. While working as a teenage DJ, Jennings met fellow Texan Buddy Holly. To your father, he was a friend. Yeah.
Yeah, he was he was his best friend, you know, and And my dad always told me he said, Not a day went by that he didn't think about it. Not a day. Buddy Holly encouraged Jennings to become a musician. They toured together and were playing the same show on a fateful night in Iowa in 1959. And you know, the last conversation that was had was like, I hope your bus breaks down and you freeze to death.
And he says, I hope your whole plane crashes. You know. Did he live with the pain from. Buddy Holly's death. It did it did haunt him.
But Whalen carried on, started a band, and eventually moved to Nashville, where he became a star and a symbol of a new kind of sound. What is outlaw music? Is it just wearing a leather jacket and a dark cowboy hat and sunglasses? Is it being anti-Nashville? Or is there something deeper to the whole idea?
No, it was a marketing tool. You know, they came up with it in Nashville. It was like a way to package Whalen and Willie, and they kind of called the Outlaw Movement. Uh Looking lonesome on me and me. How did your dad?
change music. He got his creative freedom and artistic integrity and control, which is what he wanted. And that kind of freed everybody else. Independence for artists. Independence for artists.
He was uncompromising and controversial. He walked out during the We Are the World recording session. And he goes, this isn't about the kids. That's the first thing he thought. He thought, this is about The look of this.
Schooter says his father thought too much attention was on photo ops, not fundraising. And then he said, So by the time it got to be four in the morning and they're like, let's do it in Swahili, he was like, I'm out of here. I've been here all day. This has been too long. And they were going to, they're going to keep going, you know, and make him try to learn a language or something.
And I think he was already like, I can't speak any other languages, you know. And later, I was on the bus with him, and Paul Simon walked in. He goes, He said, Wayland, he goes, You every one of us wanted to walk out of that thing, and you were the only one that had the b to do it. Whalen acknowledged he long struggled with a drug habit, but he quit cold turkey in 1984. He said the catalyst was his young son.
Your father was candid about his struggles with drugs. Yeah. He sometimes would spend over $1,000 a day. Yeah. Did he ever talk to you about his journey?
You know, he did, of course, but it bothered him so much. Like, it didn't affect me one bit. Like, when I was a kid, he quit by the time I was like five or six. And I think once he won the battle, it was when he realized he didn't need it anymore, you know? And he was a great dad.
Whalen Jennings died in 2002. at sixty four. You miss them. Yeah, well I do miss him. Of course I miss him.
But that's not why I cry, you know. I get emotional just because I feel how important this all is. Give up McCarthy. Fighting in balls. What keeps you going?
I want everybody to know the guy I know. And I think, like, I'm in a place where. I'm in this studio and I'm able to put this out there and people will get it and hear it.
So I feel like that should be my purpose in a way. Look for your heart. Look for your low. My lady Steve Harbin this morning on the gratitude. I'm a graduate.
His footwork is impressive. But it pales compared to the trick he pulled off. Cheating Death. Back in 2022, Dylan Moniki of Kansas City, Missouri was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer. He was fourteen.
They gave him just eight months to live. But he is alive today thanks to a doctor named Mary Austin who did a lot more than treat his cancer. she became his friend. We made arrangements to grab lunch together and he's met my kids and it just evolved naturally as a friendship. She's like my partner in crime.
I call her my second mom. He calls her my second mom. That's his first mom, Lucy. and his dad, Paul. She she used to check on him just like a mom would.
every step of the way. Through 52 weeks of chemo, She was there for him. especially during his darkest days, when there was serious doubt Dylan would live long enough to even graduate high school. She just hyped him up. Like, I promise you, if you keep going through with this, so you can live.
I will come to your graduation. Just that trick of saying, hey, I'll make it for your graduation, it's changed everything. You just decided, you know. he has the will to keep fighting. her making promises like that and kind of giving me hope.
Uh Definitely uplifted my mood. Today, Dylan is cancer-free and a graduating senior. Dylan Taji Moniki. Unfortunately, Dr. Austin now works at Seattle Children's Hospital, 1,500 miles away.
getting to graduation would be difficult. But She has not made one promise that she hasn't kept. And we'll forever be grateful for that. This thing. His parents kept Dr.
Austin's visit a surprise. Until now. And although little was said in this moment, The firmness of their hog and the length of their embrace showed how much it meant to Dylan. It was, after all. literally what he lived for.
In fact, Dylan's parents believe this human connection played a big part in saving their son. proving that you don't always have to be a doctor. to heal. Be kind. Be kind.
Be kind. You know, I am Irish, and Irish people, they don't tell you a thing. Irish people keep it so bottled up. You know, like the plan with Irish people is like, I'll keep all my emotions right here, and then one day I'll die. Whether on stage or screen or working behind the scenes, John Mulaney.
Is something of an expert when it comes to laughing matters. Tracy Smith? is talking with a stand-up guy. John Mulaney is a comedy superstar, finding the funny in the familiar. Thank you for coming to see me at Radio City Music Hall.
I love to play venues where, if the guy that built the venue could see me on the stage, he would be a little bit bummed about it. At 43, he already has five highly rated specials to his name, four primetime Emmys, and a reputation as one of the best stand-up guys in the game. I can't listen to any new songs. Because every new song is about how tonight is the night. and how we only have tonight.
I want to write songs for people in their 30s called Tonight's No Good, How About Wednesday. It is great to be here hosting Saturday Night Live for the sixth time. It's very nice to see all of you. For John Mulaney, Saturday Night Live is Home Turf. He started as a writer there in 2008 and helped create some of the show's biggest characters, like Bill Hayter's Stefan.
Mulaney would often change the script last minute to throw Hater off, like in this Halloween sketch. Have you heard of Blackula the Black Dracula? Yes. Well, they have a Jewish Dracula. Oh.
What's his name? Sidney Applebaum. It seems like this is the thing John Mulaney was born to do. Raised in Chicago, Mulaney says he grew up feeling that comedy was his destiny. Growing up, was there a moment or a memory where you realized that you were funny?
Always interesting in these things because you don't want to sound. Egotistical, but I don't remember a time when I didn't think I was funny. Not long after graduating from Georgetown, he joined SNL and a career was launched. Mulaney made his mark in New York, but he's fascinated with Southern California, where he now lives year-round. He took us record shopping at one of his favorite places, the legendary Amoeba Music, in Hollywood.
When you come out to places like this, do people come up to you or do they leave you alone? A little bit. My joke is that I'm like Louis Farrakhan. I mean a lot to a small group of people. Truth is, John Mulaney is a lot bigger than he'll admit.
Hello, old friend. In his most recent special, Baby J, he played to a sold-out crowd and focused on his drug addiction and recovery. I walk into my intervention two hours late. According to my friends, This is what I said.
Okay. He describes a 20-20 intervention on his behalf, staged by friends like Seth Myers and Fred Armison. Let me just call this out now. I don't mean to be weird. It was a star-studded intervention.
It's funny now, of course. Mulaney says he's been clean for more than four years. Forgive me if this is a naive question, but is sobriety something that you have to think about every day?
Well, that's a good question. I don't think about. Um Cocaine opioids and benzodiazeprine every day.
Well, acknowledge that. I understand the vigilance I need. I do not think about it every day. I just, I don't. I do think about the ways that I can lead my life.
to perhaps never feel the kind of strain that that got me there. Um So yeah.
Sobriety, maybe being like a bigger term than just abstaining from the chemicals. I definitely think about that. That makes sense. Yeah. Mulaney credits his wife, actress Olivia Munn, with helping him navigate his recovery.
She's in the new hit show, Your Friends and Neighbors. Are you swagging Nebraska? Uh, yes, I am, you corn-fed hayseeds. And you might also remember her from Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom. Split them up.
Or maybe X-Men, Apocalypse. But Olivia Munn is a bit of a superhero in real life as well. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023 and has shared her whole journey online from the initial test to a double mastectomy. Other women have since credited her with saving their lives. There's this lifetime risk assessment test that is really the only reason her cancer was discovered, and seeing So many women Um Publicly and privately, they come to her that they discovered how high their risk was from that.
It's astonishing. Here's how I describe Asian markets to people who haven't been. I'm like, you take a regular supermarket. And then tweak every single detail. Olivia Munn says she is cancer-free now, and she credits John for helping her with the most brutal chapter in her life.
What's it been like to have John by your side through all of this? There's no better person in the world to me than my husband. He wanted to come to every single doctor's appointment. He had his little notebook. You know, he's got his notebook that he writes all of his ideas for jokes and anything that comes to him through the day.
You know, you turn halfway through it and there's all these notes about, you know, cancer and hormone therapy and you know, everything that you could imagine that I need to know, he was there. Having the humor to go through it and having someone who's so funny. It really It just lightens everything. Oh no! CHAPTER Their son Malcolm is four, daughter Maimai will be two in the fall, and John says he's still in awe of their mother.
I have this feeling a lot of times I go, I can't believe I know this person. let alone and married to her. My wife and I just welcomed a baby girl into our family. Fatherhood has given him not only more material, but a whole new outlook on life. My wife takes care of the five-week old and I take the two-year-old out and that's not fair.
That's not an equal distribution of labor at all. Saying you have a five-week old, I'll take a two-year-old, that's like saying, I'll transport this convict across state lines. You hold a potato. John Mulaney's built a good life making people laugh.
Now, as a husband and father of two, he says he has something to live for. How do you think fatherhood changed how you look at the world? I'm in the world now that I'm a father. My head was my only home before that. When my son was born, the first thought I had was: I went, oh, there you are.
And when my daughter was born, I had this This not to m sound woo-woo or anything. Poffy Woo.
Well, when she was born, I went, oh. My thought was like, oh, we've met before. I've collided with you some other time.
So it's like these people came in that just I don't know, make me like the world a lot more. Hey parents, we all know summer break is for fun, but it's also a time when kids can start losing some of the progress they made during the school year. We want them to stay engaged and keep those young minds active. Between camps, vacations, and family time, it can be tough to keep a learning routine going. That's why I want to tell you about IXL.
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These past few weeks, we've been taking a closer look at obesity in America.
Well, this morning our Dr. John Lapouk on a growing health crisis impacting millions of our youngest Americans. BK, have it your way. We have the meat. The Whoppers, Whoppers, Whopper, Whopper.
Junior. Double, triple, Whopper. Flames real taste with perfect toppers. If fast food jingles were multiplication tables, perhaps we'd all be good at math. I'm loving it.
That's from McDonald's. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. In the meantime, those ads sure are stuck in the brains of kids. 10-piece chicken McNugget. My favorite fruit is.
Chicken Nuggets. From where? McDonald's. The marketing of ultra-processed food, which accounts for more than 60% of calories for children, has coincided with a dramatic increase in childhood obesity across the United States. In 1970, about 1 in 20 children were affected by obesity.
Today, it's one in five. To be clear, there are multiple causes for the rise, including socioeconomic, environmental, and lifestyle factors. But when it comes to diet, Figuring out what's healthy and what's not can be daunting. You look at the back of the label and you're like, yeah, that's no good. That's no good.
It's like, okay, so then, what do you eat some days? It's scary. All right, three, two, one, go. Heather Wolf and her daughter, Grace, are enrolled in the YMCA's Healthy Weight and Your Child program in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Beanbags hit the frizzy.
Three, two, one, go. The program preaches getting healthy the old-fashioned way. Eating right, and exercising, and focuses on changing the environment and habits of the entire family. Highly hydronated oils, that's bad for you. You know, ketchup years ago used to be tomatoes, salt, vinegar.
you know, simple ingredients.
Now you're going, what is that even? In an age of powerful weight loss drugs, including GLP-1s not yet approved for children under 12, a crucial question remains. How do we prevent future generations from becoming obese in the first place? This is not a willpower problem with our nation's kids. We have a pretty specific FDA Commissioner Dr.
Marty McCary, who has since left the agency, said he would like to see Americans eating diets that emphasize protein, fruit and vegetables, healthy fats, and whole grains, and reduce highly processed foods. This is a problem with us putting highly addictive, highly chemicalized food in front of them. One of the entities that is telling people. What to eat? Are the marketers, right?
Yeah, we'd like to see more information. Even on the front of the package of food, we'd like to see schools buying real food instead of ultra-processed food. Pastas and carbs are her thing, and she drinks a lot of her calories, too. Shayla Mitchell's daughter, Miracle, began gaining weight during the COVID pandemic.
Now, six years later, the YMCA program is helping the family work on improving her health. Healthy foods is for me to lose weight and for me to have to lose my life a little bit more. Faster than that I'm supposed to. She wants to be able to eat what her friends are eating. She wants to be able to share snacks and share lunch.
We really wanted to find a program where she was gonna really learn why you can have it, but in moderation. Childhood obesity is one of the most daunting challenges that young people face from a health and wellness perspective. I think we're leaving it. Harlem Children's Zone CEO Kwame Ovusu Kesi heads up the Healthy Harlem program, which focuses on prevention. What good is this investment in quality education, enrichments, and exposures if there's a health ticking time bomb awaiting our young people?
Childhood obesity increases the risk of problems later in life, such as diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer. This is about wrapping our arms around the community. That is the secret sauce of the Harlem Children's Zone. We were designed to be able to hit a critical mass of young people so that you shift culture. What is it that you're doing?
In terms of addressing childhood obesity, we're making sure that our young people are moving. We want to make sure our young people have nutrition, knowledge, and awareness. Does anyone else want to turn it on? Every year we distribute somewhere between 50 to 70,000 pounds of fresh protos throughout our Harlem community.
So it's this marriage of nutrition knowledge, cooking. physical activity for the young person and the community. that helps change the culture. Mm. Both the YMCA and Harlem programs focus on involving the family, schools, friends, and even neighbors.
I don't let the fencerize because it has too much salt on it. You're 12 years old and you know about avoiding salt. Who taught you that? My mom She says if I eat a lot of sauce, I can get a heart attack, and I don't want that to happen. Yeah.
I wanna see some chips! Both programs also rely on children becoming agents of their own progress. Portion control is the hardest thing, but it's one of the things that she knows is super important.
So every now and again, I'll catch her grabbing a measuring cup when she's making herself cereal in the morning. She'll pour it into the measuring cup and then pour it into her bowl. All the kids know exactly what they're supposed to eat. My vegetables, salad, apples, kale. And why?
So I could get better from this one. I can like lose weight and like feel better about myself. I could be getting more stronger, getting more athletic. Not eating that much junk food, eating healthy food better. But creating a supportive environment at home can be tricky.
Getting my husband to kind of go in with that because he that's daddy's little girl.
So anything she asks for.
Okay, yeah, you can have it. No, honey, she can't. It's so easy to say yes. It is harder to say no and see the disappointment, but we know that we're doing it for the overall benefit of her and the entire family. and that means family is also there for the triumphs.
We went through her clothes and she started trying on things. She was like, ah, before I couldn't fit these jeans. I'm like, see, these are the small waves we're talking about. When she doesn't see it immediately, it's kind of like a downer for her, but I keep reassuring her, it's working. I promise she was working.
And for kids like Grace, weight loss is about so much more than the pounds. It makes me... really feel healthy. and happy, you can be more active and like go outside and actually play with your friends if you go over to the house. and not just like sit on like their couch and watching a movie or something.
You can actually jump on the trampoline or like Go outside, play with the dogs and stuff.
So that's really nice. On this Father's Day, thoughts from contributor Charles Blow. about growing up without a dad. I know what it feels like to miss a father, the hole it leaves in a boy where his dad should be. My parents split when I was five.
The part of my father that the breaking of our family didn't take, his alcoholism did. I experienced him primarily as an unpredictable apparition who occasionally stopped by in the middle of the night, waking us, reeking of booze, talking loudly, and breaking our peace on his way home from a night out. But I was lucky. a constellation of other men stepped into the void he left. grandfathers and uncles, neighbors and coaches providing the guidance and correction, the modelling of composure and possibility that boys need, the kind that can only come from a man like the ones they will become.
I have always wanted that for all boys similarly situated, a community of men to bridge their way.
So when I came across an organization, Son of a Saint, in New Orleans that does just that, and primarily for boys in even greater need than I was, I was moved. The organization largely serves boys whose fathers have passed away or been locked away. It was founded in 2011 by Vivian Sonny Lee III, whose own father had played for the New Orleans Saints but died when Sonny was three years old. He has made it his mission to transform the lives of boys like the one he was. Earlier this month, I visited the group's headquarters, a beautifully transformed building in the Bayou St.
John neighborhood that serves as something of a community center for the organization and the Boys in Its care. They have classes. The boys really love the cooking classes and hold meetings. The group provides not only mentors but case teams for each boy, ensuring that all his needs are met, from academic to emotional. When I was there, I observed a wellness class, beaming boys competing in teams, learning concepts about their own mental health.
Free from any judgment or the strictures of a distorted masculinity that frowns on such things. I sat down with 16-year-old twin brothers, Michael and Robert, who had easy smiles and fidgeted in their chairs the way teenage boys do as they grow into their bodies. They joined the program three years ago when their dad passed away. They lit up when they told me about the summer camps in the Northeast that the organization paid for them to attend. I asked each boy I met that day how he celebrated Father's Day.
and almost all of them said they did so with their mentors from the program. the men who stepped. into the breach. I'm Week Owen. Thanks for listening, and please join us when our trumpet sounds again.
next Sunday morning. On a new season of SkyMed. I need fluids and an ambulance standing by. The crew balances new responsibilities, new rescues, and new recruits. We take care of our own.
Clear? Clear. SkyMed, new season now streaming on Paramount Plus.
