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That's ZipRecruiter.com slash Z-I-P-D-A-I-L-Y. Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two-year contracts, they said, what the **** are you talking about? You insane Hollywood ****. So to recap, we're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month.
Give it a try at MintMobile.com slash Switch. Good morning. Jane Pauley is off today.
I'm Lee Cowan. And this is a Sunday morning on this extended Independence Day weekend. Because of the holiday, there's a pretty good chance you took a trip this week. AAA says it's likely to be the busiest 4th of July week ever, with nearly 71 million Americans on the move, 6 million of us, passing through the nation's airports. Which means many will undoubtedly be boarding jets built by Boeing. As you know, the once storied aerospace giant has had a turbulent few years, coming under fire for a series of quality control issues leading to hundreds of deaths, criminal charges against the company, and perhaps most critically, an erosion of public trust. This morning, Chris Van Cleve looks at how Boeing got here and where the embattled company might be headed next. A company that started over 100 years ago building seaplanes now has over 10,000 jets in service around the world. But it's not just the planes that have changed. Do you think Boeing's forefathers would recognize the culture today? I don't think the leadership of Boeing's past would recognize the culture today. Boeing was always about creating the greatest aerospace technology, and for many years it became focused on creating the best shareholder value.
A breakdown of Boeing, coming up on Sunday morning. The world's most famous sponge turns 25 this month. Spongebob Squarepants, whose humble roots as an animated TV character have seen him grow into a global multimedia phenomenon. This morning, a deep dive into all things Spongebob. Chances are, you know, the voice of Spongebob, the man behind him, however, maybe not. Is there sort of a form of method acting where once you get in there and you're in character, so to speak, you stay in character?
It's kind of like on drugs, it's more like methadone acting. The cast of one of the most popular cartoons of all time leaves Bikini Bottom for a chat. Later, on Sunday morning.
With Tracy Smith, an appreciation of legendary composer Henry Mancini, whose tunes like Moon River and the Pink Panther theme have delighted film goers for generations. Plus, Robert Costa's analysis of President Biden's Friday night television interview, a story from Steve Hartman, a tribute to what may be the hottest grill in America, and more this Sunday morning for the 7th of July 2024. We'll be back after this. This episode is brought to you in part by Progressive. Most of you aren't just listening right now. You're driving, cleaning, and even exercising. But what if you could be saving money by switching to Progressive? Drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average, and auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts.
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Discounts not available in all states and situations. It was one of America's most admired companies, the aerospace giant Boeing. But following a series of devastating quality concerns in recent years, Boeing has suffered quite a fall.
Chris Van Cleef explores its turbulent times. Every two seconds, a Boeing 737 takes off or lands somewhere around the world. For over a century, Boeing airplanes have embodied American engineering prowess, a confidence colloquially expressed in the saying, If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going. It was pride in our country's iconic manufacturer.
There were no boundaries on it for what great it could do. Dennis Tasure is a 737 captain. He's flown for American Airlines for over 30 years. Did you see it as the gold standard of aircraft?
It was the only standard. It's interesting how you tell these stories about Boeing. All of them are in the past tense.
Yeah. These are the stories of Boeing past. Boeing had our trust because they earned it. Boeing was a great company, but it's no longer a great company. For Tasure, who has become an outspoken critic of Boeing's leadership, things changed in the aftermath of the 737 MAX crashes in 2018 in Indonesia and 2019 in Ethiopia, resulting in 346 deaths. Boeing apologized and said they'd do better.
But then this January, a door panel on a 737 MAX blew out in flight. There were no serious injuries, but Boeing's reputation was wounded again. It's a stark contrast for the storied company known for putting engineering and quality first, one that started in 1916 building seaplanes in Seattle, Washington. Boeing became a symbol of national pride during World War II, churning out 16 B-17s every day. Optimism for the dawn of the jet transport age, these airliners riding the sky lanes by 1959.
Boeing then introduced Americans to the jet age, launching four new successful airplanes in just over a decade, the 707, 727, 737 and 747, the world's first jumbo jet, all while building the rockets that helped put a man on the moon. So how did we get here to Boeing facing a potential criminal trial and dealing with a loss of public confidence? In your book, you talked about the crashes exposed the rotted culture of an iconic American company. Is that what happened, the culture rotted at Boeing? That's pretty much directly from the words of Boeing's employees.
It's systemic, it's culture. Senior leadership had its eye on stock price, had its eye on share buybacks and weren't listening to the people on the ground. It's Boeing. Investigative reporter and author Peter Robeson wrote Flying Blind, the 737 MAX tragedy in the fall of Boeing. He started covering the company shortly after the 1997 merger between Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. One person at Boeing described the people from McDonnell Douglas as hunter killer assassins. They came into this collegial environment at Boeing and just went through them like a knife through butter.
Well, it's the kind of deal for which the word blockbuster is reserved. Boeing merging with McDonnell Douglas to form the largest aerospace company in the world. Since that 1997 merger, Boeing has become a corporate behemoth in defense, space and commercial aviation. By 2019, it had spent more than $60 billion on stock buybacks, helping boost its stock price by over 1000 percent. How did Boeing get to the point of we can't get a plane we've been building since 1967, right?
Boeing lost control of its production system. It spun off parts of it that were essential. These aren't just interchangeable commodities. It's a complex product that needs to have a different level of scrutiny every step of the way. And it's ultimately people's lives at stake.
Exactly. This is a business where one miss is too many. After its third miss this January, where a door panel blew out of an Alaska Airlines 737 at 16000 feet, Boeing said more of the same, eerily similar to the statements after the 737 MAX crashes.
We're sorry and we're fixing it. Boeing now says it's investing heavily in engineering to, quote, enable safe and sustainable flight in the years ahead. We had hoped to sit down and talk with someone from Boeing about how the company got here and where it's going in the future. Instead, we were invited to what amounts to a media field trip and a tour of the Boeing 737 MAX production line.
As part of that tightly controlled tour late last month, senior vice president of quality Elizabeth Lund took some reporter questions. After the MAX crashes, we heard very similar things. And we're back here again talking about fixing problems that sound a lot like the problems that should have gotten fixed before. Why should anyone believe anyone from Boeing that you're actually fixing anything? We are a company that is deeply committed to the fine public safety. We are deeply committed to our employees.
We are deeply committed to doing the right thing. Just this past week, in an effort to clean up persistent quality control problems, Boeing announced it would buy back Spirit Aero Systems, a Kansas-based contractor building the 737 fuselage. Boeing spun off Spirit in 2005 in an attempt to reduce manufacturing costs. You see, Boeing seems to do the right thing only after they do the wrong thing. That's the problem.
They react to bad things instead of being proactive. In Captain Dennis Tasure's mind, Boeing has much more work to do. How do you feel getting into the cockpit of your airplane today?
More ready than I've ever been. I have absolutely no hesitation in flying the aircraft based on what I know about it. The unnerving part is, particularly on the MAX, is I don't know what you've put on it that you decided not to tell me. On the 737 MAX, Captain Dennis Tasure now uses a rather analog tool in an otherwise digital cockpit. A post-it note to help remind him of another potential problem, a design issue in the engine. The FAA sent us this airworthiness directive saying, hey, you got to be aware of this. They can get so bad that it may cause you to have to do an off-airport landing. They're words, off-airport. What the heck does that mean?
That's a cornfield with a Hudson River. Boeing expects to have a fix by next year. I have a book of post-it notes. Now I look at these and think, how many of these am I going to have to fill out because Boeing didn't tell me about something or they learned something new about a faulty design. Still Tasure and every 737 pilot we spoke to say the plane is safe, but change at Boeing is desperately needed now. It's not the airplane that I don't trust.
It's the people who delivered it to me. Hi, I'm Lazlo, director and producer of the new audio fiction series, A Better Paradise, written by Dan Houser, the writer and creative director of the Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto series. A Better Paradise is a story set in the near future about the creation of an ambitious and advanced but addictive video game world led by inventor and psychologist, Dr. Mark Tyburn, played by Andrew Lincoln from The Walking Dead. As the company and project fell apart, the game world and the super intelligence within was left abandoned, dormant and undiscovered until now. Things have evolved.
Listen to the first episode right now and make sure you follow A Better Paradise on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere you listen so that you'll never miss an episode. We all belong outside. We're drawn to nature, whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to or the succulents that adorn our homes. Nature makes all of our lives, well, better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it.
But the outdoors is closer than we realize. With AllTrails, you can discover trails nearby and explore confidently with offline maps and on trail navigation. Download the free app today and make the most of your summer with AllTrails. What's hot this 4th of July weekend? Serena Altschul may have the answer. Last October, over 3,000 people lined up at a baseball stadium outside Atlanta. But there was a different game on the field that day.
Sisters India and Felicia Jordan of Black Girls Grilling were just one of 150 teams. Amazing. Representing at Eggtoberfest.
Oh yeah, we're going to spend some time on this. A friendly competition and celebration in honor of their favorite 50-year-old gastronomic gadget. Yes, I'm an egg-spert. The Big Green Egg. I mean, it's a cooking machine.
We literally go from smoking 200 pounds of smoked oxtail to a butter pound cake. Anything is in between. You know, what can I cook in a Big Green Egg? It'd be quicker to try to think of something you couldn't. We think of it as a laboratory.
Hardi Irani is the company's CEO. You can grill, roast, bake, smoke, sear, and just about everything in between. So what does that mean? Well, obviously it means steaks. It also means pies.
This is my love letter to food. This ingenuity is centuries old. Kamado refers to a style. In India, you'd call it a tandoori.
In Asia, you'd call it a kamado. And it references a oval-shaped vessel with a lid. In the early days, the vessel was made out of clay. And today, the egg is ceramic. The charcoal-using barbecue gets part of its name from the shape.
But the rest is a mystery that only its 90-year-old founder, Ed Fisher, can solve. I said, well, they're big. And what do they look? They look like an egg, yes. And now I have to think of, well, green is an outrageous color. Who buys green things? So I said, call it the big green egg. Turns out, millions of people are seeing green. This is a bacon-red Oreo.
Have you had one of those? For Ed Fisher, though, there's something more. The magic is when someone cooks on an egg and he cooks for his family, whether it's the wife or the husband, they become a hero. He wrote some of the most memorable music of the 20th century. On the centennial of his birth, Henry Mancini's magic endures.
Well worth a second look at our appreciation from Tracy Smith. Even if you've never been here, you probably recognize Abbey Road. There's the crosswalk, as seen in the famed Ian McMillan cover photo for a Beatles album in the fall of 69.
And inside, it's much the same as it was back then. Even the piano used for Lady Madonna is still here. Some of the best loved music of a generation was played in this room, and it still is. Last year, the Royal Philharmonic recorded the instrumentals of composer Henry Mancini's classic Moon River. As we've been reporting, the Mancini family has re-recorded some of the maestro's most famous songs in celebration of what would have been his 100th birthday. The record debuted last month and immediately shot to number one, and it's not hard to see why.
Some pretty big names are on it, like Quincy Jones and John Williams, who helped re-record Mancini's Grammy-winning Peter Gunn theme. What does it feel like to play it again? It's amazing. It's like a bicycle. You get back on.
Chris, it sounds almost like it's slurring into B2. It's at a... Producer Greg Field, who also happens to be married to Monica Mancini, is leading the effort to honor his father-in-law. I know it's kind of hard to sum up, but what do you think the world should know about Henry Mancini? Well, nobody under 50 probably knows who Henry Mancini is, right?
But they know Pink Panther. You can go virtually anywhere in the world and go up to a 10-year-old and say ba-dup, ba-dup, ba-dup, and they immediately know it. And I can't imagine another composer that has created music that generation to generation, decade to decade, keeps resonating with people. And it does resonate still. These days, you can hear Mancini music from artists you might not expect, like Elton John. And Cynthia Erivo, who was among the stars last month at an all-Mancini program at the Hollywood Bowl. You know, we're celebrating his 100th birthday and still it's so... the music is so alive.
And we are doing everything we can to have the music be out there and have people enjoy it and have it take you someplace, have it make you feel something, which is what music should do. Seems no Mancini concert would be complete without the Pink Panther theme, here by SAC's great Dave Cause. For the album, the song was re-recorded in New York City last April by none other than the legendary Sir James Galway on the flute. And he was joined by someone he inspired to pick up the flute herself, Lizzo.
How'd they sound? You be the judge. The Pink Panther theme is still one of Henry Mancini's most popular tunes, and Dave Cause plays it as well as anyone ever. But it's not his favorite. I know you've said that your favorite song is a Mancini song?
It is, but not the one you would think with the saxophone in my hand. Not Pink Panther. Not Pink Panther, Moon River. Moon River. It's a perfect melody. It's a perfect lyric.
In fact, Moon River has been called the crown jewel of Mancini's work. Johnny Mercer's lyrics about wide rivers and huckleberries are drawn from his memories of a childhood spent in Savannah, Georgia. Henry Mancini wrote the music specifically for Audrey Hepburn to sing and tailored it to fit her limited vocal range. His family says it took him a month to write the first three notes, and once he had those, it only took him a half hour to write the rest. The song quickly became a hit and more.
May I have the envelope, please? The song was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song. The winners are Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer from Moon River.
In addition to the Oscar, the song picked up a pair of Grammys, and the great Andy Williams made it his own. And for the latest version of Moon River, the Mancini family passed the torch to another legend. Finally, Buble Mancini. Finally, my name is attached to the Mancini name. I have waited so long for that. Yes.
You'd think that in his 30-year career, Michael Buble would have made his own version of Moon River, but he's never recorded the song, and he jumped at the chance. When the Mancini family calls and asks you to be part of honoring the legacy of a genius, you say, thank you so very much. I would love to be there. Can we do it in Vancouver?
Because I'm in 46 countries, and I'm only going to be home for six days. But you say yes. All right. Yeah.
I'm good if you're good. And we met him in Vancouver on the day of the session. He had limited time and a miserable cold. And I knew a couple days ago my daughter started coughing, and I went like, oh, okay. And she stayed in our bed, and I was like, this is going to happen to me. So it's going to be fun to see how I sound.
In the end, the cold didn't seem to bother him or anyone else. And maybe that's the genius of Mancini's music. Whether it's Hepburn and a guitar, or Buble's voice and the royal Philharmonic strings, the songs sound the way Henry Mancini would have wanted them to sound. Perfect. Travel is great, but planning for travel can be time consuming and difficult. That's where one travel comes in. With one travel, you'll find everything you need to book the perfect trip flights, hotels, cars, transportation, it's all right there. With one travel, you can book online via app or even pick up the phone and talk to a travel advisor ready to help you make your selections.
Visit one travel.com slash podcast or call 877-290-1880 plan it, book it, live it one travel. When it comes to hiring, don't go searching for the one just meet your match with Indeed. If you need to hire you need Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors according to Indeed data and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash match. Just go to indeed.com slash match right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.
Indeed.com slash match terms and conditions apply need to hire you need Indeed. The war in Ukraine has been raging for nearly two and a half years now. And as the fighting drags on the Russian army is finding new ways to inflict damage, though at an enormous cost.
David Martin has our Sunday journal. The new look of the Russian army in Ukraine, soldiers on motorcycles race across no man's land, counting on speed to evade Ukrainian fire, but not always able to outrun the swarms of drones which hover over the battlefield and can pick off fighters one by one. These are essentially stormtroopers, they're assault shock troops that hop onto motorbikes. George Barros of the Institute for the Study of War says it's one of the new tactics Russia has used to seize 430 square miles of territory over the past nine months. Currently at the moment, the Russians have the upper hand, the Russians are able to choose where, when the tempo of battle and what intensity that they want to conduct defensive operations anywhere along this entire 600 mile frontline.
And where does that get them? It puts them within striking distance of some very important ground lines and communication supply corridors that connect some of the really important large cities that constitute the backbone of Ukraine's defense of Eastern Ukraine. What price are the Russians paying to make these advances?
It's a very high price. The current estimates suggest that the Russians lose between 25 to 30,000 troops per month. By some estimates, Russia has suffered a staggering half a million killed and wounded since the invasion. Yet Putin has been able to replace those losses and pursue his merciless long war strategy, endless assaults to grind down Ukraine's ability to resist, coupled with threats of nuclear war against the nations supporting Ukraine. Putin understands what's going to make or break this war is whether or not the allied states that support Ukraine decide to lean into or not. The United States leaned way back when politics. We'll talk about the Ukraine measure going forward.
That's not been abandoned, but there's a lot more work that needs to be done. Caused a five month suspension in arms shipments to Ukraine just as the Russian Air Force was unleashing a devastating new weapon. The Russians discovered that they can put these cheap glide kits onto the glide bombs and convert their large Soviet era stockpiles of dumb gravity bombs into a precision weapon.
The bombs sprout wings in flight and guided by a GPS signal glide toward targets 30 to 40 miles away. While Russian pilots remain out of range of Ukraine's air defenses. They can use the air power and these 500 kilogram bombs to pummel and destroy Ukrainian trenches, bunkers, strong points and fortifications. Thousands of bombs and millions of artillery shells have turned the battlefield into a moonscape of craters.
One became a death trap for a Russian tank when a tiny Ukrainian drone attacked it. Russia has tried protecting its tanks with extra layers of armor, but for every measure there's a countermeasure and American weapons are once again flowing to Ukraine. So as long as the Russians actually fail and convincing the international coalition from continuing to support Ukraine, the Russians have no chance of winning in Ukraine. It sounds like all wars it comes down to will.
Precisely. Political will is the decisive factor for this war. It's not what happens on the battleground. Territory can be lost, ceded and recaptured again but if we make the decision to abandon the Ukrainians then they will lose. I mean honestly the center of gravity for this war, it's not the fields in Ukraine but it's what happens here in Washington just like it was in World War II, just like it is today.
Time for something completely different. Millions of Americans spent time in the yard these past few days cooking out or just hanging out but it's a safe guess few of us have had the sort of unforgettable run-in our Steve Hartman now shares with us. You've no doubt seen many animal rescues from barn fires to flash floods, critters cut loose and airlifted but until you've seen this story you have not seen it all.
Yeah it was surreal. It's an unbelievable thing to see you know if we didn't catch that on camera no one would have ever believed it. Our drama unfolds at a backyard cookout in Burton, Michigan where friends Tyler Whalen, John Posinski and Bill Messenger were just wrapping up their weekly cookout when a raccoon appeared. The raccoon had just stolen an American single much like this one, a harmless caper until it became clear to everyone that this raccoon had bitten off way more than it could chew. We're looking at we noticed it was choking. Pointing at its neck like the universal sign for choking it was like this. Right after that's when Bill just sprung into action and started hitting its back. And now you've seen it all.
A little bit lower Bill. I could not believe a wild raccoon was letting him hit it in the back that hard. I was like oh my god. It was leaning back into it like help me out brother. I think it knew that he was trying to help it.
And help it he did. There you go. There it is.
Let's go you're not gonna stop. Watch again in slow motion and you can see right there out came the cheese. For the obligatory don't try this at home warning we reached out to an animal behavior expert. Professor Suzanne McDonald from York University in Toronto. She is a wealth of information. I've seen it all. I've been bitten by it all. I've been pooped on by it all. Perhaps too much information. But to the point.
Don't do that. Don't be slapping raccoons or any other animal on the back. But it wasn't like he was given a mouth to mouth or anything.
And she says a choking animal can't bite you. Regardless, the guys believe they had no choice. We all thought it was gonna die. We were pumped for that little dude. He was one of us at that point. So it sounds like that raccoon wasn't the only one. And I'm proud to call these guys my friends.
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That's rocketmoney.com slash wondery rocketmoney.com slash wondery. Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co founder of Angie. When you use Angie for your home projects, you know all your jobs will be done well. Roof repair done well. Kitchen sink install done well deck upgrades done well electrical upgrade done well. Angie's been connecting homeowners with skilled pros for nearly 30 years. So we know the difference between done and done well.
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U is for you and me. It's Sunday morning on CBS. And here again is Lee Cowan. He started off as a lowly resident of the underwater city of Bikini Bottom. Since then, SpongeBob SquarePants has truly risen to the top, worthy of a Sunday profile. Behind the gates at Nickelodeon Studios in Burbank, California, some tropical trouble was brewing in an undersea pipe. This letter's just not gonna open.
It's a preposterous postal predicament. Yeah, he pulls it out of his nose. Yeah, yeah. That SpongeBob's Tom Kenny has gotten pretty used to. Duh!
Maybe it just needs a little extra elbow grease. See, what did I tell you? Lee, I wish you could tell me what all this means. Do you know what this means? It's amazing.
Like this wasn't supposed to happen or this hardly ever happens. Oh! SpongeBob and his undersea buddies have become a multi-billion dollar a year franchise for our sister network, Nickelodeon. They've spawned countless video games, internet memes, action figures, three feature films. Whoa!
What is this place? Even a Broadway musical. And in just 10 days, he'll celebrate his 25th anniversary, or as SpongeBob himself might call it. SpongeBob lets his freak flag fly.
He is who he is. And it's amazing that folks find that very empowering that are now grownups or even little kids now. But what separates SpongeBob from all the other cartoons? Hello, welcome to my commercial.
Would you like the convenience of a Krabby Patty at home? Why does such an emotional connection remain for both kids and adults? What are you two laughing about? In part, it's the cast.
Every one of them has been side by side since the very beginning. What an amazing gift you guys have given people. No, but we got the gift. Yeah, we really get the gift. It's our first best destiny, I always say. You idiots ruined my perfect getaway. Now I have to get away again, all over again.
So why don't you get cooking? What struck me just like watching you guys today is that you still laugh at it. That's the beauty of it.
We always will laugh at it. Patrick still makes me laugh. I kind of lose myself in Patrick. Is mayonnaise an instrument?
No Patrick, mayonnaise is not an instrument. And then every one of these guys, I hear them. It's like I'm eight years old. And I am giddy. Not even an idiot would come all the way out here. I'm Mr.
Planted. Oh, it's you. What are you doing here? When fans find out they're all actually friends in real life, let's just say there's a moment. Strong men, big dudes, burly guys with beards have teared up when they say, they go, wow, you guys really hang out together. Yeah, like that's so cool, man.
Can I have a hug? This fantastically improbable world was dreamed up by a former marine biologist named Stephen Hillenburg. These are the Nickelodeon archives. Although the inhabitants of Bikini Bottom are mostly genuine aquatic creatures. Squidward's house, the tiki head and SpongeBob's pineapple house. Squidward, we don't need television.
Not as long as we have our imagination. Hillenburg thought it would be particularly funny if the sponge who lived in this tide pool wasn't an actual sea sponge, but an ordinary kitchen sponge instead. These are his shoes and socks. So this is an in-depth study of SpongeBob's footwear.
Hillenburg's premise was pretty simple. A happy-go-lucky SpongeBob wants nothing more than to be the best fry cook in the ocean. I can't accept your money, Mr. Krabs.
Grilling is my passion. He has a pet snail named Gary. Gary and I are going to try to win the prize so Mr. Krabs can fix up the Krusty Krab. Right, Gary?
And a dim-witted best friend who would try anyone's patience, except for SpongeBob's. Is this the Krusty Krab? No! This is Patrick! I'm not a Krusty Krab.
Uh, Patrick, that's the name of the restaurant. Huh? There's also a squirrel in a space suit. Wow, I didn't think superpowers worked that way. An irritable squid who plays the clarinet because why not?
I didn't play any wrong notes. And a scheming single-celled organism hell-bent on stealing the Krabby Patty secret formula. Hey, watch it!
I'm in a what? The secret formula! Must be one of Krabs' tricks. It was so bizarre and yet so simple and now it's become this phenomenon.
So bizarre, so simple, so perfect. Ramsay Nato, president of Nickelodeon and Paramount Animation, argues that SpongeBob became, for Gen Z, what Mickey Mouse was to Baby Boomers. One of the things I always loved about SpongeBob personally is that SpongeBob reminds us of the kid inside of us all, truly.
You know, that sweet, honest, naive, lovable kid in all of us. And yet it survives because it's much more than that. If SpongeBob was nothing but optimistic, that wouldn't be a very good show. So SpongeBob does get down in the dumps. SpongeBob does get discouraged. SpongeBob does feel sad. But he bounces back. He comes back. You know, well, there's always tomorrow.
One of the happiest shows on TV, however, hit one of its saddest moments when in November 2018, SpongeBob's creator, Steve Hillenburg, died after being diagnosed with ALS. He was only 57. Was it hard going on after that? It became more of a calling, I think, for me because we want to carry on what he started. I think our thing was feeling like we should keep doing this if we can.
We have no choice in a way. One generation, now a second, even a third, come to Comic-Con events, not so much for autographs and pictures, but to tell their own stories. I constantly get people coming up and one of the first things, if not the first thing out of their mouth is, thank you for my childhood.
Right. I had this 15-year-old girl came up to me at a con and she said, I went through a period of great depression and I wanted to kill myself. You made me want to keep living. And I mean, that's such an incredibly intense thing to hear. And I look up and there's her mother saying right behind her, she's sobbing. It's incredible.
I mean, things like that happen all the time. Pink! At a time when we all feel a little underwater and the future seems clouded by the dense fog of pessimism, Tom Kenny and SpongeBob SquarePants are a gentle, albeit silly, reminder that optimism and friendship remain just as valuable as the Krabby Patty formula itself. Sometimes I've tried to find a downside, like just as a mental exercise. Dang it, I can't find one. So if you come up with a downside, let me know.
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Start your confidence journey today with Bite. On this Independence Day weekend, we asked former CBS News correspondent Chip Reid, author of the book, Battle Scars, for some perspective on the mental health challenges facing our nation's military. At this moment, there are over 35,000 American troops stationed in the Middle East. And since October 7th, when Hamas attacked Israel, there have been more than 170 attempted attacks on U.S. facilities.
If those numbers surprise you, you're not alone. Most Americans don't pay much attention to our men and women serving overseas until something horrible happens. Technically speaking, America is not at war. But try telling that to those who will in all likelihood continue to be subjected not only to frequent attacks, but also to the extreme stress of constant vigilance, which is why I worry about their long-term mental health.
F-18 streaked in, dropped 500 and 1,000 pound bombs. I was embedded with a Marine battalion during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Twenty years later, I interviewed dozens of those Marines and most said they came home with at least some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, such as nightmares, explosive anger, and survivor's guilt. PTSD has always been with us. In the Civil War, it was called soldier's heart. In later wars, shell shock, combat fatigue, and post-Vietnam syndrome.
It was once thought to be a sign of weakness, but medical science tells us it is not. Combat and other traumatic events cause changes in the brain that trigger PTSD. We also now know that PTSD need not be permanent. A relatively new concept in psychology is post-traumatic growth, in which those who get help with their PTSD instead of trying to bury it can experience greater inner strength and a whole new appreciation for life. In the early years of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, we failed as a nation to respond to a mental health crisis in the military.
Let's make sure that this time around, we give our returning troops the mental health services they need and deserve. I'm Lee Cowan. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app.
Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at Wondery.com slash survey. Nancy's love story could have been ripped right out of the pages of one of her own novels. She was a romance mystery writer who happens to be married to a chef. But this story didn't end with a happily ever after.
When I stepped into the kitchen, I could see that Chef Brophy was on the ground and I heard somebody say, call 911. As writers, we'd written our share of murder mysteries. So when suspicion turned to Dan's wife, Nancy, we weren't that surprised. The first person they look at would be the spouse. We understand that's usually the way they do it. But we began to wonder, had Nancy gotten so wrapped up in her own novels There are murders in all of the books. That she was playing them out in real life? Follow Happily Never After Dan and Nancy on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can binge all episodes of Happily Never After Dan and Nancy early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Scammers are best known for living the high life until they're forced to trade it all in for handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit once they're finally caught. I'm Saachi Cole and I'm Sarah Hagee and we're the host of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of some of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims and what's left once a facade falls away. We've covered stories like a Shark Tank certified entrepreneur who left the show with an investment, but soon faced mounting bills, an active lawsuit filed by Larry King and no real product to push. He then began to prey on vulnerable women instead, selling the idea of a future together while stealing from them behind their backs. To the infamous scams of Real Housewives stars like Teresa Giudice, what should have proven to be a major downfall only seemed to solidify her place in the Real Housewives Hall of Fame. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad-free right now on Wondery+.
