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It's a convenient way to run your household, customize to your family's needs, and the easy way to raise financially smart kids. Get started with Greenlight today and get your first month free at greenlight.com slash wondery. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley and this is Sunday Morning. It was only a month ago that the reset button was pushed on the race for the White House. With President Joe Biden's announcement, he'd withdraw as a candidate. On the eve of tomorrow's Democratic National Convention, Robert Costa will examine how Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, have dramatically changed the tone of the election and rekindle the hopes of the Democratic Party as their campaign kicks off in Chicago, a city steeped in political history.
If we finally beat Medicare. After a summer of twists and turns, Democrats are ready to nominate and showcase Kamala Harris. People don't know her, so she gets the opportunity to draw that picture of herself, which is seldom in politics.
Coming up on Sunday morning, looking back and ahead in the Windy City. For more than 50 years, Carol Kane has been putting her unique stamp on countless roles, both on TV and in film. Nancy Giles has our Sunday profile. Carol Kane can bring a character to life with just her voice. One thing I do know is that it's flexible, changeable, depending on the character. Now, fail me like a grape so I can get out of here.
But my regular voice, sometimes I think, what is that? Later on Sunday morning, Emmy Award winner Carol Kane. For generations, work in coal mines has sustained communities in West Virginia, despite the health risks miners face on a daily basis. Today, far fewer workers make their living in mines. But for those who do, it turns out the health risks are even greater, as Ted Koppel discovered.
Kevin Weichel is 35. He used to be a coal miner. And you got black lung? Complicated black lung.
What do they mean by complicated? My lungs is turning a rock. Coal miners with black lung, more than ever, younger than ever, ahead on Sunday morning. The Republicans have their elephant. For Democrats, it's the donkey. This morning, Connor Knighton gets up close and personal with their party animal.
Best-selling author Carl Hiaasen has made a career capturing the colorful, quirkier side of life in the Sunshine State. He'll be talking with Lesley Stahl. Plus, retired three-star army general H.R.
McMaster is in conversation with David Martin. And more. It's a Sunday morning for the 18th of August, 2024. And we'll be right back. As summer winds down, let your imagination soar by listening on Audible. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. With Audible, there's more to imagine when you listen. And speaking of listening, you can listen to the best-selling science fiction thriller, Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir, right now on the Audible app, and traverse the galaxy in a desperate last-chance mission, along with astronaut Ryland Grace.
All from the comfort of your living room. As an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash wonderypod or text wonderypod to 500 500. That's audible.com slash wonderypod or text wonderypod to 500 500.
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Slows full terms at mintmobile.com. This week at the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris will formally accept her party's nomination for president. The fact that her historic candidacy will be officially launched in Chicago has a special significance, as Robert Costa reports. Chicago, perhaps no city has been more connected with the Democratic Party. And this week, Chicago will host its 12th Democratic Convention, nominating Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz to talk about the new ticket and this old school city. Well, I'm Irish, so corned beef sandwich.
We naturally had lunch with a daily. What kind of case do you think she needs to make to win this November? What does she actually need to do? I think she has to lay out a vision. She has to show who she is as a person and kind of what she believes.
Not so much the litany of specific positions on issues, but sort of a sense of who she is and what does she believe in. Bill Daley, who has spent his life in Democratic politics, met us at Manny's Deli, a spot beloved by Chicago's workers and its politicians. The memory of Daley's father, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, still looms large in Chicago. In 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, the city hosted the Democratic Convention. That year, like this year, the incumbent exited the race.
I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president. And that year, like this year, violence marred the campaign. On to Chicago and let's win there. At the turbulent convention that August, Bill Daley was at his father's side. What was it like, though, to be inside the cauldron when it's boiling over? It was crazy.
Outside the convention hall, there were bloody confrontations between police and anti-war protesters, putting Mayor Daley in the spotlight. Ever have any regrets years later about how that all played out in 68? If he did, he didn't express them. Look at it, he didn't like it. He didn't like what happened. You know, he didn't like the rap to Chicago. But you know what?
He didn't look back. This week, there are planned protests of the Biden-Harris administration's handling of Israel's war with Hamas. This city seems to have been bracing for protests.
What do you expect on the streets? There'll be protests. There'll be a lot of protesters. I don't think they'll be out of hand.
You know, it's not the 60s. The convention's key speaker on Monday night is President Biden. How are Democrats going to handle that, showing some respect for him, but also recognizing it's still the Harris Convention? I think there's going to be enormous emotional reaction of the presidents being there.
I think that place will be rocking. Harris will accept the nomination on Thursday, setting the stage for a showdown with former President Donald Trump. All of a sudden, the cards have all been reshuffled, where he's the older guy and she's the young, new generation. And that's a pretty powerful message, too, just that alone. Many Democrats hope this crossroads will have echoes of another Chicago gathering, when in 2008, Barack Obama became the first Black American to win the White House, where Bill Daley later served as his chief of staff. It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America. He was totally different from anybody who had ever run for president. Everything about his candidacy was change. He just exuded change, difference.
We love our country. For Harris, there might be a balancing act. She is at once new to many Americans, but already in power. She is an incumbent vice president.
Yeah, I know. But all due respect to vice presidents, they're really not known by the American people. The job itself kind of dictates you play second fiddle. Vice President Harris casting herself, it seems like the change candidate. Is that how you see it? Absolutely. Just like Barack Obama did. Look at that artist, Shepard Fairey, who did the Obama Hope painting years ago. He just came out with a new one with Harris, forward, just among Democrats, this excitement. Absolutely. The thought of the first woman being president is awfully exciting.
I have three granddaughters. They're incredibly excited. That excitement, Bill Daley cautions, will soon be tested by the reality of a brutal campaign. The Electoral College is very difficult for a Democrat.
You almost have to pull an inside trait every time. A lot of Democrats are really giddy right now about the poll numbers. They feel good about Vice President Harris.
If you offered a word of caution to them, what would you say? 90 days is a long time. 90 days in politics is a lifetime. Along with the pomp, pageantry, and punditry of this week's Democratic National Convention, will be plenty of images of one particular animal, the donkey. But why?
Connor Knighton has our answer and much more. Democrats and donkeys have been linked ever since the election of 1828, when Democratic candidate Andrew Jackson's opponents labeled him a jackass. Instead of taking offense, Jackson embraced the association. Decades later, after political cartoonist Thomas Nast depicted Democrats as donkeys, the symbol really took off. Although the donkey has never been an official party emblem, you will undoubtedly see it on display this week as the Democrats gather in Chicago. But to witness an actual gathering of donkeys, you'd be better off heading to the small town of Beatty, Nevada. Burros are just part of Beatty.
You don't think of Beatty without burros. At Happy Burro Chilean Beer, Beatty locals admit to, not always being happy, about the town's famous four-legged residents. I have a love-hate relationship with them, actually. I think they're funny. I hate that they get in my garbage. I hate that they poop everywhere.
Oh, Godie! Donkeys can be cute, but they can also be a nuisance, knocking down fences and chewing up gardens. It's a show of hands, who's had a burro in the backyard? Oh. Okay.
All right. Burro, by the way, is just Spanish for donkey. It's the exact same animal, although people tend to refer to wild donkeys as burros.
While they're originally from Africa, they've been in North America for centuries. We're talking late 1400s, 1500s, Spanish explorers, early missionaries, some mining operations used burros. And so brought to work.
Yes, brought to work, you bet. Gus Warr is a program manager for Burros. He's a program manager with the Bureau of Land Management's Wild Horse and Burro Program. The American West was built on the backs of burros, until changing times and technology made the animals less necessary. Once their usefulness was used up, a lot of people would just turn them loose. So they truly became wild animals. For decades, it felt like the Wild West, in terms of how the free-roaming horses and burros were managed. There was animals that were being gathered up and sent, like, to slaughter.
Before hearing our first witnesses... That all changed in 1971. The proposed legislation would give them status as a national heritage species. Velma Johnston, known as Wild Horse Annie, successfully led a campaign to protect wild horses and burros, testifying in Washington alongside school children who rallied to the cause. The passage of the 1971 Free-Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act proclaimed the animals, quote, living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West, and ensured that they would be legally protected from capture, branding, harassment, or death.
It worked. As far as protection, I mean, the animals are thriving. Almost too much now. Today, there are more than 14,000 burros wandering around public lands, where they can overgraze and threaten delicate ecosystems, or end up on roads and cause traffic accidents. Attempts to control fertility have been largely unsuccessful, so the Bureau of Land Management removes the burros through frequent roundups, controversial due to the way the process can stress the animals. The government would love for you to take one home through their adoption program. Discover the magical bond you can enjoy with a wild horse or burro. But not all the burros find homes.
That's where Mark Meyers steps in. I'm the donkey guy, because I don't think donkeys got their fair shake. Meyers is the executive director of the non-profit Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue. Take your hat off, walk into any bar and pass it around and say, I'm raising money for the donkeys. You're going to get laughed out of the place. This sprawling ranch in San Angelo, Texas, takes in everything from abused domestic donkeys to wild burros the government struggled to adopt out.
We joke that it's a backyard hobby gone horribly wrong. Mark and his wife Amy purchased a pet donkey in 1999. This is Izzy. This is Izzy. It's gentle, almost dog-like quality.
It's good stuff right there. Challenge their preconceived notions about the species. When you talk to people about donkeys, what are the stereotypes that you hear?
They're stubborn, they're stupid, they're lazy, and it's like none of that is true. They are loyal, they're protective. This is Almond Joy, this is Betty White. Oh, this is Betty. The goal here is to tame these donkeys and get as many as possible adopted. Carrie and Brad Dawkins are here to pick up Hank and Miles. Oh, they're precious.
They're so sweet. Meyer says his rescue has adopted out nearly 11,000 donkeys. He also just opened a donkey history museum north of Las Vegas to make people more aware of their often overlooked contributions. They're forgotten, and I just feel it's my job to make people know all that they've done. As you make new memories this summer, are you also protecting your old ones? Chances are the precious home movies from your past are breaking down and could be lost forever. Great news, Legacy Box can help. They make it easy to stop worrying about losing your memories to old media. With Legacy Box, you can easily access those memories and protect them. Just load Legacy Box with your old tapes, film, and pictures, and send them in. You'll get them back on a thumb drive or stored in the cloud, so they're ready to watch and easy to share. It's so simple, it's like magic.
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That's ZipRecruiter.com slash Z-I-P-D-A-I-L-Y. Hello, Frank. I'm the ghost of Christmas present. I had a funny feeling.
Why did you do that? Sometimes you have to slap them in the face just to get their attention. Carol Kane left quite an impression on Bill Murray in the 1988 film Scrooged. It's just one of the many memorable performances in her more than 50-year career.
This morning, she's looking back with our Nancy Giles. I can't talk to you without talking about your marvelous voice. Oh. What do you mean? And its flexibility. I don't know what you're talking about.
And the fact that you can do all these different things with it. Liar! Get back, witch! I'm not a witch, I'm your wife!
Carol Kane has made a name for herself, portraying characters with very distinctive voices. We can spend a lot of time talking about this. We can go.
Oh, they'll never even know we were there. I sanded off my fingerprints years ago. The 72-year-old is using that voice in her latest movie. I feel like maybe it might be my time to go ahead with it because I always wanted to do it. She's playing a retired music teacher who is determined to be bat mitzvahed and takes lessons from a former student, played by Jason Schwartzman. I sing at the service's cantor. That is a really good gig.
It's beautiful. You're a widow, he's a widower, and he's a cantor who can't sing. He's that depressed. But I help him. That's right. And in fact, the breathing I teach him in the movie is the breathing that my mother teaches her. Her vocal students, it's called belly breathing, where you stick your stomach out and get a big deep breath. Those breathing exercises weren't the only thing that connected to Carol's real-life mother, Joy. She said that you inspired her character.
Did you know that? Well, I am elderly. No, mama, you inspired because you started your life over again when you were 55, and then again when she was 75. And at age 97, Joy Cain still composes music daily. What was Carol like as a little girl? She was adorable.
This is Moi, and those are my darlings. Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, the youngest of two daughters, Carol's imagination was encouraged by her parents. We had gorgeous picture books, art books. When I was like four or five, I started taking these books in the bathroom, in front of the mirror, like I'd sit on the floor in front of the mirror, and spend hours every Sunday trying to recreate the makeup that I saw in the paintings and the photographs.
After her parents divorced, mother and daughters moved to New York City, where Carol attended the professional children's school, intent on becoming an actor. But that voice she's so famous for today? I didn't speak very much when I was young. I didn't speak very much when I was young, and I was taken to a doctor who interviewed me, and wrote as a diagnosis that I should never, under any circumstances, be allowed to enter the professional theater because I would not be able to project.
And I mustn't be allowed because I would inevitably be completely rejected. Then what happened? I needed to do it, Nancy, I had no choice. I just kept at it. By age 18, that tenacity paid off. Cain landed a role in Carnal Knowledge and appeared on stage at Lincoln Center.
Then, Cain learned to speak Yiddish to portray Gittel, an Eastern European immigrant, in director Joan Micklin Silver's Hester Street. It earned her a 1976 Oscar nomination at a moment when, ironically, she was on unemployment. Literally, I was on unemployment. Literally, I was doing that thing that you do when you want a boy to call you, and they don't call, and you have to pick up the receiver and make sure there's a dial tone. You're thinking, this must be busted.
The phone must not be working. Something's wrong here, I'm going to call Ma Bell. So it didn't ring, and then it rang, and it was Gene Wilder a year later. Oh my goodness. And he asked me to play the part of his wife in a comedy, and I have no idea how that happened.
But more comedic roles followed, in film. Don't stop me before I make a complete imbecile of myself. No, that was wonderful. I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype.
Right, I'm a bigot, you know, but for the left. And on television, where Cain learned yet another way to make a film. Where Cain learned yet another language to play Simka Dablitz on Taxi.
The language was created by Andy Kaufman. For him, it was just being a little kid, allowing himself to not censor himself. And that was an incredibly important lesson for me, because I was very nervous about getting it right, you know. And then he put it in that context of there's no such thing as getting it right. You're just going to be little, and you're just going to imagine.
And six decades into her career, Carol Cain still approaches each new role as she always has. It's not that I love being nervous, because it's very painful sometimes. I can't even breathe, you know. I mean, have you ever approached something like, I got this? No. Okay, there you go. I'll tell you something, I did Wicked for four years.
I was sometimes more nervous in my fourth year than I had been in my first year. And that was eight shows a week. Yes, I'm not saying that's healthy.
I'm just saying it's a fact. Hiring is challenging, especially when you're a business owner with a lot on your plate. Thankfully, there's a place you can go for help. ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter does the work for you to make hiring fast and easy. Immediately after you post your job, ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology starts showing you qualified people for it. Experience faster, easier hiring with ZipRecruiter. Try it free at ziprecruiter.com slash zip daily.
That's ziprecruiter.com slash z-i-p-d-a-i-l-y. This podcast is supported by Progressive, America's number one motorcycle insurer. Everything is more exhilarating when you're on your motorcycle. Just like your bike is more protected when you choose Progressive Motorcycle Insurance. They offer coverage for your bike starting as low as $75 per year, and they keep things affordable with discounts like paid in full, multi-policy, and responsible driver. So raise your kickstands and get to quoting at progressive.com to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, $75 premium is for state minimum coverage not available in DC. Discounts not available in all states or situations. Perhaps no industry is as synonymous with a state as coal mining is with West Virginia. In many communities, working the mines has long been part of the cultural fabric.
But as senior contributor Ted Koppel reported during a recent visit, those jobs come at a price. West Virginia, October, Friday Night Football. The Oak Hill Red Devils are hosting the Buchanan Buccaneers. Long before game time, the littlest fans dressed to the teeth, are trotted out one by one by a succession of cheerleaders. When the cheerleaders crank up their own routine, a few veterans of the squad from a generation or two ago are discreetly keeping pace in the back row. In small town America, Friday Night Football is a family event. And it remains a big deal.
Zach Davis here, he's head coach for the Buccaneers. Our kids, some are going to go to college and then go into some sort of professional career. A lot of them will go be a blue-collar worker, whether that's at Walmart or a local business or some sort of convenience store. I notice you're not mentioning the mines. This used to be, this is coal country right here.
Used to be. I think a couple of our kids I know of have been in the mine since I've been here, but not very many. These kids who are out in the field right now, 20 years ago, half of them at least would have ended up in the mines.
That's a fact. Today? Today, no chance of going in a coal mine. I graduated high school on a Friday, Monday morning I was in the coal mine. My dad worked the coal mine, my granddad worked the coal mine, my brothers worked the coal mine. Still is coal country, but not like it used to be. Don Barrett used to be a miner. 23 years in the coal mine. Everybody was working, there was jobs everywhere, people buying new homes, new cars. Life was good.
That was the upside. Mining, of course, was always a dangerous job, and one in every five miners has for years ended up with black lung. Black lung is a bad disease.
I have problems with breathing, you have coughing, you just suffer where you can't do the things that you used to do. Kevin Wankel is taking what's called a pulmonary function test. Big deep breath in, blast it out hard. Keep pushing. It identifies just how badly impaired his lungs have become.
The test confirms what he and respiratory therapist Lisa Emery already know. Almost there, big breath in, suck in, suck in. Good, take a break and you can take your notes. Kevin's black lung is so severe that he can no longer work in the mines. Yeah, these things are tough. What's different about Kevin is his age. Used to be black lung didn't force a man out of the mines until he was in his late 50s or 60s. Kevin is just 35. Kevin has been a coal miner almost half his life. There he was at age 18, suddenly making more money than he ever dreamed possible.
The first six months underground, at $12 an hour, made $76,000 in six months. That's how much I worked. Sometimes I wouldn't even go home. I'd go out and sleep in the parking lot, get back up and go back in.
I was told that I'd break myself long before I broke the company, so I could work as much as I wanted. I'm guessing there was a truck in your future there somewhere. Yeah. Is that the first thing you bought?
Yep, I went and bought a brand new F-250 diesel. You grow up with little, so when you start making that kind of money... Those were the good days. Yeah, yeah, those was the good days. When did life start getting serious? When my son was born, then you look at stuff different. How?
You really realize the dangers when you have something to live for instead of just yourself. It's something that you expect to get when you're old. And you got black lung? Complicated black lung.
What do they mean by complicated? My lungs are turning a rock. Kevin is just one of many young miners showing up at the New River Health Clinic. This is a complicated pneumoconiosis, so he has the worst form of black lung. That's respiratory therapist Lisa Emery again. Our rates of black lung in central Appalachia are skyrocketing.
Why is that, Lisa? The miners are having higher exposure levels to silica dust. You tell me if I'm oversimplifying it. They're having to drill through more rock to get to the coal.
Absolutely. And the rock dust, paradoxically, is more damaging to the lungs even than the coal dust is. That's right. It's smaller. It's finer. It's a dust called silica dust. This is the second of three public hearings that MSHA is holding on the proposed rule lowering miners' exposure to respirable crystalline silica. MSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, has proposed a new rule that would lower miners' exposure to that silica dust. And I'm happy to see this included in the proposed rule. In June, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee voted to kill the new rule.
The bill has now advanced to all of Congress, where lawmakers have one more chance to save it. It needs to be reinforced by MSHA and not by the coal companies. We've already got the limits for black lung coal dust.
This is silica dust, which has been there present all the time, and it cuts your lungs. William Bolts Willis retired from the coal industry years ago, but he's still in the union. In fact, he's president of United Mine Workers Local 8843. But this in and of itself is going to change nothing.
It may not, because there's no teeth in what they're doing to make the companies comply with this. Coal mining isn't a bad job. I do love coal mining, but it doesn't have to be the way it is. Roscoe, that's not his real name, is a working miner in his early 30s who fears that he already has black lung. The reason we're obscuring his identity is his contention that the mines routinely break the rules. What would happen if your name came out?
Probably never have a job in the coal industry again. You serious? 100 percent. Roscoe explains what happens when an inspector comes on mine property. Everybody's crossing their T's and dotting their I's. Everything's done right. When we're underground and an inspector pulls up on that property, before he ever gets out of the vehicle, the dispatcher calls underground and lets every section know that there's an inspector on the property.
So by the time the inspector comes up to the section, everything's right. How many years has that been going on? That's been going on since I've been in coal mining. Forever, huh?
Yeah. They keep raising these dust laws and these ventilation laws for these coal companies, thinking that it's going to help this black lung matter, but it's not. Because? Because the laws that are in effect now would work if coal companies actually obeyed them and took care of their men full-time instead of whenever there's just an inspector on the section. The only thing that mining companies understand is money. Sam Petsock represents miners in their lawsuit seeking benefits for black lung. Coal companies rarely provide such benefits without being sued. We are seeing many young miners, hundreds in this region where I practice law, as young as their thirties, losing over a quarter of their lung to pure rock dust.
It's a crisis. We've never seen so many young miners with such short exposures becoming so extremely sick. We contacted several mining trade associations, all declined the opportunity to comment. There's some kind of a gauge that measures a dust pump that measures the dust in the air. It takes in that dust and traps it in a filter. Kevin Weichel explains how, he says, the mines stack the deck when it comes to testing for air quality.
Well, company pumps, you'd keep them in clean air to make sure that they passed. So really what the inspectors were seeing was not a normal shift. Was not a normal shift. If the inspectors had actually seen what the real reading was, what would the difference have been? Significant.
And what would that have meant? A lot of changes. I mean, and ventilation that ate up the air required on each machine. It would have been more expensive for the company? Yeah.
It would have been more expensive and a great loss of production. You think that happens a lot? I know it does.
And anybody says it don't, so why? The disease, as Kevin knows, is not reversible. It's progressing. It will progress whether I'm in the dust or not. It's still going to grow and lead to probably a lung transplant at some point in time. If you're lucky.
If I'm lucky, yep. Expensive? Very. Have you got any idea what it costs? I don't. Tens of thousands of dollars.
Say it's close to a million. Yeah. Really? Yeah. And the money is only part of the problem.
There are also long wait lists and the prospect of moving to one of the limited locations where lung transplants are performed. The pressure only builds. Kevin says his wife has filed for divorce.
She and the children have moved out. The coal company laid it out for Kevin half a lifetime ago. He'd break himself before he broke the company.
Before he broke the company, and that's pretty much how it is. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary.
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Download the free app today and make the most of your summer with AllTrails. I got moldy vegetables. You got decomposing shrimp just sitting out right there, defrosting. And my favorite, there's an actual condom in that vat of soup. It's a chowder. I may never eat again. That's Vince Vaughn in Bad Monkey, a new streaming series based on the book by best-selling author Carl Hiaasen. It's a tale that could only happen in what Hiaasen describes as, quote, a bizarre place called Florida.
Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes went there to see for herself. I wonder how you would describe yourself. Crank. Curmudgeon.
Crusader. Crank, definitely. Cranky. Cranky.
Maybe not a crank. No, I think when you write satire, which is what I do, satire always comes from a place of anger, a sense of injustice about things. Satire has a target. The cranky, crusading Carl Hiaasen has channeled that anger into more than 30 books.
And now, one of his snarkiest satires, his 2013 novel, Bad Monkey, has been turned into a series on Apple TV Plus. That's all they found? No, man, the head's in the passenger seat. If you're too grouchy to answer the question, just say I'm too grouchy to answer the question.
You have to hit me with the head in the passenger seat. We caught up with the 71-year-old Hiaasen in the Florida Keys, where Bad Monkey was being filmed. This is pretty amazing for you, isn't it? You know, it's a little surreal because you're sitting in a room all by your hook and write it, and then alone, and you come here, and they've had like 105 people on the set.
One of those 105 is the actor Vince Vaughn, the good guy in Bad Monkey. Inspector Yancy, I have a few questions. What time is it?
Just past bathrobe time, so you're still good. Okay. You want to come see the set? I'd love to. Let's do it. I'd love to.
Here, he plays the main character, police detective Andrew Yancy. The house from the front is god-awful, but it's really just a set. Yeah.
But I think everyone's glad it's just pretend and not here forever. I would call it a Key West egg yolk monstrosity. Monstrosity, yes. And this is my house, Yancy's house. Oh, perfect. Just a simple little bungalow, really. It's been there for quite a while, right.
One theme in all of Hyacinth's writing is New Florida versus Old Florida, development versus nature. Not just bad monkeys. No, Bad Monkey. But bad neighbors. There's a dead raccoon in my house.
Yancy lives in a beautiful little home in Big Pine Key, and this mansion is being built next door. It's blocking his view. It takes away the sunset, everything, and that's all he lives for. Broadly speaking, Bad Monkey is based on his own life in Florida. Everywhere I went as a kid, went hunting and fishing and catching critters and all that stuff, it's all paved over, it's all concrete now. But I saw it happening from a very young age, little six or seven years old, and I was pissed off then. And I'm still pissed. For 45 years, Hyacinth has turned his outrage into newsprint at the Miami Herald as a reporter and a columnist.
You often railed against the paving over of Florida. The novel seemed to be an extension of that. Yeah. So it's all one piece. Yeah, but it's all coming out of the same place, I think.
It's the same fuel. I think you really have to care about a place to write about it. You have to care if it's going to be good. This, it's the overwhelming beauty of the place is what makes my characters behave the way they do. Some of your characters talk about the beauty as if they're in a church or a cathedral.
Very much. For me, that's church. It's spiritual. It is very spiritual, and you just turn a corner in a mangrove swamp and all of a sudden you know, you see a beautiful spoon bill up in a tree or something, and that's it, you know.
That's when you're reminded like, you know, we can't, we can't screw this up. Hyacinth worships Florida's flora and fauna, but our own species, not so much. I love the words you use. I love them. So here are just some words I pulled out of your books. Greed heads, whore hoppers, pretty good. Pill head fugitive felon.
He had facial skin like Rice Krispies. Even you're laughing. Well, I remember that line, yeah. You know, when they come to me is when I'm driving and I have a low threshold of patience as a driver, and I will use them as a salutation to another person.
As a salutation to another driver who perhaps. Hey, you whore hoppers. Yeah, yeah. That's when they come into my head. And then I'll say, oh, that's pretty good. Where did I come on? I'll put that in the book.
See, it's always anger. Hyacinth writes about a book a year, but Bad Monkey is his first to become a TV show. He's feeling good about it, even though two feature films based on his novels, Striptease and Hoot, tanked. Do you understand why those movies didn't really make it? If I was handed a novel like mine with the subplots, I would have a really hard time adapting.
Yes. The exciting thing about Bad Monkey is that it's a series. And you can do more backstory. You can do all kinds of things that you can't do in a feature film. Another thing that's different about Bad Monkey is veteran TV producer Bill Lawrence. So you are the producer of Ted Lasso, the most popular show on television. You could do anything.
You could name what you want to do. Why Bad Monkey? I've been obsessed with Carl Hyacinth and his books since I was a kid. Hyacinth's superfan, Bill Lawrence, told us that it was insane to do this with a real live animal. Every time we come to a point that it says, and the monkey hisses or scowls, the monkey just smiles like that, and then usually we'll give you a kiss on the hand, you know, or wink at you, and you're like, you've got to be a bad monkey. It's not just the monkey that caused a problem on the set. I see one right now.
You don't. Tiny indigenous key deer around the size of golden retrievers kept stealing the crew's food. Florida is the only place where endangered species line up for Dunkin' Donuts at sunset. Hyacinth hasn't gone Hollywood. In 2020, he wrote another novel, Squeeze Me, about fat cats and pythons slithering around the grounds of a Palm Beach mansion, suspiciously like Mar-a-Lago. And there's a character, a central villain kind of character in the book, who was a president of the United States. You think?
Well, I'm getting the book. There's a resemblance? Yeah, there seems to be a resemblance. And Hyacinth even co-wrote a song last year with his good friend and fishing buddy, the late Jimmy Buffet. Whatever genre he's working in, you can always expect a funny ending.
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Visit Schwab.com to learn more. In Donald Trump's four years as president, four different men served as his national security advisor, including U.S. Army Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster.
This morning, he's in conversation with David Martin. Lots of people told me not to do it. People were calling me up who really detested President Trump and saying, you can't do it.
It'll sell your reputation. Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster had been a soldier for three decades when Donald Trump named him his national security advisor just one month into his administration. Thank you very much, sir.
You're going to do a great job. Thirteen months later, Trump fired. I got used up, essentially, in the service of Donald Trump. I was at peace with that. And I was not going to try to keep my job by telling the president what he wanted to hear.
Now, in a book titled At War With Ourselves, McMaster, a CBS News contributor, describes a White House where everything was much harder than it needed to be. None of the friction that I encountered in the White House was completely unprecedented. But it was next level, right?
It went to 11. Everything was cracked up to a higher level. What was your first real business meeting with the president? The first meeting was a presidential daily brief, which is an intelligence briefing that all presidents take. And I have a distinct impression of that meeting of being really not very effective for the president. President Trump plays to an audience. And it was too big of an audience in the Oval Office. And would the audience play to him? The audience would play to him.
I describe the environment as an environment of competitive sycophancy. Did he want advice or did he want flattery? The president wanted advice. You know, he also wanted flattery.
I'd ask whether or not you think I will someday be on Mount Rushmore. He really likes the adulation. In many ways, he's kind of addicted to adulation from his political base, from people around him. McMaster was happy to serve and eager to reverse what he considered Barack Obama's weak-kneed foreign policy. I saw actually so many of our policies as in need of disruption. I was grateful for the president's disruptive nature.
I saw it as my job to try to help him disrupt what needed to be disrupted. At his first NATO summit, Trump took disruption to a whole new level. Unhappy some members weren't spending enough on defense, he made some last minute changes to his speech. What did he written into the speech?
If countries don't pay their dues, then we're not going to defend that particular country. When did you find out that was in the speech? I found out just, you know, as we were departing for NATO headquarters. As Trump's limousine pulled up, there was an awkward delay while a frantic intervention took place in the backseat. I convinced a reluctant Secretary of State Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Mattis to get in the beast, the president's armored car, with me to talk him out of that. It was one of the few times the three of them agreed on something. What were your relations like with the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense?
So they were less than harmonious, they were difficult at times. They regarded the president as a danger to U.S. interests, a danger to some of our relationships internationally. The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense viewed the President of the United States as dangerous?
Yes, he was dangerous in particular to what they thought an effective foreign policy should be. McMaster never considered Trump dangerous, but the president's affinity for autocrats made him uneasy. President Trump sees in authoritarian leaders the qualities that he wants other people to see in him.
Vladimir Putin in particular. He would appeal to the president's desire for flattery. He would appeal to the president's skepticism about long-term military commitments abroad.
Could Putin play Trump? He knew really what Trump's predilections were. One of my roles was to alert him to that, to say, Mr. President, this guy is the best liar in the world. But when it came to listening to his own advisors, McMaster writes, Trump could be reflexively contrarian.
Oh my gosh. So if you bring the president a course of action, say everybody agrees, you know, whatever you do, don't do this thing. He's going to do it just to spite everybody. With Venezuela's anti-American regime cracking down on protesters, Trump walked out to meet the press with McMaster, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Rex Tillerson says to him, hey, Mr. President, whatever you do, don't say that we're planning any military options for Venezuela. We have many options for Venezuela.
And by the way, I'm not going to rule out a military option. Tillerson lasted just over a year before he was fired. Why do so many of the senior people who work for Donald Trump end up being either fired or quitting? You get used up in that environment, right?
President Trump does enjoy kind of pitting people against each other, you know, and that creates a lot of angst in people. Was he just plain nasty? At times he can be nasty, especially when he's tired, especially when he's grumpy, especially when he feels beleaguered. You know, there were a couple of times where, you know, nobody wanted to be around him, you know, and I'm like the last guy. I mean, I have to be with him, right?
So I would get in the car and he would just unload on me. The end came after a Trump phone call with Turkey's President Erdogan, which got off to a bad start when McMaster tried to prep him. What did he have against preparation? Well, he found it to be tedious, you know, and he had great confidence in his own instincts, right? So why am I prepping for this? McMaster decided to quit, but Trump fired him first and at a private farewell ceremony told his family, make sure he only writes nice things about me. The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment about McMaster's book. It's a fun, fun learning environment for all of us. McMaster retreated to the ivory tower of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he writes and teaches, and where he watched the events of January 6th.
We're in! He encouraged an attack, you know, on the first branch of government. They broke the glass? Everybody stay down, get down! And an attack on the peaceful transition of power, you know, and I think that that was an abandonment of his responsibilities to the Constitution. Is he fit to hold office? That's the judgment that the American people have to make. I don't want to tell people how to vote. Will he be getting your vote? I'm not going to ever tell anybody my vote. But he will tell you what he experienced in the first Trump administration.
So help me God. Congratulations, Mr. President. And what that might mean for a second. History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
I think it does foreshadow what we might expect in the second Trump administration as well. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. 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. Every day you'll learn something new about things you never knew you didn't know.
Subjects include history, science, geography, mathematics and culture. If you're a curious person and want to learn more about the world you live in, just subscribe to Everything Everywhere Daily, wherever you cast your pod. Each week I'll chat with artists, athletes, actors and experts about how our perceived failures have actually been our biggest catalysts for growth, revelation and even healing. Through these conversations, I hope we can learn how to embrace the opportunity of failure and fail better together. Fail Better is out now, wherever you get your podcasts.
