[Letterman] Howard, tell folks who don't have the benefit of living in this area
to hear your show, what they would hear.
- You don't play music, so what do you do? - It's been described as honest radio.
You know...
We talk to people on the phone. We're ourselves.
It's like your show in the sense that you don't come on here
with a lot of phony hype and you don't...
You have people on with pets and then the bird gets lost
and we let anything happen. You know what I mean?
- You make a lot of phone calls. - A lot of phone calls.
We call people who write us hate mail.
I know you're on the air right now and I appreciate you coming down here.
Gonna have me on again? I want to be a regular like Marv Albert.
I think we can work it out.
[jazzy theme music plays]
I'm here.
How are you?
Thank you. Oh, that's very kind of you.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here.
Welcome to the theater.
Thanks. Do you feel all right? Are you happy to be here?
By God, I'll change that.
It's a...
This is... I'm very excited about this program.
I assume we all know who the featured guest is on the show.
This is interesting.
We've been having a debate all day.
And I'm going to ask you folks to participate in the debate.
How do you think things are going to go tonight?
How many of you think things are going to be a shitstorm?
Now let's get to the point here.
A couple of months after I retired,
I got a call from the people who operate Sirius Satellite Radio.
I don't know who the guy was.
Maybe he was a high school kid. I don't know.
And he said to me, "Dave, if you ever want to do anything on Sirius,
call me, you can have your own show.
You can do whatever you want.
Anytime, five days a week, two days a week, seven days a week.
Think about it. It would be great."
And I said to him without hesitation...
I said, "If my next guest had not been born,
I might consider this offer."
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Howard Stern.
Howard, how are you?
How many of you bet on shitstorm?
You know, Dave, I only wore this...
Today is a beard intervention.
This is what you look like.
You know, you were laughing when I walked out.
Right.
Did you think I looked good in this beard?
No, you looked like...
I know Ringling Brothers has shut down.
- Yes. - And it looked like a remnant of that.
But, you know, I thought for sure when the Netflix show started
that you would in fact lose the beard and I think Netflix was betting on it.
And, uh, but you know... Look, in person, the beard isn't such a presence.
- Am I correct? - [woman in audience] Yeah.
But when you see it on TV, I said, you know, "I'm excited..."
By the way, I am honored you asked me to be here.
Thank you very much for being here.
But...
I said, "It's, like, Dave's show
and there's Dave, there's me and the beard."
- Right. - And the beard is here.
People can't stop talking about it.
And I think you should shave it.
Raising hands, who says shave the beard?
See...
Oh, keep the beard?
- I like it. - You like it.
Well, in that case...
I'm actually envious of the beard and I'll tell you why.
You bring up a mildly interesting point.
How did that happen?
And the beard was in some way intended
to ensure that I would never work again
because I thought if I do this
and I begin to like it, which I do, I like it,
and I forget that I have it, because I don't have to look at it,
there's nobody in their right mind going to consider me
for any kind of job for the rest of my life.
Well, the people at Netflix were nice enough and perhaps you're correct.
Perhaps they thought I would shave. Or here's the thing.
Maybe they remove it digitally.
Hair by hair.
Yeah, let's take it out.
In a way, I relate to the beard because of my sunglasses.
Whenever I go on TV, and that was not my career plan to be on TV,
it was always radio.
And, you know, when I'd go on TV, I'd wear these dark glasses,
feeling it made my look better
or that my face would be more handsome.
And I'd watch these shows back whenever I'd go on and I said, "It did me no good."
I'm sitting indoors in a dimly lit room with sunglasses on
and I still look no better.
Well, you know, you look better now than any time that I have known you.
That's enough. That's enough.
One wonders if there has been some work done.
I don't care. That's your business.
No, you can see it's all falling apart.
It's all caving in.
You know how long you and I have known one another?
How long?
Well, it's pretty much to the month since 1984.
Wow. Now I'm gonna do some quick math
and figure out how long that is, if you don't mind.
Now, math happens to be... I'm good at it. This is how I do it.
This is 2018.
- Right? - It's 34.
- Oh, you gave it away. - It's 34 years.
- Let me check your math. - Yeah.
The way I get to it is, you say 1984 and I add ten immediately.
- Yeah. - That brings us to 1994.
- That's right. - That's ten.
- Yeah. - 1994, then 2004 is 20.
- Yeah. - Now here's tricky, 'cause I get confused.
2004 to 2014 is another ten. That's 30.
You're absolutely right. That's 34 years. Good for you.
- Now... - I love to show how I do the math.
Speaking of math, you realize that all of that will be subtracted from the show?
Wow. But really for you...
I guess the premise of this show, although who knows what this show is...
You know, I don't even know what I'm doing here,
but I thought the premise was that...
You're choosing six people
and I'm way more fun than Obama already, I'm sure.
- I mean, this is fun. - Really?
Oh, for God's sake, yeah.
I mean, if I have to hear about Clooney and how he helps people all day
and all of that bullshit, I'll just run right out the door.
This is fun. Now we're having a good time.
Clooney and Obama didn't wear a beard.
Now, a couple of things I've always wanted to say to you.
I believe that you not only changed comedy in the United States,
you changed the culture of the United States.
- [Stern] I don't know, but... - Yes, clearly.
You just... Go to any town anywhere
and they have a team of people
who are pretending to be you.
And the comedy from the genesis, yourself, has caused great change.
Now, I read things about your childhood
that I found frankly stunning and unpleasant.
Was this hyperbolic or was this accurate?
- That my childhood was unpleasant? - Yes.
"Raised like veal."
Yeah, well...
Yeah, I was raised like a veal.
It's very confusing, my childhood.
You know, I think certainly... My father was a radio engineer.
My father held radio people, announcers, people who, you know, were actors,
he held them in high regard.
What year are we talking about here?
Oh, gosh.
You know, well, I was born in 19... 82.
So...
No, we're back in the '60s when I became kind of aware of this.
Early '60s. My father would come home from work and he would talk about the...
[exaggerated accent] My father would talk like this.
My father had... His parents were immigrants.
I don't know, my father was always trying to speak proper English,
so he would talk like this very much, talk about his day.
And he'd say, "Today, I worked with Vincent Gardenia."
I'd go, "Yeah?" He would always tell me about Vincent Gardenia.
And Raymond Burr came in and did commercials in his recording studio.
- It was a big deal for him. - It was a big deal.
He would talk about his day.
And I saw that he appeared to not really be interested in me at all.
I don't think he knew a thing about me.
Sometimes I didn't even think he knew my name,
but the way he held people, these actors and voice people...
- He had such reverence for them... - Right.
...that I was like, "Oh, my God, in order to be even noticed by my father,
maybe this is the way I could do it."
So beyond the desire to please your father,
was this something you had an interest in?
I was five years old. I knew I wanted to be on the radio.
- Is that right? - Yeah, I knew it.
I didn't know how I was going to do it.
And this was something he reminded me of my entire life.
- Yeah. - When I was growing up, I'd say,
"I'm going to be a millionaire one day," and he would erupt.
"How dare you say this!
You have never worked. You have never made money ever.
How dare you! You're not a millionaire. Let me see you make a dollar.
You can't even mow the lawn!"
There was a lot of anger and I was just a kid fantasizing
that I would be a big deal announcer.
But my mother would say to me--
Tell me about your mother.
My mother would say, "If someone's going to be on the radio,
why not you? Someone's got to do it."
- So, you know-- - She was a little more encouraging.
- Your sister, what role did she play?
I don't remember. I was a narcissist to the tenth degree...
I was a tenth degree black belt narcissist.
I needed attention so badly that I don't recall ever being in the house.
In fact, I made... Dave, it's the truth.
I made a movie called Private Parts about my life and...
Thank you. And...
Which shows you how narcissistic I am.
And my sister is not in the movie.
And she came to the premiere and she's so sweet, my sister.
There's not a jealous bone in her body.
She never wanted to be an entertainer,
but she did find it curious that she's not represented in any way.
Not part of your life.
- "I don't remember you being there." - Didn't make an impression.
But your relationship with your parents--
- It's wonderful. - Yes, it's wonderful.
And I could tell when I would listen to the show,
when you were talking to your mother,
that there was a solid, really a solid connection.
Although I can also remember you asking your mother
about various sexual positions
and I thought it has to be solid
or they couldn't possibly be having this conversation.
My mother, she understood what she would call shtick.
It's a Yiddish word. Shtick is okay and sex is not a big deal.
So I knew I could go there with my mother.
There were things... There was one time... I don't think I'm gonna tell you.
- I know what it is. - No, I--
- I know exactly-- - No, I made my mother very angry.
Nothing to do with sex. I did something really kind of cruel.
I knew it was her Achilles heel.
And I went there on the air and it was wrong to do
and she called me crying.
That was the only time that happened. That hurt. I made a mistake.
But for the most part, when we would talk about sex,
there was no holds barred.
And if I would bring up... I know what you're talking about.
The kind of forbidden sex a son should never hear his mother has performed.
And... But she...
I mean, you asked her if she had ever done this.
- If she had ever had anal sex. - [exclaims]
Good night, everybody.
But so what?
Shouldn't every son have that discussion with his mother?
And it was from you listening to you talk to your...
- Howard, I'm begging you. - This is what you look like.
Either the hair or the beard, take one off.
It's a mirror, I'm telling you.
Yes, I thought maybe I was looking in a mirror.
- Time to feel good about life. - Put it away.
All right.
Anyway, I started talking to my mother on the show
because I heard you talking to your mother on the show.
And many things that I have stolen from you over the years.
But Mom and I never had that kind of relationship,
which I think is just fine.
- Now let's-- - Did you ever wonder? After that--
- Oh, please! - I don't think you...
I used to watch your mom on the air.
I don't think she did anything like that.
I think she was a real meat and potatoes kind of gal.
Midwest.
Is that a euphemism for something?
Your father was a very large man. You told me that in private.
Tell the story, Dave.
Dave, tell the story
when your father walked out of the shower and what that was like.
- It's a great story. - Yeah.
- It's really wonderful. - The sun went black.
Now...
That's big.
Yeah.
By the way, my father was large. I saw--
Okay!
I had such penis envy.
Now the...
also the information and I don't know the chronology of this,
but you claim to have been beaten up quite a lot.
Is that true?
Yeah, that is. I had a lot of fights.
Roosevelt, Long Island was a very strange community that I grew up in
and it taught me a lot, it taught me everything.
It completely molded who I was.
You know, it was a white community and it was Jewish and Italian and...
You know, all of a sudden... It was one square mile, this town.
And real estate agents would do a thing back in that day called blockbusting.
What they would try to do is move a black family in
and if you put a black family on a block, whitey would move right out the door.
And lo and behold, in the middle of the night...
This is how crazy it was.
In the middle of the night a black family would move in,
literally the middle of the night.
White people didn't want their neighbors to know they had sold to a black family.
And what would happen is, in the middle of the night,
a white family would move out
and the next day a black family would be there.
And this sent a panic into white people.
And most of these people, you would call them white liberals.
But these white liberals talk one way.
"Oh, I love my black brothers. They're wonderful."
Next thing you know, they're selling their house in the middle of the night
and they're moving out.
And so this little community, this mostly white community,
ended up being 97% black and Puerto Rican.
And my parents took a stand that...
They wanted to stay in the community.
My mother was like, "We are not afraid of black skin."
I go, "You don't leave the house. I'm going to school."
And I'm one of three white kids in this school
and I got to tell you it's terrifying
because it was a very weird time in this country's history.
You had the civil rights movement.
The day Martin Luther King got shot,
my mother got a call from several of her black friends
and said, "Keep Howard home."
And she got on that phone and she said, "I'm not keeping him home.
We're going to school." We are going to school!
I went to school and I got news for you. I got the shit beat out of me.
Did you make friends in that community?
It was difficult.
I did make one friend.
Lovely guy named Alan.
I used to like to play chess
and we were going to go to my house and play chess.
And we started to walk in the house
and a gang of kids came up to us and asked him where he was going.
He said, "I'm going to his house."
They beat the hell out of him, beat the hell out of me.
He took a bad beating
and he said, "Look, I can't do this."
- It was sad. - After this, you went to high school?
- This was not high school? - My parents moved.
Then I went into tenth grade and I was in culture shock.
We moved to a white neighborhood and it was a disaster for me.
Turns out, not only didn't black people like me, white people didn't like me.
I realized it wasn't a racial thing.
There was something wrong with me.
But the most unbelievable thing is,
these kids would get up and talk
about how they love black people and they're our brothers.
And I was like, "These hypocrites!"
They all move out of town in the middle of the night as soon as anything happens.
They meet one black person, they move out, and I was filled with rage.
I was filled with rage at the white man for lying.
It was baloney, but I look back on that as a defining experience.
Well, a defining moment
that manifests itself in your life today in what regard?
I have a hard time accepting anybody's BS, particularly on the radio.
I think that a lot of people say things that they suppose we want to hear,
but I often ponder, "Are they for real?"
You know, it's just like when I was doing radio, especially in the '90s,
the government was after me, religious groups were after me,
and I went, "These phonies!
They're all phonies.
I know what they're doing behind the scenes.
I know what they think and I know what they feel
and all this nonsense, they're uptight about sex,
they're uptight about people talking in a real way on the radio,
and they're hypocrites.
They all talk like this in private
and they're not being intellectually honest."
You wonder about your viewpoint on this and I think you give your parents credit,
although you're the one that had to take the beatings,
but this comes from your family, having the backbone to stay there,
even though you were getting kicked around.
Yeah, it's hard to figure my parents out.
My parents are strangely liberal about some things
and very conservative about others.
I remember being a young kid.
And I just wanted a subscription to Playboy.
And I had to get my hands on this thing.
There were pictures of naked women and this to me was unbelievable.
I remember I said to my mother...
I was 13 and supposedly becoming a man.
She said, "What do you want for your birthday?"
And... I said, "I want Playboy."
And she turned to me without missing a beat and said,
"Listen...
I'm not uptight.
The naked body isn't a big deal.
But I want you to know something, and I'll get you Playboy.
But the women in that magazine are freaks.
And I'll tell you why.
Real women don't look like that.
It's a bunch of nonsense.
Now, your sister and I are real women
and that's what women look like."
Now...
I don't know. Listen.
I saw my mother naked once. She was taking a shower.
She walked out. I was like...
I said, "I'm gonna look at the Playboy. I'm gonna stick with that."
So you go from high school to Boston University.
That was a miracle that I got in there. But you know what it was?
I went down to the college radio station
and I got a chance to be on the radio for the first time.
I didn't know what it was to be on the radio.
And I was awful, it was horrible,
but I had a chance to work equipment and all of that.
Same with me, the college radio station.
You went in, you looked at it and you figured it out.
You had to figure it out because there were no teachers.
No.
We really should have taken some sort of acting class.
My father kept telling me that.
"You need to do summer stock. You need to enunciate.
You should really be in an acting program."
But now, at this point in your life as a--
I think my father was Dracula.
"Welcome to you."
And your mother is beginning to sound more and more like Howard Cosell.
Yeah. It's not a great impression.
You get out of college.
You get an offer at a radio station somewhere in New York.
- Briar-- - Briarcliff Manor, WRNW.
I got out of school. I did get offered a radio job and I turned it down.
I was so scared about being on the radio, but I called the guy at Briarcliff Manor.
I said, "I know I turned down a radio job here."
I said, "Can you see your way to offering anything?
I've made a terrible mistake."
And he goes, "I don't have anything really but I'll tell you what.
Can you be here New Year's Day morning?
I got a shift for you." I said, "I'll take it."
And I show up and the guy says, "There's one thing.
"When you do this shift, it's from six to ten or eleven in the morning.
I've got to work nights in New York.
The only thing I ask you is don't wake me up because I'll be asleep
and I don't want to be woken up and I don't get any sleep."
I said, "Don't worry about it." I walk in, a long story even longer...
I get there behind the mic.
I promptly jam the equipment up.
So picture this, the whole job is to play these records
and interrupt every once in a while and go, "Westchester 107,
WRNW, progressive music from the woods."
That's all I had to do. Now the board is jammed up.
- What's progressive music from the woods? - I can't turn off the turntable.
What do I do? I call the program director.
He goes, "You son of a bitch, I'm gonna fire you when I get there."
Well, one thing in my career I was good at
is I could talk to management and talk them down off the roof.
I was good with them.
I said, "Look, I know I screwed up but I'm a good guy, I'm an honest guy.
I will continue to work for you. I'll be here whenever you ask."
So he started to give me more and more airtime,
but I was the worst announcer ever.
I had a similar situation.
I worked at a station, WBMD in Elwood, Indiana.
Not far from Muncie, Indiana.
They turned me down.
And my first shift there-- And I was pretty...
I needed a lot of training time on the board.
Yeah.
And my first shift there, I got through something
and I felt pretty good about it, I pushed away from the console
and in doing so, unbeknownst to me, I unplugged the clock.
So I'm now waiting for the network news to come on
and I'm waiting and waiting and waiting.
I get the call, "What the hell is going on?" And that was it.
Oh, yeah. I was the king of dead air, they called me.
I had nightmares for years.
In my early radio career, I played records.
Yeah.
The whole trick was you play a song and you've got to do a segue.
The segue was there'd be no dead air between songs.
You wouldn't have any space.
So I would have nightmares that the record would run out
and you had to do a lot of other things, chores, read meters.
- Yeah, load stuff. - It was a one-man show.
And I was the worst, plus I had OCD,
so to put away a record, I had to tap on the record three times and touch it.
I'm hitting it with my pinkie and so time is running out,
and I knew that, like, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" is three minutes long.
So I became adept at finding records that were five to seven minutes long.
When you heard my show, there were records that went on for...
It was like the whole side of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.
And it gave me enough time to get to the next record.
But when you were there in the radio,
was there anybody on the air in New York or in the area
that you thought, "I like what this man or woman is doing,
I would like to be like that man or woman"?
For me, it was a guy named Bob Grant.
Bob would get on and he was an angry conservative.
You know, no nonsense.
Way before a Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck or any of these other characters.
He was a true original and it wasn't his politics necessarily.
It was his attitude.
He was just like, "Shut up, get off my phone. You're an idiot."
He was... He would emote.
I never heard anybody on the radio do that.
Everyone took a kind of academic approach to talk radio, except for Bob.
You had to be nice or people wouldn't be attracted to you.
But Bob had a point of view
and, you know, it was then I said, "Ah ha! It doesn't matter if I know anything."
I'm not sure Bob knew a goddamn thing.
But if I come out like I know something
and I'm dead serious about it and I take a position,
that's all that matters.
And it's the truth. This is like Radio 101.
- So I got to meet him. - What was that like?
He was absolutely magnetic.
I mean, the guy was a great speaker, he could do it all.
I hate speaking in front of crowds. I wish you'd all go home.
No, seriously, I like the idea of being on a microphone away from people.
You always had an audience and enjoyed that.
Well, no, I enjoyed the camera and I enjoyed being on radio.
The idea of living human beings terrified me.
Yeah.
But if you worked to the implement, then I was better.
Did you ever consider doing this show, the Netflix show,
without an audience?
It seems to me that that might have been an interesting approach because I find...
[audience chuckles]
Let's try it.
Pretend you're not here.
There's the camera guy. This is nice, this is very intimate.
- Howard... - Oh, sorry. Yeah.
Anyway, in answer to your question--
- Are you enjoying doing this? - I love it.
- You like it? - I love it.
And people would come to me and say, "Tell us what you want to do."
I'd say, "Jesus, I did it for 35 years. I don't know what I want to do."
"What do you like doing?"
"I like talking to people in front of an audience."
That's why we have the audience, why we have you.
But this is very different.
Yeah, but so what?
- No, this is great. - Same thing.
- But... - We're having fun.
Now...
By the way, if this is getting too serious, you tell me.
I can put on the Fartman costume. It'll take me five minutes.
And I...
- Or... - Oh, Jesus!
Or as I used to do on Dave's show,
I'll never forget, on Dave's old show, I decided to come out dressed as a woman.
And, yeah, thank you.
Okay.
Now here is where you reached my awareness.
I knew that you were working, I think after that, in Washington.
Washington, D.C.
Yeah, and is this where you met Robin, in Washington?
Yes.
Wonderful Robin.
I also knew that because I didn't have an audience,
I needed someone who could talk,
who was loose, who was articulate, who was well-informed.
I needed all of this. I knew what I needed.
Where was I going to find this person?
How did you find this person?
There was a lovely program director named Denise Oliver
who knew Robin from Baltimore and called me up and said,
"Hey, you're coming to my radio station.
I know you're looking for someone to work with.
I've got this wonderful woman.
What if we put her on the phone with you?
I'll listen to you guys, see if there's some sort of chemistry."
We get on the phone together and we started yapping.
- Yeah. - And it sounded to me like a radio show.
It sounded good. I said, "I feel comfortable with this woman."
And so we decided to give it a try.
And the first time we really worked it out was on the air.
And word had it that you were coming to WNBC.
An enormous 50,000-watt, clear channel AM station.
And you were going to be afternoon drive or something.
And the word on you was that you had gotten fired out of Washington
because you had told... you had called an airline...
An airline crashed into a bridge in the Potomac.
Right.
And you called the airline and said, "I just wanted...
How much is a ticket from Dulles to the bridge?"
Yeah.
- I said, "Is that a one-way ticket?" - "Is that a one-way ticket?"
- Yeah. - Yeah.
So we knew that something untoward was coming.
By the way, that thing about the bridge was completely blown out of proportion.
I didn't actually call anyone.
I used to do this bit where I'd have phones ringing.
And I'd go, "Hello, 14th Street Bridge? [yammers]"
My fans knew I wouldn't--
I wasn't completely insane, where I'd call an airline and say that.
There was some method to the madness.
Well, when I went to Washington, D.C.,
I decided I was not going to lose any more.
I had to do whatever it is.
And my epiphany, if you want to call it that,
was I had to loosen up a bit,
that whatever came into my mind I would talk about,
and it would be pure id, total honesty.
And I had a lot of rage and I was going to let that rage out.
That's what your quote is.
You were just going to let your head crack open
and your unadulterated id would spill out.
Which is great radio, but really damaging to your personal life.
It can wreak havoc. You don't have a life.
- You become a madman. - Yeah.
And that's who I was.
I don't know how my first wife could have been married to me at this point,
because I was all-in on my career.
And that's not a way to be in a relationship.
You know, when you're so... In a tunnel,
and only thinking of yourself,
it's very hard to think of even your children's well-being
in relationship to what I'm doing.
I went through a version of the same thing
where all I really cared about was being on television.
- Right. - To the exclusion of everything else
that I now realize is actually life.
And the change came for me when my son was born.
And 15 years before my son was born,
arguments with my then-girlfriend about when are we going to have a family,
and I just said you have to discount all of this
because I'm concentrating on this stupid television show.
Yeah. I didn't really have this ability to think about others.
I didn't have a way of functioning in the real world.
I knew how to function on the radio. That's what I was good at.
Let me ask you about the anxiety and the OCD.
- Did you ever take medication for those? - No.
But you spent a long time in therapy. Did that help the anxiety and the OCD?
Before there was therapy, which I never did,
I never... was self-aware.
I never once... Sometimes I would spend an hour or two in a bathroom,
getting ready for work,
touching things, this and that. I never said to myself...
"How am I going to fix this? This bothers me."
I just would do it, get it over with and get to work and do my thing.
Which sounds crazy, but I was unaware...
Now, I've come to understand
that this behavior is trying to control a world
that's out of control.
You think through some magical thinking that you can have control,
that if I did this enough, when the ratings came out, I'd be number one.
And the pressure's intense. I remember being at NBC Radio.
I remember one of the sales guys would walk up to me
and go, "Howard, today's your report card."
And I'd hear "report card" and this was the worst thing you could say.
My report card was coming out. The ratings were coming out.
And if I was number one in the market, it wasn't like some glorious euphoria.
- It was like, "Phew!" - Right.
"How am I going to do this again? What's the plan?"
And I would spend hours thinking about what it is I could do next to win.
I knew that ratings were measured in quarter hours
and they did these things called quarter-hour sweeps.
If I can get you to listen from 14 minutes past the hour to 16 minutes past the hour,
that quarter hour sweep meant time spent listening and that would send my cume up
and when cume went up, that meant my ratings would go through the roof.
That extra minute would give you the whole half hour?
I could do a radio show at one point, look at the clock and see at 14
and I would just say the most ridiculous things
to get you to listen.
I became the Hulk of radio.
Let's talk about you and the FCC.
Stations got fined.
My God, you would have thought--
What was the total at the end of your terrestrial radio career of fines?
It started out for a couple of grand, then it was up to a million two.
You know, one of the first fines I got from the government was,
I was having a Christmas party on the air
and a guy came in and said he was playing the piano with his penis.
He was... You can't see that on the radio.
- No. - It was theater of the mind.
And I got fined for it.
I was like, "The guy didn't really play the piano with his penis."
The story that I read about that episode
was a woman somewhere during the holidays turned on her station
because she liked to hear Christmas music,
and instead through somehow...
- She heard this. - Yeah.
And she immediately contracted leprosy
because when you hear penis and piano, it drives you crazy.
But that's what turned me on about the radio and what I was doing.
These were words and I felt like I was leading a revolution of sorts.
[reporter] In New York, shock radio king Howard Stern,
one of the prime targets of the FCC's battle against obscenity,
was at a rally this morning condemning the FCC
for threatening what he says are his First Amendment rights.
When I listened to your show...
I had to stop listening to your show early on
because I heard myself being talked about in unflattering ways.
And I thought, "Holy crap, I don't need this!"
And then I would think, "Well, maybe if I have him on the show,
he'll stop saying these things.
Maybe if I call him, he'll stop saying these things.
Maybe if I accept a part in the movie Private Parts,
he'll stop saying these things."
And then one time somebody told you,
"You know what Letterman said on his show?
Not on his show, during the warm-up.
He said something awful about you."
And you said, "Oh, yeah? Well, let's just see."
And so now you get the overnight ratings out
and you go through all 32 markets
and you compare my ratings to Jay Leno's ratings.
Just to get back at me.
But something happened.
And you and I became friendly,
or friends the way I always thought we would be,
and for a myriad of reasons,
I received from you a heartfelt apology.
- Yes. - So what was...
And I'm sure I'm not the only one who was apologized to.
What was the chain?
I've apologized to a lot of people.
And I'll tell you why. I think I did a lot of growing up.
And I do attribute this to psychotherapy.
Again, you know, I was just a young man full of rage and I was angry.
I was angry with you, that you were on television, that you had an audience.
There was no rhyme or reason to it. I could not love anyone.
I couldn't respect anyone. I just thought this was who I was.
And I went into psychotherapy.
This is all self-esteem, lack of self-esteem?
Yeah, I think so.
And I think just really a lack of self-examination.
And I think through psychotherapy,
I started to fall in love with life a little bit.
I started to appreciate what was good.
And one of those things was my relationship with you,
that I could appreciate what you had done for me.
I had betrayed your trust
and I was ashamed.
Here the reality was I loved you and I really felt strongly about you.
What about Beth? Was she an influence in some of this?
Beth was a huge influence with me because...
By the way, I couldn't have been in a relationship with Beth
until I'd opened my heart, I wouldn't have been a good husband.
I didn't want to screw it up again.
I don't want to continue to put you on the spot here,
but going back to that episode where you read the ratings,
I had not said anything about you.
- Right. - And that's what I--
- I was eviscerated by that.
Anyway, after a series of unpleasant things
that Howard said about me, about my wife and about...
I'm not singling myself out.
This is part of Howard's apology and I hope you can see it.
- There. - I painted that for your wife.
- Yes. - Because I felt bad.
I had said some things and again words had no meaning to me.
Words didn't hurt.
Of course, they hurt me if somebody said something bad,
but as far as I was concerned, everything's a joke.
- Yeah. - Words don't mean anything.
In fact, my mother used to say to me, "Words don't mean anything."
And I took her at her word.
It was like...
So when I would talk about your ratings
or talk about your relationship or anything like that,
I assumed, "He doesn't care."
But it did hurt and it did hurt you
and I was like, "Why am I hurting this guy I love so much and admire?"
And really this is somebody I could maybe talk to and relate to
because we've been in the business a long time
and maybe he could teach me something or I--
I can't teach you anything, but, you know...
That's what I found out, but I thought maybe.
But, Howard, the change has not hurt your listenership.
People still love you.
New listeners all along.
Thank you.
Well, some people don't.
When I went through this on satellite,
some people who were fans of mine a long time said,
"You know, you're soft, you're this, you're that."
People do that, but here's the thing, if I may say.
I think the reason I was successful
was that I was always honest with the audience.
When I was saying that stuff about you,
I was coming from an honest place.
I was enraged and angry.
And now that I was opening myself up to some new ideas,
was I to maintain that for the sake of the jerk
who is sitting there saying, "You've changed,"
or am I going to take the audience in a new place?
I think bad radio is when you don't somehow change it up constantly.
- You've got to change it. - That's right.
You wouldn't be expected, you wouldn't be successful
if you were doing the same kind of radio
that you did when you first came to New York, doing it now--
It would look ridiculous.
It would feel strange
like you were wearing somebody else's clothes or something,
which I've seen you do.
Now explain to me the difference between satellite radio
where you have more freedom to talk...
Yes, so now I'm on Sirius XM which you know is a satellite facility.
I love it there.
And the reason the government doesn't regulate satellite
is it's a paid service, it's a closed service.
So it all of a sudden caused me to rethink the whole thing.
I guess when I thought I'd go to satellite,
oh, now I'd be this outrageous, crazy man that would have no governor on him.
I was unleashed, I was wild,
and when I went there, I said, "This doesn't work at all."
The fun of it was that everyone was telling me no.
Here, I didn't hear from one guy in management.
- They said, "Do whatever you want." - Yeah.
"You want to masturbate, masturbate. We don't care.
Just keep your fans satisfied."
- Bring in the piano. - Right.
Bonk, bonk, bonk.
All of a sudden I'm like, "Oh, my God, this isn't going to work.
This is nonsense. This isn't what I got into radio for."
And I said, "We can do better."
And I found ways of communicating with my audience in a new way.
Talk to me a little bit about Donald Trump.
You've spent more time interviewing Donald Trump
- than almost anybody in the media. - That's true.
At one time you considered him a friend and when he used to come on our show,
he was always a tremendous guest.
- Absolutely. - People loved to see him.
You could make fun of his hair, you could make fun of him being fat,
you could make fun of him being a slumlord.
And is that similar to the relationship you had?
Donald was the definition of "great guest."
Yes.
To me, a guest who comes on and says anything
that is in his mind is a great guest
and he would get on and no matter what I asked him, he would answer.
- Yes. - In a very sincere and thought-out way.
I'd say, "Donald..."
I'd always call him Mr. Trump. He liked that. I'd say, "Mr. Trump...
tell me...
who are the great beauties?
If I ask you some names, can you tell me who the great beauties are?"
He goes, "First of all..." Straight face.
"The great beauties, Howard, are not actresses.
It's models and a lot of these girls
who work in the... you know, anyone who works in the entertainment industry.
Really, I've only seen sixes and sevens."
So, you know, I'd say, "Donald, I think Angelina Jolie is a great beauty."
"Seven."
- "Really? Why?" - "Well, come on."
He goes, "You know who is a great beauty?" I go, "Who?"
He goes, "My daughter, Ivanka. Now she's a ten."
So we'd have these discussions.
Oh, my!
Of course, with the internet now, all these tapes are out there.
And they're still using them on a constant basis.
And what's your impression of him now?
Not as a guy that you knew, a guy you had a history with,
but as a guy who's running our country.
Well, I'm sorry, a guy who's president.
Well...
You know, it was a very awkward kind of thing
because Donald asked me to speak at the Republican Convention.
- Oh, really? - Yeah.
And he would call me from the campaign trail very often
and say, "Hey, you watching?"
And I was tickled by this
because I really kind of felt deep in my heart
that this campaign was really more about selling a book or selling the brand.
I didn't really understand that he really would want to be president.
Yeah, I think that was a commonly held idea.
I was put in a very awkward position
of having to say publicly and to him that I am a Hillary Clinton supporter.
I always have been and I was honest with Donald.
I said, "You know, Donald, you also supported Hillary,"
and I said...
I do consider Donald a friend, but my politics are different.
Well, I don't have the same relationship that you had with him, similar.
But I worry about it for my 14-year-old son.
What will he, you know, when he's my age,
what will we have around us?
Let's go on to... Tell me about your love and support of animals.
I mean, I've always loved animals,
but my wife is obsessed with helping animals,
and she really led the way.
When we first got together,
we got this bulldog.
Beautiful bulldog.
And our relationship really kind of flourished
around loving this bulldog, and she was like our child.
We don't have children of our own.
I have three grown children from my first marriage.
So this became our child.
And we began to think about animals and how we might help
and Beth started to throw herself into this organization,
North Shore Animal League.
- Yes. - One thing led to another.
We raised a whole bunch of money to build an entire wing
onto North Shore Animal League
where animals could live in a cage-free environment.
Because animals in shelters, you know,
they're in cages and some of them are there for years.
And so now they can roam free until they're adopted
and they stay much healthier.
Then we got into it even more and we started taking animals in.
We at any given time have 20, 30 cats in our house that we are...
We take care of them. A lot of them are blind or sick.
Then they're placed for adoption.
It's really turned into a passion of both of ours, but she's the inspiration.
You mentioned your three daughters.
Tell me the ages of the daughters and what they're up to.
My daughters are fantastic. They really are.
They've grown into really just wonderful women
and all of them I'm very proud of because...
My youngest, she wants to be a nurse practitioner.
She's in nursing school right now and...
it's unbelievable that my daughter wants to do this.
She called me up the other day and was like, "Dad...
I just injected someone for the first time."
I was like, "Wow," and I go, "What's the goal here?"
"Maybe to work with an elderly population and to help people."
And this is a kid who, like, could have kind of...
just not done much because she comes from a privileged family
and she wants to give of herself.
And it moves me to tears to think that my daughter wants to do this.
My second eldest, my middle daughter...
She did social work for years
and now went back to school to get her doctorate and recently got married.
And so she wants to further her education
and she has been doing phenomenal work with kids who are lost in the system.
And my oldest daughter is studying to be a rabbi.
- Wow. - Yeah, so...
That's very impressive.
- Yeah. - Congratulations.
Yeah, I feel great and I'm so proud of them.
As a father, did you ever worry
that what you did would nudge them into a miasma of instability?
Yeah, and you know what, that again...
Again, my selfishness and complete one direction
with my radio career was very hard on them, I am sure.
They're not here to tell you, but they'd probably stand up and testify to that.
And so I have spent a lot of time with my girls
and talking about those years and talking about my own selfishness
and sometimes not being available.
And they've been very brutally honest with me and I appreciate that
and we found it very liberating and it brings us closer together.
I recommend this for any father out there, especially fathers of daughters.
The best way to come together is to allow them to express themselves
and to tell you really what they're feeling.
It's not threatening once you let them do that.
Don't take it as a threat.
I mean, look...
Don't take parenting advice from me.
Well, I'll take parenting advice from anybody
because I had my son when I was 57, for God's sakes!
How are you doing with that?
Well, I don't know. You'll have to ask him.
Do you read to him at night?
He is 14.
Would you read to me at night?
People used to ask me this all the time and I think I made a mistake here.
I think I hung around too long on TV,
and I think it was because people in power were afraid to fire me.
I think that-- "Jesus, you tell him." I think it was one of those deals.
You don't have that problem.
So just give us an idea where you're going with this.
I don't know.
I have three more years left on my contract with Sirius XM.
We're doing some exciting things. There's a fantasy that I have.
I love to paint and I love to play chess. I have a lot of hobbies.
- And photography as well? - Photography.
I love spending time with the kids
and I especially love spending time with my wife. She is just so great.
- I'm so lucky. - Where do you go on vacation?
Well, we don't take many... We're real homebodies.
We never leave the house except to go on a walk.
Well, I understand you've decided to come to Utah with us.
Well...
Because I heard you're going to Cleveland for Bon Jovi.
Well, no, Dave--
I mean, that's west of here.
Utah is just a hop, skip and a jump from Cleveland.
- Well-- - This'll be great.
I got to tell you, you know...
with this new Netflix show...
Who knows? I didn't know what this new show is.
Dave asked me to do it and I said, "Oh!" Because...
You know, I really, I do, you know, I'm not...
I was like, "Why is he asking me? This is just gonna be horrible.
And what if I let him down? You know, it's a whole expectation."
How do you feel now about the experience?
I feel like I've ruined your show.
- No. - I really do.
Have you had any fun?
Come on, you've had some fun.
I don't know if it's fun because--
We'll have so much more fun in Utah.
I feel this is good, but somewhere along the line,
I don't even know if you know this,
I get a call, "Dave wants to do the show in Indiana."
At Ball State University, Dave's alma mater.
I go, "What, is he insane?"
- I said-- - I think that is a sign of insanity.
What you just described there is the craziest fucking idea
I have ever heard in my life!
But it is.
Your guest George Clooney had invited me to his home in Italy.
Not invited me.
- I'm not going. - You're not gonna go?
Take my invite. No, because I...
God, I would be so awkward at that guy's house.
- And what do you do? - Exactly.
What if I want to eat something like an apple?
- Do I have to go ask someone? - Yeah.
I don't want to be at anyone's mercy.
Yeah, did I get up too early, did I make too much noise?
I also heard that if you go to his house...
I know people who have been. I was feeling it out, maybe that's cool.
And he plays practical jokes on people.
- I don't need that. - I hate practical jokes.
No, we don't need that.
Don't you want to say to him, "You're good-looking, you're not funny"?
That's right, yeah.
You get a face like this, then you're funny.
But no, anyway, he's a lovely guy, but...
He doesn't want to see me in Italy. Trust me. He would have a miserable time.
So it's six guests. Who are the others? It's Obama, Clooney, me and who else?
It was Malala Yousafzai.
She's funny.
I like her.
And Tina Fey.
Oh, Tina Fey, she's very good.
- Let me tell you about Malala Yousafzai. - I like Tina Fey.
I like Malala, too. Say hello from me, but don't tell her I was Fartman.
She wouldn't get it. But she's a--
- She's a big Fartman fan. - Is that right?
Yes, that's all we talked about.
That was probably the craziest thing I've ever--
Okay, we're done. Listen...
- You had enough? - Howard, you're the best.
God bless you. My best to you and your family.
- Thank you. - Howard Stern, ladies and gentlemen!
So maybe you're thinking, "Well, jeez, there seems to be horses.
And what does this have to do with talking to Howard Stern
in the middle of New York City?"
We're here in Utah.
This is paleontologist Christa Sadler
and I invited Howard to join us,
and he made every attempt to his best effort to join us,
but it turns out he doesn't have a flannel shirt,
so it's just going to be me and Christa.
This is Tom and that is Rocky.
Tell the folks where we are.
So, okay, right now we're on land
that was removed from monument protection.
And this monument is the Grand Staircase-Escalante
which I had not heard of
until part of it was eviscerated by presidential act,
and so it now officially is no longer part of that monument.
Yeah, we are standing on lands that are still federal lands,
they're still managed by the Bureau of Land Management,
but they do not have the protection of being a national monument.
Yeah, so in relationship to Howard Stern,
it only has the same relationship that it has to every other American.
That's it.
So what we're riding through right now is about 210, 215 million years old.
- Which again-- - 215 million years old!
But it's young.
- Really? - Geologically, that's young, yeah.
- No kidding! - Yeah.
I got ties that old. Don't worry about it. That's an old joke.
Describe the threat to me
if this amendment of the boundaries stands legally.
If they could turn it into good grazing land, they might.
People might decide to sort of blade roads through.
They could do that.
It's just, I mean...
I know that this conversation is greater than aesthetics.
Yeah.
But if I came in and took a look at this, I would say, "You know what?
Why don't we just leave this protected? What's the problem with that?"
If this place weren't gorgeous,
we still need to protect these chunks of land.
Just for the fact that they exist and they're disappearing really quickly.
Now, I just want to reiterate that the objective is, at sunset,
I will be on a horse--
- Riding into the sunset. - On a ridge, silhouetted by the sunset.
- Would you settle for riding up a river? - Yeah.
- Okay. - Yeah.
That's good.
[jazzy theme music plays]
You got one more of those in you?
I'll do it all night.
- This is unbelievable. - Cool.
Anybody else want a ride?