What does the Senate Parliamentarian do?

The Senate Parliamentarian is many things. A nonpartisan referee, an appointed official, and at some times one of the most powerful people in our government. This week, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough found several provisions in the currently debated budget appropriations bill violated something called the "Byrd Rule." Today we explore this complicated and often-unseen role with Sarah Binder, professor at George Washington University, and a person who spent over thirty years in the office, former Senate Parliamentarian Alan Frumin. CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more! To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro. Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nick Capodice?

  Oh, what time is it? What time is it? Indeed, there will be a time. 12:29. Hello, everyone. It is 12:29 PM on Monday, June 30th. And as I speak these words, the Senate is starting a slog of a process of amending and voting on a huge budget reconciliation bill.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  All in the Senate floor clerks are reading all 940 pages of the big, beautiful bill out loud as part of a Democratic stalling tactic.

• 0:31Nick Capodice?

  This bill has been a cornerstone of President Trump's agenda. So, what is a budget reconciliation bill? We are airing today's episode on the Senate parliamentarian to answer that and to help any of you out there understand why the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth McDonough, was in the news so much this weekend. Some quick facts about her. McDonough was appointed to the position in 2012. She is the sixth person in US history to have the job. And she found that several pieces of this bill violated something called "the bird rule." Specifically, McDonough ruled against a provision in the bill that would slash hundreds of

• 1:12Nick Capodice?

  billions of dollars from Medicaid, and these dollars instead are going to go towards Donald Trump's tax cuts. As a result of this finding, Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville called for the Senate Majority Leader to fire Elizabeth McDonough.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  We hear about the parliamentarian ruling all day long. We've got senators calling for her firing today, Bill, so that's a pretty important detail.

• 1:34Speaker 03

  I think that's so unfortunate.

• 1:35Nick Capodice?

  So, to learn all about the parliamentarian, to learn about the bird rule, to learn about why this all matters so much, right now, 12:31 on Monday, stay tuned.

• 1:49Speaker 04

  Is it the contention of the Chair that, under the rules of the Senate, I am not allowed to accurately describe public views of Senator Sachin's?

• 2:00Nick Capodice?

  All right, and I want to play you this clip from February of 2017. Sure, go ahead. Senator Elizabeth Warren is found in violation of Senate Rule 19 and is being cautioned by the Chair.

• 2:11Speaker 05

  The Chair has not made a ruling as respect to the Senator's comments. The Senator is following process and tradition by reminding the Senator of Massachusetts of the rule.

• 2:20Nick Capodice?

  Standard procedural stuff, right? But I cut something out. This is what it really sounded like.

• 2:28Speaker 05

  The chair has not made a ruling as respect to the senator's comments.

• 2:34Speaker 05

  The senator is following process and tradition.

• 2:39Speaker 05

  By reminding the senator of Massachusetts.

• 2:40Hannah McCarthy?

  Wait, someone is just feeding him lines? This is happening in the Senate?

• 2:44Nick Capodice?

  It happens every day in the Senate.

• 2:50Nick Capodice?

  So I've read a few articles about you and people tend to refer to you in sports metaphors, like you're a referee or an umpire. Is that accurate? Is it like that?

• 3:01Speaker 05

  Yes. Yes, it's like that.

• 3:05Hannah McCarthy?

  Who's that?

• 3:06Nick Capodice?

  That is Alan Frumin. Hannah, we've had a lot of guests over the years who know an awful lot about how things work in Washington, but when it comes to the Senate, Alan beats them all. And he would never say that. He is a humble man, but it's true because knowing the intricacies of the Senate was his job for 35 years.

• 3:29Hannah McCarthy?

  What was his job?

• 3:30Speaker 07

  Well, we've got breaking news tonight. The Senate parliamentarian has denied Senate Democrats' attempt to include a $15 an hour minimum wage into one. The Senate needs to step up. Override the parliamentarian, okay? The parliamentarian is not elected. Our demand is for...

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Big news, and it is big news. The Senate parliamentarian says only one new budget resolution and one reconciliation package. That's it.

• 3:56Nick Capodice?

  You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.

• 3:58Hannah McCarthy?

  I'm Hannah McCarthy.

• 3:59Nick Capodice?

  And today we're talking about a position that has been referred to as, quote, "the most powerful person in Washington," the Senate parliamentarian.

• 4:10Hannah McCarthy?

  Are you trying to tell me that the person whispering in the chair's ear is more powerful than the Speaker of the House or the Senate Majority Leader or the President? Are you serious?

• 4:23Nick Capodice?

  Maybe I'm being a bit hyperbolic. That line was from a Politico article about the current Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth McDonough, and I will get into why McDonough is claimed to hold so much power right now a little bit later.

• 4:35Hannah McCarthy?

  All right, first off, can you tell me what the Senate parliamentarian does?

• 4:39Speaker 05

  At the risk of sounding conceited, the Senate parliamentarian is the de facto presiding office...

• 4:45Nick Capodice?

  The presiding officer is the person who sits in the chair of the Senate and rules on everything. Who can speak, who can interrupt somebody speaking, what someone speaking can and cannot say. They rule on every point of order. Points of order are basically objections to what someone else is saying or doing.

• 5:03Hannah McCarthy?

  Okay, wait, I thought that the vice president was the presiding officer in the Senate.

• 5:09Nick Capodice?

  Yes, technically, they are. But when the veep is not around, which is pretty much all the time, the most senior member of the majority sits in the chair. And Alan told me, most of the time, senators don't want to be in the chair ruling on things. They want to be down there doing senator stuff. Now, to be clear, the parliamentarian doesn't sit in the chair, but they tell the person in the chair what they should do.

• 5:35Speaker 07

  They make decisions, they give advice based on past episodes of confusion.

• 5:41Nick Capodice?

  This is Sarah Binder. She's a professor of political science at George Washington University.

• 5:45Speaker 07

  I teach Congress. It's the only thing I know anything about. So if you look at the Constitution, it says, Article 1, Section 5, the House and Senate will make their own rules. If you have the power to make your rules, you also have the power to apply your rules. And that's the point at which the parliamentarians in the House and the Senate come to play a role. They are supposed to be the nonpartisan, neutral, expert arbiter of how to apply the rules. And that sounds like, well, that's not hard. However, if you look at the rules of the House and you look at the rules of the Senate, they don't

• 6:30Speaker 07

  actually tell you what to do and how to apply them in every single circumstance.

• 6:35Hannah McCarthy?

  The House has a parliamentarian, too?

• 6:37Nick Capodice?

  It does. And while I am focusing on the Senate parliamentarian for this episode, the parliamentarians in both chambers of Congress are the ones who know the rules, and they advise the presiding officer on what to do in any given situation. Now, Hannah, do you know what dictates the rules of the Senate?

• 6:53Hannah McCarthy?

  I'm pretty sure it's something that people use in, like, student council and community meetings. It's Robert's Rules of Order, right?

• 7:01Nick Capodice?

  I thought so too, but I was wrong. And don't feel bad. Uh, even some senators thought the same thing.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  Late people assume, and one or two senators elect had assumed that the Senate used Robert's Rules of Order. And I would suggest to people that, um, okay, if you are familiar with Robert's Rules of Order, you probably know that Colonel Robert first published them, I believe in 1876, which would then beg the question, how did the Senate muddle through from 1789 until 1876, uh, before Colonel Robert saved them, which he didn't do, of course.

• 7:39Hannah McCarthy?

  Wait, if they don't use Robert's Rules of Order, what do they use?

• 7:42Nick Capodice?

  They use their own rules. They make them and they update them every few years. The most recent rules and manual of the Senate is from 2013 and comprises 44 rules.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  Point being that the Senate is a self-governing body that operates by its own rules and precedents. Nobody is familiar with them coming into the Senate. And smart senators recognize right away that the rules of the road in the Senate are, are unique to the body. And, uh, some of them will set out in various ways to, uh, become knowledgeable.

• 8:17Hannah McCarthy?

  How complicated are those 44 rules?

• 8:20Nick Capodice?

  Fairly complicated. Uh, I tried to read it. You're looking at basically a dense 80 pages of procedure. Honestly, I would have a really tough time learning them if I was to spend a day in the Senate. But those 80 pages are the absolute tip of the iceberg.

• 8:35Speaker 07

  So here's the thing. There were what we call precedents. So the House might decide something, the Senate might decide something, and someone might have scratched it down on a piece of paper. And there might, there was a clerk, uh, at the front on the dais, uh, and they usually reported to the speaker or to the presiding officer. But basically there was no written, right? There were no really compilation of precedents. So neither the House or Senate really knew, the members didn't know what to do in any new circumstance. So there were lots of appeals, lots of points of order. Hey, stop, I raised a point of order. That's not how this works.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  For what purpose does the gentleman from New York rise? Mr. Speaker, I rise to a point of order. Gentleman will state his point of order. Mr. Speaker, I object to consideration.

• 9:20Speaker 07

  And they'd arbitrated, there'd been lots of votes on the floor.

• 9:26Nick Capodice?

  But those decades of precedents, often written on little slips of paper, have been collected and compiled into an official manual. Alan helped edit it. It's called Riddick's Senate Procedure: Precedents and Practices, and that's 1,608 pages.

• 9:42Hannah McCarthy?

  So the parliamentarian is the one who knows all of this stuff. They advise whomever is the presiding officer in the Senate.

• 9:49Nick Capodice?

  Right.

• 9:50Hannah McCarthy?

  How do they do that physically, though?

• 9:52Nick Capodice?

  Well, to explain this, Alan showed me a photo of where everyone on the Senate dais sits.

• 9:56Speaker 03

  There's the Senate floor. Unfortunately, my fat head is in the way. There are four chairs across the secretary's desk: general clerk, parliamentarian, legislative clerk, and bill clerk. There are other chairs behind. There is a chair for the secretary of the Senate. There's a chair for the sergeant-at-arms. So this is the parliamentarian's battle station. It's a swivel chair. It's a swivel chair that rocks. I have seen it go over once, pre-television. That was quite a scene. And in essence, what the parliamentarian does is she swivels and speaks to the presiding officer up here. The presiding officer's mic has a mute switch. It's a spring-activated mute switch.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  The parliamentarian can press and hold if she wants to mute the microphone so that the conversation between the parliamentarian and the presiding officer is not public.

• 10:51Nick Capodice?

  I asked Alan if the parliamentarian is just swiveling back and forth all day, and he said that was pretty accurate.

• 10:58Hannah McCarthy?

  Is this job anywhere in the Constitution?

• 11:00Nick Capodice?

  No, it is not. The job was created in 1935, during FDR's New Deal era.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  When Roosevelt and his administration became a little more proactive legislatively, and Roosevelt's vice president had other things to do than sit on the dais of the Senate and preside. And so the Senate decided that they needed somebody to be the repository of the various interpretations of the Senate's rules. And they selected a man named Charles Watkins, who had first come to the Senate in 1904.

• 11:37Nick Capodice?

  Charles Watkins, he started out as a stenographer in 1904 in the Senate. He moved up to a journal clerk. That's the person who takes the minutes of what happens all day, every day in the Senate. And the job of parliamentarian was created for him in 1935. And he was good at it. He had a remarkable memory. He was considered completely nonpartial to either party. And before the microphone mute button existed, Watkins would spin around in his chair and whisper to the presiding officer hundreds of times a day. And as a result, a newspaper called him, quote, "The Senate's ventriloquist." And he held the job until he retired in 1964.

• 12:20Hannah McCarthy?

  So 60 years.

• 12:22Nick Capodice?

  60 years. And the next parliamentarian, he had worked with Watkins.

• 12:26Speaker 07

  My daughter once asked me, like, how do you get to become a Senate parliamentarian? And I somewhat flippantly said, well, first you have to be the assistant parliamentarian. But it turns out to be generally true that they hire from within.

• 12:41Nick Capodice?

  Alan came in this way. He had been the assistant parliamentarian.

• 12:45Speaker 07

  Why is that important? It helps to limit the partisanship, right? Because they get, first of all, they get socialized into the practice of being the parliamentarian. And it's a source of expertise.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  It's always been the model, and it's the only appropriate model.

• 13:02Nick Capodice?

  Alan told me, in the office of the parliamentarian, you want to have assistants spaced out generationally. So when someone leaves office, the next person can be there a long time. And to this date, there have been six, and only six, Senate parliamentarians.

• 13:20Hannah McCarthy?

  And Sarah says the job requires limited partisanship, which honestly is something that feels nearly impossible here in 2022. Can a parliamentarian be truly nonpartisan?

• 13:33Nick Capodice?

  From what I can gather, parliamentarians just might be among the most nonpartisan people in Washington DC. And I say that because their rulings help both sides. And they take heat from both sides as a result. And let me give you an example. One parliamentarian, Robert Dove, was dismissed by Democratic Majority Leader Robert Byrd and was replaced by Alan Frumin. And then Robert Dove was reappointed again a few years later, and then fired and replaced by Alan again, but this time by Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.

• 14:08Hannah McCarthy?

  What did Dove do that caused so much controversy?

• 14:12Nick Capodice?

  Well, that is related to the powers of the Senate parliamentarian that we haven't gotten into. The reason why they have been named the most powerful people in America. So powerful that at one point, Alan and his family received death threats. And all that's coming up after the break here on Civics 101.

• 14:31Hannah McCarthy?

  But first, when Nick was researching for this episode, he sent me this list. It was the 56 things that they don't teach you at parliamentary school that Alan had sent him. And he promises he will include selections of that list in next week's newsletter. And you can subscribe to get that free and fun newsletter that comes out every two weeks at the top of our website, civics101podcast.org.

• 15:00Nick Capodice?

  Haven't you out there ever Googled your own name? Like, actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing. There are companies called data brokers, whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over, so your info doesn't just pop right back up. You set it up once- And they keep working in the background.

• 15:45Nick Capodice?

  You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics or use the code civics at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.

• 16:07Hannah McCarthy?

  We're back. We're talking about the Senate parliamentarian. So Nick, let's get into why this job is so powerful.

• 16:13Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, this is maybe the reason why we've gotten so many requests from listeners to do an episode on this. Two specific facets of the position that result in some senators getting very, very frustrated.

• 16:30Nick Capodice?

  Number one, committee assignments. Here's Sarah Bender again.

• 16:35Speaker 07

  This is a little less noticed about the parliamentarian, but the bulk of the work is actually deciding when a bill is introduced, which committee gets the bill. That's a power of the speaker and it's a power of the presiding officer and the rules. But a norm, a practice, is that the parliamentarian makes those decisions. And those decisions can be pretty consequential.

• 17:00Hannah McCarthy?

  So even though deciding which committee gets a bill is technically the power of the presiding officer of the Senate, the parliamentarian is the one really making the call.

• 17:10Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, every time. And since most bills die in committee, senators care a great deal about which committee they go to. You can work on a bill for months in advance before you write it, meeting with members of a committee beforehand to make sure it goes through, and at the last minute, find out it's going to go somewhere else? Here is former parliamentarian Alan Frumin again.

• 17:33Speaker 03

  You can have a thousand-page bill dealing with environmental remediation. All of this material in the jurisdictionally environment and public works committee. If, however, there is a provision in there that affects revenues, that bill is supposed to go to the finance committee. Suffice it to say that the staff of the environment committee doesn't like that. The staff of all the other committees do not like that. If they have a provision that might be scored as affecting revenues, they don't necessarily, you know, put a star, put stars around it. They'll let the parliamentarian find it if she's willing to spend the four or five hours going through every page and line.

• 18:15Hannah McCarthy?

  Wow, so how many bills does a parliamentarian have to go through line by line?

• 18:19Nick Capodice?

  A lot.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  All in all, the parliamentarian is responsible for referring probably 10,000, 12,000 items in any particular Congress. And virtually all of that plays out without any evidence on the floor of the Senate. My point being silent killer. Nobody sees that job being done. The committees are always jealous of their jurisdictions.

• 18:45Nick Capodice?

  And finally, the reason why Alan Frumin was in the media spotlight a lot and dubbed the most powerful person in Washington, the reason why law enforcement was sent to his house to protect him and his family in 2010. We've got to first talk about that uniquely senatorial action, the filibuster.

• 19:02Hannah McCarthy?

  I thought that was coming.

• 19:07Nick Capodice?

  Hannah, you want to break down the filibuster for everyone?

• 19:09Hannah McCarthy?

  I'll take a swing at it. Bills that come to the floor of the Senate for a vote require only a majority to pass. However, a bill can be debated endlessly until what is called cloture is invoked by three fifths of the Senate, which means that in essence, a bill does not pass unless it has the support of 60 people in the Senate.

• 19:30Nick Capodice?

  Yep. Well done. It's rule 22 in the Senate rules. And nowadays, you don't even see a bill get to the floor without that support, without those 60 votes. And senators rarely stand and talk for hours like Jimmy Stewart and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington anymore.

• 19:58Nick Capodice?

  And as a result, very, very few bills get through the Senate. But there is a special kind of bill.

• 20:10Nick Capodice?

  A bill that is not subject to the filibuster. It's called a reconciliation bill.

• 20:19Nick Capodice?

  It is a bill that deals with policies that change spending or revenues in the budget. So the budget bill can't be filibustered, and neither can reconciliation bills that alter that budget.

• 20:33Hannah McCarthy?

  Okay, well, if I were a senator who really wanted something passed, I would try to squeeze things into those reconciliation bills that maybe weren't related. So what stops a senator from doing that?

• 20:44Nick Capodice?

  What stops them is something called the Byrd Rule, named after Senator Robert Byrd in the 1980s. Things in those reconciliation bills and proposed amendments to them cannot be, quote unquote, extraneous. They have to be about the budget. And guess who decides what is and is not allowed?

• 21:05Hannah McCarthy?

  I'm gonna guess it's the Senate parliamentarian.

• 21:07Nick Capodice?

  It is indeed. As a matter of fact, Alan told me that material removed from reconciliation bills on the advice of the parliamentarian, because, you know, it violates the Byrd Rule, are lovingly referred to as "bird droppings." Seriously.

• 21:22Speaker 03

  The term "Senate majorities" over the years of both parties have always pushed the limits of what could be done in reconciliation bills because they recognize that these bills can't be filibustered, and that a simple majority is all that's needed to pass a reconciliation bill.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Last night's ruling was extremely disappointing. It saddened me, it frustrated me, it angered me, because so many lives are at stake. Senate Democrats have prepared alternative proposals, will be holding additional meetings with the parliamentarian in the coming days.

• 21:58Nick Capodice?

  That was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in 2021. There was a massive spending bill, and a component of that bill would have provided a path to citizenship for Dreamers.

• 22:09Hannah McCarthy?

  Dreamers being young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children who currently have little to no pathway to citizenship.

• 22:16Nick Capodice?

  Absolutely. But Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth McDonough decided that part of the bill was not germane, meaning the Democrats had to take it out, or the bill was going to be subject to a filibuster. And not pass. And so the Democrats removed that dreamer's part.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  And in the middle of all of this is the dear parliamentarian who has always been a career civil servant, whose entire career is dedicated to serve the Senate in a nonpartisan capacity, who in essence is required to talk truth to power. Every decision the Senate parliamentarian makes, every consequential decision, will anger some very powerful person every single time. And the parliamentarian is just doing her job.

• 23:05Hannah McCarthy?

  Can we go back to something you said earlier? What was the ruling that Allen made that resulted in those death threats?

• 23:11Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, it was related to the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The bill had gone through the House, it was in the Senate, and the GOP tried many procedural methods to kill that bill, or make alterations to it, because that would force it to go back to the House for another vote. Allen ruled against those. He was in newspapers and blogs everywhere, and the sergeant-at-arms informed him that as a result, members of the Tea Party had posted they were going to his house.

• 23:38Hannah McCarthy?

  It sounds like a really difficult and unique job.

• 23:42Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, it is. Allen said, "It's not for everybody." These people aren't looking to get advancement to a more powerful role. They're not going to run for higher office, or be courted by lobbying firms to make seven-figure salaries when they leave Congress. They make $172,000 a year. Their job is taxing, quiet, and mostly unseen, until they make a decision that drags them into the spotlight.

• 24:13Nick Capodice?

  Last thing, I can't let this episode end without an anecdote. Indeed, Allen did share a list of dozens of strange and wonderful and terrifying things he saw in his long tenure in the Senate, but none more bizarre than the porta potty incident.

• 24:27Hannah McCarthy?

  All right, I'll bite. What's the porta potty incident?

• 24:32Nick Capodice?

  Senator Lowell Wyker from Connecticut was on the floor.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Say a correct language and historic occasion.

• 24:40Nick Capodice?

  And Senator Jesse Helms wanted him off the floor. And it's hard to get someone off the floor. You can't do that unless Wyker yielded, and Wyker didn't yield.

• 24:51Speaker 03

  Senator Helms kept coming to the desk, wondering if Wyker had violated this rule or that rule, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And finally Helms looked at me and said, well, eventually he's gonna need to, uh, he's gonna need to go to the bathroom. And naturally Wyker and his allies knew that as well.

• 25:08Nick Capodice?

  But there is a small provision in the rules that senators could have, quote, "mechanical devices" on the floor of the Senate. And Wyker's ally, New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, knew about this provision.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  Senator Bradley came up to me and said, well, mechanical devices. Alan, what do you think of a porta potty? You know, if we can provide Wyker with some relief, so to speak, does that qualify under this provision? And I thought he was kidding. Bradley was about 6'5" or 6'6". And he stood over me and said, Alan, I mean it. What I decided to do was pass the buck. And I've decided that that's up to the Senate Sergeant at Arms.

• 25:48Nick Capodice?

  The Sergeant at Arms was duly summoned. He went up to Senator Bradley and just said, no.

• 25:53Hannah McCarthy?

  This whole thing is ridiculous.

• 25:56Nick Capodice?

  It's not over yet.

• 25:57Speaker 03

  Bradley wasn't deterred. He came and asked me about a can of tennis balls. I just said, no.

• 26:07Hannah McCarthy?

  I never thought that Civic 101 would be a show where we'd talk about peeing in a tennis ball can, but things can go anywhere when it comes to American government. There you go.

• 26:19Nick Capodice?

  Like I said, the parliamentarian has a pretty unique job.

• 26:28Nick Capodice?

  That'll do it for Senate Parliamentarian, "Point of Order," Hannah. We gotta get out of here. You guys are pretty funny, isn't it? Motion to adjourn. Alan, if you're hearing this, thank you so much, and I hope I didn't get anything wrong. This episode was made by me, Nick Capodice, with you, Hannah McCarthy. Thank you.

• 26:47Hannah McCarthy?

  Thank you. Christina Phillips is our senior producer, and Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer.

• 26:52Nick Capodice?

  Music in this episode by a lot of the old favorites we know and love. Kevin MacLeod, Conrad Old Money, Lobo Loco, Scott Holmes, Maiden, Proletur, Rachel Collier, and the greatest of all time, Chris Sabriski.

• 27:03Hannah McCarthy?

  Civics 101 is a production of NHBR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

• 27:08Nick Capodice?

  All right, let's get on.

• 27:15Nick Capodice?

  Can you do a Jimmy Stewart?

• 27:16Hannah McCarthy?

  I don't know. Gosh, no, I can't.

• 27:24Hannah McCarthy?

  I can't do it.

• 27:25Nick Capodice?

  That was good. That was a good try. At least you tried. I'm gonna try it. There's a, there's a big movement to colorize films. And it's not the intent. That sounds a little weird.

• 27:37Hannah McCarthy?

  No.

• 27:38Nick Capodice?

  It's not the intent. It sounds like Kennedy-ish. It sounds like Buffalo Bill.

• 27:41Hannah McCarthy?

  That doesn't sound like Kennedy. Did you know that if your spouse goes missing and you don't tell anyone, that's not necessarily a crime? That surprising fact is at the heart of the brand-new season of Bear Brook, the critically acclaimed true crime podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio. I'm your host, Jason Moon. In this season, Bear Brook investigates another New Hampshire mystery. A Christmas tree farmer with dementia vanishes. His wife never reports him missing. Can he still be found? Don't miss it. Follow Bear Brook wherever you get your podcasts.