#206 - Maury Povich

The great Maury Povich joins the pod to discuss his podcast On Par, Stav's dream of taking up the mantle of "You are not the father," his marriage to Connie Chung, playing guitar to pick up girls in college, pledging for a frat, his long legendary career, nerding out over the history of comedy, and much more. Maury and Stav help callers including a woman who's wondering if she should tell her three dads that she knows who her biological father is, and a man who really doesn't want to pay money to see his sister-in-law's silk dancing class recital. Check out Maury Povich's podcast On Par: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-par-with-maury-povich/id1803175670 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Mnb1Ji4WvVIPdcQk43qyX https://www.youtube.com/@onparpod https://www.instagram.com/onparpod https://www.tiktok.com/@onparpod Thanks to our sponsors!! Chubbies: www.chubbiesshorts.com / code STAVVY Visible - https://www.visible.com/ SWITCH NOW! 😏 Buy the Stavvy Baby 2027 calendar! https://shop.stavvy.biz/ ☎️ Want to be a part of the show? Call 904-800-STAV and leave a voicemail to get advice! 🎤 Watch Uncle Stav on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/82055929 ‼️ Bonus episodes every week! Unlock exclusive, Patreon-only episodes at https://www.patreon.com/stavvysworld 🎟️ See Stavvy live!! https://stavvy.biz/ for tickets

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games. Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Make them remember you.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  This podcast is supported by Nurtac ODT, Remedy Pant. We know you didn't ask for an interruption, but migraine doesn't wait for the right moment to interrupt either. It just barges in, takes your time and throws everything off. So when migraine takes your time, take Nurtac. It's for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura in adults. Nurtac can provide pain relief in two hours, which can last up to two days. Ask your healthcare provider if Nurtac is right for you because your time is for you, not migraine. Don't take if allergic to Nurtac ODT. Allergic reactions can occur even days after use. Get help right away for trouble breathing, rash, swelling of face, mouth, tongue or throat. High blood pressure and Raynaud's syndrome can occur.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Get help for high blood pressure, numbness, coolness, pain or color changes in fingers and toes. Common side effect is nausea. For full prescribing information, call 1-833-4-NUR-TAC or visit Nurtac.com. All right, back to your podcast playlist or whatever's keeping you going today.

• 1:16Stavros Halkias?

  Hey everyone, we have a banger of an episode coming for you right now with our pal, the legend, Maury Povich. But first, I want to let you know that our 2027 calendar is out. It's for sale right now. What a stocking stuffer. What a beautiful piece of art to have hanging on your walls. Some high-end photography featuring my, my body in its natural state. I think you're gonna love it. I think you're, this is a gift for your grandmother, your mother, your sister, your wife. Perhaps your female cousin, a gay guy that you know. All types of people would love this calendar. He could be related to you, he could just be a friend.

• 1:58Stavros Halkias?

  For any of those people and for straight men as well, consider buying the 2027 calendar that we put out this year. And the link is somewhere. Anyway, enjoy Maury. Hup, welcome everybody to Stobbys World. 904-800-STOP. Call in, we'll solve all your problems. Hit the visible hotline, we'll solve your problems. And today we're honored to have on the couch, I mean, a legend truly. Maury Povich is here, everybody. How about, oh, listen to that.

• 2:29Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 2:29Stavros Halkias?

  A huge round of applause, Maury.

• 2:31Speaker 04

  I can't, this live crowd is amazing.

• 2:34Stavros Halkias?

  It goes way back, the bleachers, yeah. We, we copied your studio, actually.

• 2:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:40Speaker 04

  And my audience.

• 2:40Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah. Thank you for being here, Maury. Truly like, I've mentioned you so many times, I'm a huge fan of the show. I've said it, I've said it before, I was like, my dream is to, I would love to do a special where I take on the mantle of you are not the father. I would, I would love to, the way, you know how Family Feud, it changes every time? I would love, you know, and listen, we'll see how the episode goes. I'm not pushing you to give me your blessing. I don't want to be like Adam, as soon as you got on his program, he made you call Tony Kornheiser. I'm not asking for personal favors. I just want to get to know each other.

• 3:16Speaker 04

  It's a high bar, I can tell you. Because, you know, there are a lot of other talk show hosts that tried to do paternity.

• 3:24Stavros Halkias?

  Believe me, I've seen them all. The imitators, they, they couldn't even stand up to you. Yeah, they tried it. Well, and then they completely fell away. That was beautiful. But thank you, thank you for being here.

• 3:34Speaker 04

  I don't know why, the, the greatest thing about it is, I don't know about you in terms of, you know, when you felt that you were successful.

• 3:42Stavros Halkias?

  Sure.

• 3:43Speaker 04

  I have no clue. I have absolutely no clue.

• 3:48Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:49Speaker 04

  Why, why all of a sudden these people would unburden themselves with me?

• 3:52Stavros Halkias?

  Of course. No, I get it. I have no idea. I mean, for you, I think it makes sense. There was definitely a moment, you had a show, you were, I mean, truly, daytime TV, you're the, you were, you were sort of keeping it alive. You're sort of Atlas, holding daytime TV on your back.

• 4:07Speaker 04

  I, I do have the record, I'm the longest-running daytime television talk show.

• 4:12Stavros Halkias?

  Hate that, Donahue, you piece of shit. Ricky Lake, no, no, we're actually big fans.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  One of my daughters sent me a toy goat.

• 4:22Stavros Halkias?

  Really?

• 4:24Stavros Halkias?

  That's awesome. You are the, the goat of daytime talk TV, not even, no question, no que, Jordan, Tom Brady, Maury. You're on the Mount Rushmore, as far as I'm concerned. Yes, and, and also I realized, I just, I did your pod, a fellow son of the mid-Atlantic. You're a DC guy.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  I'm a DC guy, you're a bomber guy.

• 4:44Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 4:45Speaker 04

  And you had a long night last night, right?

• 4:48Stavros Halkias?

  I did, I did. The Ravens, this will come out in a couple of weeks, but last night, the Ravens thrilling overtime victory against the Falcons. Shout out to Snoop, Huntley was unbelievable. It was an incredible win.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  It's always great when the backup wins.

• 5:04Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, and we have a great back, I mean, Huntley is kind of like, he's somewhere between backup and starter. I think, I don't want him to go, obviously, you want an overqualified backup, but that guy deserves to, you know. I think he deserves to be a starter at some point, so we'll see. But we need him, I mean, you know, Lamar, Lamar's electric, but he, he'll get hurt, he'll have nagging injuries. And it's also safer to have a really good backup, so I'm pumped to have him. So yeah, we're looking good. I think we might have righted the ship a little bit last night.

• 5:31Speaker 04

  Did you give up doing Ronnie, the, the Ravens fan?

• 5:34Stavros Halkias?

  Thank you for, I, I appreciate it. This is what a, what a pro this guy is, Eldis. Take notes, my, my producer, Eldis, you can learn a lot about professionalism.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  I just thought it was great.

• 5:41Stavros Halkias?

  I appreciate it. You know what it was, Maury? It was that I, I do love the character, but it felt a little repetitive to me. It was the same joke over, I'll give you the formula right now.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  It was like Dicca and the Bears?

• 5:52Stavros Halkias?

  Exactly.

• 5:53Speaker 04

  The Bears.

• 5:54Stavros Halkias?

  The Bears is incredible, but how many did they do? Look it up. I bet you I've done more Ronnies than they did the Bears sketches. Cause I did it every, after every game for like four years. I'm gonna save it for the big ones. I'm gonna save it for the playoffs, I'm gonna save it for like a big victory. The, the, and I, right now, if anybody's watching and you want to do Ronnie, the formula is ironic racism, ironic homophobia, but also maybe the characters a little, hint that he might be kind of gay and closeted, some kind of light incest and then, you know. And then you mentioned Joe Flacco, of course.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  You had to mention Flacco.

• 6:27Stavros Halkias?

  You gotta mention Flacco, shout out to Joey.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  Did you, did you used to do that when he came back? As a 40-something?

• 6:34Stavros Halkias?

  He, I was, he's the only, the only guy who's ever gotten me to root for like other franchises is Joe. Like, there was one game where he was back with the Jets and they were playing the Browns. And to me, it's like Flacco versus the Browns, I saw this, I grew up on this. I remember him crushing the Browns year in, year out. He led a thrilling comeback. And I don't give a fuck about the Jets, really, I mean, you know, whatever. I lived in Queens for a while, but you know, I guess I, I semi-rued for them, but we're in the same division, but, or same conference. But that day, I was the biggest Jets fan in the world, watching Flacco beat the Browns in a last-minute drive. It was, it was electric. Who were your guys when you were, were you, you know, when you were growing up?

• 7:14Speaker 04

  Let me tell you how old I am.

• 7:15Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 04

  I mean, I grew up as a young kid. Sammy Ball with the Washington Redskins.

• 7:21Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 7:22Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 7:22Stavros Halkias?

  Leather helmets, snow face masks.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  It was slinging Sammy Ball.

• 7:27Stavros Halkias?

  Were they doing the forward pass back then, Maury?

• 7:29Speaker 04

  What's that?

• 7:30Stavros Halkias?

  They invented the forward pass.

• 7:32Speaker 04

  But yeah, you know, you, you bring up an interesting, my, my father was the sports writer for the Washington Post for 75 years.

• 7:39Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 7:40Speaker 04

  The sports writer.

• 7:40Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 7:41Speaker 04

  He was so, I mean, he saw everything in the 20th century, for instance. He was there when Lou Gehrig was retired.

• 7:51Stavros Halkias?

  The speech, the famous?

• 7:52Speaker 04

  The speech.

• 7:53Stavros Halkias?

  Oh my god, yeah.

• 7:54Speaker 04

  And he was there when Cal Ripken broke his record.

• 7:59Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  In Baltimore.

• 8:00Stavros Halkias?

  That's incredible.

• 8:01Speaker 04

  And so he covered both events.

• 8:03Stavros Halkias?

  Wow, that's.

• 8:03Speaker 04

  And he was the only one, he and Joe DiMaggio were the only ones in the stadium with Ripken who were at Gehrig.

• 8:12Stavros Halkias?

  Oh my, that's insane.

• 8:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:15Stavros Halkias?

  So did you, I mean, you also, like, your dad is this legendary sports writer. You, your family is like, it runs in the, journalism, your sister also, right?

• 8:23Speaker 04

  It's a kind of delicate house of cards.

• 8:25Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 8:26Speaker 04

  My sister was the first woman senior editor at Newsweek. In fact, she even led a suit in order to get women on an equal pay basis.

• 8:36Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 8:37Speaker 04

  And her husband, Steve Shepard, is, was the editor-in-chief of Businessweek for 20 years.

• 8:45Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 8:46Speaker 04

  And so, and my brother was a lawyer that represented the Washington Post all the time. And my father, of course, and me, and then my wife, Connie Chung.

• 8:56Stavros Halkias?

  Of course.

• 8:56Speaker 04

  Oh boy. It's a, I always said it was a delicate house of cards when it came to journalism.

• 9:02Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, how do you feel? I mean, you're, we're, those are all, I mean, they're, they're insane journalists, you know what I mean? And then especially with your, yeah, I, I wanted to ask you too, it's like, you know, obviously you're a legend, I love you, but you know, your wife crushes you. She absolutely, like legendary interviews, the Michael, the, the Magic, right? Didn't she interview Magic?

• 9:22Speaker 04

  Oh my god, she, she was the first HIV interview with Magic.

• 9:25Stavros Halkias?

  I remember that, I had watched that interview.

• 9:27Speaker 04

  She was the first big exclusive interview with MJ, Michael Jordan, when there was a lot of gambling issues.

• 9:35Stavros Halkias?

  Yes, of course.

• 9:35Speaker 04

  And Jordan had the.

• 9:39Speaker 04

  When Connie said, do you have a problem with gambling? And, and, and Michael comes back and right away and says, no, I consider it another form of competition.

• 9:48Stavros Halkias?

  Yes, yes, yes, competition. That's incredible. I remember that was in The Last Dance. I remember that. Yeah, yeah, that clip, which is so funny.

• 9:55Speaker 04

  She's all through The Last Dance.

• 9:56Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 04

  In fact, there's a, there's one shot of me and her. Because we were on celebrity row.

• 10:05Stavros Halkias?

  Okay.

• 10:06Speaker 04

  When Michael came back after his retirement at the Garden and made and shot and only scored 55.

• 10:13Stavros Halkias?

  Forty-five, when he was wearing forty-five. Yeah, but he was wearing the four-five, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:17Speaker 04

  And scored 55.

• 10:18Stavros Halkias?

  That was a legendary night. Yeah.

• 10:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so I was, we were there for that, but.

• 10:22Stavros Halkias?

  Not bad getting.

• 10:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:23Stavros Halkias?

  Having a much more accomplished wife.

• 10:25Speaker 04

  You know, I always thought, I, I still can, when we were married first, I was working in Washington. She was working at New York, then with NBC. And so for a year and a half, we had this commuter marriage. And so I would come up on the weekends and I'd get to the doorman at, at the apartment. And I'd, and she's, and he would say, who are you here to see? I said, I'm here to see Connie Chung. She's my wife. And I could hear him on the phone calling upstairs, Ms. Chung, Mr. Chung is downstairs.

• 11:00Speaker 04

  So I have, I have been Mr. Chung.

• 11:04Stavros Halkias?

  Maury Chung has a nice, the Maury Chung Show, I like that. That's got another flair to it. You should have changed, Maury. That would have.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  I've, I've thought of myself that way for the last 41 years.

• 11:15Stavros Halkias?

  Well, your sister's a pioneer for feminism. You could have been one too, if you would have taken your more famous wife's name.

• 11:20Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 11:20Stavros Halkias?

  You should, you should have done it. There's still time. Let's change it right now.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  I would have gotten gigs that no one would have thought of.

• 11:26Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah. And then you show up, they're like, huh? Who's this guy? Where's, where's Maury Chung? It's me. That, and you guys met, like you were, you were working in, you were like, you bounced around a little bit, right?

• 11:38Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. I, I, you know, when you were on my podcast, which by the way is coming.

• 11:45Stavros Halkias?

  Yes, might even be.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  On par, Maury Povich.

• 11:47Stavros Halkias?

  On par, check it out. This meant, by the way, Maury, the fact that you have a podcast after retiring, like.

• 11:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, why the hell?

• 11:54Stavros Halkias?

  Why? What are you doing, man?

• 11:56Speaker 04

  What the shit am I?

• 11:56Stavros Halkias?

  What are you doing?

• 11:57Speaker 04

  What was I thinking?

• 11:58Stavros Halkias?

  You're in the gutter with us now. You're too good.

• 12:00Speaker 04

  All of a sudden, I, I always wanted to be.

• 12:02Stavros Halkias?

  Maury Chung should not be podcasting.

• 12:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, because Carson was my idol.

• 12:06Stavros Halkias?

  Yes.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  And one of the reasons I loved him was when he quit, you never saw him.

• 12:11Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 12:11Speaker 04

  It was over. And I said to myself, I want to be just like that. I mean, Carson's my, I want to just.

• 12:17Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  And now they dragged me.

• 12:23Stavros Halkias?

  Well, I'm happy you did.

• 12:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, you were great with it.

• 12:25Stavros Halkias?

  Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

• 12:27Speaker 04

  Uh, and, uh, so, uh, right about when this is, we start our third season when this comes on.

• 12:33Stavros Halkias?

  That's awesome.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  This is great.

• 12:34Stavros Halkias?

  Check it out. I mean, a ton of great, Soder's been on it. You've had a ton of comedians.

• 12:38Speaker 04

  Soder came on.

• 12:38Stavros Halkias?

  Friends of the program, Josh Johnson, Norm. Yeah, love it. This episode is brought to you by Visible. The smartest upgrade this season isn't a new phone. It's a better wireless plan. Switch to Visible, the ultimate wireless hack. You get unlimited 5G data and unlimited hotspot powered by Verizon. We have Visible here at Stavi Baby Enterprises. We love it. We just got a new assistant. She loves it. She's taking all our sushi orders. They're going through the Visible network brought to you by Verizon. It's fast, it's reliable, it's so sick. They sponsor the Stavies World hotline, as you know, and make it possible for us to help all our callers out. Oh my God, they're the best. Switch today at visible.com. The Visible plan starts at $25 a month.

• 13:20Stavros Halkias?

  Or get the premium Visible Plus Pro Plan and save $10 on your first month with promo code STAV. Terms apply. Ah, November, what a month. The whole, everything you've been doing all year comes to roost. The, you're coming right into the holidays. It's getting cold. Why not have a little questionable, little treat in between lunch and dinner? Why not overstuffed the calendar with fun, with family obligations, holiday parties? So much chaos going on. That's where AG1 earns its spot. Not when life is easy and you got time for a whole routine. Right now, when everything is full and something has to give. One scoop covers what a full stack of separate supplements would.

• 14:02Stavros Halkias?

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• 14:43Stavros Halkias?

  That's drinkag1.com/stavi. Uh, great. So, but I want to get back to the, how, so.

• 14:51Speaker 04

  Oh, so what happened was.

• 14:53Stavros Halkias?

  I need to know how, because I would love to get a much.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  I was working in DC.

• 14:56Stavros Halkias?

  Yes.

• 14:57Speaker 04

  For which is now the Fox station, Channel 5, which used to get to Baltimore too. Anyway.

• 15:02Stavros Halkias?

  Was Fox 5.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  Uh, so I'm working and I'm doing, you know, for a local guy. I mean, I wasn't Ron Burgundy, but. It was, you know, I, I was, and I had this talk show and I was, I first started doing sports and then I was doing news. And so, uh, this woman was hired, I think in like, I don't know, 69 or 70. I started in 66. And so she was hired as the news director's copy girl. Where she would go to the wire machines and pull off, and take the copy and distribute it to various reporters and stuff. And nobody took notice of her. But then what happened was, the first job that opened up was a weekend writing job.

• 15:46Speaker 04

  And so she told the news director, I want that job. I want to, you know, I want to be a journalist. That's why I'm here. Oh, you can't, you're my assistant. You can't do that. No, no. Well, if you want the job, you have to replace yourself. She walks out of the newsroom, up the stairs, across the street, into the bank, looks at the first woman teller and says, you want to be in TV? Come with me.

• 16:09Stavros Halkias?

  You want to be in show business?

• 16:10Speaker 04

  And that's when everybody knew.

• 16:12Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  How unbelievable Connie Chung would be.

• 16:15Stavros Halkias?

  Right, right, right. Well, then I need to know, how did you convince her to marry you? Because I would like a much more accomplished wife someday.

• 16:21Speaker 04

  Well, this, well, it, it's an interesting thing. So, uh, I was married at the time and then Connie became a big star at CBS. And then she ended up going to Los Angeles to anchor the news there for the local station, which is where she met Magic and Magic used to love her and everything else. And so, uh, I, uh, I was, went on this kind of seven year odyssey. And I was working all over the country in Chicago and Los Angeles and San, and so I end up being, after all these years, her second banana.

• 16:55Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 16:56Speaker 04

  And so.

• 16:57Stavros Halkias?

  The copy girl in DC.

• 16:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, now I am.

• 17:00Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:01Speaker 04

  She's the star. And I'm the co, co, co, co-host.

• 17:05Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:05Speaker 04

  Co-anchor way down. And so what happened was, six months after I was hired, they put a new general manager in and I'm fired.

• 17:14Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, wow.

• 17:15Speaker 04

  And so now I, I'm fired for the first time. It's like the first time you felt failure.

• 17:20Stavros Halkias?

  Right, right, right. Yeah.

• 17:21Speaker 04

  You know what I always thought about that? I always thought, when you have this fear of being fired, fear of failure, whatever it is, it's not the act. It's how you're going to feel. You don't know how you're going to feel when it happens.

• 17:36Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 17:36Speaker 04

  That's what I think the fear comes.

• 17:38Stavros Halkias?

  For sure. And, and if it happens, I think honestly, was that freeing for you? Because I do feel like at moments that that has happened to me where I'm like, oh, the worst thing happens. And then you're like.

• 17:47Speaker 04

  And you're looking around, you say, hey, look, I still got my fingers. And, and I laid down on the couch and I started watching newscast and I said, yeah, I think I'm as good as these guys.

• 17:58Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 17:59Speaker 04

  And so within months, I ended up getting a job in San Francisco. But since Connie was the only one I knew in LA and I was going through a divorce, I always say, in order for Connie Chung to love you, she must first pity you.

• 18:16Stavros Halkias?

  All right, pity I think I could do. I think I'd get a beautiful woman to pity me. All right. Step one I could do.

• 18:21Speaker 04

  If she pities you, you got a chance.

• 18:24Stavros Halkias?

  All right, okay. I like this.

• 18:26Speaker 04

  You ever thought about that?

• 18:27Stavros Halkias?

  You know, that, that was how I got my first girlfriend, actually, was just being, kind of hanging around.

• 18:33Speaker 04

  Hanging around, right. And she probably went.

• 18:35Stavros Halkias?

  She's like, all right, let me toss you a bone, you know? And then, yes. So I've, I'm fully aware of that. I had abandoned the pity strategy, but now I might have to reopen that. That's, that's great. All right. So you're a real sad sack, getting divorced, can't hang on to a news station. And now Connie takes pity. That's beautiful.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  And we dated for like, seven and a half years.

• 18:56Stavros Halkias?

  Okay.

• 18:57Speaker 04

  Before we ever got married, because. That's, have you ever lived with a woman?

• 19:02Stavros Halkias?

  Uh, no.

• 19:03Speaker 04

  Neither have I.

• 19:04Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, wow.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  And I've been married twice.

• 19:07Stavros Halkias?

  All right.

• 19:08Speaker 04

  I never lived with anybody until I got married.

• 19:11Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  I don't know, these days, I mean, my son's been engaged, he's engaged and been with a woman for 10 years. They're ma- they live together.

• 19:21Stavros Halkias?

  They've been living together, yeah. Well, I think that's also probably the housing market was a little better back then.

• 19:25Speaker 04

  Oh, that's true.

• 19:26Stavros Halkias?

  Two people could afford a nice apartment.

• 19:27Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 19:28Stavros Halkias?

  Now, you know, everything, you know, buying everything up.

• 19:31Speaker 04

  Sometimes it's for economic reasons, I understand that.

• 19:34Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, in New York, so many relationships get ruined because people move in too fast to save on rent. And then they realize they're not compatible. So it happens. It definitely happens. I feel so bad. Eldis' poor now wife, me and, so Eldis is my best friend, you know, we've been friends since literally kindergarten and.

• 19:50Speaker 04

  Does he go on the road with you?

• 19:52Stavros Halkias?

  He's my tour manager as well. Yeah. He's horrible at the job, but you know, he's good moral support.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  What does a tour manager do?

• 19:58Stavros Halkias?

  Uh.

• 19:58Speaker 05

  I'm still trying to figure that out.

• 19:59Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ask him. He's, he's done, he's been a tour manager for three years now. Let's see. Eldis, what do you do?

• 20:05Speaker 05

  Uh, coordinate the merch sales, speak with the venues, advance the shows.

• 20:09Stavros Halkias?

  Make sure the rotisserie chicken is in my green room.

• 20:12Speaker 04

  Do you slap him up, slap him around if, if the place isn't full?

• 20:17Stavros Halkias?

  He hears about it. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, Eldis, go, go bark some people in, get some homeless guys in here, man. I need, I need to see the balcony full.

• 20:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, but you're doing 3,000 seat arenas.

• 20:26Stavros Halkias?

  We're doing all right. We're doing all right. Not quite an arena, we're not, I'm not an arena.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  You know what you told me?

• 20:31Stavros Halkias?

  What's that?

• 20:31Speaker 04

  You told me you, you really, what you really like are clubs.

• 20:34Stavros Halkias?

  I do, yeah, I do. I do think there's a little, it's just, stand-up comedy is meant to be small. It's meant to be intimate. It's, you're meant to have a connection with the people in the room. And I think some of these theaters are really, you know, the Chicago Theater is beautiful. It's 3,500 seats. It's maybe the only big venue I've felt where I'm like, okay, I feel these people. Being here, it's laid out perfectly, but once you get at that, into thousands and like a theater, a, a thousand seat theater, if it's laid out the right way, can feel right. But nothing beats a club, you know, just a basement club, you know, shitty sound system.

• 21:10Speaker 04

  And you would forego the money?

• 21:12Stavros Halkias?

  I would, yeah. I mean, I think the problem is you would just have to work more, which is like, but when your job is stand-up comedy, is it, is it really work? You know what I mean? Like, is an extra, is an extra show, and it also depends where you are in the creative process, I think. When I'm, when you're building stuff.

• 21:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was gonna ask. You do it, so I heard about Nikki Glaser being on and, and she works clubs to work material.

• 21:36Stavros Halkias?

  Exactly. Yes, exactly. It's like when you're doing, when you're starting completely from scratch, you want more reps. You want to do more shows. So, you know, yeah, a 300 seat or a 200 seat club, it's like, yeah, you have to do 10 of those shows to do a theater show. The same amount of people, but then you've done 10 more reps and you've gotten a little better and you know. And I think there's a natural progression of clubs to theaters and then you film it probably at some point. But I'm excited to get back to clubs. I'm not going on the road. I'm sticking around in New York. Um, it's so.

• 22:06Speaker 04

  So will you do the scene here?

• 22:08Stavros Halkias?

  I love it here. Yeah, I love it here. It's the best.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  What do you think of the audience?

• 22:11Stavros Halkias?

  The audience is good. The weird thing about.

• 22:13Speaker 04

  Are they, are they from out of town?

• 22:15Stavros Halkias?

  That's the weird thing. You never know what you're gonna get. In a good way, I mean, New York audiences are fun, obviously, and, and they're very different, you know, depending on where you, you know. Neighborhood by neighborhood, things change, right? An Upper West Side crowd is different than a, you know, deep Brooklyn crowd, whatever. But then also you go to these great clubs, the, the Cell or the Stand, and you'll have some locals, but then you'll have like, you know, people from Germany or so, you know, people just on vacation.

• 22:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I, at my show, for instance, I mean, we would get people from Ireland.

• 22:45Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 22:46Speaker 04

  Australia and they, they were always different. We ended up doing the show in Connecticut. So Connecticut audience is different than a New York audience. Cause we used to bus people from the city.

• 22:56Stavros Halkias?

  Yes, yes.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  Come up and those people are different than the Connecticut crowd.

• 23:00Stavros Halkias?

  Yes, yes.

• 23:01Speaker 04

  And then the frat people.

• 23:02Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah. Well, it must've became, it must've become a meme at some point where, where people wanted to come out because I told you this, the week you ended the show, we, Eldis remembers, our plan was to come see a live taping. It was my brother's bachelor party and that's how, that's what, what a wild guy my brother is. What he wanted to do was go see a daytime taping of a, you know, of, of a talk show, of Maury. But we loved the show so much, we're like, we're gonna, we were, I lived in Queens at the time, we were gonna drive up to Connecticut. And it was literally the week you stopped. It was the week you retired.

• 23:35Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 23:35Stavros Halkias?

  It was so funny because we were checking the website and then the week it rolls around, I'm like, okay, great, let me get these tickets. Maury's show's done, folks. And it felt like someone was fucking with me specifically.

• 23:46Speaker 04

  Well, you had 31 years to get there.

• 23:49Stavros Halkias?

  You're right. That's, you know what? You're right. You, you had the record. I could've come up at any time. I lived in Queens for eight years previously. You got me there, Maury. What can I say? But, but yeah, it mu- it must've become a destination that's so, yeah, like college kids. And you were telling me when I did the pod that I had no idea of that you were, you were kind of, what were you like in college? Cause it was like you, you were five year.

• 24:12Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. It was really.

• 24:15Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 24:16Speaker 04

  I mean, I.

• 24:18Stavros Halkias?

  Are you a reformed, Maury, you're a reformed scumbag is, is what I'm asking you?

• 24:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would.

• 24:22Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 04

  When I went to, believe it or not, when, when I went to college, this is mid to late 50s.

• 24:31Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 24:31Speaker 04

  When I started, all right?

• 24:32Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 24:34Speaker 04

  And, uh, beatniks were coming into style.

• 24:37Stavros Halkias?

  You went to college before beatniks?

• 24:41Speaker 04

  So, uh.

• 24:43Stavros Halkias?

  That's incredible.

• 24:43Speaker 04

  So they were coming into style.

• 24:45Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 24:46Speaker 04

  And we had groups like the Weavers, we had Pete Seeger, we had all of these.

• 24:50Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:52Speaker 04

  And, uh, you know, to get the chicks.

• 24:55Stavros Halkias?

  Of course.

• 24:56Speaker 04

  I started playing guitar.

• 25:00Speaker 04

  In the fraternity house.

• 25:03Speaker 04

  And every year in Philadelphia, at the University of Pennsylvania, they had a nurses convention.

• 25:10Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, wow.

• 25:13Speaker 04

  So what can I tell you?

• 25:15Stavros Halkias?

  Of course.

• 25:15Speaker 04

  So what happened was I really didn't go to class. I really didn't. I had gone to an all-boys high school.

• 25:24Stavros Halkias?

  Right, right.

• 25:24Speaker 04

  In Washington, in the Washington area.

• 25:26Stavros Halkias?

  Prep school.

• 25:27Speaker 04

  Prep school. And so when I was really, quite frankly, even though I had a girlfriend or two in high school, I was socially challenged.

• 25:35Stavros Halkias?

  Sure, of course.

• 25:36Speaker 04

  And at the University of Pennsylvania, there was a bigger challenge because it was a campus of 4,000 people, but only 1,000 women. So we, they were.

• 25:46Stavros Halkias?

  Ratio's not in your favor.

• 25:48Speaker 04

  Not in my favor. So I really took it on.

• 25:50Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:51Speaker 04

  As a real challenge.

• 25:54Speaker 04

  So I didn't go, so after, in the middle of my junior year, which I had been on probation every semester.

• 26:03Stavros Halkias?

  Hell, yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 04

  I couldn't play any sport. Couldn't do anything.

• 26:07Stavros Halkias?

  Grades too bad.

• 26:08Speaker 04

  I was a pretty good baseball player. I was too small for football in college and too small for basket, but I was, you know, on probation. So, uh, I missed so many classes in my junior year, they said, Maury, it's over. You're out.

• 26:24Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, wow.

• 26:25Speaker 04

  And so I went back to Washington and I was, this is the time, this is like around 1960, 60, 61.

• 26:34Stavros Halkias?

  Okay.

• 26:34Speaker 04

  And, and Kennedy had come in and there was a Berlin crisis and so the draft was there and I was going to, instead of the draft, I was going to go into the reserve.

• 26:44Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  For the, you know, that was it. End of my college career. My father said, the hell you will.

• 26:49Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  I said, what do you mean? He says, I know a guy.

• 26:54Speaker 04

  At American University.

• 26:55Stavros Halkias?

  Okay.

• 26:56Speaker 04

  And so it was three weeks into the semester and he nudges me into the American University for a year.

• 27:02Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 27:02Speaker 04

  I reapplied to Penn.

• 27:03Stavros Halkias?

  So wait, how long did you go to college?

• 27:06Speaker 04

  Well, I'm telling you.

• 27:07Stavros Halkias?

  Okay.

• 27:08Speaker 04

  I go back to Penn, finally get re, they actually took my application.

• 27:13Stavros Halkias?

  Okay.

• 27:13Speaker 04

  And I go back to Penn and I was so, the, I, it took me five years and a summer.

• 27:21Stavros Halkias?

  Hmm.

• 27:22Speaker 04

  To graduate and I had it down. You had to have 120 credits. I was right on the, I was right on the number. I was right on the number. So I go in and the dean of the college, who was my advisor.

• 27:34Stavros Halkias?

  Hmm.

• 27:35Speaker 04

  Uh, wants to see me, Dr. Burns.

• 27:37Stavros Halkias?

  Hmm.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  And Dr. Burns says, Maury, uh, you're missing a half a credit. I said, what? I said, I had it all worked out, Dr. Burn. No, you're missing a half a credit. Whoa. What am I missing? Gym. You gotta go to gym. Back then, you, you had a credit of gym. I went one semester for a half a credit and I guess I've, as you well, forgotten.

• 28:00Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 28:01Speaker 04

  And, uh.

• 28:01Stavros Halkias?

  Playing Pete Seeger songs at the frat house.

• 28:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. I said, Dr. Burns, the havoc that I could wreak on this campus, you've known me for five years and a summer. You want me for another semester here?

• 28:14Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 28:14Speaker 04

  You know what I could do to this, you know, oh, I'm waving the credit.

• 28:18Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 28:19Speaker 04

  And I got out.

• 28:20Stavros Halkias?

  I love that. You, you.

• 28:21Speaker 04

  Better than what you did at UMBC.

• 28:23Stavros Halkias?

  That's right. That's right. I lied about, uh, I basically told, I was, I was short my language credits. And by the way, I'm fluent in Greek. I could've tested out of it. I just didn't feel like it. I, I, I Googled it.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  Taken Greek?

• 28:35Stavros Halkias?

  I could, there were, they didn't offer Greek, but I could've taken a class in New York. This is literally what happened, or a test in New York. I was taking a test in New York and I just forgot. I was like, I was looking it up and there was like one step too many. They wanted me to like do one email. I was like, nah, I don't need my degree. And so basically I was short my language credits and I could walk. And I went into that office, whatever, the, the advisor, bursar, whoever it was, and I was like, guys, let me walk and I'll take these in the summer. And as soon as they gave me the picture with the cap and gown, that's all I needed. And so I didn't take a single class. I'm still technically not a college graduate. I'm still, I'm technically a college dropout with, I'm six credits short and I graduated with like a three-point, you know.

• 29:20Speaker 04

  Well.

• 29:21Stavros Halkias?

  Magna cum laude.

• 29:21Speaker 04

  Don't worry about it. You'll get the honorary degree.

• 29:24Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, exactly. I'm ready for honorary degrees. I can't wait.

• 29:27Speaker 04

  I'll tell you what.

• 29:28Stavros Halkias?

  How many you got?

• 29:30Speaker 04

  Oh, zero.

• 29:30Stavros Halkias?

  No, no one, no one wants to.

• 29:32Speaker 04

  Of course not.

• 29:35Speaker 04

  Are you kidding?

• 29:36Stavros Halkias?

  Not even American for that one weird year you were there?

• 29:39Speaker 04

  I'm not too sure. I got a key to the city.

• 29:42Speaker 04

  My wife's got all these honorary degrees. I got Bupkis. I got nothing.

• 29:47Stavros Halkias?

  The trophy shelf must be hilarious.

• 29:49Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:50Stavros Halkias?

  Yours versus you.

• 29:52Speaker 04

  Let me tell you how bad, let me tell you how ridiculous it was in college. So in the summer session, in the last fifth year,

• 30:01Speaker 04

  I'm doing this short story class because I was an English major. And by the way, the dean of the college, my advisor, was the teacher of the class.

• 30:08Stavros Halkias?

  Okay.

• 30:08Speaker 04

  So you had to read 20 short stories.

• 30:12Speaker 04

  I say to my buddy, who's also doing five years, you read 10, I'll read 10. And then the ones that I don't read, you'll tell me about them.

• 30:24Speaker 04

  So we go to the class. Back then, I don't know if you had this, we had blue books.

• 30:29Stavros Halkias?

  The little blue books. Sure. Yeah, actually, they still had those.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  Guy goes up on the board and writes, "The, uh, the short story, How Beautiful With Shoes by Catherine Anne Porter. Would you please talk about the allegories?"

• 30:44Speaker 04

  It was his.

• 30:45Stavros Halkias?

  Wasn't one of your 10, huh?

• 30:48Speaker 04

  So I said, "What, what's it about?" He goes, "It's about this guy, he's in the woods, doesn't know what to do. He knocks on a door and, and a woman gives him some shoes." I said, "That's it."

• 31:05Speaker 04

  That's it.

• 31:05Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah. Those little scams are tough.

• 31:08Speaker 04

  So I concoct this thing.

• 31:12Speaker 04

  The guy in the woods is Jesus.

• 31:13Stavros Halkias?

  Okay.

• 31:14Speaker 04

  Jesus comes, knocks on the door, Mary Magdalene. Opens the door. They have all this back and forth dialogue and everything, and she gives him a pair of shoes. And that's why he loves Mary Magdalene.

• 31:26Stavros Halkias?

  Okay.

• 31:28Speaker 04

  Next week, the books come out. He's sitting up there with the books and distributing them to everybody. He holds one last book. He says, "I'm gonna hold this last book because this is the most remarkable."

• 31:43Speaker 04

  "This is the most remarkable essay." "Obviously, Mr. Povich, you did not read."

• 31:54Speaker 04

  "But you know, in short stories, there is a creative process." "And your creative process was so magnificent, I'm giving you an A."

• 32:02Stavros Halkias?

  Wow, you got an A.

• 32:04Speaker 04

  And my buddy got a D.

• 32:05Stavros Halkias?

  The only A you got in college was for bullshitting? Is that what you're telling me?

• 32:07Speaker 04

  Exactly. See, that was, and that was the start of my entire career. That's when I knew.

• 32:17Stavros Halkias?

  So far, you've told me.

• 32:18Speaker 04

  Bullshit.

• 32:18Stavros Halkias?

  Yes. So far, the lessons from this are be so pathetic, a beautiful woman falls in love with you.

• 32:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:24Stavros Halkias?

  And bullshit your way through everything.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 32:26Stavros Halkias?

  So far, we're very aligned, it turns out.

• 32:28Speaker 04

  Don't you think?

• 32:29Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I loved bullshit. I mean, there was, there is something to knowing just enough or like, you know, getting a reading and reading a couple of lines and then being like, I could talk. You know, these teachers, and you realize like, teachers are just at work too. They just want you to do barely enough for you to get by.

• 32:45Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:46Stavros Halkias?

  It felt, yeah, that's, that's.

• 32:47Speaker 04

  I mean, like in my, uh, you know, every, in the, in the high school yearbooks, they write about everybody. Everybody has a page and everything.

• 32:54Stavros Halkias?

  Sure.

• 32:55Speaker 04

  The entire, the entire, uh, column on me was when I was banned, when I, my grades were so low, I had to go to study hall and all I did was read Sports Illustrated.

• 33:07Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah. That's not bad. Yeah. That's, yeah, that's what they knew about you. You were the, you were the guy reading Sports Illustrated in detention. That's, yeah, that's hilarious. So now, were you, did, you know, your dad's a sportswriter, whatever, you know, and you're go, you clearly are not taking school seriously. As a kid, what did you want? Did you have?

• 33:26Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 33:26Stavros Halkias?

  Did you want to be an athlete?

• 33:27Speaker 04

  I first wanted to be an athlete.

• 33:28Stavros Halkias?

  Of course.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  And then I ended up, as a very small child, like five or six or seven, we'd all go to spring training with the then Washington Senators baseball team, and I was the bat boy.

• 33:39Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 33:40Speaker 04

  And so therefore, I was picking up bats for Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio and.

• 33:46Stavros Halkias?

  That's fucking crazy, dude.

• 33:50Speaker 04

  All the Senators players. And so, uh, and so I grew up around my father.

• 33:55Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 33:55Speaker 04

  And as I got older, my first, my first taste of getting into the business was I was the assistant to the Washington Senators baseball broadcaster named, Hall of Famer named Bob Wolf. And so I was his assistant. And so, believe it or not, from the age of 16, all the way through college through 23, I would be all summer on the road with the baseball team.

• 34:23Stavros Halkias?

  Whoa.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  In the plane, at the hotels.

• 34:26Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 34:26Speaker 04

  Learning everything about baseball. And I wanted to be a pitcher. And I used to work out with, I mean, not a pitcher, I wanted to be a player.

• 34:32Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 34:32Speaker 04

  And I worked, worked out, we used to work out with the team. We used to do everything. As soon as I saw, um, not a fastball, but as soon as I saw a major league curveball and my left foot was halfway in the dugout. I said, "This is not working."

• 34:48Stavros Halkias?

  Time to hit the books.

• 34:51Speaker 04

  So that's when.

• 34:52Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 34:53Speaker 04

  Journalism and TV.

• 34:54Stavros Halkias?

  Wow. All right. Good for you for pivoting.

• 34:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:56Stavros Halkias?

  You and you.

• 34:58Speaker 04

  Are you kidding?

• 34:58Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:59Speaker 04

  I thought every one of those major league curveballs are gonna hit me right now.

• 35:03Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, of course. No, I was so scared. As a child, I was really scared of baseball because I grew up, you watch baseball and you hear 99 mile an hour fastball.

• 35:12Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 35:12Stavros Halkias?

  And I didn't want to play Little League because I thought other children threw 90 miles an hour. So I never played baseball. I was too, and my, my family.

• 35:19Speaker 04

  But you played, you were.

• 35:20Stavros Halkias?

  I played soccer.

• 35:21Speaker 04

  And football.

• 35:22Stavros Halkias?

  I played football. I played football, um, two years in, in, uh, my parents didn't want me to. And in hindsight, they were right, right? They like, my parents are immigrants. They see football as this barbaric, American sport where you're, and you know what? They were, the CTE research kind of bears it out. They were right. You know, your kids should probably not be mashing their heads up against each other. But I did it for a couple of years and, you know, got a, maybe, I do remember getting concussed once. There was a.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  Oh, you did get concussed.

• 35:50Stavros Halkias?

  A much smaller, I was a nose tackle and this was, this kid was like a center, he was so tiny. And I was like, this little pipsqueak, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna crush him. And he had, he had like, clearly a Napoleonic thing going on. He had like a little man syndrome. He destroyed me. He like rammed, he was underneath me and he rammed his helmet into my chin. And I was just like, literally, you know, Looney Tunes, I'm lining up the wrong way. You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing. But, you know.

• 36:17Speaker 04

  See, I was, uh, okay, I, I go so far back with football that when my helmet, one bar.

• 36:28Speaker 04

  You remember those days?

• 36:30Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 36:30Speaker 04

  One bar.

• 36:31Stavros Halkias?

  Yes, of course.

• 36:32Speaker 04

  On the helmet. And I was 165 pound.

• 36:34Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 36:35Speaker 04

  Middle linebacker.

• 36:36Stavros Halkias?

  Different sport.

• 36:37Speaker 04

  And an offensive guard.

• 36:40Speaker 04

  That's when we played both ways.

• 36:41Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:42Speaker 04

  And I was pretty good, but my, so I go to Penn.

• 36:45Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 36:46Speaker 04

  And so the, the coach, Steve Sebo, says, "You wanna play?" I said, "Are you kidding me? I'm 165 pounds."

• 36:53Stavros Halkias?

  I'm a little guy. I gotta get these chord progressions right. I gotta pledge and I gotta see, this and there's conventions in town.

• 37:00Speaker 04

  Oh, God.

• 37:03Speaker 04

  Did you have a fraternity in school or not?

• 37:05Stavros Halkias?

  I did. I went to, in, my school was so lame that just to go to parties, you had to be in a fraternity. But it was like, no one, I was in the kind of fraternity that no one, like one guy hooked up with women, like no, like you go there for girls, it's like, no one gets any attention from girls in my fraternity. Like one guy literally had to go to rehab for video games. That's, that's how lame my fraternity was, but.

• 37:29Speaker 04

  But we were there. I mean, we had to go through this thing, you know? We had paddled, had to be paddled. We were paddled.

• 37:36Stavros Halkias?

  See, that had changed.

• 37:38Speaker 04

  Thank you, mother, may I have another? Bend down. You know, this sloppy hell week is this, gristling around this shit all weekend. And then all of a sudden, the guy who you, really was a prick to you, the, this member, and you remember, of course, there was one black ball you threw out of the fraternity.

• 37:59Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, right, right, right.

• 37:59Speaker 04

  One guy could blackball you.

• 38:01Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 38:01Speaker 04

  And of course, it was all a joke that they assign each pledge a prick man.

• 38:06Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, really? Just one guy to fuck with you the whole time?

• 38:09Speaker 04

  That when I was, uh.

• 38:10Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 38:11Speaker 04

  In the fraternity and when later on, I was the prick man for the entire pledge class.

• 38:21Stavros Halkias?

  You let them have it, huh?

• 38:22Speaker 04

  They hated me. They really.

• 38:25Stavros Halkias?

  So you were a real piece of shit to those pledges?

• 38:27Speaker 04

  It was the best. Thank you, mother, may I have another?

• 38:34Stavros Halkias?

  You, growing up, were, so were you in the, you, do you have other siblings? Just a sister or?

• 38:39Speaker 04

  No, I have an older brother.

• 38:40Stavros Halkias?

  Older brother. Where were you in the?

• 38:41Speaker 04

  Middle.

• 38:42Stavros Halkias?

  In the like, power rankings? Did they, like, who did they like the most?

• 38:45Speaker 04

  Here's the good, here's the best news about that. So I thought that my brother was the favorite. Cause he was the oldest. My father always listened to him more than me. He thought my younger sister was the favorite. And she thought I was the favorite. I guarantee you, I was not the favorite.

• 39:10Stavros Halkias?

  You were not the favorite.

• 39:10Speaker 04

  I was a middle child and, and in fact, I interviewed my one time, one, I interviewed my father one time. When I was doing a show in Philadelphia locally, and it was Fathers and Sons. And I had Joe Frazier, the boxer, and his, and his son, Marvis, and another fellow and his son, and my father. And I said, you know, Dad, uh, I know you don't know about the middle child syndrome, but, you know, I, I, I suffered the middle child syndrome, being in the middle and all this stuff. And he says, "I know what the middle child syndrome is. Quite frankly, son, you exploited it."

• 39:46Speaker 04

  On TV.

• 39:49Stavros Halkias?

  That's, I mean, that must have been, your dad must have been a larger than life.

• 39:52Speaker 04

  Oh, my gosh, it was just, and his name, first name was Shirley and he was from Maine.

• 39:58Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, hilarious.

• 39:58Speaker 04

  And the thing is that Yankees, back then, I mean, these, these names were unisex. I mean, you had Marion, you had.

• 40:08Stavros Halkias?

  Right, Marion, Marion Barry, famous crack smoking mayor of.

• 40:11Speaker 04

  Right, or, or women were named Marion.

• 40:14Stavros Halkias?

  Right, right, right.

• 40:14Speaker 04

  And, and so his name was Shirley, which, which, by the way, he told me that there were five Shirley's in the town, all men.

• 40:23Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 40:23Speaker 04

  One was the, actually the golf pro at the, at the local golf, golf course where he worked. And he said, in high school, this girl comes in and announces her name is Shirley and we said, what the hell is that?

• 40:40Stavros Halkias?

  That's a guy's name. What is it? What next, a girl named Eric?

• 40:44Speaker 04

  So I was always teased as a kid, you know.

• 40:47Stavros Halkias?

  Your dad's name is Shirley?

• 40:48Speaker 04

  Your dad is Shirley, your father's name is Shirley, your mother's name is George.

• 40:53Stavros Halkias?

  Your mom was named George?

• 40:54Speaker 04

  No.

• 40:56Stavros Halkias?

  George and Shirley, they should just swap the names.

• 40:59Speaker 04

  Oh, boy named Sue, I mean.

• 41:01Stavros Halkias?

  You think Shirley Temple ruined it for him?

• 41:03Speaker 04

  Could have.

• 41:04Stavros Halkias?

  Who ruined it?

• 41:04Speaker 04

  Could have.

• 41:04Stavros Halkias?

  When did, when was the dividing line for Shirley becoming a woman's name?

• 41:08Speaker 04

  I think Shirley Temple would have done it, yeah.

• 41:10Stavros Halkias?

  And then there was the, the airplane joke, don't call me Shirley. You know what I mean? That was, you know, that put the nail in the coffin.

• 41:17Speaker 04

  Who had that line?

• 41:18Stavros Halkias?

  Leslie Nielsen.

• 41:19Speaker 04

  Did Leslie have that line?

• 41:20Stavros Halkias?

  I believe so.

• 41:20Speaker 04

  Boy, was he good.

• 41:21Stavros Halkias?

  Incredible. Yeah, so, so good.

• 41:24Speaker 04

  Great deadpan.

• 41:25Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, I mean, the, the Naked Gun movies are so, I mean, some of the best stuff ever. Well, that's interesting. What was, okay, this is good, this, I'm curious here, what was like your, growing up, like comedy stuff?

• 41:36Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 41:37Stavros Halkias?

  What kind of stuff did you like?

• 41:37Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 41:38Stavros Halkias?

  And like a movie, like what was like, when you're in the, when you're, when you're getting out of the sock hop and hitting the drive in, what are you, what are you watching?

• 41:45Speaker 04

  So we have to understand, back then.

• 41:47Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 41:48Speaker 04

  Records.

• 41:50Stavros Halkias?

  Yes, comedy records.

• 41:51Speaker 04

  Seventy-eight. Records. Two thousand year old man.

• 41:56Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, Mel Brooks, yeah, yeah.

• 41:57Speaker 04

  I mean.

• 41:58Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 41:58Speaker 04

  Reiner and Brooks.

• 41:59Stavros Halkias?

  Yep.

• 42:00Speaker 04

  Bob Newhart.

• 42:01Stavros Halkias?

  Yep, yep, the unbuttoned mind or what is the buttoned down mind?

• 42:04Speaker 04

  Mort Saul.

• 42:06Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:06Speaker 04

  You know Mort Saul and I, when I used to do this talk show in Washington, Mort used to come on all the time.

• 42:12Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 42:13Speaker 04

  And Mort, he became this huge Warren Commission conspirator, where he believed that that's all bullshit. It wasn't Lee, Lee Harvey Oswald, there were a lot more people going on there. And he would do his act, I remember at the cellar door, remember the cellar door in Washington or not?

• 42:31Stavros Halkias?

  I didn't, there was a cellar door in Frederick, Maryland that I played at.

• 42:35Speaker 04

  Oh, this was the original.

• 42:36Stavros Halkias?

  I didn't go to the original, yeah, yeah.

• 42:37Speaker 04

  So he would come to the cellar door, great intimate club, yeah, a hundred people.

• 42:41Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  And he would do his act with the entire Warren Commission report.

• 42:47Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 42:48Speaker 04

  On a stool.

• 42:48Stavros Halkias?

  Wow. I mean, that's the equivalent of modern comedians, myself included, talking about Epstein, you know what I mean? That's our conspiracy.

• 42:56Speaker 04

  Right.

• 42:57Stavros Halkias?

  It's like, he didn't kill, like, comedians back then being like Kennedy, you know, some, something else was going on, that's us now. I mean, it is funny how these traditions keep going on.

• 43:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it was, then there was the guy, I can't remember his name, I shouldn't remember his name, who imitated Kennedy and he was great.

• 43:14Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, yeah, there was like, they had these songs.

• 43:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was.

• 43:19Stavros Halkias?

  They were songs, right?

• 43:19Speaker 04

  Started with an M, yeah.

• 43:21Stavros Halkias?

  I don't remember that.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  I can't remember. He was big, but it was all on records.

• 43:24Stavros Halkias?

  Records, yeah.

• 43:25Speaker 04

  Was it Von Meter? Von, yes.

• 43:27Stavros Halkias?

  There you go.

• 43:27Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 43:28Stavros Halkias?

  Wow, the first time you've Googled, you've Googled correctly.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  Hey.

• 43:31Stavros Halkias?

  Maury here, you've risen to the occasion.

• 43:33Speaker 04

  You want to come with me on the road?

• 43:36Stavros Halkias?

  Maury, I wouldn't do that to you, Maury. I respect you to much to unload Eldis on you.

• 43:42Speaker 04

  Let's do it, Maury.

• 43:45Speaker 04

  That's great.

• 43:47Speaker 04

  The one problem with Von Meter was, that was his only act.

• 43:51Stavros Halkias?

  Right, right, one trick pony, probably.

• 43:53Speaker 04

  And so, those were the comics. And then I was so lucky, when I start in my twenties and then I interview Rickles and I interview Pryor and I interview all these great comics.

• 44:08Stavros Halkias?

  Pure legends, yeah.

• 44:09Speaker 04

  It was just, just amazing. And so, yeah.

• 44:15Stavros Halkias?

  Was it like, was like, because what fascinates me too of like, because I'm, you know, I.

• 44:21Speaker 04

  You like the history of comedy?

• 44:22Stavros Halkias?

  I love the history of comedy, I love the history of just like entertainment in general and how, you know, how media shifts. Because I've been getting into, you know, I'm trying to act a little more and growing up, I didn't watch that many movies, you know, we're Greek, my family's Greek, we, they weren't really into American culture.

• 44:39Speaker 04

  The Greek?

• 44:40Stavros Halkias?

  We watched the Greek show, no, we watched every Greek movie. Believe, my big fat Greek wedding, my church chartered buses.

• 44:45Speaker 04

  What did the, what did your parents think of Anthony Quinn playing a Greek?

• 44:48Stavros Halkias?

  You know, I think at the time, they were thrilled to have the representation. They're like, hey, Quinn's, literally, my dad's favorite like restaurant was called Zorba's. I mean, every, every Greek like community has a Zorba's and it's usually the best restaurant in town. I think, I think our Zorba's closed down unfortunately, Eldis, I don't know if you know that, heartbreaking stuff, great lamb chops. But I'm, just like.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  Greeks always had great lamb chops.

• 45:13Stavros Halkias?

  The lamb chops are the best, I'm a big lamb chop guy. But the, the like idea that, like movies used to be, people didn't have TV, people, people just go to the movie theater and watch like multiple, you know, you'd watch cartoons, you'd watch like.

• 45:25Speaker 04

  My gosh, double features.

• 45:26Stavros Halkias?

  The double features, like, were you, were you doing that?

• 45:28Speaker 04

  Oh, my gosh.

• 45:29Stavros Halkias?

  Growing up?

• 45:29Speaker 04

  Oh, but every Saturday.

• 45:31Stavros Halkias?

  That's awesome.

• 45:33Speaker 04

  They had the black and white, Gene Autry or Roy Rogers, and then there was a cartoon, then there were previews, and then there was the first feature and then you, and you didn't have to, and the second, you didn't have to walk out, you just stayed there for the second. It was like ten to four.

• 45:51Stavros Halkias?

  Wow, just your whole day. So now what we do on our couch, you just did it at the movie theater, basically.

• 45:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was great.

• 45:57Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 45:58Speaker 04

  So, it, it's interesting about, you know, when I think about it, and I still watch on YouTube, you know, a lot of Rickles stuff and Pryor stuff.

• 46:08Stavros Halkias?

  Sure.

• 46:10Speaker 04

  And now I see, we're recently, so Shane Gillis, who gets called out all the time.

• 46:16Stavros Halkias?

  He does, certainly, yes, yes, yes.

• 46:18Speaker 04

  And I'm watching his monologue from Saturday Night Live the other day, the other week, and he gets called out on something and I'm going, Richard Pryor.

• 46:27Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 46:28Speaker 04

  And Don Rickles would say things, if they said those things today, I just wonder what would happen.

• 46:35Stavros Halkias?

  Yes, certainly.

• 46:35Speaker 04

  But even back then, when we were more of a kind of a straight laced crowd, they got away with that, everybody understood where Rickles was coming from or Pryor was coming from.

• 46:45Stavros Halkias?

  Sure. Well, I think, I think Pryor probably did get a little more pushback, some of the stuff he said, because he was, especially the drug stuff and the like.

• 46:52Speaker 04

  Maybe the drug, but not the racial stuff.

• 46:54Stavros Halkias?

  No, no.

• 46:54Speaker 04

  Huh?

• 46:55Stavros Halkias?

  No, no.

• 46:55Speaker 04

  Not the Saturday, how about the Saturday Night Live?

• 46:57Stavros Halkias?

  Chevy Chase, the Chevy Chase sketch, with sketch, sketch, sorry.

• 47:01Speaker 04

  Now, so that's seventy-five or six?

• 47:04Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a, that's a great sketch, yeah.

• 47:07Speaker 04

  So that's fifty years ago?

• 47:09Stavros Halkias?

  True. Well, I think Pryor in particular, like back then, I think what would happen is one guy sort of got, you kind of put everything on to them, right? Like Pryor sort of was the mainstream acceptable voice for, you know, black Americans at the time, I was, or like, not, obviously there was like more, you know, like there's actors and more, but in terms of in the counterculture, I think like Pryor was such a, you know, again, this is from my perspective, you tell me you were there, but from my perspective, Pryor was a guy I really did study when I was like a little, you know, when I was in college. When I was skipping class, it wasn't to get girls at the, and play Pete Seeger songs or it was, or Bob Seeger songs, it was me to like, I was literally in Eldis's apartment watching Richard Pryor, like YouTube and listening to.

• 47:52Speaker 04

  Oh, you were?

• 47:52Stavros Halkias?

  To his albums. And I would even listen to Mort Saul and Lenny Bruce and pretend I understood the reference.

• 47:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:57Stavros Halkias?

  Because they're the political guys at the time, I'm, I'm like, you know, it's two thousand, it's two thousand.

• 48:02Speaker 04

  You're not too political, are you?

• 48:03Stavros Halkias?

  Not really, a little, I mean, certain, certain things.

• 48:06Speaker 04

  You mean, if it comes into the culture?

• 48:08Stavros Halkias?

  If it comes in, I'll, I'll address it. But I wonder if that's the thing with back then, it was like Pryor was sort of like the one guy who could get away with it, right? And then Rickles too was the, he was known as the insult comic, right? And I do think, and because there was a monoculture, everybody bought in and was like, these are the guys that are acceptable. Now, everything is kind of, everything is so fragmented where, you know, Shane sells out the Eagles, you know, Eagle Stadium, but then to some people, they don't care, you know, not only do they not know about him, they hate him or whatever, right? And it's like, it's this thing where now people don't just enjoy entertainment, it's almost like it's a substitute for their beliefs, right? Whereas in the past, it was like, hey, I'm just having a good time.

• 48:53Speaker 04

  I see, for instance, maybe you know him, I don't know him, I see Bill Burr.

• 48:56Stavros Halkias?

  Sure.

• 48:57Speaker 04

  He gets, he gets a, a lot of pushback?

• 49:01Stavros Halkias?

  I, from time to time, I would say. I don't think he's, I mean, I think his material for the most part, people do, like, people kind of are with him, I think. But I think he got a little pushback with the Riyadh stuff, I mean, that's, which I think is a different thing than your material. And I do think it's a, it's an interesting time, right? Because entertainers mean a lot more to people now. People are sort of a fan of you as a person, not, not your output, in a weird way, which I don't particularly like, if I'm being honest.

• 49:30Speaker 04

  But, yeah, also, you have to understand, back then, unlike now, there's not the vox populi, in other words, everyone has an opinion.

• 49:40Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 49:40Speaker 04

  And you see it.

• 49:41Stavros Halkias?

  Right, right.

• 49:42Speaker 04

  And you have a comment on everything.

• 49:44Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 49:45Speaker 04

  And back then, I mean, I even can remember, how about this?

• 49:49Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 49:49Speaker 04

  I can remember politicians.

• 49:54Speaker 04

  On my talk show, all of a sudden, I was, I was exploiting these people. I was doing the, and they would go on the Today Show.

• 50:02Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 50:03Speaker 04

  And basically said, people shouldn't watch Maury Povich, you know, shouldn't watch the Maury Show, shouldn't do this. And I went, really?

• 50:10Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:11Speaker 04

  Really?

• 50:11Stavros Halkias?

  I'm your biggest problem?

• 50:15Speaker 04

  There's one, one good thing that the American people have, they vote with their fucking remote.

• 50:20Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is, you know, and that was cool. I'm a little worried with like, how, you know, three companies seem to be controlling everything now.

• 50:31Speaker 04

  Apparently.

• 50:31Stavros Halkias?

  That's, that's a little scary because they're sort of taking away our opportunity to vote with our, our remote or like our, now there's really only a couple of options where back in the day, it was like, hey, if this show is good, people will watch it. Whereas now, it is, I don't know, it's an interesting landscape, you know, you kind of.

• 50:49Speaker 04

  Well, I was trying to find out the other day, you know, with this Paramount Warner Brothers.

• 50:54Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 50:54Speaker 04

  The merger. What, they're taking Paramount Plus, they're taking HBO Max, and they're going to merge them.

• 51:02Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah. That's a, I mean, me personally, I think any mergers in general are like, it's not, it's not good. You want more competition. The irony is these people, you know, say they're capitalists and they want the competition that comes with the free market, but they fix it. They basically, it's like, it becomes this crony capitalism thing where it's like, oh, now instead of you having different choices, you have the illusion of choice, whereas we own everything, right? And like, it was better off when you got a bunch of different, I liked, I mean, look, I'm a little biased here. I'm, I'm in, you know, show business, whatever. It's better when there's more people to pay you, right? Like when there's more than three, but we'll see how it shakes out.

• 51:42Stavros Halkias?

  Paramount, they say they want to, the one good thing is they seem to be dedicated to the, the in theater experience movie theaters. They like big blockbusters, whatever.

• 51:52Speaker 04

  They're supposed to have 31 movies a year, we'll find out.

• 51:55Stavros Halkias?

  We'll, we'll find, all we can do is hope, right? Like at this point, but.

• 51:58Speaker 04

  Do you go to the theater?

• 51:59Stavros Halkias?

  I do, I love it. I, I've gotten into it.

• 52:00Speaker 04

  Good for you. I mean, I am so bad because I watch everything at home.

• 52:05Stavros Halkias?

  Of course, of course, but.

• 52:06Speaker 04

  It's ridiculous.

• 52:07Stavros Halkias?

  I do think, I'm hopeful there is a little bit of a swing back. Like I think Gen Z actually, they are going to the theater way more. That's kind of why I asked you about what, what going to the movies was like when you were a kid. Because I do think that younger people now are going to movies a little more, which hopefully, right? Like it's the best, it's such, it's such a like communal experience. We're losing just hanging out places.

• 52:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 52:27Stavros Halkias?

  People don't really just go to a bar, they don't go to, you know.

• 52:30Speaker 04

  You have to understand, when I was growing up, the big new thing was Cinemascope.

• 52:36Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 52:39Speaker 04

  The first 3D.

• 52:41Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 52:41Speaker 04

  The glasses.

• 52:42Stavros Halkias?

  The glasses. Creature from the Dark Lagoon with the glasses on.

• 52:46Speaker 04

  Oh, God.

• 52:47Stavros Halkias?

  In a drive through, arm around, you know, you got your Letterman jacket around.

• 52:52Speaker 04

  If a girl, if a girl said that they would go to the drive in.

• 52:55Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 52:56Speaker 04

  You thought you were, I mean, you were.

• 52:58Stavros Halkias?

  Let me ask you a question, Maury. Who was president the first time you saw breasts?

• 53:03Speaker 04

  Oh, my Lord.

• 53:06Speaker 04

  Other than my mother?

• 53:07Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 53:17Speaker 04

  I mean, I, I told you I was socially challenged.

• 53:20Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, okay, okay.

• 53:22Speaker 04

  Late developer, maybe.

• 53:23Stavros Halkias?

  Eisenhower?

• 53:24Speaker 04

  I was definitely, yeah. Definitely Eisenhower.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  Thank God it wasn't Kennedy.

• 53:32Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 53:34Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah. You snuck into the 50s, I love that, all right, good. Well, look.

• 53:38Speaker 04

  And that's why we were called the silent generation.

• 53:40Stavros Halkias?

  Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah.

• 53:43Speaker 04

  We didn't know shit.

• 53:44Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 53:45Speaker 04

  I mean, really, seriously.

• 53:46Stavros Halkias?

  Truly, yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 04

  I mean, we didn't know a thing.

• 53:49Stavros Halkias?

  You were right before the, yeah, you'd missed the summer of love, huh? You were already, you were already graduating.

• 53:55Speaker 04

  I mean, look, I was well in my, I was working in my twenties.

• 53:58Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:59Speaker 04

  You know, all that came about.

• 54:00Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, jealous. Looking at those dirty.

• 54:03Speaker 04

  When, in fact, when I went to San Francisco to work in like 78, I was still trying to look for Haight Ashbury and it left already.

• 54:14Stavros Halkias?

  I love it. Well, why don't we take some of this expertise and answer some questions here, Maury?

• 54:18Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 54:18Stavros Halkias?

  Cause I, you know, you're, you, you have, you probably have the most life experience of anyone we've ever had on this podcast.

• 54:25Speaker 04

  See, all you have to do is be 87.

• 54:27Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 54:29Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, it's mostly a participation trophy, but still, you're still number one, baby. Eldis, play us some calls here, buddy. And let's hit the visible hotline, of course, to play these calls.

• 54:40Speaker 04

  I love the color.

• 54:41Stavros Halkias?

  Thank you, yes, shout out to our friends at Visible.

• 54:43Speaker 00

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• 55:23Stavros Halkias?

  Drafting the brief, flagging risks, running a competitive scan, your agent can do it all. And the best part, anyone can build one, even you. Try it, create your first Monday agent today at Monday.com.

• 55:38Speaker 06

  Hi, Stavi, hi, Eldis, hello, guests.

• 55:42Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 55:42Speaker 06

  So I just did an ancestry test and it came back and 50% DNA match with this random guy who's apparently my dad.

• 55:55Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 55:56Speaker 06

  I called my mom and I was like, what the fuck?

• 55:58Stavros Halkias?

  I see what you're doing here, Eldis. Yeah, you're keeping it in theme. We got a fraternity question.

• 56:03Speaker 04

  50%, that's pretty big. Usually it's like two or 3%.

• 56:06Stavros Halkias?

  Okay.

• 56:06Speaker 04

  50%.

• 56:08Speaker 06

  My dad, I called my mom and I was like, what the fuck? Because I have a biological dad who was a weekend dad. He's kind of a fucking dickhead. Um, I hadn't really talked to him since I was 16.

• 56:23Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 56:24Speaker 06

  But last year I was like, oh, he's my dad, let me reconnect with him. Turns out this motherfucker isn't even my dad. But he is still because he raised me, but he did a kind of shitty fucking job at it.

• 56:39Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 56:40Speaker 06

  Anyway, my biological dad, for real, I reach out to, he's super into being my dad. Like he wants to hang out, blah, blah, blah. By the way, my mom asked both of them for a DNA test back in 2001, when she found out she was pregnant. And they both sort, like, they both declined. And now look what fucking happened. Anyway, so my dad, not biological, I'm like, you must know, you must have an inkling that I'm not your real kid, right? But I'm not gonna tell him because he's fucking crazy. I cannot tell him.

• 57:25Speaker 06

  I can't tell him he's fucking crazy. I feel like he's gonna sue for child support. Like, or he's gonna like, he's gonna flip his fucking lid. But I feel bad keeping that secret because it seems like a really bad secret, but also it's like.

• 57:39Stavros Halkias?

  It's not your fault.

• 57:40Speaker 06

  You did it to yourself, bro, you didn't take a DNA test. Anyway, I also have a stepdad who's been in my life since I was like a baby.

• 57:46Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 57:46Speaker 06

  And I think of him as like my dad dad.

• 57:48Stavros Halkias?

  Okay.

• 57:49Speaker 06

  So I have these three fucking dads and I need to keep a secret from one of them about the other and.

• 57:57Speaker 04

  Well, you ought to be, you ought to feel lucky. I mean, I do, I do shows when there is no dad.

• 58:06Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, man, those are the best when a girl kept coming back seven, eight times. At a certain point, you're like, Jesus, just fake one, Maury, put her out of her misery.

• 58:16Stavros Halkias?

  The camera, she starts running, the camera guy chases her.

• 58:20Speaker 04

  You have three dads.

• 58:21Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, that's something. So this, so her question basically, Eldis, is what does she do?

• 58:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 58:27Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, I think that's interesting. So she has this one dad who raised her, but, or for part of her life, but wasn't that great? And who turns out isn't even her biological dad. I, and who's the crazy one that she's scared of. I think that guy, you don't need to deal with at all.

• 58:42Speaker 04

  Right.

• 58:42Stavros Halkias?

  Right?

• 58:43Speaker 04

  Go to the, go to the birth father.

• 58:45Stavros Halkias?

  Go to the birth father and your stepfather.

• 58:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, and a stepfather, especially the stepfather because, uh, you know, he probably doesn't give a shit about you anyway.

• 58:55Stavros Halkias?

  He seems to be the one who does. The, I, I would, the stepfather seems to be the only one in her life, right?

• 59:00Speaker 04

  Oh, is that right?

• 59:01Stavros Halkias?

  Yes.

• 59:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. She said she likes him, he was like, she can sit, she considers him her dad.

• 59:06Speaker 04

  Well, then that, that's somebody you can talk to. So you, you know, you can go tell him what you're gonna do and then.

• 59:10Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 59:11Speaker 04

  And then go to the birth father. And look, in 2001, I was doing fraternity. You could have called me.

• 59:20Speaker 04

  We would have loved to have you on the show, especially if we had a, a guy who hated you.

• 59:26Stavros Halkias?

  Now, that's good TV.

• 59:27Speaker 04

  Are you kidding? That's right up the Maury Show.

• 59:32Speaker 04

  We would have loved to have had both those guys on.

• 59:36Stavros Halkias?

  You're right, this sounds like a great episode. This girl's 21 years to her, 25 years too late. But yeah, I think that's the easy thing. It's like you stick with your stepdad. And I think you, you see, you kind of cautiously see this relationship with the birth dad, right? Cause this is somebody who at the time, didn't want to take a DNA test.

• 59:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:55Stavros Halkias?

  But now that you're grown up and he doesn't have to buy a diaper, doesn't have to go to a recital, doesn't have to do anything. Now all of a sudden he wants a kid? I mean, I think about this selfishly where I'm like, if like a 15 year old showed up in a couple of years, I'd be pretty pumped. You know what I mean? If I got to skip all the bullshit of fatherhood and like someone was just like, yeah.

• 1:00:14Speaker 04

  You ever worry?

• 1:00:17Stavros Halkias?

  I can't have this conversation with you.

• 1:00:21Speaker 04

  Did you ever worry that there might be.

• 1:00:22Speaker 05

  Mine's gonna reboot the show.

• 1:00:25Stavros Halkias?

  I never seriously, there were, there were a couple iffy evenings. Yeah, there's, there's a couple of people I checked up on for 10 weeks or so, just to see, you know, if I saw any bumps on their Instagram stories. But I am in the clear so far, knock on wood, so.

• 1:00:39Speaker 04

  Good.

• 1:00:40Stavros Halkias?

  What else we got, Eldis?

• 1:00:44Speaker 06

  Hi, Stavi, Elvis, and guests. I'm calling on how to navigate kind of a strange issue with my dad. For a little background, I'm in my mid-30s and I have a very happy life with my husband and young daughter. My parents divorced about 12 years ago. When my daughter was born, my now 75-year-old dad moved back to California to be near his granddaughter and to help us out with childcare. We were initially grateful for the extra help, but he started lately to act like he really doesn't want to be there. Then recently, out of the blue, my dad informed me that he is planning on moving to Shenzhen, China in the next couple of months. I want to be very clear that we are not Chinese.

• 1:01:24Speaker 06

  We have no ethnic or cultural connection to the country and no one in our family speaks Mandarin, including me. He initially told me that he had a business opportunity there and then backpedaled to say that he was moving with a friend who was going there for work. And this makes him feel like he has a second lease on life and an opportunity for a great adventure. I do not think he is moving there for a woman or being honey-potted. I think he is just deeply unhappy with his life as it is now. My husband and I have actually been to Shenzhen, China for work. And although we liked our experience visiting the country, Shenzhen is a business district and not a particularly exciting city to visit in China. Not to mention China is a country with really strict immigration laws, so moving there is not an easy thing to do.

• 1:02:09Speaker 06

  He told me he has a plan to exit and re-enter the country every 60 days on a tourist visa. We tried to explain to him that's a horrible idea and obviously illegal. His response was that he was going to figure out a way. He needed an adventure and experience and he was tired of me and my husband making him feel like he was a burden. I found that last comment particularly offensive because me and my husband have always been very gracious and accommodating to him. I always organize and host the holidays, his birthday, Father's Day, make him dinner. My husband is always helping him manage his finances and tech issues. And I even co-signed an apartment for him when he was having financial problems. So how do I explain to my 75-year-old dad that it's utterly insane for him to move to China?

• 1:02:50Speaker 06

  And how can he find a way to find meaning and happiness in his older years here in the US?

• 1:02:56Stavros Halkias?

  Interesting. Wow, that's a lot. That's fascinating.

• 1:03:01Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:03:02Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:02Speaker 04

  Sounds like a guy is looking for action.

• 1:03:05Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, it does. It does sound like he's hiding something from her. She says she's not moving there for a woman, but although to be fair, he'd probably move to a more like sex tourism forward place if that was the case.

• 1:03:17Speaker 04

  I mean, when I was 75,

• 1:03:19Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Speaker 04

  I was just scared about work.

• 1:03:22Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 1:03:23Speaker 04

  I wasn't into tourism.

• 1:03:25Stavros Halkias?

  Right. Different guys, though. You're still working, you know, and this guy, this, and also I feel like you, you're probably a better grandfather than this guy.

• 1:03:32Speaker 04

  The guy moved there to be with the grandchild, so why wasn't, you know, why isn't that enough?

• 1:03:38Stavros Halkias?

  I think probably what happened was he assumed it would be, right? He assumed like it was going to be this magical thing where, you know, like my, my brother just had a kid and it is that for my mom. My mom truly has a new lease on life. And for me too. I love the kid so much. Yeah, yeah. It's been really nice. It's, it's completely sort of-

• 1:03:55Speaker 04

  And your mother is really engaged.

• 1:03:58Stavros Halkias?

  Much more engaged, like it's, it's literally gotten her healthier, she's moving around more, she started working out because she's got to keep up with the baby. And I think for a lot of grandparents that happens. But it sounds like this guy was hoping the kid would just like, you know, unlock something for him. You got grandkids?

• 1:04:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have four. In fact, yeah, I have four. And they're all, the last one is still in college at Tulane. Charlie Gorham and the other three are now working. One, one's a doctor.

• 1:04:31Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 1:04:32Speaker 04

  Some, this kid, I mean, in all the generations of the Poviches, nobody in their, would ever in their unbelievable right mind, apply to a university called MIT.

• 1:04:49Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 1:04:50Speaker 04

  There is nobody in my family. So he not only goes to MIT, then he gets, then he, he goes to a medical school, he's out of medical- and now he's in your town-

• 1:05:03Stavros Halkias?

  Get out of here.

• 1:05:04Speaker 04

  At Johns Hopkins. By the way, if you ever have a problem, you go see my grandson.

• 1:05:09Stavros Halkias?

  I literally will. I will, Maury.

• 1:05:12Speaker 04

  He's in residence there.

• 1:05:13Stavros Halkias?

  I'm going. Yeah. That's incredible. So, so you're in great-grandfather territory soon.

• 1:05:19Speaker 04

  Close.

• 1:05:19Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, you're getting there.

• 1:05:21Speaker 04

  My first grandchild got married.

• 1:05:23Stavros Halkias?

  Wow.

• 1:05:23Speaker 04

  So that's a year or two into it.

• 1:05:25Stavros Halkias?

  Look at that.

• 1:05:26Speaker 04

  You know what she works at?

• 1:05:27Stavros Halkias?

  What's that?

• 1:05:28Speaker 04

  Maybe, I don't know if a lot of viewers believe in this, but I do. Starlink.

• 1:05:34Stavros Halkias?

  Starlink, okay, so like the internet.

• 1:05:37Speaker 04

  Elon Musk. It is the greatest satellite ever.

• 1:05:42Stavros Halkias?

  Of all the stuff Elon's doing, that seems to be the one that has some actual application.

• 1:05:46Speaker 04

  Unbelievable.

• 1:05:47Stavros Halkias?

  Yes. And we had Starlink on the bus, didn't we?

• 1:05:51Speaker 05

  Yes, we did.

• 1:05:51Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, we, we watched action movies thanks to Starlink.

• 1:05:54Speaker 04

  Starlink, you, you travel on a bus?

• 1:05:57Stavros Halkias?

  We travel on a bus for the tour. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:59Speaker 04

  Sleep on the bus.

• 1:05:59Stavros Halkias?

  Sleep on the bus. Love it. Love the bus.

• 1:06:02Speaker 04

  I always, so my dear friend is Lewis Black.

• 1:06:05Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, I love Lewis Black. He's been on the show.

• 1:06:07Speaker 04

  And so Lewis-

• 1:06:10Stavros Halkias?

  Another DC guy, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:11Speaker 04

  Hated to fly. In fact, she, Lewis and Connie went to the same high school.

• 1:06:16Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, wow. That's fucking crazy.

• 1:06:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, I don't, maybe, I don't know. Yeah. But close by. Anyway. When it comes to Lewis, he doesn't fly. He hates to fly. And so he has a bus everywhere. And I always wondered with you guys,

• 1:06:38Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:39Speaker 04

  where do you get the bus?

• 1:06:40Stavros Halkias?

  Where do we get the bu- there's like-

• 1:06:42Speaker 04

  Is there a company?

• 1:06:43Stavros Halkias?

  There's a couple of companies. Yeah, yeah, there's companies on-

• 1:06:45Speaker 04

  Like, this has been one of the music group buses and things like that?

• 1:06:51Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, we had, in fact, we've had buses where, didn't, didn't somebody, somebody was like working as a roadie for Bob, like a Bob Dylan bus? And our YouTube was logged into this bus. So it was like, so on one of Bob Dylan's buses, it was like the Stavros World YouTube was logged in. So yeah, it's like we get everybody's, you know, everybody, I, we had a bus, one bus, the hilarious, I don't know if you're, if you're up on drag queens, Maury, but Trixie and Katya, we got their bus one time. They're hilarious. They, they did a tour. The bus driver had done that. We had a bus that was like, so who was the other music, like?

• 1:07:25Speaker 05

  They're, one of the drivers drove Wiz Khalifa before.

• 1:07:29Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:30Speaker 04

  They're a great, they're a great Connie Chung drag queens.

• 1:07:33Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:37Speaker 04

  In fact,

• 1:07:38Stavros Halkias?

  Yes.

• 1:07:38Speaker 04

  I'll tell you one of my greatest moments in terms of somebody appearing on TV.

• 1:07:45Stavros Halkias?

  Please.

• 1:07:47Speaker 04

  You remember In Living Color?

• 1:07:48Stavros Halkias?

  Of course. Incredible sketch, yeah. Legendary sketch program broke, it was the Wayans Brothers, it broke Jim Carrey, it was, yeah. Jennifer Lopez was a backup dancer.

• 1:07:58Speaker 04

  In 91, 92 or somewhere in there, I think, that's when it started. And so Connie and I are trying to have a child and so she has to leave her show at CBS. She has to take time off. And it became a big story and all the late-night talk show hosts were doing bits on it, you know? And so In Living Color does a sketch of me and Connie.

• 1:08:25Stavros Halkias?

  Jim Carrey plays you?

• 1:08:26Speaker 04

  Jim Carrey plays me.

• 1:08:30Stavros Halkias?

  That's awesome.

• 1:08:31Speaker 04

  And the only Asian-American cast member plays Connie.

• 1:08:34Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:08:35Speaker 04

  A guy. And I think that's when all of the Connie Chung-

• 1:08:42Stavros Halkias?

  Is when it started? I'm sure they've done it on Drag Race.

• 1:08:45Speaker 04

  But I, I, I'm honored that Jim Carrey plays me on In Living Color.

• 1:08:50Stavros Halkias?

  That's hilarious.

• 1:08:51Speaker 04

  That's where he got his start.

• 1:08:52Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, he was unbelievable in that. I, yeah, we, we, that's another, going back when I was like a col- in college and I was a comedy nerd, I would buy all these DVDs and I would watch, you know, the Rodney Dangerfield special, In Living Color, you know, old SNLs. But, so anyway, let's get, let's get back because we, we hit a couple, let's counsel our friends here. We started with the grandchildren conversation. Terms of this guy, this guy who wants to move to China.

• 1:09:19Speaker 04

  At 75.

• 1:09:20Stavros Halkias?

  At 75. I mean, part of me wants to say, let him do it. Because my hunch is the first 60 days he comes out and he tries to come back in, they're gonna be like, no, you can't fucking come back in. You're going back to Toledo or wherever the fuck.

• 1:09:35Speaker 04

  Well, if he tried to come back every 60 days, I mean, they'd think he was a CIA.

• 1:09:39Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The world's shittiest spy, you know, a spy with a bad hip. I would say, yeah, I mean, look, I get the sense, the sense of adventure thing is sort of interesting to me because, you know, let's not be ageist here. I get the, I get wanting to feel alive, wanting to be like, my life's not over yet. I mean, you know, I, our society does tend to, once you hit a certain age, say, you know, sort of like, you know, just kind of discard you, right? Like whether you're up in years, whether you get disabled, whether you, whatever, look a certain way. It's kind of tough. So I understand wanting to defy age and have this grand adventure.

• 1:10:20Stavros Halkias?

  China is crazy, though. Like, this guy doesn't speak the language. He's just going there. But at the end of the day, he is your father. What are you gonna do? Put him in timeout?

• 1:10:29Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, or, you know, to get the, to get the feeling in the environment, you can go to San Francisco.

• 1:10:37Stavros Halkias?

  That's true. Yeah, there's, yeah, absolutely. Go to Vancouver. Are you kidding me? Vancouver's even better. They have, there's, they're even, you know, the Chinatown there is unbelievable. Uh, that's true. Start in a Chinatown. Yeah. Move to Chinatown first. See if you can handle that for three months and then go, go over there. But it's tough. What do you tell your parent, right? I mean, parents, parents don't listen to their fucking kids.

• 1:10:59Speaker 04

  Not at seventy-five.

• 1:11:00Stavros Halkias?

  Not at, no, no. Never. I don't think.

• 1:11:03Speaker 04

  You should see what they try to do at you when you're eighty-seven.

• 1:11:06Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:08Stavros Halkias?

  Dad, stop podcasting.

• 1:11:15Stavros Halkias?

  So, anyway, good luck. I personally say let the guy, I mean, you can't stop him. Also, you're not worried about, like, lose, him losing money. He doesn't have any fucking money. You had to co-sign an apartment for him. So it's not like somebody's taking advantage of him. Hey, let him see what he does. I get it. He's your dad. And you can't talk this out of him. He has to experience something. You can't tell him how, I mean, you can tell him, hey, you could have the conversation with him where it's like, hey, why do you feel like a burden? Because we're trying to be gracious. Like, I think that's important for you, because to not let him be passive aggressive towards you. But at the end of the day, if he wants to go, like, if your dad at some point, I'll just wanted to, like, your dad went to Albania for a little bit.

• 1:11:58Speaker 05

  This, this kinda did happen after my mom died. I think my dad just started, like, getting restless. And I think he was kinda like, oh, fuck, the clock is ticking. I gotta go do something if I wanna do it. So,

• 1:12:08Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 1:12:09Speaker 05

  He went back home to Albania for, like, a week. He took another trip to, uh, visit some family in Italy.

• 1:12:16Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:17Speaker 05

  And, you know, both trips, he just kinda flamed out. They weren't really what he thought they were gonna be. I think he realized in more clearly than ever that time truly was running out. And, you know, I think your dad's probably gonna flame out once he goes to Shenzhen and,

• 1:12:34Stavros Halkias?

  Of course.

• 1:12:35Speaker 05

  There's, there's, there's a risk. It sounds like, I don't know how sustainable her dad is. There was like, hmm. Is my dad just blowing through his money that he doesn't have and will we be even more on the hook for his care or whatever?

• 1:12:48Stavros Halkias?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:12:49Speaker 05

  But, you know.

• 1:12:50Speaker 04

  But the fact, that the fact that she's been there, she should be able to, you know, rationalize to him.

• 1:12:56Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:57Speaker 04

  Don't go there. It's not that nice.

• 1:12:59Stavros Halkias?

  Of course, of course. But that's the thing, though. He's got, I think what you said makes the most sense. He's gonna flame out.

• 1:13:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04Stavros Halkias?

  He's gonna get there. He's not gonna speak the language. He's gonna have, he's gonna try and order a hamburger.

• 1:13:08Speaker 04

  Sixty.

• 1:13:09Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, he'll do the first sixty and then he'll be back. He'll be back. If he leaves now, he'll be back before Christmas. That's, that's, that's what we think.

• 1:13:15Speaker 05

  My dad also started talking to, like, an old girlfriend of his around that time. So it's kinda like, tied into, like, reconnecting with her. And then he came back after the trip, because I think they met up, like, at least one time with his cousin or something. I was like, how was it? And he just never really told me anything. So, he must have, like, a dark moment of, like,

• 1:13:36Stavros Halkias?

  Your dad was a late in life incel.

• 1:13:39Speaker 05

  Must have, like, a dark moment of, like, what am I doing? Why the fuck did I fly out here?

• 1:13:45Stavros Halkias?

  I need to get back to,

• 1:13:46Speaker 05

  This isn't the beautiful girl from college. You're just fucking,

• 1:13:48Stavros Halkias?

  No, she is also seventy. I need to get back to Owings Mills, Maryland right now.

• 1:13:55Speaker 04

  Is that where he's from?

• 1:13:56Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, that's where Eldy grew up.

• 1:13:58Speaker 05

  That's where my, uh, the family house was.

• 1:14:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:14:00Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:01Speaker 04

  I belong to a golf club. It used to belong to a golf club in Owings Mills.

• 1:14:04Speaker 05

  Oh, there you go.

• 1:14:05Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, yeah, cuz the, all the Ravens would be, the Ravens turned Owings Mills into, like, a real, a real destination. Yeah.

• 1:14:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Stavros Halkias?

  Look at that. Maury was probably hitting the links while we were playing WWE No Mercy in your, in Owings Mills.

• 1:14:18Speaker 04

  Either there and then I used to go to the Pimlico.

• 1:14:20Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, the Pimlico. Yeah, of course. Someone just was telling us about the, the famous Pimlico cake. The, the, you know, the, the chocolate frosting and the, what do they have, like, pecans or something? But, yeah, that's awesome. No, that's, uh, uh, so, yeah, good luck to your dad. What else we got, LD? Stabby, Otis, guests, whatever. Hey, show some respect, you piece of shit. Yeah, I'm calling cuz me and my wife, we bought our house a couple of years ago. And my brother and his fiance, they bought their house a couple of years ago. So we live pretty close. And we do dinner every so often, whatever. Um, that being said, my brother's fiance

• 1:15:02Stavros Halkias?

  has been taking aerial silk classes, like the shit you see at a circus. Oh, yeah. And I guess she has a recital coming up. And, uh, so she invited my wife and I to go to this fucking recital. And I was like, yeah, I'll go, like, whatever. Fucking Saturday, do something. Yo, these tickets are fifty dollars each. Wow, that's crazy. I paid less to come see you.

• 1:15:31Stavros Halkias?

  That's insane. That, I get,

• 1:15:34Speaker 04

  What is it?

• 1:15:34Stavros Halkias?

  So it's like, it's like, uh, have you, it's like kinda low, very low level Cirque du Soleil stuff. Where it's like, somebody has these, they, they have, like, silk or they have, like, these, they're doing aerial yoga kinda thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but, and, does he have more? Like, this is crazy. My wife says that I'm an asshole and cheap for not wanting to spend a hundred dollars to go see this grown ass woman have a fucking dance recital. And that she would be really offended by it. Um, for context, yeah, like, we really ain't hurting for money that bad. Okay. But, So it's more for the principle. Am I crazy and cheap as fuck for not wanting to spend a hundred dollars to go see her goof around for, like, an hour on a Saturday?

• 1:16:20Stavros Halkias?

  Anyways, love the pod. Uh, put this one on a free podcast, cuz I'm cheap, obviously. So, uh, yeah. You're lucky it is cuz we have Maury, but if Maury wasn't here out of principle, I would make this a Patreon episode. Okay, so this is, so he's basically, it's just the principle of the matter to this guy. Look, man, yes,

• 1:16:41Speaker 04

  It's what, what you would do for a hundred.

• 1:16:43Stavros Halkias?

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like a hundred bucks. Look, I get it sucks. I'm not arguing that this is fun to do. It is annoying. I get it. But this is family. You, everyone's, It is, isn't it, what did he say? It was his brother's fiance?

• 1:16:59Speaker 05

  It's his sister-in-law, yeah.

• 1:17:00Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, sister-in-law.

• 1:17:01Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 1:17:01Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, so, yes.

• 1:17:02Speaker 04

  Family, yeah, you gotta go.

• 1:17:04Stavros Halkias?

  It's annoying, right? If this was a neighbor that you guys see every much while,

• 1:17:09Speaker 04

  If he didn't go.

• 1:17:10Stavros Halkias?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:17:11Speaker 04

  How would the, uh,

• 1:17:13Stavros Halkias?

  Now you're,

• 1:17:13Speaker 04

  How would it play out later on?

• 1:17:14Stavros Halkias?

  Exactly, exactly. So for a hundred dollars and four hours of a Saturday, you are, what you're, think of it as not spending that. You're saving passive aggressiveness for eight Thanksgivings.

• 1:17:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:17:29Stavros Halkias?

  You know what I mean? Like, and now you made an effort, and by the way, when you go, don't be sullen. Because that sort of, uh, that cancels it out. You wanna go, you pretend you're excited to be there. You know what I mean? Not so excited that she invites you to more, but excited enough. And next time you find out about one of these, have a work function or something. But on this one, you gotta go. If it's family, you gotta go.

• 1:17:53Speaker 04

  You gotta go suck it up.

• 1:17:55Stavros Halkias?

  Have you, what's the most, uh, what's the most boring family function you've ever had to attend?

• 1:17:59Speaker 04

  Anyone that comes about.

• 1:18:05Speaker 04

  I mean, I, uh, I, every other Thanksgiving, the entire Povich family has to go to Maine, my father's boyhood home that we still have.

• 1:18:19Stavros Halkias?

  The Shirley Povich estate.

• 1:18:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:18:21Stavros Halkias?

  Yes.

• 1:18:22Speaker 04

  And, uh, it's a nice house, but, you know.

• 1:18:25Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:26Speaker 04

  I'm staying at the Hampton Inn anyway.

• 1:18:28Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:31Stavros Halkias?

  You're not, you're not sleeping on the Trundle bed?

• 1:18:33Speaker 04

  Every other, you know, and I'm coming from Florida, so it's just not around the corner.

• 1:18:37Stavros Halkias?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:18:40Speaker 04

  And then, of course, there's every Jewish holiday.

• 1:18:43Stavros Halkias?

  Of course.

• 1:18:43Speaker 04

  You gotta be with family.

• 1:18:44Stavros Halkias?

  Yep, yep.

• 1:18:45Speaker 04

  Now, I like family. I think it's great. I think it's terrific.

• 1:18:48Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 1:18:49Speaker 04

  Why don't they just say, you don't have to come?

• 1:18:52Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 1:18:52Speaker 04

  I would love it for a family member saying, well, there's an occasion, but Maury, you don't have to come.

• 1:19:00Stavros Halkias?

  I think you've earned that, Maury. I think when, I think if anybody, you know, if anybody's short on rent, I think they know who to go to, you know what I mean? I feel like you've bought your way out of a couple Thanksgivings.

• 1:19:11Speaker 04

  You know, once I get there, I wanna leave.

• 1:19:14Stavros Halkias?

  Skip a couple of Rosh Hashanahs. I think you'll be all right.

• 1:19:18Speaker 04

  And it's, and then, yeah, that's the problem. Cuz it all happened with my father and his, and his parents. They had all these big occasions, every Jewish holiday. But there was one great story he told me about that, about occasions.

• 1:19:38Speaker 04

  His, his parents came from, uh, Lithuania, and so they were immigrants and they became citizens. And every Thanksgiving, they would love Thanksgiving, so American and everything else. And my father said, he was fifteen years old before he realized that Thanksgiving wasn't a Jewish holiday.

• 1:19:59Stavros Halkias?

  The sacrif, the sacrificing of the turkey to free you from the pharaoh.

• 1:20:05Stavros Halkias?

  That's so funny, yeah. Yeah, dude, I, by the way, Maury, I think you, you gotta be the one calling the shots. Are you kidding me? Who says, how are you not the patriarch of the Povich family?

• 1:20:15Speaker 04

  I am, I am. I am.

• 1:20:17Stavros Halkias?

  Make them come to Florida.

• 1:20:19Speaker 04

  They won't let, they won't let me be that.

• 1:20:20Stavros Halkias?

  Make them come to Florida, what the fuck?

• 1:20:22Speaker 04

  I mean, it's, it's, it's like I'm the dawdling, uh, old great uncle,

• 1:20:28Stavros Halkias?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:20:29Speaker 04

  Grandfather, you know, you pull me around and just,

• 1:20:32Stavros Halkias?

  I think he, this is, if you were Maury Chung, they'd respect you more.

• 1:20:35Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:20:36Stavros Halkias?

  You gotta, yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta pull the Chung card here.

• 1:20:39Speaker 04

  Can I call in and say, I wanna change my name? What do you think?

• 1:20:46Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, man, sorry.

• 1:20:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, you gotta suck it up.

• 1:20:48Stavros Halkias?

  But you gotta suck it up and go, man.

• 1:20:50Speaker 00

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• 1:21:23Stavros Halkias?

  Owners deadlines. Go to Monday dot com, the AI workspace platform.

• 1:21:30Stavros Halkias?

  Give us another one. Hey, Stav, got a lot going on. I want to get your opinion on the heck I should do with my life.

• 1:21:39Stavros Halkias?

  Got out of the airport recently because I was married, you know, had a daughter. You know, got separated with the girl that I got with in the military. She was also military. She moved to California, so I followed her out here for my daughter. Just trying to do the right thing.

• 1:22:00Stavros Halkias?

  But man, I'm just struggling to make friends. I'm struggling to find out how to be a civilian again. While also making friends and acclimating to a place I've never lived before. While also trying to be a part-time dad and support my daughter and be a good father. But it's killing me. I feel like I'm needy. When I'm trying to make friends because I don't fucking have any and I am needy. And I feel like I'm not making the right friends. I feel like the ones I'm making are also desperate and needy. But they're desperate and needy because they're like weird or shitty people. I'm desperate and needy because I'm not from here, so I don't have any friends.

• 1:22:46Stavros Halkias?

  Be a little judgmental, pal. So at this point, you know, I'm honestly considering moving back to where I grew up and where I'm from. Because this is just depressing as fuck to be out here in the California. You know, by myself and I'm originally from Charlotte, North Carolina. You know, so just let me know. You got any good ideas? You know, should I sacrifice, you know, being out here for my daughter and only have her on the summers? And winter breaks when I move back to the Carolinas? Just stay out here and figure out how to make friends as a grown ass adult. While also trying to learn how to be a civilian again. Yeah, appreciate it.

• 1:23:31Stavros Halkias?

  You mean to learn how to be a civilian again? You're pulling your gun out at the fuck, at fucking Chipotle? What do you have to learn? But yes, this is tough. This is a tough one.

• 1:23:40Speaker 04

  It is. You want to be with your daughter, but at the same time, you got nobody to be around.

• 1:23:46Stavros Halkias?

  Right. I mean, look, I think that's where it starts though, right? Is the kid, right? And I think anytime if your kid is your sort of like North Star. If your kid is, is kind of dictating everything, then

• 1:24:01Stavros Halkias?

  yes, anytime you transition anywhere, it's going to be a little tough, right? And you've got, this guy's got a lot going on. He's right. I was, I'm busting his balls about becoming a civilian again, but it's true. The military orders your life. You don't have to think, you do whatever, you know what I mean? Like this guy's got a lot. He has a lot of autonomy now and he has these very complicated things to figure out with his family situation and then moving, like he said, as an adult. Particularly if he's, he went in the, in the service young from North Carolina. He's now is probably in his mid twenties, but he's, his, his development is sort of arrested it when he went in, right? So in many ways socially, he's like an eighteen year old who now is like a twenty something father in a strange land.

• 1:24:45Stavros Halkias?

  So that's tough. Absolutely.

• 1:24:48Speaker 04

  Maybe he could, if his daughter has friends and they're, and they have parents.

• 1:24:54Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 1:24:55Speaker 04

  Maybe he could ingratiate himself into that.

• 1:24:58Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah. I think so. I mean, I think, I think you have to look at this from a number of different ways. It's like, first of all, everything matters with your daughter. So that's a great point. It's like, start with her, you know, friends.

• 1:25:10Speaker 04

  That might open your own life.

• 1:25:12Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah. And then, but also this is a good opportunity to like, when you say you learn how to be a civilian again, what does that mean exactly? Where are you working? Usually work is a good place to at least pick up one friend, right? And then what are you doing socially? What is your, you know, he's saying he's, he's saying, oh, he's like desperate losers. It's like, where are you going? What are you doing? Are you at bars? Are you whatever? As corny as it is, can you pick up some kind of adult hobby? Can you beat, literally join a kickball league? Join a, join one of those like, you know, what are they called? Like, like play, play fucking pickleball if you have to. People love that. You know what I mean? Golf, whatever, like where people make friends, you gotta, or you know, you make friends.

• 1:25:57Stavros Halkias?

  Are you a gym guy? Can you make friends at the gym? Like you have to sort of

• 1:26:03Stavros Halkias?

  no, normally I would say, if it wasn't for the kid, obviously you just go back home, right?

• 1:26:07Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 1:26:07Stavros Halkias?

  But the kid is, in my view, you should, you should take this as an opportunity to sort of branch out and do some other stuff. Find, you know, you know, I've been very lucky where, when I moved to New York, I did make all my friends through work. My work happened to be comedy, right? So it was like, it's a very social thing to do.

• 1:26:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, but first of all, all you comics are morose anyhow, so you're.

• 1:26:31Stavros Halkias?

  It's true. It's true. We're all, we're all, yeah, we're all depressed. Everybody hates themselves. What, well, you moved around a lot. Was that ever a problem for you? I mean, you're talking about that.

• 1:26:39Speaker 04

  I always was, it was.

• 1:26:41Stavros Halkias?

  You're such a workaholic.

• 1:26:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. You know, what I used to do was great in San Francisco. I worked for almost three years in San Francisco and I was single.

• 1:26:52Speaker 04

  If you wanted a date in San Francisco, you went to the Marina Safeway and started shopping.

• 1:27:01Stavros Halkias?

  All right. Hit the fucking prologue, pal.

• 1:27:07Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah. I mean, I do, yes, this, you hear it in his voice. This guy's, he's having a tough one. I would say stick it out. Give it a couple of years.

• 1:27:17Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:27:17Stavros Halkias?

  Give it two years. You know, your kid's young.

• 1:27:20Speaker 04

  The problem is, and I don't know what, what your experience is, Southern California is tough to make friends.

• 1:27:27Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:27:28Speaker 04

  I really do believe that. And I'm not shitting on Southern California, but if you're from outside Southern California and you're a newbie.

• 1:27:36Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 1:27:37Speaker 04

  It's difficult, I think.

• 1:27:39Stavros Halkias?

  Well, I mean, I guess it is very, you know.

• 1:27:42Speaker 04

  Because when I was working there, every, every town I ever worked in.

• 1:27:49Speaker 04

  We did the show, we did the newscast, everybody went out, we all drank.

• 1:27:53Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 1:27:54Speaker 04

  Went to the bar, went to the, and not only we, but all of our competitors were there.

• 1:27:57Stavros Halkias?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:27:59Speaker 04

  And everything.

• 1:27:59Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:00Speaker 04

  Go to LA. Soon as the show is over, everybody gets in their goddamn SUVs. They're gone.

• 1:28:06Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:07Speaker 04

  They're gone. They're going to Orange County or they're going to this place. There's nothing.

• 1:28:11Stavros Halkias?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:28:12Speaker 04

  There's no there there.

• 1:28:13Stavros Halkias?

  No, no community there.

• 1:28:14Speaker 04

  Not in LA.

• 1:28:15Stavros Halkias?

  Everyone is very like atomized. Everyone is sort of is in their own little bubble. And to be fair, I have found that in LA as well, even though I have friends there, you know, through comedy or whatever. Everybody lives all across the city, whereas here, this is the best hangout city in the world, you know? You can get drunk.

• 1:28:31Speaker 04

  Even though you might be Queens or Brooklyn or Lower Manhattan or whatever, it's close enough.

• 1:28:36Stavros Halkias?

  We got the trains, you know what I mean? It's, you know, so yeah, dude, this sucks. I hear it. And I think, give yourself the credit that what you're going through now is for the betterment of your kid, right? And anytime it gets tough, think of that. And yes, just go literally put yourself out there socially as many ways as possible. Join some clubs. Go, go to club, right? Go to music, comedy, whatever, like any kind of like, do you have any interests? What do you, take this as an opportunity. Take this opportunity to also explore yourself, right? Because if you went to the army young and you, you went through this like separation kid, you haven't even had a chance to think about who you are, what you like. Take this as a chance for some self exploration.

• 1:29:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, and, and find a club, like a book club, or this club, or that club. There are all kinds of clubs.

• 1:29:26Stavros Halkias?

  Totally, totally. And I think, yeah, while you're figuring that out, spend some time self reflecting and knowing what you want. Because, you know, you haven't had that chance yet. So good luck. It's tough. And I think you're, you know, it's good. Always know you're being a good dad. We've got time for one more? What are we thinking here?

• 1:29:46Speaker 06

  Hi, Stavi. Hi, Aldis. So I do have a question. I am a thirty-six H cup.

• 1:30:01Speaker 06

  But here's my problem. I've always had big boobs. I've lost a hundred and thirty pounds. I had two kids, breastfed. They look bad.

• 1:30:14Stavros Halkias?

  Oh, come on.

• 1:30:14Speaker 06

  You know, I, I've always loved having big boobs. And my doctor just recommended a breast reduction and lift.

• 1:30:24Speaker 06

  So it would boost them up, make them look a little bit nicer.

• 1:30:28Stavros Halkias?

  Sure.

• 1:30:28Speaker 06

  But they were talking about sending me down to a C or D cup. And I don't know. So I figured I'd call.

• 1:30:37Stavros Halkias?

  Right.

• 1:30:38Speaker 06

  Get your advice.

• 1:30:39Stavros Halkias?

  This is what you have for Maury, Aldous, huh? We have fucking Maury over here, waiting on tits.

• 1:30:44Speaker 05

  He's a legend. We gotta get him on the record.

• 1:30:46Speaker 06

  Thank you. Bye.

• 1:30:47Speaker 05

  Issue dear to our hearts.

• 1:30:49Stavros Halkias?

  That is true. Yes.

• 1:30:50Speaker 04

  I know one person.

• 1:30:52Stavros Halkias?

  Please.

• 1:30:53Speaker 04

  Who had a reduction.

• 1:30:54Stavros Halkias?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:30:55Speaker 04

  And she, she did it for, for, for medical reasons. Her back.

• 1:31:01Stavros Halkias?

  Back problems. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:02Speaker 04

  Because of, of her breast size.

• 1:31:04Stavros Halkias?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:31:05Speaker 04

  And so that's why she did it.

• 1:31:06Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:07Speaker 04

  She looks great.

• 1:31:08Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah. And I mean, our friend here is worried about, so basically the gist of the call is, she, they wanna, they wanna reduce and lift, just kinda whatever. She's worried that, she wants the lift, but she's worried about the reduction. Is that, is that her call, Aldous? Now, look, here's what I'll say. I get that. I say, try it out. And look, at the end of the day, if you want, you could always get implant. If you get a reduction now, couldn't you get implants if you wanted to get back to your natural size? I mean, really, I don't see the problem in that, where it's like, especially somebody who's.

• 1:31:40Speaker 04

  You tell me about.

• 1:31:42Stavros Halkias?

  Go ahead.

• 1:31:42Speaker 04

  Implants.

• 1:31:43Stavros Halkias?

  You want me to tell, they're great. The technology's really, I bet, yeah.

• 1:31:46Speaker 04

  Has it gotten much better?

• 1:31:47Stavros Halkias?

  It's gotten much better, Maury. Since you were at that Safeway in San Francisco, they've gotten a lot better.

• 1:31:52Speaker 04

  Really?

• 1:31:52Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:53Speaker 04

  Cause back then.

• 1:31:58Stavros Halkias?

  Nah, it takes a while, you know, you, you're like, huh.

• 1:32:00Speaker 04

  You know, my wife is responsible.

• 1:32:02Stavros Halkias?

  I didn't know about this.

• 1:32:03Speaker 04

  For getting rid of the silicone.

• 1:32:08Stavros Halkias?

  Ah, saline now.

• 1:32:10Speaker 04

  Cause, and it went to saline because there were all these problems with silicone leakage and things like that.

• 1:32:16Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:16Speaker 04

  She did this big expose. Every, every plastic surgeon, by the way, hates her.

• 1:32:21Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:22Speaker 04

  So I don't know. It's gotten better.

• 1:32:25Stavros Halkias?

  It's gotten much better. I can say, from some firsthand experience, I would say it's gotten much better. And I would say, you know, we tip, I didn't even know that about.

• 1:32:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:33Stavros Halkias?

  Your, yeah, shout out to.

• 1:32:34Speaker 04

  Connie.

• 1:32:35Stavros Halkias?

  Connie again for improving breast implants around, I mean, what a legend. We gotta get her on the podcast.

• 1:32:43Stavros Halkias?

  Uh, but look, I say, lift them up, make yourself, you know, see how you feel. And then, what's your trepidation? Did we cut her off? She have any more, Aldous? Is that pretty much?

• 1:32:53Speaker 05

  No, that's basically, she's, she wants to know your stance as a supporter of the big titty community.

• 1:32:56Stavros Halkias?

  Of course, of course. And I am staunchly for the big titty community, of course.

• 1:33:01Speaker 04

  Who isn't?

• 1:33:05Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, you're right. One of the few things we can all co, you know, join hands and agree on. And I would say, yeah, lift them up, see how you're feeling. And you might, you might be okay with them, you know, they're still not small. She's not talking about having small tits. We're talking about lifted D cups. Um, but if you want, you know, try it out. And then if you wanna get, you know, implants, who cares? Get them later. It's fine. It's fine. And I think more people should, you know, if you want, anything you wanna do with your body, it's your body. Go crazy. Who gives a fuck? And if you don't, and people, by the way, people who don't wanna do it, don't do it. But people who wanna do it, do it. Who cares?

• 1:33:41Speaker 04

  Like, you're, I mean, you're going through a situation now, right?

• 1:33:44Stavros Halkias?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:33:45Speaker 04

  I mean, you're taking the shot.

• 1:33:47Stavros Halkias?

  Yes, I am. Yep. I'm, I.

• 1:33:49Speaker 04

  And if it gets to the point where you don't like it, you won't use it, right?

• 1:33:52Stavros Halkias?

  I'll stop. I'm actually, right now, cause I had such a crazy year and I was taking so many substances. I've, the last couple of weeks, I've gotten sober from weed. And I also stopped taking the GLP-1 for a couple of weeks, just to kinda let my body reset a little bit. And just to like, I kinda want to feel in control of everything. So I'm like, I'm cooking all my own meals. I'm doing, I'm trying to, I'm getting my sleep schedule right. And so, yes, I'm having a little natural break from everything right now. But I'm gonna go back.

• 1:34:21Speaker 04

  Did you have any side effects from it?

• 1:34:22Stavros Halkias?

  I had a little, you know, a little, you know, in, you know, your stomach hurts some, you, you kinda gotta get used to the, you gotta get the, the rhythms of the, I, I mean, when I first had it, I kept, I kept getting sick as I just kept eating, you know? It got, it, it was kind of like an electric fence for me after, after I've shocked myself a couple of times. I was like, all right, enough cheese steaks, let's let the medicine work. But, um, I will, I.

• 1:34:44Speaker 04

  Give up those.

• 1:34:46Stavros Halkias?

  No, no, I still, I, Maury, I figured out how to, how to time it out. Don't worry. I still know how to get a nice one.

• 1:34:52Speaker 04

  I worked in Philadelphia for three years.

• 1:34:54Stavros Halkias?

  They're good, man. They're, they're some, some really good, and you know.

• 1:34:58Speaker 04

  You know, I believe that John Kerry lost the presidential election when he went to Pat's Steaks.

• 1:35:03Stavros Halkias?

  Instead of Gino's? What do you think?

• 1:35:05Speaker 04

  He went to Pat's and he ordered Swiss.

• 1:35:10Stavros Halkias?

  Oh my God. You gotta go whiz. You gotta go whiz, bro. Swiss? The gayest European cheese there is? They're already calling you a flip flopper, John. If only I wasn't a child, if only I was on his sandwich. I wanna be a presidential sandwich advisor from now on. I will never steer you wrong. Um, yeah, lift them up, see how you feel. And if you gotta get implants in a couple of years, why not? Why not? We believe in science here on Stavi's World. Um, that's gonna do it for us, folks. Maury, this was such a treat.

• 1:35:44Speaker 04

  Was it okay?

• 1:35:44Stavros Halkias?

  Are you kidding me? This is the best episode I've ever done in my life.

• 1:35:47Speaker 04

  Comics?

• 1:35:47Stavros Halkias?

  Huh?

• 1:35:48Speaker 04

  You're not your friend's comics? It's just me?

• 1:35:51Stavros Halkias?

  You, are you, just you? Are you kidding me? You're, this might be the only time I've ever respected a guest on this show.

• 1:35:57Speaker 04

  Now I'm honored.

• 1:35:58Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah. Uh, the podcast is on par with Maury Povich. I've done it. A bunch of great comics have done it. You've had a bunch of great guests. Season three should be coming out right now. Check him out, guys. And listen, treat yourself, if you're not familiar with this man's hoover, treat yourself to some YouTube compilations. Legitimately, during the pandemic, I, I might, I, I mean, we crushed.

• 1:36:21Speaker 04

  The pickles, the olives.

• 1:36:22Stavros Halkias?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, uh, and you know, we'll, we'll, we'll talk off mic about reviving the You Are Not The Father series. Um, the, but that is gonna do it for us. Maury, thanks again. Thank you for, thank you for being here. Absolutely. And go watch the podcast and we will talk to you guys later. Bye, bye.

• 1:36:47Stavros Halkias?

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