HTDE: Josh Gad defeats earworms, and we make a pitch to Pete Buttigieg
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Hey, guys, it's Peter here to tell you that you are about to listen to yet another episode of How to Do Everything, our sister podcast from Wait, Wait producers Mike Danforth and Ian Chilog. It's a very special episode today because they're featuring Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. Now, some people credit Pete Buttigieg's rise in national politics to his appearance on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me in 2017.

By some people, I mean me. Now, if you hate hearing this show in the WaitWait feed, I've got good news for you. Pretty soon it's going to disappear from here and people will have to go over to its own feed on How To Do Everything to listen to How To Do Everything. And if you love hearing the show, I got great news. It's got its own feed. You don't have to worry about my dumb show. Just go listen to them whenever you want. So enjoy this week's How To Do Everything. ♪

Election Day is just days away. Maybe your mailbox is full of election mailers. Maybe it's even overstuffed with mailers. Maybe you're considering just setting fire to your mailbox so you don't have to deal with it. But there's a better way. Douglas Herman is a political strategist. He was lead mail strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012.

So Doug, we hear there's a way to cut down on all these mailings. Can you tell us about it? Absolutely. There's a way to do this, and it actually works in your interest and in the campaign's interest. I'll tell you how it works. Campaign mailers are expensive, and you get on the list by registering to vote. And the campaigns are going to communicate with you because you're a registered voter. The way in which you can get off the list the quickest and the easiest is to do your homework and

and vote early because when you vote the campaign's gonna stop talking to you. It's in their interest to stop spending money. So they are gonna wanna not send you any more mailings just as badly as you don't wanna see any more of those mailings. So the bottom line is do your homework and vote early.

Wow. So it both stops me from getting more mail than I want, but if I'm passionate about my candidate, it's kind of like making a donation to them because they don't have to spend the money to send me something I'm just going to recycle. Absolutely. Because it costs them a lot of money to do that and they're doing it time and time again. So your little bit, little personal contribution, that's right. I once got a letter from Barack Obama

And instead of a stamp, it just had his signature where the stamp would go. Because I guess once you've been president, you can just mail things that way, right? Federal elected officials have, by virtue of their signature, it's called franked mail. They're able to send out mail under their signature, basically in lieu of a stamp.

Wait, what's it called again? Frank mail. The congressional members use it often. F-R-A-N-K-E-D, Frank. Okay. And they have congressional franking privileges, which is what they're given as part of their office to communicate with their residents, the voters. Can I ask a question, Doug? When else can you use the word frank as a verb? No.

I've never used it as a verb except in this instance. Wow. Ian, have you ever heard of it? Franking? No. The term is congressional franking. There's rules about it, very clear rules. Congress drives them about how you can use all that stuff and what it's for. It can only be done for straight-up official purposes.

So it would be a campaign finance violation for an incumbent candidate to just sign every election mailer themselves to save their campaign money. Yes, it would. That's kind of what took Dan Rostankowski down. He was catching in dams for cash. So wait, so when he's in jail, they could be like, what are you in here for? And he could be like, illegal franking.

I franked wrong. Yeah. Doug, do you think that people would pay more attention to these mailers that they got in their mailboxes if maybe they were sticky? You know, folks have said a lot of things about ways to gather more attention and pique more voters' attention. The scratch-off, the leave an odor, doing the lottery. There's been every trick in the game has been played. Did you say leave an odor?

Uh-huh. You know, let's say you're having, you're trying to say this guy's spewing bar motors for their campaign promises. But like, are you saying that's something somebody proposed? It's been done. Really? Yep. Well, Doug, thank you so much for talking this through with us. Thank you. This is How to Do Everything. I'm Mike. And I'm Ian. On today's show, we go to the highest offices of government and ask them for something.

But first, Roxanne, what can we help you with? Hi. Yeah, so my toddler is obsessed with Gaston in Beauty and the Beast. And everything is Gaston in our house, but especially the song. And I just get this stuck in my head all the time. And I was wondering how we can get a song out of my head. Hmm.

This is the, like, no one fights like Gaston, no one bites like Gaston. That's what we're talking about, right? That's the song. You had that pretty quick, Ian. Is that a song? Are you singing that song in your house? I'll just be honest. I also have a four-year-old who is obsessed with this song. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Oh, that's perfect. When you say your toddler is obsessed with Gaston, what's your child's name? Gaston.

Yeah, his name is Marco. Marco, okay. Does Marco think Gaston is the good guy in Beauty and the Beast? Kind of. I mean, the Beast is bad for a lot of the movie. I don't really think the arc does the story justice. But yeah, he doesn't really understand that Gaston is the bad guy. He just likes that Gaston jumps off of tables. He always wants to jump off of tables and jump off of roofs.

Is that Marco in the background that we can hear?

Yeah, yeah. Marco, do you want to say hi? Hi. Hey, how are you? Hey, Marco. I'm good. All right, we should jump in real quick here. There's about to be a spoiler for those of you who haven't seen Beauty and the Beast. After a while, the beast is bad, and then he turns into a prince. Sorry, he turns into a what? A prince. A prince? Uh-huh. Okay, so...

How can we help? What would you like us to resolve for you? So when I'm not listening to Gaston, I don't want to be repeating the lines in my head all day long. We have probably listened to it at least 10 times this morning so far. Is that true? Yeah. Wow. So what can I do to get the song out of my head when it's not being played?

All right. Gaston, the song, it is catchy. And with the risk of getting it in your head, those of you listening, let's hear a bit of it so we all know what we're talking about. No one's slick as Gaston. No one's thick as Gaston. No one's neck says incredibly thick as Gaston. But there's no man in town half as manly. Perfect. A pure paragon.

That voice you're hearing there is Josh Gad. Maybe he can help. He's the person who sang the song in the first place. He also is the star of Frozen and the Book of Mormon.

Josh, any advice? Okay. I've got a couple of tips here. For starters, I think that you need to take out all speakers from the house immediately. Okay. And then I would just start singing other really catchy melodies. Maybe do a Taylor Swift, throw in a chaperone, get a little bit of Beyonce in there, and just sort of like...

You got to get him off the scent. I wish I had stronger suggestions. The truth is, I couldn't get that damn song out of my head.

Well, I was going to ask. Yeah, if you had to rehearse this song to get ready to perform it, you were just living with the same problem. I was literally living with that problem. Unlike Marco, I was getting paid to live with the problem. Yeah. So it was slightly better. But it was still very problematic because I would walk around humming it all the time.

But I was like, you know, clockwork, oranging it into my brain, just nonstop listening. And it was tough. It's a good song, though, so it's like, it could have been worse. It could have been like a garbage song that I had to, you know, that I couldn't get out of my head. And to be clear, not the band Garbage, but a song that isn't good. Correct. Okay. Not the James Bond Garbage theme song from the

The world is not enough. That's all I remember of Garbage. That they randomly did a James Bond song that was sandwiched in between Tina Turner and Madonna. That does feel random, doesn't it, when you have that? And Adele is up there. Adele, Madonna...

and garbage. One of these things is not like the others. One of these things is literally called garbage. laughter

Well, Josh, let me ask you this then. So like Roxanne, an adult, a person who knows how the world works, has agency, is in control of her own life. How did you, like, what else were you listening to when you also had that song stuck in your head? So I have a playlist that is, you know, I want to tell you it's really diverse and cool, but it's like, here's...

Here's the sad part that I'll only tell you and all of the listeners to NPR. Yeah. Is...

It's really strictly 80s, for the most part. There are exceptions, but it's like an 80s playlist. That's my happy place. Can you pull that up right now, wherever it is, if it's on Spotify, Apple Music? I'm doing it. I'm doing it right now. What is the first song on that playlist, the top song? Oh, I'm not going to like this game. Most recently added. Okay. Well, first song is...

What Have I Done to Deserve This? An apt question for this conversation by Pep Boys and Dusty Springfield. Oh, that's a good song. Yeah, sure. Now, the most recent song that I added was Somewhere Only We Know remastered by Keen. Oh.

Oh, I don't know that song. I'm going to write it down. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Do I know it? It's... Oh, simple thing, where have you gone? I'm getting old and I need something to rely on. So tell me when you're going to let me in. Don't you remember that song? It's so good. I think I do remember it. That is... I got to say, that rendition was fantastic. It was... Thank you. High falsetto. Yeah.

Can I ask you this? You have two, you have young kids, right? I do. When Frozen came out, kids everywhere were talking about it. They were dressing up as Elsa, as Olaf for Halloween. Were your kids like, oh yeah, that's my dad? Oh, it's really interesting. I can vividly remember my oldest was three. My youngest wasn't born yet. But I vividly remember taking Ava, my oldest, to go see Frozen.

her first movie in a theater, Monsters University. And they showed a teaser, a teaser trailer for Frozen. And it was just Olaf. It was original animation that was done exclusively for the trailer. And it was just Olaf. And he didn't have any lines. He just laughed. And my daughter immediately recognized my laugh. And she goes...

Data? More data. And I started bawling. You love me. You love me. Oh, that's terrific. Well, Josh, thank you so much for helping Roxanne and Marco. My pleasure.

Do you know what's really unfortunate about what you just said is now I have the song Roxanne stuck in my head. I know that it couldn't be avoided, but so you've now infected me with the same curse. Oh my gosh. It's revenge. This is... Yeah. Maybe that's, maybe that will be Roxanne's solution. Maybe that will be like the trigger that we can plant in her brain that will jar it loose then.

Jarr Gaston. Yeah. Yeah. If at this point, Roxanne or anybody out there, if you still have a song in your head, there is a way to get it out. Dr. Philip Beeman from the University of Reading in the UK said,

has studied this. Dr. Beeman, you have figured out that actually chewing gum will help get a song out of your head. Can you tell us about it? Okay. So I've got a friend and colleague who'd done some things on chewing gum and short-term memory, and he discovered that chewing gum is actually not good for your short-term memory or verbal short-term memory.

And that makes a lot of sense, actually, because when you're trying to remember things, you're repeating them to yourself normally. So my reasoning was that if you've got a song stuck in your head, then whether you're intending to or not, what you're really doing is singing it to yourself. Uh-huh. So if you then...

interfere with people's ability to sing to themselves by getting them to do something else and especially something else to do with the lower part of their face that they would normally be using for planning movements to sing, then that should interfere. So basically, if you keep the singing parts of the face busy doing something else, which is chewing gum, you're less likely to have the song stuck in your head.

Yeah. Of course, it's not really the chewing parts of the face. It's really the brain regions that are controlling the chewing parts of the face that you're keeping busy. That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for talking to us about this. Oh, you're welcome. If you have a question you'd like us to answer, go ahead and send it to us. Send it to our email at howtoatnpr.org. Maybe you have a question about Halloween or another upcoming holiday. There are many.

I won't name them all. But if you have a question about a holiday coming in the next six to 18 months, send it to us and we will answer it for you as best we can. Once again, that email address, no matter what this season, is howtoatnpr.org.

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I had this idea. Mike and I work in two different time zones. We both are producers on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and we work with producers in three time zones, sometimes four, occasionally even five time zones. As you might expect, scheduling meetings is annoying. So I was thinking, wouldn't it be easier if we had our own time zone?

So I could just be like, let's have a meeting at noon wait-wait time. And that would be that. This sounds like a crazy idea, but we want to see if it's possible. The person in charge of time zones is the Secretary of Transportation. Pete Buttigieg, you're in charge of time zones, right? True. Yeah. So can you help us out? So the answer is...

Probably no. However, I should point out that we administer the time zones, but a lot of it actually comes through the states. And I know a lot about this from lived experience because I grew up in the state of Indiana at a time when we didn't do daylight savings time. So in the summer, we were central and in the winter, we were eastern. Right. We just never changed our clocks.

Which was perfectly fine by most of us, but then there was a change in leadership. The governor wanted to make sure we were like the rest of the country, except Arizona, I think, which was the same. Yeah. And then we started to have a big debate over which time zone we would be in, because if we're going to permanently be in one time zone, which one are you going to do? And for about two years, there was kind of a rebellion where counties had their own

individual preferences over time zones. I remember I was volunteering on a campaign at the time and I showed up, I looked up online the time zone of the county that I had been asked to deliver some items to before a parade, made sure I was half an hour early, got there, clearly was half an hour late, went into the nearest government building I could find, which was the library, and said, what time is it?

And she kind of laughed at me. And I said, no, really, what time is it? And she pointed to two clocks on the wall behind her, one of which said central time. And the other said commerce time, which is what they called it around there. Wow. If you weren't on the official federal time. They also sometimes call it fast time and slow time.

And then she started explaining. She said, now, if you go to Walgreens, they're going to run on central time. But if you go to the corner drugstore on Main, you know, Billy never did like the governor. So they're sticking with conference time. That's kind of how it works. Secretary, are you just filibustering so that you don't have to give us a time zone? No.

I'll tell you this. Be glad that you're only dealing with four or five time zones. See, the reason our department, the Department of Transportation, has some jurisdiction on time zones is because obviously it's very important for transportation that everybody be able to agree what place is what time. Before the railroads...

it was commonplace to have hundreds of different kind of micro time zones around the country. Like an individual state might have dozens of different local times in different places. Because, you know, you went by the sun like you didn't,

you weren't syncing to an atomic clock. It didn't particularly matter, right? And then it was because of the railroads that they came up with this kind of system of the four different zones. So if it's any consolation, if you don't get to have your personal time zone, which I can tell you from experience may cut both ways. The point is no, you can't have your own time zone just because you asked. Yeah.

Can I ask, have you gotten, as Secretary of Transportation, have you gotten a speeding ticket since you've held this position? I have not since I held this position. Has any other Buttigieg gotten a speeding ticket? Ooh, uh...

I can't remember if that's happened to Chastain or not since I got this job. I'll plead ignorance. Yeah. I wonder if it were to happen, as Secretary of Transportation, do you get exempt? Like, are you exempt from that? Can you decide at that moment what the speed limit is? That'd be a bad look. You know, there's a story of Ulysses Grant was pulled over.

uh, wow. President, um, he was speeding in his carriage and, uh, really? Yeah. I think they booked him and he had to pay a fine. You know, he paid up. He like did the right thing. Um, so if that were to happen, you definitely would not be a good look for me to do anything but, uh, uh,

the right thing there. But I will say Chastin has joked that I should carry around like a notepad of little citations if we see, like whenever we're like walking and we see somebody like going right over a stop bar and stopping in the wrong part of an intersection or just generally being a bad driver that I can just peel off my post-it and just say, as your secretary, I need to let you know that you are being a bad driver right now. I do feel the temptation sometimes.

Well, that does it for this week's show. What'd you learn, Ian? I learned that when you vote early, you actually stop the election mailers from coming to your house.

And also, you help your candidate. You're saving them money. Yeah. Is there somebody out there who absolutely loves, loves like cardboard photos of politicians? And this would be the greatest season ever for them because every day they go to their mailbox and they get a new prize. All you have to do to get pictures of a person you like or a person you don't like is

is remove yourself from participation in America's democratic process. This is also an easy way to wallpaper a small room in your house. Yeah, no, we redecorated the bathroom, and now we're going with a Jill Stein theme. How to Do Everything is produced by Hina Shrivastava. Our intern is Khan786Khan. Sir, this is what this is. Technical direction from Lorna White.

If you have any questions, you can send them to us at howtoatnpr.org. I'm Ian. And I'm Mike. Thanks. But you know what, Ian? No one thanks like Gaston. Every time we mention the segment, which we worked hard to produce to help Roxanne, every time we mention that segment, we undo the hard work we did. But here's the truth. No one produces segments like Gaston. We apologize, Roxanne. You're welcome, Marco.

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Anthropic. Introducing Claude, their AI assistant designed to help teams enhance their workflows. When working as a team, miscommunication can steal the momentum away from a good idea. That's why Anthropic designed their AI assistant to be a valuable co-worker who can help turn those one-off emails and side chats into a project to keep your team unbounded.

Claude can even create code snippets, diagrams, and graphics in different languages. And because Anthropic is committed to user privacy, Claude protects your team's projects so your trade secrets stay secret. Discover how Claude can transform your work at anthropic.com slash claude.

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