TRANSCRIPT Bullseye with Jesse Thorn: Bill Bradley

[00:00:00]

Transition: Gentle, trilling music with a steady drumbeat plays under the dialogue.

Promo: Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

Music: “Huddle Formation” from the album Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team—a fast, upbeat, peppy song. Music plays as Jesse speaks, then fades out.

Jesse Thorn: It’s Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. I’m not sure that there has ever been a time that Bill Bradley, who is my guest on this program, has sat down and said to himself, “You know what? I’ve done pretty good. I’m going to take it easy, have a nice tea, watch The Sopranos or something.” For all of his 80 years on this earth, Bradley has wanted more from himself. That ambition drove him to the Ivy League, where he took Princeton to the basketball final four. It got him a Rhodes Scholarship. It took him to the New York Knicks. It helped the Knicks get their first ever NBA championship in 1970, then another in 1973. Even when he retired from basketball, he wanted more.

So, he ran for Senate in New Jersey. He was elected in 1978, again in ’86 and ’92. He retired from the Senate in 1998, and he could have just taken it easy—maybe made some money on the lecture circuit. But he, of course, did not take it easy. He challenged Vice President Al Gore for the Democratic presidential nomination. A monumentally difficult task. Losing that election in 2000 was the end of his political career. But again, why rest on your laurels? He still works. He’s written seven books, he hosts his own weekly show on satellite radio, and he recently performed his own one-man show. Yes, NPR listener, Senator Bill Bradley did a one man play off-Broadway, and you can watch it. It’s called Rolling Along: An American Story. It’s streaming now on Max. Here’s a bit of it. It’s a story about playing on the US Olympic team. and preparing to face the Soviet Union.

Transition: Music swells then fades.

Clip:

Bill Bradley: So, I went to a Russian professor at Princeton and said, “Could you give me a few words in Russian that I could use in case I get into trouble out there? And I came against the Soviets.”

And he said, “Well, what do you want to know in Russian?”

And I said, “How about, ‘HEY, BIG FELLA! WATCH OUT!’”

(The audience laughs.)

So, he gave me the words, we get to the finals of the Olympic Games. We are playing the Soviet team. I’m at 6’7”, 240. About eight minutes in, he cracks me with an elbow. Elbow in my upper chest, lower neck. I fall back and I momentary lose my voice. And I remember what the professor said. So, I gather myself up, I put on my meanest face possible. I look him right in the eyes and I say, “(Shouting in Russian)!” Which liberally translated means, “Hey, big fella. Watch out.”

(Laughter.)

Now, funny thing happened. Because the Soviets were calling all their plays verbally. But after they thought I understood Russian, they stopped talking to each other, we went on one to win the gold medal!

(Laughter.)

Transition: Music swells then fades.

Jesse Thorn: Bill Bradley, welcome to Bullseye. I’m so happy to have you on the show.

Bill Bradley: Thanks, Jesse; pleasure to be here.

Jesse Thorn: So, did you enjoy banging around in the paint, as they say in basketball lingo?

Bill Bradley: I did. I did. I enjoyed the whole process from writing it, to memorizing it, to performing it, to filming it, to doing it. Yes, I enjoyed the whole thing.

Jesse Thorn: Why are you a theatre performer? Why isn’t this a book or a lecture or some other form?

Bill Bradley: Well, I’ve done seven books, and this is much harder. (Chuckles.) And the story of how it began is interesting—for me anyway. I’d given my papers to—my political papers to Princeton, and they did an oral history and interviewed about 60 or 70 people. I invited them all to a reception. 40 showed up. And I stood up and told stories about each of the 40. And one of them, who is a friend of mine of 50 years, produced 72 plays on Broadway, named MannyEisenberg. And he came up to me afterwards and said, “It sounds a little bit like Hal Holbrook doing Mark Twain. You ought to work something up.” And so, for the next year, I wrote it. And then for another six months, I took it around to 20 cities in the country, and read it, and took notes from people who offered their comments afterwards.

[00:05:00]

And then covid hit, which had the effect of allowing me to go deeper into the material. And at the end of covid, I realized I wasn’t going to do a theatre—I was going to make it a film, so we rented a theater. And I did it four nights at the Jewel Box Theatre, a theater signature on 42nd Street in New York City. And I analogize—as I was sitting in the room off the stage—I guess it would be the dressing room—about to go out, I thought about sitting in the locker room with the Knicks about to go out and play the game. And each time I thought there’s no place else in the world that I’d rather be, and nothing else I’d rather be doing than this. And so, I had a had a ball.

Jesse Thorn: I imagine the feeling before you go out on stage in front of 50 people to do a monologue, even though it has some things in common with the feeling of going out on the court at Madison Square Garden, it’s probably very different as well. I mean, for one thing, you don’t have teammates.

Bill Bradley: That’s very true. That’s very true. Good observation. Yeah, you’re going out all alone. But then you’re going out with your story. And if you have thought about it and written it and memorized it, then you’re not going out alone, because you’re taking all the people in your story with you.

Jesse Thorn: It feels like if the show is about something, it’s about you looking for connection with others. And the root of that is your childhood as an only child in unusual circumstances in a small town. How were you different from other kids in town?

Bill Bradley: Yeah. Well, no, I do think you’ve caught one of the themes—which is feeling different or that I did not belong. And it began in that small town in Missouri. My father was the local banker. It was a factory town, a glass factory town. Most of my friends were the sons and daughters of factory workers. And so, I wasn’t. I was the banker’s son, and that made me feel different. And in some ways, it prevented me from feeling that I belonged there. And you flash forward, and when I get to Princeton—you know, by that time I’ve converted to Evangelical Christianity. And I was at a preeminent secular university. And the assistant Episcopal chaplain—who said about me at some point, “Did you know Bradley? Bradley was one of them.” Meaning Evangelicals. And so, all that did was tell me once again, I was different.

And it really wasn’t until I got to the Knicks and had the union of personality and talents that I really felt at home and that I really felt I belonged. And it was a very important moment when I had that realization.

Jesse Thorn: You know, it’s funny. I was thinking about basketball as I was watching your show, and I thought: what an unusual combination of team sport and solo sport it is, right? Because, you know, unlike—say—baseball, where there is very little baseball practice you can do by yourself. You know, you can throw at a rectangle on the wall. (Chuckling.) I know I did that a fair amount when I was a kid. But like, ultimately baseball doesn’t happen unless there are two baseball teams, right? And baseball, when you’re actually performing it, is a solo thing, largely. It’s a pitcher against a hitter. It’s a fielder making a play and throwing to someone else. Teamwork is—you’re on a team, but teamwork is not the essential component.

Basketball is kind of the backwards version of that in that you absolutely must be deeply committed to team when you’re playing basketball, because it is always in motion. Everything is always dependent on everyone else. But you know, you describe a childhood that often was you by yourself with a basketball hoop.

Bill Bradley: Yeah, well, basketball, on the one hand, is—

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It can be a solitary experience when you’re developing your basic skills of shooting, for example. That’s why I begin the film by saying, “You begin by bouncing a ball—in the backyard, in the driveway, at the playground. And then you start shooting. Your knees are bent, your elbows are under the ball, your eyes are on the rim. You shoot, and you follow through. How simple the basic act is. I don’t know when my interest turned to passion, but I was very young.” And I guess I was very young when—I started when I was like nine or ten years old. And then I went to a basketball camp when I was 14. It was put on by a pro named Easy Ed Macauley, who was a big St. Louis Hawk. And he told—that was the pro team in St. Louis.

And he told the assembled campers one day, “Remember, if you’re not practicing, somebody somewhere is practicing. And if you two meet, given roughly equal ability, he’s going to win.” (Chuckles.) Well! That was the origin of my workaholism! And of course, the way you practiced was you had to master your individual skills, and that was a solitary experience. Occasionally, there’d be another classmate of mine that would be practicing, and he’d be at one end of the court practicing, and I’d be at the other end. And the irony is, it’s a very solitary experience when you are learning the basic skills, but it is totally communal when you’re playing the game. Because no one person is as important as all five can be together, and it is really a meshing of talents and personalities that produces a winner. And so, it’s a combination of those two things.

Jesse Thorn: We have to go to a quick break. When we return, even more with former Senator and Basketball Hall of Famer Bill Bradley. Stay with us. It’s Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.

Transition: Gentle, chiming synth.

Jesse Thorn: It’s Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. My guest is two-time NBA champion and former US Senator Bill Bradley. He’s starring in a new solo show called Rolling Along.

When you were a teenager, did you think that you would become a professional basketball player?

Bill Bradley: Absolutely not. I never had the idea I wanted to be a pro until at the end of college. And I just wanted to win the state championship. I wanted to be the best player I could be and win the state championship. That was the whole thing. And in college, I wanted to be the best player I could be and win the NCAA championship. Neither of which I managed to accomplish—losing in high school in the state final and losing in college in the semifinals. It wasn’t until I was with the Knicks that I could say I was a champion when we won the title in 1970 and ’73. So, those were big moments that had an echo that went way back in my life.

Jesse Thorn: You had a conversion when you were a teenager at a Christian basketball camp and became an Evangelical. Now, that to some extent meant a different thing then than now. But did you have a direct experience? Did you have what these days they call a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?

Bill Bradley: Yes. In fact, I remember the speaker the night it occurred, who said that we’re not fighting for the state championship or the world championship, but the victory of Christ in the hearts of men. And that was a moment for me. So, yeah, there it occurred in a place over time, and then I lived it. And I lived it for eight years, something like that.

Jesse Thorn: You describe in the show the moment when you decided to walk away from Evangelism. I certainly can understand why, you know, you left the church you were going to after they were—after the pastor was defending racist practices in what was then Rhodesia. Like, I can understand that. But I also think it must have been immensely painful to walk away from something that was that central to your life.

Bill Bradley: Yeah, I mean, it always stays with you. But I came to believe that God’s love was more important than God’s judgment. And then the experience of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes camps where most of the campers were against the civil rights laws. And so, it wasn’t—I decided, you know, that was—I was moving to someplace else.

[00:15:00]

Jesse Thorn: It seems like part of the feeling of home and basketball for you was being alone in a gym or being alone with a hoop. Like, you describe when you first started playing basketball at Oxford in England, that feeling of like, “Oh, right, this is… this is home.” And that wasn’t—you know, you did play basketball in Europe on a basketball team, but that’s not what you were describing, right? Like, that’s left out of the story. The story is you alone with that hoop.

Bill Bradley: Yeah, no. I did have that realization, because when I left Princeton and went to Oxford, I wasn’t sure I was going to play basketball again. My first year at Oxford, I did play for an Italian meatpacking firm in the European Cup Championships, which we won. But then after April of that first year at Oxford, I didn’t touch a ball for almost a year. And then one day, I went down to the newly constructed Oxford Gymnasium—the first one in 700 years—and I started shooting baskets alone. I was dribbling, and I found myself announcing the game again. And I realized I really loved the game, and not to play professional basketball would be to deny a fundamental part of who I was as a human being. And so, I then went back and called the Knicks and said, “I’d like to play,” and flew back, and negotiated a contract.

Jesse Thorn: Do you shoot now?

Bill Bradley: I used to shoot from time to time. I like it. But I had a rotator cuff surgery, so I haven’t really returned to it with any intensity. (Chuckles.)

Jesse Thorn: Is there anything else that gives you that feeling?

Bill Bradley: Not really. I think that it’s a magical moment when you’re alone in the gym and you feel that your body is in sufficient shape that you can do what you want, and you shoot, and you hear the swish, and the swish, and the swish. I got a little of that feeling when I memorized the show here and did it, where I knew what was coming, and I enjoyed doing it.

But other than that, no.

Jesse Thorn: You say rhythm in the show, that rhythm of shooting by yourself.

Bill Bradley: Yeah. The rhythm of shooting by yourself is, you know, having all of the—you know, the knees bent, elbows under the ball, all the structure of the shot down. And then shooting, hearing the swish, returning, getting it back, shooting again, getting it, shooting again, getting it, shooting again. And it is a kind of rhythm that you get into when you are practicing alone. And I like that. I mean, people have often asked me, for example, “Well, what’s the difference between winning the NBA title and being elected to the Senate three times?” And I said, well, being elected to the Senate was the greatest honor, but all that allowed me to do was to work 14 hours a day for six years to prove that people weren’t wrong in selecting me.

But standing at center court with your fist raised in the air, chills going up and down your spine, knowing you’re the best in the world—now, that’s a thrill. And it lasted about 48 hours. (Chuckles.) And then you had to go back to practice and try to do it all again the following year. But those 48 hours were blissful.

Jesse Thorn: Sometimes I feel—especially now that I’m in my 40s, when I watch my favorite athletes—is how aware I am that they have dedicated their extraordinary skills and extraordinary work to something that will be gone as they enter middle age.

Bill Bradley: I was aware of that from the moment I turned pro, that I knew that at some point it was going to be over. And so you start preparing for what are you going to do when it’s over. You’re never going to duplicate it in terms of the emotional intensity. But you can have a full life afterwards, and I started thinking about that from the first moment I came in and did things in the off season that gave me tastes of different kinds of lives.

[00:20:00]

I mean, one summer I taught school at a street academy in Harlem. Another summer I worked in an advertising firm. Another summer I worked in the poverty program, OEO, in Washington. Another summer I traveled all around the world. So, my summers were spent tasting different possible futures after basketball was over.

Jesse Thorn: You had been a pretty extraordinary college basketball player. As a player at Princeton, you know, you brought the team to the Final Four and won the consolation game with a—you know, what at the time was one of the, the greatest individual performances in the history of the Final Four. And when you went to the NBA, you immediately struggled.

Had you ever struggled that way on the basketball court before?

Bill Bradley: No, never.

Jesse Thorn: Did you expect it?

Bill Bradley: No, I did not expect it. I was—when I signed the contract, I came in, and I was put in the position of guard, and I was too slow to play guard. And within about a month, I’d come in as, you know, the Great White Hope, a big bonus, and I was the savior of the team. But quickly it proved that that wasn’t the case, because I was too slow to play guard. And the crowd turned on me. They booed me, they spit on me, they threw coins at me. They accosted me in the street with, “Bradley, you overpaid bum.” And it hurt. And I hadn’t experienced anything like that before.

And so, what do you do? Well, you dig down deep and work harder. And so, in the offseason I played in a summer league in Harlem, a summer league in Philadelphia, and worked on my game every day. And I was better as a guard at the beginning of my second year, but I was still too slow. And it wasn’t until Cazzie Russell, the starting forward, broke his ankle and they moved me to forward that I found my natural position in the NBA as a small forward. And everything was then familiar.

Jesse Thorn: Was the pain of that struggle more about the fans sort of anger and contempt with you, or more about the fact that, you know, for the first time in your life as a basketball player, you weren’t good enough to do a great job at the job that was in front of you?

Bill Bradley: Well, I think that the fan reaction accentuated what was already there, which was my own set of standards that I didn’t meet. And I wanted to be better than I was, but I wasn’t. So, I think that it’s memorable in the sense that it was painful, and I didn’t have that experience a lot of places.

Jesse Thorn: Did you feel like you belonged on the team?

Bill Bradley: At that stage, I did not feel I belonged on the team. I was, you know, a rookie, or first/second year. I was miscast in the position. It was only after the team made a trade for Dave DeBusschere, and I was moved to forward, and the team played 40 minutes a night together for the starting five—40 minutes a night for 39 games—and the team gelled that I began to feel at home.

Jesse Thorn: It seems like you never lost your taste for exploration, and especially exploration of other people. That’s the terms that you describe your senate career in, is as a series of basically opportunities to talk to other people.

Bill Bradley: Yeah, and I think that’s probably true, that—I have always been a kind of storyteller. And you can’t tell stories unless you have experiences, unless you meet people, unless you understand life from their perspective. And I think really one of the reasons that I did this film was that I wanted to maybe have it become a kind of healing process. And in a world where we’re divided politically, emphasizes the common humanity that were illustrated in my own life by all those things that I experienced and saw and did and felt.

[00:25:00]

And so, it goes back a long way.

Jesse Thorn: It seems to me, though, that that kind of traveling and searching, even though it is about connecting with other people, is also the—is also a—(sighs) I guess I would say an act, in some way, of loneliness.

Bill Bradley: I don’t dispute that. I think that it’s true. I mean, I was the only child, right? I didn’t have brothers or sisters. And there’s always that element that was playing a role in my life. But there was also genuine curiosity. And the genuine curiosity is what drove me to experience these other things. I didn’t think—I didn’t consciously at that stage say I was trying to escape loneliness, and I don’t think that I was. I was trying to experience the diversity and richness of life and how different it was in different places. I was really trying to absorb America. That’s what I was trying to do. As I say in the show and I mentioned earlier, I wanted to understand America like I understood the seams of a basketball. So, you have to understand the people of different places in America who are very different and yet very similar. And that nuance was something I constantly sought.

Jesse Thorn: That kind of thing is also a sort of enactment of loneliness, though. Like, when I think of myself traveling, as a fellow only child, (chuckles) like I have the same instinct to talk to everyone and learn about them and learn about the place I’m in, right? But when you’re doing that, you’re also fundamentally set apart, you know?

Bill Bradley: Well, no, I think you’re searching for contact. You’re set apart by traveling alone. So, you’re alone. So, what do you want to do? Stay and twiddle your thumbs or eat chocolate bars in your hotel room? Or do you want to interact with the clerk? Or do you want to interact with the person sitting next to you in the airplane? Or do you want to have a list of people you want to talk to in that particular town?

I mean, after the first championship with the Knicks, within two weeks, I was in a ‘round the world trip. And I had prepared for it for a year, where every town I went to, I had 15 or 20 names of people I wanted to talk to. And I’d call them up cold and introduce myself, and half of them would say, “Yeah, come by and talk.” And so, I ended up talking to all kinds of people. And I recently did A Zoom call with people who played roles in my life, and one of them was a young political scientist in Singapore that I met, because she was on my list of people to call to learn about Singapore.

So, you know, it’s not just the loneliness; it’s also the curiosity that has been fundamental in my life.

Jesse Thorn: We’ll wrap up with former Senator Bill Bradley in just a minute. After the break, Bradley ran for president in 2000. He lost, and that was the end of his political career. But he wasn’t ready for it. We’ll talk about how we got past it. It’s Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.

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Transition: Thumpy rock music with a syncopated beat.

Jesse Thorn: Welcome back to Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. My guest is NBA legend and former Senator Bill Bradley. He recently put on a solo theatre show about his life. It’s called Rolling Along: An American Story. You can watch his performance of it right now on Max.

You were 35 years old when you were elected as Senator from New Jersey. When you got to the Senate, how was the experience of being the new guy there similar or dissimilar to the experience of being the new guy—?

Bill Bradley: Well, there was nobody spitting on me.

[00:30:00]

(They laugh.)

Or calling me—

Jesse Thorn: Well, you hearing that—I believe you, but I wouldn’t have presumed it.

Bill Bradley: —or calling me names, that’s for sure. I was in the Senate about three months.

Jesse Thorn: When you say that, you mean like literally inside the Senate. I believe you inside the Senate, but I don’t know—when you’re taking a walk in New Jersey—what might have happened.

Bill Bradley: No, no. I never had that experience. I had some rough town meetings, but not like that. Yeah, no. I was in the Senate about three months, and there’s something—there are two rooms off of the Senate floor that are called cloak rooms, which are named for in the 19th century where senators stored their cloaks that they wore when it was cold outside, right? They keep calling them cloakrooms. And so, I was in the Democratic cloakroom one night, ten o’clock at night. The Senate was in session. I saw one senator who was reading, one senator who was sitting in conversation with another senator. Another senator was walking back and forth. And I had a realization. I thought, you know, this isn’t a lot different than a Knick locker room. And I actually felt more at home.

Jesse Thorn: Why did you run for president?

Bill Bradley: I thought that I would be the best person to take the country forward, so that’s why I did. It was a long journey to get to that point.

Jesse Thorn: There were a number of times when you decided not to run for president. You know what I mean?

Bill Bradley: Yeah, yeah, I do. I remember in 1988, when the press asked me am I running, and I said no. And they said, “Why?” And I said I don’t think I have enough experience. And it was published in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, that quote. And the following week, I get a handwritten note from President George H. W. Bush, my potential opponent, agreeing with me that I didn’t have the experience. (Chuckles.)

Jesse Thorn: It’s a big thing to think that you’re the best person to be the president of the United States. I’ve never had that thought. You know what I mean?

Bill Bradley: Yeah, yeah, it’s gigantic. Well, first of all, in my case, you have to have a love affair with America. And then you say you want to see the country head in a certain direction. How can you do that? Well, you have to run for office. Well, what do you run for? You run for the Senate. Now you try to do it there. Well, what if you really want to embody the whole country and take the country in direction with more power than you have as a senator? What do you do? You run for president. And that’s what and why I did. And it was really as simple as that. And I had—eh, over the years, I had, you know, thoughts about doing it but chose not to for a variety of reasons. But then in 2000, I thought I was ready and that I had the opportunity. And so, take the shot. And I did.

Jesse Thorn: I read an article about you from Sports Illustrated in like—I think it was maybe from the late ’60s. And one of the questions in the article is whether you had killer instinct. And you know, with the benefit of knowing the next 35 years of your life, I found myself wondering how you felt about running for president against the vice president, who had been in a—you know, politically, at the very least—a pretty successful administration, and whether you felt like you had the killer instinct necessary to kick his tail in an election. You know what I mean?

Bill Bradley: Well, I wouldn’t have run if I didn’t think that I could win, right? And the killer instinct is… I mean, it’s—

Jesse Thorn: It’s loaded. It’s loaded. I’m not denying that it is.

Bill Bradley: Yeah, I mean, it’s a—I don’t quite know what you mean. I mean, I understand what killer instinct means. But I think it was not relevant to this circumstance.

Jesse Thorn: You don’t think so?

Bill Bradley: No, they’re not things I refrained from doing because I didn’t have the killer instinct. That wasn’t the way it flowed in the campaign. It was a tough job to run against a sitting vice president that had the whole party behind him. It was a long shot. I knew that going in, but I also knew that this was my time when I felt ready and thought I could offer something to the country, so I did. And the experience itself was a remarkable experience.

[00:35:00]

For a year and a half, I had the chance to travel around the country and stand before audiences at town meetings everywhere from Texas to New Hampshire. And I would knit together the eyes of the people in the town meeting who were listening and realized they were looking at me as a possible president and asking themselves, “Do I trust this person with my job? Do I trust this person with my life? Does this person have a view of life somewhat similar to my own?” And I could feel that responsibility in each of those areas, and I loved it.

Jesse Thorn: Had you prepared for the end of that part of your life the way that you prepared for the end of your career as a basketball player?

Bill Bradley: Very interesting question. The answer is no. I knew from the moment I entered the NBA that I was gonna be old and leave. And I had to be ready for where I was gonna go next. But this was an abrupt ending. And I didn’t know, so it took me a while to get my footing and try to decide where to go next based upon self-reflection and living life. And so, it was a different kind of experience, much more challenging than the end of basketball.

Jesse Thorn: Well, Bill Bradley, I sure am grateful to get to talk to you. It’s a real honor, and thanks for taking the time to be on the show.

Bill Bradley: Thank you, Jesse.

Jesse Thorn: Bill Bradley. As we mentioned, his solo show, Rolling Along: An American Story, is available to stream on Max. You can also check out Senator Bradley on his satellite radio show, American Voices. It airs on Sirius XM’s POTUS channel.

Transition: Bright, exuberant synth.

Jesse Thorn: That’s the end of another episode of Bullseye. Bullseye is created from the homes of me and the staff of Maximum Fun, in and around Greater Los Angeles, California. Here in Los Angeles, it was raining crazy hard, and then it stopped raining. Then it rained again, then it stopped raining, and it looked like it wasn’t going to rain anymore. But guess what? It’s raining right now. Don’t let them tell you it never rains in Southern California.

Our show is produced by speaking into microphones. Our senior producer is Kevin Ferguson. Our producers are Jesus Ambrosio and Richard Robey. Our production fellow at Maximum Fun is Daniel Huecias. We get booking help from Mara Davis. Special thanks this week to Lucy Little for recording our interview with Bill Bradley. Our interstitial music is by the great Dan Walley, DJW. Our theme song is “Huddle Formation” by The Go! Team. Thanks to The Go! Team. Thanks to their label, Memphis Industries. Bullseye is on Instagram, where we share interview highlights, behind the scenes looks, and more. @BullseyeWithJesseThorn is where you can find that. We’re also on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. I think that’s about it. Just remember, all great radio hosts have a signature signoff.

Promo: Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

(Music fades out.)

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