Paula Poundstone is obsessed with cats

0:00If you'd like to join the Obsessed community, head over to joincampsite.com. We'll give you updates on episodes, some behind-the-scenes access, and a whole lot more. That's joincampsite.com. Hope to see you there.

0:15Campsite Media.

0:21Welcome to another episode of David Greene is Obsessed. My guest today has feline fanaticism, obsessed with cats, and I can't wait to dig in with her. But to kind of tee up who this person is and what she does, I wanted, hopefully, for all of you to indulge me in a quick story about my early days at NPR. I got there in 2005. I started covering the White House. I had never done radio in my life. and here I was, it was my first day in May of 2005 in the little NPR booth in the basement of the West Wing. And I was having one of those moments where it was like, this is kind of a dream. I'm covering the White House for NPR.

1:01I had my feet up on the desk and I had gotten this advice from my colleague, Don Gagne at the time. He was giving me, he was mentoring me in radio and he said, you know, when you're in that little booth, you shut the door to record something, don't forget to open the door. Good advice. Very important advice for a radio newbie. So I'm there the first day, got my feet up, had recorded something. I think I was watching some TV. I think it was charmed. That's a confession. I did not have CNN on. And there I was. And then the phone rang. And I picked it up. And I was very proud to say, like, it's David Green at the White House.

1:35And my editor at the time, Ron Elving, was really frantic on the other end of the phone. And he said, David, are you okay? And I said, yeah, Ron, I'm fine. I'm here. I'm covering the White House. Here I am. He was like, okay. because I got CNN on. It looks like the White House has been evacuated. And I kind of was shocked. I looked over at the door and realized that I had left it closed, which meant I had no idea what the hell was going on on the outside. Told Ron I would call him back. I opened the door. It was really dark. Little security lights were going off and a uniformed Secret Service agent kind of found me and said, what are you still doing here?

2:09And I said, I'm covering the White House. Is something happening? And he said, well, there's a White House, there's a plane in White House airspace. And we've cleared out the building, including, you know, senior staff and the first lady. And I said, well, should I leave? And he said, well, you probably are too late. I think the episode is almost over. Why don't you stay here? And I said, cool, cool. I'll stay right here. I was ashamed. I was embarrassed. I called Ron back and I said, I'm stuck in the White House booth. I'm really sorry that I wasn't outside evacuated. And I realized the thing I should have told Ron if I had had my wits about me was, Ron, I was ready to go down with the ship.

2:48I'm that kind of journalist. I was ready to cover this until the very end. Did not do that. Was horrified. Things got even worse when I got a call from a producer at an NPR program called Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. That is not the show you want to be on when you are covering the White House. You want to be on Morning Edition. You want to be on All Things Considered. I got to host Morning Edition many years later. I survived this. But one of my first honor experiences was during the quiz on wait wait when peter segal brought me on he played kenny loggen's danger zone the question was what building in washington was evacuated because a plane came into nearby airspace and then he brought me in and said npr's new white house correspondent david green what in the hell were you doing stuck in the building and i was humiliated i set this up because my guest on our show today is a regular on wait wait don't tell me, also a comic, also an author, also a cat lover.

3:44And I'm going to be back with her in just a moment. It is the wonderful Paula Poundstone. We'll be right back.

3:55We are back with David Green is Obsessed. And my guest today is a comic author and cat lover, Paula Poundstone, also a regular on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, which is a show that I never plan to be on. But Paul, I have to say, I think if I were, if I had the chance to switch jobs between hosting Morning Edition and doing what you do on Wait, Wait, I think you had the better end of the stick in your NPR life. It's a great job. It's a really fun job. You know, A, we sit in a chair and laugh. Yeah, at me back in 2005, probably. But yeah. Wow. I missed that story. That's the first of that I knew.

4:33Just so you know. I mean, And unless I, like you, was stuck in the booth and just never. It is pretty funny to be covering the White House and not know that the White House was evacuated. But that's kind of great. It's kind of great, right? Yeah, you can see why Peter was interested. And yeah, I felt like a total idiot. You know what I mean? It's a box and a box and a box. Yeah, the wait, wait job is the best. And I pay attention to the news to begin with. so it's not really you know any great stretch in that way and we make jokes and that's not a great stretch is it different from from other comedy i mean is there something distinctive about the like a quiz show that is built around the news that makes the comedy land differently or is more fun dare i say i do think there's a you know sort of a particular audience that maybe i've gotten to know over the years or has gotten to know me.

5:30I don't know. I mean, I know that there are people who have come to see me on stage that only recently found out I was a stand-up comic and are surprised that I'm not answering questions about the week's news while I'm on stage. Like, wait, why is this person being funny? What is going on here? Yeah. And there are other people who've never heard of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me that are just stand-up comedy audience members that I have. The merging audience chances seem to get along well. So that's good. That's a good thing. Yeah. Well, I've known you for a long time. I actually remember watching your special Cats, Cops and Stuff with my mom when I was a teenager and you were her favorite comic.

6:12Oh, that's nice to hear. I swear to you, to my grave, I have interviewed many comics through my career and I don't say that to everyone, but it's really fun to get to hang out. Well, it's very nice to hear. Thank you. Yeah, I've been around for a long time. This is my, I think, 46 years now. I've been telling my little jokes. And then, wait, wait, I started, I think, 24 years ago. So, it's a long stretch. Yeah, and a great one. It's so much fun. So, I remember, I think I remember, like, during that special, you had just lost a cat, right? Mowgli, is that? Oh, yeah. Yeah, my cat Mowgli. Yeah. That was a great cat.

6:51Yeah. Now, they don't live forever. When you take in a pet, unless you get an exotic bird or a tortoise, at some point, you're going to do end of life with that pet. They just don't live forever. I don't think tortoises make it worth it to say I'm going to take in a tortoise for my entire—I will have this tortoise for my entire life, and it's going to be great. I wanted a tortoise at one point. Okay. I forget why exactly, because the truth is what tortoises do is eat, have sex, relieve themselves, and bask. Yeah, that was my point. There's just not much redeeming. No offense to tortoises, but like not the most entertaining, lovable pets in the world.

7:36And I almost wish we could trade and have dogs or cats live 150 years. Honestly, right? And have poor tortoises live less. That's why they live 150 years, because they don't do anything. They don't do shit, yeah. There are rocks that live less time. Yeah. So why cats? When did your cat obsession develop? You know, I grew up with cats. We had a Siamese named King Tut, and then we got two kittens at the church fair one year, because no one had taken them, and my mother was part of the organizing committee. And at the end of the night, they were still there, and she was like, oh, just go get them.

8:12Yeah. Yeah, that's the way people often take pets. It's like, oh, come on, there's no one else. We can't let them just sit there. Yeah, exactly. So I grew up with three cats and they were great. We also had a flappy door. At some point, we put in the flappy cat door in the basement. And every now and then in the middle of the night, like someone else's cat would come in. Nice, visitors. You'd hear all this yowling and screeching and have to go chase out someone else's cat from the house. But so I always knew that I like cats. And then I was on the road working a club in Virginia Beach. This would have been in like the early 80s, probably.

8:48When you worked on the road back then, it was a little bit like being in the junior high in that you had no transportation. They often you weren't generally staying in a hotel that the club owner would put you up in everybody lovingly referred to it as the comedy condo. basically because they knew they needed to house like three people every week they would rent an apartment and they would send a waitress in maybe with a vacuum once a week and so you were basically staying in the sort of squalor of the last comics that had stayed there and a lot of times these were not you know you weren't near any kind of services or stores and so you were kind of marooned the whole week except for maybe a couple of times during the generally five days that one would be there the club guy the manager or the owner or something would come by and take you to the mall it was a big deal that was a special special outing for it was a special outing it really was i remember those so well um so the guy who owned the virginia beach club um that came by to take me to the mall.

9:59I was very excited. And, uh, you know, we went through the, the, the mall, we walked by a pet store and the pet store had a cage out, like outside the door of the pet store inside the mall that had, uh, kittens. And, uh, you know, I stopped and I looked at the kittens and he said, you want one? And I was like, yeah, so sure do. Yeah. He, he bought me a kitten and a cage to take it home in the airplane in like a carrier and uh you know some kitten food and it happens that this cat was so great i named her smike and she was so animated and uh you know had such a full personality that you know once you get one and it's so great then of course you know a little bit later you're like maybe another and this was smike like smi smike like from nickels nickelby gotcha okay that was your first road cat that was that was my first road cat smike was a great cat now if i you know a lot of people complain you know cats don't aren't interactive they're so independent who to head you know they have whiny complaints about cats if i had gotten like a less um personality filled cat a cat who was more skittish a cat who didn't really want to hang maybe i wouldn't have gotten more but as it was I got Paloo and then I got Haskell next thing you know I got a hep cat and it was on amazing yeah I'm glad you brought that up because as a dog person like I just I don't I can't do it I've there's there's never been a cat that I connect with and I don't I mean feel free to say it's more about me than about the cats but not necessarily they just so many cats just I feel like I'm bothering them.

11:47Like I'm literally disrupting their life by either petting them or talking to them, even feeding them. It's like, I feel like I just get this look of, what are you doing? Why are you here right now? Why are you doing this? I have certainly had cats among the group of cats. So I, the most that I ever had was 16. At one time. At one time. Yeah. And over the years, I mean, my daughter and I tried to make a list and counted up one time and this was a few years ago that we did that and we think that we've had like over 30 all together never at the same time uh but by now it's probably over 40 uh but with okay within all those years and all those cats there have been cats that i barely ever saw um it just that that just never kind of came out of the shells they were just they were just kind of Heidi cats from the start.

12:43And there were times I felt a little resentful of that. I'm like, you know, like if I even went towards the cat to pet it, it would shoot off in another direction as if I had done something bad to it. And I did. That's what I'm talking about. If that was my only cat, then I really probably wouldn't like cats. I have to say I had a cat named Wednesday. Wednesday was so skittish. And the irony is that we had her litter mate as well. And that was Theo. And Theo was so outgoing that it was annoying. If you even looked like you were going to sit down, he was in your lap. And there were times, you know, that maybe I was writing or doing something and I didn't really want him in my lap, but he would just.

13:17In the lap. And you'd shove him off and shove him off. And he was just relentless. His sister was Wednesday, who was the polar opposite, scared of everything. At one point, Wednesday had some scabs on her. And we thought, well, the other cats are bullying her. So I put her in the bathroom with food and water and a litter box to, you know, let her sort of heal up. Well, it turned out that she had allergies. It wasn't that the cats were doing anything to her. But she was so much happier living in my bathroom. She would let you pet her. She was just less nervous. So I left her in the bathroom for, I don't know, a couple of years maybe.

13:52And so I was online one time on Twitter. And Mickey Dolenz, who I followed, who is the last remaining monkey from the monkeys, and a great follow and a lovely person. Mickey Dolenz had posted something about Michael Nesmith and about missing Michael Nesmith, another monkey. Co-monkey. Who is since dead. So I thought, oh, my God, Mickey Dolenz is like the last monkey living. And so I started this friendship with him on Twitter. Like every Saturday, I used to post something to Mickey Dolenz. And, you know, one time I wrote to him, it was just a little getting to know you period. So I wrote to him once just via Twitter.

14:31And I said, do you have any pets? You know, and he said, oh, no, I'm on the road too much for pets. So I said, I'll tell you what, I will give you one of my cats and I'll take care of it here for you. So I gave Mickey Dolan's Wednesday. The cat who was still banned to the bathroom. Yeah, the cat who lived in the bathroom. So I took care of Mickey Dolan's cat. You know what? I would love to take care of David Green's cat. All right. I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say, I think you're going to fall in love with my cat, Louis. Hey, Gordon. Will you? Is Louis near you? Will you bring her in?

15:12Just you wait. This could be my cat. Except A, my wife is allergic to cats. And B, I love dogs more. But if anyone can help me overcome those two challenges, might be you paul you shave this cat a couple times a week all right look at that oh it's really cute okay that's good yeah she's really cute and you know what's weird this cat wait a minute stepping on my wire okay i don't know how to demonstrate how small she is but she is um she's full grown really she's tiny she just didn't grow and i feel that i named her after john lewis and i feel that that's part of the reason she didn't grow she's just short like john lewis was okay i might fall in love with i would fall in love with her yeah and she's personality filled and uh and very loving she jumps up in gordon's arms when he walks through the room which by the way really irks him but that's because he doesn't know what's what's good in life okay she's really cute you've won me over yeah yeah his little eyes are so cute she is just the best kitten just gets along with everybody when i sleep out here i sleep in the living room a lot because that way there i can have all the cats on top of me it's perfect yeah Yeah, I know that sounds really sexy.

16:42So tell me how the cats fit into your community. I mean, you've had fostered many children. You've had a good number of children as a mom. You have a lot of cats, more cats than most people do. What do you love about the crowd? Why a lot of cats and not three? I just, you know, when kitten season comes around, I get tingly. Cats actually do have a season. Dogs apparently will go at it anytime. Anytime, doesn't matter. But if you go into your local shelter in, say, April or May, they may have a couple of kittens, possibly. But if you go back in July, they're overrun with kittens. And they call it kitten season.

17:24And I swear, I would be driving down the street years ago, and I would think I would be, like, possessed, like, sweaty. I would think, my gosh, I need to get a kitten. and always this occurred in like April or May because I would go to the animal shelter and they'd go, no, we don't have any, come back later. And then I go back later and get a kitten. But it leads me to believe that I am somehow biologically, you know, attuned. Yeah. So I was interested in getting a kitten generally during mating season. I was a little early. Somehow you are biologically connected to feline mating season. There's something that happened.

18:03that draws you in. Yeah, I mean, cats are easier than dogs. Dogs, I have dogs. Right now I have one, but I've had, you know, two at a time in the past. And they're great and I love them. They are a lot of work, you know. My cats don't need walked. They don't go outside and bark. They don't do the in and out game all day long. You know, I want to go in, I want to go out. I want to go in, I want to go out. Cats don't do that. Cats have a schedule. They stick to it. They do for the most part. I don't know. So they're easier and there are a lot of, gratification. It's nice to pet something or hold something.

18:36I mean, look, this, not this summer that we just had, but the year before, prior to the election, I was so stressed out that I could barely, like my memory was shot. And there was a number of reasons why. I was working very hard. I was doing my regular job. I was doing my podcast. Nobody listens to Paula Poundstone. I was entertaining at my local Democratic headquarters. I was postcarding. I was, paying attention to the news, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I had some just bone crushing personal problems at the time. And I really was just like, you know what? I haven't gotten a kitten in years at this point.

19:15And I thought that's what I need because it's very hard to be miserable around a kitten. So I went and got one. When I bring a kitten into my home, I usually put it in the bathroom so that it can get used to me. It can get its sea legs before I put it out with the gen pop. I'm telling you, I got the most beautiful little Siamese Lynx. I named him Bevel. And I stuck him in the bathroom and I would go in there and do computer work with, you know, and pet him and talk to him. I stuck him in my jacket because he was kind of a nervous cat. I held him like in the, he would crawl up into the sleeve of my jacket and just hang there.

19:53Oh, that's cute. I did this for days and it worked. I slept with him in the bathroom. It worked exactly how I thought it would. It lifted my spirits so much that I went back a couple of days later and I got the cutest little black kitten. I brought home this female. I put them in together and oh my God, watching them was just so uplifting. And so a few days later I went back and this time they showed me a litter of three and I'm like, well, we don't want to break them up, do we? So I brought them all home and it's probably the most effective intervention I have ever done. It really worked. I mean, that and drinking water, you know, it's a lot of times when you're really feeling bad.

20:35Hydrate. Drink water. It's the damnedest thing, right? Hydrate or buy a kitten. No, but that sounds really important. I mean, it really sounds like getting new kittens have become a way to, I mean, cheer yourself up, find some therapy. I'm telling you, it works great. It really does. Just, yeah, there's something about petting. I mean, they say people who have pets, you know, live longer. I have zero desire to live longer, but I like the idea of living healthier. I've heard you talk about your, your eldest daughter and her relationship with, with some of the cats. I heard you tell the story of like, she would, she would bite their ears sometimes.

21:11Oh, my middle daughter. Yeah. Your middle daughter. Okay. Yeah. What was, what was that? Tell me about her. Tell me about her relationship with your cats. So my family came together in a different order because I was a foster parent. So my middle daughter was my second kid, but my first foster son had gone back to his birth mother. And although he sometimes visited, sometimes they were together as siblings, but, and then my oldest daughter came later. So at this time it was just the girl who became my middle daughter. Got it. And it was just she and I, and she was just a toddler. And, you know, I'd be doing dishes or whatever.

21:53And I would try to sort of, you know, set her up with like, you know, some books or something so that she was not underfoot for a few minutes. And she, she loved the cats and the cats liked her. Um, but she would pick them up. I've seen it right before my eyes and bite their ears, just a big old chomp. And, uh, no cat ever hurt her as a result. I mean, no, none of them ever. It was as if they knew she was a kitten. Like they never got mad enough to scratch her or anything in that particular setting. But obviously I didn't want her doing that. And obviously it was also a dangerous thing to do. So I would tell her when she did that, I would tell her she had to go sit on the stairs.

22:33And, you know, she'd waddle over and sit on the stairs. But she never, like my middle daughter never really understood like the things that I used as quote unquote punishments. They never struck her that way. So she just grew up believing that after you have a big old bite of cat ear, you go sit on the stairs and rest. It wasn't a matter of getting that behavior out of it. It was like, okay, when I do this, which I am going to do, I'm going to bite the cat's ear. I'm going to go have a seat. I saw her do it all totally on her own. Pick up a cat, bite its ear, put the cat down, walk across the room and sit on the stairs.

23:09I'm like, okay, something. I am not apparently a great communicator, but she did eventually. And one time she got scratched by a cat and it wasn't because of that. It was because the cat was under a bench, and it was sort of trying to get away from her, and she had cornered it, and she got scratched. But that was the only time. And let me tell you, my oldest daughter has cerebral palsy, and when she was little, she walked on crutches. And so when she carried a cat, it was pretty damned uncomfortable for the cat. And then my middle daughter is, in fact, younger than my oldest daughter. And so she would pick up a cat and they have a tendency to carry them from like under the shoulders or under the front legs.

23:57And the whole cat would just dangle down to the floor from there. I never saw a cat react badly to either one of them doing that. Again, it always seemed like they knew that the kids were my kittens. They always seem to gather that those were little and they didn't know how to behave yet. What does sort of this cat obsession say more deeply about you? I don't mind a certain level of urine smell.

24:36Because let me tell you, that is part of having a multiple cat family. Yeah. You spend a lot of time trying to figure out where certain smells are coming from and make sure that, you know, it wasn't some sort of illicit rogue pee. I'm sure the next the next comic staying in Comic-Con was really thrilled with the smell being left behind. Yeah, probably. I don't know what it says. I guess maybe it says I don't have full rich relationships with human beings. I'm not sure. I mean, listen, I have a friend who will call me up occasionally and say, oh, you know, I'm on the west side. Can I come over?

25:15I really need to pet cats. Now, she gets to come pet my cats and she doesn't have to clean up after them. And let me tell you, it's bordering on a full-time job cleaning up after a lot of pets. I can imagine. One cat seems like a lot. For me, it's second nature. You know, if I'm someplace else for a long time, I start ghost sifting. Yeah. just looks like I have Parkinson's or something. It isn't. No, I'm just, just sift when I'm not, because sifting is a huge part of the job. Because if you don't keep the litter boxes clean, then they will pee all over the house. You get sounds, and we don't want that.

25:51No, we really don't want that. I guess what I'm getting at, like one of the reasons that I love the, just the concept of obsession, like there's so many things that I just dig into so deeply. And some of them are weird. Some of them are healthy. Some of them are not. And I mean, you've been so, so open in your career about battling alcohol, going through rehab and all that stuff. And I guess I just wonder, is there a through line there that helps us understand the role of having an obsessive personality in our lives that might speak to cats and drinking, as weird as that sounds? Yeah, I see where you're going.

26:31Is that a possibility? Sure. I mean, the thing is, it was funny. When I came in the room to start the podcast, my assistant Gordon was helping me do the tech stuff. And just as we came in the room, I was chuckling. And he said, what are you laughing at? And I said, you know, the cats were running back and forth, chasing a ball or chasing a fly or something in the other room. And just the sound of all those feet going at one time. I go, I just, I love that sound. It just makes me laugh. You know, bruh, bruh, bruh, bruh. like a bunch of cats at one time. And so I like having a lot of them because I just enjoy that.

27:10It's like a movie going all the time. I mean, there's a couple times a day where they're all asleep at the same time. But outside of that, somebody's chasing a fly or somebody's jumping on somebody. It's entertainment for me. I don't know that I view it as an obsession, but could one argue, you know, that I feel compelled to have more than one? Yes, I think you could make that argument. Could you have made the argument that I felt compelled to have more than one drink? Yes, I would say that they affect me differently. I mean, I can still drive after petting a cat. Do you have any advice? I'm curious who's listening.

27:50And, you know, for people who have maybe followed your career and are coming to a show about obsession, as someone who left behind alcohol so many years ago, and someone who's kind of struggling and saying, like, I want to listen to the show. Am I obsessed with alcohol? Am I addicted to alcohol? Should I worry about it? Should I not worry about it? Any general advice for people who are curious? i wrestled for a long time with whether or not i was an alcoholic i was court ordered to a.a. on television which i believe really beats the shit out of the second a it was on tv like literally yeah i you know it's funny because a.a.

28:37and i am not an a.a.er uh and i i i went because i was quote ordered but as soon as i didn't have to i i didn't uh any longer and if it's helpful to people you know have at it fantastic i you know nothing bad ever happened to me as a result of going but i am an atheist and i take that very seriously and you know somebody said to me one time well you know because the whole higher power thing they go it doesn't have to be god it can be the ocean i'm like okay now we're just people have told me the same thing they're like yeah if you wonder if there was a big bang theory and you're not sure you believe in something so you're not atheist and i'm like oh that's interesting okay it is an aspect of the whole organization that i just couldn't get past but the other thing is the whole you know sort of identifying yourself that way, that you had to have checked boxes in order to, you know, this idea that you're trying to decide if you are or if you aren't.

29:41It's like us with our democracy. Are we in an autocracy? Is it a dictatorship? Is it a constitutional crisis? The great historian Heather Cox Richardson says, I don't know, and it doesn't matter. Yeah, what matters is what's happening, not like a label. Exactly. So I feel the same thing about the whole, you know, am I an alcoholic thing? Look it. If you're embarrassing yourself places, if you're getting up the next morning not knowing if you did embarrass yourself, if you're, you know, if you're making the horrible mistake of driving intoxicated, then it's something you shouldn't be doing. Or let me put it in another way.

30:23Then your life would be improved by not doing it. That's a better way of saying it. Because I can say this for absolute certain. Alcohol never made one moment of my life better in any way. Not once. Not when I had just one drink. Not when I had just a couple sips. Not when it was like a low level. You know, I wasn't like over the limit. Never. Not once. Part of the reason I often drank too much was I had this feeling that I just wasn't doing it right. And if I can, you know, because I had never achieved this happy feeling that the advertising talks about or the comics talk about. I mean, everybody, when you describe, you know, they'll go, oh, he was feeling no pain.

31:10There's all these euphemistic ways of describing this relationship with alcohol. And all of them are myths. All of them. And because so many of us have lied to ourselves about it and because so many businesses depend on it, you know, restaurants. and bars and grocery stores. There is a collective lie there, I think, that we just won't let go of. But if you as an individual have this experience of messing things up for yourself, then you're going to have a happier life if you don't. It's such an interesting and honest kind of exploration of the motivation. Like the idea of you never felt the thing that it was advertised as, so you needed to keep trying to master it.

31:56to feel this thing that you're supposed to be feeling. And then, of course, I do, I suppose, what I described with cats, like, if one's good, two is better. I definitely had that mentality about drinking. But again, I was never able, even, you know, because people go, well, I can just have one. Okay, but I never got a more positive experience, even from just one, than I ever did just from being straight. instead what i ended up with was you know pounds of regret if i had my life to do again i would do that differently and there's lots of things in my life that if i had my life to do again i would do the exact same way including getting a lot of cats including adopting my children i love that well i'm going to be right back with paula poundstone and we'll dig into the last chapter of our show which is paula poundstone is obsessed we'll be right back

32:59all right we're back with more david green is obsessed i am with paula poundstone um a regular on wait wait don't tell me on npr an author a comedian a cat lover this is my favorite thing to do to people which is just catch them off guard with obsession questions to see what comes to mind paula and i would love to know a relationship in your life that you're obsessive about in a good way oh in a good way in a good way because i do have ocd and one of the ways that it's manifested itself in me over you know forever is obsessing over an individual well tell me tell me let's let me take away the good way good way or bad way tell me about tell me about the ocd like how does that manifest and of course when i was when i was a kid i had no idea I mean, I didn't find out that I was OCD until I was maybe 40.

33:56But for many, many, many years, I mean, I would say since maybe the fifth grade, fourth grade, I would find a person that I genuinely loved, somebody that I was influenced by. But it would become where I saw myself through the way I thought they saw me. And everything I did, I ran through them. And this included obviously wanting to spend time with the person, calling the person on the phone like a kajillion times. And thank goodness, most people were pretty patient with me. But this went on and it was agonizing. It was like, it was an achy feeling because what I always thought they thought was that they didn't like me and i would talk to the person and i would say gee i you know i feel you don't like me and they go no i like you just fine or i like you or i whatever and then i would be okay and then i would hang up the phone and the first thing i would think is well they don't like me this went throughout my life and it usually would be like one person at a time like you go through a phase of yeah yeah and some of the people by the way once i you know once i knew what it was.

35:14It's funny sometimes because we were talking earlier about, you know, identifying whether or not you're an alcoholic and how it kind of doesn't matter. This in a way, it struck me differently, which is to some degree, once I knew that it was a thing, there was a thing in my brain and that I'm not the only one. That's the other thing that it does this to people. I found it a lot easier to cope with. And I have not had that same problem, um, you know, in, I don't know, 10 or 15 years, but I, I always have this feeling that it's just asleep, you know, waiting to come back. And it really, I mean, it was really devastating.

35:55It was a horrible, awful thing. No, I can, I can relate to that. I've actually, I've, I have talked to my therapist about a very similar thing. I think it's very similar. It's a slightly different version, but, and it's not just one person at a time, but there will be people like in the workplace or in a friend group who I become more and more obsessed with needing validation to know that I am either that they like me or that I am pleasing them and making them happy. Like, and if, if I feel like I'm disappointing someone and I can create that narrative, like in the narrative can just build. But then I get so anxious in the relationship.

36:34Like I'm just constantly worried, like they're disappointed in me. And then I'll, I'll do what you were talking about. Like I'll find ways to be, to communicate with them. So they have the opportunity to tell me that it's okay. Yeah. But it's like, I don't, but I don't ask it. I don't ask it deliberately. I'm like waiting for them to say like, Oh, you did a great job. Or Oh, that was a great interview. You would ask. Yeah. I would ask sometimes hundreds of times a day. And it's funny because I never really, didn't talk about it on stage. I mean, I did tell the audience, you know, over the years that I had OCD and I maybe even gave like a thumbnail sketch of, you know, cause OCD is a weird disorder.

37:12It manifests itself differently in different people, which makes it hard to identify because you're like, well, you know, I'm not like that. But anyways, it's comforting to me to hear you say I can identify with that because I think part of the reason I never really brought it up on stage, for example, was that I didn't think anybody would identify with it. I didn't think it would make sense to anybody. I don't think I can describe why that's a painful thing. I don't know. So I never really did because my number one job on stage is to be funny. I had the great pleasure on my podcast, my partner, Adam Felber, who's also from Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, very funny guy, very brilliant guy.

37:49Adam said to me one time, I mean, generally, I come up with the ideas for what topic I want a guest to interview about. And every now and then, Adam ventures an idea, but generally it comes from me. But he said to me one day, you know, I can get Heather Cox Richardson. And I was like, okay, if you want. I didn't know who she was. And he said, well, I worked with her recently. She's really great. And I went, if that's what you want, do it, sure. And I think he even told me she was a historian. And I was like, well, okay, fine. If that's what you want, do it. So he gets her on. And I fell in love.

38:22I mean, she is so goddamn great. She does a thing every day called Letters from an American that she writes. And she posts it. You can subscribe. It's free. But she also reads it aloud. And I listen over and over again every day. And I recently was working in Rockland, Maine. And I thought, wait a minute. Heather Cox Richardson lives in Maine. And so I got her email. and I wrote to her and I said, listen, I know this is last minute, but I'm, you know, I'm working in Rockland and Maine's a big state. I don't know if you live near there. I said, but if you like to, you know, you and yours to come to my show, I would love to have you as my guest.

39:04And she wrote back and said, yeah, that would be great. Let's go to dinner. So she and her husband and I went to dinner. And when I first got in her car to go to dinner, I said, I want you to know this. I am an atheist, but I do worship you. Which I'm sure made her feel terribly comfortable right from the start. I mean, it's not the same as what I've described from before, but I do quote her a thousand times a day because she said such helpful things. And her letters that she reads are so helpful. She talks about what's going on now with our government, but she'll couch it in history, like where did this bill come from?

39:50Where did this law come from? When has this happened before? And it's never more than, you know, the longest one I've ever listened to was probably 22 minutes. They're generally, you know, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 11 minutes. I learned more in that brief thing than I do from a whole day of listening to MSNBC. It's just so informative. And I'm so impressed by someone who can do that. It's so interesting is that that does feel like the positive version of investing in a person and a relationship. Like there can be a very negative side of it and a very positive side of it that can be incredibly nurturing in your life.

40:28Yeah. You know, it's not a bad idea to admire somebody. It's not a bad idea to love somebody. I mean I think Ringo Starr let me down so badly when I was a child never coming in through my window to get me he was an obsession early on oh well who didn't love the Beatles right I loved the Beatles and I loved Ringo I have to say like I I kind of I grew up thinking like so unappreciated like come on yeah no Ringo was my favorite and got to interview him years later and I was like Like he really, it was great because I went into it telling all the producers and everyone working. I was like, Ringo's going to blow your mind.

41:10Like he's going to blow your mind and you're going to realize that he was a very cool Beatle. And he lived up to that. Yeah. Oh, that's good. Oh, isn't that great? Don't you love it when that happens? Yeah. Oh, it's fantastic. Paula, thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure. I had a great time. As you see, I don't stop talking very easily. So neither do I. Join the club.

41:38David Green is Obsessed as a production of Campside Media. It is hosted by me, David Green. Our senior producer is Lane Rose. We are mixed by Ewan Leitrimuen. The executive producers of Campside Media are Vanessa Gregoriadis, Matt Scherr, and Josh Dean. Special thanks to our operations team, Ashley Warren and Sabina Mara. If you have an obsession you would like to share, hope you do, you can send us an email. The address is obsessed at campsidemedia.com. That's obsessed at campsidemedia.com. And hey, if you enjoyed the show, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts. Really appreciate you listening.

42:18Moms and Mysteries is the podcast where two Florida friends uncover chilling cases with humor and heart. Hey, guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. And we're the moms behind the mics taking you on a roller coaster of true crime stories while adding our own brand of humor into the mix. respectfully. Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. We're your go-to podcast for mysteries with a motherly touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast and never miss a Tuesday.