Episode #183: Liars, Leakers and Losers

The torrent of political headlines since 2017 began has been enough to bend anybody out of shape, political junkies included.  So perhaps it’s not surprising that Ken Rudin underwent back surgery this week, and is now recuperating. But we couldn’t go the entire month without recapping last week’s dramatic testimony by former FBI Director James Comey before the Senate intelligence committee.  NPR’s Ron Elving has been covering both Comey’s testimony and President Trump’s response and joined Ken earlier this week to discuss the details that were disclosed. Then, we revisit our conversation with Todd VanDerWerff, a critic at large for Vox.com, who came up with a unique and fun list: pairing presidents of the past half-century with their most identifiable TV show that was running at the time. And we remember one of the great political junkies of our time, legendary Meet the Press host Tim Russert, who died unexpectedly nine years ago this week. Betsy Fischer Martin, who served as the program’s executive producer for 11 years, reflects on her former boss’ career and legacy. Photo via Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Music used in this podcast: My Boyfriend’s Back by The Angels Television Man by Talking Heads Tears in the Morning by The Beach Boys  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License