I Still Wonder What Sam Waterston and Wilt Chamberlain Spent 90 Minutes Talking About Intensely on a Couch

I still to this day wonder what Sam Waterston and Wilt Chamberlain spent 90 minutes talking about intensely on a couch. I would love to be a fly on the wall in that conversation, two great minds discussing something that is so fascinating it warrants such an intense discussion. The idea of sitting down with someone who has made significant contributions to their respective fields is incredibly intriguing.

At one point, I was talking to John Hodgman and his band, The Roots, are all moving around, quest love and the roots are just lovely; they were awesome dudes. Uh, one of them, I think, their tuba player was a huge fan and asked for a picture with me, and I'm like "you want a picture with me?" sure absolutely. And I'm telling Hodgman about it, and he's like "The Roots are absolutely the best touring band in America right now; they really are." They're just so tight. I said Tony Bennett, and he said no, Tony Bennett is good, but I'm really not sure if it comes anywhere close. I mean, Tony Bennett is standing right behind you, like he's right there. Cat Stevens came in, and when I said hello, Mr. Stevens, I'm Adam, and he said "you can go," he was making a joke, but he said "you can call me Joe" – short for Yusuf, which is his name.

Um, and then Cat Stevens still; his voice when he speaks, you're just like you're transported on a magic carpet. I don't know about you, but I discovered Cat Stevens by spinning through some albums as a kid, and I found this album called "Teaser the Fire" – that's not it, or was it "T for the Tillerman"? I'm sorry, which one is the opening song? It's "Morning Has Broken," and when I put it on, I was like "oh my god; does anyone know else knows how good this music is?" So to be in a room with Cat Stevens talking about a show he's writing is just amazing. And then in situations like this, you never want to be alone – it's awful to be alone; you want winged people. In this case, my wife and I found as wing people John Hodgman and Anna Marie Cox, and the four of us spent that whole day kind of being a citadel dealing with the insanity and amazingness that was going on all around us.

That night didn't end for hours and hours and hours; I mean I think we all separated in the very wee hours of the morning, and we all probably looked super bleary. But what an incredible day! Yeah, I mean at one point towards the finale – which are in the finale – they're singing the final song, and the whole audience is singing along, and I don't remember what the song was; it might have been "I'll Take You There," but the important point is that we're like backstage, and someone comes into the green room and says everyone get on stage, it's the finale. So the Osbornes, Jamie, me, Cat Stevens, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – all move on to stage; we're all dancing on stage. And I'm standing there, and here's Jeff Tweedy on his guitar, playing, like it's Jeff Tweedy, and he looks over at me, and the look is like "can you believe how weird this is?" Like that's the look of someone who has witnessed incredible events in their life.

The Look Is Kindness

Jeff Tweedy looked up at me, and I can tell he was thinking about the absurdity of the situation. That moment – to be on stage with all these incredible people – it was like a dream come true for Jeff Tweedy. And as he stood there looking around, taking in the scene, I could sense his genuine appreciation for this extraordinary experience.

That day of meeting people who were so far beyond my heroes and having everyone that I met being so kind has left an indelible mark on me. It's a testament to the kindness that both John Stewart and Stephen Colbert have inspired in their careers – kindness is not just something we should strive for; it's what they've consistently shown us throughout our lives.

The Primary Output from Both Gentlemen

I think this event, which stemmed directly from John Stewart and Stephen Colbert, is a perfect example of the impact that these individuals can have on others. They've spent their careers promoting kindness and compassion – not just through their comedy shows but in every aspect of their work.

Their combined influence has created an environment where people feel encouraged to be kinder to each other. It's no surprise that I, like many others, was inspired by this event and its participants. This experience is a prime example of how these two men have made the world a better place through their dedication to kindness and compassion.

The Event That Changed Everything

The event itself was just as memorable as the people who participated in it. From the music played during dinner to the moment when everyone came together on stage, that day will forever be etched in my memory as an unforgettable experience.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enuh ben campbell says that he first saw me and jamie live in 2010 when we appeared at the at the stephen colbert jon stewart rally to restore sanity and or fear how did you get the invite to the rally and do you have any behind the scenes story i have so many behind-the-scenes stories from that that was incredible so uh it was 2010 obama was two years into his first term and the the conservative world was losing its collective mind that it was absolutely what was felt like what was going on and jon stewart and stephen colbert had both like put out a press release that they were going to have a rally and stewards was to restore sanity and colbert's was to restore fear and then they joined their rallies and i was in la a friend's house for dinner when my phone beeps and i've got an email in there from stephen colbert and i hadn't met stephen at that point had i met him i mean jamie and i might have go actually i don't know but at any rate i didn't know him at all i know him a little more now but i didn't know him at all and to see his name in my email inbox was heady as you could i was and my wife was like what and i like put my phone and she went and so i pulled up the email and started replying my wife was like you're just going to reply you're just going to reply to stephen colbert like it doesn't even matter they're just going to type something to him i'm like yeah that's what i'm gonna do it really felt so strange um and then about four or five days later stephen and i got on the phone and it was lovely uh we we were mutual fans we talked about what we liked about each other's work we talked about the white house press correspondents dinner um and then he said look john stuart and i are both huge fans of yours and jamie's and we'd love you guys to be the opening act of our show you'd like you to kind of warm up the crowd uh before all the incredible musical guests come on that included oh my god the musical lineup just go look up the rally restore sanity and or fear because uh yeah i was on stage with some unbelievable heroes uh and it was a beautiful day but so steven says look we've combined our rallies we'd love you and jamie to be our opening act you would do 15 minutes before the official start of the event um and i said yeah completely and he said we'd love it if you could do some experiments with the audience and i ended up actually having a long lovely chat with my friend richard wiseman um who's a a wonderful content creator writer uh youtuber magician uh he lives in scotland uh and we had a great chat about things that we could do with large crowds and we ended up doing a set of experiments we had the we did a wave we did a wave starting from the stage going all the way to the back and then coming back we timed how long that wave took to make it we timed how long the women took to do the wave versus men and i think the women were faster um then we had everyone jump um and we we had a a a a um a seismic activity machine my brain is a little bit slow this day uh basically we had a seismologist on hand and we were able to create a little bit of an earth tremor by getting the crowd to jump can i talk about this crowd for a second i think it was it was the full length of the mall so it was like how many people were at the rally to restore sanity i want to say it was over a hundred thousand hold on just a second i'm gonna ask this question how many people were at the rally to restore sanity and or fear search about 215 000 attended the rally right so i'm on a stage i'm staring at 210 000 people going back about a mile and the moment jamie and i walked out on stage oh wait right so i agreed and then um i got to work with steven's people to write up this 15-minute piece uh of what jamie and i would do on stage for that 15 minutes and they were great they were really really fun to work with they're super and i i knew a couple of the writers they were just delightful so the day comes we get to the mall it is you know 250 215 000 people on the mall it was intense and we get up on stage and that's when the teleprompter craps out there's a teleprompter about 50 feet in front of us right in the middle so that we can look at it it's just blank nothing on there but the night before i had done the final rewrite and polish and sent it off to the writers and they had put it into the prompter so i remembered it for the most part and the you know i will say uh jamie heinemann while not a let's say a born performer is a born problem solver and that means that he understood exactly what was happening so the moment the teleprompter is not showing anything and i'm starting to talk he just starts to look at me and waits for the cue we have we had a really good sort of symbiotic routine with each other and sort of dealing with things like this and yeah i would started doing this time for a jamie joke i'd i'd tee it up look over at him he would knock it down he knew like he knew his part um and we got through the 15 minutes we got through the 15 minutes we got everyone to jump we got the wave to go back and forth it was lovely it was just amazing um the biggest crowd i probably will ever perform for um and then it came off stage and that's when the day got really fun because once you've completed your your part of the thing then you get to really enjoy yourself um this is axiomatic of what it's like to work anywhere around stephen and i'm i know jon stewart much less i've only met him in passing just like once or twice um but i get this feeling it infuses both of their entire sort of creative groups is that i came off stage and there was stephen in his costume for the opening and he comes right over to me just as i'm coming off stage and he goes thank you so much for doing that adam i really want to know did you have fun was it great and that's stephen in a nutshell like he wanted to know that we had fun that was the most important thing to him i mean that just felt like the biggest hug um so we talked to steven and his lovely family for a little while and then we went into the backstage into the green room which was full stop the weirdest green room i will ever participate in i still to this day wonder what sam waterston and wilt chamberlain spent 90 minutes talking about intensely on a couch i would love to be a fly on the wall in that conversation two great minds i just it was such a weird i mean at one point i'm talking to john hodgman and you know the roots are all moving around quest love and the roots are just lovely they were awesome dudes uh one of them i think their tuba player was a huge fan and asked for a picture with me and i'm like you want a picture with me sure absolutely and i'm telling hodgman about it and hodgman's like the roots are absolutely the best touring band in america right now they really are they're just so tight and i said tony bennett and he said no tony bennett's good but i'm really not sure it comes anywhere close i'm like no no tony bennett is standing right behind you like he's right there cat stevens cat stevens came in and when i said hello mr stevens i'm adam and he said you can go he was making a joke but he said you can call me joe short for yusuf islam which is his name um and then he spoke and you know cat stevens still he's cat steven's voice when he speaks you're just like you're you're you're just like transported on a magic carpet um i don't know about you but i discovered cat stevens spun like organically as a kid i was like going through some albums and i found this album called uh teaser the fire cat is that the one or was it t for the tillerman i can't remember which one but i put it on whichever one is the opening song is morning has broken and i put it on and i was like oh my god does anyone know else know how good this music is so to like be in a room with cat stevens telling you about a show he's writing is just amazing and then um in situations like this you never want to be alone it is awful to be alone you want a winged person and in this case my wife and i found as wing people john hodgman and anna marie cox and the four of us spent that whole day kind of being a citadel dealing with the insanity and amazingness that was going on all around us and that that night didn't end for hours and hours and hours i mean i think we all separated in the very wee hours of the morning and we all probably looked super bleary but ah what an incredible day yeah i mean at one point towards the finale which are in the finale they're singing the final song and the whole audience is singing along and i can't remember what the song was was it i'll take you there i it might have been but the important point is that we're like backstage and someone comes into the green room and says everyone get on stage it's the finale and so the osbornes and jamie and i and cat stevens and kareem abdul-jabbar we'll all move on to stage we're all dancing on stage and i'm standing there and here's jeff tweedy on his guitar and he's playing and like it's jeff tweedy and he looks over to me and the look is like can you believe how weird this is like that's the look like how how amazing and weird is this and it's like yeah it's really weird and amazing and again just this day of meeting people who were so far beyond my heroes and having everybody that i met that day being so kind and i really feel like that all stems directly from the the the the locus of the event which is john and stephen john stewart and stephen colbert i think that the primary output from both of those gentlemen can i say this is kindness yeah i mean i think that's what both of them have been railing about their entire careers is this kind of deep hidden we can all be kinder to each other and to participate in an event that stemmed from them and find kindness all the way down all the way through the thing it was super inspiring um yeah so i did have some stories to tell you about that event thank you so much for watching if you'd like to support us even further you can by becoming a tested member uh details are of course below but it includes all sorts of perks and we're building them all the time you get advanced word and behind the scenes photos of some of our projects questions you get to ask direct questions during my live streams and we have some members only videos including the adam real time series of unbroken unedited shots of me working here in the shop they are weirdly meditative thank you guys so much i'll see you on the next oneuh ben campbell says that he first saw me and jamie live in 2010 when we appeared at the at the stephen colbert jon stewart rally to restore sanity and or fear how did you get the invite to the rally and do you have any behind the scenes story i have so many behind-the-scenes stories from that that was incredible so uh it was 2010 obama was two years into his first term and the the conservative world was losing its collective mind that it was absolutely what was felt like what was going on and jon stewart and stephen colbert had both like put out a press release that they were going to have a rally and stewards was to restore sanity and colbert's was to restore fear and then they joined their rallies and i was in la a friend's house for dinner when my phone beeps and i've got an email in there from stephen colbert and i hadn't met stephen at that point had i met him i mean jamie and i might have go actually i don't know but at any rate i didn't know him at all i know him a little more now but i didn't know him at all and to see his name in my email inbox was heady as you could i was and my wife was like what and i like put my phone and she went and so i pulled up the email and started replying my wife was like you're just going to reply you're just going to reply to stephen colbert like it doesn't even matter they're just going to type something to him i'm like yeah that's what i'm gonna do it really felt so strange um and then about four or five days later stephen and i got on the phone and it was lovely uh we we were mutual fans we talked about what we liked about each other's work we talked about the white house press correspondents dinner um and then he said look john stuart and i are both huge fans of yours and jamie's and we'd love you guys to be the opening act of our show you'd like you to kind of warm up the crowd uh before all the incredible musical guests come on that included oh my god the musical lineup just go look up the rally restore sanity and or fear because uh yeah i was on stage with some unbelievable heroes uh and it was a beautiful day but so steven says look we've combined our rallies we'd love you and jamie to be our opening act you would do 15 minutes before the official start of the event um and i said yeah completely and he said we'd love it if you could do some experiments with the audience and i ended up actually having a long lovely chat with my friend richard wiseman um who's a a wonderful content creator writer uh youtuber magician uh he lives in scotland uh and we had a great chat about things that we could do with large crowds and we ended up doing a set of experiments we had the we did a wave we did a wave starting from the stage going all the way to the back and then coming back we timed how long that wave took to make it we timed how long the women took to do the wave versus men and i think the women were faster um then we had everyone jump um and we we had a a a a um a seismic activity machine my brain is a little bit slow this day uh basically we had a seismologist on hand and we were able to create a little bit of an earth tremor by getting the crowd to jump can i talk about this crowd for a second i think it was it was the full length of the mall so it was like how many people were at the rally to restore sanity i want to say it was over a hundred thousand hold on just a second i'm gonna ask this question how many people were at the rally to restore sanity and or fear search about 215 000 attended the rally right so i'm on a stage i'm staring at 210 000 people going back about a mile and the moment jamie and i walked out on stage oh wait right so i agreed and then um i got to work with steven's people to write up this 15-minute piece uh of what jamie and i would do on stage for that 15 minutes and they were great they were really really fun to work with they're super and i i knew a couple of the writers they were just delightful so the day comes we get to the mall it is you know 250 215 000 people on the mall it was intense and we get up on stage and that's when the teleprompter craps out there's a teleprompter about 50 feet in front of us right in the middle so that we can look at it it's just blank nothing on there but the night before i had done the final rewrite and polish and sent it off to the writers and they had put it into the prompter so i remembered it for the most part and the you know i will say uh jamie heinemann while not a let's say a born performer is a born problem solver and that means that he understood exactly what was happening so the moment the teleprompter is not showing anything and i'm starting to talk he just starts to look at me and waits for the cue we have we had a really good sort of symbiotic routine with each other and sort of dealing with things like this and yeah i would started doing this time for a jamie joke i'd i'd tee it up look over at him he would knock it down he knew like he knew his part um and we got through the 15 minutes we got through the 15 minutes we got everyone to jump we got the wave to go back and forth it was lovely it was just amazing um the biggest crowd i probably will ever perform for um and then it came off stage and that's when the day got really fun because once you've completed your your part of the thing then you get to really enjoy yourself um this is axiomatic of what it's like to work anywhere around stephen and i'm i know jon stewart much less i've only met him in passing just like once or twice um but i get this feeling it infuses both of their entire sort of creative groups is that i came off stage and there was stephen in his costume for the opening and he comes right over to me just as i'm coming off stage and he goes thank you so much for doing that adam i really want to know did you have fun was it great and that's stephen in a nutshell like he wanted to know that we had fun that was the most important thing to him i mean that just felt like the biggest hug um so we talked to steven and his lovely family for a little while and then we went into the backstage into the green room which was full stop the weirdest green room i will ever participate in i still to this day wonder what sam waterston and wilt chamberlain spent 90 minutes talking about intensely on a couch i would love to be a fly on the wall in that conversation two great minds i just it was such a weird i mean at one point i'm talking to john hodgman and you know the roots are all moving around quest love and the roots are just lovely they were awesome dudes uh one of them i think their tuba player was a huge fan and asked for a picture with me and i'm like you want a picture with me sure absolutely and i'm telling hodgman about it and hodgman's like the roots are absolutely the best touring band in america right now they really are they're just so tight and i said tony bennett and he said no tony bennett's good but i'm really not sure it comes anywhere close i'm like no no tony bennett is standing right behind you like he's right there cat stevens cat stevens came in and when i said hello mr stevens i'm adam and he said you can go he was making a joke but he said you can call me joe short for yusuf islam which is his name um and then he spoke and you know cat stevens still he's cat steven's voice when he speaks you're just like you're you're you're just like transported on a magic carpet um i don't know about you but i discovered cat stevens spun like organically as a kid i was like going through some albums and i found this album called uh teaser the fire cat is that the one or was it t for the tillerman i can't remember which one but i put it on whichever one is the opening song is morning has broken and i put it on and i was like oh my god does anyone know else know how good this music is so to like be in a room with cat stevens telling you about a show he's writing is just amazing and then um in situations like this you never want to be alone it is awful to be alone you want a winged person and in this case my wife and i found as wing people john hodgman and anna marie cox and the four of us spent that whole day kind of being a citadel dealing with the insanity and amazingness that was going on all around us and that that night didn't end for hours and hours and hours i mean i think we all separated in the very wee hours of the morning and we all probably looked super bleary but ah what an incredible day yeah i mean at one point towards the finale which are in the finale they're singing the final song and the whole audience is singing along and i can't remember what the song was was it i'll take you there i it might have been but the important point is that we're like backstage and someone comes into the green room and says everyone get on stage it's the finale and so the osbornes and jamie and i and cat stevens and kareem abdul-jabbar we'll all move on to stage we're all dancing on stage and i'm standing there and here's jeff tweedy on his guitar and he's playing and like it's jeff tweedy and he looks over to me and the look is like can you believe how weird this is like that's the look like how how amazing and weird is this and it's like yeah it's really weird and amazing and again just this day of meeting people who were so far beyond my heroes and having everybody that i met that day being so kind and i really feel like that all stems directly from the the the the locus of the event which is john and stephen john stewart and stephen colbert i think that the primary output from both of those gentlemen can i say this is kindness yeah i mean i think that's what both of them have been railing about their entire careers is this kind of deep hidden we can all be kinder to each other and to participate in an event that stemmed from them and find kindness all the way down all the way through the thing it was super inspiring um yeah so i did have some stories to tell you about that event thank you so much for watching if you'd like to support us even further you can by becoming a tested member uh details are of course below but it includes all sorts of perks and we're building them all the time you get advanced word and behind the scenes photos of some of our projects questions you get to ask direct questions during my live streams and we have some members only videos including the adam real time series of unbroken unedited shots of me working here in the shop they are weirdly meditative thank you guys so much i'll see you on the next one\n"