The 100th GeriPal Podcast Special – It’s a Celebration

Anne: Welcome to the GeriPal podcast. This is Anne Kelly.

Lynn: And I’m Lynn Flint.

Anne: And we are so delighted to be together today celebrating the 100th episode that we decided to turn this podcast upside down.

Eric: Wait, Alex, did we just get fired?

Alex: We got fired. What happened?

Lynn: Anne, who do we have in the studio today?

Anne: We have some very special guests in our studio office.

Alex: I’m Alex Smith.

Eric: And I’m Eric Widera.

Ken: I’m Ken Covinsky.

Anne: Thanks for coming in guys.

Eric: So this is also a really big episode, Alex. We also have one big, big announcement.

Alex: We have a big announcement.

Eric: What’s our big announcement, Alex?

Alex: This is our first podcast that is funded by Archstone Foundation. Archstone, preparing society and meeting the needs of an aging population. Thank you to Archstone Foundation for funding the GeriPal podcast.

Eric: Thank you for your support Archstone.

Alex: And someday soon GeriPal will be supported by listeners like you.

Anne: We’ll see how it goes today. Well, you guys, we can’t wait to talk to both of you more about what it’s been like hosting this podcast, getting you here to 100 episodes. But before we do, we always ask, who would like to make a song request? And Eric, I think today you have that honor.

Eric: For 99 episodes, I’ve been trying to get Alex to sing one song. And Alex continuously refuses to sing.

Alex: Refuse.

Anne: Until now.

Eric: Until now. Alex, since you have no choice in the matter, Milkshake, please.

Alex: You’re torturing me. Why?

Anne: Yeah, why exactly, Eric is it so important to you to choose this song of all songs?

Eric: I just think it would be fun to have Alex sing it. There’s no rhyme or reason.

Lynn: Who is the artist who created Milkshake?

Alex: That is an excellent question. I think it is Kelis.

Eric: Alex is up to … He is one hip guy.

Alex: [singing].

Anne: Well done.

Alex: That’s Greg Brown meets Milkshake.

Lynn: Is Milkshake metaphorical in this song.

Alex: No.

Lynn: Oh. Okay.

Anne: Eric, we all hope that moment was as special as you have hoped it would be.

Eric: It was. It was.

Anne: Well, we’re going to be talking a lot about the podcast today, but before we even start there, we know that you guys talking about GeriPal issues didn’t start on a podcast, did it? There was another forum that you started first.

Eric: We started as a blog.

Alex: A blog. The main reason we started a blog is that we didn’t want to wait a year until our publications got published before we started ranting on things.

Eric: I remember early on we proposed this idea of a blog, and I think as academics most people in leadership positions would have said, that’s a terrible idea. But we went to Ken Covinsky here and asked him if we should start a blog and he was wildly enthusiastic. Why were you enthusiastic about the idea of a GeriPal blog, Ken?

Ken: Well I thought the two of you would be really good at it. And I thought the two of you had something to say about how the work we’re doing in an academic setting could apply to the rest of the world, and could use this as a setting to advocate for changing the world and making the world a better place for older people and those with serious illness.

Lynn: That’s one heck of a vote of confidence for these two, Ken.

Ken: I mean, it was terrific to have support of Ken and others in leadership including Bob Wachter, who’s now our chair of medicine, who had his own blog at the time. And it’s really sort of forward thinking. And most people would say, what are you doing in academics with a blog and a podcast? You should be publishing papers or teaching, or whatever, rather than doing this. But it’s sort of forward thinking. And it is a new way of reaching people, and hopefully you’ve all enjoyed it.

Lynn: And what made you guys decide to transition over to a podcast?

Eric: Well, I remember when we were talking about podcasts and Alex asked the question as we were about to start our podcast, what’s a podcast?

Alex: I hadn’t listened to a podcast before we recorded a podcast. Then I listened to Serial. But, yes. I think we decided to do a podcast because we were interested in doing something fresh and new, and people were… I think we were interested in reaching a new audience that listened to things rather than read them. And in today’s day and age the landscape of how people obtain information is constantly shifting. It’s not newspapers anymore. And for awhile it was blogs, and then podcasts. And we started a YouTube channel even because a couple years ago I was talking to the medical students and thought, oh, I’m going to relate to them. I’m going to tell them I have a blog and I got a podcast. And they said, but do you have a YouTube channel? I said, no.

Alex: So now we have a YouTube channel. So we’re trying to keep up with contemporary ways of reaching people.

Anne: And so you decided to give it a go and start a podcast. And from the very first episode you created this tradition along the way of having a little moment of time dedicated to music in the podcast. Where did that idea come from?

Alex: I think that idea came from… So I enjoy playing guitar and singing, and particularly at some of the national meetings I go to, like we’re going to this Beeson meeting, geriatrics research. I enjoy being like a campfire singer type figure. So it was really an outlet to bring together different interests on the one hand. And I think more importantly what it does is, we interview a lot of people who are academics and are used to the grand rounds type of mold of transmitting information. And when you ask them to make a song request and then I fumble my way through it and make mistakes and we laugh about it, it just kind of shifts the mood out of that academics into more of a social conversation about whatever topic that we’re addressing that day.

Lynn: So in that vein then, Eric, why don’t you sing more?

Eric: Oh my God. The problem with me singing is you really don’t want to hear it. What actually happens when I sing, I’m going to give you just that little bit of a clip if I can find it for a second. So are you ready? Here it comes. Hold on. I’m the audio guy too. Here it is. You ready? [singing ]. That’s Alex – good voice, right?

Lynn: Mm-hmm (affirmative), great.

Eric: [singing]. That’s still Alex. Now that’s Eric. You don’t want Eric singing, I think that’s the key there.

Lynn: You sound like Kermit.

Anne: It sounds like your choice not to sing has been a gift to all of us.

Eric: It’s been a gift. I also want to say about the beginning of the podcast. I think the sign of a really good kind of mentor is, like Ken was at the start of our blog. He was at the start of our podcast. And actually having his support there at the beginning and letting us then take it off from where it goes I think it’s a sign why… You know, internationally Ken is recognized as an amazing mentor, and I think that says a lot about what he does.

Ken: Thank you.

Lynn: I actually have one more question. When you think about just going back to historical times a little bit. In our new context of doing the podcast, are there things that you wish you could go back to the blog for?

Alex: It’s true, you know, sometimes I think about blogging about topics, but our time is sort of occupied by the podcast, so I don’t. For example, we were on the wards recently on palliative care consults and I’ve noticed this shift over time that the younger generation of trainees tends to refer to themselves by their first name. And they ask patients how they prefer to be addressed, and patients often respond with their first name. And these are people, you know, average age of our census in the 80s and 90s. And referring to them as Richard, Robert, John, Maria is deeply uncomfortable to me because it’s not the way I was raised to address people.

Alex: You know Mr. So-and-so, Mrs. So and so. And I also was taught to refer to myself as Dr. Smith, rather than Alex. And I thought this would be an interesting topic for a blog more than a podcast. Because we usually structure our podcasts around some sort of article that’s come out, a hot topic that’s really sort of GeriPal centric. But it’s a kind of thing that I’d probably blog about and get comments, you know? And sort of have interaction. I don’t know if you all have thoughts on this change.

Lynn: So the blog lends itself well to things like vents and pontification.

Eric: Oh yeah. The ranting, I rant so much less now than in my blogging days.

Alex: We used to rip some articles to shreds in the blog. Was it the in and out palliative care article?

Eric: I guess in a good way that gets me in less trouble because I’m ranting less. Occasionally I still do post a blog post, and then I get in trouble for ranting.

Anne: I can recall when you guys might post something that might feel controversial. You guys refreshing that webpage a lot to see what comments were coming through.

Lynn: So maybe it’s been a good wellness endeavor to transition over to the podcast.

Eric: I think having a good balance. I think one of the things looking forward, maybe doing a little bit more hard hitting question.

Alex: Right. And inviting some guests on whose articles we have serious concerns about, and challenging them on it. Well we’d probably have to fire a warning shot. And we have done that a little bit. If you remember the podcast about the blood pressure control, the SPRINT MIND to prevent dementia with…

Ken: Jeff Williamson.

Alex: Yeah, Jeff Williamson. Yeah.

Ken: That was excellent.

Alex: I remember Lauren Hunt was our guest host that day and she said, you know, we just presented this article in Geriatrics Journal Club and we looked around the room and asked, does anybody have any patients who would have qualified for this study? And nobody said yes. How generalizable is this? Just sort of threw down the gauntlet. And he had an excellent response, I have to say.

Ken: Yeah, I learned from that. It actually changed my point of view.

Eric: Yeah. Yeah. And I also now have to call Alex, apparently, Dr. Smith.

Lynn: Yeah.

Alex: Please.

Ken: That’s funny. I never call my patients by their first name.

Alex: You don’t?

Ken: Never.

Alex: No.

Eric: It’s funny in family meetings sometimes I’ll be saying Dr. Smith, and the fellow will be saying Alex. And we’ll just be like, half the time the word Alex comes out, and half the time that I’m saying it’s Dr. Smith. So it is a very interesting generational divide, potentially.

Anne: Well, I have noticed that over the course of these 100 episodes, you guys have been able to interview a lot of different people from different geographical regions. And I’m wondering, has the podcast lent itself to you being able to meet people or talk to people you wouldn’t have expected to be able to?

Alex: Oh, absolutely. I don’t think we’ve had anybody say no to our podcast, right?

Eric: No. And in the blogging days everybody would say no to a blog post, but nobody… Like these are really prominent people internationally, nobody has actually said no. We’ve got some great international folks coming up too in the next few weeks.

Alex: Yeah, we have David Currow coming up.

Eric: Yeah. So it’s pretty exciting and I’m always impressed that nobody says no. And I learn a ton from them. Like from even our initial podcast, we had one on… What was it? Cranberries. Remember that? It was like number three. And that was just like, I learned a ton. And I’ve never heard of big cranberry before until you hear about the controversy when you try to publish an article that is anti-cranberry juice for UTIs.

Alex: Yeah. This is fascinating. This has been a terrific experience. I mean, it’s kind of like you get to ask all these questions of these people who are leaders in their field about their research, and sort of ask the questions that you would love to ask in journal club. Like why did you make that choice? Because I didn’t quite understand it when I was reading it.

Eric: Yeah. Even our last one about the multinational PACE study of palliative care nursing homes. You know we spent a while just talking about, what is the right primary outcome? In journal club we would just say, oh they picked the wrong primary outcome.

Alex: Right.

Eric: But like you actually have a discussion with the author, you get a sense of how complicated it is.

Ken: Well one thing that’s impressed me with what the two of you do is, so you are doing a podcast on aging, serious illness, end of life. A lot of what you talk about hinges on design aspects of healthcare that you think are really not done well. Yet you laugh a lot during the podcasts. You seem to have a lot of fun. Is that intentional? I mean, do you feel that bringing levity to serious topics makes the topics more approachable? Do you sometimes worry about too much levity?

Eric: Honestly, I haven’t given it a lot of thought. I think from the design, from the initial inception of this podcast, I think Alex and I did it as a hobby. And part of that is just, it’s fun to do things like the music and interview people. So I don’t know, I haven’t given it a lot of thought.

Alex: I think you give us more credit than we’re do for thinking deeply about how we design the podcast. I think we enjoy doing this and our personalities come out in the way that we approach the podcast.

Lynn: So let’s take a walk down memory lane and enjoy some favorite moments from the GeriPal podcast. Let’s start with your favorite song rendition. What was Alex’s best song?

Eric: I’m going to pick this one because I have it all queued up too. Ready?

Alex: For the record, this is not my best song. This was-

Eric: This is it. Ready? Let’s see if I can get it working. [singing ].

Eric: A little queen. He did a much better intro. And then I wanted the operatic section, so I always screw up Alex’s great singing.

Lynn: That hurt my ears.

Anne: Grammy nominated Dr. Smith.

Eric: We a lost a lot of listeners on this episode. [laughter]

Anne: Well you’ve heard a lot of people with different creative ideas or creative solutions, and sometimes you’ve even heard people come up with their own inventions. And what’s your favorite invention that’s been dreamed up on the podcast?

Eric: Another one, going back to, I think it was our very first episode. Ken was talking about bed alarms. And it got us as a group thinking about the anti bed alarm. Let me play a little bit of that clip.

Eric: So how about this, Ken? How about instead of a bed alarm, we at GeriPal make the anti bed alarm. So if somebody is in bed during daylight, the alarm goes off to tell him to get out of bed.

Ken: That is a great idea. So you need an alarm that tells you you’re not moving enough.

Eric: So that one. It goes back. We’ve had a lot of different types of inventions. That’s the one I like the most, and I still want to see somebody make.

Ken: And that remains a good idea.

Eric: Yeah.

Lynn: And we were just talking about all these amazing guests that you’ve had on over all these episodes, and you’ve had to introduce a lot of different people and their work. Has that always gone perfectly for you?

Alex: No. How did that go?

Eric: Oh wait, wrong switch. This is the hard part about operating lots of different things.

Alex: I was reading song lyrics.

Eric: Wait, wait, wait.

Eric: [from previous podcast recording] Welcome to the GeriPal podcast. This is Eric Widera … Alex, it’s your turn.

Alex: Oh, this is Alex Smith. I was reading song lyrics. Sometimes there’s some last minute cramming of song preparation.

Eric: That’s the problem when you’re trying to fit this into a busy schedule. Sometimes you’re kind of multitasking.

Lynn: I have to say, just as a behind the scenes, it is really fun to sit in the office next door to Alex where I get to hear him rehearsing these songs. And when I have visiting people from outside the division, like medical students.

Eric: What is that?

Lynn: They are like, what are you doing here in geriatrics?

Anne: My favorite is seeing him walk down the hallway lamenting the idea like, how am I going to figure this one out?

Alex: Yes. Milkshake, case in point.

Eric: Alex continuously surprises me. I want to share one episode of Alex talking with BJ Miller. Surprising me with where the conversation was heading.

Alex: You start off with a story of a man who dies while receiving oral sex from his wife.

Eric: If there are any kids listening, earmuffs.

BJ Miller: Where were you 30 seconds ago?

Alex: We should have had an announcement at the beginning about the rating for this. The following episode-

BJ Miller: We’ll go back and add that.

Eric: You never cease to surprise me, Alex. I also love hearing BJ’s laugh there in the background.

Anne: Has there ever been anything that’s shocked you or come along that felt really unexpected?

Alex: I remember Eric was quite shocked to hear the lyrics of You Are My Sunshine. The beginning part everybody knows, but most people don’t realize this, as the song continues it gets a little darker.

Eric: It’s such an awesome song I thought. Let’s hear a little clip of that one. [singing].

Eric: That got darker real fast.

Ken: Is that really is part of the lyrics?

Alex: That was part of the lyrics. That’s why you only hear the first verse.

Ken: Wow. That was good. That actually was a little Johnny Cash-ish, really.

Alex: A little Johnny Cash-ish. One of the most requested artists, Johnny Cash. And then Beatles is the other. Yep. We’ve shockingly never had request, I think, in 100 podcasts for some famous artist, Grateful Dead. Never been requested.

Eric: I think Dan Matlock, his backup was Iron Maiden. That was the same episode where I requested Milkshake.

Ken: So I have a question for you. This might be a secret, but the two of you are actually really pretty serious academics.

Alex: We are?

Ken: You are. Yeah.

Eric: Alex is.

Ken: And really well regarded at UCSF and nationally and internationally. And you’ve both won big awards for your academic work. Are people surprised to see you just on the podcast to know that you actually have a day job that’s more encompassing than the podcast? And how does the podcast, like, is it hard to do a podcast and then the next day be a really serious academic? Or do a really serious academic lecture?

Eric: Yeah, I feel like even in our work, like our palliative care team, I don’t think we take ourselves very seriously. Anne, what do you think?

Anne: Speak for yourself, Dr. Widera. I take this very… I take myself very serious-

Alex: At all times.

Anne: At all times. You’re right.

Alex: I just saw some Twitter photos of Eric at CAPSI giving one of these highfalutin lectures, summary of the evidence of palliative care. And I believe you and Matt Gonzales were wearing overalls and dressed up like Southern peach farmers.

Eric: We were palliative care peach farmers picking the juiciest ripest palliative care articles out there.

Alex: Yeah. So I think our lack of seriousness from the podcast actually bleeds over into our academic life as much or more as the other way around.

Ken: Well I’m going to challenge you, because I know you two a little bit. And I know you are both extremely serious about the field, and very passionate about the field. Is there something to taking your work seriously but not yourself seriously? And if anyone reads your writings, you know, your writings are not funny. I mean, you write about really serious stuff and in compelling ways.

Eric: I think there’s something to taking your passion seriously, but not taking yourself seriously, and actually adding humor and levity. And that’s why I love podcasts. In blogs it’s hard to tell tone in emails and writing, at least for someone like me who’s not very good at writing. But for podcasts it’s so much easier to tell tone, and you can express things with both levity and seriousness. And I think that we try to do unconsciously that balance.

Alex: Yeah. Well put.

Lynn: And looking back, what are some of the lessons that you’ve learned from your guests on here?

Eric: Tough question. Alex, I’m going to let you start so I can think about that one.

Alex: That is a great question. Well, I can say that just in the last two weeks being on service on palliative care consults, I referred back to our Lynn McPherson podcast about opioid dosing. Particularly thinking about how to use methadone, and went over that with our fellows. So found that quite useful.

Eric: Yeah, the David Juurlink podcast that we did on Trama-don’t, I got a lot out of that one. It was amazing that he could talk about pharmacokinetics in a way that was easy to understand and lighthearted. So I really appreciated that.

Alex: We use that on the wards, on consults just these last two weeks as well. It’s fun to use these podcasts as a teaching opportunity and send them to the trainees.

Eric: And I also really… We just did one on the care ecosystem, like maybe episode 97. And I’m just so impressed by individuals who create these amazing interventions, but also then make it easy to disseminate. Like you can actually go to their box site and download all this information that they have to use their trainers for these navigators. And part of me, I loved the intervention and learning from the intervention, but I also loved how they implemented it, and learning how they implemented it.

Alex: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I just yesterday talking with somebody who’s interested in doing research, she was asking, are there any studies of primary palliative care? And I said, oh, we just did a podcast on one of the first studies of primary palliative care with Lieve Van den Block from Belgium, and her primary palliative care intervention in seven nursing homes in European… Or seven nursing homes in seven European countries. I also, you know, thinking back to earlier podcasts… Oh, I just lost it.

Eric: That was the podcast. I just lost it? It doesn’t sound like one of our titles.

Alex: I had one. I had another important one I was using regularly, thinking about regularly. I lost it.

Lynn: Well, keep thinking about it. You know, earlier, some months ago we asked GeriPal listeners to think about something that they’ve learned or love from the podcast, and to consider calling in our special hotline to sharing something. And I’m wondering, how did that go? Did we hear back?

Eric: We heard back. Is it okay if I play a couple?

Alex: Wait, wait. I remembered, hold on. I was thinking about, how has my practice changed as a result of the podcast? And one of the questions that I’ve increasingly incorporating into encounters with patients and family members is this question from the serious illness conversation guide. We did the podcast with-

Eric: Rachelle Bernacki.

Alex: Yup, and Jo… And Jo.

Eric: Jo Palladino.

Alex: Yes, Jo Palladino. And so the question that I incorporate is, are there activities or things you do that are so important to you that life wouldn’t be worth living with if you couldn’t do those activities? And I think that’s a really important question, because just the other day we had this patient who said, hey, I beat cancer five years ago. I’ve changed my mind, I’m not DNR anymore. I want to go for it. And the question is, well so are there bounds around that go for it, right? And we asked that question. It turns out he says, if I couldn’t be an usher at San Francisco Giants games, it’s not worth it to continue living. That is very different, right? From, I want to go for it under any circumstance.

Eric: So very useful information.

Ken: And you learn in medical school this long hundred item review of systems, set goals through every organ. Again and I don’t think anywhere on that is like, what activity’s most important to you? I mean that’s a really remarkable question.

Alex: Right.

Eric: Well what activity is most important to me is hearing from our listeners. You like that transition? All right, let’s hear.

Amy T.: Hi, this is Amy Trowbridge calling from Seattle on the pediatric side of care back at Seattle Children. And I learned that Twitter can be a professional growth opportunity. And I actually joined Twitter because of the GeriPal podcast. So thank you. And also I’m a little bit mad at you because it is a time sink as well. [laughter]

Eric: I got another, are you ready for another?

Lindsay Y.: Hi, this is Lindsay Yorman calling from San Diego. And I was very proud because it’s a really efficient and high yield way to learn. And it doesn’t feel like you’re working to do it, because of the singing and the corny jokes and the good conversation. So I’m looking forward to episode 200-

Eric: There you go. We have a ways to go for that one.

Ken: Should we disclose that Lindsay is not an independent voice, but she-

Alex: She left us. She’s in San Diego, so she’s independent right now.

Ken: Lindsey is a very missed medical student from UCS F that spent time with Alex and Eric.

Alex: She wrote the article that led to e-prognosis.

Michael B.: Hello, my name is Michael Beasley. I am a heart failure transplant cardiology fellow at Yale I really enjoy the GeriPal podcast. I think it helps bring a great balance to my thoughts about how I practice clinical medicine, balancing the advances that we get from science and innovation in our field, but also knowing the balance when we need to think about how to practice clinical care in a smart and a reasonable way for our elderly and frail population. Thanks so much guys for putting this together.

Meredith G.: This is Meredith Gillam, geriatrician at the University of North Carolina. I just wanted to say I really enjoy the podcast. I’m a regular listener, and I find that it helps keep me up to date. And often directly improves patient care that I’m able to provide. Keep doing what you guys are doing.

Eric: Thank you Meredith.

Ken: Thank you.

Eric: A couple more?

Karen A.: My name is Karen Alexander, I’m a speech language pathologist in Spokane, Washington. And I’ve learned how to have better conversations with my patients when it comes to end of life and decisions, like whether or not to proceed with a feeding tube. Thanks for all the great shows. Keep up the great work.

Eric: That’s great. Quite a diversity of backgrounds.

Mark N.: … I’m Mark Nelson, I’m from Columbus, OH.

Eric: They just keep on coming. I got tons of these Alex.

Mark N.: … and I’ve learned a ton. And I enjoy the curiosity and openness to new ideas and viewpoints. And they are presented in a fun and easily digestible format. So thank you.

Alex: Thank you.

Eric: Maybe do two more?

Dwayne: This is Dwayne Dobschuetz. I’m a nurse practitioner in Chicago in the department of geriatrics at Northwestern. I work closely with Lee Linquist …

Eric: Lee linguist, we had her on for our podcast. She talked about the last 10 yards. Do you remember that? What was her quote from that one? It was the last 10 yards. Okay, I got one last one for us.

Ken: Lee also did, she had the best song request ever.

Alex: It was something Chicago, wasn’t it?

Ken: Go Cubs, go.

Alex: Go Cubs, go.

Eric: Ken always drives us to do a Cub song every time he’s on with us.

Lindsay: Hey Eric and Alex, this is Lindsay calling from UCSF.

Eric: A local.

Lindsay: … about feeding tubes and advanced dementia.

Eric: Okay, those are our… Lindsay goes on, but-

Anne: Thank you listeners, thank you so much for taking time to leave a message and let us know you’re out there. And giving us some ideas of what you guys have been learning from Alex and Eric’s good work all these episodes.

Ken: I’m very impressed. I thought when I saw the announcement with this number, I was convinced it was a prank. And then I called the number and heard Anne’s voice.

Anne: Not convincing of… I wouldn’t be sold that it’s not a prank.

Lynn: And you leave a message.

Eric: Who is that voice that we hear at the beginning of episodes, Alex?

Alex: Who is that voice? That’s Anne Kelly.

Eric: That is Anne Kelly, right over there.

Anne: Trying to find a alternative path of employment should this palliative care gig ever-

Eric: You have a good radio voice there. That’s why we use Anne for all of our intros.

Alex: I think it is really important to thank our listeners and our readers. And to say that we appreciate all the support that we’ve had from you throughout the years. The emails here and there, the messages you just left, running into you when you come up and you introduce yourselves to us at national meetings. It just really makes this feel like somebody’s listening. Right? And not just somebody, but many people. And it does seem to have an impact on people’s lives. So we appreciate all the feedback and your support over these years. Thank you.

Eric: And all of our guests and recurring hosts like Anne and Lynn and Ken and Sei. We’ve had a lot of people who help us build this podcast.

Alex: Yeah, this is a community effort. And kudos to everybody who’s been involved. Our deepest gratitude. Thank you.

Eric: And going forward, a very big thank you to Archstone Foundation for supporting our vision and improving the lives of those with serious illness and aging individuals. And that’s kind of the point of our podcast, and that’s our focus.

Anne: Well thank you all again for helping us celebrate this very special 100th episode of the GeriPal podcast. And of course before we go, I think we have a little more from Alex.

Alex: Okay, wait, wait. Before I started singing, I would like everybody to join in this time on the song. And I’m just going to go over the lyrics to Milkshake to make sure that they’re clear. Okay, here we go.

Anne: Hold on, let me get a pencil.

Alex: Sing along in your car, wherever you are. The lyrics are: “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and they’re like, it’s better than yours. Damn right, it’s better than yours. I can teach you, but I have to charge.” Okay? And then we’re just going to repeat that one more time.

Lynn: Are you sure that’s not metaphorical?

Alex: No, definitely not metaphorical. All right, here we go. [singing]. All right. Perfect.

Anne: Thanks everybody.

Lynn: Bye.

Alex: [Alex, Eric, Ken] Bye. Thank you.