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Says Who? · Maureen Johnson and Dan Sinker

PARTY LIKE IT'S 1999

April 8, 2026·1 hr 3 min·5 clips
The New York Times sent three reporters to interview roughly two dozen workers and regulars at all three Waffle Houses in Rome, Georgia — none of whom had seen anyone teleport in.
1. Says Who, hosted by Dan Sinker and Maureen Johnson, covers the Iran ceasefire resolution, a teleporting FEMA official, and personal chaos from Maureen's visit to her parents in an episode titled PARTY LIKE IT'S 1999. 2. Maureen Johnson is a novelist returning from caring for her post-surgery mother and ailing father in Philadelphia; Dan Sinker is her Chicago-based co-host. 3. The episode's framing question is what it means to still be alive and not dead after Trump threatened to annihilate a civilization overnight. 4. Maureen spent a week at her parents' house: cooking, shopping, cleaning, doing everything while her post-surgery mother rested and her father complained that Diet Coke was not Coke Zero even though he wrote 'Diet Coke' on the list. 5. A month-long saga with a blind manufacturer called YoYo Decor — involving a lost shipment, a wrong blind personally DHL'd from Chicago, and repeated assurances of 'please trust us' — resolved successfully when the correct zebra roller blind arrived and installed in 30 seconds. 6. Maureen's friend Jay brought her a simple ring-bound Staples planner, solving months of planner-quest frustration; Dan compared it to his father's 1986 desk calendar, which Maureen disputed. 7. On the episode's shoe-board update: Pam Bondi is officially crossed out; a new side quest has appeared that cannot be discussed yet. 8. Trump's Easter Sunday post read: 'Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah. President Donald Trump' — complete with an apostrophe in 'fuckin'.'' 9. On Easter Tuesday morning, Trump escalated with: 'A whole civilization will die tonight. Never to be brought back again... One of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world.' 10. The ceasefire that followed left Iran still controlling the Strait of Hormuz, now charging $2 million per vessel to pass — up from zero before the conflict. 11. Dan likened Trump's deadline cycle to the Dread Pirate Roberts, noting the 'deadlines' are primarily attention-seeking behavior and the next two-week deadline will almost certainly arrive before two weeks are up. 12. Both hosts recognized the ceasefire-eve dread as identical to Cold War childhood, when schools assigned books about nuclear fallout and television broadcast films of faces melting, and Dan briefly considered taking up smoking. 13. FEMA official Greg Phillips described two teleportation events on the right-wing podcast Onward: once landing in a ditch outside a Baptist church near a state border, and once arriving at a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia 50 miles from where he told his sons he was going. 14. Phillips later said on Truth Social that the event occurred while he was heavily medicated for cancer treatment and that 'teleportation' was not his word; he preferred 'translated or transported,' which he described as a miracle. 15. The New York Times dispatched three reporters — Richard Fawcett, Chris Hippensteel, and Scott Dance — to interview roughly two dozen workers and regulars at all three Waffle Houses in Rome, Georgia; none had seen Phillips or witnessed teleportation. 16. A physics professor at Emory University, Sidney Perkowitz, told the Times that reproducing the information content of a human body for teleportation would require a data volume beyond any expressible number. 17. Dan and Maureen share their own 'unexplained location' anecdotes: Dan drunk at a Washington D.C. conference trying to walk to the Vietnam Memorial and waking up in the hotel; Maureen waking up on the roof of a different building after a brownie; a graduate school friend eating a brownie in London and waking up in France. 18. Personal warmth and gallows humor run throughout the episode; both hosts are clearly tired but find comfort in the absurdist stories. 19. Regular listeners will enjoy the shoe-board updates, planner saga callbacks, and running dog/apartment observations; the Iran and FEMA material stands alone for new listeners. 20. Listeners wanting focused political analysis or those put off by profanity-heavy conversational comedy will likely find the format too loose.

As heard by us

Listener thanks, Iran talk, a steak tangent, and a pop-song signoff shape a loose but lively episode.

Says Who? opens with extended listener thanks, Patreon promotion, and book plugs before turning to the week's politics. From there, the discussion centers on Donald Trump's Iran posts and his Strait of Hormuz threats, with the hosts landing in their familiar mix of commentary…

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Why you'd press play

When Trump's Iran post spirals, this show stays funny enough to make the week easier to sit with.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →
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