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00:00:00 Music Transition Gentle, trilling music with a steady drumbeat plays under the dialogue. 00:00:01 Promo Promo Speaker: Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR. [Music fades out.] 00:00:12 Music Transition “Huddle Formation” from the album Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team. A fast, upbeat, peppy song. Music plays as Jesse speaks, then fades out. 00:00:19 Jesse Host It’s Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. Look, if you’re not from New York but Thorn you have any kind of idea what a chopped cheese sandwich is, I’m willing to bet you can thank two people for that: Desus Nice and The Kid Mero. They’re natives of the Bronx. They started first as podcast hosts, with their show The Bodega Boys. It’s a fast paced, chaotic, and very funny show where two best friends just kind of shoot the [censored]. They’ll talk about news, music, or how former NBA great, Derek Fisher, looks like a Verizon store manager. In 2017, they got their own TV show on Vice. In 2019, they moved over to Showtime. And since then, they have become a pretty big deal. Here’s just a partial list of their guests: Ludacris, Glenn Close, Bernie Sanders, Eddie Murphy, Barack Obama, and recently one Yo-Yo Ma, who was kind enough to play them the cello line from the song “Ruff Ryder’s Anthem”. 00:01:22 Sound Transition Music swells and fades. Effect 00:01:23 Clip Clip Music: A cello cover of “Ruff Ryder’s Anthem”. [Desus and Mero cheer and hoot.] Desus: I thought we were in Boston. We in Yonkers! Y-O, baby! Mero: Y-O! Desus: Home of the brave. Desus and Mero: [Singing.] Yo. Yo. That’s how Yo-Yo Ma rolls. Mero: WHAAAT!? Oh! Classic, classic! Let’s go! Oh my god! Desus: Right there, right yourself. Right yourself. Right yourself. 00:01:38 Sound Transition Music swells and fades. Effect 00:01:39 Jesse Host Anyway. When we had Desus and Mero on the show in 2017, we found the perfect person to interview them: Brooklyn native and public media legend, Ray Suarez. Let’s listen. 00:01:49 Music Transition Thumpy music with light vocalizations. 00:01:54 Ray Host Desus and Mero, welcome to Bullseye. Suarez 00:01:55 Mero Guest Heeeeey! 00:01:56 Desus Guest Thanks for having us! 00:01:57 Mero Guest Thanks for having us, buddy! We’re here! 00:01:59 Ray Host The show has been on for not that long, right? Still pretty new. [Mero confirms.] 00:02:03 Desus Guest 61 episodes. 00:02:04 Mero Guest 61 episodes, just wrapped 61 today. You know? 00:02:08 Desus Guest Still new. Still fun to do. Still pretty fresh. You know? 00:02:12 Ray Host Four nights a week. It’s tough! You know, yes, the world keeps throwing up new things to talk about, but you gotta churn it out, day after day. [They agree.] As it— 00:02:19 Desus Guest But you know what? We’ve both had much worse jobs. So, when people are like, “It’s tough,” I just remember when I used to have to collect dead rats for a living, at a Bronx mechanic. And I say, “You know what? This is actually not that bad!” [Mero agrees.] 00:02:31 Ray Host Well, yeah, if you set the bar there. Yeah. [They agree.] You’re probably right. [Chuckles.] Like any superheroes, you guys need an origin story. What’s yours? [They chuckle.] 00:02:40 Mero Guest Summer school in the Bronx, man! We briefly crossed paths and then, like the internet does, it brings you back together, years later. And we kind of like reconnected on Twitter and then, through talking, we realized that we actually knew each other. 00:02:54 Desus Guest Think of it as a Brokeback Mountain Bronx High School edition, but with less sex. [Mero agrees.] But basically, when we first met at like summer school, we did not know we’d ever like cross paths again, let alone be on TV. But we just took a—we ran in different circles and we knew of each other. I was like, “Oh, there’s that guy there.” He was like, “Oh, that’s that guy there.” We’re funny on the internet. We talked about the same topics. So, generally if something Bronx related popped up on Twitter, we’d both have comments on it. [Mero chuckles.] And people really enjoyed the banter, there. From there, it went to a podcast. Podcast went to a TV show. Boom, bang, bing, now we’re on Viceland. We’re in your homes four nights a week. 00:03:28 Ray Host So, summer school—I guess you guys were such good students, they wanted you there all year round? 00:03:32 Mero Guest [Laughing.] Yeah! All year! Of course! 00:03:33 Desus Guest Oh, yeah. Couldn’t leave. Actually, the truth is— 00:03:34 Mero Guest Yo, the worst thing in the world actually is going to summer school for gym. [Ray laughs.] I actually went to summer school for chemistry. For chemistry, ‘cause I was not good at chemistry. But there’s a lot of people that go to summer school for gym, believe it or not. 00:03:45 Desus Guest Also, summer school is one of the few places you’re guaranteed to have air conditioning in New York City. [Mero confirms.] So, if you had to go to summer school, it wasn’t the worst thing. 00:03:52 Mero Guest Shout out to Lehman High School for actually having air conditioners, ‘cause I went to DeWitt Clinton High School and they did not have air conditioners. You know what I’m saying? 00:03:57 Desus Guest Lehman High School by White Castle. Shout out to—shout out to Lehman lions, my alma mater. 00:04:01 Ray Host Now, Desus, did you say you once picked up dead rats for a job? Did I hear that right? 00:04:06 Desus Guest I’ve had almost every possible job a person can have in New York City. You can ask Mero. Every day, I come up with a new job that I’ve worked. [Ray laughs.] I’ve had everything from high level computer programming jobs doing encryptions for credit card transactions, all the way down to collecting dead rats in a mechanic—a car mechanic on Webster Avenue in the Bronx, across from Twin Parks East projects— shoutout to King Bear. That’s what we—that was the name of the mechanic shop. What happened was, an exterminator came through and laid out—they had a huge rat problem. When I say huge rat problem, I mean numerous rats and also very large rats. Large rats that could kind of push a Toyota Camry to the side when they were running. And it was the middle of the summer. The exterminator put down rat poison. It was a huge—it was like a warehouse. And so, it’s 100 degrees. We’re in the middle of a heatwave. And there’s just this overwhelming stench of dead rats all over the place. And the owner comes out with a compound bucket and a shovel and he says, “You need to find the dead rats around here.” And I thought he meant there were two or three. By the end of the day, there were like eight dead rats. That was me. I got my bucket full of rats and I went home, and that job aged me 14 years in one week. 00:05:16 Ray Host Now, when you negotiate upfront for that, is it by the rat or by the hour? Or is like the— 00:05:20 Desus Guest It’s even—no, here’s is the part where I blow your mind. I was not legally supposed to be working that job. That was my father’s friend from Jamaica on that thing. There was no working papers signed. There was like no W2s. I was working off the books and, at the end of the week, he gave me $60. And I had been working from almost 7AM to 7PM, Monday through Friday. And I walked off the job. I was so mad. I was like, “I’m never coming back here.” Which was a huge embarrassment to my father, because that showed I did not have the Jamaican work ethic. But I was literally like—I was not getting paid a fair deal. Turned out, that $60 was actually for my bus fare for the next week, but even then, I had too much pride to go back. And I was like—I felt I had more to offer life than just picking up dead rats. And I think me being interviewed at NPR proves it. 00:06:02 Ray Host Yeah, I can—I could see the garage owner, you know, saying, “You know, what’s the matter? You get to work with animals!” [They laugh.] Don’t you love animals? 00:06:08 Desus Guest I also—I wanted to know what he was doing with the rats, because he was like, “Don’t put them in the trash. I have something else for them.” Soooo… [They laugh.] 00:06:14 Mero Guest He was making [chuckles]—he was making [inaudible].

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