BROOKE GLADSTONE:
This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD:
And I'm Bob Garfield, with the winner of the first-ever On the Media T-Shirt design contest, from Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Phil Mastman. Phil, welcome to the show.
PHIL MASTMAN:
Thank you. It’s an honor.

BOB GARFIELD:
Your design, which we love, borrows the 3-D glasses image that we have at the top of our website. This is people in a movie theater watching the movie with those, you know, the cardboard specs. On one side is that image, and then superimposed is the phrase “Edited by Brooke” in big letters and just ”On the Media” on the back.

We're actually going to flip that around. Though I did vote for your design, seeing Brooke’s name emblazed large on somebody’s chest is -
PHIL MASTMAN:
[LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD:
- pretty much more - more than I can bear.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Hey, you’re the one who did the show topless this month.

BOB GARFIELD:
Yeah well, and, and it was delicious. [BROOKE LAUGHS] Phil, what inspired you [LAUGHS] to do this design?
PHIL MASTMAN:
Well Bob, after listening to you read the credits at the end of the show for all these years with that just wonderfully smarmy delivery of “Edited by Brooke” I just thought it couldn't be anything else.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
[LAUGHS] Tell us about yourself, Phil. What do you do in real life?
PHIL MASTMAN:
Well, I am a television commercial director here in Cincinnati. I actually had the great honor of having one of my commercials reviewed by Bob in his other job at Ad Age.
BOB GARFIELD:
Oh, my God.
PHIL MASTMAN:
And –

BROOKE GLADSTONE:
[LAUGHS] As the world’s most powerful advertising critic?
PHIL MASTMAN:
Absolutely, and I have to say that he slammed me terribly. [BROOKE LAUGHS] But it was still an honor, just the same. [LAUGHS]
[LAUGHTER]
BOB GARFIELD:
I apologize. It was probably nothing personal.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
What was the ad about?
PHIL MASTMAN:
It was for the Fifth Third Bank here in Cincinnati.
[OVERTALK]
BOB GARFIELD:
Oh, I so remember that.
PHIL MASTMAN:
It was probably like five or six years ago. Do you remember that?
BOB GARFIELD:
Yeah.
PHIL MASTMAN:
And they used the character Mini-Me in a commercial. [BROOKE LAUGHS] And [LAUGHS] Bob took issue with that.
BOB GARFIELD:
Well, my apologies, Phil. [PHIL LAUGHS] I'll see that that doesn't happen again, although if you keep calling me “smarmy” you’re -
[LAUGHTER]
- you’re – you’re more vulnerable than you otherwise might be.
[LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Phil, do you have any questions for us?
PHIL MASTMAN:
Well, I would love to know the story behind this delivery [BROOKE LAUGHS] that Bob does at the end of the show every time. I'm sure there’s, there’s got to be some inside story to it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Do you know that we have gotten, over the eight years we've done this show, more letters about that than any other single thing?
[PHIL LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD:
Phil, I'd like to accommodate you but I just can't tell you everything because, truthfully, this is the love that dare not speak its name. [LAUGHS] But way back when, in the mid-'80s, I was doing pieces for All Things Considered and Brooke was my editor. And, you know, sometimes those editing sessions were a little bit on the contentious side, much as the Civil War was a little on the contentious side.

But every single time, save one – [PHIL LAUGHING] I came to understand, at the end of the process, that my piece had not only been improved but dramatically improved because it had been – edited – by Brooke. [LAUGHS]
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Bob did stories about a sort of bizarro America, Charles Kuralt style, and there was this friar who basically evangelized on the side of the road and ate what people threw to him. And Bob has him eating a two-day-old taco that he finds on the side of the road, and I felt that it stacked the deck against the friar. Bob will never agree with that edit.
BOB GARFIELD:
[LAUGHS] Yeah, Brooke felt that it made this guy who stood outside on the highway for 16 hours a day, flagging cars down for Jesus - she thought it made him, well, seem a little odd.
[LAUGHTER]
PHIL MASTMAN:
Well, I have to say that if this t-shirt design was the catalyst that finally satisfied all of us listeners’ curiosity about that reading of the credits at the end of the program, then it’s all worthwhile.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Phil, thank you so much.
BOB GARFIELD:
Take care, man.
PHIL MASTMAN:
It was a great honor. Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Phil Mastman, TV commercial director from Cincinnati, Ohio, and designer of the first On the Media t-shirt.