Duologue with Leslie Heaney

Surviving 9/11: my friend of over thirty years, Tim Grant, is speaking publicly for the first time about what happened to him that morning. Tim was on the 105th floor of the South Tower at the World Trade Center — one of only a handful of people who made it out from that floor and above. In this conversation, he walks me through that day minute by minute: the heat and fireball when the first plane hit the tower next door, his decision to leave his desk immediately rather than wait for instructions, and the more than one hundred flights of stairs he descended, which grew far more crowded and much slower once the second plane struck his own building while he was already partway down, around the 60th floor. He also describes his desperate attempt afterward to reach his fiancée from a payphone with no cell service working. Twenty-five years later, Tim opens up about what came after — the funerals, becoming a father, and how that morning has shaped the way he's lived every day since.

(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:31) Tim's morning on September 11th before anything happened
(00:07:09) Feeling the heat from the first plane hitting Tower One
(00:09:55) Tim's decision to leave his desk immediately
(00:13:08) Descending to the 78th floor with Rob and Tom
(00:18:00) The second plane hits Tim's own building
(00:25:01) Reaching the bottom and the devastation outside
(00:44:03) Life after 9/11 — funerals, family, and moving forward
(00:47:58) Tim's message on what he wants us to remember

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Fashion designer Lela Rose has spent almost thirty years building her ready-to-wear and bridal label. But when she left New York for Jackson Hole, Wyoming, she opened something completely different — a tiny log cabin store called Lela Rose Ranch. In this episode of our summer travel series, Lela shares her story and her full guide to Jackson Hole, from the best hikes to a night out at the Cowboy Bar.

(00:00:00) Intro
(00:00:14) Lela's 29 years in fashion and how she got started
(00:03:55) Neiman Marcus, quality control, and early lessons
(00:05:25) From ready-to-wear to bridal
(00:11:47) Leaving New York for Jackson Hole during COVID
(00:08:27) Opening the Lela Rose Ranch log cabin store
(00:22:09) What to pack for Jackson Hole
(00:22:23) Where to stay and where to eat
(00:35:06) Best hikes and outdoor adventures
(00:27:04) Entertaining outdoors and her two books

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Nick Mele has spent his whole life in Newport, Rhode Island — and turned his eye for that world into a career photographing it, in a style Town and Country refers to as "the Slim Aarons of our time." He's also the photographer behind the book A Newport Summer, his love letter to the place he grew up. On this episode, Nick shares where to stay, where to eat, and the local-only spots most visitors never find — everything you need for a perfect Newport summer weekend.

(00:00:00) Introduction
(00:35:55) Where to stay in Newport
(00:40:27) Where to eat and drink
(00:44:56) Cliff Walk and Rejects Beach
(00:47:20) Mansions, Newport Film, and museum culture
(00:52:30) Festivals, car shows, and Coaching Weekend
(00:56:22) Family-friendly spots outside town
(01:07:00) Outro

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Sarah Wetenhall had never worked in hospitality when she and her husband decided, almost on a dare, to buy The Colony Hotel in Palm Beach. She joins me to talk about turning decades as a guest into two of the most in-demand boutique hotels in the country, and what it took to build The Hedges Inn in East Hampton next.

(00:00) Introduction
(02:00) The Colony: family history & buying in with zero experience
(06:39) Deciding to buy The Hedges
(09:00) Opening The Hedges & bringing Swifty's east
(11:22) Inside the guest experience
(13:35) Local recs: restaurants, shops & hidden gems
(27:24) The Ina Garten story
(29:43) Best times to visit East Hampton
(32:00) What's next for Sarah and Andrew
(34:25) Community programming: Conversations at the Hedges
(39:10) Wrap-up

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They never appear in the photo. They never take the credit. But without them, there’s no flyover, no Brandenburg Gate speech, no “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” For sixty years, the people behind every presidential moment have operated under one unwritten rule: what happens on the road stays on the road. Jean Becker and Tom Collamore have finally convinced 96 of them to break it.
Jean and Tom join me to discuss their new book Don’t Tell the President, a bipartisan collection of stories spanning LBJ through Obama. We get into the bicycle bell phone trick that conjured a fake presidential call, how Chelsea Clinton ended up chasing Air Force One through Moscow in a laundry van, what really went into making Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech historic, and why Bob Dole ended up being greeted by Daffy Duck and Frankenstein at what was supposed to be a campaign event.
We also go to the serious side — 9/11, Sandy Hook, assassination attempts on Ford and Reagan — and what it means to be the person who has to put a president in the right place on the worst days in American history.
Jean Becker served as Chief of Staff to President George H.W. Bush is the author of The Man I Knew and Character Matters. Tom Collamore is a senior advisor to the George and Barbara Bush Foundation, was Chief of Staff and assistant Secretary of Commerce in the George H W Bush Administration senior fellow at the Bush Presidential Library and a veteran of multiple presidential trips.
(00:00:03) Introduction
(00:01:50) How the book came to be
(00:06:31) What does a presidential advance person actually do?
(00:08:46) John the Baptist: the first advance person
(00:10:43) The bicycle bell phone trick
(00:13:00) Chelsea Clinton and the Moscow laundry van
(00:15:27) How advance changed after the Reagan assassination attempt
(00:17:44) The Secret Service relationship
(00:20:08) Robert Gates as a pre-advance person
(00:22:28) The nude beach in Martinique
(00:24:48) George W. Bush, a safari, and elephant mating season
(00:27:10) The Vatican vs. the Bush team over a backdrop
(00:29:31) Two Clinton staffers, a locksmith, and a Texas standoff
(00:31:48) The president as comforter in chief
(00:34:12) 9/11 and the shoes Brian Montgomery still can't clean
(00:36:39) Reagan's Berlin Wall speech almost happened inside
(00:39:00) Obama at Sandy Hook
(00:41:25) Bob Dole, Daffy Duck, and the campaign event from hell
(00:45:59) Outro

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