Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of Maximum Fun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorne. Earlier this year, Barney Frank died. He was 86. Frank served in Congress for 32 years,

representing Massachusetts' fourth district. Between 2007 and 2011, he chaired the House Financial Services Committee.

If you remember your recent history,

well, you would be hard pressed to find a more consequential time to be overseeing finance policy in the United States. Of the hundreds of pieces of policy Barney Frank drafted proposed and

voted on, his signature might be the Dodd-Frank Act, which regulated financial institutions in the wake of the 2008

financial crisis. Barney Frank was a policy walk. He was also a great public speaker, genuinely funny.

He's certainly the funniest politician that I've known in my time. Definitely, if you loved him, a sort of lovable grump.

He was also a trailblazer.

He was the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out as gay.

In 2015, we took Bullseye on the road.

We did a live show in Boston, specifically in Cambridge,

and Barney Frank was kind

enough to join me on the stage.

He'd just recently retired from Congress, and he'd written a book, Frank, a life in politics

from the great society to same-sex marriage.

He showed up backstage, by himself, in a frumpy suit, sat down, looked at me, said,

oh, I'm in the right place, right? What am I going on? And then took out a book and read it

frowning until he came on the stage and was amazing. Let's listen back to my conversation

with the late Barney Frank.

All right, sir.

Well, thank you.

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