After his interview, Rodale remained onstage, and was seated on a couch beside the next interviewee, New York Post columnist Pete Hamill. According to Dick Cavett, Hamill noticed that Rodale had appeared to lose consciousness, leaned over to Cavett, and said, "This looks bad." Cavett is then said to have quipped, "Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?"; Cavett himself has "emphatically" denied any memory of saying this, though others who were in the studio have recalled it.