Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome to the show. This is Talk Easy. I'm
Speaker 1: San Fragoso and thank you for being here. This week
Speaker 1: on the podcast, we have screenwriter, critic, and podcaster himself,
Speaker 1: Andy Greenwald. Despite creating an impressive body of work writing
Speaker 1: about music at Spin magazine in the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: Andy came to prominence right around the time grant Land
Speaker 1: opened its doors. The beloved Bill Simmons operated publication offered
Speaker 1: Andy an outpost to write long form pieces of criticism
Speaker 1: about contemporary television. In the conversation You're about to hear,
Speaker 1: Greenwald admits almost at the top to being skeptical of
Speaker 1: this idea at first, which was pitched to him by
Speaker 1: childhood best friend Chris Ryan and Chuck Closterman. Andy loved television.
Speaker 1: He wanted to write television, though not write about it.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't long until Andy found himself taking to
Speaker 1: the position at ESPN's digital venture. For more than two years,
Speaker 1: Greenwald wrote authoritatively on TV at a time when people
Speaker 1: were more interested in reading about the latest HBO show
Speaker 1: than they were about what's playing in a movie theater
Speaker 1: near them. Greenwald now finds himself on the mountain rushmore
Speaker 1: of TV critics alongside Emily Nussbaum, Manzilla Sites, and Alan Sepinwall.
Speaker 1: In fact, Andy was so good at picking apart serialized
Speaker 1: programs that showrunners began coming to him about working on scripts.
Speaker 1: Once grant Land shuddered, Greenwald made jump from critic to creator.
Speaker 1: He hasn't looked back since. Greenwald has done a healthy
Speaker 1: amount of podcasting throughout his career. He co hosts The
Speaker 1: Watch with Chris, He's the host of the sporadic Andy
Speaker 1: Greenwalt podcast, and has appeared on plenty of the shows
Speaker 1: within the Ringers podcasting network. But in each of these shows,
Speaker 1: the focus tends to be on entertainment TV films, Punk Records,
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia Eagles. Like many of those who routinely listen
Speaker 1: as I do, those shows are consistently a blast. Few
Speaker 1: people can engage with are in a way that is
Speaker 1: both intelligent and playful. Greenwald always seems to do that. However,
Speaker 1: I admit that when I asked Andy to do the show,
Speaker 1: I noted that this conversation that he was going to
Speaker 1: have on Talk Easy would be a little different than
Speaker 1: what he's used to. While I've spent hours listening to Andy,
Speaker 1: I had no idea about who he was as a
Speaker 1: human being in the world. I knew his opinions on
Speaker 1: the young poet hope. There was no shortage of young
Speaker 1: pope opinions in fact, But what about his childhood or
Speaker 1: his college days with Chris, or that time he wrote
Speaker 1: a novel about a despondent Brooklyn writer who discovers he
Speaker 1: has a doppelganger. Yes, that is real. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of ground to cover in Andy's varied career. I think
Speaker 1: we did a solid job surveying all that we could,
Speaker 1: and I hope you enjoy this conversation. So here, finally
Speaker 1: is Annie Greenwald. So should I like yell your name
Speaker 1: in the beginning of this podcast like I'm used to it?
Speaker 1: I know you are. I don't think there's any reason too.
Speaker 1: But if you feel like it, where did that come from?
Speaker 1: I have no idea. He's He's an excitable guy. He's
Speaker 1: very excitable, except I feel like it's never reciprocated as much.
Speaker 1: I feel like you need to be doing that to
Speaker 1: Chris every now and then. Well that's why I started
Speaker 1: doing the brands thing. At the end, they give him
Speaker 1: a little bit of a little bit of heat thrown
Speaker 1: back at him, but in general, no, I mean that
Speaker 1: was always the thing also he for you know, we
Speaker 1: started the podcast in UM when we were both in
Speaker 1: New York in January of twelve, and then he moved
Speaker 1: to LA two months later. So the majority of the
Speaker 1: first few years of the podcast, he was in LA
Speaker 1: in the nice Grandland studio and I was in my
Speaker 1: apartment in Brooklyn. So he was in a place that
Speaker 1: felt professional, and I think, yeah, it was like good
Speaker 1: audio quality, and I was in a dingy U while
Speaker 1: my apartment wasn't dingy, but it felt a little dingy,
Speaker 1: So I didn't feel like I didn't have the same energy.
Speaker 1: The back story of this partnership that you two were
Speaker 1: born in the same hospital, Noo, it just seems like
Speaker 1: you guys are attached at the hip. Well, what's amazing
Speaker 1: about it is that we both we both grew up
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, we both went to Quaker schools in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: We are I'm six months older, were essentially the same age.
Speaker 1: We knew people in common. His is father was a
Speaker 1: film critic that I read every week for the for
Speaker 1: the Philadelphian Inquirer. But we did not meet until college,
Speaker 1: and then we became best friends. Then well, so let's
Speaker 1: back up, because I want I wanted to say, um,
Speaker 1: I've heard you on anytime you do another podcast to
Speaker 1: do an interview, it is predominantly about it's gonna win
Speaker 1: the Emmys and and television shows you should watch because
Speaker 1: you spend a lot of time watching TV. Um or
Speaker 1: I give the impression that I spend a lot of time. Sure,
Speaker 1: do you give a good impression if it's just an impression. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're here at my home, you see. I own a TV,
Speaker 1: so that's it's kind of small. I gotta be honest.
Speaker 1: That's super small. Now. I thought it would be like
Speaker 1: a big TV. No. Well, because most of the stuff
Speaker 1: I get, it's like screeners. They send it to you
Speaker 1: on you know, through the link, and I have to
Speaker 1: watch it on a Crumby laptop screen or whatever because
Speaker 1: airplane is a lie and doesn't work, and those links
Speaker 1: never wait. You always end up waiting seven minutes for
Speaker 1: it to buffer and then it stops halfway through. I
Speaker 1: that's the best way to enjoy young Pope like for pauses.
Speaker 1: I think that's what ju Law like, why you signed up.
Speaker 1: He's like, people may not like it consistently, but if
Speaker 1: it stops and starts. He thinks they'll get it. He
Speaker 1: thinks they'll get it. I guess I mentioned that because
Speaker 1: is a frustrating to have your public perception be like
Speaker 1: the TV guy, and that is almost the only thing
Speaker 1: people seem to know about you. No, I can't believe
Speaker 1: I have a public perception. How great? I mean, what
Speaker 1: a nice thing to have. Its It's nice to be
Speaker 1: considered an authority or at least of voice worth hearing
Speaker 1: on any topic. I mean that maybe that's the frustrated
Speaker 1: freelancer and me talking who spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: saying things or writing things, and I don't know how
Speaker 1: many people were paying attention. So so no, I think
Speaker 1: it's great. And also I do care about TV. I
Speaker 1: mean I care about storytelling. I care about its place
Speaker 1: in the culture and how we respond to it and
Speaker 1: how we consume it and produce it. So I'm I
Speaker 1: think it's fun. You're fine with that. Yeah, it's so far,
Speaker 1: so good. But but your childhood, Yes, what happened? What's
Speaker 1: going on? I watched television? You watched it was that? Like,
Speaker 1: were you like jet appata? Because you've heard those stories
Speaker 1: where jet apt like the only thing I think he
Speaker 1: was on Simmons podcast. Yeah, He's the only thing I
Speaker 1: did was watch TV non stop. You were born in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: that's I was born in Wilkesbury, PA. Wilkesbury, which is
Speaker 1: northeast Pennsylvania, and then I moved to Philadelphia when I
Speaker 1: was one. Okay, so essentially yes. Uh. And was TV
Speaker 1: part of the equation early on or were you just Um?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. I don't know how much
Speaker 1: my screen experience was monitored the way that we do
Speaker 1: now with children. Um. I mean I remember watching TV.
Speaker 1: I remember watching I remember being in my parents' bedroom
Speaker 1: watching the TV at the foot of their bed when
Speaker 1: the news broke in that John Lennon had been killed. Um,
Speaker 1: and that was sort of that was an intense thing
Speaker 1: to learn about. How was he was? He killed an
Speaker 1: eighty I was three before my time, but I was three,
Speaker 1: I think, Um, so I was watching TV then? Um? No,
Speaker 1: I mean I I mostly read. I was just an
Speaker 1: enormous reader. Um. But to your question about TV, like
Speaker 1: he almost in retrospe it seems ridiculous that it took
Speaker 1: me until whatever year it was that I started writing
Speaker 1: about TV because I was that kid who when I
Speaker 1: went to my grandparents house, would pick up the copy
Speaker 1: of TV Guide on the beds on the side table
Speaker 1: and read it like a magazine. Like I cared about
Speaker 1: cheers and jeers. I paid attention to ratings and who
Speaker 1: was in the cast of shows when I was like ten.
Speaker 1: Why was that I found? I think I found the
Speaker 1: minutia interesting. I definitely always was interested in how things
Speaker 1: got made and who made the things, and knowing things
Speaker 1: like this. This is definitely inherited my dad as a
Speaker 1: as a PhD in English literature, and like his party
Speaker 1: trick was that he would know the birth and death
Speaker 1: dates of poets and things like he would just which
Speaker 1: is not really I mean, he also knows poems, which
Speaker 1: is probably more valuable, but he would like factoids, you know.
Speaker 1: So I do you see him dispense this information? Oh sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's slate. At parties, people came over and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: like Edmund Burke, Yeah I need to know birth and
Speaker 1: death yere No. But like this idea of like knowing
Speaker 1: things as like the brain as a you know, like
Speaker 1: a curated experience of information was was definitely part of
Speaker 1: my childhood. But but I also would just appeal to me, like,
Speaker 1: I like to know when you saw the names at
Speaker 1: the beginning of a TV show or movies, I'd like
Speaker 1: to know what those names were and what those names
Speaker 1: meant and what they did, and where those people came from,
Speaker 1: where they came from, where you could see them again,
Speaker 1: Did you have that about sports? Because that was my experience.
Speaker 1: I had like an encyclopedic knowledge of like NBA and MLB,
Speaker 1: and I'd memorized statistics and all this stuff I did.
Speaker 1: I was a sports I had these two major eras
Speaker 1: of sportsman. And when I was really little, I was
Speaker 1: a big baseball fan because my dad's a big baseball um.
Speaker 1: From learning about John Lennon's death to I think that's
Speaker 1: going to be the chronicle. Yeah, that's a huge moment
Speaker 1: in my life. From then until trying to think like
Speaker 1: a big baseball fan, probably until I was like ten
Speaker 1: or eleven, and I took a sports hiatus for like
Speaker 1: until probably until high school, and then I became as
Speaker 1: to your point, like then I took that part of
Speaker 1: my brain. I used to joke that I must have
Speaker 1: run out of like actors names to learn, because then
Speaker 1: I just I went all in on the NFL and
Speaker 1: NBA and became I mean I had to step back
Speaker 1: from football fandom because it was it was, it was
Speaker 1: a lot, it was too much. It was it was
Speaker 1: it was damaging my life. So it seems you you
Speaker 1: like things that would provide alternate universes. Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 1: I mean I liked, uh, you know, I think this
Speaker 1: is it's not an atypical thing to become like very
Speaker 1: obsessive in collectory um and sort of define yourself that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I just walked back from saying that because
Speaker 1: I feel like it is you know in general, like
Speaker 1: you know, when you show up When I showed up
Speaker 1: at college and you meet people who might be your friends,
Speaker 1: it was like I'll show you my CD collection if
Speaker 1: you show me yours. Yeah. Um, it was a very
Speaker 1: much thing oriented. I'm sure they were like measuring contest
Speaker 1: or is it a yeah, I think in a very
Speaker 1: uh sort of intellectualized meta soft way. Yeah, it's okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I discovered new stuff, you know, especially in high school. Um.
Speaker 1: I think you and I maybe had a similar where
Speaker 1: we toggled back and forth between I love film, but
Speaker 1: then I was also about NBA fan. Yeah, were you
Speaker 1: doing both and that. Yeah, I was definitely devouring the
Speaker 1: sports pages and the entertainment pages. I think that makes deaf,
Speaker 1: I think as an anomaly though, I mean I didn't
Speaker 1: know many people like that. You kind of had to
Speaker 1: either pick one of the other, definitely, and my experience,
Speaker 1: I think, with a lot of cultural things was definitely segregated.
Speaker 1: You know. I think that one of the reasons Chris
Speaker 1: and I got along Chris Ryan and I got along
Speaker 1: so well instantly when we met in ninety six, was
Speaker 1: because he was one of the few people I knew
Speaker 1: who cared about pavement as much as he cared about Biggie,
Speaker 1: as much as he cared about Allen Iverson. Like, we
Speaker 1: were equally just inspired and obsessed with all those things.
Speaker 1: And you know, generally I had friends who were sports
Speaker 1: fans who you generally would get friends who are one
Speaker 1: out of of the three, and then you sort of
Speaker 1: pick between them. I don't know why it's one of
Speaker 1: the other. Yeah, I mean it definitely felt in general that,
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, this was something that I
Speaker 1: actually cared about enough to do. The basis of the
Speaker 1: EMO book I wrote was that like teenage lives are
Speaker 1: so defined by external forces. You know, you look for
Speaker 1: something to latch onto to define yourself, and you know,
Speaker 1: I do think things like Free Darko and then you know,
Speaker 1: into Grantland like sort of made it public to be
Speaker 1: the kind of quote unquote cool or culturally interested sports fan,
Speaker 1: the alt sports fan, or whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 1: that there wasn't really a represent that really wasn't represented.
Speaker 1: I think when I was in high school, it was
Speaker 1: really one thing or the other thing. It was sort
Speaker 1: of impossible to imagine bringing a sort of a sideways
Speaker 1: viewpoint to sports. And similarly, like some of my people
Speaker 1: were still my friends, like showed up loving indie rock
Speaker 1: and literally laughed when I said, you know, I also
Speaker 1: like Wu Tang clan, like like na matters to me,
Speaker 1: Like it was just not it was not comprehend It
Speaker 1: was not incomprehensible to them. And I feel like those divisions,
Speaker 1: thankfully have seemingly melted away. Not to day year, But
Speaker 1: what year were you in high school? You can date me.
Speaker 1: I graduated high school in ninety five. Um, where was
Speaker 1: what was your place in high school? Were you writing stuff?
Speaker 1: Like how did you? Um? It was there like a
Speaker 1: social group you were part of I'm just fascinated. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I went to I said, I went to Quaker school
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, just outside of Philadelphia, and I had a
Speaker 1: very very very small class. And I went to the school,
Speaker 1: the same school from kindergarten through graduating, so thirteen years
Speaker 1: in the same place. So I knew the people pretty
Speaker 1: well and I need the lay of the land pretty well. Um,
Speaker 1: I would say that. I I mean, I did a
Speaker 1: lot of plays. You can you can infer what you
Speaker 1: want from that. Um, I mean, yeah, I wrote what
Speaker 1: do you want? I mean the role in the firmament. Um,
Speaker 1: I was not on the lacrosse team. I was definitely
Speaker 1: in all the plays and uh, but I was also
Speaker 1: I was in I did student government. I was a
Speaker 1: student council president. Oh yeah, see now the pieces of
Speaker 1: the puzzle are coming other piece, but bringing it all
Speaker 1: the way back. The best thing. The reason I wanted
Speaker 1: to be student council president is you ran the assemblies
Speaker 1: and you could do things like play Boutang Clan or
Speaker 1: channel live or whatever. As the people came into the
Speaker 1: uh you know, the auditorium. So it was teenage and
Speaker 1: they interested in power. No, that was my last prussure
Speaker 1: with power. I really I really liked I really like
Speaker 1: my school. I had liked high school. That was funny.
Speaker 1: Way I ended up writting about EMO later and like
Speaker 1: kids who who didn't because I had a great time
Speaker 1: in high school. Right. I was fascinated by the book
Speaker 1: because I came out in two thousand and three. But
Speaker 1: before that, you go to college Brown, Yeah, you get in,
Speaker 1: you major in English. So when do you meet Chris?
Speaker 1: Do you have like an origin? So yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like I've said this before, but I'm happy to share it. Um,
Speaker 1: there was so I had my freshman year, I met
Speaker 1: a woman who a classmate at Brown who was from
Speaker 1: Philadelphia who had gone to UM Friends Select, which was
Speaker 1: the name of the downtown Quaker school UM and Uh.
Speaker 1: That summer, the summer between freshman and sophomore year, I
Speaker 1: worked at the Borders Books in Music in Rosemont pia Um,
Speaker 1: which is sort of near UM Haverford College. To clarify,
Speaker 1: it's Borders Books and Music. Well that's what they called it.
Speaker 1: Then they had Orders. Well it's Borders, but they sold
Speaker 1: books and CDs. Um. Back then I worked in the bookstore.
Speaker 1: I should have just said books. I had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the CD side except sometimes so I'd buy
Speaker 1: them with my discount um. Anyway, so I was working
Speaker 1: there that summer, and uh, this young woman was coming
Speaker 1: in a lot and uh talking to me and and
Speaker 1: and and eventually, I guess because she she wanted to
Speaker 1: hang out or talk to me more. She was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: I have a friend who likes those bands that you like.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, yeah, because you know, you
Speaker 1: don't like dogs sniffing each other, Like oh sure, sure.
Speaker 1: So then she walked in one day that summer with
Speaker 1: a red headed kid, and I think we looked at
Speaker 1: each other's band T shirts. You know, He's like, oh
Speaker 1: arches a loofia, you look apples and stereo okay, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And like we went to the Villanova Diner and had
Speaker 1: grilled cheese sandwiches and we became best friends. And I
Speaker 1: girl liked you, I think, yeah. I dated her for
Speaker 1: a year and a half after that. But but Chris, Chris,
Speaker 1: Chris stiled the deal. I was like, you bring me, Chris,
Speaker 1: I'll date you. No, no, no, no, she was She's
Speaker 1: she's wonderful. It seemed like you're a little unconvinced. Before
Speaker 1: Chris was part of the equation. We definitely, Well, no,
Speaker 1: I think it just being having Chris as the the
Speaker 1: the third point in the triangle gave us more opportunity
Speaker 1: to hang out each other. No. They they had known
Speaker 1: each other for you know, since first grade or whatever.
Speaker 1: So was it one of those friendships and calls it
Speaker 1: like it was like immediate and suddenly you spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time. Yes, Well, so he wasn't at Brown,
Speaker 1: he was at Emerson in Boston. Um, but it was
Speaker 1: immediate in that he immediately became one of my best friends.
Speaker 1: He immediately became very close friends with all of my
Speaker 1: friends at college, started dating one of my friends, uh
Speaker 1: at school, and and you know, so we would I
Speaker 1: would go up to Boston to see concerts. Um. He
Speaker 1: had red ash. What's that? He had red hair. He
Speaker 1: still does, he does redheaded, redheaded, half jew Um and Uh.
Speaker 1: He would come down to Providence constantly, and we would
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time doing that drive from Philadelphia
Speaker 1: to get up together. And yeah, what were those drives
Speaker 1: Like a lot of curated mixtapes, a lot of mixtapes.
Speaker 1: And he would always be like, Hey, there's no traffic,
Speaker 1: this is gonna go great. And then you know, then
Speaker 1: you hit the patch after trenton UM. And then he
Speaker 1: also is incredibly optimistic about cinnamon and how it's really
Speaker 1: worth getting and he's going to feel great after this.
Speaker 1: I heard, Yes, Yeah, Cinnabon's one of those things that
Speaker 1: seems good. But then once you have it, you're like,
Speaker 1: oh boy, I can vouch for that. What a mess.
Speaker 1: I can vouch for that. It seems like that dynamic
Speaker 1: was established purely. I don't think anything's changed, Andy, No,
Speaker 1: nothing's shamed. I mean, that's the most ridiculous thing is that,
Speaker 1: like we just would we do this stuff anyway? We
Speaker 1: talk about this stuff anyway. Um, you know, if we're
Speaker 1: not doing the show, we're texting each other. So and
Speaker 1: then you know, he I went to New York after
Speaker 1: graduating UM and started working at Spin. And then he
Speaker 1: came down to like very few months later and started
Speaker 1: contributing to Spin dot com where I was working, and
Speaker 1: and then and then immediately became very close with the
Speaker 1: whole crew of writers we had at Spin. And it
Speaker 1: was basically and started writing for the magazine. So this
Speaker 1: was in New York. Yeah, this is in ninety nine thousand.
Speaker 1: So you leave college, you immediately get this job. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I interned at Spin um in the summer of ninety eight,
Speaker 1: and while I was interning, I got I started writing
Speaker 1: reviews for what was then called Spin Online. Because Spin,
Speaker 1: showing the same wisdom they would apply to all of
Speaker 1: their dealings with the Internet, had a quote internet presence
Speaker 1: that was only for AOL subscribers, and because of that
Speaker 1: they couldn't for any reasons, they didn't pay anyone to contribute,
Speaker 1: So summer interns would write reviews. So I like reviewed
Speaker 1: Arabstrap records for them, you know, to be seen by
Speaker 1: fives of AOL subscribers. But having that relationship paid off
Speaker 1: because then when I went back to school senior year,
Speaker 1: they they launched Spin dot com, you know, just on time,
Speaker 1: in a March of ninety nine, and I had the
Speaker 1: first review up on it. It was Blurs thirteen and
Speaker 1: they that paid like thirty bucks. Yeah, so I was good.
Speaker 1: So and then in May of ninety nine, I went
Speaker 1: to New York actually to pick up my girlfriend who's
Speaker 1: coming back from a different girlfriend the one we mentioned
Speaker 1: from a semester abroad, stop by the Spin office to
Speaker 1: pick up a copy of a CD Advanced CD review
Speaker 1: as Moby's Play, and my editor there was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: we're looking for a editorial assistant, you should interview, And
Speaker 1: I did, and so I started working there two days
Speaker 1: after graduating. Was writing the plan in college. Did you think, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go find a job. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: loved I loved writing well. Also I knew I didn't
Speaker 1: know I could do it well, but I knew I could.
Speaker 1: It didn't seem like that much work. It seemed fun
Speaker 1: and music was the primary passion my life at that point,
Speaker 1: and I knew I wasn't playing it. But the secret,
Speaker 1: the dirty secret, maybe it's not a secret about writing
Speaker 1: about music for a living. Is this the one thing
Speaker 1: you don't really have to know anything to do. You
Speaker 1: don't have to know about chord changes or how to
Speaker 1: tune a drum like you'd really just know you need
Speaker 1: to know how to use adjectives, have very strong opinions.
Speaker 1: But the other thing that Chris and I really bonded
Speaker 1: over in college was we were not just fans of music.
Speaker 1: We were huge fans of music writing. We were obsessed
Speaker 1: with the names in spin, particularly in a couple other places,
Speaker 1: and you know, we had many, many, many plans to
Speaker 1: do our own zines and you know, do our own projects.
Speaker 1: And we were always buying like Enemies and Melody Makers
Speaker 1: and paying attention stuff that way. So working for Spin
Speaker 1: was the dream, Like that was I could not imagine
Speaker 1: anything cooler than that. Were you both equally ambitious at
Speaker 1: that age. See, I don't know if it was ambition,
Speaker 1: like I don't to me, just that doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: the highest ambition to have. I didn't have any thought
Speaker 1: past that. I just thought like, there would be nothing
Speaker 1: cooler than being in New York and writing for Spin,
Speaker 1: because then you could get all the records early, and
Speaker 1: you could advocate for them and make funny jokes and
Speaker 1: get to know Charles Aaron and Sia Michael and Simon
Speaker 1: Reynolds and all the people. I was reading, you know, obsessively,
Speaker 1: and that seemed certainly seemed like enough. And then part
Speaker 1: of doing this is up by this point, you're starting
Speaker 1: to write your book that came in later. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'd been doing, you know, the right, I was just writing.
Speaker 1: I was just looking for any opportunity to write. So
Speaker 1: I was writing creatively. I was doing like playwriting college.
Speaker 1: When I got to Spin, I was assisting the non
Speaker 1: music editor. The features editor is a guy named Dave
Speaker 1: Moody who who founded something in San Francisco called Mike
Speaker 1: Magazine with Dave Eggers. So I was actually answering his
Speaker 1: phone that summer right before Heartbreaking Work if Staggering Genius
Speaker 1: came out and all these calls were happening, and I
Speaker 1: was like to my boss Dave, I was like, what's
Speaker 1: what's going on and he was just like, nothing, somebody's
Speaker 1: writing a book about me. And so you remember the
Speaker 1: thing about Heartbreaking Work is that like Eggers put everyone's
Speaker 1: real name in, put their phone numbers in the back.
Speaker 1: Like there was very you know, meta like see behind
Speaker 1: the screen. But I don't think the friends were super
Speaker 1: into it. I'm imagine that. So yeah, so Aggers was
Speaker 1: calling like to make that mollify that a lot, I remember,
Speaker 1: but but in general, you know, I was writing for
Speaker 1: the website, but my opportunity strite for the magazine involved
Speaker 1: like my third week, Dave Moody coming by my desk
Speaker 1: being like, do you like video games? And I was like,
Speaker 1: I had a genesis, and he's like, here, this is
Speaker 1: called Dreamcast. It's coming out. This is a Japanese one,
Speaker 1: set it up at home, play it, and you're going
Speaker 1: to San Francisco to like cover the launch. So I
Speaker 1: became the video game critic, you know, which is just sure,
Speaker 1: but any opportunities, opportunities, So like writing about my first
Speaker 1: byeline was a story about a Dreamcast game called Soul Caliber,
Speaker 1: and the headline was Samurai whoop ass. I'm very proud
Speaker 1: of that. You remember the specific Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: remember looking at that being like, what a what a
Speaker 1: first byeline, what an honor? It's amazing that the landscape
Speaker 1: has changed so much. Yeah, this sort of the idea
Speaker 1: that that one stumbles into something like this, it's almost
Speaker 1: non existent though. Well also just print. I mean I
Speaker 1: may have told this before into a microphone, but like,
Speaker 1: there are a number of things that I hold up
Speaker 1: from what has not been the longest career hopefully yet,
Speaker 1: but of just having existed in a different era. One
Speaker 1: of them was like, you know, Blender sending me to
Speaker 1: Milan to interview my chemical romance for a cover story
Speaker 1: for like forty eight hours. But the biggest one to
Speaker 1: me was I think it was the December ninety nine
Speaker 1: issue of Spin. We were all working on it, and
Speaker 1: there was this thing called closing, which is the week
Speaker 1: you would like they would order dinner and you would
Speaker 1: stay late because you were actually making the physical magazine
Speaker 1: to send off. And I remember the publisher the ad
Speaker 1: sales came up to our floor and they were like,
Speaker 1: we got to crash in more copy because we sold
Speaker 1: too many ads. The magazine actually had to get bigger.
Speaker 1: So they were like, okay, so they ran a piece
Speaker 1: about there was a show at the Brooklyn Museum that
Speaker 1: Giuliani got really angry about. It's called it was like
Speaker 1: a shock art show, you know. So we like ran
Speaker 1: a piece on that in spin Perfect, like what it's base,
Speaker 1: basically saying that I used to like skitch on the
Speaker 1: back of a dinosaur to get to get to school
Speaker 1: in the morning. To say that, like, there was a
Speaker 1: time when there were so many ads for print that
Speaker 1: we need too much money here, we need too much money.
Speaker 1: Why don't you cover an art show? It was a
Speaker 1: different at different time. Did you know that you were
Speaker 1: living in some sort of golden age at that point? No,
Speaker 1: I mean, because it seemed even then, I mean maybe
Speaker 1: all magazines were like this, but even then, I would
Speaker 1: say a hallmark of spin was that they never it
Speaker 1: was a little magazine that couldn't and didn't. That's what
Speaker 1: I always would say about it, like I love it dearly,
Speaker 1: I love the people there, but you know, like I
Speaker 1: joined the magazine that was just coming off of this
Speaker 1: totally unique supernova of a time when the artist that
Speaker 1: they editorially wanted to support could also be put on
Speaker 1: the cover. So they could put Kim Deal on the cover,
Speaker 1: PJ Harvey on the cover, Smashing Pumpkins or Vana, whatever.
Speaker 1: You could put those bands on the cover, feel good
Speaker 1: about it and sell magazines. I entered into an eraw
Speaker 1: when it's just like, Okay, we're gonna put beccantry Amos
Speaker 1: on the cover my first summer there. But then they
Speaker 1: weren't quote, they weren't like popular in the same way anymore.
Speaker 1: And so then I was there during the era when
Speaker 1: they were like Papa Roach Pink, like what isn't cover
Speaker 1: artists for a music magazine, So it already felt like
Speaker 1: something was shifting, and then I I was I was
Speaker 1: Dave Moody's assistant for six months, and then I took
Speaker 1: over the website at age twenty three, which is not
Speaker 1: a compliment to me. It's just more of an indictment
Speaker 1: of their lack of foresight about anything so quickly. Not
Speaker 1: compliment yourself. I've noticed, no, but this is really true.
Speaker 1: I was the director of new Media for Vibe Spin
Speaker 1: Ventures at the age of twenty four, overseeing Vibe Spin
Speaker 1: and Blaze magazine's websites. We had our own staff, We
Speaker 1: had a video person, We did all this video stuff.
Speaker 1: We had like our favorite bands come in play on
Speaker 1: our couch and not ideal was ideal for me for you?
Speaker 1: So I was like, I'm at for the business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like like death Cabs, Spoon whatever, Like they were
Speaker 1: close to our age, like come in and they just played.
Speaker 1: No one signed anything. We had all this footage. No
Speaker 1: one magazine wanted anything to do with it. They did
Speaker 1: not understand any of it. I had to like beg
Speaker 1: and cadrole to get into editorial meetings to try and
Speaker 1: coordinate the coverage. We were running our own reviews of
Speaker 1: stuff they were running. It was nonsensical. My favorite memory
Speaker 1: from that era was I like that you smiled during
Speaker 1: this whole Oh god, it's the best joke I'll ever had.
Speaker 1: I mean, best job I'll ever have. And I called
Speaker 1: it a joke, which is true. I remember my boss
Speaker 1: coming by once saying like, you know, this is someone
Speaker 1: like he's thinking about investing in what we're doing here.
Speaker 1: He's very interested in, like the video stuff, because we
Speaker 1: were doing video stuff when only college students had broadband basically,
Speaker 1: so no one could watch the stuff we were doing.
Speaker 1: So we're very interested in investing in the broadband. There
Speaker 1: this kind of company whatever and talked about, and I
Speaker 1: showed him the stuff we were doing, and I was like, so, sorry,
Speaker 1: what was the company again? The guys like Enron. So
Speaker 1: Enron almost bought Spin dot com or invested in it,
Speaker 1: which is just you know, Italian chef fingers perfect. So
Speaker 1: that that was that era. Yeah. And then and then
Speaker 1: in two months after nine eleven or two months before
Speaker 1: nine eleven, so it's the summer of two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: they fired everyone except me and moved me into a
Speaker 1: storage closet off the Vibe conference room. And that was
Speaker 1: when I was like, I should probably try to do
Speaker 1: something else. And that's when I started writing. That's that's
Speaker 1: when I pitched and sold the first book. So post
Speaker 1: Spin days, you need to recollect, Well, I was still
Speaker 1: there right now but you have no job. You were
Speaker 1: already mapping out. Yeah. I was literally in a closet, right, Um,
Speaker 1: not a joke, Like I would walk out to get
Speaker 1: lunch and the Vibe editors would cry out in shock
Speaker 1: because they didn't know someone was in that closet and
Speaker 1: that was my place of business. And so concurrently with that,
Speaker 1: I had started writing. I wrote the first piece on
Speaker 1: Dashboard Confessional for Spin and had been covering some of
Speaker 1: these because I was writing a lot for the magazine.
Speaker 1: So I was covering a lot of these bands, and
Speaker 1: I was like, I feel like there's something happening here
Speaker 1: that's worthy of investigation. So I pitched it, sold it,
Speaker 1: and then quit the closet job, but stayed on the
Speaker 1: masthead as a senior contributing writer. And considering all this writing,
Speaker 1: I'm interested and um, like where you came from? Yea,
Speaker 1: a suburb of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Yeah, Um, did you ever
Speaker 1: feel like you weren't? Mean that's not maybe not a
Speaker 1: matter of being in touch, but like not the ideal
Speaker 1: candidate to be writing about all these like gives you bands? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: like you're wearing a nice shirt right now, it's like
Speaker 1: button up and no, I was there. What did you
Speaker 1: go through a punk phase? Now? So is that whole
Speaker 1: book a live not at all first page or a
Speaker 1: third page? I'm like, this was not my world. I
Speaker 1: was very very very upfront about it. I need to
Speaker 1: read this book always what And I wrote about like,
Speaker 1: well what was my way into this? Now? So did
Speaker 1: you play the Wallflowers card? Is that? Well to go
Speaker 1: to go back? I remember very clearly, like one time
Speaker 1: in ninety seven going to visit Chris. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: during the summer even between, like when school wasn't in, like,
Speaker 1: and he used to work at Newbray Comics, the record
Speaker 1: store in Boston, and so I would meet him there
Speaker 1: or whatever. And I remember going to his place just
Speaker 1: raving about the newbell and Sebastian EP three six nine
Speaker 1: Seconds of Light, and he was just like this is
Speaker 1: the truth and he handed me nothing feels good by
Speaker 1: the promise ring and I was like pass, hard, hard, pass.
Speaker 1: And we sort of went in different directions for a while.
Speaker 1: But he was very much involved, and he played in
Speaker 1: the band. His roommates were in an emo band, so
Speaker 1: he was he had like get up kids staying in
Speaker 1: his basement, like this was this was more his story
Speaker 1: than it was mine. And he's actually a character in
Speaker 1: the book. I quoted him quite a bit. So does
Speaker 1: your friendship drift apart for a while? Drift apart in
Speaker 1: the sense that, like he was finishing school and living. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we would see each other. We didn't have
Speaker 1: cell phones, so it was not nearly as constant. But
Speaker 1: that's like ninety seven ninety eight. He was doing his thing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like so I was, so my way into
Speaker 1: this was young people. I wrote. This was the first
Speaker 1: piece I wrote about Dashboard for Spin and November of
Speaker 1: November of a one, and I put this anecdote in
Speaker 1: the book too. But like I showed up. It was
Speaker 1: a show at CBGB's and I remember walking up there
Speaker 1: and I'd been there many times before, you know, covering stuff,
Speaker 1: because I mean I may have had button down shirts,
Speaker 1: but I was still quote unquote a rock critic. I
Speaker 1: mean that was my job, was to talk to bands
Speaker 1: and stuff. And instead of seeing the usual crowd in
Speaker 1: front of CBGB's, what I saw was like range rovers
Speaker 1: from like Suffolk County, from Long Island, dropping off high
Speaker 1: school kids wearing like game cox hats, you know, and
Speaker 1: like pleaded khakis, and I was like, I know, you kids,
Speaker 1: like you're the enemy, like even to me, like people
Speaker 1: who dressed like this were the enemy. Like this was
Speaker 1: not who I was or who I wanted to talk to,
Speaker 1: and certainly not who would be going to a punk show.
Speaker 1: And then you see these kids going to CBGB's and
Speaker 1: they're screaming their hearts out, you know. And I interviewed
Speaker 1: some of them afterwards and they were like, we really
Speaker 1: care about art, we care about writing in our journals.
Speaker 1: And I was like, what the fuck is happening? And suddenly,
Speaker 1: so what interested me was this democratization of a quote
Speaker 1: unquote outcast teenage experience. It's the idea that suddenly everyone
Speaker 1: was identifying with outcasts and loaners, because maybe everyone does
Speaker 1: on some level internally. And what the Internet and this
Speaker 1: third way, fifth way, whatever EMO was doing was basically
Speaker 1: making the underground accessible to everyone. Because I remember, like
Speaker 1: in high school, when I like I heard about Pavement
Speaker 1: or whatever, Yola Tango or whatever band I was into
Speaker 1: at the time, there was his records or Repo records
Speaker 1: right by boarders books and music. You know, It's like
Speaker 1: the grungy record store and you would go there and
Speaker 1: people would glare at you, like high fidelity style. But
Speaker 1: they had the imports, and they had the indies, and
Speaker 1: they the posters up from Matador and Merge and these
Speaker 1: other labels, and it was a little bit of work. Now,
Speaker 1: this was not hard work for me to go from
Speaker 1: where I lived to this part of the suburbs, but
Speaker 1: still crossing that threshold was a thing, just as it's
Speaker 1: even more of a thing, or used to be if
Speaker 1: you were in somewhere in rural America and like maybe
Speaker 1: your brother, older brother or older cousin or uncle or
Speaker 1: aunts or sister gave you a Smith's record, you know,
Speaker 1: and was like, Okay, here's your passport to something else.
Speaker 1: And so I was noticing that this seemed to be
Speaker 1: that that's sort of what was happening on a large
Speaker 1: national scale, because EMO had been a regional thing and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it was a national thing. So
Speaker 1: that was what interested me. So I basically tried to
Speaker 1: pitch the book as me being like, can that sort
Speaker 1: of connection that many of us used to feel with
Speaker 1: one record that seemed to speak just to us, like
Speaker 1: alone in our dark bedrooms, can that become a national movement?
Speaker 1: Can that be a large scale thing. I think the
Speaker 1: answer was no, And ultimately the book was about social
Speaker 1: networks even though they didn't exist yet. And how like
Speaker 1: I wonder at the end of that book, if like
Speaker 1: reading about someone's actual feelings on what was then live
Speaker 1: journalism would now be I don't know whatever, would that
Speaker 1: take the place and ultimately be more powerful and take
Speaker 1: the place of Chris Corraba's lyrics. And I think the
Speaker 1: answer to that is definitely yes. What was that record
Speaker 1: for you? Um what was that record for me? In
Speaker 1: like when in high school, the one where you listen
Speaker 1: to and you're like, ah, this is why music is
Speaker 1: the best thing ever. There's so many like I wish
Speaker 1: you were asking nineteen year old me this because I
Speaker 1: would have like like a cough slightly and pulled out
Speaker 1: like a notebook or a right Seriously, I would have
Speaker 1: a detailed list. I mean, maybe it's easier if I ask,
Speaker 1: did your parents show you something? No, my father is
Speaker 1: a classical music like a vant garde classical music obsessive
Speaker 1: like my childhood is this soundtracked by him? Either, um
Speaker 1: let playing really loudly music that sounded like like crickets
Speaker 1: being massacred, or him trying to tune in I didn't
Speaker 1: know where that sentence was going me either, I didn't
Speaker 1: know where the music was going. Or him trying to
Speaker 1: tune in a Camox the voice of Saint Louis because
Speaker 1: he's Saint Louis Cardinal fan. So just static. My mom
Speaker 1: was like a big, big Beatles fan, but also like
Speaker 1: Peter Pollen, Mary and folk music and like Denver and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So, so what was your first discovery?
Speaker 1: For me, the big deal was the first record I
Speaker 1: ever bought was Thompson Twins Into the Gap when I
Speaker 1: was six, and I'm proud of that. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's a very good synthpop record. So I was really
Speaker 1: into music very young because we had MTV when I
Speaker 1: was We got MTV when I was like six or seven.
Speaker 1: I just watched it NonStop. But by the big one
Speaker 1: for me was RM. I became obsessed obsessed with RM.
Speaker 1: With my my best friend in middle school, we both
Speaker 1: beame obsessed with our gams to the point where we
Speaker 1: made our mothers take us on a spring break trip
Speaker 1: to Athens, Georgia, just to like be where RM was.
Speaker 1: I said, not even a show, no no, no, because
Speaker 1: they weren't touring then. So I became obsessed with them
Speaker 1: when Green was out and I just missed them play Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: And then they did not tour again until Monster, So
Speaker 1: it was like five or six years they didn't tour.
Speaker 1: So I actually didn't see them until I was already
Speaker 1: in college and like they had just been the gateway
Speaker 1: drug and I mean I still loved them, but they
Speaker 1: wasn't the same thing. But um, but the thing is that,
Speaker 1: you know, the way things used to work then is
Speaker 1: if you like one thing, then you slowly, you know,
Speaker 1: you pick at it and sometimes you so you listen
Speaker 1: RIM and you're like, well, Scott Lit produced this Scott
Speaker 1: Lit producer record by the replacements? What are the replacements?
Speaker 1: Then you become obsessed with the replacements and then you
Speaker 1: see an interview where someone says, I like RM the
Speaker 1: replacements and Toad the wet Sprocket and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: And not every path you go down is the right one,
Speaker 1: but you start chasing it, and you start chasing it. Um,
Speaker 1: this is the TV got stuff all over again. You
Speaker 1: know it is it? Because I also read Spin and
Speaker 1: I read Rolling Stone, and you know, uh, whatever else
Speaker 1: I could get my hands on, especially the British press.
Speaker 1: So that so that by the time I got to
Speaker 1: high school, it was it was. It was hip hop
Speaker 1: and indie rock. It was UM got It by Voices.
Speaker 1: It's a huge, huge band for me, and and Superchunk
Speaker 1: and I mentioned Arches a loaf stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: then and then also concurrently like Biggie Mutang, it's huge.
Speaker 1: I remember going to I went with my friend to
Speaker 1: a biggie show and he played like Springfield, Pennsylvania, which
Speaker 1: is just like there's a mall there. He went to
Speaker 1: a biggie show. Yeah, And I was in line for
Speaker 1: a long time in front of it, wearing like a
Speaker 1: see I was running a cap and I was probably
Speaker 1: dressed like this, and everyone in the crowd called me
Speaker 1: beastie boy. Nah. I'll give you a guess why because
Speaker 1: you kind of look like Horvitz Because I'm white. That's why.
Speaker 1: Spoiler there. I like this to all the ladies in
Speaker 1: the place with stylin grapes. Allow me to lace these difficushes,
Speaker 1: rock bruise and make moves with all the mommy the
Speaker 1: back of the club, sip the back of the club.
Speaker 1: Macke Music stuff seemed to come to a close around
Speaker 1: two thousand and three of the book comes out, and
Speaker 1: then well, so basically from that point for all that,
Speaker 1: basically for that decade, I am. I'm freelancing. I'm writing
Speaker 1: cover stories for Spin and Blender. I'm in Brooklyn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've in Brooklyn from ninety nine until August of last year.
Speaker 1: And I'm writing for Entertainment Weekly in Washington Post or
Speaker 1: basically wherever wherever we'll pay me to write, and almost
Speaker 1: entirely about music, because that was sort of the thing
Speaker 1: that I was known for. I had contacts and that's
Speaker 1: what I could do after my after the EMO book
Speaker 1: came out, I wrote a novel called Miss Misery, and
Speaker 1: that's very, very music heavy, to the point where I
Speaker 1: got some bands that I was friendly with to let
Speaker 1: me send a mix CD with the advanced copies of
Speaker 1: the book, which I'm very proud of. Still I wish
Speaker 1: people could I wish I could have come with the
Speaker 1: actual book, but like I got um, I think Jenny
Speaker 1: Lewis and Ray lo' highly and Jim Adkins from Jimmy World,
Speaker 1: and I forget who else is on there, but like
Speaker 1: I got them to agree to do this for the book.
Speaker 1: But by the way, the log line for this book,
Speaker 1: yeah I have here is a lonely Brooklyn twenty something
Speaker 1: David Gold has problems, blown work deadlines. I wrote this
Speaker 1: an obsession with an internet temptress he's never met in
Speaker 1: the flesh, and worst of all, a hedonistic double attempting
Speaker 1: to steal his identity. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's a book
Speaker 1: about a doppelganger. It's about internet culture before internet culture
Speaker 1: was a thing. It was. It was fun. It was
Speaker 1: a long time ago, but it was fun. But it
Speaker 1: was very soaked in music and also seemed slightly autobiographical.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, Yeah, So what happened was when I was
Speaker 1: writing this book about em when I was writing Nothing
Speaker 1: Feels Good Like, because so much of the book was
Speaker 1: about the kids. I mean that's what they called themselves,
Speaker 1: like the scene kids, like people who were fans. Because
Speaker 1: the argument ultimately was that EMO is a sort of
Speaker 1: a temporary moment that exists between fans and music. It's
Speaker 1: not really the bands, it's not the albums. It really
Speaker 1: is a fan driven thing. And so a lot of
Speaker 1: the research was me sitting in my apartment in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: a well instant messaging with like sixteen year olds in Utah,
Speaker 1: which definitely is illegal or should be illegal. It should
Speaker 1: one thousand percent be illegal. But you know, I was
Speaker 1: telling their stories and quoting them and using them in
Speaker 1: the book. And at the same time I was also
Speaker 1: finding this new world of like on live journals that
Speaker 1: I was writing about, where there were just these people
Speaker 1: who were not that much younger than me, but maybe
Speaker 1: three years younger than me. Because I was writing that
Speaker 1: book I was twenty five and twenty six, I guess
Speaker 1: who were just living a life that I didn't recognize
Speaker 1: in the city that I lived in. They were having
Speaker 1: these wild nights and like making these cross connections, and
Speaker 1: it seemed he was more intoxicating than reading fiction, and
Speaker 1: so I decided. So it came to me. I was
Speaker 1: on a train once in this idea came to me
Speaker 1: of like what if there was a sliding doors version
Speaker 1: of me, Like what if there was a version of
Speaker 1: me that tipped into that world? What if I started
Speaker 1: trying to live that life? What if what if one
Speaker 1: of these young people I was instant messaging with just
Speaker 1: suddenly came to Brooklyn like to meet me, or like
Speaker 1: to to flee her life and like what if all
Speaker 1: these things became tangible and weird ways. So in the book,
Speaker 1: the character is, you know, more extreme situation than I was.
Speaker 1: I was never like that writer's blocked. I was never
Speaker 1: left so completely alone as that character is. But starts
Speaker 1: writing a fake blog about all things he wishes he
Speaker 1: was doing, and then the blog starts updating itself because
Speaker 1: his heatons took topplic Ganger is running around New York
Speaker 1: City doing blow and you know, djaying parties and and
Speaker 1: and actually trying to hook up with the blog girls
Speaker 1: that I was reading. So it eat one book led
Speaker 1: to the other directly. But you prefer that version of
Speaker 1: you live on the page. And in reality, there was
Speaker 1: two thousand and four. There was two thousand and three
Speaker 1: and four, but it's a long time ago. What were
Speaker 1: those years like? Um? Fun, different from other years, different,
Speaker 1: very different from other years. Yeah, they were, they were fun,
Speaker 1: they were they were a lot more social. And then
Speaker 1: in two thousand and six, we'll bypass those years because sure,
Speaker 1: though it is you can ask Chris about those years.
Speaker 1: But Chris will come on next week and we'll have
Speaker 1: him after and we'll interrogate and see, yeah, ask him
Speaker 1: about asking him about playing like like FIFA four at dawn.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's not exactly what you were talking about. No,
Speaker 1: that's it's very connected. But but yeah, so he was
Speaker 1: living in the city then, Oh yeah, yeah, Chris moved
Speaker 1: to Brooklyn in ninety nine, so you guys were finally
Speaker 1: in the same city. Oh yeah, and we were from
Speaker 1: ninety nine to twenty twelve, and he was We had
Speaker 1: all the same friends, like as soon as he met
Speaker 1: all the people from Spin, they were his friends too.
Speaker 1: Was that a disaster or great? Oh? It was great. Oh,
Speaker 1: it was great. He lived for a little while, we
Speaker 1: lived in the same neighborhood and then we lived very close.
Speaker 1: I was in Park Slope, he was in Carol Gardens.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that you had so you said it was
Speaker 1: two thousand and four and two thousand and five, two thousand,
Speaker 1: three thousand four. Yea, So those years of whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call him. I don't know what's the right
Speaker 1: free play. I don't know that's the genitor. That's not sure.
Speaker 1: That's nice. They lead into what you describe here that
Speaker 1: I found only through the way Back time machine online.
Speaker 1: You wrote on your blog it said, um two yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was a blog spot. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it was. I had. It was Andy greenwaldt had
Speaker 1: a website for the books and on that I would write.
Speaker 1: So this is December, I think twelfth of two thousand
Speaker 1: and six. You say, yeah, changes abound all over the place. Actually,
Speaker 1: for one, I'm no longer living in Brooklyn. Well, I
Speaker 1: am just not for a year. Fate and a really
Speaker 1: wonderful one year job for my girlfriend has taken me
Speaker 1: rather different environments of Boise, Idaho. It's true, Um, you
Speaker 1: also described Idaho for a year. Yeah. Well, before leading
Speaker 1: to that, you apologize for not keeping the site active. Yes,
Speaker 1: and in part because I'm sorry if I'm hiding in
Speaker 1: the wake of uh I think Bush's re election that
Speaker 1: was a tough one, which I found interesting rereading this morning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've given things happening now. I remember very very well.
Speaker 1: I mean, people who weren't politically active and I think
Speaker 1: don't understand like how surprised we all were that that happened.
Speaker 1: And obviously it was nothing like the surprise and devastation
Speaker 1: that's happened just in the last few weeks and months,
Speaker 1: But at the time it was truly shocking and took
Speaker 1: the wind out of our sales. And I just remember
Speaker 1: going with my that same girlfriend who got the job,
Speaker 1: the same person who's my wife. Now. We went out
Speaker 1: to breakfast and I brought a notebook to make a
Speaker 1: list of things to be happy about. It was a
Speaker 1: rough breakfast. You guys met it together? The list? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we tried to make the list together. And how did
Speaker 1: that go? I didn't remember it was it felt forced.
Speaker 1: There was not much that felt that happen anything you
Speaker 1: run on the list? No, honestly, I don't. I don't.
Speaker 1: You remember the creation being rough though? Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was that was tough. So where did you meet in college?
Speaker 1: You met in college? Yeah, and then she moved to
Speaker 1: New York and yeah, and you re meet. No, we
Speaker 1: were to get she was younger we met, Um, she
Speaker 1: was so she was still a college for a year
Speaker 1: when I wasn't. And then we were together in New
Speaker 1: York and then we weren't for a short time and
Speaker 1: then we were Yeah what I The reason I bring
Speaker 1: this up is this for a specific reason is that, um,
Speaker 1: you leave the East Coast for the first time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're old there, um twenty eight, right, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: were pretty entrenched in that world in books. My whole
Speaker 1: life was the Amtrak Northeast Corridor. Yeah, and you left it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sucks. God, it was awful. It was really bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know we by the way, the description
Speaker 1: on the blog is, um, we have a yard now
Speaker 1: and it's super nice and I feel peaceful, and it's Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was probably like the month we got there when
Speaker 1: it was a fun change. Like basically it was there
Speaker 1: was a hangover period from like from other other, from
Speaker 1: a certain from a certain period in my life, and like,
Speaker 1: not making it sound very dramatic, it wasn't as dramatic
Speaker 1: as I'm making it sound. But it felt really good
Speaker 1: to be back in this relationship and also to be
Speaker 1: away just for a minute. Oh so did that happen
Speaker 1: at the same time, is that you guys got back
Speaker 1: together and then yeah, it was she had this job, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I went with her. It's also I mean, I
Speaker 1: think the weight behind it is like you're getting in
Speaker 1: that age at twenty eight age where you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: well you'd think, yeah, it would seem right, it's seem right.
Speaker 1: And also to move I'm just fascinated, and you moved
Speaker 1: your life yeah, well not really. So we kept our apartment.
Speaker 1: Sure it was a temporary sub led our apartment to
Speaker 1: the same friend who I went to Athens, Georgia with,
Speaker 1: just to give you some story continuity, and my heart
Speaker 1: never moved. I mean, like, the one thing that was
Speaker 1: fun about it for a few weeks was or a
Speaker 1: couple of months was you know, novelty. And then also
Speaker 1: people don't realize this, but Bois is essentially West Coast
Speaker 1: so and she was working for the Federal Court, which
Speaker 1: is in San Francisco. So I got to visit friends
Speaker 1: in Seattle, in Portland, and San Francisco in La a lot.
Speaker 1: And then in February of six or January, in December January,
Speaker 1: my novel came out, and so I went on book
Speaker 1: tour and was away on this book tour around the
Speaker 1: country and kept going, you know, Backya's. I was writing
Speaker 1: for Spin, so I would go to Chicago to do
Speaker 1: a fall Up Boys story or whatever, and then I
Speaker 1: really refused to admit that I was not in New York.
Speaker 1: And so the hardest part of that year was when
Speaker 1: the book tour ended, and then I had nothing else
Speaker 1: to do, so like March March until we left in
Speaker 1: August was just brutal. I was not a nice place,
Speaker 1: a good place for me to be. How did you manage? Well?
Speaker 1: I was still writing, so I was freelancing for places
Speaker 1: and writing record reviews and stuff. The gen I mean,
Speaker 1: I imagine you were pretty vocal about your disdaining. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we both ultimately didn't like it. I mean, the job
Speaker 1: is amazing, it's a federal clerkship, so it was worth doing,
Speaker 1: but especially at that age and that moment, Boise is
Speaker 1: not a very welcoming town. Anyone our age that we
Speaker 1: could encounter who was sort of some Podico either had
Speaker 1: left to live in Portland or San Francisco or was
Speaker 1: back in Boise to have kids, and we were not
Speaker 1: doing that. So and literally no one was friendly to us,
Speaker 1: like it was not a friendly place. Really. Yeah to you,
Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah, no, it's not a it just seems
Speaker 1: here's my theory. Yeah, you know, every once in a
Speaker 1: while in these podcasts, I throw out theories about the
Speaker 1: guests that are sure completely unsubstantiated until you respond, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like it's hard to be unkind to you.
Speaker 1: That's very nice. Many people have been quite good at it.
Speaker 1: Um I also was not in I was not like,
Speaker 1: how like this meant a lot of people or you'll
Speaker 1: have to ask them, Um, it was not. I was
Speaker 1: not in a outward reaching frame of mind. I would
Speaker 1: say either. I was eager to get back and I'm
Speaker 1: so happy, and both of us felt and when we
Speaker 1: when we moved back, that we would never leave New
Speaker 1: York again. And so what happens when you get back?
Speaker 1: Do you get right back? In this ring? I had
Speaker 1: a book contract to write another novel, and then that
Speaker 1: novel took on. I kept changing it. I couldn't find
Speaker 1: a story I wanted to tell, so I was just
Speaker 1: getting lost in it. And how many years was that?
Speaker 1: Two years? You know, and I'm still freelance, so I
Speaker 1: was still writing things for magazines. I think that was
Speaker 1: when I wrote a Vampire Weekend cover story in there,
Speaker 1: and the time I went to Milan for my chemical romance.
Speaker 1: But the next sort of thing of note in there
Speaker 1: was that I got hired by an old friend and
Speaker 1: boss it's been Craig Marks, to help him launch a
Speaker 1: music website for CBS Interactive c Net in O eight.
Speaker 1: And at that same time, Josh Schwartz, who's the guy
Speaker 1: who created the OC. I had become friendly with him
Speaker 1: because I had written a feature on him for GQ
Speaker 1: that got killed. Ultimately, it was like this really long,
Speaker 1: tortured process, right. I spent time with him right as
Speaker 1: he was putting together the second season to the OC,
Speaker 1: and then it didn't it wasn't received that well, so
Speaker 1: they sent me back to write more of the story.
Speaker 1: And anyway, it was ended up being great because the
Speaker 1: story was killed, but he and I became good friends.
Speaker 1: The piece didn't wasn't received well. No, the season of
Speaker 1: the second season wasn't the same story anymore to write.
Speaker 1: And then ultimately the editor in chief of someone at
Speaker 1: GQ was just like, do we like this guy or
Speaker 1: we don't like this guy? And I was like aha,
Speaker 1: but they killed it. But it was good. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever gotten paid more for a
Speaker 1: piece because the Conde Nest and they never ran it.
Speaker 1: But I made this friendship because he's just a year
Speaker 1: older than me, and we were very similar places in
Speaker 1: our life. And you know, eight he was launching, he
Speaker 1: got he had a deal at more at his overall
Speaker 1: deals at Warner Brothers, and they were trying to launch
Speaker 1: the WB as a internet channel, so they had him
Speaker 1: create a TV show called Rockville that was basically a
Speaker 1: web series set in a rock club that music bands
Speaker 1: would perform on. And so he asked me to write
Speaker 1: an episode of it, and I did and then it
Speaker 1: was great. It was a great experience. It was so fun.
Speaker 1: And then they asked me to write a second one,
Speaker 1: and the second one was the penultimate episode, and in
Speaker 1: that one, I had to like line up things because
Speaker 1: the first one was just on spec like write something
Speaker 1: in this world. The second one was more like TV writing,
Speaker 1: like these things have to happen, and that was even
Speaker 1: more fun. And so after I had so much fun
Speaker 1: doing that that I then turned the book that I
Speaker 1: was writing, which at that point was almost like a
Speaker 1: YA novel, into a spec script because I decided I
Speaker 1: wanted to go into TV. And that was Fall of eight,
Speaker 1: where it was like three things. I had this job,
Speaker 1: we were trying to get the site launched, we were
Speaker 1: hoping Barack Obama would be president, and the Phillies were
Speaker 1: in the world series, and I was like two out
Speaker 1: of three, I'll take two out of three, and I
Speaker 1: got the ones that mattered most. They got the Phillies.
Speaker 1: I got Obama and they pulled the plug on the
Speaker 1: site without launching it. He placed the phillies over the job. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: any ten times out of ten. So that was that
Speaker 1: was fine, that was good. And then I but so yeah,
Speaker 1: So I had this spec script and I got an
Speaker 1: agent from that, and I was hoping to do what
Speaker 1: I'm doing now. I was hoping to write four TV.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't ready to move, which made things complicated.
Speaker 1: And the only thing people thought of me was I
Speaker 1: was the music guy. There was music in the script.
Speaker 1: I'd written about music, so I would like, that's all
Speaker 1: the meetings I would have. But I had these sort
Speaker 1: of fitful things where like I got hired by Cartoon
Speaker 1: Network to work with this older producer and create this
Speaker 1: cartoon about a garage band, and did that with the
Speaker 1: script gut paid, didn't get made, nothing gout made. Everything
Speaker 1: would vanish. And at some point in there, Nikatucci, in
Speaker 1: his infinite wisdom, who was then at Vulture, was just like,
Speaker 1: have you ever considered doing these recap things? And I
Speaker 1: was like no, And he asked me to recap Friday
Speaker 1: Night Lights, which I loved, and it was just like
Speaker 1: the most fun thing ever it was. It was just like,
Speaker 1: why am I such an idiot? Why why did it
Speaker 1: never occur to me that because I think about music,
Speaker 1: you asked if it had faded. I still love music,
Speaker 1: but like writing about music as a young person's game,
Speaker 1: because it's tribal. You gotta have to really say, I
Speaker 1: feel like not just this matters, but this matters instead
Speaker 1: of that, it's very oppositional. Often. Plus it wasn't an
Speaker 1: industry anymore. Plus streaming in MP three's like you didn't
Speaker 1: need record reviews because you could hear it yourself. That
Speaker 1: didn't used to be the case. And the budgets were slashed,
Speaker 1: and publishing was dying and blah blah blah. But so
Speaker 1: I recap for a night Lights for a Vulture, and
Speaker 1: then I recapped like Party Down and Rubicon and and
Speaker 1: that was just really fun. But I was still doing
Speaker 1: music stuff, and I was still trying to do this screenwriting.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and I knew about Grandlin for from the
Speaker 1: very beginning because from Chuck Chuck Closer men and from
Speaker 1: Chris who was in from the very very beginning. I remember,
Speaker 1: in it's probably February of eleven, I went to the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Inn to get beers with Chuck and he was like,
Speaker 1: you know, this thing with Simmons is really happening, Like
Speaker 1: if you if you want to get in on it,
Speaker 1: you could probably pitch anything. And I was like, no, thanks,
Speaker 1: I'm good that such a dick. I was like, freelancing
Speaker 1: is I'm done with it. I'm done with criticism, like
Speaker 1: it's a dying thing. I gotta get out of it.
Speaker 1: And what did he say to that, It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you're enjoying doing what you're doing. And
Speaker 1: then in April, Lane Brown, who I had known from
Speaker 1: Spin and then was one of the founding editors of Vulture,
Speaker 1: that had been my editor of Vulture, and then he
Speaker 1: was the founding culture editor of Grantland. He was in
Speaker 1: LA he had moved out to start the site. Site
Speaker 1: was launching a few months and he called me out
Speaker 1: of the blue and he was like, I finally convinced
Speaker 1: everyone that we need someone writing about culture part time
Speaker 1: when we launched, and would you want it? And again
Speaker 1: I was like I don't know. I was like, and no,
Speaker 1: I know. But my response, which was accurate, was like
Speaker 1: part time jobs on the Internet gets smeary, like you know,
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as part time becauld you end
Speaker 1: up doing more work. You just end up doing It's constant.
Speaker 1: And I sort of knew that, but I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I could work with my friends, and it seems like
Speaker 1: kind of a cool thing. But I had no contact
Speaker 1: with Bill, I had no contact with the mothership. I
Speaker 1: just you know, I agreed to terms on this part
Speaker 1: term thing, and I wrote a piece. Lane had an
Speaker 1: idea about HBO, and it was the HBO recycling program
Speaker 1: that like, they always use the same actors. So I
Speaker 1: wrote a piece on a Tuesday file that he's like, great.
Speaker 1: The next day the site launched and it was up
Speaker 1: there the first day with his beautiful illustration by this
Speaker 1: guy actually bought another one of his pieces, this this
Speaker 1: thing right here and room. Um. This guy, Craig Robinson
Speaker 1: was in Mexico City. But um, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: that's what it was. And I had no idea that
Speaker 1: it was going to be big or good. Um. I
Speaker 1: wrote every day that summer about all culture and it
Speaker 1: was so fun. It was so fun for so many reasons,
Speaker 1: but the biggest reason being like I had like rescue
Speaker 1: dog mentality from being a freelance person, like you just
Speaker 1: assume no one wants to read what you're doing. You
Speaker 1: just I was writing record reviews for Entertainment Weekly. There
Speaker 1: were four sentences like, that's that's that's what the word
Speaker 1: count was, you know, that's that's that's that's math, that's
Speaker 1: not writing. And that's when um writing becomes paycheck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which it was UM. And all of a sudden, not
Speaker 1: only did I have some new topics to write about,
Speaker 1: but I had an audience. Because the thing about Bill
Speaker 1: that is just amazing is he was generous with the
Speaker 1: most valuable thing he had, his audience. So all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you're being read. And then through that summer,
Speaker 1: I was writing about everything and writing more and more
Speaker 1: about tv UM and sort of took over the TV
Speaker 1: bea unofficially fall in September, and then came out here
Speaker 1: for the first time in December or January, I think,
Speaker 1: and and met Bill and he was like, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take care of you, and so they ripped up my
Speaker 1: part time deal and I was full time starting. What
Speaker 1: is that interaction like when you come here to LA Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and you said you had that rescue dog thing, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're like, I mean, we both live here now,
Speaker 1: we're both recently moved here. It's a beautiful place. It is.
Speaker 1: It's it's a little disturbingly beautiful at first. Yes, and
Speaker 1: that's disarming when you go to that meeting, like what
Speaker 1: is that? Well, I I mean the la part, like
Speaker 1: I love coming here. I was coming here as much
Speaker 1: as possible for work, like always doing stories out here.
Speaker 1: But yeah, going into the office, meeting a lot of
Speaker 1: these people I've never met before and just hearing things
Speaker 1: that you just had never heard in journalism in ten years,
Speaker 1: just like blue skying it, like we're gonna do this.
Speaker 1: We're gonna hire this person, and we're gonna be able
Speaker 1: to accomplish this, and we're gonna be able to pay
Speaker 1: you this and like, oh my god, like this is
Speaker 1: this was also to be dead. I had no idea
Speaker 1: this is even possible. And then yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: was a huge Bill Simmons fan, like Chris and I
Speaker 1: would remember we would, you know, like everyone would email
Speaker 1: each other columns from the minute they started running, being
Speaker 1: like this guy likes the Wire two and sports, like
Speaker 1: holy shit, and then we actually meet him and he's
Speaker 1: the same guy you read, but you know, he is
Speaker 1: outrageously fiercely loyal, and you know, I think he appreciated
Speaker 1: how hard I was working and stuff, and he does
Speaker 1: take care of people. It was remarkably generous. So it
Speaker 1: was surreal, but it was really intoxicating. It was really exciting.
Speaker 1: I don't remember if that was the first time or
Speaker 1: the second time, because then I January of twelve, I
Speaker 1: remember being out here for the first Grandlin holiday party.
Speaker 1: It was after the holidays, and like we went to
Speaker 1: a Clippers game and sat in a box and like
Speaker 1: got to shoot free throws. I was like, okay, and
Speaker 1: then Chris was already. They were like Chris has to
Speaker 1: move here, and they were trying to get me from
Speaker 1: that point on. But I resisted the whole time. I resisted.
Speaker 1: You go into that Clippers game. You know this utopia
Speaker 1: can't last forever? Yeah, I know, it felt like it could.
Speaker 1: I mean, like in terms of Grandlin. Sure, at a
Speaker 1: certain point, at a certain point, you were so far
Speaker 1: whiley coyoteing off the cliff, that was like, well, why
Speaker 1: would it stop? Now? At what point did you see
Speaker 1: the turn when they fired? Bill? I mean, I still
Speaker 1: think you know that I'm not I mean getting into that.
Speaker 1: We can get into that if you want. But like,
Speaker 1: it was an amazing, amazing, maybe not recreatable collection of disparate, diverse,
Speaker 1: unique talent, and you know, that's a resource. But it's
Speaker 1: a resource that the company never cared much about, maybe
Speaker 1: with good reason, because it's not if you're used to
Speaker 1: brokering NFL deals, this is not the same thing at all.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not as valuable. And I did still think
Speaker 1: that it would hold together through the first part of
Speaker 1: the spring and summer, and then when it became clear
Speaker 1: that it wouldn't. The timing was good. My contract ended
Speaker 1: a week after they ended the site, and so I
Speaker 1: was already leaving. It's all those little elements that add
Speaker 1: to the mythologizing. Yeah, the site, I mean, and I
Speaker 1: don't use that word lightly. I think it has on
Speaker 1: the internet been there's something mythical about grant Land. It's funny,
Speaker 1: it's nice. It was like the last vestige of an
Speaker 1: old system. I can't believe I got to be a
Speaker 1: part of it. I feel really, really fortunate because of
Speaker 1: the people I got to work with and the opportunities
Speaker 1: I had were just outrageous, outrageous, you know, to be
Speaker 1: able to just to be able to I mean you
Speaker 1: said at the beginning, like to be quote unquote an
Speaker 1: authority on TV or talk about it, like to be
Speaker 1: able to have someone give you that podium, the podium
Speaker 1: just built for me to grab the microphone. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's crazy, but you know it's time to go. Well,
Speaker 1: at that point, I was not liking. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone liked working for ESPN, except for the
Speaker 1: fact that ESPN pays really well, and you know, I
Speaker 1: could have a corporate card and you could fly to
Speaker 1: LA or do these big picture things. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't mean to sound ungrateful anyway. I mean they look
Speaker 1: what they let me do. That's insane. Look at the
Speaker 1: studios they built us. You know, that's crazy. So I
Speaker 1: think we're grateful for that. But in terms of working
Speaker 1: for that company, I think that we all really liked
Speaker 1: the idea of what Bill was building, which was sort
Speaker 1: of a shadow company inside the company that could maybe
Speaker 1: be a little more nimble and creative. But those things
Speaker 1: don't really tend to work out. I mean their motherships
Speaker 1: or motherships for a reason. So I saw that coming.
Speaker 1: And then also I really wanted to try something else.
Speaker 1: I think I wrote a lot, and I were really
Speaker 1: long pieces. And you know, to some degree, the thing
Speaker 1: that you hear is is true that you always are
Speaker 1: the person you walk into a job in the first day.
Speaker 1: You always are that person until the day you leave.
Speaker 1: And I walked in as a part time grinder who
Speaker 1: was just going to write about culture. And though I
Speaker 1: was given many opportunities and you know, given a podcast,
Speaker 1: mar of a column, I was still the guy who
Speaker 1: wrote two or three times a week. And there are
Speaker 1: other people who didn't, and that's great, but I was
Speaker 1: envious of that, and at a certain point I kind
Speaker 1: of was extremely envious of that. I wanted to calm
Speaker 1: down and breathe and not have to write everything and
Speaker 1: watch everything. You remember whinning that format because you were
Speaker 1: writing a lot, Yeah, but you'd write long things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you felt like you were hitting your stride, because
Speaker 1: it was it was kind of a clear thing for
Speaker 1: me as a reader. Yeah, that's interesting. When that happened,
Speaker 1: it was um yeah, at the end of Louis season.
Speaker 1: It may have been the Internet has a Louis problem,
Speaker 1: not the other way around, I think. So. I think
Speaker 1: it's about Louis and the aggression, aggressive relationship behind with
Speaker 1: the woman. That was the piece. I was like, that's
Speaker 1: really nice. That piece is one of the probably the
Speaker 1: two that I'm most proud of. Ye Oh, we'll say
Speaker 1: that I'd picked up on something for sure. There are
Speaker 1: a couple that are you surprised that I got that?
Speaker 1: Not only because I was hoping you'd say, I guess
Speaker 1: if I think about it, yes I am. But I'm
Speaker 1: very grateful because that's one of the pieces I was
Speaker 1: most proud of. It's incredible. Remember I remember talking about
Speaker 1: it with like a bunch of people being like, man, like,
Speaker 1: we're never going to write something that's good. Oh that's nice.
Speaker 1: That felt like the moment where you could use you
Speaker 1: could clear out some space to say something that hopefully
Speaker 1: was a little bit different than what everyone else was saying,
Speaker 1: because the other thing that started to get exhausting was
Speaker 1: the hot take industry, the culture industry online. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd like to think i'd I brought. I'd
Speaker 1: like to think that I brought a certain level of
Speaker 1: rigored everything I wrote. I wanted it to be unique
Speaker 1: or interesting or well written, or have jokes or whatever.
Speaker 1: But no matter what I poured into it. You're still
Speaker 1: shoveling cultural snow, and everyone's shoveling snow. And it started
Speaker 1: to feel like, what was I contributing other than to
Speaker 1: this you know, flaming tire fire of opinion and except
Speaker 1: I think people a lot of people were to stick
Speaker 1: with this analogy. They had like little brooms or they
Speaker 1: had little like snow things, but you had like a snowblower.
Speaker 1: Oh that's nice, thank you. But I think that's what rather,
Speaker 1: that's what the writing read like. I want I took
Speaker 1: the writing part more seriously than the opinion part, maybe
Speaker 1: to my detriment, like I really wanted to be well
Speaker 1: written or just very written because they were long pieces.
Speaker 1: You know, my editors probably didn't like that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I So there were moments like when the
Speaker 1: Louis thing happens, you have a little bit of lane
Speaker 1: to write something that's a little bit different, that you're
Speaker 1: passionate about that maybe hopefully can say something bigger. And
Speaker 1: the thesis of that piece wasn't like this season of
Speaker 1: Louis was good. It's that art should be challenging, and
Speaker 1: we're entering an age in the Internet we're offended by everything.
Speaker 1: Instead of wondering instead of being letting it affect us
Speaker 1: and being confused by that and sitting with it, which
Speaker 1: is sort of an anti internet argument really if you
Speaker 1: think about it. So that piece, I'm really proud of
Speaker 1: the writing I did on Madmen, like two or three
Speaker 1: times a year. Breaking Bad was kind of a big one.
Speaker 1: Breaking Bad and Thrones as they built. Having that week
Speaker 1: to week relationship was like nothing else, especially the last
Speaker 1: six episodes or mini season of Breaking Bad, when maybe
Speaker 1: that's the last time in the culture when everything stopped
Speaker 1: and everyone it felt like everyone was watching that show
Speaker 1: and then to be able and then I wasn't getting
Speaker 1: screeners after the first one. So to see Azamandius and
Speaker 1: then sit down at eleven pm in the East End
Speaker 1: have to write something was I mean, I don't ever
Speaker 1: want to do that again. Well, what's important to note,
Speaker 1: I think, is that in these moments where the shows
Speaker 1: were dominating, Yeah, everyone was watching Breaking Bad, watching Game
Speaker 1: with their own two shows. Ironically, I'm not watched Interesting,
Speaker 1: but that was me. Well, they're out there for you,
Speaker 1: they're out there for me. Your audience was growing. Rather
Speaker 1: it became like, yeah, it seemed like that was the
Speaker 1: first time, you were having a clear yes, audience that
Speaker 1: was interested in Annie Greenwald at large. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: to the great credit of everyone at Grantland is that
Speaker 1: we never knew. They never ever ever said a word
Speaker 1: to us about traffic. I'm not exaggerating never. I never
Speaker 1: knew if something I wrote was I think, no, okay.
Speaker 1: So the very end, like in twenty fifteen, I remember
Speaker 1: an editor being like, you sure you want to write
Speaker 1: another another column about the Americans, you know, So that
Speaker 1: was like the first sign that like, maybe those weren't
Speaker 1: as well received, but um, but in general it was
Speaker 1: just wide open and I was allowed to do it.
Speaker 1: So but that feeling of like, oh, people wait for
Speaker 1: these and they want to read them there is I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't express how appreciative I was for that, because
Speaker 1: what a responsibility, Like what an honor that people would
Speaker 1: want to know what you think about something and that
Speaker 1: they're watching with you so week to week. The experience
Speaker 1: that you're having to trying to pull in strands from
Speaker 1: the episode in the culture and trying to spit out
Speaker 1: literally overnight, something worth investing and worth reading. That was
Speaker 1: really fun, but it was very exhausting. Was there also
Speaker 1: a part of you that was thinking, as much as
Speaker 1: I love this, this is not the thing you want
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, well that's the thing I mean? Was
Speaker 1: that was that like nerve racking to be like, oh man,
Speaker 1: people really love me for this thing? Yes, and in
Speaker 1: my heart I know this is not what I want. Yes, forever,
Speaker 1: maybe not even in the next five years. Hugely, I worry.
Speaker 1: I'm sure many people worry that it's dangerous to look
Speaker 1: past the thing, the current thing. Like I really needed
Speaker 1: to try to be present and be appreciative that I
Speaker 1: have something that I'm pretty good at that people like.
Speaker 1: And how lucky is that? Like that's rare, you know, um,
Speaker 1: but this is a recurring theme. And everything you've told
Speaker 1: me is that you you you do something, you become obsessive,
Speaker 1: you get very good at it, you read some sort
Speaker 1: of climax and or the company decides to shut her
Speaker 1: on its own accord and you have no control over it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you move on to the next Well you
Speaker 1: don't do Yeah, well I don't repeat, like I feel
Speaker 1: like it's like except your wife. That's a great point. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: that that was that one was worth it. The rest
Speaker 1: of the seems have been the most important. That one
Speaker 1: was worth it. The rest of them. It's like once
Speaker 1: you climb them out and you're like, I'm not doing
Speaker 1: that again. Um, how did you matter that? And love? Uh? Persistence? Um,
Speaker 1: but in in in terms of what you're saying, like
Speaker 1: I wanted to be I always wanted to be more creative.
Speaker 1: I tried to be creative in the criticism. Um. And
Speaker 1: but that was an itch that wasn't scratched, you know,
Speaker 1: and to go so to track it, you know, I
Speaker 1: was I had an agent and I was trying to
Speaker 1: write for TV. As soon as Grantlin took off, I
Speaker 1: couldn't do both. I had to stop. So I shut
Speaker 1: down that part of it. I did not pursue it.
Speaker 1: I did not bring it up. I didn't a pitch.
Speaker 1: I did not write anything. This initial the original spec
Speaker 1: script I had written was bought and was going to
Speaker 1: become They paid me to turn into a web series
Speaker 1: and we were casting and right sort of concurrently when
Speaker 1: I was about to get my first full time gig,
Speaker 1: and then like everything else i'd done, it vanished overnight,
Speaker 1: and I was like, this is a sign, you know,
Speaker 1: I need to do the thing that's working right now
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that anymore. But it was
Speaker 1: remarkable because all of a sudden during the run of Grantlin,
Speaker 1: I had access to everyone that I had hoped to
Speaker 1: have access to to be in the room with, you know,
Speaker 1: and then they knew me or they were reading me,
Speaker 1: and I could have conversations with them, And were you
Speaker 1: being careful in managing those relationships? I tried to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's very tricky because it's very seductive to meet
Speaker 1: people you admire, you know, or for creative people you admire,
Speaker 1: it to flatter you and be like I read you.
Speaker 1: I you know. I almost asked that as a selfish
Speaker 1: question because people have come on the show. Yeah, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, we talked for an hour in a way
Speaker 1: that I think feels you know. I don't know if
Speaker 1: we're gonna become pals after this, but it's certainly like, yeah,
Speaker 1: in some way or another, we're gonna be part of it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna, you know, email. It's hard to it's hard
Speaker 1: to like it's not like a radio spot. No, that's
Speaker 1: I mean, that's also one of the reasons why I
Speaker 1: love doing podcast, right, which is why what I heard
Speaker 1: on your show. I would hear those relationships being fostered.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, how I wonder like which ones I'm curious? Um,
Speaker 1: I think uh man Zukas for sure. Oh that was amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was just ridiculous that I thought you meant like
Speaker 1: when I did, like when I would do solo, my
Speaker 1: solo shows, my interview shows, like relationships with those people. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well the one with when man Zukas came up to us,
Speaker 1: it was like I listened to you guys, we were like,
Speaker 1: we're done, Yeah, we're ready to return. I knew that.
Speaker 1: I knew that was a prince. Oh my god, Well,
Speaker 1: which ones do you remember that immediately felt like that, Um,
Speaker 1: you know the one with the guy from uh I see,
Speaker 1: I'm terrible at TV. But the robot well Sam. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Sam is someone that I have become close with
Speaker 1: and I have a relationship with now. But that was
Speaker 1: solely because he read my stuff, came on the show
Speaker 1: get Along, and then also you know, he's just bizarre,
Speaker 1: bizarrely tuned about criticism, like he I hosted his after
Speaker 1: show because he wanted me to do it. I then
Speaker 1: went on the Watch with Chris and talked about all
Speaker 1: the problems with season two. He listens to every episode
Speaker 1: of the watch, totally fine with it, eager to come
Speaker 1: on and rebut them, you know, I could never be
Speaker 1: like that much more sensitive, but so he's he's unique.
Speaker 1: But the fact that like, I could use this podcast
Speaker 1: as a trojan horse to be in the room with
Speaker 1: people that means so much to me, like Lindsay Buckingham,
Speaker 1: like like Tony Bourdain, you know, like like Elizabeth moss Um,
Speaker 1: David Chase, Like, I mean, I can't believe I got
Speaker 1: away with it. Yeah, um, I thought, I don't want
Speaker 1: to eye of Cash. Oh and she's yeah. So now
Speaker 1: I feel so no one, Like I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: friendly with her now because we became friendly. And like
Speaker 1: Stephen Falk who run ran you the worst, runs You're
Speaker 1: the worst. Like there are cases where I do feel
Speaker 1: I'm friendly with those people now, and I'm glad I
Speaker 1: do not have to review their projects. But there are
Speaker 1: other things where, like early on the show, that I
Speaker 1: feel like sort of set me on the path to
Speaker 1: being the official critic. Was I was one of the
Speaker 1: early adopters of Homeland in fall of eleven, certainly not
Speaker 1: the only one, but one of the early ones, being
Speaker 1: like this thing on Showtime's good, this season's good. So
Speaker 1: that was a wave. I got on early and then
Speaker 1: rode through the end, and Showtime appreciated that they knew
Speaker 1: I was championing it. They were reading my stuff. So
Speaker 1: I got interviews with Claire Danes and Damian Lewis, and
Speaker 1: then we did our first what became more of a
Speaker 1: thing that I did regularly, but the first postseason, you know,
Speaker 1: post mortem with Alex Gonzo, the showrunner, and he's a
Speaker 1: wonderful guy, really kind and nice guy, and came back
Speaker 1: on for the second season and I saw him at
Speaker 1: a premier party, you know, And and then I had
Speaker 1: to keep writing about the show, and I had to
Speaker 1: be honest because at a certain point I was like,
Speaker 1: the only people that I owe anything to the readers,
Speaker 1: Like I only have X amount of credibility and I
Speaker 1: cannot burn it. So I was honest, and I always
Speaker 1: tried to be fair, and I hope that everything that
Speaker 1: I wrote, you know, obviously there were some reviews that
Speaker 1: were very negative, but I wrote TV reviews the same
Speaker 1: way I wrote music reviews, which is I fucking love it.
Speaker 1: I love storytelling. I want it to be good. I
Speaker 1: wanted to acknowledge also the business part of it, that,
Speaker 1: like TV is by definition an imperfection machine. You can
Speaker 1: never get it right. You just have another chance to
Speaker 1: do it next week. It's collaborative, it's messy, it's stupid,
Speaker 1: it's ridiculous. You know. And now that I work in it,
Speaker 1: totally confirmed all of it. But I admired even more.
Speaker 1: But he, you know, to which I understand, took it,
Speaker 1: took it badly. You know, I don't have any relationship
Speaker 1: with him. I don't have any relationship with that show.
Speaker 1: I wanted to before Grantlin ended do a big, big
Speaker 1: piece on Homeland, and sort of I ended up writing
Speaker 1: the piece, but it was going to be a reported piece,
Speaker 1: basically like maybe we were all a little bit wrong,
Speaker 1: Like maybe I created this by being so wildly enthusiastic
Speaker 1: because of the Internet. Maybe they made mistakes they made
Speaker 1: in making the show because the Internet claims everything is
Speaker 1: the greatest, when maybe the maybe you should just be
Speaker 1: a B B plus is okay, you don't need to
Speaker 1: be a plus. But he didn't want to participate. What
Speaker 1: was the angriest response you got from a cred or
Speaker 1: someone in a show? Oh, God, I know there's an
Speaker 1: answer to this. I mean, my favorite angry response was
Speaker 1: but not even angry. It was sort of angry with
Speaker 1: like hate love, like the opening of season two of
Speaker 1: The Leftovers where there's a cave woman and like a
Speaker 1: snake was created to piss me off, Like that's not
Speaker 1: a joke, like damon. Linda laugh Did said in interviews
Speaker 1: that you know, and then he wrote me later and
Speaker 1: you know, we worked it out on the podcast when
Speaker 1: he came on, but he listened to the Hollywood perspectus.
Speaker 1: He read all my reviews and he agreed with me.
Speaker 1: And then Leftovers came out and I was like, I can't,
Speaker 1: I can't get into it, and I was, you know,
Speaker 1: had all these problems with it, and he said that
Speaker 1: in the room, they were like, what will piss Greenwald off?
Speaker 1: Let's do the thing you will piss him off the most,
Speaker 1: And I know they did something else again for the
Speaker 1: season even now I like the show. So that's my
Speaker 1: favorite response, Um, how does it make you feel? It's
Speaker 1: so stupid, that's so dumb that they did that. But
Speaker 1: I am so honored in a way because you know,
Speaker 1: but the relationship with Leftovers is it made me feel something,
Speaker 1: even when that thing was anger or fear. It was
Speaker 1: not a bad show. It was just calibrated in a
Speaker 1: way that I didn't make sense to me. And then
Speaker 1: they fixed the calibration, and I think that's even more impressive.
Speaker 1: But angry, they're definitely people who hate me, but I don't.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe have let them that memory fade. That's probably
Speaker 1: a good thing to left fade. I've thought about Roger
Speaker 1: Ebert's career a lot, and that um many people went
Speaker 1: to him for film reviews as the guy. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: film reviews, and your own right, you've become or you
Speaker 1: rather you did become the guy for TV reviews, I would,
Speaker 1: I would one of the family USA guys are all
Speaker 1: still in the trenches and killing it, but they are.
Speaker 1: I jumped, I bailed, you bailed. But the last question
Speaker 1: I want to ask about the TV stuff is that
Speaker 1: why do you think people liked you? Assuming they did,
Speaker 1: a lot of people didn't, Let's operate under the assumption
Speaker 1: they did, or at least we're fascinated. Here's what I hope.
Speaker 1: I hope that people thought that what I wrote came
Speaker 1: from a place of being informed but also being enthusiastic
Speaker 1: I wanted it to be fun. I wanted to have
Speaker 1: fun with it, but I also within that I wanted
Speaker 1: to take the work seriously and be empathetic towards the
Speaker 1: work of creation, because it's fucking hard, and doing anything
Speaker 1: is worthy of some respect. But then it's also worthy
Speaker 1: of If it's worthy of respect, it's worthy of being
Speaker 1: interrogated a little bit and pushed back on. And you know,
Speaker 1: there was a weird moment when it did feel not
Speaker 1: to overstate the role of critics, because I think that
Speaker 1: they having a very important role, but I also think
Speaker 1: no one wants to overstate it more than critics. It
Speaker 1: did feel like television wasn't top down. It was all
Speaker 1: part of one conversation that the fans could communicate more directly.
Speaker 1: Now the critics could communicate more directly. Now the creators could,
Speaker 1: and so we were all talking to each other in
Speaker 1: a way that felt not unhealthy. I think maybe it's
Speaker 1: tipped in different directions since then, but you know, it
Speaker 1: really felt amazing, and I'm very grateful to have a
Speaker 1: seat at whatever table I was at because I could
Speaker 1: talk to these creators about their decision making hopefully hopefully
Speaker 1: have helped them think about things in a different way,
Speaker 1: and then similarly, to help the audience to think about
Speaker 1: things in a different way, because it's fun to do
Speaker 1: stuff together. You like consensus. I like consensus that we're
Speaker 1: all watching something together, and then the conversations and the
Speaker 1: debate can sort of I love the way the Internet.
Speaker 1: The Internet's ruined most things, but I do think it, yeah, happily,
Speaker 1: I'll say it. You've been there from the beginning, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you a story. It fucking sucks, man,
Speaker 1: But of the many things that it has ruined, it
Speaker 1: had definitely saved and transformed television because it changed shows
Speaker 1: from a once a week thing to a twenty four
Speaker 1: seven thing, you know. I The analogy I used to
Speaker 1: use was like the Internet and the conversation that exists
Speaker 1: on the Internet. We carry the show. The TV show
Speaker 1: airs on Sunday, and we carry the show on our
Speaker 1: shoulders from Monday to Saturday, and we talk about it.
Speaker 1: We interrogate and we think about it, we laugh over it,
Speaker 1: we assess over it, make memes, rip it, whatever. Then
Speaker 1: the show comes back and we do it again. And
Speaker 1: I do think that's sort of beautiful and crucial. My
Speaker 1: last thing I wanted to ask you, you have this
Speaker 1: new Legion comes out? When does that next week? Next week? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh this is like I didn't even know this. Yeah promotional? Sure?
Speaker 1: Is that why you timed it to now? So? Are
Speaker 1: you worried that it doesn't work out? No, I'm thrilled
Speaker 1: to say no, like I feel, by the way, I
Speaker 1: don't mean the show, Yeah, I mean you making this transition. No,
Speaker 1: because I know, first of all, like you were saying
Speaker 1: to leave something that I knew I could do. I
Speaker 1: still know I can do it if I ever feel
Speaker 1: like using that muscle again of criticism and if someone
Speaker 1: if I haven't burned every bridge, and if someone would
Speaker 1: have me, I could maybe go back and do it.
Speaker 1: I don't see that happening, by the way, if only
Speaker 1: because your whole entire life suggested you've never done that before,
Speaker 1: going back, Well, no, I don't have any interest in it,
Speaker 1: but maybe I could, I guess. But my feeling is
Speaker 1: the experience I had on Legion and on the thing
Speaker 1: that I'm working on now that I wish I could
Speaker 1: tell you about, and other stuff that that hopefully I'll
Speaker 1: be able to announce soon that that is happening has
Speaker 1: been really wonderful because it's been really professionally fulfilling. It's
Speaker 1: creatively fulfilling, but also affirming because I think I can
Speaker 1: do it and I think I have something to offer.
Speaker 1: You know, I've tried to be very clear that like
Speaker 1: Legion is Noah Holly Show, a Noah Holly show is
Speaker 1: a Noah Holly show. And I knew that before and
Speaker 1: I really know it now. And I don't even mean
Speaker 1: that like in an ominous dictator way. I mean like
Speaker 1: he is a visionary. It's his vision and it's up
Speaker 1: to the writers in the room to try to understand
Speaker 1: his vision and contribute to it. But I know now
Speaker 1: that I can be in those rooms and contribute something,
Speaker 1: and so that's it's really just it's positive. It's exciting
Speaker 1: with this year, like the next twelve months of the
Speaker 1: or rather the next four years and this presidency. And
Speaker 1: I don't mean to get political, because TV shows matter
Speaker 1: so much now. Well, that's my question is do you
Speaker 1: feel like what you're doing is contributing to well the
Speaker 1: betterment of of of I'll tell you this, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you this, I don't really know what anyone can do.
Speaker 1: I'm terrified. I don't know what art can do. But um,
Speaker 1: I do know that something I wrote a couple of
Speaker 1: months ago was came out of the way I was feeling,
Speaker 1: and that felt good to write something that reflected the
Speaker 1: way the debates made me feel. And then the thing
Speaker 1: that I'm working on now is super I'm working out
Speaker 1: for someone else, but you know, it's hugely ambitious, huge,
Speaker 1: hugely it's it's a crazy thing. Um, but it's also
Speaker 1: very political, and that's great. That's exciting. It's exciting to
Speaker 1: be able to take the way you feel every morning
Speaker 1: and then put it into something else. And again, that
Speaker 1: sounds it's a very selfish answer, because that is not
Speaker 1: contributing to hashtag resistance. Although when you walked into my home,
Speaker 1: you saw you saw the posters my wife and daughter made.
Speaker 1: So I am doing that, but at least in terms
Speaker 1: of my own role. I always dislike when you have
Speaker 1: hashtag something on a bomb the podcast, I'm like, God,
Speaker 1: I don't like when people say that I'm sorry I
Speaker 1: had to do it. I'm glad you did it on
Speaker 1: my show too, but but for what? But so, I
Speaker 1: feel like we all have to take care of ourselves
Speaker 1: too in this moment, and so I feel better about
Speaker 1: stepping back from the flame wars of the Internet, stepping
Speaker 1: back from the instant whatever of Twitter one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty characters, stepping back from thinking about other people's stuff
Speaker 1: and instead just trying to put something more positive or
Speaker 1: creative out into the world, and just stepping back in general,
Speaker 1: because writing for the Internet, you get instant feedback every
Speaker 1: day and you're grinding every day. And so you know,
Speaker 1: I've worked on three TV projects and have another one
Speaker 1: that's that's cooking. Only one is public, and only one
Speaker 1: is right. Only one is um been filmed and is
Speaker 1: going to be airing starting next week. My men. Take
Speaker 1: away um, from what we've talked about, but also watching
Speaker 1: your career go where it's gone, there's an enthusiasm to
Speaker 1: the things you're doing, so that I find, UM, it's good.
Speaker 1: It's good, and it's weird for me to give you
Speaker 1: tell you this, but it's uh, it's nice. Thank you
Speaker 1: to see happen. And I hope wherever you go that
Speaker 1: that that is guiding for us. Thank you. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate that. I think it is an enormous gift and
Speaker 1: an enormous privilege to be able to jump from project
Speaker 1: to project like that. But for me, that's the thing
Speaker 1: I want. I don't I don't want to I don't
Speaker 1: want to lie, you know, and like our bullshit and
Speaker 1: like writing four sentence record reviews and Entertainment Weekly in
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine. It was grateful for the money, but that
Speaker 1: was not an inspiring thing to do. It's that you
Speaker 1: constantly refuse settling. Yeah, I hope so. I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a there's a it's that that's an Internet word
Speaker 1: to say privilege. But I do think it's a privilege
Speaker 1: to be able to have the opportunity to not settle
Speaker 1: rum because you know, but sometimes you said external forces
Speaker 1: shake you out of it. Like I definitely if Bill
Speaker 1: hadn't been let go by ESPN and what happened happened,
Speaker 1: you know, I very I still would have these unscratched itches.
Speaker 1: I still would have wanted to see if I could
Speaker 1: have done these things, if I could have moved out
Speaker 1: here and worked in this field. But I don't know
Speaker 1: if I would have had the courage to do it,
Speaker 1: to try it. I'm glad you did. Thank you. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll find out on FX on February eighth. No, that's
Speaker 1: a that's good. Thank you. Yeah, that won't be a
Speaker 1: referendum on me, believe me. I just was lucky to
Speaker 1: be a part of it. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on, Andy, Oh, thank you, I thank that was
Speaker 1: really fun. Well there it is. The Only person to
Speaker 1: thank this week is Andy himself, who graciously let me
Speaker 1: record at his dining room table. When it comes to
Speaker 1: Andy's work, though, be sure to check out Legion Noah
Speaker 1: Holly's latest on fx IT premiere is tomorrow night, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: February eighth. You can also regularly listen to Andy on
Speaker 1: the watch his podcast with Chris Ryan over and at
Speaker 1: the Ringer will include links and information to all this
Speaker 1: in our show note over at our website www dot com,
Speaker 1: easypod dot com. People people who need people. If you
Speaker 1: enjoy today's episode with Andy, there's probably a good chance
Speaker 1: you would enjoy our past conversations with x grant Landers
Speaker 1: like Wesley Morris or Jay Caspian. We've also had on
Speaker 1: Ringer favorites like McKenzie Davis from Halton, catch Fire and
Speaker 1: Zazzy Beads from Atlanta. Also in the new year, we're
Speaker 1: trying to have more people who listen to this podcast
Speaker 1: review the podcast. If you don't have iTunes or just
Speaker 1: don't want to write a review, just sharing a show
Speaker 1: with a friend could help us on a lot. All
Speaker 1: of this has done in the hopes that the show
Speaker 1: continues to reach new listeners. If you're not doing so already,
Speaker 1: you can subscribe to the program on iTunes, SoundCloud, or
Speaker 1: your favorite podcasting app, and feel free as always to
Speaker 1: reach out to us at Sam at talk easypod dot com.
Speaker 1: We're also on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at talk easypod
Speaker 1: dot com. Keep an eye out for a newsletter that
Speaker 1: we are sending out today on Tuesday. We'll be sending
Speaker 1: those out every Tuesday. They will include some background information
Speaker 1: on the making of the show. Be sure to keep
Speaker 1: an eye out for the newsletter that will be sending
Speaker 1: out starting today and hopefully every Tuesday moving forward, who
Speaker 1: include background information on the podcast. Random Thoughts about Life
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen a weekly Spotify playlist that I'm going
Speaker 1: to continue trying to make information about a couple of
Speaker 1: exciting live shows and I think we're gonna be doing
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen, and we'll probably do a couple of giveaways.
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna be good. Sur If you're into that,
Speaker 1: sign up for the newsletter at tiny letter dot com
Speaker 1: slash talk Easy. We'll also include that information in the
Speaker 1: show notes. Our music this week is by Jin Sang
Speaker 1: and Vanilla. Our executive producer is David Chen, graphics by
Speaker 1: Ian Jones, illustrations by Krishna Chnoy. Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Valerie Ettenhoffer, and the show is produced by Nora Knight.
Speaker 1: I'm Sanford Goo, so thank you for listening to Talk Easy.
Speaker 1: I'll see you next week.