Episode 1040 - Kurt Andersen
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what's happening uh this is mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it
Marc:Kurt Anderson is here today.
Marc:Kurt Anderson.
Marc:Do you know Kurt Anderson?
Marc:Kurt Anderson's got his own gig over there at NPR.
Marc:He hosts Studio 360 for years.
Marc:And he's written this book, Fantasyland, How America Went Haywire, a 500-year history.
Marc:And you can get that wherever you get books.
Marc:But I read it.
Marc:I told all you guys that were listening about it because I was excited about reading it.
Marc:It just covers it, man.
Marc:It just contextualizes.
Marc:Everything, just the American unconscious and that just kind of bubbled over from from the beginning all the way through till now.
Marc:Just the sort of strange, erratic, fantastical religiosity and hucksterism and self-involvement and the ongoing struggle between reason and bullshit.
Marc:It's really a great book, a very dense and readable book, and I was so thrilled about it.
Marc:I was like, fuck it, man.
Marc:Let's talk to this Kurt Anderson guy.
Marc:What compelled him?
Marc:Because I'm grateful for it.
Marc:You know when you can tell you're reading an obsessive screed that was...
Marc:Just just, you know, written in fury to understand, to try to get some perspective on what's happening.
Marc:He was able to really track it that even before this country was settled, it was, you know, religious weirdos landed here.
Marc:And then you just watched Christianity mutate.
Marc:And then you watched it.
Marc:You watched P.T.
Marc:Barnum and hucksterism mutate.
Marc:And you watched the New Agers mutate.
Marc:And then you watched this sort of weird ongoing battle between ridiculous beliefs and
Marc:And I actually fax and it just it's an interesting ebb and flow through 500 years.
Marc:And as I said before, it's dense, but he's got a wry wit and he's kind of cutting.
Marc:So it's it makes it readable and compelling.
Marc:And I'm going to talk to him in a few minutes.
Marc:All right.
Marc:How are you guys doing?
Marc:Everything all right?
Marc:You all right?
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:Exciting times, right?
Marc:Watching our racist shit bag of a president gain confidence and conversely watching once reasonable people lapse and buckle into intolerance and garbage mindedness.
Marc:Just an ongoing shit show.
Marc:A horror.
Marc:A horror.
Marc:The horror.
Marc:The horror.
Marc:Well, I hope you're all holding up and holding on to something inside yourselves that is righteous and provides a sliver of hope.
Marc:At the very least, people have a fun breakfast, maybe a nice piece of melon.
Marc:Listen to some music.
Marc:Enjoy the company of the people you love and like, kind of.
Marc:And you know what?
Marc:Maybe help someone out.
Marc:Throw someone a bone, help them out.
Marc:And also, please don't kill yourselves.
Marc:There'll be no killing of the selves.
Marc:Sword of Trust is opening in more cities this Friday.
Marc:It's up over 100.
Marc:Go to Sword of Trust dot com to see where it's playing near you.
Marc:I believe we got the number three comedy of the year so far on Rotten Tomatoes.
Marc:I might be making that up.
Marc:I might have hallucinated that, but it seems kind of specific.
Marc:Also, go to WTF pod dot com slash tour to see my tour dates.
Marc:I'll be in Raleigh, North Carolina at good nights starting this Thursday and then at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon the following week.
Marc:OK.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So that's good.
Marc:I promoted myself.
Marc:There you go, Mark.
Marc:So I got it.
Marc:I got to tell you something.
Marc:A couple of things.
Marc:You know that I'm in this ongoing jazz hole and I'm trying to wrap my brain around the new music, the new musics.
Marc:And I got to be honest with you.
Marc:I was earlier today.
Marc:I was just sitting around listening to Wynton Marsalis's first album.
Marc:Wynton Marsalis.
Marc:I obviously we all know the name Wynton Marsalis.
Marc:But dude, I really know the man's work.
Marc:No, I did not.
Marc:I really had no fucking idea.
Marc:But as I said, I'm trying to wrap my brain around the whole jazz thing.
Marc:So I'm reading this book.
Marc:By Nate Chinon.
Marc:He sent me the book.
Marc:I'm going to give you my reading list, my summer reading list.
Marc:I have it right here in front of me.
Marc:Would you like that?
Marc:Is it too late in the summer for summer reading list?
Marc:But I'm reading that I'm reading the Nate Chinon book.
Marc:The book is called Playing Changes Jazz for the New Century.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So I'm reading that a bit.
Marc:I got through about a chapter and a half.
Marc:But at the end of each chapter, he makes a list of the albums that he discussed.
Marc:But now I'm like, I'm listening to Wynton Marsalis' first album after he talks about when Wynton appeared on the scene, I guess in the 80s.
Marc:And I fucking had no idea.
Marc:I had no idea.
Marc:I mean, it's so ridiculous, but I don't know if you know this, but Wynton Marsalis is a fucking genius.
Marc:And I don't know what I was thinking, but like, am I really that much of a nostalgist?
Marc:Am I really...
Marc:That guy, the guy that I see that looks kind of like me at the record store, about my age, flipping through the bins, looking for their past, looking to connect with something tangible that makes sense.
Guest:Am I that guy?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:But anyway, talking about jazz, right?
Guest:Out of nowhere, folks.
Guest:Out of nowhere, I'm looking at the emails.
Marc:And for those of you who listen to this part of the show, you'll know this is hilarious.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:I get an email.
Marc:Hi, Mark.
Marc:I knew you'd eventually come around.
Marc:I've been a fan for years.
Marc:Podcasts are terrific.
Marc:Even the commercials.
Marc:Yours.
Guest:Donald Fagan.
Guest:Donald Fagan.
Guest:I knew you'd eventually come around.
Guest:That was fucking hilarious.
Guest:Donald Fagan from Steely Dan knew I'd eventually come around.
Guest:That was a big laugh.
Guest:Big laugh.
Marc:I wrote one of the great emails to receive hilarious comments.
Marc:We should talk sometime.
Marc:I'm still getting the hang of what you did.
Marc:And my subject line is, I'm going to believe this is you.
Marc:And then Donald Fagan wrote back, yup, it's me.
Guest:Pleased to meet you.
Guest:DF.
Guest:I knew you'd eventually come around.
Marc:Anyway, folks, I'll give you my reading list for the summer.
Marc:Fantasyland.
Marc:by Kurt Anderson, How America Went Haywire, a 500-year history.
Marc:And then It Came From Something Awful, How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office by Dale Barron.
Marc:This is a great book.
Marc:It's informative, especially for people of my generation or older.
Marc:who don't really know about Reddit or 2chan or 4chan or about a whole generation of people that were brought up gaming and sharing anime information and how that became just a wave of...
Marc:totally toxic garbage that infused itself into the mainstream and we didn't understand where this stuff was coming from and it just seemed like news to us but uh this is a fucking fascinating book the two of these books together they're a dark portal fantasy land and it came from something awful but they're well written and there's enough humor not humor but it's readable and it's very informative about what's you know sort of the history of what's happening and
Marc:and how it's going to continue happening.
Marc:And then when you get a little tired of the darkness and the truth, you could go to some lighter truth, but this is only if you're a music person.
Marc:You can read The Birth of Loud, Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar Pioneering Rivalry that Shaped Rock and Roll by Ian S. Port.
Marc:Great read, especially if you're into guitars and rock music.
Marc:And then, like me, I haven't finished it yet, but there's no reason not to get started with Nate Chinon's book, The Playing Changes, Jazz for the New Century.
Marc:These are the things I'm reading.
Marc:Enjoy.
Enjoy.
Marc:Now, I explained to you what Fantasyland is basically about up front there.
Marc:It's really about the history of magical thinking in America.
Marc:The idea of America being a place where you could reinvent yourself, where anything was possible, where utopias were possible.
Marc:And then the sort of evolution of that.
Marc:you know, through, you know, Christian hucksterism, huckster hucksterism, you know, on all the way through the sort of conspiracies and things of the left and the right, the way the 60s morphed into a new type of magical thinking.
Marc:And I don't know, it's really all there and very specific and beautifully executed.
Marc:Now, I talked to Kurt about the book, and I guess I dropped some names that you should probably...
Marc:you know, know about.
Marc:Adam Curtis, we start talking about Adam Curtis because, you know, he's Adam Curtis is a documentary filmmaker, and I've watched a couple of his documentaries, which I found to be mind blowing.
Marc:Years ago, 2004, The Power of Nightmares made a big impact.
Marc:I actually didn't see that.
Marc:The two that I watched sort of back to back were hyper normalization and the century of self.
Marc:And now that I'm looking at his his his filmography, he's done a lot of stuff.
Marc:But I found hyper normalization and the century of self to be brain changers.
Marc:All of these things that I'm mentioning to you today changed my fucking brain, including the book about guitars and just including a chapter and a half of Nate Chinon's book about jazz.
Marc:The other stuff, darker stuff, a lot of information, but they gave me some relief.
Marc:you know, right alongside of the terror.
Marc:You know, it's like if you have free floating terror because your brain is just taking in information and it's terrifying, you know, that just causes anxiety.
Marc:But if you have terror that's coming in and then you contextualize it, there's relief in that.
Marc:Oh, there's a context.
Marc:There's even a historical context, still terrified, but not causing as much anxiety because there's relief in knowing that there's a context.
Marc:As opposed to just this fucking bullshit.
Marc:You know, it's just a shotgun full of bullshit clickbait and memes go blasting into your brain as soon as you wake up and turn on your phone.
Marc:You just it just sort of like it's on.
Marc:It's just it's on scatter.
Marc:It's like a sawed off.
Marc:It's not even a tight grouping, just a fucking blast of garbage.
Marc:That just blows in through your eyeballs and tries to hook on to your synapses and find it just goes in, sees if it can find an emotion or a desire or a need that it can latch on to.
Marc:And then it kind of rides your synapses for a little while.
Marc:And then you go tell somebody else.
Marc:And that, my friends, is how publicity works.
Marc:Word of mouth publicity and also fascism.
Marc:Okay, good times.
Marc:Good times in the autocratic USA.
Marc:Dig it, man.
Marc:Kurt Anderson is here.
Marc:And we get into it, man.
Marc:We get into it.
Marc:His book is Fantasyland, How America Went Haywire, 500 Year History, wherever you get books.
Marc:He hosts Studio 360 on NPR affiliate stations nationwide.
Marc:And it's also available as a podcast.
Marc:This is me and Kurt Anderson talking in a New York City hotel room.
Music
Marc:So I guess I should start by telling you that.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I got the book.
Marc:I get a lot of books, Fantasyland.
Marc:And I decided to sort of start it.
Marc:And then I was like, oh my God, all the answers are here.
Marc:All the answers I need are here for the whole thing.
Marc:And there is some part about it, knowing where you sort of came from in terms of intellectually and comedically and politically.
Marc:It feels like there was an obsessive need for you to make sense of this stuff.
Marc:You know, I don't know if it was fear or some need to contextualize it.
Marc:But what was it that compelled you to get to the bottom of this particular part of the fabric of American culture and politics?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, you're right about the fact that there was this need that had been simmering along for a while.
Guest:I mean, I often, I mean, people make fun of me for harking back to and harping on the fact that, well, I grew up in Nebraska back in the day when it was like this.
Guest:And one of the things about that that is relevant to this is that, yeah, sure, it was a religious place.
Guest:It was Nebraska, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:But it wasn't just in the religious sense.
Guest:It wasn't all nutty like it got in the 70s and 80s and 90s.
Guest:So that was part of it.
Guest:But then I guess I just, so it was a thing I'd been thinking about.
Guest:And like when I asked professors, like, why is America this way or that way?
Guest:They didn't really have an answer that satisfied me.
Guest:And so, yeah, I felt I had to like figure it out.
Guest:You know, and then, you know, earlier in this century, in the 2000s, when it just kept getting...
Guest:Look at that.
Guest:There's another example of rampant craziness and everybody getting to think their own facts.
Guest:Their opinions are their facts.
Guest:Yeah, I really like something's happened here.
Guest:And what it is ain't exactly clear.
Guest:And so I had to figure it out.
Marc:And I think you tried to find some comfort in the fact, and it was a lot of research, in that not only had it happened before, that this ongoing struggle between reason and magical thinking, it's pre-America, and it's always been a struggle.
Marc:But I think the thing that stops the logical-minded person is like, how is that still an issue now?
Marc:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And what I didn't really know, I mean, when I hadn't written a big... I'd never written a big book like this.
Guest:I'd written little nonfiction books.
Guest:I'd written novels.
Guest:But I'd never written a big book like this.
Guest:And so whenever I write anything, though, it's always, you know, I don't totally know what I'm going to do or say or write or what I think.
Guest:The writing is the figuring out, you know?
Guest:And so I didn't know, like...
Guest:At first I thought like, wow, did this start in the 60s?
Guest:And I said, no, no, no, no, no.
Guest:As I did research and found out, no, look at all these bits of DNA that have been there from the get-go.
Guest:So I didn't know what I was going to say until...
Guest:I was in the middle of saying it, really, in terms of, oh, reassuring that we've always had this.
Guest:And yes, I didn't really... And I had a hunch that, like, wow, why has America gotten this way as opposed to England or Japan or Australia or whatever?
Guest:And then I had to figure that out, and I had to really try to figure out, like, are we really different than those countries?
Guest:And how are we, like...
Guest:what we used to call third world countries in this way and stuff.
Guest:But yeah, it was a kind of like, wow, this bugs me and interests me and I guess I have to write a big nonfiction book to figure it out for myself.
Marc:The weird thing about the book is that it's dense, but, you know, because you have sort of a kind of sardonic sort of humor, you know, it kind of propels it.
Marc:But it's like it's a lot of information.
Marc:I mean, you really had to do some homework.
Marc:And then I guess the intellectual heavy lifting was really positing the reality that the nature of this country.
Marc:was the promise of a type of freedom for reinvention and a type of freedom to practice any kind of life you want.
Marc:And then the core seed of the book that kind of gets it going is that the first settlements here were based on magical thinking.
Marc:They were religious utopias.
Marc:And then after that, you get people that are like, well, I can be whatever I want.
Marc:So the kind of two through lines of religious magical thinking and just classic American hucksterism, it's really the ground on which this country is built, that and massacring indigenous people.
Guest:Yes, which I give some time to in this book.
Guest:But yeah, I mean, because people always said to me when I was writing novels, oh, would you ever write a novel that's completely not funny?
Guest:I said, I don't know.
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:It's part of how I think about things.
Guest:And similarly with this, even though it's about this serious thing and maybe this tragic story.
Guest:Fall of America and all that.
Guest:Like, still, there's funny aspects.
Guest:I find these, I find Joseph Smith funny.
Guest:I find all this stuff funny.
Guest:He's hilarious.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, but it's hilarious in that horrible way where you're like, how the fuck do people buy this?
Guest:But again, I don't want to make it all about, oh, it's a bunch of suckers and these hucksters.
Guest:It is that, but it's only part of it.
Guest:And it's people who do self-select to come here.
Guest:Like, there's gold?
Guest:They say there's gold?
Guest:I'm going.
Guest:Or what?
Guest:The Indians are Satan's agents?
Guest:Ooh.
Guest:I mean, it's people.
Guest:I mean...
Guest:In 1600, when the Europeans started coming here, I mean, the Middle Ages, the primitive Christianity was ending, except for these freaks.
Guest:So they brought that old version here.
Guest:And there's another kind of belief, too.
Guest:It wasn't just religious.
Guest:I mean, religion is part of it, but it's also just this, like, man...
Guest:Build it and they will come.
Guest:I can do anything.
Guest:It was part of the enlightenment, too.
Guest:It's not to an expert to tell me what to believe.
Guest:It's up to me to decide what's true.
Guest:So it was a perfect storm of lucky and slightly unlucky timing.
Marc:Now, in terms of the humor, because now we can sort of go back a little bit, because I know that was really where you defined yourself was with satire.
Marc:For a while, yeah.
Marc:So what's your journey there?
Marc:So you grew up in Omaha?
Marc:I did.
Marc:In the 50s?
Marc:I think of 60s, but yes, sure.
Guest:I was born in the 50s and grew up there in the 60s and left in the 70s.
Marc:And so what was going on in Omaha?
Marc:When I'm growing up, I've been through there a couple of times, but what was the nature of that city?
Marc:I remember the insurance company.
Marc:I know you talk a little bit about in the book, were they farmers?
No.
Guest:No, I sort of dine off that idea.
Guest:Like, oh, sure, it was a ranch.
Guest:No, my dad was a lawyer and we lived in a house and it was this suburban, nice suburban, you know, leave it to beaver operation.
Guest:It was very father knows best, leave it to beaver, you know?
Marc:And you had an older brother.
Guest:I had three older siblings.
Marc:And they're important.
Marc:Older brothers are important in the education.
Guest:All of my olders, my three siblings in their respective ways were all crucial.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And when you were in like high school, was it planned to be like a journalist?
Guest:Yeah, maybe.
Guest:Well, more probably at that point, an academic.
Guest:My sister, my eldest sister was becoming a professor.
Guest:I said, oh, that looks pretty good.
Guest:In what?
Guest:Political science at Syracuse.
Guest:Ultimately, various places before.
Guest:But that looked good.
Guest:And, you know, reading, thinking, writing, you know, not working three months a year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But so, no, I didn't know.
Guest:I wrote for the school paper and wrote funny things for the school paper.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Like a Joseph Heller parody about my high school.
Guest:And then an outraged thing saying, why aren't there any black people in this giant white high school of ours?
Guest:And stuff like that.
Guest:I was trying to make trouble.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Did you succeed?
Guest:Late 60s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:well in what in integrating the school no but in making trouble and and and but not so much trouble that you know they didn't give me good grades and let me into college and stuff yeah and and so well you so you grew up and fortunately in a family that put a premium on education and it was it was you know what you guys did and kind of as i once said to my mother when she was missing all of her children not living there said you know you kind of raised us all to leave yeah right right
Marc:and she and she took a big sigh and said yeah i know so when did you start uh when did you like so you wrote a joseph heller parody in high school so that was happening so you were in when did you graduate high school 72. so the world was blowing up yeah and i assume that you're in the wow so you're in high school when the bulk of the vietnam war is happening
Guest:uh correct and and and and i got a draft number and i was i i people my age never actually got drafted i i i as in so many ways younger just too young yeah you know i was a you know middle younger boomer and and just too young to get literally just young enough to get a number but not young not old enough to get drafted and your brother went no no no no one went no nobody went he had a he had a heart thing oh really not bone spurs he had an actual real heart thing physical thing yeah
Marc:But like when you like because the more I read about the 60s, because I sort of missed it.
Marc:I'm about a decade younger than you.
Marc:There was.
Marc:Did you feel that the country was coming unglued as a child in Omaha?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, I was definitely paying attention to the 60s as a, you know, as a 10 year old, 12 year old, 14 year old, 15 year old for sure.
Guest:And, you know, went from being a, you know, having literally a picture of Richard Nixon on my wall at the beginning of 1968 when I was 13 to, like, getting high and, like, revolution, man, when I was 14.
Guest:14.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're getting high in Omaha at 14.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:So it made it up that far, the drugs.
Uh-oh.
Guest:sure the dead were playing in omaha all the time in 67 really oh sure no and there was this little like soho like part of town where there was a head shop and it was oh yeah it was all happening those pipe the t-shirts and the pipes and the bongs and the posters black light posters all that you saw the dead in 67
Guest:I didn't actually, but all of my siblings and the slightly older kids did.
Marc:So you had the brother down the hall in the house that had the posters and the records?
Guest:No, he was in a rock band.
Guest:He was in first as a child, the Fabulous Impacts.
Guest:And then he started his own band, Naked Afternoon.
Guest:And how they do.
Guest:They did fine.
Guest:And then he had a band called Kraken and they made albums.
Guest:He has records out?
Guest:He has records out.
Guest:Guitar?
Guest:He wrote a song for The Temptations.
Guest:He wrote a song for Foghat.
Guest:He was cool, man.
Guest:Which Foghat song?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:One of the big ones?
Guest:Oh, Blue Spruce Woman.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did he do all right on that one?
Guest:He did all right.
Guest:And now he has a wonderful life rebuilding and creating and restoring old grand pianos and
Guest:wow yeah and he's like a mat world class uh piano technician yeah really is he here no he's in los angeles ah that's an interesting niche job it's a great niche job yeah and he's apparently you know one of the wizards yes indeed and you have two sisters i do and they're both academics
Guest:No, one of them's an academic, and one of them is an executive whisperer, executive coach, consultant.
Guest:Oh, one of those people.
Guest:All of your former Comedy Central and other bosses have hired her, I guarantee you.
Marc:Oh, yeah, to sort of reconfigure their career trajectories and their personal brands.
Guest:And how they deal with their employees and stuff like that.
Marc:Yeah, that's a weird, magical sort of profession, that one, the consultant.
Marc:Because when you ask them what they do, it's sort of like,
Guest:oh that seems a little vague but i understand it's priestly yeah yeah so and then you just uh there was no other you just you wanted to go to harvard i wanted to get out of omaha but harvard's a big i mean that's like no and i applied to a bunch of i applied to colleges back when you know literally i don't think my parents knew where i was applying to college and i just did and and uh and i got in and and i got into harvard so i went there did you know what you're getting into
Guest:I mean, I guess I'd visited once, but know what I was getting into, kind of.
Guest:I mean, I knew I was going to the East, I was going to a city, and yeah, this was a portal into some version of the life I wanted, yeah.
Guest:So you're at Harvard in 1972?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because I'm fascinated with Harvard because there was no way I was going to go there because I obviously didn't have the grades and I didn't have the understanding.
Marc:And now when I look at Harvard, you realize there's sort of a guarantee that comes with Harvard that you will be placed in society to a certain degree.
Marc:You're anointed somehow.
Yeah.
Guest:There's some privilege as definitely involved that it annoys.
Guest:No, there's no question about that.
Marc:And when you got there, what were you going to study?
Guest:You know, what I did more or less, you know, sociology, social studies, economics, history, that stuff.
Guest:There was no then creative writing study.
Guest:And so it was like, which version of like academic study do you want to do?
Marc:And I thought that was... Liberal arts.
Guest:Yeah, but specifically kind of the history, social science stuff, yeah.
Guest:So you're interested in people?
Guest:Well, that's a good question.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I'm not uninterested in people.
Guest:What was I interested in?
Guest:I was interested in being interested.
Guest:I also took a lot of art history courses.
Guest:I liked that a lot as well.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:So it's a broad spectrum intellectual foundation.
Guest:Yeah, it was kind of a liberal arts thing.
Guest:Yeah, that's fair enough.
Guest:yeah but like sociology and art history you know you were not in any way a science guy oh no no no no no no no i had done oh fine in math and science as a child and then there was this point when i was 14 or so and i just reached the amount the limit of math that i could understand and i suddenly was getting bad grades and i had not
Guest:Hadn't gotten bad grades before.
Guest:I said, I got to get out of this.
Guest:I got to get out of math.
Guest:And back then, at this perfect late 60s time, they kind of allowed me to, no, sure, whatever you want, young man.
Guest:And so I didn't have to do math anymore or science after a sophomore year in high school.
Marc:And was there like a lot of trouble on campus in the early 70s?
Marc:You mean in high school or in college?
Guest:no in college i mean i guess the war was coming up it was over yeah and in fact my my feeling arriving uh there just having turned 18 and 17 was like man i i missed this i fucking missed the whole student hippie thing it's done right that was my sense but the but the the clothes were still around i mean yeah sure the clothes were still around the drugs were still around but like music was different like like basically
Guest:you know, Vietnam was winding down and the draft was over.
Guest:So like, I mean, that would, for me personally, that was the sensation that like, wow, that the high stakes, how's this going to end?
Guest:Is a revolution going to happen?
Guest:That was over.
Marc:The revolution was over.
Guest:That was my sense.
Guest:As an 18 year old from Nebraska, yeah.
Guest:Were you the head writer at the lampoon?
Guest:It didn't have a head writer, but, but I got, I, I, you, you try out and you write things and then they either elect you or don't to the Harvard lampoon.
Guest:And, and I did right away, uh, my first fall in college and, and, and got elected.
Guest:And, uh, that was my life.
Guest:I mean, you know, I also did this.
Guest:I went to class and did your sociology and your history.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, but the lampoon instantly became the entire center of my universe.
Marc:Because I've talked to people who were there much later, and they may be an honorary whatever over there.
Marc:I got a little medallion of some kind.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah, they had me in.
Marc:So let's do our secret thing.
Marc:Yeah, I don't remember the secret thing.
Marc:Me neither.
Marc:But there is sort of – it doesn't seem – because I guess I romanticize it because I know there's a lot of people of your generation that made tremendous headway comedically and satirically in the world –
Marc:But when I got there, it was a bunch of kids.
Marc:I'm like, you're in charge?
Guest:But I guess you guys were kids, too.
Guest:As soon as I arrived, I happened to meet Sandy Frazier, who became a writer at The New Yorker, and still is a writer at The New Yorker, and an incredibly funny guy and a brilliant writer, and his friend, Jim Downey, these two guys who were in The Harvard Lampoon.
Guest:I didn't know anything about The Harvard Lampoon.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:But I met them right away, and I thought, man.
Guest:These are my people.
Guest:I got to join this.
Guest:And so were they deeper or better?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:They were fantastic.
Guest:And the other point for future cultural history of the next 45 years is that there was not yet this pathway from the Harvard Lampoon to writing for TV.
Guest:Show business.
Guest:Show business.
Guest:I mean, it happened here and there, but like that wasn't a thing.
Guest:And Jim Downey really was the, you know, I don't know, patient zero of that operation.
Guest:Graduated from Harvard and went to just as Saturday Night Live was beginning and became a writer.
Marc:Oh, he was the guy that stayed there for like 40 years, right?
Guest:Correct.
Guest:And out of that, you know, other Lampoon people did and The Simpsons started and voila.
Guest:He's the guy.
Guest:He is the guy.
Marc:And when you get to the lampoon, like, what was the... Well, I guess maybe the reason I think that the younger people were deeper was they were pushing against something more consolidated as a bad guy.
Marc:Like, it just seems like everything's very fragmented and people are more self... It's more self-centered.
Marc:Whereas I think then you're like, we know... The man was still the man.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:Right.
Marc:The man was still the man.
Guest:No, it's true...
Marc:and you know because like uh you know until later it wasn't like oh i'm gonna go here and then i then i go to hollywood and then i have a big house in brentwood you know i mean that's really the case now i mean it really that people going into it once they get in there they know that you know that this is really a career training institute it was not a place to get that broader education right
Guest:No, it was not yet a pre-professional thing.
Marc:It was still like, I don't know what's going to happen to me now.
Marc:And you wanted to get a good education if you wanted.
Marc:I mean, you could get it.
Marc:Correct.
Marc:And obviously, you still can.
Marc:Yeah, you can get that at a lot of colleges.
Marc:But there was something about the intellectuals that were attracted to Harvard to teach were the guys.
Marc:yeah and what was he what what was the lampoon exactly i mean what was the idea of it well mark um it was because i've talked to other people about it but like it does have a sort of place in comedic history and it still sort of exists but it seems like i'm not sure i'm completely clear on what the original intention is and what it evolved to in the 60s started in 1876 it was
Guest:you know college humor magazine and and it was it was a time when all all these college magazines and newspapers and things like that were all starting in america all over the place i looked into it what year recently 76 1876 yeah then in the 20th century you know and then william randolph hearst was hunted and and helped pay for this insane wonderful parody castle building yeah it's still there yeah
Guest:Which is a huge part of why the Harvard Lampoon, beyond Harvard, sustained because it had this funny building.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, that was part of it.
Guest:Then, you know, the great comic writer and comic actor Robert Benchley and other writers came along.
Guest:And then the 60s happened.
Guest:And then Doug Kenny and Henry Beer were there.
Guest:And then they started the National Lampoon.
Yeah.
Guest:so they were there before you oh yeah yeah yeah but were they when you got there were they mythic were they they were and doug kenny showed up and was like can we what what god what can we do to you god and he was only you know whatever he was eight years older seven years older than we were you know but yeah and that's sort of where you kind of like honed the writing chops
Guest:I think about honed the comic chops such as they were.
Guest:I mean, writing to some degree, but it was mostly just hanging around, trying to make other people who thought they were funny laugh about stuff.
Marc:It's like a clubhouse.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:It wasn't like the Skull and Bones or a fraternal organization.
Marc:Was it affiliated with the Hasty Pudding?
Marc:No.
Marc:It was different.
Marc:It was not.
Guest:And so it was that.
Guest:It was where, you know, in this immediate post-60s time when the revolution was over, but like the anti-establishment counter-culturally feeling was still happening.
Guest:And that was a golden moment to be there, I think.
Marc:And what kind of stuff were you writing?
Marc:Oh, I don't know.
Guest:A parody of The New Yorker, I remember.
Guest:For a man who, well, I later went on to write for The New Yorker, and you recently appeared in The New Yorker, so that's why I say that.
Guest:Anyway, that, for instance, I don't know, just whatever.
Guest:What do 19-year-olds write?
Guest:Who cares?
Guest:yeah but when you got done with harvard was there a sort of did you want to did you think about trying to write for the real lampoon i mean was that sort of i i don't know i don't remember that that was again by the time i got out of college well no it was still happening then and and actually it was uh animal house was just yeah it was it was pretty good so i don't know no i i don't know i i was just trying to get a job like doing what
Guest:I got a job through a friend of my girlfriend's father being a copy boy at the New York Daily News and realized I'm happy to pay dues, but this isn't the place I want to pay dues.
Guest:You don't want to be that kind of newspaper guy?
Guest:Kind of, yeah.
Guest:And whenever I tell my children, like, oh, don't be entitled, you millennials.
Guest:And then I have to say, but I did quit my first job after one day.
Guest:So I guess I was the original entitled kid.
Marc:Well, maybe you just knew better.
Marc:Maybe you knew yourself a little better.
Marc:But so you decided, though, New York was where you had to go.
Guest:New York, like a lemming-ish thing.
Marc:This is just where I had to be.
Marc:Why?
Marc:What position did it hold in your head?
Guest:Well, I'd seen it on television.
Guest:I'd seen it in movies.
Guest:Growing up in Omaha, watching New York in all of its incarnations from the 1940s movies to Woody Allen movies to Patty Duke show to whatever was, wow, New York.
Marc:Got to go to New York for everything.
Marc:I mean, I came here too.
Marc:Where else are you going to go?
Marc:That was the goal.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:But New York was still really kind of New York.
Guest:Well, New York, when I arrived, was at its nadir.
Guest:I mean, it was... 77?
Guest:76.
Guest:Crime had crazily increased for the last 10 years.
Guest:The city had gone bankrupt five months earlier.
Guest:I mean, it was... But you're 21.
Guest:Who cares?
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's great.
Marc:And what were you doing?
Marc:What was the scene?
Marc:What was your scene?
Marc:You don't strike me as a punk rock guy.
Guest:I went to CBGB's.
Guest:I did.
Guest:I didn't play, but I went.
Guest:And I got a job.
Guest:I quit this copy boy job and got a job writing for Gene Shalott.
Guest:Do you recall Gene Shalott?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:The movie reviewer on the Today Show.
Guest:The movie reviewer and interviewed all the directors and the actors and...
Guest:He was the cultural guy.
Marc:Yeah, with the big mustache.
Guest:Correct.
Guest:My main job for him, however, was he also had a daily radio essay on the NBC radio network.
Guest:It was funny stuff about the news or whatever.
Guest:Not movies.
Guest:No, not so much.
Guest:About whatever, about culture.
Guest:Anyway, so I wrote those, and I was doing that, and that was a great job, and he was a great boss, and living on the Lower East Side, and going to CBGBs, and...
Guest:you know doing the new york thing doing the new york thing so would you say that that that experience working for shallot started to you know connect you to the cultural fabric fabric of new york and get you sort of like on the job with the funny writing uh no i mean it was it was a creative job and it was paid you know 17 000 it was a good that's good sure yeah and uh uh
Guest:And then I fell in with a guy, Tony Hendra, who you probably know Tony.
Marc:Well, yeah, he's the Lampoon guy.
Guest:He was a National Lampoon guy, yeah.
Guest:And was about to be in a character in Spinal Tap.
Guest:Anyway, he was one of these people who was doing parodies.
Guest:And somebody else I knew doing parodies.
Guest:So we did a New York Post parody with somebody else.
Guest:And I did a Wall Street Journal parody.
Marc:Where were they being published?
Guest:Just one-offs.
Guest:Oh, so they come out as magazines.
Guest:As physical papers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And so that's how I kind of fell into that world a little bit.
Marc:But you had been, like, there was some weird, there's no coincidence, I mean, the Lampoon sort of shaped you for that a bit.
Guest:Oh, for sure.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:And I worked on national parodies, the Parodies of Sports Illustrated at the Lampoon.
Guest:And so, no, I saw that, oh, this is a thing that you can do, and
Guest:And you do, yeah, you hone your skills and all that.
Marc:But it's interesting because there was a time where, I mean, those are kind of refined.
Marc:That's one thing Lampoon did, and I remember vaguely those things you're talking about, that these were very sort of specific and refined, very detailed parodies, big-scale parodies.
Guest:Full-scale.
Marc:Yeah, and I think that they...
Marc:Before I talked to you, I started to wonder in the face of really the subject matter of Fantasyland, what power does satire really have in the culture we live in?
Marc:Because it seems to me that leading up to creating Spy Magazine and being sort of New York-centric around those satirical attacks, that it did have some cultural impact.
Guest:Cultural impact, sure.
Guest:Did it make the world better?
Guest:I can't say that, but definitely had cultural impact.
Marc:So was it these parodies that led?
Marc:How long before you started to put Spy together?
Guest:I don't know, six, seven years.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I met a guy, Graydon Carter, who was also a young writer, not quite as young writer, at Time Magazine.
Guest:And we just became friends and started talking about, whoa, whoa.
Guest:You know, what's our next thing?
Guest:What are we going to do?
Guest:And and had and came up with this idea for, you know, a funny but journalistic magazine, not the not the lampoon, Harvard or National, which was just humor.
Guest:But that wedded to journalism.
Guest:And that was the idea we came up with for spy.
Marc:And there was nothing like that going on at that time?
Nuh-uh.
Guest:There really wasn't.
Guest:And there wasn't, and our thought was, you know, we'd been here a few years, and we thought like, wow, you know, we're learning all this stuff about this and that, about the New York Times, about these rich people, about this business guy, and kind of like the kind of reporting we were trying to do, as well as being funny about it.
Guest:I mean, you know, our motto was smart, fun, funny, fearless.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You know?
Marc:So you guys would sit down, and you hired writers.
Marc:Hired, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you all sit down.
Marc:You had sort of a manifesto to how you're going to approach it.
Guest:We did.
Marc:We had a mission.
Marc:A mission.
Guest:That's what you have.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it was a monthly magazine, 10 times a year originally.
Guest:And at first, it was going to be all New York focused.
Guest:And then it was successful in the way that it was successful.
Guest:So it became a year or two in.
Guest:Oh, this is national.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So this is what?
Marc:80 what?
Guest:86 we start.
Guest:Fall of 86.
Yeah.
Marc:So this is a decade after you got here, and New York has since... I just turned 32 years old.
Marc:Oh, the ripe old age of 32.
Marc:But New York had risen like a phoenix out of its bankruptcy.
Marc:Correct.
Marc:And now we're talking about the era that Thomas Wolfe wrote about, that Wall Street was going crazy, Fiorucci's was popular, Dan Ceteria was happening, Studio 54.
Guest:And yes, new wave, and it was coming back, and Uptown was going downtown, and Downtown was going uptown, and wow!
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Marc:But I imagine in the mission of Spy, you realize, like, well, in this excess lies the truth of the human condition, which is just monsters.
Marc:We're surrounded by fucking monsters.
Guest:That could have been the larger mission.
Guest:Smart, fun, funny, fearless, and then that.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And he set out to take down the monsters.
Marc:Take them down, but certainly cause them.
Marc:Get them into the light.
Guest:Discomfort.
Guest:And yes, get them into the light.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:You know, we did not provide comfort to the afflicted so much, but we did want to afflict the comfortable.
Marc:Now that sounds like a mission statement.
Yeah.
Marc:And when did you know you were doing that?
Marc:Pretty immediately.
Marc:When you poked them and you got it.
Marc:The bear growled.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Pretty quick?
Guest:Right away.
Guest:Yeah, right away, pretty much.
Guest:Because, you know, whether it was the New York Times or Donald Trump or all the other subjects of our.
Marc:Who are some of your other favorite whipping people?
Guest:Well, those were definitely two.
Guest:I mean, we got a whole different kind of reaction when we started talking about Hollywood.
Guest:We had people out in Los Angeles and talking about CAA and Mike Ovitz and...
Guest:And again, we were just knowledgeable enough and just on the cusp of young and not young to be a little dangerous.
Marc:Well, yeah, because honestly, especially the show business industrial complex, that's where the cultural mirror is generated.
Marc:So if you fuck with them, if you fuck with the illusion,
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's true.
Marc:You know, it's going to look at that man behind the curtain.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's why we'll see that.
Marc:I think that then spy must have provided some sort of template for what if anything, you did change the nature of journalism a little bit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:in terms of how magazine publishing was done and also how, you know, that line of humor and actual reporting.
Marc:Like, I mean, you know, Hunter S. Thompson did his thing, and this seems like the next turn.
Guest:No, that's well said.
Guest:And, you know, Mad Magazine, National Lampoon, Hunter S. Thompson, you know, various, I mean, Norman Mailer, various kinds of bits and pieces that had been done journalistically, you know,
Guest:for sure were our influences and and then as as the boomers were becoming of age and taking over the world there was this audience for like yeah let's look at the world that way let's let's get a let's get a strand of this into real journalism for sure so so yes we were influenced by and then yeah we we influenced for sure
Marc:Yeah, and it seems to me that in order, because now that we talk about it like this, like Fantasyland, this could have been written by an academic, right?
Marc:I mean, I wouldn't consider you an academic, but I'm saying in someone else's hands, this approach to history...
Marc:This is sort of like Howard Zen, The People's History of the United States.
Marc:This is some other strand of how to look at history.
Marc:But if you weren't able to approach it with humor, it would be not only difficult to read, but it would be completely horrifying.
Right.
Guest:But it would be just too depressing.
Guest:I mean, it's pretty depressing as it is, I guess, to many people.
Guest:But, yes, that and also I think a conventional academic wouldn't quite have been permitted by her or his lane, academic lane, to go all over the place, as I do in this book.
Marc:Now, let's talk about New York for a minute.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What's happened?
Yeah.
Marc:Well, Mark, what do you mean?
Marc:Because you actually were there to experience it.
Marc:When I see movies, have you watched those Adam Curtis documentaries at all?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:They're amazing.
Marc:Aren't they?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:No, Adam Curtis is the... I'm so glad you mentioned Adam Curtis because I regarded this in some neighborhood in my dreams of Adam Curtis.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It might have been some sort of reaction to hyper-normalization.
Marc:That weird sort of... Those dueling trajectories of Syria and Trump and New York in the 70s.
Marc:The intellectual juxtaposition without really...
Marc:saying, you know, having an argument, the way he makes his movies, it's really devastating and enlightening in a way.
Marc:But I guess the point being that, you know, you were sort of, you weren't here in the early 70s when it was rubble, but you were here, you know, for the rebuilding.
Guest:I was here, well, I was here in like when the Bronx was burning, I was here, you know, Son of Sam and like, oh my God, where's this going?
Guest:For sure.
Marc:It's really hard to imagine that this city was in that sort of dire straits.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, it was.
Guest:And cheap.
Guest:I mean, all the good aspects of that.
Guest:You didn't buy a building in 1978?
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:But I could have a really nice apartment for $400 that would now be over $4,000.
Marc:So in charting the people that you were kind of reporting on during the 80s,
Marc:You know, like when, like, you know, you were, you have been a nemesis of Trump or an early nemesis of Trump.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like he knew who you were.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I didn't know who, and we, I didn't, we didn't know who he was.
Guest:My, my partner Graydon just literally kind of discovered, I mean, I didn't, I'd never heard of Donald Trump, but you probably helped build him in some way.
Guest:Well, in some way.
Guest:And Graydon had been assigned to write a freelance piece, I think, for GQ magazine about Trump and came back and said, I just met this guy.
Guest:You won't believe, Kurt, this guy.
Guest:What a thug and what an idiot and what a bombastic fool and what a – all that he is.
Guest:This is in 1985 at this point, you know?
Guest:And –
Guest:Tell me more.
Marc:And so, yes, he became a. And he's well on his way to like he had mass most.
Marc:He had amassed most of his father's real estate.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:He was just starting, though.
Guest:And he was just building Trump Tower.
Guest:And he had just converted this crappy old hotel on 42nd Street to a nice hotel.
Marc:And what we learned from like Adam Curtis and wherever he learned it was that, you know, he got a sweet deal from the state.
Marc:They gave him money on the promise of redeveloping this broken city.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I wonder if he's actually made that analogy.
Guest:And now it's a broken American.
Guest:I will fix it.
Guest:No, exactly.
Guest:He made out like a bandit in the 70s and then the early 80s by like, yeah, okay, we'll fix it up.
Guest:Yeah, he got these sweet deals from the banks.
Guest:Correct, when they'd give it away.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And like whatever tax abatements you need.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And so when Graydon comes back to you with this information, then you guys just sort of targeted him, basically?
Guest:Well, he also, this was actually maybe even before we were starting Spire, when we were just thinking about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because by the time Spire started, there was a Trump Tower.
Guest:And the other thing he said was, was like, and the guy, he's a big guy, he said.
Guest:He's as big as we are.
Guest:the shortest fingers you've ever seen.
Guest:And so that became a thing.
Marc:And that kind of resurfaced during the election.
Guest:Well, indeed.
Guest:What was it?
Guest:Short-fingered Bulgarian.
Guest:Short-fingered Bulgarian, we called him.
Guest:Anyway, so he became a sub.
Guest:And he was this big, you know, bullying, you know, bachelory jerk.
Guest:And so, like, we thought, oh, this is a funny, this is a guy to make fun of and report on.
Marc:So we did.
Marc:And who else were your main target?
Guest:Oh, I mean, he was, I mean, it's hard.
Guest:He now looms so large in retrospect, it's almost hard to imagine the others.
Guest:But all kinds of, you know, and Mike Ovitz in Hollywood and various people in television news and business people and, you know, some of whom are well-known and some of whom aren't billionaires of various kinds.
Guest:You know, Henry Kravis, who subsequently hired and effectively fired me.
Guest:At New York Magazine?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:was that was that when did that start so that that was not after spy in new york magazine no that was like it felt a general it was a generation older it started in 68 but i remember like when i was a kid that there was it did turn towards what spy was doing at some point a little more right a little more humor probably i took it over yeah yeah right yeah when you were a kid yeah well you was that 94.
Marc:Okay, I wasn't a kid.
Marc:You were a young man.
Marc:Yeah, I was a young man.
Marc:I was 30 years old, 31 years old.
Guest:But yeah, but there was a change.
Guest:Yeah, and that made it more popular.
Guest:I don't know about that, but yeah, I think we made it better and kind of a generational change, yeah.
Marc:So one of the things I'm experiencing as somebody who lived here in the late 80s for a few years and then on and off for many years was that I don't know who lives here anymore.
Marc:And I don't quite have a full understanding of what's happening to the city.
Marc:Where did you live then?
Marc:I lived on 2nd between A and B, 89 to 92.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:I lived on 9th Street between 1st and 2nd.
Marc:Yeah, I loved it.
Marc:It was a lot of heroin and a lot of stuff.
Marc:And then eventually Giuliani kind of pushed them into the water or wherever they went.
Marc:I remember the military occupation of the NYPD after a certain point.
Marc:And then I lived on 3rd and 16th for a few years.
Marc:And then eventually I got an apartment in Astoria that I held on to for almost a decade.
Marc:But I come back now and it seems like there's a lot of empty buildings that look like they're not lived in.
Marc:And it seems like a lot of the people, and I'm speculating, but it feels like there was once a time where people who worked in the city of all economic strata at least could have a place to live here.
Marc:And it seems like that they're all gone.
Guest:I would say you get out of Manhattan.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Which is, I mean, you went to Astoria at a certain point, and you did get out of Manhattan in that sense.
Guest:So I would say, and no, I mean, I did not leave Manhattan because it was becoming too full of rich people or anything like that.
Guest:But it has, you know...
Guest:Certainly when I moved into the neighborhood where we moved to in Brooklyn, my wife and I, our babies 30 years ago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was Italian.
Guest:It was economically integrated and diverse.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Not so much racially.
Guest:Right.
Right.
Marc:But it seems like what kind of got lost, and it's weird because I remember when Giuliani, under his reign, when they rebuilt Times Square, and they kind of pushed a lot of people out down here for real estate speculation.
Guest:I mean, the Times Square thing actually began a little before...
Guest:July, to be fair.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But there was this sort of part of this seedy nostalgia that they're ruining it.
Marc:But when you go up there, it's sort of like you realize, I think this was the original intention of what this was supposed to be.
Guest:A thousand percent.
Marc:That this is returning it to its glory in a modern way.
Guest:I mean, you know, I'm with you on that.
Guest:I mean, it's a yes.
Guest:I think that's exactly right.
Guest:That was the vision of all those big lights and everything.
Guest:It wasn't meant to be like, oh, I think I'm going to get killed.
Guest:I mean, it was meant to be like, oh, yeah, it's a little saucy.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:But you go there now, and it's quite a spectacle.
Marc:It doesn't even matter what the lights are representing, but you go there, and you're like, wow.
Marc:This is like a hallucinatory experience.
Guest:And the thing about New York's change that when no matter, okay, it's all yuppies.
Guest:Oh, it's all rich people.
Guest:All that stuff.
Guest:Okay, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.
Guest:We can talk about it.
Guest:But now it doesn't even seem like yuppies.
Guest:Well, I will say, I mean, if the miracle, and this is a hobby horse of mine, and I'll never stop saying it, but there are today...
Guest:87% fewer murders in New York City than there were in 1990 when I was a kid here.
Marc:87%.
Marc:87%.
Guest:I mean, that is, as I say, it's as close to a miracle as I will ever experience in my life.
Guest:And what are you... Oh, that's a whole other...
Guest:three-hour conversation.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, there are all kinds of theories about why that's true.
Guest:I mean, it's true.
Guest:I mean, obviously, crime has gone down in America, generally.
Marc:Killers realize that it wasn't as rife of a killing ground and they've moved out.
Guest:I mean, all kinds, you know, it's... Police... Policing is part of it, but, you know, is it... There's a legitimate set of...
Guest:of scholarship about the fact that it's getting lead-free gas made people less criminal.
Guest:Really?
Guest:That increase of abortions reduced the number of murders.
Guest:There's all kinds of controversial pieces to a theory, but there is no one theory.
Guest:And therefore, because it's kind of mysterious, you know, from 2,200 murders to 300 murders in 25 years, what?
Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's it's a miracle.
Guest:And, you know, if if the price of that is too many Starbucks, OK, I'll make that trade.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:You know, sure.
Marc:But if the price of that is like, you know, too many police and and really sort of, you know, you're pushing the marginalized further out onto the market.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, right.
Guest:Correct.
Marc:So it's a it's a Faustian thing.
Guest:Well, or, or maybe just like, you know, okay, we solved that crime problem 15 years ago.
Guest:Let's now, let's now go to the other thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that was the theory behind de Blasio becoming mayor, for instance.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, okay, good.
Guest:New York's back.
Guest:Let's work on inequality and misery.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, unfair criminal law enforcement.
Marc:But the feeling I get is that it seems like a lot of the real estate is owned by, I guess, carpetbaggers from China and Russia and other money coming in.
Guest:There is that.
Guest:And all of the empty retail storefronts, that does bug me.
Guest:well that's going to happen everywhere i mean who the hell goes to stores anymore but i mean you know well but that's not no but it's not because they're going out of business it's because the landlords are demanding too much money right it's the the invisible hands are not yet right grasping so the cuter shops that were you know more not even mom and pop but at least someone's big idea right but but again that's what i say that's one of the one of the pleasures of living in in in places other than manhattan is there are still more of those quirky odd mom and poppy
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Places.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:But, you know, another thing that's left, though, with as you know, the rent control apartments went away and lofts, you know, got cleaned up was that it seems like there was a whole sort of world of a certain type of performance art.
Marc:And I think some visual art that kind of like had to recenter itself somewhere else.
Marc:which is all out in bushwick essentially is that where it is yeah yeah because when i was still here there was kind of the crashing wave of whatever the new york's performance art scene was right yeah exactly and it was in your neighborhood in my old neighborhood right there were weird little theater spaces eric but goes what yeah yeah right yeah i watched him work something out for you know five or six times yes yeah but that's all gone they've all moved to connecticut
Guest:Well, that happens, too.
Guest:Or they have their kids or whatever.
Guest:Or they haven't made enough money.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, because, oh, no.
Guest:I mean, really.
Guest:Can't stay here.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Got to go.
Guest:I mean, show me what a million dollars buys you in New York City versus Connecticut.
Guest:I mean, the money, there's more money here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Marc:I mean, you know.
Marc:goes a little further it's not no surprise yeah so you go from spy then you edit new york and then you do some other things but you do end up with this radio show forever this is like uh too long an institution you should take over no no we we need you out there but i mean what how did that start
Guest:That started when I'd actually, in 1999, I was doing various things and writing.
Guest:I just, what was it?
Guest:Oh, yeah, I just published my first novel, actually.
Guest:And in fact, this is not how it happened, but in fact, I was doing a public radio show to promote the novel.
Guest:And I was in WNYC here in New York, and I saw, whoa, look, interesting.
Guest:They're starting this new show, huh?
Guest:And so I knew about this idea for a show they wanted to do.
Guest:And then out of the blue, a month later when somebody called me and said, hey, would you be interested in talking to us about being the host of this show?
Guest:I said, oh, you mean this show?
Guest:And they were astounded that I knew what they were talking about and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:So there was a bit of serendipity, synchronicity going on.
Guest:And then they said, well, we think you could do this.
Guest:I said, I've never done any radio except when I've appeared on other people's shows.
Guest:Why?
Guest:I said, well, we just think so.
Guest:It's your background.
Guest:You're doing this.
Guest:So anyway, one thing led to another, and I tried out, and they said, yeah, sure, let's do this.
Guest:And yeah, crazily, it's interesting.
Marc:it started we started uh 2000 and uh here here it is still it's it's lasted so much longer than any other of my you know multiple gigs in life it's crazy but isn't it great though in the sense that you know like even going back to you know what your interests were in college is that you know when you have a radio even more so than than writing because there was something visceral about talking about something is that
Marc:Through your show, I think the main thing that makes it unique is you can kind of weave all of your intellectual interests into it and put them together however you want.
Guest:A bit.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:No, indeed.
Guest:And because unlike, I don't know, when you started performing and talking out loud...
Guest:I had my little bits and pieces of it, part here, part there.
Guest:But, like, public performing was not a thing I did.
Guest:So, wow.
Guest:You know, here I am, 40 years old, over 40 years old.
Guest:Like, really?
Guest:You want me to start figuring out how to do this?
Marc:Best time to get into radio.
Guest:But it was – I loved it.
Guest:And so, yes, you can –
Guest:you're just talking so you can be reminded of X, Y, or Z from your life or from a book you read or from whatever.
Guest:It's fantastic, yes, exactly in the way you say.
Guest:And at least the way we do it with producers who do all the hard work, it's so much easier than anything else I do.
Guest:Good producers are the best.
Guest:I mean, really, writing anything is hard.
Guest:Writing a magazine article or a book is really hard.
Guest:And really, yeah, okay, yes, there are people who help you and they're editors and copy editors, but it's your thing.
Guest:Whereas this, I don't know about you.
Guest:I mean, I just go in and get to talk to somebody I'm interested in for an hour and then they turn it into radio.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And also sometimes they're like, you know, I don't know if you've thought about this, but they'll put something in your ear and you're like, oh, yeah, I should do it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:No, and then you sound super smart.
Marc:The best.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, you suddenly named the role that Jeff Goldblum had in 1979.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Because you had someone do the research and put it in your head.
Marc:That's the best part of radio.
Marc:But okay, so now let's get back, get current so I can get some answers.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:so what was the direct like we brought up adam curtis who i find fascinating you know i i you know the two movies that you know the uh what was it there was the one the hyper normalization one what was the one about trump and assad and and kissinger and you know and then there's the other one the century is the century of self century of self
Marc:That was the one that was my epiphany.
Marc:The PR industry.
Marc:So your epiphany was the trend of psychotherapy.
Guest:Yeah, and the way he blends.
Marc:Why am I forgetting his name?
Marc:Freud's nephew.
Guest:Oh, the guy who invented Bernays.
Marc:Bernays, yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, the thing that fascinated me about that and also the thing that you're very diligent and thorough about in your book is that a lot of this magical thinking became prevalent on the left and in culture with the baby boomers post-acid who were into self-realization.
Marc:Which was sort of the perfect amalgamation of the thesis where you can invent yourself, but you can also invent whatever kind of fucking magical thinking structure or paradigm that you want, commit to it, and it's going to have some sort of ripple.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, precisely.
Guest:And again, I didn't know – I wasn't raised religiously, so I didn't know really very much at all about Protestantism.
Guest:So I had to do a lot of research to learn about that because that's so deep in this – The different schools of Christianity and how they broke apart.
Guest:And the basic idea of Protestantism, the priesthood of all believers, that every believer is a priest, not like these Catholics –
Guest:And I'd never thought about it before.
Guest:And in the reading I'd done, hadn't really seen it, the lines drawn, the dots connected between that, like, wait.
Guest:You know, the Protestant said in 1550 or 1604, I don't need a priest.
Guest:I can just read the Bible and figure out what it means and what I should live and how I should do because of that.
Guest:Whoa, I'm the priest.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:Well, that carried to all kinds of extremes is what we got here.
Guest:I mean, and so I'd never, that was like one of the, I don't know, 10 revelations I had or 20, whatever, in researching this book that I thought, uh-huh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's interesting because we talk about, oh, Protestant work ethic.
Guest:Oh, WASP.
Guest:Oh, all this.
Guest:Oh, crazy evangelicals.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:All that stuff is there.
Guest:But this more fundamental piece of what it means to be Protestant in your understanding of your relationship to God and truth and all that is this other thing that I just didn't know anything about.
Marc:Are you talking about being untethered from the church to go ahead and start your own church?
Guest:Well, that too, and combined with entrepreneurial, like, let's make a buck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Americanism, yes.
Guest:But also just the, wait, I don't need a priest to tell me what's what.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's really up to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the way in which that really does relate to the simultaneous enlightenment, which is, no, you don't need, I mean, the enlightenment we all think of is, oh, you don't need religion.
Guest:But it was just, you can figure it out, whatever it is.
Guest:on your own right studying well that plus plus this you know application kooky protestant religion thing an application of will together i i i really felt like wow you know i i'm not saying nobody's ever said this or put these together but it for me it was a it was the one of the little things i mixed up as i was doing research here that i got okay i'm on to something here
Marc:Well, I like the whole sort of like dealing with the kind of, you know, now that people talk about themselves as brands, whether they're on brand or off brand and the sort of evolution from the, you know, the sort of 60s enlightenments to the me generation, because I think that, you know, just as damaging,
Marc:That, you know, religion, organized religion or amassing people into these religious movements and, you know, profiteering off of them, but also mobilizing them to nefarious deeds or to sort of fascistic deeds.
Marc:You know, on the other side of that, you were careful to sort of explore the kind of...
Marc:The other movement, which was to empower people to be themselves in whatever version that is and attain some sort of nebulous spirituality through diet or yoga or whatever.
Guest:Crystals.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But it seems like the more...
Marc:powerful side of that politically are the rubes that are angry and feel like they're doing something for God, where the other side of the 60s thing is like you get kind of progressives by name, many of them successful, who are really about just sort of self-realization, which is in and of itself somewhat ineffectual politically.
Guest:well other than like how do i you know ultimately uh alleviate my guilt by paying you know putting my money into something but still do whatever the fuck i want yeah sure i mean they are different as i try to describe in this book different flavors of of of you know irrationality and some are more benign or less malign than others for sure the the and the thing where you know you know i i
Guest:I thought I was gonna get more shit for this one little dots I connect where I say like well of course as the Republican Party has gotten more Christian over the last 30 years in a way it wasn't before my parents were Republicans my mother left the Republican Party around 1995 or 8 because it had gotten so Christian but that was on purpose
Guest:Correct.
Guest:But what I'm saying, when I made the point that, like, wow, your party gets more and more Christian, naturally you're going to fall for things like there's no climate change and, you know, black people are less, or white people are more discriminated against than black people and all these other untrue things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know,
Guest:Your religion is, to me, nutty and insupportable.
Guest:So naturally, you're going to it's an easy step over these other things.
Guest:I thought people and I don't know, maybe maybe the people who would have hated that didn't read it.
Guest:But but I think I think that's what happens is when when I mean, nutty beliefs are fine.
Guest:more or less.
Guest:Nutty beliefs are fine when they don't become politicized, when they don't spill into the public sphere.
Guest:And that's the way America was.
Guest:That's the way everywhere mostly is.
Guest:People believe they're nutty things, whatever they are, or they're untrue things, or they're superstitious things, or they're whatever.
Guest:I don't care.
Guest:That Thomas Jefferson quote I quote over and over again.
Guest:I don't care if my neighbor believes in no gods or 20 gods as long as he doesn't pick my pocket or break my leg.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:But now they started breaking our leg and picking our pocket.
Guest:And yes, and because there's this organized set of churches that really became politicized in the 70s and 80s, that's a big part of the problem.
Guest:It's not the whole problem, but it's a big part of the problem.
Marc:Yeah, I guess in a broader... The way it impacts me just on the individual level that once you get...
Marc:once you're able to suspend your disbelief, you really can and will believe fucking anything.
Marc:And that the application of logic or even sort of very shallow research or some sort of inarguable belief in the scientific method would guide most people to have some sort of barometer of basic truth.
Marc:But it just doesn't seem to matter.
Marc:And what causes that is ignorance and stupidity on some level.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And this encouragement, again, as I argue, this thing that's been part of the American character and way, oh, I don't need to trust an expert.
Guest:Oh, you elitist.
Guest:I don't need to trust.
Guest:Oh, book learning isn't for me.
Guest:Then sift that through the 1960s and I go, man, whatever you want to believe, it's your truth.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Mark, it's your truth.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And that's enough.
Guest:And even if you think you hated the 60s, like, no, I'm against the 60s.
Guest:I'm a conservative.
Guest:No, well, then it allowed you to believe these crazy fucking things you believe because suddenly it was a much easier and freer and more legit, and I couldn't challenge it if you believed whatever.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then in the 60s, there were actually some proven conspiracy theories which fed the fire.
Marc:And then somehow the right appropriated the tool of the conspiracy theory and used it as a political tactic.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I really like the focus you put on P.T.
Marc:Barnum.
Right.
Marc:I mean, like, like he goes all the way through the book.
Marc:And I think that's the weird thing is that, you know, once you have this world where everyone can invent themselves and seek, you know, freedom and religious utopias and have the freedom to do whatever they want, that the deeper thing is, is that there's always going to be a bunch of people that are con men and hucksters are going to take advantage of all the suckers.
Marc:And that seems to be that combination of like, you know, free thinking and, and, you know, religious utopia is,
Marc:that the more important leg of the country are the con men.
Marc:That's capitalism.
Guest:But of course, you could have a socialist con man and a socialist P.T.
Guest:Barnum as well.
Guest:But yes, the P.T.
Guest:Barnum to WWE and Donald Trump is one whole thread.
Guest:And then it always interests me.
Guest:I mean, P.T.
Guest:Barnum, one of the reasons P.T.
Guest:Barnum was great is even though he was like, oh, look, you know, it's a mermaid.
Guest:It's a mermaid I'm showing you or whatever.
Guest:He winked and he would write like, yeah.
Guest:He was on to himself.
Guest:He was on to himself.
Guest:You know, Joseph Smith, you know, about so many of these people, I wonder if they're on to themselves or not.
Guest:But anyway.
Guest:That's a good question.
Guest:Barnum was.
Guest:WWE obviously is.
Guest:But there are all these... Is Donald Trump?
Guest:That's the question.
Guest:And there are a lot of Americans, and it is part of being American, that like, yeah, I know Hulk Hogan isn't really beaten up, but...
Guest:Like maybe he is and they kind of hate each other.
Guest:And look, in private life, he's this.
Guest:So that blurring of character and reality and like, well, maybe, who knows?
Guest:It's entertaining is what America, is the hybrid that America started making in the Barnum age and before.
Marc:So this is really the storm because now that media is entirely fragmented, there is no sort of mainstay.
Marc:There is no kind of communal effect of three networks.
Marc:Even though some of the shit we were getting were lies or misrepresentations, at least we were all on the same page.
Guest:And there were only white straight men doing it and all that stuff.
Guest:Yeah, for sure.
Guest:It wasn't perfect.
Marc:But there was a sense of at least community, whether it was wrong-minded.
Marc:Here's the facts.
Guest:We all agree on the basic facts.
Marc:right so that's gone yeah so now like it's like now it's just and now you have people within the administration even the president himself contradicting himself you know in in the course of of three minutes right so there there's no real like none of that none of that seems to matter or or saying in his case no no i never said that wait no here's the tape of you saying exactly that you know four days ago and then well four days is enough for it to disappear yeah
Marc:So I guess, you know, after all is said and done, you did all this research, and I know the conclusion, you know, was not particularly helpful, but at least you were able to prove to yourself and the reader that this is not an uncommon, you know, tug of war in this country between, you know, reason and magical thinking.
Guest:It's a chronic condition.
Guest:And we have dealt with and we have been weird.
Guest:We have been exceptional all along.
Guest:I mean, exceptionalism has been taken lately as this conservative, no, American exceptionalism means we're great.
Guest:We're great.
Guest:We're great.
Guest:We are great.
Guest:I don't hate America.
Guest:I don't want to leave.
Guest:But we are also exceptional in that way, in not having a different grip on reality.
Marc:We're exceptional at bullshit.
Guest:Yes, we are exceptional at bullshit and exceptional at entertainment.
Guest:There's a reason we invented show business.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I mean, again, like a religious cult comes over here and and invents, you know, entrepreneurial business and show business, too.
Guest:I mean, that's going to get to unfettered.
Guest:That gets us to where we are.
Marc:After getting through this, this book and this research, you know, to to sate your own curiosity and try to put your fear in perspective.
Marc:What is your biggest fear about what's happening now in terms politically and culturally?
Marc:Is it something that looks like some sort of friendly, kind of acceptable fascism?
Guest:Well, I don't know about friendly or acceptable, but yeah, some, you know, idiocracy slash fascism.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:It is.
Guest:And this thing, you know, again, I didn't start with this idea of, oh, this is going to destroy America.
Guest:I was just like, yeah.
Guest:Let's figure this out.
Guest:This has changed since I was a kid.
Guest:Let me figure it out.
Guest:But now with the coming of Donald Trump, who, by the way, wasn't even nominated for president until I had finished a manuscript of this book.
Guest:So it wasn't like I was reverse engineering.
Guest:How did we get to Trump?
Guest:But now that he has a presidency and a movement based on denying the
Guest:Reality and the truth and of various kinds as as I when I quote Hannah Arendt the great writer about yeah Nazis and Communists and Stalin and Hitler saying that's one of the things they always did they is like No, we're gonna lie and you're gonna like that.
Guest:We lie and all that stuff So yes
Guest:this American tendency, not uniquely American, but kind of unique in the developed world, this American tendency to like not, my truth is my truth and your truth is your truth and all that stuff that we've come to and let's get rid of the establishment, let's get rid of the experts that tell us we're wrong, all that.
Guest:has led us to this place that, yeah, could be the end of things, could be the end of the republic, the end of the democracy, could really get us into a terrible, existentially horrible place.
Guest:I've never been a person who screams about that stuff or says, you know, oh, it's like the end of Rome or, oh, my God, you know, Nixon's a Nazi.
Guest:I never have been that person.
Guest:But –
Guest:But seeing where we are now, you know, with Trump and Trumpism as as the so far apotheosis of this long historical American tendency.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where's the shit on?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what do you what are you doing about it?
Guest:Voting.
Guest:Tweeting.
Marc:You wrote the book.
Marc:I mean, I didn't mean that as indicting.
Marc:It's just sort of like there is a powerlessness that one feels.
Guest:Well, I think I do feel a certain mission drivenness to keep talking about this part of it, which I think underlies so much of it.
Guest:And letting people who have a better standing to talk about, you know, racism or misogyny or other things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I feel like I don't want this part of the nightmare to go on remarked upon because it's its own part of the nightmare and underlies so much of the rest.
Guest:Once once people can say this is these are the facts or these aren't the facts.
Guest:And then, you know, you got no society and you can't you have no conversation and you have no debate about.
Guest:Well, you know, so so it's it's an important it's it doesn't seem as grotesque and horrible and threatening as look at this racist thing he said or look at this what he's doing to these children in the border or whatever.
Guest:Pick your thing.
Guest:But to me, it is important.
Guest:So, yeah, so I'm, you know, almost two years after this book came out, I'm still, you know, ranting about it, you know, and doing my best to, you know, yeah, give money to politicians and organizations and...
Marc:Well, I think it's an important book, and I didn't know when it came out, and I didn't know how long it had been sitting around.
Marc:But when I locked into it, I'm like, well, this should be required reading to a certain degree.
Marc:And because it enabled me... Because there's so much that causes anxiety around...
Marc:what we think we need to know and how much we do know.
Marc:And, you know, and, you know, is this new?
Marc:Is it not new?
Marc:And there's plenty of people that are like, well, it was bad during Nixon, but not unlike you.
Marc:You're like, I didn't even live there then.
Marc:But like things seem to be worse.
Marc:And there seems to be a type of kind of accepted, you know, chaos around the information we take in and how it's being used.
Marc:So for me, it really helped me contextualize a lot of stuff.
Marc:And I'll keep preaching it.
Marc:Thanks for talking to me.
Guest:And making a movie about it.
Marc:Are they making a movie?
Marc:Your movie.
Marc:Well, yeah, sort of trust is... I guess it touches into that, and it's weird because I...
Marc:Years ago, when I was a younger person and kind of angry, but not that educated in full-formed intellectual understanding of history or anything, I kind of got submerged in the specific kind of one-world government, trilateral commission, Freemason, Illuminati conspiracy.
Marc:I was into reading about that.
Guest:So I helped deprogram you, really.
Marc:A little bit, but more so my friend Jim.
Marc:I remember...
Marc:He worked for Clinton and Obama.
Marc:He's been a political guy forever.
Marc:And he worked in Washington.
Marc:And I was there during this time.
Marc:I was visiting him.
Marc:And we're on the Great Mall.
Marc:And we'd just gone into the Capitol rotunda.
Marc:And I actually said to him, I said, we're going to walk around office buildings all day.
Marc:And he was like, this is the Capitol.
Marc:But I had no context.
Marc:I didn't have the appreciation of American history.
Marc:But I did see the obelisk and the Pentagon as some sort of ritual evidence of an almost magical conspiracy.
Guest:The Nick Cage movie.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But I had all the information.
Marc:I just remember ranting about it, standing there on the Great Mall about what Washington really was.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, after I take a breath, Jim just looks at me and goes, Mark, people here just aren't that organized.
Guest:Well, no, but that to me is one of the things about conspiracies is like people aren't that organized.
Guest:People can't keep secrets.
Guest:It's it would be really tough to pull off a good conspiracy.
Marc:Well, yeah, but they make they make ignorant or stupid people seem intelligent because they have closure.
Marc:There's no you know, it's very easy to connect a lot of dots in retrospect.
Marc:So when you make sense of that and it has the punchline you're looking for that satisfies your particular
Marc:anger or emotions, you're like, that feels good.
Marc:That's going to settle in as truth.
Guest:Correct.
Guest:And it's, you know, you write fiction, you write a story, you tell jokes, whatever.
Guest:It has that pleasure of, oh, it's a tidy... There's a callback.
Guest:Oh, it connects to this.
Guest:And people want reality to be that way.
Guest:And it, you know, 99% of the time is not.
Marc:And also there's this problem with how every... There's no...
Marc:nothing has the authority there you know things look like news like there's a lot of fiction that goes out there that within a couple weeks somehow another becomes true to a lot of people because they don't know where it came from or what the source is and and my dad watches fox news not because he's a republican it just looks like news to him there's a guy sitting there you know i don't know why he chooses that one because he's an angry guy but he was never a political guy but he can't quite understand how it's not news
Guest:Well, and again, that's part of the problem of somebody like your father who went from the pre-digital age to the digital age, who are like, whoa, no, look, I saw it on the internet.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And we just, you know, it's like we were given wands or sabers or something that we don't know how to use properly with digital stuff.
Marc:Well, I hope it seems like there's a fight to be fought, and I hope we get back to at least some respectable form of fighting.
Guest:That's all I hope for.
Guest:Exactly right, is get it back to fighting in the old days.
Guest:I go back and forth.
Guest:Some days I wake up and think, no, we're fucked.
Guest:This is it.
Guest:And some days I think, no, I mean, look.
Marc:you know it was nazi germany and now they're normal germany i mean it can happen you know just a lot of people have to die that's it but or be very uncomfortable but my fear is though like and i talk about on stage is that i think that people that where the switch is thrown in their brain where they can no longer really have any ability to decipher truth from fiction or or or what is making them excited against what is the reality is that i don't think they can
Marc:a lot of them can come back.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I think that, that I don't hear that enough that like, you know, we have people in your family, like my uncle's one of these guys.
Marc:It's like, I don't know that they can come back.
Marc:I don't know that there's a way back.
Guest:Well, and unfortunately now is as there wasn't 60 years ago, uh,
Guest:There wasn't all the all the means and venues for keeping them there.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You know, if you were just, you know, your uncle, you're a crackpot and basket like, OK, dude, maybe.
Guest:But now you got your own TV channel.
Marc:And also you just get online and, you know, you got friends going like, yeah, we're still here.
Guest:No, and that is a new condition.
Guest:And you don't want to be too technologically deterministic and, oh, people used to say that print would be terrible or TV would ruin everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, I get that.
Guest:But this keeps the nuts and the crackpots and the believers in whatever more believing and encouraged and in a community than ever has been possible before.
Guest:And also, yes, in answer to your earlier question, they are going to make a, not a movie out of it, but there's going to be a TV, three-hour TV thing.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Are you going to narrate it?
Marc:I am.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:Well, congratulations, and thank you for writing the book, and thank you for talking to me.
Guest:My pleasure.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:The book is Fantasyland, How America Went Haywire, a 500-year history.
Marc:That was Kurt Anderson.
Marc:The other books I'm recommending for your second half of summer reading are It Came From Something Awful by Dale Barron and The Birth of Loud by Ian S. Port and the jazz book, Playing Changes, Jazz for the New Century by Nate Scheinman.
Marc:This is a new thing I'm doing.
Marc:Book Club.
Marc:Book Club with Marin.
Marc:Go to wtfpod.com slash tour for all of my tour dates.
Marc:I'm going a lot of places.
Marc:Austin, Houston, Dallas, Detroit, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, D.C., Philly, Nashville, Atlanta, Toronto, Minneapolis.
Marc:A lot, a lot.
Marc:Just go over there, all right, and find it.
Marc:And if you want to watch Sword of Trust, you can go to sortoftrust.com to search movie theaters and also streaming options.
Marc:And now I will play guitar for you.
Marc:Boomer lives!