Episode 635 - Bob Guccione, Jr.

Episode 635 • Released September 6, 2015 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters what the fuckadelics what the fuckmans how's it going i'm mark maron this is my show wtf nice to be here nice to to talk to you hope you're doing well happy labor day be careful today don't drink and drive don't hurt yourself don't hurt others

00:00:29Marc:If you're going to drink, try not to cry in public.

00:00:32Marc:Try not to cry at family gatherings.

00:00:34Marc:Don't cry at the barbecue.

00:00:35Marc:Don't be afraid to take a nap.

00:00:37Marc:Don't throw up by yourself if you're laying down.

00:00:41Marc:If you know you're going to throw up, you're probably okay.

00:00:44Marc:But try not to pass out and throw up laying down, okay?

00:00:48Marc:And take it easy.

00:00:49Marc:Take it easy.

00:00:51Marc:Eat some stuff that's shitty for you and try to be nice to your friends and family today on this holiday day.

00:00:58Marc:Today on the show, Bob Guccione Jr.

00:01:01Marc:Bob Guccione Jr., who I knew years ago.

00:01:04Marc:Bob Guccione Jr.

00:01:06Marc:was the creator and editor of Spin Magazine, and now he's there as a guest editor for its 30th anniversary.

00:01:12Marc:He's curating 30 iconic stories from the magazine's 30-year history.

00:01:16Marc:Like later this week, Spin.com is posting a new video interview with Chris Novoselic.

00:01:21Marc:I don't ever know if I pronounced his name right, either of them, of Nirvana, the bass player, if that helps out.

00:01:26Marc:Tall fella.

00:01:27Marc:Tall fella.

00:01:28Marc:And they were publishing Chris' original war reporting from Croatia, which was first in spin back in 1993.

00:01:35Marc:Guccione and I go back a little bit.

00:01:38Marc:We knew each other.

00:01:39Marc:They did a small bit on me a million years ago when these weird little kind of like, look what's happening, kind of people.

00:01:45Marc:pieces it was a kind of two page thing not on me but had a bunch of little things little moments had this great picture of me and tracy pepper wrote a little piece on me and quoted a joke that i'd never done before and would never do again that made no sense i remember like this is going to be great it's going to be in spin magazine like that fucking joke it wasn't even a joke it was a fragment of a joke it was weird crowd work

00:02:09Marc:Oh, my God.

00:02:11Marc:I just saw it as another indicator that I got no luck in the world.

00:02:15Marc:Things worked out.

00:02:16Marc:That was probably 1992 or three.

00:02:19Marc:And then Guccione and I, we kind of, because I was in the magazine, then I wrote a piece for Spin.

00:02:27Marc:I wrote a piece for the last page that I worked very hard on with the help of my buddy Devin Jackson.

00:02:34Marc:And then he invited me to, like, he used to have these dinner parties.

00:02:38Marc:I got to talk to him about this.

00:02:40Marc:Maybe I will.

00:02:42Marc:But he used to have these dinner parties, like these salon evenings where, you know, he just invited a bunch of random people who were at the cutting edge of something.

00:02:51Marc:And he'd just go over there to his place on the west side and eat pasta and sit around and chat.

00:02:58Marc:I think the idea was to have compelling conversations about what's happening now, man.

00:03:05Marc:Where are we at?

00:03:08Marc:And one night that guy, do you remember that guy?

00:03:10Marc:I think his name was Jaron Lanier.

00:03:12Marc:He was like the first like, you know, cyber philosopher, computer guy.

00:03:19Marc:He had dreadlocks.

00:03:20Marc:He's a white guy with dreadlocks.

00:03:22Marc:He was on the cover of all the tech mags or the two that were available then, like Wired.

00:03:27Marc:And he was like...

00:03:29Marc:a thinker man, you know, a futuristic internet computer on the cutting edge of tech at that time.

00:03:36Marc:But he was also like this sort of pagan-y mystic presenter.

00:03:40Marc:Like he presented himself like he was some sort of little dreadlocked Buddha of a sort.

00:03:46Marc:And he immediately bothered me.

00:03:47Marc:It bothered me when I saw him on magazine covers.

00:03:51Marc:And there he was.

00:03:52Marc:You know, he just said, you got all this press like he was some sort of fucking wizard.

00:03:56Marc:And I just remember he's a little kind of roly poly guy with dreadlocks and his little beard.

00:04:01Marc:And I picture that perhaps he had a flute or a lute, not a lute, a flute or a pan flute.

00:04:08Marc:That's what I picture.

00:04:09Marc:He's playing perhaps a small instrument, a primitive instrument at the salon dinner party at Bob Guccione's house.

00:04:17Marc:I just remember being there.

00:04:18Marc:I think I must have been with my first wife.

00:04:21Marc:And he's just sort of all filled with himself and sitting there eating some pasta.

00:04:25Marc:And he goes, I don't think dogs have souls.

00:04:28Marc:Dogs definitely don't have souls.

00:04:31Marc:And I'm like, oh, God, I got to go.

00:04:33Marc:Let's go to a comedy club where people at least are funny.

00:04:36Marc:And then he goes, but goats do.

00:04:39Marc:Goats definitely have souls.

00:04:41Marc:Goats have souls.

00:04:42Marc:And I picture you just pick up his pamphlet.

00:04:44Marc:Yeah.

00:04:47Marc:Oh, my God.

00:04:48Marc:That was a rough evening.

00:04:50Marc:Rough evening.

00:04:51Marc:But I hadn't seen Bob Guccione in a long time.

00:04:53Marc:He'd kind of been through it and been around and resurfaced in New York.

00:04:57Marc:I thought, why not catch up with him?

00:04:59Marc:He had some stuff to say.

00:05:00Marc:It was an interesting chat about journalism, the state of things today and the state of Bob Guccione today.

00:05:06Marc:All right.

00:05:06Marc:So that's coming momentarily.

00:05:09Marc:So I had an embarrassing thing happen.

00:05:12Marc:Lately, I've been panicky.

00:05:13Marc:I think it's because of my insane caffeine intake.

00:05:16Marc:Anxiety is high.

00:05:18Marc:And every little thing just happens at the same frequency as every other thing, no matter what the intensity of it is emotionally or psychologically.

00:05:26Marc:So...

00:05:27Marc:As you know, I got some work done on my driveway, and a lot of the dudes who were working on the driveway had a picnic on my grass.

00:05:33Marc:And then it looked like they might have dumped some chemicals on my grass of some kind, some cement chemicals.

00:05:38Marc:I don't know.

00:05:38Marc:It was a nice outing.

00:05:39Marc:We all had burritos and Cokes with lime and hot sauce.

00:05:43Marc:And I sat there and was unable to communicate with anybody except for smiling, and occasionally they laughed at me.

00:05:50Marc:But after everybody left, it looked like my grass had been through the shit, and I thought it was all dead.

00:05:55Marc:And then I go over to my sprinkler timer, which was unplugged.

00:06:00Marc:I plug it back in and it ain't working.

00:06:02Marc:Now, there was a time in my life where I would have taken the afternoon to go ahead and fix the sprinkler timer.

00:06:07Marc:I tried.

00:06:07Marc:I checked the fuses.

00:06:08Marc:I checked the lithium battery.

00:06:10Marc:Nothing.

00:06:10Marc:It didn't matter.

00:06:11Marc:It was broken.

00:06:12Marc:I opened up the back and there were several Brown Widows in there with very weird looking egg sacks.

00:06:17Marc:Very interesting egg sacks.

00:06:19Marc:I think the Brown Widow has.

00:06:20Marc:It's these little, the standard spider egg sack, but they're spiky.

00:06:24Marc:They look like little stars, little stars filled with mildly poisonous arachnopods.

00:06:30Marc:But I didn't care, man.

00:06:31Marc:I was looking to fix this thing.

00:06:32Marc:Couldn't fix it.

00:06:34Marc:So I panicked.

00:06:35Marc:I texted the guy that does my landscaping.

00:06:38Marc:Yeah, I have a guy that comes twice a month to cut back cactuses and play with the yard.

00:06:45Marc:But he's a great guy.

00:06:46Marc:His name's Jose.

00:06:47Marc:So I text Jose.

00:06:49Marc:Now, I'm not trying to be insensitive.

00:06:52Marc:This is a real thing.

00:06:53Marc:Real thing.

00:06:54Marc:Jose doesn't really speak English.

00:06:56Marc:He's a very sweet guy.

00:06:56Marc:He doesn't speak English.

00:06:58Marc:He's very good at his job.

00:06:59Marc:He doesn't speak English.

00:07:00Marc:So I need to text him because I'm panicking about the sprinkler timer that I'm not sure I can fix or I should fix or whatever.

00:07:07Marc:So I text Jose, you know, Jose, it's Mark.

00:07:11Marc:Timer, no work.

00:07:13Marc:So I was texting in broken English.

00:07:18Marc:Don't know what to do.

00:07:20Marc:Grass brown.

00:07:22Marc:Please help.

00:07:23Marc:So there was that texting.

00:07:24Marc:And then he texted back a very lucid answer, like, OK, what's going on?

00:07:28Marc:I'll try to make it by if there's anything I can do to help.

00:07:31Marc:And I'm like, wow.

00:07:32Marc:So Jose, it's not great.

00:07:34Marc:He doesn't understand the language when I speak it, but he's very proficient reading it and writing it.

00:07:40Marc:And I thought that was very impressive.

00:07:41Marc:So I go back and forth with Jose all day.

00:07:44Marc:So eventually my panic spins into a fucking nightmare and I realized that the timer is broken and I realized I'm a grown ass man and I can fix this shit myself or maybe at least go buy a new timer.

00:07:55Marc:So I went to the Home Depot site and they had the timer, the new one that replaced the one that I had and I went and got that timer and I'm texting Jose the whole time and he's saying I'm going to be there between four and five and I'm like, great, I'll be back at 430.

00:08:07Marc:I'm getting a timer.

00:08:09Marc:And so I go get the timer and I drive back and there's a couple of dudes on my lawn waiting for me.

00:08:16Marc:And it's it's the guy that does the plumbing at my house occasionally when I have problems with the plumbing.

00:08:22Marc:His name is Jose as well.

00:08:24Marc:And I'm like, oh, shit.

00:08:26Marc:And I get out of my car and I'm like, holy shit, dude, why are you here?

00:08:29Marc:And he's like, I'm here for you.

00:08:30Marc:I'm like, I was texting the wrong Jose.

00:08:33Marc:which I thought might have been taken the wrong way.

00:08:35Marc:Like, see, that's how sensitive things are in the country where I'm like, there was nothing insensitive or weird about that.

00:08:41Marc:There's many people named Jose and a lot of them are Latinos.

00:08:45Marc:But I said that to Jose, the plumber who speaks perfect English.

00:08:49Marc:But I told him I was texting another Jose, but you're probably the guy that could really fix this.

00:08:54Marc:Actually, I got this new timer.

00:08:56Marc:And he's like, oh, yeah, I can fix that.

00:08:58Marc:But now I didn't know what else to say because he probably thinks I'm a fucking moron.

00:09:02Marc:And I don't know.

00:09:03Marc:I seem like a smart guy, but I'm kind of illiterate because I'm texting him, a guy who speaks the language proficient.

00:09:12Marc:That's what he speaks, English.

00:09:14Marc:And I'm texting him like, timer, no work.

00:09:17Marc:Can you come today?

00:09:18Marc:Please help me.

00:09:20Marc:So he didn't say anything and I didn't say anything and it was okay.

00:09:25Marc:Maybe he thinks I'm a moron.

00:09:26Marc:It's okay.

00:09:27Marc:I can live with that because the timer got fixed and we set it up and he came and took care of a drain problem.

00:09:34Marc:So it was a big day.

00:09:35Marc:And then today...

00:09:37Marc:today jose the the uh the landscape guy he came to double check the timer and he replaced some uh some wires and uh we smiled at each other a lot and laughed and and i tried to tell him that the cactus and back look good and and he goes move them and i'm like no no no no they're good bueno bueno good but everything worked out and i know that you were concerned in this time of drought

00:10:01Marc:How much I'm watering my lawn and should I be watering my lawn?

00:10:04Marc:Shouldn't I probably be looking into a more indigenous garden?

00:10:07Marc:Yes, I should get an indigenous garden.

00:10:09Marc:Is that what they're called?

00:10:11Marc:Desert plants.

00:10:12Marc:I like them, but I don't know, man.

00:10:15Marc:I think I'm holding on to something with these plants here.

00:10:17Marc:The cactuses look great, but the stuff out front, I think I'm just...

00:10:21Marc:My ex-wife planted it, and I used to think I keep it because I won, that it's my house.

00:10:27Marc:And now, I don't know, maybe it's time to let it go.

00:10:30Marc:Maybe I should just burn the fucking house down to grieve my past.

00:10:34Marc:No, just a garage standing.

00:10:36Marc:No, just move through it emotionally like a normal person.

00:10:42Marc:Did I mention Australia?

00:10:44Marc:Going to Australia.

00:10:45Marc:I'm going to be there.

00:10:46Marc:Going to be in Australia.

00:10:48Marc:Going to be in Sydney.

00:10:50Marc:When?

00:10:50Marc:I'll tell you.

00:10:52Marc:October 15th at the State Theater.

00:10:54Marc:I'm going to be in Melbourne.

00:10:55Marc:When?

00:10:56Marc:October 16th at the Palais Theater.

00:10:59Marc:Going to be in Brisbane.

00:11:00Marc:When?

00:11:01Marc:October 17th at Brisbane City Hall.

00:11:03Marc:There.

00:11:04Marc:Now you know.

00:11:05Marc:Now you know.

00:11:06Marc:Now let's go to the hotel where I talked to Bob Guccione Jr.

00:11:11Marc:Hadn't seen him in a while.

00:11:13Marc:It was nice to talk to him.

00:11:15Marc:Enjoy.

00:11:23Marc:No, you and I didn't sleep together.

00:11:27Marc:I think when I met you, I can't remember why, but I was with a woman who became my first wife.

00:11:33Marc:Here's what I remember.

00:11:36Marc:You invited me over for a thing.

00:11:38Marc:You used to have these dinner parties.

00:11:40Marc:You had these dinner parties.

00:11:42Guest:Totally random ones.

00:11:44Marc:Weird collection of people.

00:11:46Marc:I was like, fuck, what is this?

00:11:48Marc:I was just a miserable comic.

00:11:50Marc:I'm like, this sounds fancy.

00:11:52Marc:And I went over to your house.

00:11:53Marc:I can't remember.

00:11:54Marc:All I remember is that guy, Jaron Lanier was there.

00:11:57Guest:Lanier, yeah.

00:11:58Guest:Jaron Lanier, yeah.

00:11:59Marc:And I was there, and he was there, you know, holding some sort of flute or something.

00:12:03Guest:That was one of the most brilliant scientists in the universe.

00:12:06Guest:Is he?

00:12:06Guest:Yeah, he invented virtual reality.

00:12:08Guest:What does that mean?

00:12:09Guest:Well, you know, the gloves and the... Yeah.

00:12:11Guest:No, I know what it is.

00:12:12Guest:No, not the virtual reality the military had.

00:12:14Guest:Right, right.

00:12:15Guest:That preceded him.

00:12:16Guest:Yeah.

00:12:16Guest:But no, he's a brilliant computer scientist.

00:12:20Marc:No, I know.

00:12:20Marc:I know he was.

00:12:21Marc:And there was a lot of heat on him.

00:12:23Marc:And, you know, he's on the cover of Wired magazine.

00:12:26Guest:He's a great friend.

00:12:27Guest:Still?

00:12:27Guest:Still, yeah.

00:12:29Guest:And used to write for me at Discover.

00:12:31Guest:Discover.

00:12:31Marc:That was what happened after Spin, right?

00:12:34Guest:Or at the same time?

00:12:34Guest:Gear.

00:12:35Guest:Gear after Spin.

00:12:36Marc:Sorry, let's go through the, like, where do you live now?

00:12:39Guest:In Pennsylvania.

00:12:40Guest:How the fuck?

00:12:40Guest:Like on a farm?

00:12:42Guest:No, not quite a farm, but in the woods.

00:12:44Guest:Yeah.

00:12:44Guest:It's halfway up a mountain.

00:12:46Guest:Okay.

00:12:46Guest:Yeah.

00:12:47Marc:So you ran away.

00:12:48Guest:Basically, yeah.

00:12:49Guest:Yeah, you headed for the hills.

00:12:50Guest:Yeah.

00:12:50Guest:You were done.

00:12:51Guest:I did literally head to the hills.

00:12:53Guest:You know, I'd been in New York 38 years, and I used to say to friends of mine, if I'd murdered somebody, I'd have been out in 35.

00:12:57Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:13:00Guest:So I got a longer sentence.

00:13:01Guest:But I loved New York.

00:13:02Guest:Yeah.

00:13:02Guest:You know, at the time you knew me, I was enjoying it immensely.

00:13:04Guest:Yeah.

00:13:04Guest:But after, you know, I don't know, 35 years, I was done.

00:13:08Guest:Yeah.

00:13:08Guest:And so eventually moved first to Brooklyn, which then became instantly like New York.

00:13:14Guest:Right.

00:13:14Guest:I missed all that.

00:13:14Guest:Like the same day I moved in.

00:13:16Guest:As the moving truck moved away.

00:13:17Guest:Right.

00:13:18Marc:All the hipsters came in.

00:13:19Marc:Just a truckload of pickle makers and mustache wax makers.

00:13:22Guest:The hipsters I didn't have a problem with.

00:13:23Guest:It was all of the yuppies that I found.

00:13:25Marc:Oh, that Park Slope thing.

00:13:27Guest:The original thing.

00:13:28Guest:Yeah.

00:13:28Guest:I was in Brooklyn Heights with the same thing as Park Slope.

00:13:30Guest:Right, right.

00:13:31Guest:So then I went to Mississippi for a year and I taught at Ole Miss.

00:13:35Guest:You taught?

00:13:36Guest:What did you teach?

00:13:38Guest:I taught journalism badly.

00:13:40Guest:There's a lot more bad journalists around now.

00:13:42Guest:Don't let anybody teach, I guess.

00:13:44Marc:Yeah, they do.

00:13:45Marc:They literally do.

00:13:46Marc:So how long were you down there?

00:13:47Marc:A year?

00:13:47Marc:Just a year?

00:13:48Guest:Fantastic year.

00:13:49Guest:Really enjoyed it.

00:13:50Guest:Loved the South.

00:13:51Marc:Let's go back, man.

00:13:52Guest:So now you grew up in London?

00:13:55Yeah.

00:13:55Guest:I grew up as a kid in London, born here in New York City.

00:13:57Guest:Yeah.

00:13:58Guest:Grew up as a kid from the age of two in London until 15.

00:14:01Guest:We moved as a family.

00:14:02Guest:I now had three English-born siblings.

00:14:04Guest:Yeah.

00:14:05Guest:As a larger family.

00:14:06Guest:We moved back to New Jersey.

00:14:08Guest:You moved to New Jersey?

00:14:09Guest:Yeah.

00:14:09Guest:And I was homesick, so the first chance I got, I left home and went straight back to England.

00:14:14Marc:So you were all living with your dad in Jersey?

00:14:16Guest:No, with my mother.

00:14:18Guest:Oh.

00:14:18Guest:My mom and dad had split.

00:14:19Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:14:19Guest:But the family was still close.

00:14:21Guest:Yeah.

00:14:21Guest:So when Penthouse was hitting here, he wanted to be here.

00:14:24Guest:Yeah.

00:14:24Guest:So he moved here and he moved us over and, you know.

00:14:28Marc:But you all sort of got along then.

00:14:30Guest:Oh, yeah, very much.

00:14:31Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:14:31Marc:So you grew up in the world of penthouse.

00:14:33Guest:I didn't actually.

00:14:34Guest:I grew up outside of it.

00:14:35Guest:You know, I grew up with my mom.

00:14:36Marc:Yeah, she wouldn't let you in the world of penthouse.

00:14:38Guest:No, he wouldn't.

00:14:41Guest:He smartly, you know, curtailed the competition before it got to be real.

00:14:46Guest:It kept us from getting in trouble.

00:14:49Marc:That magazine seems to have gotten pretty filthy.

00:14:51Yeah.

00:14:52Guest:Yeah, I know.

00:14:52Guest:It's a shame.

00:14:53Guest:I don't even know if it's still publishing, actually.

00:14:55Marc:I don't either, but I knew at one point, I think I opened a penthouse, and I'm like, when do they put Cox into things?

00:15:00Guest:When did that happen?

00:15:02Guest:We don't want to see it.

00:15:03Guest:It's funny that the guys don't want to see it.

00:15:05Guest:They go online for that.

00:15:06Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:15:07Marc:Oh, they don't want to see it?

00:15:08Guest:I mean, I don't know.

00:15:09Guest:Do you?

00:15:10Guest:I don't.

00:15:10Marc:Well, no, if I'm going to look at porn, but for some reason I always made this separation that those magazines were, you know, it was sort of surprising.

00:15:19Marc:It's weird because I'm no stranger to porn.

00:15:21Marc:You know, when you look at Penthouse, just historically in your mind when you're a kid, it was just the pretty girls.

00:15:25Marc:And then all of a sudden it's sort of like, oh, there's no mystery anymore.

00:15:28Guest:Exactly.

00:15:29Guest:It was a mystery.

00:15:30Guest:That's what my old man used to always say.

00:15:31Guest:It's about the romance and the mystery.

00:15:33Guest:Really?

00:15:33Guest:You know, he pioneered a style of photography based on economics, which was that he offered, when he had no money, he offered 10 pounds an hour for nude models.

00:15:46Guest:In England, that was the weekly wage.

00:15:49Guest:Right.

00:15:50Guest:So all his girls were turning up.

00:15:51Guest:Yeah.

00:15:52Guest:And he would photograph them while they were getting undressed, photograph them for about 20 minutes, say, put your clothes back on, photograph them putting their clothes on.

00:15:58Guest:In 45 minutes, you say, we're done.

00:16:00Guest:And he'd hand them £7.50.

00:16:01Guest:They thought they had a full day of £10 an hour.

00:16:05Guest:And he did it.

00:16:06Guest:And what he...

00:16:07Guest:created was his voyeurism yeah and it's actually far more exciting to see a woman getting undressed right that every every male who is sexually active with women it is the moment we know it's going to happen right right and he just pioneered that whole style so that it was always about romance and mystery and i always kept that in my head as a very very important element to to all publishing whatever the field you know yeah you should have romance it should have mystery right and and we but you learned publishing from him you think

00:16:35Guest:yeah definitely without a doubt yeah i i i did develop eventually my own instincts but but no i i was you know cheated by a master right at what age did you go into like the office and learn the nuts and bolts of that shit oh very early i mean i you know was working i had my own magazine 18 in england what was that there's a step-by-step guide to kung fu

00:16:57Marc:Really?

00:16:57Marc:And it sold?

00:16:58Guest:Yes.

00:16:59Guest:Very well.

00:17:00Guest:Bruce Lee had just died, thank God.

00:17:03Guest:It made people interested because I made a little bit of money.

00:17:05Guest:But it was a very tiny thing.

00:17:06Guest:It was England.

00:17:07Guest:I thought, if I'm working this hard, I'll go back to America.

00:17:09Guest:And what year was that?

00:17:10Guest:That was 1974.

00:17:12Marc:Right.

00:17:12Marc:So it was before like cuisine culture became later.

00:17:15Marc:So you were actually working in real publishing.

00:17:17Guest:Really?

00:17:17Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:17:18Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:17:19Marc:Did you know Kung Fu or no?

00:17:21Guest:No.

00:17:21Guest:No, we found a guy who did.

00:17:22Guest:Yeah.

00:17:23Guest:Chi Su.

00:17:24Guest:I remember his name all these years later.

00:17:25Guest:Chi Su.

00:17:26Guest:Chi Su.

00:17:27Guest:Yeah.

00:17:27Guest:He's an expert and we just did a move by move.

00:17:30Guest:Yeah.

00:17:30Guest:But the night before we went to press...

00:17:33Guest:My partner and I, this guy Richard and I who'd done the book, we'd written it and designed it together.

00:17:39Guest:We said we'd better actually practice these moves and make sure that we, it was fact checking.

00:17:43Guest:So all night long he would throw me, break my arm, I'd break his arm, he wouldn't break it, we'd get to the point where I'd break, kick each other, punch each other.

00:17:50Guest:to see if these worked and some moves no matter how many times we did it we couldn't quite get it right and we said ah hell let it go you know it's too late yeah yeah it's in maybe we just don't understand it we don't understand it somebody gets it so that was your first taste of publishing that was it yeah then I came back to America and did a a rock and roll poster magazine which was a single issue again with a poster now who was putting the money up for that your old man

00:18:14Guest:in the the kung fu thing was my friend and i you just did it did it and we found we got to go to bacchus yeah for the princely sum of five thousand pounds yeah which did it yeah and in america my father backed me for the poster magazine right and that broke even and i was just exhausted so i stopped then i came back and worked for him to launch omni and i remember omni yeah and a few years after that i

00:18:36Guest:I left to write, and I got married, and I got unmarried.

00:18:39Marc:You were married once before?

00:18:41Marc:Twice.

00:18:42Marc:So this is your third marriage?

00:18:43Guest:Twice before today.

00:18:44Guest:So you're on your third one?

00:18:45Guest:No, no, I'm not married right now.

00:18:46Guest:Oh, you're not?

00:18:47Guest:No, no, no.

00:18:47Guest:I'm with a woman I've been with for a long time.

00:18:49Guest:Oh, okay.

00:18:50Guest:Liza Lantini, a playwright.

00:18:51Guest:Okay.

00:18:51Guest:We've been with a very long time.

00:18:53Guest:Twelve years.

00:18:54Guest:Yeah.

00:18:55Guest:But no, I was married to this woman in England, and we got unmarried, and I came back, and a couple of years later, the third upspin, and started that, not knowing what I was doing.

00:19:03Guest:You know, you do little things.

00:19:04Guest:That's one thing.

00:19:05Guest:You do a big magazine.

00:19:06Guest:That was entirely different.

00:19:07Marc:Well, Omni was pretty big, but that was your dad's magazine.

00:19:09Marc:Yes, that was his.

00:19:10Marc:That was a science magazine.

00:19:11Marc:The first real kind of like cool science magazine.

00:19:15Guest:First and last.

00:19:16Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:19:16Marc:Let's face it.

00:19:17Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:19:17Guest:I like to think when I owned Discover for a couple of years that I made it better.

00:19:21Guest:Right.

00:19:22Guest:But never made it as good as Omni.

00:19:23Guest:Yeah.

00:19:24Guest:Because Omni was birthed with this sense of wonder.

00:19:27Guest:Right.

00:19:28Guest:Discover was not.

00:19:29Guest:Right.

00:19:29Guest:By the time it came to me, I was like the fourth owner of it by that point.

00:19:32Guest:And it was very dull.

00:19:34Guest:And it was kind of like trying to inject a bit of enthusiasm and curiosity into it.

00:19:39Guest:Which we did.

00:19:40Guest:We absolutely did.

00:19:41Guest:And the magazine did become much more successful.

00:19:43Guest:Yeah.

00:19:43Marc:while i was there but um it wasn't born with that sense of wonder and that was a great thing about omni it was open-minded it was curious i kind of remember it because i was a kid that was in the 70s yeah yeah because i remember it kind of being a cool magazine i knew i didn't understand it but the but i remember the uh

00:20:00Marc:The pictures were great.

00:20:02Marc:It was really visual.

00:20:04Marc:There was a lot of things to look at in there.

00:20:08Marc:But I was sort of a kid, but I knew it was dealing with big shit.

00:20:12Guest:It was exciting.

00:20:12Marc:Exactly, yeah.

00:20:13Guest:That was the subhead.

00:20:14Guest:Big shit.

00:20:15Yeah.

00:20:15Marc:So, okay, so you go off to, so you're in publishing, you burn out after the poster magazine, then you go, do you do what?

00:20:26Marc:You do Omni for a little while and then you split for a while?

00:20:28Guest:Yeah, well, I segregated from Omni to running the Penthouse Circulation.

00:20:33Guest:But then after that, I always wanted to write.

00:20:36Guest:Yeah.

00:20:36Guest:So I thought, well, I better stop and actually write.

00:20:38Guest:Right.

00:20:39Guest:I found out I wasn't a very good writer.

00:20:41Guest:I mean, I think now I've become a little better, but I wasn't good then.

00:20:43Guest:Right.

00:20:44Guest:Demonstrably so.

00:20:45Guest:Yeah.

00:20:45Guest:So that wasn't going anywhere.

00:20:47Guest:And one day the idea for Spin came to me.

00:20:49Guest:It just came to me.

00:20:50Guest:I tell this story and people never really kind of believe it, but it came to me in less than a second.

00:20:55Right.

00:20:55Guest:It was a vision of the pages literally just floated in front of my eye.

00:21:01Guest:I saw the typography.

00:21:02Guest:I saw the layout, lots of white space.

00:21:04Guest:We kind of pioneered that look.

00:21:06Guest:Certainly, I think maybe in any magazine.

00:21:08Guest:On the page.

00:21:08Guest:Yeah, certainly in a youth culture magazine.

00:21:11Guest:Lots of white space, lots of drama, the type offset by the picture, dictating everything.

00:21:16Guest:I saw it going across the whole spectrum of music from, you know, obviously the new wave stuff that was hot then that we were listening to, my age group.

00:21:25Guest:We would skip past mainstream pop, but we would go into even things like African music.

00:21:30Guest:And, you know, we did that for anybody.

00:21:33Guest:And I also saw the non-music element.

00:21:35Guest:The quirky being important, which I still think is vital and investigative journalism.

00:21:41Guest:It all came to me at once.

00:21:42Guest:The name did not.

00:21:43Guest:I had no idea what to call it, but I could see it all.

00:21:46Guest:And then I just got frightened.

00:21:48Guest:You know, like when you get sleep paralysis.

00:21:50Guest:You suddenly wake up and you're like, what was that?

00:21:51Guest:It must have been a dream.

00:21:53Guest:And I thought, well, that's a good idea, but I can't do it.

00:21:56Guest:How do I know how to do it?

00:21:57Guest:And I didn't think about it again.

00:21:59Guest:Six weeks later, and I'm not an early writer.

00:22:02Guest:I get up at 8.39.

00:22:02Guest:That's early.

00:22:03Guest:I don't like getting up early.

00:22:06Guest:I woke up bolt upright at 6 in the morning, like in a movie.

00:22:08Guest:Bolt upright, 45 degree angle.

00:22:10Guest:And this voice said to me, it's not up to you.

00:22:14Guest:It's a vocation.

00:22:15Guest:This isn't a question.

00:22:16Guest:You're not being asked a question.

00:22:17Guest:Would you like to?

00:22:18Guest:This is a vocation.

00:22:19Guest:And I got up and went straight to the office, penthouse, where I didn't have an office, but I found a space that was empty.

00:22:25Guest:And I started drawing.

00:22:26Guest:Really?

00:22:27Guest:And all those ideas came back and I started drawing them out and I still didn't have a name for weeks.

00:22:32Guest:And then one day someone sat in my office and I was using an analogy.

00:22:35Guest:I said, you know, it's all the way, it's like the way records spin.

00:22:38Guest:Right.

00:22:38Guest:I went, oh, spin, that's a good name.

00:22:40Guest:He said, ah, it sucks.

00:22:42Guest:I went, yeah, you're right.

00:22:43Guest:And then two days later I said, no, that's the right name.

00:22:44Guest:That's the name.

00:22:45Guest:Yeah, and that was it.

00:22:46Guest:And the idea for me was that spin, if you're spinning, you're happy.

00:22:50Guest:Yeah.

00:22:50Yeah.

00:22:50Guest:You know, it was very subconscious.

00:22:52Guest:None of this is conscious.

00:22:54Guest:I'm really conscious, as you know, because you know me.

00:22:57Guest:But this was subconscious, that it was meant to be about joy, meant to be about happy.

00:23:01Guest:You were meant to feel elevated and light.

00:23:05Guest:You know, otherwise, what was the point?

00:23:06Guest:You know, it was all about you're at a point in your life when you're supposed to be really, really discovering and enjoying.

00:23:11Guest:Right.

00:23:11Guest:And it was all that was it.

00:23:13Guest:Consciously looking back on it 30 years later, I can tell you what I was thinking.

00:23:16Guest:At the time, it was just an instinct.

00:23:18Guest:Yeah.

00:23:19Guest:This should have fun.

00:23:19Guest:It should have humor.

00:23:20Guest:What year was that?

00:23:21Guest:I forget.

00:23:22Guest:1985.

00:23:23Guest:1985.

00:23:24Guest:Don't forget.

00:23:24Guest:After everything I just remembered, trust me, I didn't forget the year.

00:23:27Guest:Do you want the day?

00:23:29Guest:You know the day?

00:23:30Guest:I know the day of the first issue went March 19th.

00:23:32Marc:1985.

00:23:33Marc:Yeah.

00:23:34Marc:I can't remember.

00:23:36Marc:Was that the Madonna issue?

00:23:37Marc:Who was on the cover?

00:23:38No.

00:23:38Marc:Absolutely.

00:23:39Marc:Yeah, Madonna was the first cover.

00:23:40Marc:I think I still have that.

00:23:42Marc:Really?

00:23:42Marc:Like, I have the Madonna issue.

00:23:43Marc:When was the Talking Heads?

00:23:44Marc:That was, like, shortly after, wasn't it?

00:23:46Guest:Yeah, that may have been the second issue, actually.

00:23:47Guest:Right.

00:23:48Guest:Yellow cover, right?

00:23:48Guest:Right.

00:23:49Guest:Second issue, second issue.

00:23:50Marc:I wonder if I still have that.

00:23:51Marc:Are they worth anything?

00:23:52Marc:Yeah, go on eBay.

00:23:52Marc:It's amazing.

00:23:53Marc:Really?

00:23:54Guest:How much did you do?

00:23:54Guest:Yeah, my girlfriend lives on eBay one day just for fun.

00:23:57Guest:Yeah.

00:23:57Guest:It's like $200 for theirs.

00:23:59Guest:Get it out of warehouse.

00:24:01Guest:Get out of store like a 50 of each coffee.

00:24:03Guest:We're rich.

00:24:04Guest:You don't still have that shit, dude.

00:24:05Guest:I do.

00:24:06Guest:You do?

00:24:07Guest:Yeah.

00:24:07Guest:You know what it was?

00:24:08Marc:You have every issue somewhere in boxes?

00:24:10Guest:In storage.

00:24:11Guest:Yep.

00:24:11Marc:Are they archived properly?

00:24:13Guest:No.

00:24:13Guest:They're just in boxes.

00:24:15Guest:But each box is 50.

00:24:17Guest:The printer sent...

00:24:18Marc:Okay, so you have a big stack.

00:24:19Guest:Yeah, big stack.

00:24:21Guest:Of each.

00:24:24Guest:I sold the magazine when the storage room got full.

00:24:27Guest:It's over.

00:24:28Guest:But did it sell right out of the gate?

00:24:31Guest:Well, it was small numbers, but it did sell.

00:24:34Guest:We put small numbers out.

00:24:35Guest:And your dad was bankrolling you initially?

00:24:37Marc:That was it, yeah.

00:24:38Marc:Initially.

00:24:39Guest:He did, which was wonderful.

00:24:41Guest:He believed in it very much.

00:24:43Guest:And, you know, in the beginning we sold

00:24:46Guest:very well for what we put out.

00:24:48Guest:And within a few months, we were selling 100,000 or so copies, which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you put out 200, it was a lot.

00:24:56Guest:And certainly Rolling Stone wouldn't have noticed at that point.

00:24:59Guest:They wouldn't have paid any attention.

00:25:00Marc:Well, I remember it sort of had some weird credibility.

00:25:02Marc:Like it was kind of not essentially underground, but it was sort of like, what is this?

00:25:06Marc:This is the new thing.

00:25:08Marc:And who are the guys?

00:25:09Marc:I know structurally on some level,

00:25:12Marc:As an editor, you knew you had to get a crew in there of writers and guys and women that you could depend on.

00:25:19Marc:Who were those original guys?

00:25:20Guest:Well, they were a great bunch.

00:25:22Guest:And none of us, myself included, knew what we were doing.

00:25:25Guest:Right.

00:25:25Guest:And I mean that.

00:25:27Guest:We had great ideas.

00:25:28Guest:We were good writers.

00:25:29Guest:And they were great writers.

00:25:31Guest:Who were some of those writers?

00:25:32Guest:Glenn O'Brien.

00:25:33Guest:Yeah.

00:25:33Guest:James Truman went on to become editorial director of Condé Nast.

00:25:37Guest:Glenn O'Brien is a very famous writer now.

00:25:39Guest:Scott Cohen, who was maybe the most talented of all, but he died young.

00:25:44Guest:Unfortunately, he died just illness in his early 40s.

00:25:48Guest:A woman called Jessica Behrens who went back to England.

00:25:52Guest:She was from England.

00:25:53Guest:She was James' girlfriend.

00:25:54Guest:She was brilliant, is brilliant.

00:25:56Guest:I still read her sometimes in the papers.

00:25:59Guest:A woman called Sue Cummings who was an intern who very quickly just said, oh, you can write this column because you know what you're doing.

00:26:06Guest:And

00:26:06Guest:And, you know, I know I'm forgetting some people.

00:26:10Guest:But the early writers included John Leland, who's now a big staff writer at the New York Times, one of their best writers, and a guy called Bart Bolt.

00:26:17Guest:I'm not sure they were in the first issue.

00:26:19Guest:They were definitely in the second.

00:26:21Guest:And the wonderful thing about that in those days, we didn't know what we were doing, but we knew what we liked.

00:26:25Guest:And I would read literally the underground press.

00:26:28Guest:Yeah.

00:26:28Guest:The Boston Phoenix, the New Times of Arizona, the LA Weekly.

00:26:33Guest:You'd read all these and you'd see these great voices.

00:26:36Guest:Yeah.

00:26:36Guest:And it sounds like a weird metaphor.

00:26:37Guest:Right.

00:26:37Guest:You'd see great voices.

00:26:38Guest:But you would read great writing that had a voice.

00:26:41Guest:Yeah.

00:26:41Guest:And I would just phone them up.

00:26:42Guest:Yeah.

00:26:43Guest:I'd say, hey, you want to write for Spinnacle?

00:26:44Guest:Yeah, sure.

00:26:45Guest:That's cool.

00:26:45Guest:Yeah, right.

00:26:46Guest:I want to write.

00:26:46Guest:Yeah.

00:26:47Guest:And, you know...

00:26:48Guest:We gave them the opportunity to write things that were a little more adventurous.

00:26:51Guest:Rolling Stone had not even bothered to take their phone calls, basically.

00:26:54Guest:They were trying to get into Rolling Stone.

00:26:55Guest:I'm trying to get them to me.

00:26:57Guest:And we were blessed.

00:27:00Guest:We were blessed with this fantastic centrifugal force that brought all these great people together.

00:27:05Guest:And we had humor.

00:27:06Guest:It was very obvious in the beginning.

00:27:07Guest:We were going to have humor.

00:27:09Guest:We had a humorous take.

00:27:10Guest:We didn't take ourselves seriously.

00:27:11Guest:And I used to say, we kicked the sacred cows.

00:27:14Marc:Did you cause any major controversy in the first few years?

00:27:18Marc:Yeah.

00:27:19Guest:Oh, God.

00:27:19Marc:Like what?

00:27:20Guest:I can't remember.

00:27:20Guest:Pretty much immediately.

00:27:22Guest:I'll tell you just quickly, because it's a great story, but in our third issue.

00:27:27Guest:We've got time.

00:27:27Guest:We've got time, right?

00:27:28Guest:Yeah.

00:27:29Guest:No, you know, everyone was talking about Tina Turner in 1985, who was one of the biggest stars in the world at the time.

00:27:34Guest:And she was going on and on, a bit over the top perhaps, about I was beaten by Ike.

00:27:38Guest:Ike beat me.

00:27:39Guest:Did I tell you?

00:27:39Guest:Did I mention Ike beat me?

00:27:41Guest:Yeah.

00:27:41Guest:And so she had what's love got to do with it, massive hit, all the rest of it.

00:27:44Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:27:44Guest:But she did think, as did most people, that Ike was dead.

00:27:50Guest:But as it turned out, we were having an editorial meeting, and I said to myself, well, forget Tina, why don't we go find Ike?

00:27:56Guest:Right, I think I remember this.

00:27:57Guest:Yeah, so this brilliant investigative reporter called Edward Kirsch, who did not return my emails for the record, if he's listening, and I said to him, we're doing this 30th anniversary thing, I want you to be part of it.

00:28:07Guest:Yeah.

00:28:07Guest:Anyhow, he went and found him.

00:28:09Guest:It took weeks.

00:28:10Guest:He found him basically homeless in LA.

00:28:12Guest:Really?

00:28:13Guest:Yeah.

00:28:13Guest:Drugged out, homeless, had been in prison.

00:28:16Guest:And he finally convinced him to do an interview, and it was a fantastic piece.

00:28:20Guest:And that was our fourth issue.

00:28:22Guest:Annie Lennox was on the cover.

00:28:23Guest:We didn't put Ike on the cover.

00:28:25Guest:Nobody recognized him, right?

00:28:27Guest:And we headlined it, What's Ike Got to Do With It?

00:28:32Guest:And it absolutely struck people that spin.

00:28:36Guest:You know, Rolling Stone does Tina.

00:28:38Guest:Right.

00:28:38Guest:Spin does Ike.

00:28:39Guest:Right.

00:28:39Guest:And it was still a long time before we were commercially successful, about 300 years, I think.

00:28:43Guest:Many years, but that did set the impression right away.

00:28:46Guest:But he copped to it.

00:28:47Guest:Yes.

00:28:48Guest:Yeah.

00:28:48Guest:He said famously, if somewhat politically incorrectly, he said, sure, I beat Tina, but I didn't beat her any more than the average man beats his wife.

00:28:57Guest:That's a real quote.

00:28:58Guest:No.

00:28:58Guest:I mean, but that's where he came from.

00:29:00Guest:Yeah, sure.

00:29:00Guest:Look, we don't forgive.

00:29:01Guest:We don't excuse that and forgive him.

00:29:02Guest:We didn't in the article.

00:29:03Guest:Right.

00:29:03Guest:But I thought it was important in the article to show his side, number one, and also to show he was more than that man who beat his wife who was a drug addict.

00:29:11Marc:Yeah, he's sort of a genius.

00:29:14Guest:He invented rock and roll.

00:29:15Guest:Yeah.

00:29:15Guest:I mean, partly by accident.

00:29:16Guest:Rocket 88.

00:29:17Guest:Right, exactly.

00:29:18Guest:You really know your stuff.

00:29:19Guest:Sometimes.

00:29:19Guest:Do you know that story?

00:29:20Yeah.

00:29:20Marc:No.

00:29:21Guest:What happened was he was driving to Memphis to do a recording session.

00:29:24Guest:Yeah.

00:29:25Guest:And the car leaked and water got into his amp.

00:29:28Guest:Yeah.

00:29:28Guest:When he got there, he and his musicians set up their equipment and they realized the amp was ruined.

00:29:32Guest:Yeah.

00:29:32Guest:So he had to take newspaper and wedge it up into little balls under the woofer to stabilize the woofer.

00:29:39Guest:Right.

00:29:40Guest:When they played, the feedback was all very muddy.

00:29:43Guest:Yeah.

00:29:44Guest:And it was like early grunge.

00:29:45Guest:Right, right.

00:29:45Guest:It was very muddy.

00:29:46Guest:When he heard that, he changed his piano style to a thumping piano style.

00:29:50Guest:And it became the first rock song.

00:29:52Guest:Right.

00:29:52Guest:And years later, Little Richard copped to the fact that he stole note for note the piano stylings of Rocket 88 for Tutti Frutti.

00:30:02Marc:No kidding.

00:30:02Guest:So it really was a great song.

00:30:04Guest:I'm not even sure we told that story in that article because I don't think we knew it and I don't think you brought it up.

00:30:08Guest:But I've since learned the significance of Actona.

00:30:11Guest:It was fun reliving it and I think it's fun for, I hope desperately, it's fun for new spin readers learning about some of the stuff that was done before they were born.

00:30:18Marc:Well, I think I remember how we actually, like I know that there was a little piece in the magazine about me with a picture.

00:30:24Guest:Right.

00:30:25Marc:I think you hired me to write a back page once.

00:30:27Guest:Yes, absolutely.

00:30:28Guest:That's right.

00:30:29Marc:That's sort of how we became friends.

00:30:31Marc:I remember now.

00:30:32Guest:I thought it was early in those gay baths, but you're right.

00:30:34Marc:No, no.

00:30:35Marc:The gay baths for me, that was, I don't remember you.

00:30:43Marc:You're losing listeners.

00:30:44Marc:I'm losing credibility.

00:30:45Marc:Excellent.

00:30:46Marc:So all right, so that goes to how long were you how long was spin your thing?

00:30:50Marc:I mean, how long were you there?

00:30:51Marc:I mean 12 and a half years so that was from 85 to 90 whatever 97 now.

00:30:57Marc:What was it?

00:30:58Marc:What was this the big schism between you and your father?

00:31:02Guest:Well, it's a long story, but the brief and, you know, worthwhile answer to that question is Penthouse was rocked by the moral times, you know, the moral scandals, you know, the four wells.

00:31:18Marc:The Mies Commission.

00:31:19Guest:The Mies Commission.

00:31:21Marc:So what, the mid-80s?

00:31:22Guest:Yeah, it was really inspired by Reagan's administration to clamp down on, you know.

00:31:30Guest:Pussy pictures.

00:31:30Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:31:31Guest:Yeah.

00:31:32Guest:Put it better than I would have.

00:31:34Guest:And so this impacted the Penthouse company by 50% of its revenues.

00:31:39Guest:50% of its revenue.

00:31:40Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:31:41Guest:It cost them 2 million copies of the number of stores that threw the magazine out.

00:31:44Guest:And now they were still making money, Penthouse.

00:31:47Guest:But Penthouse, meanwhile, grown into this massive multi-titled company, most of which were losing money.

00:31:52Guest:And one of which was Spin, which was still, you know, losing, still in the startup phase of a couple of years, so still losing.

00:31:58Guest:But Penthouse was the only company that's, I mean, sorry, Spin was the only division Penthouse didn't own.

00:32:04Guest:It was done as a, you know, a franchise so that I would actually own it once I'd paid back the money, Penthouse.

00:32:13Guest:Right, right.

00:32:14Guest:Which we were on track and doing.

00:32:16Guest:But so at that point, my father said, you have to just give me Spin.

00:32:21Guest:And I said, well, no.

00:32:21Marc:Because he was cutting his losses?

00:32:23Guest:Yeah, he was embarrassed, I think, that some of his other losing companies were losing.

00:32:28Guest:But they were saying, you don't even own Spin.

00:32:31Guest:You're actually winding him up.

00:32:33Guest:And so we had a falling out of that.

00:32:35Guest:I said, no, no.

00:32:36Guest:I said, you know...

00:32:37Guest:I will pay you back.

00:32:39Guest:I will raise money and pay you and give you a profit.

00:32:41Guest:Yeah.

00:32:42Guest:That's not an issue.

00:32:42Guest:Yeah.

00:32:43Guest:The issue is you can't, you know, you can't take away that is mine.

00:32:47Guest:Right.

00:32:48Guest:We have an agreement.

00:32:49Guest:Right.

00:32:49Guest:It's based on that agreement.

00:32:50Guest:I've honored it all.

00:32:51Guest:Right.

00:32:51Guest:You have drawn it too.

00:32:52Guest:Yeah.

00:32:52Guest:I'm going to cancel it.

00:32:53Guest:Well, if you cancel it, that's your choice.

00:32:56Guest:Yeah.

00:32:56Guest:Then the magazine becomes entirely mine.

00:32:58Guest:Right.

00:32:59Guest:So he says, but you have no money.

00:33:01Guest:I will find money.

00:33:02Guest:Yeah.

00:33:03Guest:You know, so why don't you let me find money and pay you back?

00:33:05Guest:Right.

00:33:05Guest:And then you'll be happy.

00:33:06Guest:Yeah.

00:33:06Guest:But if you throw me out, you know, I don't owe you anything.

00:33:10Guest:Right.

00:33:10Guest:So anyway, this went on for a while.

00:33:12Guest:And there's father and son dynamics, of course, in there.

00:33:15Guest:The sad thing is not that he threw me out.

00:33:18Guest:Right.

00:33:19Guest:We went on, of course, to do...

00:33:20Guest:Well, the sad thing is we didn't talk for 18 years.

00:33:24Guest:And we reconciled a few years before he died, six years before he died.

00:33:26Guest:You did?

00:33:27Guest:You reconciled?

00:33:27Guest:Yeah, yeah, it was beautiful.

00:33:28Guest:I often tried, and he was still too, you know, stubborn.

00:33:32Guest:Really?

00:33:33Guest:And as fathers are, Sicilian fathers particularly.

00:33:36Guest:Yeah.

00:33:36Guest:And then one day he called me up out of blue.

00:33:37Guest:He actually had somebody call me and say, come over for dinner.

00:33:40Guest:And I thought it wasn't real.

00:33:43Guest:I thought somebody was just trying to get me to come.

00:33:45Guest:He was going to kill you.

00:33:46Guest:Yeah, no, I thought he was just going, he didn't know about it.

00:33:49Guest:I thought somebody was just nicely trying to put us together.

00:33:52Guest:But finally the person called me back and said, no, no, it's really serious.

00:33:54Guest:He can't talk.

00:33:55Guest:He's had throat cancer and he can't talk well on the phone.

00:33:58Guest:And he's insecure about, if you haven't heard his voice for a long time, he's insecure about you hearing it.

00:34:03Guest:But he wants you to come.

00:34:03Guest:And I thought, what I got to lose.

00:34:04Guest:I mean, the worst is he throws me out.

00:34:06Guest:Right, right.

00:34:06Guest:He throws away at the door, and I go away.

00:34:08Guest:But I did go, and he embraced me at the door, and that was it.

00:34:11Guest:Did you cry?

00:34:11Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:34:13Guest:Did he?

00:34:13Guest:Not him.

00:34:14Guest:We didn't cry then.

00:34:14Guest:Yeah.

00:34:15Guest:I did later, absolutely.

00:34:16Guest:Really?

00:34:16Marc:Because it was just the cries of joy.

00:34:18Marc:It's so long, dude.

00:34:19Marc:18 years.

00:34:20Guest:It's horrible.

00:34:21Marc:Lifetime.

00:34:22Marc:It's horrible.

00:34:22Guest:Yeah, it is.

00:34:23Guest:And it's weird and it's tough.

00:34:24Guest:And, you know, I never didn't love him.

00:34:28Guest:Yeah.

00:34:28Guest:The whole time.

00:34:28Guest:I believe he never didn't love me.

00:34:30Guest:Yeah.

00:34:30Guest:He had his stubbornness and I, to a degree, had mine.

00:34:33Guest:Pride.

00:34:33Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:34:34Guest:He's a fucker.

00:34:35Guest:Before the fall, baby.

00:34:36Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:34:37Guest:And, you know, I'm so happy we were reconciled.

00:34:39Guest:And so was he.

00:34:40Guest:And I was with him when he died.

00:34:41Guest:And, you know, we're really, really...

00:34:44Guest:We got back to being very close.

00:34:46Marc:What a fucking relief.

00:34:47Guest:Totally.

00:34:48Marc:Could you imagine if that went on and he died and you didn't fix that?

00:34:51Marc:Yeah, exactly.

00:34:52Guest:I used to tell myself, look, if he dies and we don't reconcile, that's okay.

00:34:55Guest:That's life.

00:34:55Guest:But you know what?

00:34:56Guest:That wouldn't have been the way I felt.

00:34:58Marc:Right?

00:34:58Marc:Oh, God damn.

00:35:00Marc:Well, good for you, man.

00:35:01Guest:It was good for him.

00:35:03Guest:He finally opened the door and it was wonderful.

00:35:05Marc:And you weren't even expecting it?

00:35:07Marc:No, no, no at all.

00:35:08Marc:And you have other siblings too?

00:35:09Guest:I do, yeah.

00:35:09Marc:And you don't get along with them?

00:35:11Guest:For the record, I get along with them.

00:35:16Guest:You've never had kids?

00:35:17Guest:I haven't.

00:35:18Guest:I still want them.

00:35:19Guest:Really?

00:35:19Guest:I still want them, yeah.

00:35:20Guest:What are you going to do about that?

00:35:21Guest:Well, I'm going to have to find a way of doing that.

00:35:24Guest:We want them.

00:35:26Guest:Yeah?

00:35:26Guest:I mean, I want them and, you know, so we'll have them at some point.

00:35:30Marc:so now like in in the history of spin you got in trouble a few times yeah like like i i like i was trying yeah i was trying to wrap my head around because you you know you had a certain swagger at some point as i recall for about an hour or two yeah in my moments well what the happened i mean did you did you you never lost did you lose the magazine no at one point no no no no no well you got in trouble for what sexual harassment

00:35:57Guest:No, well, we got sued.

00:35:59Guest:The company did.

00:36:00Guest:And because of my name being famous, not because of me, but because of my father, there was an attempt to, I call it legally blackmail us, to settle.

00:36:10Guest:Right.

00:36:10Guest:And I said, no, I'm not going to do it.

00:36:13Guest:And I could have got out for a fifth of what I paid to defend the suit.

00:36:17Guest:But I said, you know, I will...

00:36:19Guest:Never feel good about myself giving into this blackmail.

00:36:22Guest:I said, we didn't do anything wrong.

00:36:23Guest:What was the case?

00:36:24Guest:It was a hostile environment case.

00:36:26Guest:You know, this was very popular.

00:36:28Guest:From one person was suing you?

00:36:30Guest:Yeah.

00:36:30Guest:Well, actually, a lawyer went out trawling ex-employees.

00:36:34Guest:Those motherfuckers.

00:36:34Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:36:35Guest:And I've pointed out since, you know, many times I've pointed out that in those years, we were just about the only magazine that wasn't a woman's magazine that had women editors and women staff writers who got a salary just to write.

00:36:49Guest:and a ton of women contributors they said we have more bylines by women than any magazine being published in america from time through down to except for women's magazines which of course were written in time by women but um so we gave a lot of first chances you know elizabeth gilbert famous writer now i was her first boss i found her

00:37:10Guest:and hired her and made her a staff writer right right in the beginning and there's a dozens more like that so I resisted this attempt to just get us to pay off a few hundred grand just because somebody wanted to make a career right I said no bring it we went to court we won you know we prevailed completely and the law firm almost went out of business and they actually got rid of I think they got rid of the lawyer she said she left and what was the other trouble

00:37:34Guest:No more.

00:37:35Guest:Oh, I mean, you know, I was always in like I was politically incorrect in terms of the music industry.

00:37:40Guest:And, you know, just we expose a lot of people.

00:37:42Guest:And well, one of the great articles we did and we'll run this, too, I think is you're still in the process of editing this thing.

00:37:48Guest:Yeah.

00:37:49Marc:Yeah.

00:37:49Marc:You just started.

00:37:50Marc:How long have you been going?

00:37:51Marc:A couple of months.

00:37:52Marc:So what are you doing?

00:37:53Marc:You're putting them up online as you sort of put them together.

00:37:55Yeah.

00:37:55Guest:Yeah.

00:37:56Guest:Well, we know what they're going to be now.

00:37:58Guest:We have a couple of open slots.

00:38:00Guest:We're not quite sure.

00:38:00Guest:But one of them should be the, you know, do you remember Guns N' Roses?

00:38:04Guest:Yeah.

00:38:04Guest:Of course.

00:38:05Guest:You remember the band.

00:38:05Guest:But at a certain point of their popularity.

00:38:08Guest:And Spin was the very first to ever write about them.

00:38:10Marc:I remember the article that you wrote.

00:38:12Marc:Like, I remember there was a piece that turned me on to Guns N' Roses because I was living in an attic.

00:38:17Marc:in somerville massachusetts probably 88 or 89 and i think that someone in spin wrote a piece about how the album was released and it didn't sell and then all of a sudden it was like re and it was rediscovered like isn't that how it worked with them like they put it out to nothing and then i think spin magazine decided it was the greatest rock and roll record around it was a bit out we said it was one of the best albums of the year right and we nominated them as one of the 10 artists to watch in the next year

00:38:43Marc:And they went unnoticed, basically.

00:38:45Guest:Absolutely.

00:38:46Guest:They were unnoticed.

00:38:46Guest:They think they may have been dropped, but they were not going anywhere.

00:38:51Guest:But anyway, a couple of years later, they had a big, big bang.

00:38:55Guest:And so they sent out a contract to every media outlet that said, if you want to interview us, you have to agree that we control the interview, we edit it, we write the captions, and if you change any of that, you have to give us $100,000.

00:39:07Guest:And we own it, by the way.

00:39:09Guest:You don't own it.

00:39:11Guest:So every self-respecting

00:39:13Marc:Was that some Axel shit or what?

00:39:15Guest:I'm sure it was.

00:39:16Guest:I mean, who knows?

00:39:17Guest:But anyway, everybody who meant real journalism said when I signed that.

00:39:22Guest:So one of my editors said, Bob, you should write an editorial about this.

00:39:26Guest:I said, no, let's publish the contract.

00:39:29Guest:We printed the contract, showed what idiots they were.

00:39:31Guest:And as we were going to press, literally as the cover was leaving the art department to go to the...

00:39:36Guest:Messenger to take it to the airport.

00:39:38Guest:I said, wait a minute, wait a minute.

00:39:39Guest:Add this line of text to the very top.

00:39:42Guest:How to get your own guns and roses interview page nine or whatever it was.

00:39:47Guest:Right.

00:39:48Guest:And that was it.

00:39:48Guest:We typeset that.

00:39:49Guest:We added that.

00:39:50Guest:Messenger waited and then he took it off, right?

00:39:52Guest:Yeah.

00:39:52Guest:Well, 10,000 kids took it seriously, signed the contract and mailed it into Guns N' Roses' office.

00:39:58Guest:I just meant it as like, sort of, quite frankly, fuck you to Guns N' Roses.

00:40:02Guest:But the kids took it seriously.

00:40:03Guest:So they were now deluged with box upon box, arriving daily, of signed contracts.

00:40:08Guest:Were they legal?

00:40:10Guest:I signed it.

00:40:11Guest:When can I have this interview?

00:40:12Guest:They were embarrassed and they had to sort of write back and say, no, this isn't the way it works.

00:40:18Guest:But anyway, at that point, I said to my staff, I said, find out who this guy is.

00:40:23Guest:The guy who wrote the contract?

00:40:24Guest:No, no, find out who Axl Rose is.

00:40:26Guest:you know, we've just taken him as Axl Rose.

00:40:29Guest:Right.

00:40:29Guest:But he wasn't born Axl Rose.

00:40:30Guest:Right.

00:40:32Guest:And he had a life in Indiana.

00:40:33Guest:So we sent a reporter out.

00:40:35Guest:And the reporter did, like, an investigative piece, as you would do on a politician running for the presidency.

00:40:40Guest:And found out he was a bit of a prick, frankly.

00:40:43Guest:And that was a great piece.

00:40:44Guest:And after that...

00:40:45Guest:He wrote that song, Get In The Ring, which he challenges me to a fight.

00:40:51Guest:Well, the thing is, he challenged me and Andy from Hit Parader and one or two other writers.

00:40:54Guest:Hit Parader.

00:40:55Guest:But he really goes on to the chorus about, you know, you weren't getting as much pussy as your dad and blah, blah, blah.

00:41:01Guest:Oh, really?

00:41:01Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:41:01Guest:You know, you're a wimp, Get In The Ring.

00:41:03Guest:Yeah.

00:41:04Guest:Well, at the time, I was studying full contact karate.

00:41:06Guest:Yeah.

00:41:07Guest:Four times a week I got in the ring.

00:41:08Guest:Yeah.

00:41:08Guest:And I was way into it for many years at that point.

00:41:11Guest:I think when I knew you, I was way into it.

00:41:14Guest:And so I just called up Geffen Records and said, well, when?

00:41:17Guest:When do you want to do that?

00:41:18Guest:It's fine by me.

00:41:20Guest:And I promoted it because I helped sell magazines.

00:41:22Guest:Right, sure, sure.

00:41:23Guest:I didn't want to fight him.

00:41:25Guest:I was glad there never was a fight.

00:41:27Guest:It would have been pointless.

00:41:30Guest:In the end, he backed down.

00:41:32Guest:He said, I'm not fighting him, blah, blah, blah.

00:41:34Guest:But, you know, the point was, A, I'm not going to let somebody call me out.

00:41:38Guest:Yeah, sure.

00:41:38Guest:And B, certainly not in a song.

00:41:40Guest:And C, it sold some magazines and I had fun with it.

00:41:44Marc:Well, that's interesting because I'd forgotten there was all those magazines that preceded Spin that were pretty great rock magazines.

00:41:50Marc:You know, like Cream.

00:41:52Guest:Yeah, the old Cream.

00:41:53Marc:The old Cream was great.

00:41:54Marc:Crawdaddy.

00:41:55Marc:Circus, was that one?

00:41:56Guest:Circus was great.

00:41:57Guest:Circus became kind of like just a sort of MTV show.

00:42:01Guest:Right.

00:42:01Guest:Heavy metal.

00:42:02Guest:Right, right.

00:42:03Guest:Echo.

00:42:03Marc:Crawdaddy and Cream.

00:42:04Guest:But the original circus was, you know, back in the early 70s, was a real magazine, you know.

00:42:09Marc:Did you ever work with that?

00:42:10Guest:And the granddaddy was Rolling Stone.

00:42:11Guest:I mean, that really was the first countercultural magazine.

00:42:14Marc:Now, when Spin started to pick up speed, did you ever have words with Jan Wenner?

00:42:18Guest:Oh, often.

00:42:19Marc:Oh, really?

00:42:19Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:42:20Guest:In the press, we would poke each other.

00:42:22Guest:And then we'd run into somewhere and have a chat.

00:42:24Guest:How are you?

00:42:25Guest:How's your family?

00:42:26Guest:You know, what's going on?

00:42:27Guest:Right.

00:42:28Guest:Did you see the Mellencamp show?

00:42:29Guest:I thought I saw you there.

00:42:31Guest:Yeah.

00:42:31Guest:It was very nice and cordial, and he was always very gracious.

00:42:33Guest:I hope he thinks I was gracious.

00:42:35Guest:And then the next day, we're back in the press going, ah, Rolling Stone's full of shit.

00:42:38Guest:We'd say, ah, spin's meaningless.

00:42:40Guest:And then we'd run each other at Michael's Restaurant in New York.

00:42:42Guest:How are you?

00:42:43Guest:How are you, Bob?

00:42:44Guest:It was business.

00:42:45Guest:Pure business, yeah.

00:42:46Guest:This isn't personal.

00:42:47Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:42:48Guest:This is just business.

00:42:49Marc:Right.

00:42:51Marc:Words before dying.

00:42:52Marc:Yeah, exactly, yeah.

00:42:54Marc:So now you're in town.

00:42:57Marc:Now, where do you like?

00:42:59Marc:There's a couple of issues we talked about.

00:43:01Marc:I mean, in terms of where the world is now and what publishing really means now, because it seems to me that one thing that's been did.

00:43:08Marc:And I think Rolling Stone did it, but with a little more.

00:43:11Marc:type of uh there was a uh kind of a a classish you know they they they postured but i mean it seemed that the agenda of spin initially was to sort of uh like you said be open-minded embrace all new forms of music you know integrate you know the whole landscape of music and pop culture uh that was relevant and and and also journalistic into this one magazine which rolling stone kind of did but had been drifting

00:43:37Marc:So what do you think you inspired?

00:43:39Marc:What do you think the meaning of spin, you know, now is to people?

00:43:42Marc:I mean, because I know it's no longer a published magazine.

00:43:45Guest:Right.

00:43:46Marc:But what do you feel like when you think about spin?

00:43:48Marc:What did you contribute to the world of publishing?

00:43:50Guest:Well, that's a lovely question.

00:43:52Guest:Nice.

00:43:52Guest:I mean, I appreciate the implication behind that question.

00:43:55Guest:I do think.

00:43:56Guest:We contributed a lot, and I think I perhaps guided that effort.

00:44:00Guest:I wanted to be honest with the reader, and I don't know how much you get that these days, frankly.

00:44:06Guest:I hate to say it.

00:44:07Marc:We live in a clickbait culture.

00:44:09Guest:Yeah, and also politically correct.

00:44:10Guest:Nothing can ever be anything but politically correct.

00:44:14Guest:You know, there's only one opinion, the prescribed opinion.

00:44:16Marc:For the most part, there's a faceless momentum.

00:44:18Guest:Oh, yeah, it's gutless.

00:44:20Marc:It's gutless, but it's also impulsive.

00:44:22Marc:And what's interesting to me is I think about it more because I'm becoming mildly obsessed with some of this.

00:44:29Marc:Me too.

00:44:30Marc:I interviewed the president though.

00:44:31Marc:And he said something interesting about the incremental growth of democracy.

00:44:35Marc:That nothing happens in a democracy overnight.

00:44:38Marc:And I think a lot of what people are getting set up, it's just a very slow process.

00:44:43Marc:And the weird thing is about gay marriage or anything else, or even what I think politically correct is also a buzzword for defending something that I think if you really investigate it personally, it might not be worth defending on some level.

00:44:56Marc:The idea of political correctness is certainly troublesome sometimes if it's misused.

00:45:02Marc:But a lot of times people, there is a growth period

00:45:06Marc:Like gay marriage, right?

00:45:07Marc:There's a lot of people who are not religious fanatics that are uncomfortable with gay marriage.

00:45:11Marc:And they're like, oh, fuck, the fags are going to get married.

00:45:13Marc:What's the world coming to?

00:45:14Marc:But 10 years from now, those same people very likely would be like, eh, who cares?

00:45:19Guest:Exactly, right.

00:45:19Guest:Those exact same people, yeah.

00:45:20Marc:Right.

00:45:21Marc:So it evolves into sort of like, I guess, what are you going to do?

00:45:24Marc:It's fine.

00:45:25Marc:They don't have to agree with it ultimately, and they can hold their opinion, but ultimately culture has to evolve.

00:45:30Marc:And it's just a slow process.

00:45:32Guest:He's very right.

00:45:33Guest:But you know what?

00:45:34Guest:I have an issue with political correctness, which is I think it's an intellectual and emotional, societal, cultural laziness and cowardice.

00:45:44Guest:Because I was on a panel once with Hunter Thompson and, you know... When he was still together?

00:45:50Yeah.

00:45:50Guest:No, no, I didn't know him at the age of five You know, this was a panel.

00:45:56Guest:He was still alive clearly But he was way drunk at 9 in the morning.

00:45:59Guest:We were at NYU.

00:46:00Guest:Doug Brinkley was running it.

00:46:01Guest:Allen Ginsberg was on the panel It was supposed to be about the beat generation and I was literally on the wrong panel I mean I was asked to be on it, but I wasn't in the beat generation But anyway, Hunter Thompson's talking he's saying American Indians American Indians and there's a woman in the front row she kept going Native Americans Native Americans.

00:46:17Guest:So finally I said Hunter may I interrupt?

00:46:19Guest:I said

00:46:20Guest:You know, you want to call them Native Americans.

00:46:22Guest:Well, does anybody here know there was a thousand plus people in NYU auditorium?

00:46:25Guest:Yeah.

00:46:26Guest:I said, does anybody realize that this is the exact year that most of the land leases the American government bought from the Indians come up?

00:46:34Guest:They're actually now the land reverts legally.

00:46:38Guest:to the American Indian.

00:46:39Guest:I said, so we can argue about calling Native Americans American Indians, but let me just posture this.

00:46:44Guest:Who here wants to pay more taxes so the government can buy that land legally in the many tens of billions of dollars that it is now worth?

00:46:54Guest:So it's going to cost us, the people, the taxpayers, many tens of billions more than we pay in taxes.

00:47:01Guest:So who's for it?

00:47:02Guest:And a room of a thousand, three hands went up.

00:47:06Guest:I said, well, I appreciate you doing that.

00:47:07Guest:I think you're lying.

00:47:08Guest:But even if you're not, good for you.

00:47:10Guest:But that's the only thing that matters.

00:47:12Guest:What do you think an American Indian cares if you call them a Native American?

00:47:15Guest:Give them the money for their damn land.

00:47:17Guest:It's their land.

00:47:17Guest:We took it.

00:47:19Guest:Yeah.

00:47:19Guest:It was time for us to pay.

00:47:20Guest:It was the exact year.

00:47:21Guest:Most of them didn't even know the issue.

00:47:22Guest:No, of course not.

00:47:23Guest:No, of course not.

00:47:24Guest:But they all knew the issue about the name change.

00:47:26Guest:And, you know, I've always, my back goes up, my hair goes on edge when I hear this faux, you know, faux culture, this faux revolution.

00:47:39Guest:Phoniness gets me.

00:47:40Guest:I don't want to sound so strident, but I am on this issue perhaps.

00:47:44Guest:And as an editor all my life now, which is 40 years of being a professional editor, off and on, mostly on, I've always striven for that truth.

00:47:55Guest:When I had Discover Magazine, I had editors quit because I did articles they found politically incorrect.

00:47:59Guest:Like what?

00:48:00Guest:Well, very early on, the whole climate change debate, we published an interview with Bjorn Logstrom, I think his name is, who was then recognized as one of the leading climatologists in the world.

00:48:14Guest:I mean, people didn't do anything without checking with him first.

00:48:17Guest:And he said in this interview, he said, you know, we don't really have great data on climate change.

00:48:22Guest:We haven't really been looking for it.

00:48:23Guest:He said, but ironically, in my lab, we've been looking at something for seven years every minute of the day, every second of the day for seven years, and it's sunspot activity.

00:48:35Guest:He says, in actual fact, we found a correlation of 100% between sunspot activity and the Earth's temperature.

00:48:44Guest:So solar storms, when they are directed at the Earth, because of course they're also not directed at the Earth, but when they're directed at the Earth, influence the temperature, 100% correlation, 100%.

00:48:54Guest:It's parallel lines for seven years.

00:48:57Guest:He says, so clearly, we're warming up, but the sun has a lot to do with it.

00:49:01Guest:Well, I had an editor literally quit.

00:49:04Guest:And others threatened to quit.

00:49:05Guest:They didn't.

00:49:06Guest:This was what year?

00:49:06Guest:At Discover in the year 2006 or 2007.

00:49:11Guest:And I remember saying to this group, I had to call the editor.

00:49:14Guest:I mean, hold on.

00:49:14Guest:I said, listen, let me tell you something.

00:49:15Guest:First of all, the magazine is publishing this article word for word, and I'm final editing, top editing it.

00:49:21Marc:But you're not denying climate change.

00:49:23Guest:No, of course not.

00:49:23Guest:No, no, no, in the slightest.

00:49:24Marc:You're not denying the postulation of human responsibility for it, but you're presenting some science.

00:49:29Guest:I'm presenting another science.

00:49:30Guest:And I said to them in this meeting, I said, science, the actual definition of science is to prove a theory wrong.

00:49:39Guest:Mm-hmm.

00:49:39Guest:You know, there are people, generally anyone said this to me, there are scientists who say we haven't really proven gravity because if you talk to the physicist who talk about many dimensions, they say gravity is too weak to be actually a force in the universe.

00:49:55Guest:So it's one of the forces, but there are others.

00:49:57Guest:So, I mean, there's that kind of open-mindedness to science that makes science fantastic.

00:50:01Guest:And here were a bunch of science editors and writers sitting around complaining and stamping their little feet because this was a politically incorrect thing to publish.

00:50:08Marc:So they didn't want to be associated with climate change denying.

00:50:12Guest:Right.

00:50:12Guest:It was even before the phrase came up.

00:50:13Marc:Right.

00:50:14Guest:It was that early.

00:50:15Guest:So I said, listen, I said, the truth is the truth.

00:50:18Guest:And the truth about science is that it's never black and white.

00:50:22Guest:I said, so why is it that only one set of voices should be heard?

00:50:26Guest:I said, we know, we know from hearing from scientists that I said, you know, because they told you, but there's another group, by the way, very credible, who have another point of view that has to be included.

00:50:35Guest:So, yeah, I'm not a denialist.

00:50:38Guest:You know what I am?

00:50:38Guest:I'm a hysteria skeptic.

00:50:40Guest:Yeah.

00:50:40Guest:And when he gets hysterical, when I saw Al Gore give his presentation at the beginning of that movie, The Inconvenient Truth, at TED back in 2005, 2006, February 2006,

00:50:52Guest:It's the first time he'd ever given it.

00:50:53Guest:In fact, he kind of said, oh, I hope I get this right.

00:50:56Marc:Yeah, he's riffing.

00:50:57Guest:Yeah, he's riffing.

00:50:58Guest:And it was a brilliant presentation.

00:51:00Guest:And I turned to my editor who was next to me, and I said, tomorrow, start investigating this.

00:51:04Guest:He says, why?

00:51:06Guest:Everything is right.

00:51:06Guest:There wasn't a single rebuttal to anything.

00:51:09Guest:He just has one theory, and he presents evidence only for that one theory.

00:51:13Guest:That's not possible.

00:51:13Guest:It's just physically not possible.

00:51:15Guest:There has to be other.

00:51:16Guest:This is before we did the...

00:51:18Guest:I said, it has to be other views.

00:51:21Guest:I said, he's a lawyer.

00:51:22Guest:He's advocating his case.

00:51:24Guest:This editor didn't want to do anything.

00:51:25Guest:He didn't stay much longer.

00:51:26Guest:He left to his own volition, and then I started hiring people to look into it.

00:51:29Guest:And, of course, there was another side, and that is science.

00:51:33Guest:Mm-hmm.

00:51:33Marc:have got anywhere if people weren't challenging things right um so so it struck me that we've become intellectually and emotionally lazy and spiritually lazy but also the issue like of the evolution of publishing the the the reality of the internet the sort of you know the monetization of what you grew up in what your father grew up in of units and and and the power of uh of a magazine or of that type of exclusive audiences right we don't have that now

00:52:01Marc:Well, now we don't have hardly any context at all.

00:52:04Marc:And it seems that, you know, sort of some of the stuff you're talking about, about this immaturity, reactionary thinking, you know, contempt and attack prior to investigation is sort of the outlet of almost anybody.

00:52:19Marc:The Internet has provided access for anybody to comment on anything anonymously, quickly, and possibly destroy people.

00:52:26Marc:Right, absolutely.

00:52:27Marc:So, like, you know, somebody who is, like yourself, who is...

00:52:31Marc:kind of lived through, you know, personal attacks and being crucified for other reasons and also, you know, been in the ring journalistically.

00:52:38Marc:There's got to be, you know, how do you sort of reconcile the evolution of DIY publishing, you know, internet access, lack of boundaries personally and otherwise, and this sort of destructive force that that is.

00:52:55Marc:I mean, you know,

00:52:56Marc:we have an entire generation that that is indicative of what you're saying you know spiritually uh morally and intellectually bankrupt or lazy or both yeah that that are really going to dictate the course of culture i mean i've been doing some reading for a while okay for a while let's go back to what obama said so brilliantly you know democracy grows slowly incrementally incrementally um he did say it better than me yeah

00:53:19Guest:Incrementally and slowly, that means.

00:53:21Guest:Well, so does media.

00:53:23Guest:You know, you go back to the early 1900s.

00:53:25Guest:Newspapers were as out there as the internet is today.

00:53:30Guest:There was no regulations.

00:53:32Guest:There was no sense of what could be libel or slanderless.

00:53:35Guest:Whatever sold is what they printed.

00:53:37Guest:And we evolved as a media to bring in the notion of slander and libel and say, you know, really, you have to not act this way.

00:53:48Guest:And, you know, the rampant untruth that was the core of media 100 years ago did have to be modified and, you know, taken care of so that it wasn't.

00:54:04Marc:There had to be some sort of regulations and structure.

00:54:10Guest:Right.

00:54:11Guest:And structure.

00:54:12Guest:And by the way, and then sort of it got calibrated by the people's reaction.

00:54:15Guest:People said, you know, this is this isn't the whole story.

00:54:18Guest:Right.

00:54:18Guest:This is unfair.

00:54:19Guest:And, you know, I make up my own mind.

00:54:20Guest:But so media change, you know, from the very tabloid newspapers that make today's papers look like, you know, the hymnal at mass.

00:54:27Guest:So that's not a new story in a way.

00:54:30Guest:We have a new technology, so it's a new story for our generation.

00:54:33Guest:And I think it's going to eventually again recalibrate.

00:54:37Guest:People are going to get tired of this.

00:54:40Guest:I think people can get tired of the bashing.

00:54:43Guest:You know, we've become very similar.

00:54:45Guest:We don't like to hear this.

00:54:46Guest:We don't like to think about this.

00:54:47Guest:But today, we are very similar to the Taliban.

00:54:50Guest:We have one prescribed opinion.

00:54:53Guest:There's no deviating from that.

00:54:54Guest:We stone people to death as a mob.

00:54:57Guest:A faceless mob cowardly mob stoning someone to death.

00:55:00Guest:Let me give you the most recent example.

00:55:01Marc:It's on both sides, though.

00:55:03Marc:So, I mean, there are two opinions, but the result is just more bashing.

00:55:08Guest:Yeah, more bashing.

00:55:09Guest:There's no debate.

00:55:11Guest:There's no real debate, no honest debate.

00:55:13Guest:There's only this, you're wrong, and you're obviously a Nazi.

00:55:17Marc:And then some spin.

00:55:18Guest:yeah because it comes from the other side you're wrong and you're obviously a godless heathen who wants to kill babies right exactly and you know it's you see it's very easy therefore intellectually lazy to say i'm for this x right um and somebody else says well yeah i'm totally for that oh you're an evil person you know totally for that right fill in x it can be marriage equality it can be sexism it can be uh you know gender discrimination it can be all sorts of things

00:55:47Guest:But whatever it is, I always say, in reality, there are two sides.

00:55:52Guest:Maybe one side is 75%, 80% undeniably the best way to go.

00:55:57Guest:And maybe the other side, it's going to take a while for everybody to come to that.

00:56:00Guest:But, you know, you should hear it.

00:56:02Guest:And there are real concerns.

00:56:04Guest:And we should hear this and be open to it.

00:56:06Marc:But the weird thing is, is once people or ideas are destroyed, that frame...

00:56:10Marc:The hunger for sort of aggravated justice and closure in the form of predatory journalism, if you're going to even call it that, is that once that frame is set, the retraction or the sort of the gaining back of one's reputation is

00:56:32Marc:It's not as much of a story.

00:56:33Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:56:34Guest:How about this?

00:56:35Guest:How about the poor Nobel Prize winning scientist, England, somebody, Hunt, Dr. Hunt, Professor Hunt, whatever.

00:56:40Guest:I can't remember his first name.

00:56:42Guest:Nobel Prize winning, 72 years old, universally loved in a scientific community, happened to have been from the early days a great advocate of bringing women along in the laboratory, brought many students in, helped them become full-fledged scientists.

00:56:59Guest:This was not always the case, say, 30, 40 years ago.

00:57:02Guest:especially not in England.

00:57:04Guest:And he has done this.

00:57:06Guest:And then he makes a joke at a conference.

00:57:07Guest:And he says, the problem with women in labs is that we fall in love with them, they fall in love with us, and they cry when you criticize them.

00:57:15Guest:For which he lost every one of his professorships at university, all his income.

00:57:21Guest:He was destroyed reputation-wise.

00:57:24Guest:He was destroyed employment-wise.

00:57:26Guest:For that one remark, which if you break it down, is hardly...

00:57:31Guest:Inflammatory.

00:57:33Guest:People say it was a silly remark.

00:57:34Guest:Well, I'm not even just totally sure.

00:57:36Guest:It climbs to the bar of stupid.

00:57:40Guest:I think it was obviously an inappropriate remark.

00:57:44Guest:But he is destroyed.

00:57:45Marc:Inappropriate in that no matter how good he was to women, his ideas of the dynamic of men and women was old.

00:57:52Guest:Do you know what?

00:57:52Guest:I'm not even going to say it's inappropriate.

00:57:54Guest:I'm going to retract that.

00:57:55Guest:It's not inappropriate.

00:57:56Guest:It's just old.

00:57:56Guest:Well, it is old, yes, because today the culture is a little different.

00:58:01Guest:But the offense taken was that they cry at criticism.

00:58:05Guest:Well, you know, a lot of people cry at criticism, men and women.

00:58:08Guest:And if the worst thing said about me in my life was that I cried at criticism, which, by the way, I have done.

00:58:15Guest:I remember once my father criticized me when I was a young man for something I had done, and I did cry.

00:58:20Marc:But it's interesting.

00:58:21Marc:I don't know if that's the worst criticism you can have.

00:58:23Marc:But he prefaced the comment by, you know, we fall in love with each other.

00:58:26Marc:So then it becomes an emotional relationship.

00:58:28Marc:He met his wife in the lab.

00:58:30Marc:Right.

00:58:30Marc:But it becomes an emotional relationship.

00:58:32Marc:So it's not about the criticism.

00:58:34Marc:See, like if you really deconstruct that, that, that, that what he said, you know, as far as men and women in relationships go, if he said that outside of the context of the lab, but he set it up properly, which is that we're, you know, the relationship has been convoluted by emotion.

00:58:48Guest:Right.

00:58:50Guest:Exactly.

00:58:51Marc:That's horrible.

00:58:52Guest:And he's destroyed.

00:58:52Guest:Destroyed.

00:58:53Guest:You know, no universe.

00:58:54Guest:They all dropped him within a minute of a week.

00:58:56Guest:Newspapers like The Guardian beat on him five articles a day, four articles.

00:59:00Guest:To sell papers.

00:59:02Guest:Yeah.

00:59:02Marc:Well, this is to sell online clicks, by the way, because it was online.

00:59:04Marc:But that's the problem.

00:59:05Marc:How do you fucking reconcile that shit?

00:59:07Marc:I mean, at least with a paper, there was a little time in between.

00:59:10Marc:So maybe someone could get a fucking word in.

00:59:12Guest:Right.

00:59:12Guest:Exactly.

00:59:13Guest:Well, I read a lot of these articles because I was so horrified by this, and I read the comments, and the people would just be, you know, he should be thrown out.

00:59:19Guest:We should take him from the record to take away his Nobel Prize.

00:59:22Guest:The man didn't say anything terrible.

00:59:25Guest:Let's face it.

00:59:26Guest:Let's just be real.

00:59:27Guest:It's not a terrible comment.

00:59:29Guest:He didn't call them sluts.

00:59:30Marc:Did you write an editorial?

00:59:31Guest:Did you do anything?

00:59:33Guest:No, I don't have the outlet right now.

00:59:34Guest:If I had to spin, I'd have written the editorial immediately.

00:59:36Guest:But I just want to counter that with the same paper about two weeks earlier did a news item which said that a woman barrister in England was found to have lied.

00:59:50Guest:about her ex-boyfriend raping her and the boyfriend was in jail and had gone to jail for this accusation of rape ex-boyfriend and so they said well you know now she's going to be prosecuted and she'll go to jail and he got released there wasn't a single word again not a single editorial saying hey that's pretty bad you know let's just we beat up

01:00:11Marc:What did that guy give up?

01:00:12Guest:I don't know.

01:00:13Guest:He gave his life.

01:00:14Guest:His life can never be the same again.

01:00:16Guest:But I'm saying, look, that happened.

01:00:17Guest:That's not the Guardian's fault.

01:00:18Guest:But where is your indignation about that wrong?

01:00:21Guest:Well, that's not a politically correct wrong because it involved something that's just not in the political correct sphere.

01:00:27Marc:It's a bit of a frightening thing.

01:00:29Guest:It's very frightening.

01:00:30Guest:Because I don't know.

01:00:31Guest:It'll take years for that.

01:00:33Guest:Did I answer your question a moment ago?

01:00:34Guest:It will take many years for that bad toxin

01:00:39Guest:to filter through the digestive system of our society.

01:00:41Guest:Eventually it will, and we will excrete it.

01:00:44Guest:And then we'll get back to a nice balance.

01:00:46Guest:I think that the internet is coming out of the phase of novelty.

01:00:49Guest:I think we've had it now 20 years.

01:00:52Guest:You know, some people had it a little longer.

01:00:53Guest:You know what I mean?

01:00:54Guest:It goes back probably 20 years.

01:00:57Marc:But it's just people sitting at work looking for headlines.

01:01:00Marc:And now you get these 20-something journalists, quote-unquote journalists, who are assigned to dig into a story, even if it's a pre-existing story, to find something salacious in order to tag it with.

01:01:12Guest:Right, exactly.

01:01:13Marc:So then it becomes social media currency.

01:01:15Marc:That becomes the dialogue.

01:01:16Guest:Currency.

01:01:17Guest:Yeah.

01:01:18Guest:And that's because it clicks back to the site, which clicks to advertising clicks.

01:01:21Guest:But how do you stop that?

01:01:24Yeah.

01:01:24Marc:It's just... It's too big a question to answer because I don't know how... Morbid fascination and fucking, you know, it's malignant.

01:01:33Guest:Well, it is.

01:01:33Guest:And, you know, I think it's more destructive than we realize because I think it hurts us spiritually and I also think it hurts us intellectually.

01:01:40Marc:Well, it creates a culture of self-censorship that stifles... It creates ignorance.

01:01:48Guest:It creates and nourishes ignorance because after a while, if that's what you're fed, that's what you believe.

01:01:53Guest:And, you know...

01:01:54Guest:To get back to something you asked me a while ago, I think Spin was a vanguard.

01:01:59Guest:I think we represented our generation.

01:02:02Guest:I used to tell my editors, we worked for our readers.

01:02:04Guest:We represented them.

01:02:05Guest:We guided them.

01:02:07Guest:That was an obligation to do and also a sacred duty for us.

01:02:11Guest:I don't see much of that in today's media.

01:02:14Guest:And I think it can come best from counterculture.

01:02:19Guest:Publishing like spin now, which is only online, but they have the opportunity to do this and I'm talking to these guys a lot and saying hey, you know God do big so I want them to a big surround Bill Cosby I said go to the big story.

01:02:29Guest:Let's have both sides.

01:02:30Guest:Okay.

01:02:30Guest:Look clearly We're going to conclude by his own words that he gave drugs to women and that's clearly uncool But you know I want a context a little worse than uncool.

01:02:40Guest:Yes.

01:02:40Guest:No, no It's terrible terrible, but you know and I'm looking to in any way exonerate him, but I'm saying I

01:02:45Guest:What is the story?

01:02:47Guest:Who is Bill Clarkson?

01:02:48Marc:How is he going to... See, the thing is, it's like... Not the first rock star.

01:02:53Marc:One of the first rock stars on TV.

01:02:54Marc:Of comedy.

01:02:55Marc:I talk to comics about it all the time, how they are trying to reconcile the influence he had on comedy and on them as a comic with this reality.

01:03:05Marc:But how is he ever going to talk about it?

01:03:07Marc:You think he can get somebody... No, I don't think he'll talk.

01:03:09Guest:I think...

01:03:11Guest:Well, by the way, this purpose of this story that I'm suggesting is simply for Spin to re-imprint itself on the public dialogue.

01:03:19Marc:How do you pitch that story?

01:03:19Marc:What do you assign?

01:03:20Guest:I would assign, because it's not my magazine now, but I would assign who was the young Bill Cosby of this time.

01:03:27Guest:He was, in effect, an out-of-control rock star.

01:03:31Guest:He was the Mick Jagger of television.

01:03:33Guest:Forget comedy.

01:03:34Guest:I Spy was the biggest show at the time.

01:03:36Guest:You know, it was a very big show.

01:03:37Guest:Him and Robert Culp.

01:03:38Guest:And he was the first leading character on a TV show who was black.

01:03:43Guest:And he was very, you know, handsome.

01:03:45Guest:And he was an athlete, he was a tennis player, all that.

01:03:47Guest:So, you know, he was a rock star.

01:03:49Guest:Well, I'm not saying this exonerates him.

01:03:51Guest:I'm just saying, give us a story.

01:03:53Guest:Because do you know what?

01:03:54Guest:An awful lot of people...

01:03:55Guest:Reading about Bill Cosby, I have no idea, except for the little blurb that said he was The Cosby Show.

01:04:01Guest:He's got an interesting trajectory, and it's a flawed one.

01:04:05Guest:It's Greek tragedy.

01:04:06Guest:It's Greek tragedy, but at least Greek tragedy is an arc.

01:04:09Marc:You're going to have to go farther back than his success.

01:04:11Marc:I mean, you know, to sort of act out on a desire to have sex with incapacitated women.

01:04:17Marc:I have a theory.

01:04:19Guest:My theory is he has a performance issue.

01:04:20Guest:Well, sure.

01:04:21Guest:Okay.

01:04:21Guest:I mean, you wouldn't psychopathologize him.

01:04:24Guest:I'm not excusing this, but I think he probably has some physical image impediment, and that's how he compensated.

01:04:31Guest:That's my theory.

01:04:32Guest:But the point is journalism.

01:04:35Guest:Journalism should be more complete.

01:04:38Guest:It shouldn't just be one top line, and then everybody has to get behind that and push it like a rock uphill.

01:04:44Guest:I think journalism tells us about ourselves at its best.

01:04:47Marc:But the interesting thing journalistically is if the investigation into not even empathetically, but to try to put him into context or somehow not even explain, but make understandable his crime.

01:05:02Guest:I just want to fill out the biography.

01:05:03Marc:Right.

01:05:04Marc:So so but still like what you don't get in that story is justice.

01:05:08Guest:It's not... Not that that's necessary in journalism.

01:05:12Guest:It's not reachable in this case.

01:05:14Guest:The most controversial stuff it's been over the years was the AIDS column, which is incredibly controversial.

01:05:18Marc:But you guys ran it every week.

01:05:20Marc:I mean, you were in the middle of it.

01:05:21Guest:Every month.

01:05:22Guest:Every month, yeah.

01:05:23Guest:For 120 issues, and we never once had to publish a correction.

01:05:27Guest:We got our facts right.

01:05:28Guest:I mean, neither do we agree with our opinions.

01:05:29Marc:Because I remember what started with AZT, right?

01:05:31Guest:That's such a great memory you got, man.

01:05:33Guest:Phenomenal, yeah.

01:05:33Guest:We were the first people to say, hey, look, AZT...

01:05:37Guest:Is worse than AIDS.

01:05:39Guest:Because AZT is guaranteed to kill you.

01:05:41Guest:There are people living with AIDS.

01:05:42Guest:And there are people living with HIV who haven't developed AIDS.

01:05:45Guest:But you take AZT, you will die in one to two years.

01:05:49Guest:As a result of our journalism, we actually brought about the pretty much international media paying attention to the story and coming to the same conclusion, which brought about the end of prescribing AZT.

01:06:02Guest:Right.

01:06:02Guest:It was an old cancer drug on the shelf that got abandoned because it was too deadly.

01:06:06Guest:Right.

01:06:06Guest:And then when AIDS came out, they said, well, these people are going to die anyway.

01:06:09Guest:Let's try this.

01:06:10Marc:Let's see if it works.

01:06:12Guest:And it became a great seller because it had no research cost.

01:06:14Guest:And desperate people.

01:06:16Guest:And desperate people.

01:06:16Guest:It was a perfect storm.

01:06:18Guest:So the stuff I'm actually proudest of is the AZT articles we ran and some of the AIDS columns we ran.

01:06:25Guest:That was all very controversial stuff.

01:06:26Guest:But I think, you know, going back to just personality journalism, you know, context teaches us about ourselves.

01:06:33Guest:Right.

01:06:33Guest:We learn from that kind of narrative and biography.

01:06:36Guest:Where's the arc of a narrative?

01:06:38Guest:That's what's important.

01:06:38Guest:That's what's missing.

01:06:40Guest:And part of that is the immediacy of the web as a business dictates.

01:06:45Guest:People must get out there fast.

01:06:47Marc:And get a story fast.

01:06:49Guest:In 1988, I went on the Jesse Jackson campaign.

01:06:52Guest:And I did an article about Jesse Jackson.

01:06:55Guest:And I was doing a monthly magazine article.

01:06:57Guest:So I wasn't filing my report after each campaign stop.

01:07:01Guest:And I kept on the plane the full day, and I saw four or five campaign stops.

01:07:05Guest:And I realized he not only said the same thing, but he had the exact same gimmicks at the exact same time somebody brought little children.

01:07:10Guest:Yeah, an act.

01:07:11Guest:Yeah, an act.

01:07:12Guest:Exactly right.

01:07:13Guest:It's like when you were doing stand-up, you did your act, and you had your same little motions and your same moments when you caught the ground.

01:07:18Marc:You want to try to riff a little.

01:07:20Guest:Yeah.

01:07:21Guest:Well, I think he riffed one or two bits.

01:07:22Guest:But it was an act and it was preordained.

01:07:26Guest:And I wrote about that.

01:07:27Guest:And the others didn't because they had to file a report.

01:07:29Guest:What he said in Sacramento this minute, that was 1988 before the Internet.

01:07:33Guest:Right.

01:07:34Guest:Because of the immediacy, the urgency to publish.

01:07:37Guest:Well, today with the Internet, that's amplified by 10%.

01:07:40Marc:Well, what happens is it doesn't function in linear time.

01:07:44Marc:It's everything all at once.

01:07:45Marc:Right.

01:07:45Marc:And a day is, you know, like anything that gets traction in the media, you know, they know it's like, well, this thing probably doesn't have legs.

01:07:53Marc:It's going to burn out.

01:07:54Marc:It's going to be a global hashtag for 48 hours and then it's done.

01:07:59Marc:Right.

01:07:59Marc:And then they can find some more sordid shit on this because we'd like to make it go another two or three days with some clickbait.

01:08:05Guest:Right.

01:08:05Guest:Yeah.

01:08:06Marc:Whereas like what you're talking about is when you had a monthly magazine or even, you know, a weekly column in a newspaper or an investigative piece that required time is that you had the time to do it.

01:08:17Marc:And there was none of this sort of like, well, people are going to forget.

01:08:20Marc:What do you mean?

01:08:20Marc:It was last week.

01:08:21Marc:Exactly.

01:08:22Marc:It's over.

01:08:23Guest:Exactly.

01:08:24Guest:Yeah.

01:08:24Guest:Where's the context?

01:08:25Guest:That's exactly my point.

01:08:27Guest:And the context is what nourishes us as a society.

01:08:30Guest:It's what enriches us.

01:08:31Guest:It's the nuance.

01:08:33Guest:It's the ability to say, you know, yeah, all right.

01:08:35Guest:This person, you know, today, what would happen to President Kennedy today in social media when he got known for his first affair?

01:08:43Guest:Right.

01:08:43Guest:You know, I mean, there's a lot more went on with that man.

01:08:46Guest:He didn't do everything wrong.

01:08:48Guest:He did some good things.

01:08:49Guest:And that's perhaps a bit extreme example.

01:08:50Marc:And now the only reason that people look for the arcs you're talking about is to create a stronger rope to hang somebody with usually.

01:08:57Guest:Often, yeah.

01:08:57Marc:Well, so you've got two sides.

01:08:58Marc:I mean, the idea that there's only one point of view I think is not quite – I don't quite agree with what you're saying there.

01:09:04Marc:There are conflicting opinions.

01:09:06Marc:There is –

01:09:06Marc:sort of cultural momentum on one side or the other, but both of them are looking to tear the other one down and to tear the other one's heroes down.

01:09:16Marc:So anyone's going to investigate what you want in the arc.

01:09:18Marc:You're looking to sort of like, well, who is Bill Cosby?

01:09:21Marc:And most people, no one's looking to defend that guy, obviously, but everybody's looking to hang him higher.

01:09:27Marc:That's right.

01:09:28Marc:No, I know you're not, but the idea of creating at least that unbiased, balanced reporting around it, so people can at least see the fucking sicko as a human, and not just this guy that was a big star.

01:09:44Marc:Here's the tricky thing with that, is that you've got people that grew up with this comedy,

01:09:47Marc:And you can't take that away from people.

01:09:50Marc:All a person can do who loved Bill Cosby is reconcile in his own heart and mind and live with it.

01:09:56Marc:Now, does that individual then say, like, well, none of his comedy is any good anymore?

01:10:00Guest:It's a hard thing to say.

01:10:02Guest:Well, it's true.

01:10:03Guest:You're actually saying these people are going to get airbrushed out of history.

01:10:08Guest:That's right.

01:10:09Marc:And they want to airbrush him out of their mind is the political correct element.

01:10:12Marc:It's like not only does he get airbrushed out of history, you have to erase your mind.

01:10:16Marc:That's right.

01:10:17Marc:It's very well put.

01:10:18Guest:Very well put.

01:10:19Guest:And that's not good for us as cultural society.

01:10:21Guest:It's just not good for us.

01:10:22Guest:No, it's not good for humans.

01:10:23Guest:One of the worst human beings, apparently, according to history, I mean, according to reports of people who knew him, was Picasso.

01:10:30Guest:Yeah.

01:10:30Guest:It's a man who left his own children standing outside the gate because he was in the middle of either having sex or painting.

01:10:35Guest:Either one didn't matter.

01:10:36Guest:He wouldn't interrupt either for his children.

01:10:38Guest:And yet, what are we going to do?

01:10:40Guest:Like not appreciate Picasso's painting and his impact on art?

01:10:45Guest:You know, there are a lot of people, Faulkner apparently, who's my favorite writer, William Faulkner, but he was an awful drunk, terrible of his kids.

01:10:51Guest:Once said to his daughter, no one remembers William Shakespeare's daughter.

01:10:54Guest:And it's a pretty bad thing to say to your child, you know.

01:10:56Guest:And when I spent time in Oxford, I became very close friends with Dean Faulkner, who was William's niece, who William raised.

01:11:03Guest:And, of course, I heard a lot more stories.

01:11:04Guest:He didn't sound like a nice guy.

01:11:06Guest:Perhaps the greatest American writer of all time.

01:11:08Guest:You know, we are a richer country for Faulkner writing what he wrote and that influencing other writers.

01:11:13Guest:We're a holistic culture.

01:11:16Marc:Well, that's like it's interesting because that's true.

01:11:19Marc:You know, you have great men that did great things and great women that did great things.

01:11:24Marc:dubious characters so so you know I think it's within the human spirit to to for each individual to have a way to to balance the two or to have their judgments right but I think where you're talking about is the way any sort of ideology what it's put whether it's the political correct side or or the the right-wing side is to to is historical revisionism which is fundamentally fascistic right that you have to erase the collective memory

01:11:49Guest:Yeah, what did the East, what did the communists do in the East?

01:11:54Guest:You know, what do they do in places like Czechoslovakia?

01:11:56Marc:It's an imperative of power on either side, is to annihilate the history.

01:12:02Marc:I agree, yeah.

01:12:03Guest:Which is, by the way, the important role, the sacred role of journalism is to arrest that progress.

01:12:11Guest:So is democracy.

01:12:12Guest:Yeah, absolutely.

01:12:12Guest:Supposedly.

01:12:13Guest:Well, democracy, everybody will agree on this, is founded on free speech.

01:12:19Guest:Mm-hmm.

01:12:19Guest:free exchange of ideas and the ability for all of that information to be available.

01:12:24Guest:Look, I love the internet, by the way, and I love internet media.

01:12:29Guest:My next venture is going to be an online publication about travel called Wanderlust.

01:12:35Guest:I'm excited about it.

01:12:36Guest:Incredibly excited about it.

01:12:38Guest:As excited as my current venture with the bookazine that you have in front of you.

01:12:42Guest:And we have many more copies coming up.

01:12:43Guest:Many more issues.

01:12:44Guest:I'm excited about both those things.

01:12:45Guest:Equally, I love the internet.

01:12:47Guest:I love the fact that you can reach more people more easily by the medium of

01:12:52Guest:the internet why how come why you should be saving journalism bob i mean well i want to i want to oh well yeah i don't think my travel site is going to save journalism um but hopefully it's going to work okay you know but uh no i would love very much to all seriousness i'd love very much to be part of an effort to save journalism and i

01:13:10Guest:And I hope other people feel that way because it's vital.

01:13:14Guest:It's the oxygen of a society.

01:13:17Guest:And, you know, journalism, with all due respect to the Gawkers and Buzzfeeds of the world, is not the thing that is most salacious, most get right up your nose, that moment.

01:13:27Guest:It's not the cocaine of salacious tabloidy news.

01:13:32Guest:It actually should be holistic.

01:13:34Guest:It should be a lot of things.

01:13:36Guest:And I don't just mean that in the sort of, oh, it's got to be pure and, you know, name of the father and the son and all that.

01:13:40Guest:Oh, I like entertainment journalism.

01:13:43Guest:You do.

01:13:43Guest:This is entertainment journalism right now, your show.

01:13:47Guest:But the truth is the truth, and the truth is whole, and it's full, and I think we're all served together by being able to see it whole and full.

01:13:56Marc:And sometimes it takes time.

01:13:58Marc:Yeah, it does.

01:13:59Guest:It does.

01:14:00Guest:And ultimately, I believe this will settle, and even the internet will take time.

01:14:04Marc:All right.

01:14:04Marc:Well, I will take that as an optimistic look at the possibility of incremental growth and for us to level off and take the time to have our own thoughts and opinions about things based on truth.

01:14:19Guest:Yes.

01:14:20Guest:Yes.

01:14:20Guest:How well put.

01:14:21Guest:Thank you so much for having me.

01:14:22Marc:Thanks for talking.

01:14:29Marc:That's Bob Guccione back on top of it.

01:14:33Marc:Doing the thing.

01:14:35Marc:Making a living.

01:14:36Marc:Being Bob Guccione Jr.

01:14:38Marc:What's up?

01:14:39Marc:We alright?

01:14:40Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.

01:14:42Marc:Get some JustCoffee.coop to get the WTF blend.

01:14:45Marc:I've got a little something on the back end.

01:14:47Marc:Check the calendar.

01:14:48Marc:Get on the mailing list.

01:14:49Marc:I'll send you a thing.

01:14:51Marc:You can check my dates.

01:14:53Marc:You can read the blog post.

01:14:55Marc:You can listen to the episode.

01:14:56Marc:It's all there.

01:14:57Marc:It's all there, man.

01:14:59Marc:It's all there.

01:15:00Marc:Oh, my God.

01:15:03Marc:What are we going to do?

01:15:04Marc:I'll play a little guitar.

01:15:05Marc:I'll do it.

01:15:07Guest:Oh, my God.

01:15:18Guest:you are you

01:15:46Guest:Boomer lives!