Latest / The Radio From Hell Show - Best Of / Jeremy Pugh Interview from September 11th, 2026

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Jeremy Pugh Interview from September 11th, 2026 · The Radio From Hell Show - Best Of

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Jeremy Pugh is with us in the studio. Jeremy is
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: the editor, the publisher. The publisher? You're the editor? No,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: I'm the editor. You're the editor. The editor of a
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: brand-new magazine here on the Wasatch Front, Salt Lake Metropolitan.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: It looks great. But just a little bit of the
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: story in the background. People may remember Jeremy and a
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: bunch of folks were working for Salt Lake Magazine for
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: how many years, Jeremy? I worked there about 20 years.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: 20 years. Bought by a company in the Midwest.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Not local.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Not a local company. Correct. Bought by them, and I
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: remember talking to you right after. You said, well, it
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: looks good. It looks like everything will be okay.
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: And then it wasn't.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: And then it wasn't. Cock-eyed optimist I am. They decided
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: to just let you and many people go. Correct. And
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: so you've come back with a vengeance. Maybe not vengeance,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: but a nice magazine. Well, I think you're going to
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: get your revenge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: I think local magazines should be run by and written
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: by local people.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Agreed. I agree.
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, look, and then there's these three fellows right here.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Salt Lake Metropolitan, again, it looks great. And I feel
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: privileged that we're featured in the first episode, the first
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: edition of Episode. That's broadcast time. Issue. First issue. And
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: it's just 40 years of Radio 4 Metal. It's a
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: great timeline and all of that. So pick it up.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: How can people get the magazine?
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: Well, we're mailing to– it's a direct mail right now,
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: but there is a subscription. And I sent Katie the
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: subscription code, and we're working out getting people– building a
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: subscription base. So there's a code in your show notes,
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: I hope, or online that people can use with a
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: promo code, founders, and you can get a year free.
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: We want people to see this thing.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: You can get a year free. Okay, that's very cool.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: I'm sure we can put that on our social media.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: We'll have it everywhere. But how do you think this
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: magazine is different from what you were.
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: Doing Well, in a lot of ways, some of the
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: restrictions I work with are kind of out the window.
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: It's been really awesome to try to take what I
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: know how to do and refine it into something else
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: with another organization.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: And I feel like I.
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: Always have felt like that even though we distribute all
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: over Salt Lake County, all up and down the Wasatch
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: into Davis.
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: Salt Lake is kind of sort of the urban heart
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: or the, you know, if someone moves here or is
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: thinking about moving here, they don't know where Magda is
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: or Draper. But they know Salt Lake. It's sort of
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: the name brand of northern Utah. And so I really
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: wanted to lean into that with this idea that Salt
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: Lake isn't, I don't know. I really balk, and you
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: all probably know this, is, oh, it's good enough for
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: Salt Lake. I'm like, no, it's good enough.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: It's good. It's good. Oh, that's good for Salt Lake.
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: And I think that over the last 10, 20 years,
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: we've seen, I don't know, a lot of stepping up
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: in food and drinking.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Well, we have a Michelin star. Oh, we have a
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Michelin star.
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: I picture some French guy in a beret and a mustache,
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: like in disguise, sneaking around at restaurants.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Yes. I will have this steak.
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: And so this magazine, I think, continues the tradition of
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: caring about this community, showing people like our if we've
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: shown you if you look to your 40 years and
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: we show you something new, we've done our job.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, you did a nice, the very last thing in
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: here is a nice little question and answer with our
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: good friend Mary Nichols.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like the Proust question.
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we want to do those. In fact, you
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: all would be candidates for those. That would be fun
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, we'd do that. And there are things
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: in here that I'm just pleased to see in the magazine.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Already I see something I didn't know, this stuff about
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Porter Rockwell.
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: Oh, Port, yeah, he's a gem. One of my favorite
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: Frontier characters.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Where is Porter Rockwell buried? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting to find out. And how many people did
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: he kill? He claimed he never killed anybody, but the
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: record says different. Yeah, yeah. It's a great quote from him.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: I never shot anybody. If I shoot, they get shot. Yeah.
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, good old Port. And that timeline was a lot
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: of fun. Bill helped me a lot on the fact-checking.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: I was... On the Radio from Hell time. Yeah, the
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Radio from Hell. Great moments in Radio from Hell history,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: which there are a lot of. And actually, today I
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: think is sort of the anniversary of what I think
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: is your newsiest and Edward Murrow-esque moment, which is the
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: 9-11 moment when you guys ceased... ceased being frivolous. Yeah,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: stop playing music. Yeah, we're still frivolous. Well, yes, of course,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: but things got a little serious for a while. We
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: stopped playing music and, yeah.
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: And I was also, I didn't believe that you had
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: been to the USSR.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Yes. Which was right around the time of the wall falling.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: It was. I thought, oh, that's not true. Bill set
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: me straight. It was still the Soviet Union when we
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: were there.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: But very soon after we left, and I think we
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: had something to do with it. Yes. And we've got
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: recordings of it that Katie is mastering.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to try to make those available in
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: some other way.
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: Oh, from your sort of, you know, your tapings and
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: broadcasts there?
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Live from the Kremlin? You've got the restaurant reviews.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: You've got.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: See, that's what I like is the introduction, because I'm
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: always looking for someplace new to eat.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: And I'm looking at this list of.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: Sadly, you're talking about places that I do go, and
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: now they're going to be too crowded. But there's a
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: bunch of places here that I have not been to
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: that I'm going to try now.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think for those of us who've lived
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: here a long time, you sort of run out of regulars,
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: and it's nice.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: To have a little— Try something different, yeah. Yeah. What
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: do we eat tonight? That's the eternal question. Now, can
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: you also access this online? Yeah.
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: Our website is almost up. It'll be saltlakementropolitan.com. There's also
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: another publication published by my colleague Megan Bartholomew called Wasatch Living.
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: And Brian and Loyal City Journals had already started another
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: magazine called Executive Life Magazine, which is like business-y and,
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: you know, people in suits and whatnot.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Happy to see my friends at Beehive Cigar featured in here. Oh, yeah.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: I've become recently a devotee of that place. I know.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: That cigar commercial was for real. Yeah.
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: On the way in.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah. I didn't know. Yeah, it's... No, they're great.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Bill's a puffer. They have pipes there, too, and I've
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: actually sort of gotten into... Cigars occasionally, but I really
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: have been getting into pipe culture. But Kendrick, Wilson, Hume, and...
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Brandon Ovison at Beehive Cigar. It's a wonderful shop.
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: Well, and that story was it's the apostate cigar company.
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: And there's some ex-LDS people. And what I think is
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: really interesting about that is they named their cigars after
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: what I would describe as like deep tracks cigars. In
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: Mormon lore, I mean, they've got a Liahona cigar sort
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: of label.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, those are deep cuts. I mean, those are like
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: some deep cuts. Yeah, yeah. And the design of the
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: cigar bands and everything are really nice with symbols, LDS
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: symbols on them. Yeah, yeah. Fascinating.
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: So I appreciate the cheekiness of that.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: Now, this issue is 52 Ways to be a Real
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: Salt Laker.
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and some of y'all's ways are up on my
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: editor's letter. You all contributed a smattering that we we
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: bonused in on the on page six. And yes, I
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: counted wrong. There's only eight ways there. But print, you know,
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: you can't go back. You can't can't edit it.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, we thought it'd be really fun for our
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: first issue to kind of define a little bit about
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: what we're trying to do. And and there are things that.
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: I think every Utahns done, I would say every Utahn
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: is driven to Wendover at some point in their life.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: At some point. Yeah, for good or ill.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Some never come back.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Some never came back. We lost a few out there.
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: You know, and our cover shot is somebody actually floating
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: in the Great Salt Lake, which I know is of
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: grave concern right now.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: It's a very lovely picture, though. Yeah. You know, it just...
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: It looks serene and beautiful, which we hope it will remain.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: We hope it will remain, right? Yeah, someday. The story
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: of the Salt Lake Trappers.
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: Oh, yes, and that was so much fun. I had
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: discovered that about 2025, yeah, a filmmaker released a documentary
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: called The Streak, and I got to interview the filmmaker
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: and some of the principal B-players, excuse me, trapper players
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: who were in, you know, kind of characters in this documentary.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: And Bill Murray is in part of it too.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: I mean, he was a, partial owner. He did not
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: participate in the documentary, but the director's still open to
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: his call. But yeah, it's just a great story. They
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: won 29 games in 1987. It was talk of the
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: town and absolutely talk of the nation because no one's
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: ever topped that in professional baseball.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: They're in the Hall of Fame.
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: And what's really great about the movie is The director
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: follows them after in their post-lives, which there's a little
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: melancholy there.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: You have this one great summer of your youth. Yeah.
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: And so it's a great movie, and I recommend it,
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: but that story was a lot of fun to tell.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: I remember. Especially from being a Salt Laker who was
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: alive in the 80s. Bill Murray would come to town
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: every once in a while. Oh, yeah. See you again. Yeah.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: And he'd hop behind the bar at Duffy's and start
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: pouring beers. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: So, in fact, there's a nice picture of him, I think,
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: in a locker room, you know, in kind of a
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: beer-soaked frenzy after a celebration.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Which was taken last week. Yeah, it was taken last week.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: So you've got some advertising going on. Yeah, yeah.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: If people want to advertise or propose story ideas, how
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: should they get.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: A hold of you?
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: You can get a hold of me at, let's see, jeremy.p
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: at thecityjournals.com. or saltlakeditor at gmail.com.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: You've also got a Facebook page, Salt Lake Metro.
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: Yes, and you can DM us through there. Or post there,
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: or say something. You can get a year's free subscription,
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: which is, I think, four issues. Four issues, yes.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: So we'll post all of those.
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's also a code for the Wasatch Living magazine,
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: which is a home and design magazine edited by my
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: Colleague Megan, who is the former editor of Utah Brag
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: and Groom and Utah Style and Design.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Best of luck. Thank you, Jeremy. Thanks a lot. Thanks
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: a lot for having me. Oh, no problem. Anytime you
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: need any help, let us know.
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: Thank you very much.