Latest / Caught on the Mike... / Author- Ross Benes

Transcript

Author- Ross Benes · Caught on the Mike...

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Disclaimer, the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to welcome my new friend Ross Bennett to the show today to rewax nostalgic about the 1990s and so much more.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Caught on the Mike.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, happy new year.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to a brand new episode of Caught on the Mike.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: You may be familiar with my next guest.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: He has contributed pieces to Esquire Rolling Stone Entertainment Weekly.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: He is a regular contributor to Bloomberg TV and the LA Times.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he's got a new book coming out April 22nd, 2025, that covers a year near and dear to all of our hearts, 1999, and how it parallels to the times that we are living in right now.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's a fellow Nebraskan, by way of New York.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Ross Benish, how are you doing?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the show.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing good.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Go big red, baby.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: You just got to trust the process.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be our year next year.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Offseason national champs for the eighth, ninth year in a row.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, at least we made it to a bowl game this year.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, hell yeah.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: I was there.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: It was amazing.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, man, happy new year.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for reaching out and uh offering to do the show.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Your book, 1999, The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted are bizarre times.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: That is a long title, but incredibly accurate.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's a a lot going on with trashy 90s entertainment that shows up in our world today.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, you could look at the inauguration that's coming up.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh or actually, when are you releasing this episode?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: I shouldn't say that's coming up, maybe it'll have passed.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's it it it's it's coming up.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: It it this episode's dropping next week.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you you can look up what's gonna happen with the inauguration, we'll happen at the GOP convention, um, just the way even um Beanie Babies and all the collecting that we do now with NFTs, the loyalty of juggalos is everywhere.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, the trashiness of the late 90s is is all around us.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: Netflix just released a uh big Jerry Springer documentary yesterday.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: We can't get away from this stuff.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, and it's uh it it is crazy because I do think about that a lot.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And like I was telling you before we started recording, I sent the profile of your book on Amazon to a couple of buddies of mine, and it kind of turned into this spiraling conversation where we were talking about the 90s specifically and uh Woodstock 94 versus Woodstock 99, how they occurred in the same decade, but they felt like two completely different entities and totally different uh festivals just because of the way the 90s shook themselves out.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, they're not gonna make multiple, you know, big budgeted documentaries about Woodstock 94 like they did with 99.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's not much to report on 94 there.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, there was like a mud fight or something along those lines.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: Boring entertainment, it'd be that'd be a boring piece of media.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, how did you land on this as far as being subject matter and making that parallel between 99 and 2024, 25, if you will?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I I originally wanted to write just a book on uh kind of a pretentious take on low culture because I like all this shit.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like I like pro wrestling.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, there's some reality shows I like.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: I used to watch Jerry Springer with my parents when I was growing up.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then as I was writing the book, I noticed the majority of the things that I like that are trashy are from the late 90s.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's probably because that's when I was a kid, and that has a lot to do with it.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I I formed it around that.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: And if I was gonna pick a year to make like a really big impact point, when I when I looked at all these things, they they seem to peak more often than not right at the turn of the millennium.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why I picked 99 over you know, you could write probably a similar book about 96 or 97 or even 2001, but there's something about that weird uh Y2K energy, and um, you know, like they tried to retire all the beanie babies uh on New Year's Eve to send the prices up and it didn't work.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: There's just like a lot of these weird stunts like that.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: There were a bunch of porn stars that tried to um have sex with the highest number of partners as possible in '99, and they all went on Jerry Springer and Howard Stern to promote it.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: There were so many of these little uh artifacts that there were more of them in '99 than in any other year.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why I picked that year.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, I I just see everything in the 90s comes back right now.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like how many reboots do we have and sequels and anything that was a popular IP in the 90s is is still basically having new entertainment about it uh produced right now.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I wanted to focus on the low culture though, because I I feel like that stuff gets um, you know, it's usually just dismissed, but it was so popular.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like Jerry Springer was the most watched daytime show.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: You can laugh at it all you want and and and um make fun of people for watching it, but it has an effect on the culture if eight million people are watching it every day uh for you know many, many years.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I just kind of collected all these uh things.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's there's you could write topics, you could write essays on other topics that I excluded.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: For instance, um Lent Biscuit does not have its own chapter, but I thought about it, and uh this is what I came up with.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it is fascinating because uh again, whenever I shared your book with uh with my buddies, we talked about a lot about the 90s, actually, but we talked about how 1997 kind of set the table for the culmination of all things in '99, you know, like how the Monday night wars kind of really took a hold in 1997.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: And uh the 96 Bash at the Beach was when WCW really rose.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: So 97 was a year of full momentum, basically, until Starkade at the end of the year when they kind of had a little bit of a botch pay-per-view at Sting.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, we we talk about how society is essentially pro-wrestling.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: How pro-wrestling used to mimic society and now it's the other way around.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: K Fame is everywhere.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like the the suspending disbelief to advance a storyline even though you know it's bullshit, that's like everywhere in our culture now, whether that's like a PR firm telling you something or a corporation, um, you know, it's not just in wrestling, it's certainly in our politics.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't realistically, you know, I tend to, as a content creator, podcaster, I tend to shy away from um or give the perception of neutrality with politics.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: I obviously have yeah my own personal uh beliefs, but it doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you're on, it's on both sides.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: So like on the on the left, um, the ACLU put out this statement, I don't know, probably a year or two ago about how um uh abortion bans are going to harm LGBT people the most.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, who the hell's getting abortions?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's people having man and woman having sex most of the time, you know?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: But the the they couch everything in uh in um this um disadvantaged minority group speak.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: And um that just really weirds reads as a weird thing to think about like gay men being the people most the uh or lesbians being being the people most affected by an abortion.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but you almost have to suspend your you know disbelief to believe some of the shit that the ACLU tells you.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: It is pro-wrestling in the fact that you know baby faces and heels exist on both sides of the fence and on both political parties, oh yeah, both spectrums, they play up to it and play up storylines.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like a storyline that never comes out of the way.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if you watch CNN or Fox News, the way they bring on the guests, even like the lighting uh and the way they talk to them, like the way a liberal is treat on Fox News or the way a conservative is treat on CNN, it's really like a wrestling storyline that that that's being built up.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like uh like Jake Tapper's just gonna come on and just talk down, and they're gonna even show this guy kind of sweating and being in weird light.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: And they do the same in Fox News, they bring some like clueless liberal on.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: He's he's uh he's basically there to be a squash match, like uh like when Goldberg would destroy someone in 10 seconds, that's what they're doing.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: So going back to the book, how do you break this down?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: How do you break down the compare and contrast between that time and now?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that was probably the toughest part because I lean very heavily on just like the 90s history fascinates me.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: That like the journalism and the research aspect, I could have just done like uh things that happened in 1999 and been really happy with it, but I tried to have at least the intro and the conclusions and then a little reference is sprinkled throughout that would link okay, this is where how this is resurfacing again today.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: So, for instance, I have a chapter on um video game violence being like the moral panic of the 90s.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: So after the Columbine shooting, everyone was trying to blame uh the video game doom for causing these kids to you know shoot up their school.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: And while we don't blame video games, probably to the degree that we do today, there's other things we blame for um youth like antisocial behavior.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like we're trying to ban TikTok as as a country right now.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think in in 25 years, they'll look back and they'll be like, do they really try to ban TikTok?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like it'll it'll seem very innocuous in 25 years of the TikTok.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: So um each of these uh essays has something like that.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, with reality TV and talk shows, um, that's just so much of our culture now.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: That that was um pretty clear.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: But I I've linked beanie babies to NFTs because it seems like there's always a fad that we lose our minds over, and the beanie babies seem stupid because they're just plushies with pellets in them.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: How could you use them as an investment vehicle?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: When you explain the concept of an NFT to someone now that that market's cooled down, it's like, well, why would you buy that?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: That you don't even own the image.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: What are you doing?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: So do you think when you look back to the 90s and how the internet stronghold really occurred in 99?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because Napster's biggest year was 98, 99, yeah, 99 is when they launched publicly.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: And they didn't have long because they got shut down legally.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: But if you look at all of that in the past 25 years, do you think the internet taking a stronghold that year really made it feel to society like the 90s never really ended?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you could say the internet kind of uh crossed the threshold in 99 because according to the Census Bureau, when when they did the 2000 census, that was right when 50% of the US population would regularly um go online.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: And by regularly, I think it was only like once a month at that time.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: But that is, it's right at that moment that most people um like knew how to go on the internet.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: They weren't doing it every day, they weren't doing it the way we were doing it.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, most people the other 50% didn't do it whatsoever at all.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: But um, you know, they're they're kind of crossing the Rubicon of going into this digital world, and and those anxieties were prevalent in all these things I talk about, um, you know, especially with internet porn.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: They tried to regulate the internet in the late 90s, Congress did, and every bill was like attempting they would always guide like they'd always put it under the guise of like we're attempting to stop minors from accessing porn, but then the law um would have so many other repercussions and it would eventually get struck down in courts because um you'd be suppressing so many other things that are lawful.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um and like if you look at James Exxon, uh Nebraska senator, former Nebraska governor, he's the one who uh sponsored the Communications Decency Act.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he would get up in Congress and he'd pull out a binder of pictures of porn that he uh printed out and and put together because he didn't know how to use the internet.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: He had like a staffer put together a binder of like dirty images, and he'd just say, Look how terrible this is.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: He was very anxious about the information highway.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure it was a staffer that put that together for him.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, that would have taken him years.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: He's got other things to do at this time, I would think.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, 99 was also the year of the first viral marketing campaign.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: You think about the Blair Witch project came out in summer 1999, and that was the first time the internet was used when they were trying to another, you know, callback, Kfabe, whether or not uh the Blair Witch Project was real or not.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, they did an amazing job with that too.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: They had like the actors go away and not be around publicly.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: So you think like these people really died, they were really murdered in the woods.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh their website had like all of these little Easter eggs and clues to help you try to feel like you're putting together uh the pieces of a puzzle that was fictional, but you felt like was real.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, the Blair Witch Project, um it was really a tech, it was a more technological version of what happened in the with the 1970s horror film Snuff.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, for those who aren't familiar, Snuff was a horror film that purported to show a real-life murder.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's where like the phrase snuff films comes from.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it was all uh marketing BS.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't actually a person really killed, but they um got people to believe so.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: The uh distributors of the movie got people to get really up in arms and picket them and and and protest them.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: And every time they had protests, they would sell more tickets.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: This was back in the days of like Times Square greet, you know, gritty movie theaters uh sort of things.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know, Snuff is a very much a rated R movie, but Blair Witch kind of did what Snuff did.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: They had a viral marketing campaign where they lied about the truthfulness of what was on.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: They try they tried to portray death um authentically, even though it was a staged and fictional thing, and they got people to buy into it, and that uh people wanted to believe it.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think even if people didn't totally believe it, if you go, that's kind of bullshit.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's fun to believe.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's like pro wrestling.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like I really, you know, I really want to believe Stone Cold Steve Austin is out there uh hitting his boss in the head with a with a bedpan.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like I want to believe that's what they're really doing, and this isn't something they wrote to get me all amped up about.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe a counterpoint or a counter to this low culture idea that you're presenting in your book.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Do you wonder if maybe those were the last years of innocence before social media kind of sunk its teeth into society?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, reading all this 90s stuff, at the time, um uh people then didn't seem to think it was so innocent.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like the the the call to regulate porn.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um there were there were like people freaking out about their kids spending too much money on Pokemon cards, and Time and Newsweek had these stories about like how Pokemon's a Ponzi scheme that's gonna like ruin your kids.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so at the time they probably felt that like oh man, the 70s were the the last time that like you know you were innocent, and and and now like this new thing called the internet is ruining us.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I I do think my own childhood, you know, I'm now that I'm raising kids and I'm seeing how like what they're going through is different than what I am, what I went through.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I think it is great that I had a lot of time that wasn't with a screen where I'd just be outside riding my bike or you know cutting down trees that we don't even own uh with my friends.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, I don't know how much kids do that now, but um, this I idea that like the the innocence is lost, I feel like um everyone is anxious about their current times.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, think back to all of it, and I do reflect back to things like Columbine occurring that year, um the pro wrestling boom of that era, and to like Woodstock 99.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Let's spend a few minutes talking about that because there are a few good documentaries about that.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: How do you feel music and um pop culture influenced society then versus how it influences society now?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, uh back then big labels had a much bigger say in what people would listen to.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I personally like Limp Biscuit.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: I know a lot of people want to shit out.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: I do too.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like I like Fred Durst is just so obnoxious.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, like I just love hearing him say shit like break your fucking face tonight.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, but uh you know, that they're very much a band that's that's it's mocked, and they know that they they came out of their Ozfest sets on top of uh your 13-foot replica toilet.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, they they know what they're doing.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: But Lit Visco was like a band that was uh very much shoved down people's throats.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like it felt like uh Viacom was just pushing them.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like Fred Durst dated uh MTV talent scout, they would thank uh TRL people like in their in their album liner notes.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, it it was like um they're a proud sellout.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know how else to describe it.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: So you got them all the time, and they put out a new album, whether people want it or not, like TRL is gonna play Nookie again.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: They're just gonna keep playing Nookie.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have that quite as much now.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: People, um, you know, there's still huge artists like like Taylor Swift or Beyonce or whatever, but there there's no apparatus that can shove them in your face quite as much.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I think an individual artist back then, if they were on a big label and they made a uh um inroads with NTV, they could influence the culture greater than any artist now because everyone has a band camp, everything's on Spotify, and there's nothing that it's the same thing with our TV shows.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like our most popular TV shows and most popular music right now just don't have the same market penetration that the most popular stuff in the 90s did.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like we don't even hardly have water cooler pop culture to talk about because like the band you're really into might be something like I've never even heard of because that's what got served on your Spotify algorithm.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: But kind of going back to like Limp Biscuit and the InSyncs and Christine Aguilar.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm talking about Limp Biscuit being pushed.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: No one was more pushed than the boy bands and Christine Aguilera.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, is if you listen in recent years, there seems to be a cultural forgiveness for Limp Biscuit, for InSync, for Christina Aguilera, for Britney Spears, to where the people either loved them or they absolutely hated them in 1999.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: What do you suppose changed in society that allowed that sense of forgiveness to permeate?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: And and you know, I even see it with ICP.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like Blender magazine, USA Today, like ICP's the worst band of the world.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's that that was like 2000 to 2010.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: That's how they're always portrayed.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: And now they're portrayed as like Robin Hood is marching to Washington, DC to defend against uh this bullshit gang designation, and it's by the same uh like publications often that ripped on them.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: So um, you know, a lot of these nineties bands have yeah, that were that were mocked have really come full circle.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I just there's just so much 90s nostalgia right now and a longing for that time that um any band that had a huge following still has millions of fans out there that misses the days when they grew up listening to that band, right?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's a a big part of it, why why there's like a little bit of revisionism about um you know NSync being awesome uh when people shit on him back then or or or Lemp Biscuit or or whatever.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Bringing that kind of full circle, and you know, uh your introduction to me was through Rob Harvilla.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And um, when I had Rob on my show, I talked about um how I never felt like a sense of nostalgia for the nineties was ever going to set in.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then one day it just clicked, and all of a sudden I'm nostalgic for the nineties.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: I never thought it was gonna happen, and it kind of goes back to what I was saying about the internet kind of making it seem like the nineties.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Never end.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: When you were doing research for this book, did you find that was kind of a common feeling amongst people?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um You know, I I I I don't know if I got a good answer to that about how most people feel about like they weren't gonna have 90s nostalgia and now they do.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: What I did find is that uh there tends to be a nostalgia for the decade that's about 30 years prior to the one you're living in.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like in the 80s, you did like you know, Back to the Future and you know, those types of TV shows that were set in the 50s, like Happy Days, you know, like no, Happy Days was wasn't out that was out earlier, but you in the 80s you had a lot of 1950s revisionism.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I think like 10 years ago, you had a lot of like nostalgia for the 80s and and shows that would take place in the 80s and where we're gonna bring back everything from the 80s.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: And right now we're like we're on that wave but for the 90s.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a you know, Chuck Klosterman's book, The 90s, kind of made an interesting case that it's like the last decade.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like no one thinks of like 2000 to 2010 as like a coherent decade with its own look and feel and type of music, or 2010 to 2020.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: So it'll be interesting to see if that keeps up because the 50s through the 90s, each one has their own feel, and you know the bands and you know the shows that were popular then, um kind of due to the internet and changing media distribution so much.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um beyond the really early 2000s when you have like frosted tips and you know, um Ginkko jeans and all that shit.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, once you get to like 2010, I I don't know if that will be viewed as a concrete decade, but maybe I'm a little bit younger than you.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe I'm viewing that right now, and I'm thinking we're never gonna have 2010 nostalgia, and 15 years later, like every damn show from 2010 is gonna be the home page of my Netflix.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: I saw a meme the other day, and it was talking about Dazed and Confused, and it says, if Dazed and Confused was made today, it would be based on the year 2004, and I was like, ah, fuck you, I'm over it.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, you don't think about things whenever you're living in those moments, but uh you know, it all eventually comes back around.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: With that said, it does seem like every decade or every generation and every pop culture zeitgeist kind of has some sort of conclusion to it.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: So with 1999 being the closing of the 90s, um, there seemed to be a natural transition in society to what we considered normalcy.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see that happening with what's going on in society right now?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: The end of 99 could also be uh there's a few ways to view the end of the the 90s.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, like the new year happened.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's the concrete, like actual end of the clock's turn.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's the year 2000.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: There's been a half dozen writers who have said like the 90s really started in in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell and they ended in 01 when the the Twin Towers fell.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um my book, I make the case that um Joey Budafuco scandal was the 90s because in 1992 they had the the sex scandal where the overage mechanic, you know, the the old mechanic is sleeping with the young woman and she shoots his wife in the face.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: And by 1999, American Beauty, uh, based on that incident, wins every Academy Award that there is.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's like it started out as the trashiest thing, like a Long Island mechanic sleeping with the high school chick, and it ends like with you know, in accolades on on the biggest stage of pop culture.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot of ways that you could like frame um the the 90s, uh, what with what began and what ended.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't know though what's gonna be the thing for for 2010.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I don't I know what I was gonna I kind of rambling, I forgot where the hell I was gonna go with that.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna say is the 90s actually didn't end peacefully or with normalcy, though, because you could also make the case um that the 90s, the like so-called like peace and prosperity of the 90s and in the good years with Clinton, those ended with the 2000 election when the Supreme Court basically decided who would be president, and that kick-started the really intense hyperpartisanship, the um, you know, and then and the huge distrust in institutions.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: So, like if you you know look at like the 2000 election and how things went down in Florida, you could say, well, wow, actually the 90s uh ended with more despair than anything.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a that's a very good point.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: And in and it's a nonpartisan point, too.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: I mean and then those the campaigns started in the late 90s, you know, so the election might have been 2000, but like those were 90s Gore and Bush, those were 90s politicians.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: So kind of some good questions.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have the best answer, so I'm just trying to make up shit to keep along.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely love that.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, man, this stuff is this stuff is catnip to me.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: I love talking pop culture, I love talking about general uh generationism at large, you know, because um it's particularly interesting right now in society, you know.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't ever talk about what I do for a living for my day job on my show, but I will say I lead people and um the workforce right now has the most generations working at one point in time.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's like four or five generations in the workforce right now, and every generation has a different sense of currency and a different no one can retire anymore, so I think that's part of the problem.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: But but the thing is, is everybody has a different social currency and they they all look at the time where they came of age with their rose tinted lenses.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Is that something that we're all kind of guilty of in regards to the 90s?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: People um from probably late 20s to like late 40s or early 50s?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: Probably, yeah.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: We're we're all kind of that that that was like our our our sweet time, and and you know, it's the same way like my dad talks about the 60s, he kind of ignores all the bad stuff and just talks about like the cool things you gotta do and like the Beatles and all these bands and shows he liked, but um, you know, I'll I'll probably sound like an old fogey when my kids are growing up when I'm talking about the 90s, and they'll be like, Well, you read the history books, that time sucked.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like you got didn't you couldn't even get health insurance if you had a disease, you know.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: What blows my mind is my 17-year-old daughter is singing in bands for the first time, and you know, that was kind of my thing.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I would think, okay, she's gonna be into like the Taylor Swift's, the Sabrina Carpenters, the Chapel Rones, and you know, she's got respect for all of those people, but what she's really digging her teeth into is covering Smashing Pumpkins, Baruch Assault, all the music from the 90s, and I'm just like, what led to that sense of influence?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, aside from me, because she's discovered most of these apps on her own, like it really makes you evaluate how valuable of a generation that was.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and what's defined as classic rock changes, I I was in you know, Lincoln um uh a few weeks ago.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: I I think I was listening to uh I was probably listening to 92.9 the Eagle would probably be my guess.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: And uh this is the this is the station that I I grew up with listening like CCR with my dad, or the Eagles would be on there, and it was like Green Day and Oasis.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, what the hell?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's classic crock now.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: And what when something is in the canon, it's like you just hear it at the grocery store, you know, you hear it in commercials now.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: So whether or not she may have sought out those 90 bands, they're so pervasive that she's probably constantly exposed in ways that we don't fully appreciate.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: And then and then those bands that were popular, like they're the ones that are being ripped off and covered now by new bands.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I have I have the biggest asshole of a friend on New Year's Day.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: He posted a bunch of graphics on Facebook.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: He says, These albums are turning 30 this year, and there was No Doubts, Tragic Kingdom, the first Foo Fighters record, Oasis, what's the story, Morning Glory?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh, you son of a bitch.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, soon the music that I had in college will be classic rock.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that's probably only five years away if it hasn't happened already.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: Just kind of putting this book and this topic to the side for just a moment.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: As a writer and as somebody that creates work and has to, you know, kind of think outside of the box as a journalist.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: What inspires you topically to write these things?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a good question.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: I I feel like a psychologist could answer ask me this too, because they'd be like, why you go down these rabbit holes when there's no fucking money in doing so?
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh, you know, all my all the all the books that I've done have been on very different topics.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: And um what I've uh concluded is that I I do these passion projects where I go down deep research rabbit holes on things that I already have um a predilection for.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: And uh there they are things that were were um that I either was a part of or desired when I was young, and that's Nebraska, uh trashy entertainment and sex.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's what all my books that they've been on.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Two sex books, the Nebraska book and this.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: So those are the things that I I like, those are the things that I talk about anyways.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: So um if I'm not do like doing my day job as a as a market research analyst or or having to do like other work that I take on for money, if I'm just with my friends, the the the books that I've had are the things that I would normally just I just find interest in.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like I found interest in Nebraska because I'm I'm from there um and I and I live most of my life there.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, I'm kind of a a a freak, I guess.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: I you know, who doesn't like sex, but um I wrote two books on it.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then the all this stuff now is just me trying to give like an intellectual explanation for why the stuff that I liked as a kid that was shit on so much actually has a big impact on society.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I if I'm gonna put this much time into it for like little financial payoff, I I go for the things that are um really near and dear to me.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't write a book on like cryptocurrency unless if someone paid me a ton of money because it's not something I'm like passionate about.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: But you come to me and say, You want to write about Jerry Springer, you don't want to write about um, you know, the history of the place you grew up in.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but there it is kind of idiosyncratic, and I probably would have a better career if I would have chosen one lane and done, you know, four books on a topic and build an expertise and a a following on it.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: But each thing has been its own, it's it's like new.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't have to like after the Nebraska one, I didn't want to really do that anymore.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um right.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: This one is much this is by far the most fun I've had, but I'm also like looking forward to not reading about the 90s every day.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: I've been doing that for like three years.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm not once once I'm done with this press tour, like I'm not gonna read any book from the 90s or about the 90s for probably five years.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I think that's uh you know, first and foremost, I'm gonna pay forward some advice you didn't ask for, but um spending the past five years doing this podcast, I have found the most successful people um find success in the things that they're passionate about.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't come overnight, it is a marathon, it's not a sprint, but the most successful people find success in the things that they are passionate about.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: With that said, what are some things that you've learned about yourself by taking a deep dive into these passions for the sake of this creative output?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's uh you know, I I I've learned that I could start with a really messy idea and and then eventually turn it into something half coherent.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: It takes a lot of time, but if you looked at my research notes for any of these books and and like where the proposal started from where it ends, it it's just like a kaleidoscope to start.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just like like you just throw in like paint at the wall, it looks kind of crazy.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's just little facts about all sorts of things that seem unrelated.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then eventually I um I I can uh do a lot of my best organization and thinking when I'm not actually planning to do that.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like a lot of the work on this may not come when I'm at my computer saying, Oh, I gotta write this chapter because the editor needs it right now.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of it's like I'm just waiting like to see a doctor, or I'm on the the train for longer than I should be, and I'm just kind of thinking about like a documentary I saw, or or I'm reading a book, and then I like I think of something and then I write it on my phone.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: I have like a notes, I have like a bunch of the notes app, I just have like a ton of documents where I just jot stupid shit.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um half of it never sees a light of day.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I get creative inspiration when I'm not uh looking for it, is is what I learned.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh, you know, I think I've done a better job of preserving my better uh thoughts or or my more like interesting research findings rather than I I used to like read stuff and then I wouldn't write it down or I wouldn't take a note or or and then I'd forget about it, and where I'd think of the fact where did where the hell did that come from?
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: But now it's like I'll take a screenshot or I'll write it down like page 150 of this book, like says this.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna cite this.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I don't know what I'm gonna say in that it's like so interesting.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna cite it.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: So um I've kind of gotten into a rhythm uh a little bit doing this stuff, and um, I also learned that like the marketing stuff when I did the first book, and that something that's really changed for me is passions.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: When I did the first book, I felt I should have done more marketing.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: I felt like it was like the worst thing ever.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I gotta pitch people.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, this sucks.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: I wrote the book.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: Can they just come talk to me?
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: You can't like everyone just come.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um and there are you know interviews that are uncomfortable that you don't want to do, but you're doing them because you want to get the book out.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: But the a lot of the most enjoyable moments of doing these books have been stuff like this, like like being on your podcast, or you know, I I gotta like have some interesting conversations with people um for the last book.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them I've met and hung out with in real life afterwards.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't even I wouldn't have even thought about getting in touch with that person, but I'm only getting in touch with them because I'm being shameless and I got this book.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: But then it turns out they have that same interest, and I've made a lot of connections on that.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, the books don't necessarily make the money or change my life the way I dreamed they would have when I moved to New York to do this, but I've gotten those other little pieces of fulfillment along the way that I I try to um appreciate because you got to you know appreciate what you get.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, that is so true because I can compare that to this podcasting journey very similarly, you know, spending a decade plus doing music, releasing albums, and then having this layover where I didn't do anything for a long period of time, and then of course this became a pandemic project.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: But as a result of this podcast, I have made so many friends and created such a community and been able to accomplish things that I never would have thought of accomplishing otherwise had I not taken the jump and done this.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about this press tour for this new book that's about to drop.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have notes or do you have a plan for what's to come next after this one drops?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I got uh another child being born a few weeks before the book.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: So my plan is just to uh keep them alive and keep myself alive.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh for so creatively, uh after this might be it for a little a little while, because I'll have two kids um under two and a half years old living in New York, um, and two dogs.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so um in an apartment.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: So uh so right now I can't even think about doing anything like fun like that.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: I have books I would like to write.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: I there's even some children's books I've talked about uh with my wife uh that are dog related that I would like to pursue.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um people tell me that I should start doing JD Vance impersonations, that I uh I have I have the look and demeanor.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe maybe I'll I'll I'll I'll dabble into so I'll have to do something to keep myself sane at some point, but it's gonna be a little bit of a layover just um just dadding real hard.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: And and then after I I come up from that when the kids are like out, not daycare age and and not shitting their own pants all the time, I'll think about what I really want to do.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_02: If someone wants to reach out to me and doing the project, that's great, but I don't have the the energy to hustle for a little while.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the project will find you anyway.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I'm looking forward to to doing all that stuff, but it'll it'll be uh it won't be this.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you are so inclined, my guest is fantastically interesting.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: Type his name, Ross Benish, into YouTube, and you can see interviews on the Young Turks and uh different podcast appearances and such covering a myriad of different topics.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad you reached out to me, man.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, I I'm glad that you uh had me on the show and we got a text about Dylan Riola and everything about the transfer portal, because I don't get that a lot here.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: I get that when I go home, but you know what I mean?
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my closing question, and it's my most favorite question to ask absolutely everybody, is what's your advice for making the world a better place tomorrow than what it is today?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you gotta do something small because you can't you can't fill the ocean with with one drop of water.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: I I think when you're when you're really uh pissed off, because there's a lot of things that can piss you off in in this world.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um I just had a health insurance thing today that really pissed me off.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: You just gotta walk away from it for a little bit, and then you'll feel, you know, it's not gonna solve the problem, but the the desire to uh want to smash the universe will go away somewhat uh you know a day later.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: And um, if we all did that, I think a lot of these like little minor things that blow up wouldn't happen as often.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: Tell my audience where they can find you online and where they can find your book.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you can find the book uh on any website that sells books.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_02: I prefer bookshop over Amazon because we do not need more uh tech titans controlling our world.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: And uh you can find me on Rossbenish.com, R-O-S-S-B-E-N-E-S.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm also on Twitter and Facebook occasionally, but the best way to reach me is just to shoot me an email at my name at gmail.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for doing the show.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: I am so glad we're connected and glad to now call you a friend.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: The world is a much better place with you and it, my friend.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much, Mike.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: Once again, I want to thank my friend Ross Vanish for doing the show today.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can find him at his website, www.r-os-f-e-n-es-dot com.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: His book dropped in April.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot wait for that one.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: While you are visiting websites and surfing the web, make sure you visit www.cotonThemic.com.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: Follow CotOnthemic on all social media platforms.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: Subscribe to my YouTube channel.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: You keep this thing alive.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone that's interested in being a guest or knows a person that is interested in being a guest, email me caughtonthemic at gmail.com.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: This has been Caught on the Mike with Michael Bart.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Michael Bart.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, thank you.