Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Chuck Klosterman - How Will America Remember Football in 200 Years?

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Interview Only w/ Chuck Klosterman - How Will America Remember Football in 200 Years? · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 2: Well.
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  Speaker 1: Joining me now is somebody who I I'd like to
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  Speaker 1: think I'd consumed just about everything.
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  Speaker 2: He's rim.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not going to sit here and say I know
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  Speaker 1: his days from his magazine era. But it's Chuck Clusterman
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  Speaker 1: and he's got a new book out. I know there's
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  Speaker 1: a new new book up. We'll talk about that at
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  Speaker 1: the end. But a book out that many of you
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  Speaker 1: may have seen some and probably are thinking about buying
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  Speaker 1: for dad, or some of you may think you want
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  Speaker 1: to buy it for me. I already have two copies.
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  Speaker 1: It's football, and I'm going to hesitate to describe it.
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  Speaker 2: It really is more of a I.
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  Speaker 1: Think, trying to explain football's popularity to aliens. I don't
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  Speaker 1: know if Chuck will like that description or not, or
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  Speaker 1: to people who unearth the United States of America in
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  Speaker 1: twenty three twenty four, the year I'm talking about, the
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  Speaker 1: year twenty three hundred and go what were some of
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  Speaker 1: the cultural events that united the country? And they may
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  Speaker 1: find his book, so he joins me. Now and Chuck
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  Speaker 1: fair description of the book itself, Oh, it's fair.
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  Speaker 2: That doesn't bother me. I it is a hard thing
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  Speaker 2: to describe, I realize, because you know it's there's not
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  Speaker 2: a history of football, right, That's right, aren't there. It's
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  Speaker 2: partially memoir, it's partially criticism. I mean, it's a little
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  Speaker 2: bit in some ways similar to the very first book
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  Speaker 2: I wrote. When I wrote this book about heavy metal
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  Speaker 2: and growing up in North Dakota, and it was like
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  Speaker 2: these things I thought about for years, like I'm just
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  Speaker 2: going to all put this into one thing and then
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  Speaker 2: the next twelve books or whatever are about different ideas.
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  Speaker 2: You know, I would own it on. But this again
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  Speaker 2: was something where you know, I've been thinking about football
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  Speaker 2: unconsciously for like forty five years and maybe consciously journalistically
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  Speaker 2: for twenty years, and this is just kind of the
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  Speaker 2: culmination of that. You know, I just had wanted to
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  Speaker 2: do a book that was where sports wasn't just part
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  Speaker 2: of it, where it was about the sport, about the game,
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  Speaker 2: and you know, it was just as a consequence, it
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  Speaker 2: was incredibly enjoyable to write. I mean, it was very
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  Speaker 2: fun to do in a way that book writing usually
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  Speaker 2: is not.
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  Speaker 1: Why's that because I'm look, I've done a few books,
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  Speaker 1: not like you, and I have viewed them all as
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  Speaker 1: chores by the end, like fully chores, and you know,
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  Speaker 1: I'm proud of them. But I remember I didn't get
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  Speaker 1: out of it when I thought I was going to
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  Speaker 1: get out of it. Now you've done eight x of
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  Speaker 1: the amount of books.
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  Speaker 2: What are you up to? Or fourteen? Yeah?
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  Speaker 1: OK, so seven x of what I've done, and so
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  Speaker 1: you must I'm guessing of a different experience. Some books
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  Speaker 1: have been healthier for you, and others haven't been I'm guessing.
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  Speaker 2: Well, yeah. I mean I say this a lot when
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  Speaker 2: people ask me like the process of this, if they do,
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  Speaker 2: I always kind of think of it like in your mind,
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  Speaker 2: you have a ball of yarn, which is in the
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  Speaker 2: case of football, like everything I know about football, everything
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  Speaker 2: I've thought about football, every stat I remember from third grade,
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  Speaker 2: the experience of having played all these things, and it's
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  Speaker 2: sort of in this ball of information, and then writing
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  Speaker 2: is just straightening it out. And that's what kind of
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  Speaker 2: what the writing process is now. For a lot of
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  Speaker 2: times with the book, it's like first you have to
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  Speaker 2: build the iron ball, like you know you're going into
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  Speaker 2: something and you're like, well, I have to do all
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  Speaker 2: this research, I have to learn all this I have
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  Speaker 2: almost I have to become put myself in this position
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  Speaker 2: where I can sort of write a book about this
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  Speaker 2: idea kind of theoretically for like a version of me
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  Speaker 2: that existed five years ago or whatever, like you know.
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  Speaker 2: But this is different in the sense that I wasn't
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  Speaker 2: trying to acquire information about football over my life. I
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  Speaker 2: mean I was, but not because I thought I'd write
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  Speaker 2: a book. That's just what I loved and just what
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  Speaker 2: I liked and what was easy about it was like
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  Speaker 2: it was just there were almost too many ideas, Like
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  Speaker 2: I almost had too many ideas. I guess I could
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  Speaker 2: have even made the book longer, but I did fear,
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  Speaker 2: you know, it could bleed into being repetitive or whatever.
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  Speaker 2: It just felt really natural. I mean, I wrote this
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  Speaker 2: book fast, like it was, it was written fast.
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  Speaker 1: You do something with your writing style I find fascinating
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  Speaker 1: and that. The only other times I feel this are
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  Speaker 1: when I actually read oral histories, and that is I
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  Speaker 1: feel like you're having a conversation with the reader.
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  Speaker 2: You're not informing the reader. I mean, is that your
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  Speaker 2: you know what I mean?
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  Speaker 1: I don't know how's to put it, meaning I feel
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  Speaker 1: like I'm reading conversational Chuck Closterman, not some edited version
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  Speaker 1: of him, you know, because sometimes you'll repeat a point
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  Speaker 1: just like you would in a conversation. Like when I'm
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  Speaker 1: reading the book, I feel like it's in conversation with you,
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  Speaker 1: not necessarily you presenting this formalized, edited piece of work.
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  Speaker 2: A long time yeah, a long time ago, someone was
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  Speaker 2: criticizing me and they said, it seems like he's trying
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  Speaker 2: to build a brain in public, like build his own
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  Speaker 2: brain public. But you know there's some truth in that,
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  Speaker 2: like in order to Yeah, a lot of people have
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  Speaker 2: said this. I'm not the first person. You don't really
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  Speaker 2: know how you feel about something and tell you create
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  Speaker 2: like a piece of art or a book about it. Right. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: My goal, I guess is to make it. I want
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  Speaker 2: the reader to feel as though they are writing the
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  Speaker 2: book with their mind, like they're always like like the
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  Speaker 2: books and the conversation, and they read a sentence and
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  Speaker 2: then like somehow they build the next sentence and there
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  Speaker 2: it is or whatever. Yeah, you know, I do. I
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  Speaker 2: do a lot of arguing with myself when I'm not
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  Speaker 2: writing a book. I probably do even more when I am.
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  Speaker 2: It's just I don't know. I think it in this
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  Speaker 2: again might sound like it's a bad thing to say it,
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  Speaker 2: but I think because I was educated so differently than
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  Speaker 2: the fast majority of people who write books, that it
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  Speaker 2: was it's so autodidactic and donalds just bizarre that I
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  Speaker 2: don't sometimes know the things you're not supposed to do.
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  Speaker 2: So when some people read these books, I think they're saying, well,
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  Speaker 2: this seems novel. It seems like another writer wouldn't do that,
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  Speaker 2: and it might be because I don't know any better.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not no, I get exactly. It's like
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  Speaker 2: I just kind of do it like if I was
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  Speaker 2: a musician. It's not somebody who never took a lesson.
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  Speaker 2: I just played by how I got you? Yeah, I
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  Speaker 2: got you.
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  Speaker 1: This is just how you communicate and it has always
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  Speaker 1: been how you communicate it. Yeah, your mind is fascinating
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  Speaker 1: to me. I can't tell you to this day. I'm
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  Speaker 1: obsessed with something you said in an interview once with
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  Speaker 1: Simmons about how and It's about and it feels like
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  Speaker 1: this you were. You entered this book with the same mindset,
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  Speaker 1: trying to trying to look at what how football would
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  Speaker 1: be explained or used two hundred years from now. And
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  Speaker 1: in fact, I remember you went through this exercise with
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  Speaker 1: Bill once about rock and roll and you were saying,
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  Speaker 1: three hundred years from now, there's only going to be
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  Speaker 1: one song or one artist that will be representative.
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  Speaker 2: Of rock and roll.
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  Speaker 1: And and I just remember, I can't tell you how
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  Speaker 1: often I've gone back to that conversation in my head
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  Speaker 1: that I heard you have and of almost like retest
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  Speaker 1: the premise, well, what would it be for pop culture.
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  Speaker 2: What would it be for this? What would it be
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  Speaker 2: for that?
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  Speaker 1: And you know this reminder that when Mozart and Beethoven,
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  Speaker 1: why did they get elevated?
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  Speaker 2: But nobody else around them did? Right?
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  Speaker 1: And it's sort of like, you know, you went through this.
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  Speaker 1: I don't really have a great question about it, but
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  Speaker 1: you your mind seems to be you're you seem to
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  Speaker 1: be obsessed with what sticks, what's lasting, and what isn't.
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  Speaker 2: Is that it I appreciate you saying that first of all,
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  Speaker 2: but also it is that what you're describing is something
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  Speaker 2: that from my view, this seems to be the way
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  Speaker 2: culture works over like the long term, you know, using
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  Speaker 2: just rock and roll as the example or whatever. You
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  Speaker 2: start with all these different possibilities. If the Beatles, the
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  Speaker 2: Stones and the Zeppelin, the Kings, you have all of
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  Speaker 2: these things, and it as it moves through time, you know,
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  Speaker 2: some stick and some fade away and some fall by
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  Speaker 2: the wayside, and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller
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  Speaker 2: than the people who first consume the original art. They die,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: and then the second class of generations data and it
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  Speaker 2: gets smaller, small and smaller, and tell there's just one
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  Speaker 2: thing left, and then that becomes hyper amplified, you know,
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: where it's like it all wheedles down to one and
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: then that one thing becomes massive. I mean, like you
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  Speaker 2: can see this I think is gonna happen with like
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  Speaker 2: reggae music, that it's going to eventually get to the
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  Speaker 2: point where it's like it's really only Bob Marley. Bob
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  Speaker 2: Marley will be what you're saying with that, you know,
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  Speaker 2: John Phillips SUSA represents all marching music, like that will
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  Speaker 2: happen with reggae. So I do think about that a
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  Speaker 2: lot because I think what happens is people you know,
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  Speaker 2: want to understand something. Uh, it's it's easier to understand
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  Speaker 2: like a singular narrative and have that sort of be
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  Speaker 2: the stand in for every other experience.
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  Speaker 1: I guess spoiler alert, you're you. You you believe Chuck
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  Speaker 1: Berry will be the lone person and right you actually
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  Speaker 1: with you did this whole exercise. I didn't want to
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  Speaker 1: leave the listener handing.
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  Speaker 2: Well. My argument with that was like, it should be
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  Speaker 2: the Beatles, really, like everything about Majoernity tells us it
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  Speaker 2: will be the Beatles. The Beatles are really the only
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  Speaker 2: thing now that I can think of.
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  Speaker 1: How they made a movie about what would happen if
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  Speaker 1: the Beatles didn't exist, like, you know, like they were
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  Speaker 1: not making movies about.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Chuck Berry the same. Warns has often talked about this.
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  Speaker 2: So it's sort of like, you know, something exists, you know,
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  Speaker 2: it's twenty years old and people still know what it is.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: And when you get to thirty years old, there's you know,
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: an it goes and then sixty seems to be the
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: cutof that. When something's sixty years old, it typically means
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: that every person who consume the original thing is gone now.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: And the Beatles kind of contradict this. The Beatles are
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: arguably more popular now in a weird way than they
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: were in the late sixties or were, so like, it's
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: is it is. It's an interesting thing. I guess. I
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: guess I am interested, well what will last? Because that's
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: you know, well, I.
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  Speaker 1: You know, to translate it to what I do most
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: of the time in politics, I think about the following
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: fact all the time and nobody talks about it, which
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  Speaker 1: is we're about twenty years away for where we we'll
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: no longer have a single American who up in segregated America,
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  Speaker 1: and that's going to mean something that's going to matter.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: But I'm not sure how yet.
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  Speaker 1: I think it's going to matter, you know, I'm not
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: saying and it's going to be a good thing, but
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: that is going just we're going to change. Our politics
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: will change, the what moves people to vote will change
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: simply because people with certain memories will no longer be
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: around to remind you of the importance of set events
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: well or to sort of have.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: An understanding of a before and after period that once
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: once all those people are gone. It's almost as though
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: the state that, you know, the way the world is
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: now we just almost feel like, well, its existed that
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: way in perpetuita. I mean, it's going to be very
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: we were already seeing like an accelerated version of this,
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Like with the Internet, you now have the only people
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: who are kind of consumed with what life was like
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: before the internet and what life is like after. Our
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: people like our age, like I really experienced three alities. Fully,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: there's an increasing number of people who have no memory
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: of a world without that. So therefore, this idea, it's
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: almost if like it'd be like, well, yeah, I have
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: an argument about why you know, before we had you know,
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: combustion engines or whatever. It doesn't seem in any way.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: I wonder are there books about the pre electricity days
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: and the post you know that people wrote around then,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: or we just didn't have books written like that.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: I see that with television that there was a lot
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: of sort of discussion about what is television going to
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: do and how is it going to affect the culture?
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: You know, there was a book I remember from like,
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: you know, the late seventies called Four Arguments for the
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: Elimination of Television? Are you familiar with this? Unfamiliar with
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: the the It was a guy who came out of advertising,
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, and it was like, this is not a metaphor,
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: we should eliminate television for all of these reasons. And
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: you read the book. Now it seems crazy that the
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: book could have even existed. And yet in many ways
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: the arguments he makes in that did come to fruition.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, when MTD was new, everybody was like, oh,
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: it's going to shorten attention spans. People are going to
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: you know, and people are like, well, that's a reactionary thing.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: The world always changed. It did happen. I mean that
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: that did happen from nineteen eight and nineteen ninety it
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: was a different kind of consumer because of that experience. So,
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, I do I think a lot of times
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: that that there is a kind of a natural inclination
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: to sort of disagree with people who say, like, oh, well,
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: you know, the world's getting worse, you like, well, everybody
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: always said that, but there is some truth in it.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: In some ways, the worst is just maybe the wrong word.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's going to be different, and difference feels
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: bad to people.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Right well, it all depends on what metrics you're using, right,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean, in some ways, right we were
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: there's we're so dumor we're so doom and gloom. Yet
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: if you look at the last fifty years, more people
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: have been pulled out of poverty, more people, you know,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: fewer people die of certain diseases. Like the world has
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: never been safer, but right, like, you.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Know, there's these things that the world has never been
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: as safe as it is right now, and yet it
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: does no one feels feels it's also you know, everything
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: is relative, you know, it's like once something exists, it
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: becomes normal. Like a crowbar was only an amazing tool
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: to the first generation of people who had a crowbar
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: for the first time. They're like, this is incredible. I
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: can't believe this. Nobody else would look at that and
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: think like, oh technology, you know, so are you?
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: If somebody if you have to do the eleven second
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: describe what you do for a living, what do you
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: tell people?
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Well? Now, I mean I'm just a writer.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: I just what's your beat? You know, here's a guy
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: that used to be, you know, music critic, used to
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: be this. What is your beat in your head? Forget
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: what other people think? What's what do you feel like
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: your beat is? In the American psychist, my beat is reality.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: It just seems like a lot of times in a
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: lot doesn't matter what I'm writing about. Somehow, almost annoyingly,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: the question of like is this real? Though? Comes up?
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Like what is the authentic experience? I mean, I'm just
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: like one of these guys who's obsessed with you know,
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: you know what? What? What is real? What is a construction?
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: All of the things that in some ways I feel
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: like I have lost a little bit of traction in
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: the American discourse. It was more of a nineties early
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: two thousand sort of thing to question this. Now I
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: think there is more of this idea that Oh, that's
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: kind of a stonery thing to waste your time on.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Don't worry about what is real, what is not real?
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Nothing is real, So like in this, in this completely
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: yeah a what's going to be?
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and that I don't know about you,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: but I'm on social Anything on social media I assume
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: is fake until proven real to me instead of the
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: other way around.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Well it is. But it's a really difficult way to
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: go through life and through consumption with that idea, you know,
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: because then there's this, you know, there's a second question.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: It's like, okay, so you're seeing something on social media
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: and you suspect it is unreal and you drew maybe
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: do like like a little check of it, and you
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: can't really tell yet. But there's part of your mind
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: that saying, like, well, most people are consuming this passively.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Most people just assume that this is real if they
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: see this, you know. So therefore, if if a majority
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: of people believe something, does that then make it a
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: reality even if it's just a cognitive thing. You know,
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: you can fight.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Over the whole The whole expression is when does perception
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: become reality?
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Well when does? I mean? I think it's when
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: the consumer is unable to think that equation is in play,
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: that they're they're preceding something and that question is not
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: being asked.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: You know, I've gone seventeen minutes and I don't think
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: I've asked you a question about the book.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: So my apologies for that, but.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: That's the sometimes the podcast experience, right, So I sort
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: of best understood the book description better now when looking
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: back that it's it's a living obituary for a sport
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: that you assumed, like every sport in culture, will eventually
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: go away.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: We just don't know when. Well, I just I think
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: that it will stop being the center of the culture
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: in which it is right now.
• 18:16
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• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Night Football.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Like, if you were to say, what's the starting point?
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: Is it the nineteen fifty eight games?
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: As you point out, we all have to answer by
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: rote that it's the greatest game ever played. When you're like,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: it's not remotely close to being the greatest game ever played.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: But it was something that it was the first time
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: millions of Americans experienced a football game the same way.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, in a sense it was because of
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: the modern understanding of football kind of begins with that
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: experience of that game, in the sense that there was
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: like you know, you say, like, did it begin with
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: me nine football or whatever. So by the nineteen seventies,
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: football was already the most popular sport in the United
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: States by a pretty strong margin. The perception was still
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: somehow baseball was the now pastime. Now we don't really
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: think of it in that way. We would like it
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: would be people think I'm a contrarian. I'd like to
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: see someone make the argument that football is nothing most
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: popular with sport in America. I'd be very fascinated by
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: how they would argue that. So it, like like a
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: lot of things like it kind of happened kind of
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: gradually and persistently until a point when it was kind
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: of you couldn't remove it. There is no like that
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: fifty eight game is a hinge point in this it
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: really is. And maybe the dawn of Monday night football
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: simply because it made football prime time experience is maybe
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: another hinge point. It's I just I really just think that,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: you know, and this is if you asked me like
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: to give you like the you know, the elevator pitch
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: of this book. I I think if you're trying to
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: understand the last half of the twentieth century, and you
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: can't use everything right, you can't talk about politics, you
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: can't talk movies, you can't tell you get to one thing.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: I think football probably is the best sort of material
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: to understand.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: More common than music, even because music has so many
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: different tastes, right.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: It's all you know, and it's so paradoxical, Like there's
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: so many things about football that if you describe it
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: to someone and that you don't know what they're they
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: don't know what you're talking about, you're saying, like, Okay,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: this is what it's going to be, this is how
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: it's going to operate, this is what the television experience
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: is going to be. Like all of those things will
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: sound like like a disaster, Like it would never get
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: out of a focus group. So I think that's also
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: was part of makes it interesting to see how it's
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: sort of many ways mirrors the way culture move of
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: the last half of the twentieth century, because there's a
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: lot of that as well, like these paradoxical things that
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: happened that like it shouldn't have happened, but it did,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: and now we understand the world through that Going forward,
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: I don't know if this will be the case. I
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: believe sometime in you know, twenty sixty, twenty seventy, I
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: do think that football is going to no longer be
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: the center of sort of our society in terms of
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: like how like like the shared experience. What I find
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: really interesting is how troubling people seem to find that
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: idea like I've given.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: A I mean, I guess the equivalent of you predicting
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: the end of boxing as a relevant sport in the
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: United States or the world, would it have gotten you
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: the same level of.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Criticism. I can't imagine it. I mean, like, you know,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: if you to me, if somebody was like trying to
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: sort of criticize this it and be like, oh, basically,
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: you know, you have a section of the book where
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: you're saying, in fifty years the world will not be
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: the same as it is now, Like, of course it'll
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: be it. But yet when you give the specific it
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: really I always use this like like if I said
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: to you, it's like, is there a likelihood that in
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: fifty years somebody we currently consider a great canonical US
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: president will no longer be seen in that way? I
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: think you would probably say probably, that could easily happen.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: But then you say, okay, it's going to be Lincoln,
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: and then people are like, no, no, we have a
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: real world example of this.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: I'll give you a real world examples of a president
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: who's completely been changed in death the perception of it.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Woodrow Wilson. Yes, that's where I thought you were going
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: to set.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: I mean it is astonishing to me how quickly he
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: got erased from certain campuses, how quickly his name got
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: taken off of buildings right well, the.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: School right next to us, it used to be Woodrow
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Wilson High School now's Yeah high School.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: The public high school closest to NBC's DC headquarters, Woodrow
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Wilson High School is now Jackson.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Reed. It is no longer Woodrow Wilson.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: High There's no way anybody predicts that thirty years ago.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: I no, you know, the president we're going to erase
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: it's gonna be Woodrow Wilson.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: What Leage of Nations guy? Exactly? Now? Now the League
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: of Nations has seen as like a negative associated with this,
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: and then you know the guy have any good ideas.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: You know, when I was in college, he was calm
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: for people to say, well, the two worst presidents are
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: either Granted Buchanan. You know, Grant has definitely moved. Oh
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: my god, Grant. Well, I mean, we all we all need.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Uh uh Ron, we all, we all I'm drawing a
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: blanket his last name, Churnout. We all want Churnout to
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: do our biography because apparently, once he does your biography,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: you rock it up. In relevance, right, I mean, Hamilton's
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: never had a pr better people than that, Yeah, exactly.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: People think now he's not even president, but he's great,
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: you know, he talking about.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Now, I do think we Canton, you know, I do
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: think we can't it still, you know, gets to occupy
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: you lose.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: The union still down there, Richards are still down there,
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: like it's not. But I would not you know, I
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: wouldn't have thought Grant would have moved up that much,
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: you know. But regardless, this is yeah.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: No, And and look, it's interesting to watch LBJ over
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: the years. Suddenly Vietnam doesn't matter to some people as
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: much as you know, there was a time all he
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: was was defined by Vietnam.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: And I don't think if you.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Told me, you know, by the time we hit the
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary of a bunch of stuff having to do
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: with what what Lyndon Johnson, He's going to be revered
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: by Democrats as the second greatest Democratic president after FDR.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, no way, And you're like, now there's
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: the you know, he's another one that we've changed a
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: little bit.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it used to be this sort of the
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: assumption that as soon as the president leaves office, that
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: that proceived more positive, right, and now that's not that's
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: not how it is now like now now it's that
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: that hasn't happened with Clinton, that hasn't happened with Obomba.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: When I've asked this of people that write history books,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: when do you think is the soonest you should write
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: about a historical event?
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Well, there was some question of that when I did
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: that book the Nineties that came out in twenty Yeah. No,
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: I wondered about that. Yeah, we've helped me the fifties
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: and it comes out in the nineties, right, and that
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: scenms about the right time. I guess I was sort
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: of you probably ten years too early. Well, I think
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: with what had happened with the acceleration of culture over
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: the end of the twentieth centuries, the past seems their
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: relationship to it is different. And it did not seem
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: as though putting out a book about the nineties in
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty one did not seem I mean I was
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: conscious about it put in practice. That was never a criticism,
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: for example, like I didn't hear people saying too soon
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: on that. But I feel like that's about about as
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: close as you want to get, although I mean also
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: it depends if you specify something like okay, so you know,
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: just speaking of sports or whatever. Like you know, Michael
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: Jordan was still playing for the Wizards at the turn
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: of the century. When the Last Dance came out, it
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: felt as if we were talking about something that was
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: farther back than it actually was. I do think that,
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think this is something that you know,
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: it's much bigger idea. But I think that that one
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: thing the Internet has really done dramatically as kind of underrated,
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: is how it has changed our relationship to time. And
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: I think that in some ways that might be that
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: might be the deepest impact it has, because it is.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: I've been chalking it up to COVID. You think it's
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: bigger than this COVID because everything you know there's well,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: you and I are about the same age. There's two
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: events where there feels like there's a before and after.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: And I'll give you one example. Recently. It was talking
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: about the world of pre nine eleven versus post nine
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: to eleven with somebody and then I tried to remember
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: what security lines were like at the airport pre nine
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: to eleven, and I actually couldn't. I remembered vaguely, Well,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: we still went through something. There was still a security check,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: there was still sort of some you know, it was
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: more similar than different, but I could tell but it was.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: But I you know, all I could say was, well,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: you used to be able to meet your family or
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: friend at gate right, and anybody could go through security,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: regardless of whether you're a ticketed or not.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: But that is.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Something that if you're if you've never experienced at pre
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: nine to eleven. You know, So we have two big things,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: I think arguably, and maybe the older you get you
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: have more of them. There's a real distinction between life
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: pre nine eleven and post nine to eleven. And I
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: think there's a distinction between life pre COVID and post COVID.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: But I'm curious you think about this stuff more.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: You're more consumed by these things than anybody I've come across.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: Where do you fall on that? I mean, nine to
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: eleven was because it happened so suddenly, and it was
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: a dramatic event, you know, this kind of break. You know,
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: it's a day, it's a morning or whatever, this ha happened.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: There was this one reality and then there's this different reality,
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: and there was also sort of the added edition to
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: you know, again, it's really hard to get back into
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: how we thought in the past. You just can't do
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: that in a way. But there is now, I think,
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: a belief and probably somewhat justified that there was an
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: idea that something like nine to eleven could not happen,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: like there would never be sort of a terrorist attack
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: that successful that large in the United States. It was
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: like something that didn't even seem like in America, where
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: you know, we saw him.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: They tried this in ninety three and we stopped them,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: like that, nobody can pull that off. So so it was.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Sort of like a this this unknown, kind of unimagined
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: thing happening really suddenly COVID there was you know, I
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: remember interviewing Jonathan Franzen in like twenty twelve or something,
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: and he was like, I worry about global pandemics, Like
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: there was this idea that this band, like a bird
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: flu pandemic everything could happen. And then you know, the
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: COVID experience was slow. It was like, you know, it's like, well,
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: what what's this. It's going to be like this for
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: two weeks. Oh no, it's gonna be like this way
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: two months, Oh, what could be two years?
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: So maybe it's just going to be this way for
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: it is that it ridiculous that we thought when the shutdown,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: we all thought, well, this is just gonna be a
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks. And you know, in hindsight, that was
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: like among the dumbest things we could thought. And yet look,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I grew up in hurricane country, meaning in Florida, so
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: I the only time I ever was you ever were
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: at home for something, it was because oh a storm
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: knocked everything out, Oh the power is going to come
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: back on, or this is.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: You know, you're like, what are we waiting on?
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: You know, in hindsight now it seems ridiculous that we
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: because I think everybody went into the attitude during the
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: shutdown like oh, we're just going to go a couple
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: of weeks, and you're like, how.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: Are we doing that?
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: And looking back that seemed like a ridiculous idea, But
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: at the moment, we all, I think, thought it right.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, and again it's like we I think in
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: the same way for those two weeks. After nine to eleven,
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: we've kind of forgotten how weird it was and how
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: like there'd be people. You'd talk my living in a
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: city that was attacked. It was. It was super weird
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: here in DC. Like I worked.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: I worked at the Watergate right across the street from
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: the Saudi Embassy. You think I wanted to go into
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: the office any day of the week. I thought for
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: sure they were a target, you know, that sort of thing.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: And people were convinced to this. I remember I had
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: created a go back You're like, oh, Washington is one
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: hundred percent of target.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: It was just this mindset of, yeah, you better know
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: how you're leaving when the when the when stuff comes,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: you know, it is it.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Is, I mean, it was, it was. It was so strange.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: In fact, maybe it's not support. I mean just the
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: idea of how common it was for people to say
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: during that period, maybe there just won't be popular culture anymore,
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: like maybe we'll never again be interested in frivoly, people
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: will only think about Syria, we'll only think about these things.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: And then in truth, and it went further the other way,
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: like when the swing, when the pendulum swung back, culture
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: was actually almost more superficial than it and be prior
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: to that, you know, in the first couple of weeks
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: of COVID, you know, and we're doing all these weird things,
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Like all of a sudden, people are like, we need
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: to have zoom conversations to connect with friends, and you're
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: having zoom conversations with people who normally you would never
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: talk to, you might go two years without talking to,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: but now it's like, we need to do this right,
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: and and it was it was just I mean, it's embarrassed.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: I'm almost embarrassed when I think about. There was one
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: time when like I went into a grocery store everyone's
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: masking or whatever, you know, and I got home and
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: I felt really good. I felt really good, and I
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: was like, does this mean I have COVID? The fact
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: that I feel good like I was just like anything
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: made like it was so weird you were so thinking
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: about I mean, and it was. It was also sort
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: of a bizarre time when for the only this is
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: the only time this has happened to me in my life,
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: which is that what I was thinking about was what
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: everyone in the world was thinking about. And that's so rare.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Even nine to eleven, I remember going to Australia after
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: like or New Zealand. I guess it was like six
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: months after nine to eleven or something and talking to
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: someone there and they're like, oh, yeah, that was interesting
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: that that happened. I was like, that was you know,
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: but it was like COVID was every.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Let me trill down on that, because I you know,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: there was a part of me that wondered, was this
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: going to be the ultimate global event? Meaning it was
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: really the first time with the communications that we have
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: where we're somebody in Senegal and somebody in Portland and
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: somebody in DC. We're all experiencing the same exact disruption
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: in their life. The disruptions were different, right, you know,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: because we all live different lives, but all of our
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: lives were being disrupted.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: By the same thing.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: And I know what I I think I'm sure wasn't
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: alone and thinking this is like this is going to
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: have to mean, this will mean something going forward. The
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: fact that we now have a shared experience for the
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: globe in a way that we had that yes, we've
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: all had in some ways. You know, the more you travel,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: the more you realize everybody's lives are more similar than different,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: YadA YadA, YadA, But that you know that comes with
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: your everybody's personal experience. But I always I thought that
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: was going to mean more than it turned out to me.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't know if we really know yet, because
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: I think that meaning that you're talking about is going
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: to be seen in the manifestation for the most part.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: With like people who experienced this when they were in
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: like eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth grade. Oh that's my
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: son and daughter, I mean kid them. My kids were
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: really young when it happened, and I can absolutely see
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: a situation where I later looked back nostalgically almost because
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: it was like we were all in the house together.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: They were actually at an age where it wasn't that terror,
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: It wasn't my.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Chuck I take about. It's the best two years of
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: my family's life. Yeah, I became my kids and us
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: we are. We're I've had other relatives say to me,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: you guys are too close or you know, but COVID
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: I had no. I thought we were a pretty normal
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: close family. No, no, no, no, this and they were. My
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: kids are probably a little bit older than years. I
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: got one to just graduated college and one in college,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: and so we were basically seventh grade and tenth grade.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Is with I mean we we we we.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Created TV we introduced each other to TV shows, we
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: thought watch certain movies together. We created new eating habits.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: In fact, we ate we now we've we now religiously
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: eat together at the same time, all thanks to COVID.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: So I looked at COVID as an tremendous positive in
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: my personal family connections in life. And I would never
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: utter that and assume that everybody else had, I know,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: and I always felt, I in fact feel a little
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: bit guilty about how how important that that period now
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: I think has turned out to be for me.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean that sort of then kind of just
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: kind of demands the question then, but how important, though,
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: do you view the I guess what would have traditionally
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: been considered the normal experience of a seventh grader and
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: a tenth grader who they did not have those things,
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: you know, And I just I wonder if, like you know,
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: because it was we were moving in this direction where
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: it was like it was totally possible for every member
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: of the family to really be isolated, even in their
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: own house, you know, everyone's on different screens or whatever.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: It seemed like everything about the culture would indicate that
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: people were becoming more kind of animized or whatever it
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: like split up and then we suddenly had this like
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: little house on the prairie reality where everyone was in
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: the house all the time or whatever. Now, it will
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: be fascinating if it turns out that in the future
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: there is sort of a consensus that well, this was
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: actually really good for families, like and that maybe like
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: the divorce rate will be lower. So something will happen
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: that will.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Like theation that we will change their way.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: It will almost have moved back the familial experience of
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: experience being family to like the way it might have
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: been in the forties or whatever.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know, well, I remember reading about life pre
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen eighteen pandemic, things like bringing your own silverware
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: to a restaurant was a normal thing to do and
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: sharing a cup.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: After that, everybody watched everything and.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: There was like a little weird like and I didn't
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: realize that that was you brought your own silverware, if
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: you ate a a house, you know, at a restaurant
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: that what we call today a restaurant wasn't quite there,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: oh at the inn or wherever you were going. So
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: there will be things that massively change that we don't
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: fully appreciate. Probably until someone like you looks back on
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: it and says, don't you remember this? And now that's
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: totally changed to this yeah.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: Well, but then it's also as complicated by the fact
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: that then does the person looking back actually have the
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: better understanding than we do experiencing it. I don't know.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: I think sometimes yes, I mean I sometimes think about this,
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: like how you know, you know, when when like the
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Taylor Swift ariostro was happening and you had you saw
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: these situations where tickets were this insane price, but it
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: was like, you know, it's like moms and their daughters
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: going or dads and their kids going, you know, and there.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Also had a dead head vibe to it too, where
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: there was this like you had to be there, you
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: had to experience Taylor Swift a concert. You couldn't to
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: really experience her.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: But the but the thing is, this was an experience
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: that seemed to be of interest to both the kid
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: and the parent, whereas, like you know, on the nineteen
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: eighties or whatever, the idea that like, oh, you know,
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: your dad.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: Wanted to go to Motley Crue with you, or it
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: didn't really happen, or it oh, I've had a broken promise,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Randy Rhodes died, my dad was going to take me
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: to for and Randy Rhads died before and the tickets
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: got avoided, right Like, that was the one time I convinced.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: By Trucker song addresses this almost directly. But then I
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: was thinking about this though, if you go all the
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: way back, so you could like to delay eighteen hundreds,
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: the early nineteen hundreds, like what would be entertainment, we
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: entertainment and culture would be something the whole family would experience.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: The circus is here or whatever. It's like there's a
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: you know, so it might be that it's just the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties,
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: twenty tens. That might be the only like fifty year,
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: sixty year period where the idea of what the parents
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: experienced and what their kids experienced were these two completely
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: bifurcated things that had no relationship. Because I see more
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: and more that parents watch movies with their kids and
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: they both they're almost made for both people. They're you
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: know all these you know that that like all these
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: like Marvel movies and all these things, they seem to
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: be created so that there's like, well there's material for kids,
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: and there's material for adults, and they can bolt it.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: So I more like I look at Phineas and ferb
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: and I always thought, sure, you know, my kids loved it,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: and it clearly every once in a while there were
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: a few jokes for the parents, and.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and and I guess you know, the Muppet Show
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: was a little bit like that. But for the most
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: part of your kid was watching Sesame Street. Like there
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: was the idea that somehow you would both have this
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: shared experience. So I sometimes think it would be really
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: interesting if it turns out in a great expanse of
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: history that it was only one window of time when
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: there was this generation gap in terms of cultural consumption,
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: that it will be that that maybe we just happened
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: to live through this period, which it almost seems like
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: it must exist. It feels to me like somehow, the
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: way that what a teenager wants and what a forty
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: year old wants or whatever, it should just inherently be different,
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: and maybe we're just the one section like the Sixties
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: made that happen in a lot of ways.
• 41:08
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• 42:47
  Speaker 1: I sit there and I think this originally was a
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: question I was asking about.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: You know, what is what is? What is history? You know?
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: When is it a When is the perfect time to
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: do this? So to go?
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Is there a is football and as a cultural sort
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: of glue for us? When television itself ends as a
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: cultural glue? Or is the visual medium so powerful that
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: you know what?
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: What you and I?
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: When I'm saying television, you and I might be thinking
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: one thing. My son, you know, he just views all
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: TV is on your screen. It's stuff that you either
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: visualize or stuff you read.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, so he had.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: Television is just a big monitor as far as he's concerned.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: So I'm just curious, is it when that goes away,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: that football goes away. Is it so tied to the
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: visual medium.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I suppose it comes down to at
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: some point, I think, you know that the cost of
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: television advertising and the effectiveness of television advertising, it is
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: going to reach a point where there is a realization
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: that what you know, a company has to put into
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: this is not going to equate what they're getting back.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: And they will. It's not that it's like it won't
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: work at all, but they're just like, what we're paying
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: for these super Bowl ads or whatever. It's like, there's
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: no way that the cost of making this is effective
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: enough to justify it.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: It's still seen as a lost leader by many of
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: these media companies. They just want the eyeballs.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: They do yes and other stuff yes, or just to
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: build to validate what their company is. We're a company
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: that we're a household name, even if you're not buying
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: our household products or whatever we need. I just I
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: think that there is a limit to that as a
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: successful thing. And so when that goes away, and even
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: it doesn't have to disappear, like it doesn't have to
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: go away entirely, it has to go down five percent
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: because the NFL particularly and now I would say probably
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: college football as well, is of the mindset that it
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: can only expand. I mean, the NFL is not comfortable
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: simply being the most popular thing in the United States
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: or I think all these games in Rio and austral
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: and it's like it's just there. It's a a. I mean,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: it's ultimately, I think with anything, it's like it could
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: be a huge mistake, but it's hard to stop. It's
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: hard to stop doing it when you can. But when
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: this happens IDEA, let's say that I'm right about this
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: and that some at some point, you know, advertising is
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: no longer worth the cost to continually have CBS and
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: Fox and uh, you know, Prime or all these places
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: you know, to pay for these games. Then it will
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: become is football valuable enough to people that they will
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: buy these things all accurd that they will just say, like,
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: I will pay whatever, you know, the twenty fifty five
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: equivalent of twenty five bucks or whatever to watch this game. Now,
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: if that were to happen now, it absolutely would be enough.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: Like like if football suddenly was something you had to
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: buy per game or per day or per week or whatever,
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: you know, there would be it would have absoutely no
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: problem doing that and survival.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but what about try another sport? I mean, have
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: a real much world example boxing the minute boxing became
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: pay per view, I didn't get to watch a boxing
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: match as a kid anymore, and they just have to kind.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: Of inflate the price of those, like what the pay
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: per view is? You know, the boxing.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: Special story Boxing, in my opinion, more than anything else,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: was taking it off of pro totally.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: Yes, I mean it was because it was a good
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: television sport in a way too. I mean, you know,
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: because you could you can really see I'm a Hagler Leonard.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: I'm a huge I love the Haggler Leonard fight. I've
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: seen replays of it. I didn't get to see it live.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: I heard you, I heard the you know, I remember
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: being glued to the radio that gave the after round
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: summaries in between rounds. It was the strangest radio experience.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: And I wonder if you remember express It was such
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: a vivid memory for me. I was we were a
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: Hagler family. Yes, we were all rooting for Hagler.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: I mean I was, you know, I was, I was young,
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: I was still in high school, so I was like,
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: I woke up and found out what happened, you know,
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: and then he steals from the fight, the Today Show whatever.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: He was an only child. My dad let me stay
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: up late with him and listen. But just kind of
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: we're saying though this idea of like, you know, uh,
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: will will people? Could football be a product that people
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: will just pay for out of pocket? Like I'm just
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: paying for the thing, you know, And as I say, like,
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: if that happened now, it would not be a problem.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: I do suspect though, that in a future that will
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: be less likely as fewer and fewer people have an
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: interpersonal relationship to football, Like not just that. It's not
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: just that like they didn't play or whatever. Lots of
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: you know, the majority of people love football didn't play.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: But I can see this movie where it's like not
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: only that they didn't play, but none of their friends played,
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: their dad didn't play, and you know, and it wasn't
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: like something that they cared that much about. They were
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: in a fancy football league, so they followed it. Then
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: you know, it's like it's just a kind of distraction.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: We watched football on Sunday or Thursday night or Monday
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: that's just kind of what you do or whatever. It
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean that much. And if there was a dramatic
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: work stoppage in say twenty sixty five or twenty seventy
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: five or something, I don't know if people would even
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: care that much. And all this and that, and I
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: just like I again, I always I've said this another podcast,
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: like I'm not one of these like anti capitalist people
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: or whatever, but I mean supports are I think in
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: some ways like a simulation of how capitalists operate, how capitulis.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: It operates in a way that's kind of exceedingly dangerous,
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: like you know, like the exponential growth of things like
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: like what you know, uh just I mean just looking
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: at players salaries or whatever, you know, starting from nineteen
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: sixty and kind of going through like it's it doesn't
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: like if you you say to yourself like, well, this
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: is obviously can't continue this way, like like there's like
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: there's no way it can. And and I say that
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: about the stock market. I say that about housing prices.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: This is what a million dollar house looks like now
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: or you kidding me, you know, and it's a brownstone
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: and like you know, a mid level neighborhood in DC, right, yeah, I.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: Know, and like this, I mean, like the stock market
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: is an interesting one because it's like like so much
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: is dependent, so much of the world has depended on
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: this that like if there, if we really got to
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: that point, people would step in. But I don't know
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: if that's going to happen with something kind of a
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: small siloed thing like football, like I mean maybe it would,
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: maybe there would be government intervention of this happened, like
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: we need to have this sort of I don't know.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, I just I again, by talking about this,
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: it kind of makes it seem like this is what
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: the book is and this is like one and I no, no, no,
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: and I know, but because it really it's really hard
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: for people to sort of get around this like just
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: there there it almost kind of I think that I
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: saw what one person I said, like the fact that
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: I sort of bring this idea up is disqualifying. Like
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: it's like like I'm just because like the I just
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: don't agree, Like I don't think life's not interesting if
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: you can't think you're just trying to think they could
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: project I mean, my goodness, if you took that away
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: from people, we'd have no reasons for podcasts the NFL.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: Why is football?
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: And I I will I'm going to preface this question
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: by saying, maybe I'm wrong, and maybe, but you brought
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: up earlier about how the NFL is trying to you know,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: play as many games now internationally as they can, and
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: you know, and I think they're right to be thinking
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: about this because the question is is America going to
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: continue to be an exporter or culture or are we
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: going to be an importer of culture? And you know,
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: I think there's an American and you know, sort of
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: centric view that, oh, our culture is always exporting, We're
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: never importing.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: Please, We're always importing and exporting all the time.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: At this point in time in our and where we
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: are in the timeline of of of world history, American
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: football has been hard to export.
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: What's your why? Well many reasons. One is just the
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: complexity of the game. Uh, you know, like if you
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: if you're watching a football game with a kid, they
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: can literally ask you a question about every single play
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: like what is that? Like what you know? Like it
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: is it is overstructured in a way.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: I mean just the fact that like no, I mean
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: eleven people have to do this have to all do.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is why I do think it's a
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: great teacher of teamwork. Like it's there's no other sport
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: like it, and that's it.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: It's eleven guys that are having to do all these
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: things based on the instruction given to them by the
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: quarterback who read off a wristband a code which was
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: given to him through a radio from the sideline that
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: came from a landline phone up into the press box
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: where an offensive cordner made that go like there is
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: no extemporaneous nature of football, except occasionally, within the context
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: of a five second and play there will be a
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: moment of extemporaneous action and people that's kind of what
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: is the thrilling part. But you know, we have sort
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: of conditioned to believe and you see this with like
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: you know, the player empowerment error, but lots of things.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: The idea that what we want is we want freedom
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: for those guys. We want freedom for the players. We
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: watch an NBA game, we want freedom of movement, you know,
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: we watch a baseball game. We like the idea that's
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: sort of that the manager is basically just putting the
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: pieces in onto the chessboard and those guys are doing
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: it are You know, Soccer is the same way we've
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: been told that what we want because just the way
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: society operates is a free, democratic extension of something, and
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: football is the opposite of that. Football is not that way,
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: and that is why it succeeds because unconsciously, what we
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: actually want is other people being controlled. We want freedom
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: for ourselves, but what we what we experience. We want
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: to see their obstructions, like we you know, it's so
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: now you try to transfer that to know, Germany or
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: Spain or England or whatever. It's like it's pretty easy
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: for someone to watch a soccer game or a basketball
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: game or golf or whatever and deduce what is happening.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: It doesn't really work that way. For football is almost
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: like a life experience. Okay, but what but let's take rugby.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: I mean that two things on rugby, Hey, why hasn't
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: rugby become more popular in the United States? And b
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: how come.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: American football hasn't done as well in rugby centric countries.
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: Well, it's still a little better in rugby centric countries
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: in the center, like pro football more than most of
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: the countries. You know what I mean? I guess like
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: This seems kind of self serving, but part of what
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: this book is about is the reason American football means
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: so much to America are these specific things that inadvertently,
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: it was not anyone's conscious of that, but it kind
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: of inadvertently reflects the kind of anyways like we called
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: American exceptionalist murder or the exception of America. This idea
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: that it's like things are different here, so the rules
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: are different here, and because you know, we why is it?
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: You know? You know in some ways, yes, you watch
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: your rugby game or you're watching Australian rules football game.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: It's like this is the end of cal Stanford, but
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: it's the whole game I got, but I got bought
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: sort of.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: I remember in Johannesburg one time on an extra day
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: and I was bored, and I started watching some rugby
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: seven's and I got really into it, and I was like, boy,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: if they could just watch a little bit of NFL
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: film here, but.
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: They have a couple of better sweet plays they could
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: do here. Is like I guess here's like one of
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: kind of the the principal arguments I make in this book,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: which is that the things about football that seem as
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: though they should be problems are the reason it matters
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: so much to us. In particular, Like I referenced this,
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: and I'm sure you know I'm talking about this famous
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: Wall Street Journal articles. That's the eleven seconds where a
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: guy minutes where a guy. They studied all these NFL
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: games and they came to the conclusion, I mean, the
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: justifiable actual. The conclusion was it was for eleven minutes
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: of football in a three hour broadcast. Now you hear that,
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: and you're like, that is idiotic.
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: And by the way, I want to put this in time.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: You note this was twenty twelve.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: This is it.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: This was I would argue the beginning of what I
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: would call peak anti football.
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: Meaning that was we were right, we were yet that
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: that was that concussions right, Yet all of this was coming.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: Trust me.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: I had a run in with NBC Sports during a
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: Super Bowl year over CTE story that I did unmeet
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: the press that the NFL objected to, and there was
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: all sorts of consternation and and but the point is
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: is that there were a lot of pretty smart people going,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: oh boy, football is going the way of boxing.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: It's just a matter of time. And there was an
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: active attempt to look for those things, and this big
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: example of that. It's like, so the sport which we
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: weep to violence ruining these guys' lives, they don't really
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: understand it. And there's a racial component to this. And
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: also you're watching three hours to see eleven minutes of action.
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: But what is the incredible thing is that eleven minutes
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: of action in a three hour window is the perfect
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: amount because it provides an experience other sports do not.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Like you get a terrific job of explaining movies and
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: how you would actually you sort of zone out if
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: you had too much.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: Action, you know it actually, as somebody who loves action movies,
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: what do you want from movies that want more action?
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: Well all the whole action, you know, like you know,
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: and for one movie that can work, like like the
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: movie furior Oat or whatever. That's kind of what that
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: is and people have, but it can't be this thing
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: if you're going to be experiencing something every weekend, all fall,
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: much of winter and then every year for your life.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: What it is it is like like there's you know,
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: there's hypnotic sports, you know, like basketball and soccer they're
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: constantly emotion. But there's low stakes within every small moment.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: There's totally cerebral sports like golf, baseball, and stuff, where
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: most of the action is waiting for something to happen
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: and thinking about it, and football combines these things. Football
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: is a mostly cerebral sport, but the moments of action
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: are so in kinetic and intense it creates the illusion
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: almost of NonStop action, and that is actually what we crave.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm just one of these people who really
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: believes most of what people want is unknown to us.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: That what is on the front of our mind, what
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: we describe as our desire, what we describe as like,
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: what we want from things, is mostly the projection of
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: what we think will is a way like it's almost
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: us telling people this is what I'm like, or this
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: is what I'm supposed to be like, or this is
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: what I've learned. Most of what we desire is unconscious,
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: and football is perfectly suited a specialize. Especially the tell
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: version of it, kind of feeds that unconscious desire for
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: an ability to step away and disengage and then heavily
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: engage for five seconds and then step away again.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: You know, how important is it that football is in
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: the fall and winter and not in the spring and summer.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: That's a very interesting question. You know, one essay in
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: this book I didn't write that I wished was. I
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: wanted to really write about weather because I feel one
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: thing that is very important, is so important to football, yes,
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: because you know, you know, baseball will stop the game,
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: Basketball is indoors, hockey is on ice. You know, it's like,
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: but football, you know, the weather is a variable and
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: it is also you know, one of those sort of
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: like kind of last vestiges of the old reality of
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: you know, living in America where the weather really impacted
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: you in this direct way, like we can easily escape weather.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: Now it's very easy for most people, but it used
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: to define football culture.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: Why were the Midwestern Big ten teams three yards and
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: a cloud of dust? Well, it was because it was cold.
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: And when we're in right November and there's still this
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: in the NFL yet, and then in the Florida Great
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: did not seem as good at the beginning of the
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: year as they did at the end because they were
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: building their team for that. The fact that football is
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: in autumn and winter. I mean, now it's it's like
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: almost hard to you know, distance yourself from this, right,
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: like how it would be sort of like what if
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: baseball was in winter? It's like, how do you sort
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: of imagine it? I think that, I mean, that's certainly
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: the obvious thing is that certainly probably helps the the
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: centrality of the TV experience that when you get into
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: November and December and Thanksgiving want to be outside, yeah,
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: Or if you want to be outside, you got to
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: still come in there's something that's on or whatever. Right,
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: But I just think that it's like I am I
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: like the idea of football's relationship to the natural world.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: In this book, at one point, I have a section
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: about coach and but the idea the kind of the
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: caricature of a football coach, and how the football coach,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: outside of like a used car salesman, is like the
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: most defined sort of personality type.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: No, you have this whole thing about how they like,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like even how they're portrayed on yes.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: Our game positively or negatively, it's the same got the
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: same coach, yeah, And it's but it's this idea that
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: sort of they still like in every other, uh, profession
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: or part of life. The idea of someone screaming at
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: you that would be completely off the table, but we
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: expect the football coach to do that. And the reason, well,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: I would argue that newspaper the newspaper editor.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: Also because of Perry White and Supermath, paper editors no
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: longer a job and.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: Not trust me, I used to be.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: I used to participate in a newsroom that was loud,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: and I'll just leave it at that. And then culture change,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: You're not allowed to be loud in a new.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: Well, just you know. When I got into journalism, when
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: I graduated from University of North Dakota in nineteen ninety four,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: we talked about how the fact that, like, you'll never
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: get rich being a journalist. None of us would have
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: felt like it won't be a job at all unless
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: you work to the New York Times. That's the only player.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: But I'm stead the coaching thing. I think that like
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: part of that has to do with the assumption that
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: football and the people driving football, the coaches and stuff,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: they still sort of realize these truths that we have
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: been able, for the most part, to completely remove from
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: our life, the idea of violent like like I don't
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: know it's it will be I assume, you know, like
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: I'll probably go the rest of my life and I'm
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: never going to be in a fight like it was
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: gonna punch me or whatever. You know.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: It's like and I don't know if that would have
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: been yourself.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: You never know, right, you know, but like it's it's
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: like you can go your whole life. It's very easy
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: now to go your whole life without sort of the
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: reality of physicality and you know, like power speeding, these
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: things that can be avoided in football. It can't be.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: Well, the reason I asked this season thing because you know,
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: we've had multiple attempts at spring football, and there is
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: one thing that hasn't been tried, which is the NFL
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: quality in the spring. And it's the only question I
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: would have about. It's the only thing we haven't tested
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: and given. Well wait a second, this it has Well,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: I guess what the first two years of the USFL,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: I mean the us because the US like, I mean
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: it was I got into it because of Jim Kelly
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: be in Miami game.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: Yes it wasn't the same level.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: But like, but I guess if you brought the power
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: of the NFL marketing right, you know, could you you know,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: before football ends, could you imagine it over expanding, meaning
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: you had almost two seasons, and you might have the
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: spring season champ will play the fall season champ, and
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: we'll have a European league and we'll have an Asian
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: like if Roger Godell's dream world. What do you think
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: does football become a twelve month experience globally?
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: You think I don't, possibly, but not on purpose. And
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: what I mean by that is that I don't know
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: if it can be inorganically constructed. For example, eighty thousand
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: people will go to the Tennessee Volunteer spring game. Okay,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: I don't think that you could have done that, though.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: I don't think that at the inside.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: You can't ever get eighty thousand people to go to
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: the University of Miami spring game. You will for their
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: actual championship games or something big, but you never have
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: it for something like that, So not every football team.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: But also it's like and Miami can't do anything to
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: make that happen, like it happens. It happens. When I
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: was saying, like, some of these things can just happen,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: I think that if the NFL has their thumb on
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: the scale and they're like, how let's try to create
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: a way for there to be you know, some sort
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: of like a international component to pro football that's at
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: the level of the NFL that the season begins in
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: March and it ends, and you know, I don't think
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: you can make that happen. If somehow it did happen
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: and people sort of found it, maybe that could possibly happen.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: But I think there's some like the association. I think
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: that was like with the USFL. One of these problems
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: is is you know, there was just there was something
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: psychologically odd about your watching a football game and they're
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: mentioning that it's ninety eight degrees on the field and
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: you look out the window and it's ninety two degrees
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: where you're at, and it's real, and you know it's
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: it's it's maybe it's four thirty and you typically at
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: four thirty PM when you're watching the NFL like it's
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: getting dark in your house, it's getting dark on the screen,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: still's totally bright.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: But don't you think at six I think we're probably
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: only two decades away from every single stadium having a roof.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: That's a And I wonder again, like what.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: And we know what the motivation is for NFL stadiums
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: because if you do a root, yes you get a
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: Super Bowl. I mean, and ultimately that's what these owners
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: care about.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: You know, they want to they want to have a
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: dome in Philadelphia. They want to have a dome in Chicago,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: and the sort of a dome in DC. I mean,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: I know that's you know, uh.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: I'm bummed about it. But you and I are of
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: a generation when we knew life. You know, I remember
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: being my son wanted to go experience cold weather and lambowfield,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: so we went to a game in January.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: I guess in some ways this is all this all
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: kind of feeds into this idea of mine. That's like,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: in fifty or sixty years, the relationship in your personal
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: relationship people of the football is to be very different
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: because so many things happening at both the pro and
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: collegiate and the youth levels. You can't find somebody who's
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: happy about it. You can't find you can't find many
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: people who are happy about putting a dome stadium in Chicago.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: I mean there are if they're not going to financially
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: benefit from it. Personally, no one wants that idea. Nobody
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: likes the idea of what's happening to conferences in college football,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: Like there's nobody who's like, I'm glad SMU's in the
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: a CC like that. No one wants that, right, And
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: we keep doing these expanding the college Playoff in twenty
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: four games. Now they're probably gonna know.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: Now, I wish they'd stop it, said, I've decided I'm
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: comfortable with sixteen, but don't go any higher than.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, But nobody wants. I mean, I even if
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: sixteen was the number, we'd probably still be like, I
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: don't know, maybe twelve. But like, they're just going to
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: keep going and keep going and keep going, and no
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: one likes it. No one thinks it makes sense for
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: Oregon to be playing Rutgers in a Big Dam football game.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: It's just like, you know, all these things that at
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: one point because it.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: Moves, but eventually you and I aren't going to remember
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: when Rutgers was a Big East team ex exactly.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: Right, Okay, But so then the people coming after us, Okay,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: what are they going to remember these things that we
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: were remembering? In some ways, it is almost the perfect
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: definition of nostalgia. We're actually injecting our personal feeling back
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: into the experience. But that's important, right if you if
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: you can, if they continue to make football purely an
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: entertaining distraction, it will still have success, but it will
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: not have the meaning to people that you need for
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: the longest term of of sort of you know, of depth,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: Like it's you some of these things like these these
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: things that seem like problems, you know, like they're the
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: things that kind of create meaning because they're they're natural.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: They're not things that like it's just sort of uh,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: the who's in what conference or whatever. I can understand
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: why somebody from the outside looks at that and goes like, well,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: this is what what are you getting over? Who can
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: can all fly planes? Why don't you just have the
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: who want you to have them all together? You know?
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: And it's like, well, sure you can do that, but
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: these like this is not a math problem we're trying
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: to solve. We're trying to sort of I mean, it's
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: already insane if you think about pro sports and college
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: sports on the surface, it's insane how this is.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: By the way, doesn't I tell you how rich our
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: country really is? Like if you just run like like
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: how much time and energy we spend on.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: This well and you know, and we it's going to
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: be spent on something. But whatever that thing is almost
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is hard to think about many mass
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: culture American things that don't seem crazy when you think
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: about it, like it it's just like it's like, like,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: you know, we mentioned Keylor Swift or whatever. It's actually
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: playing Sofi Stadium. I saw it was She's played five
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: nights or something and the fifth night, the last cheapest
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: seat was eighteen hundred dollars. Okay, so that was that
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: was the cheap. Now then you go to the New
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: York Times, you go to the Washington Post or whatever,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: and it's like the economy, it's like people can't get
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: by the candle, Like how are people how is this working?
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: Like like there almost there is this this split where
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: it's like the the amount that people are paying for
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: things and the degree to which people say they have
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: no money at all. It almost seems like it can't
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: exist in the same place.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: I apologize, I've gone over an hour, let me go
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: another five or so, sure, okay, And that is because
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: the other thing I want to get to is the
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: best thing to happen. When the NFL decided that needed
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: to address the perception of safety, and I say perception
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: of safety, because there's all sorts of ways they could
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: really address certain safety issues if they chose to, but
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: they've got they want to. They're walking a fine lot
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: in their heads. But one of the things they've pulled
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: off is that, in an attempt to make the game
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: less hard hitting, they've increased scoring.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: It is, it has sort of made the game. You know,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: University of Miami's got this wide receiver who's like five to.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: Ten and it's just amazing.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: Its Malachai Tony and I think he's going to become
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: a perhaps a household name. He ever would have survived
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: ten minutes on the on the football field in the seventies,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: right because of the way a receiver that's small, he'd
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: had to play a different position or whatever. And it
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: really is, you know, the safety changes over the last
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: twenty years have just changed the nature of slot receivers.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: It's had a huge impact, and it's giving a lot
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: more smaller guys opportunities and things like this. Can you
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: imagine a scenario where not that the NFL goes full flag,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: but it's most hits are accidental.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think in some ways you know,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: that is the dream in a sense, like can they
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: slowly move this game? I think they want to be
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: arena football, don't you.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: Well yeah, I hate to say most terms, but do
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: you remember there'd be a time when you'd watch arena
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: football and it was it was tackle, but the field
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: was so small and the scoring was so quick, nobody
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: had a chance to get hit.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: Me. Okay. I am of the belief that nobody is
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: watching or very few people watch football as a blood sport. Okay,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: they don't want to see someone get hurt badly or kill.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: No, we turn away now. I think when you and
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: I were growing up, they used to market it. Oh
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: they know these they did, But even the illustrated videotapes
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: right yeah, or like you know, cam would be like
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: a Lambert after.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: Whatever that was an ESPN thing or whatever got jacket.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: But even in that case, it was sort of like
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: you love the hitting, then you want to see the
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: guy get up. You want that to be right. See.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: I I think that like what it is is that
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: like people don't want to see guys get hurt in football,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: but the fact that the possibility of that is so
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: great it does increase the meaning of the things that
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: we ostensibly like the guy running patterns, the accuracy of
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: the quarterback, the blocking schemes, all these things, they matter
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: more because of the kind of their risk inherent there
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: is risk. The example I often use, it's sort of like,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: so a guy climbing K two who does not want
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: to die on that mountain. He does not want to die,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: and yet if there's no chance of that happening, the
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: accomplishment means less. It has to be there. So football
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: needs violence, not because we want to see violent acts,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: but it makes the rest of the game different, you know,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: Like they changed the kickoff role, right, so nowick, the
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: guy kicks off and the guys are only running ten
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: yards toward each other. In some ways it has been fine, right,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: there's been more interesting returns out of it. There was interesting,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: but here's like the new strategy of it. But people
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: generally when that rule was introduced, their immediate reaction was
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: I don't like this, and they would say it looks weird,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: it looks dumb, or whatever. But the reality was it
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: was the understanding of why this was being done. They
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: know this is being done to attempt to mitigate injury
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: and mitigate hitting and mitigate violence, and even though in
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: a practical application it doesn't change the experience of watching
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: football that much, it's the understanding that this was done
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: to make the thing less physical than you remember or
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: that you understood, or that it always was. And that's
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: what kind of people push back against. I mean, like,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: you know, part of the reason. You know, you see
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: if in the CFL they play with three downs and
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: so it's all passed, there's a yard between the guys
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: and the line of scrimmage and that kind of uh,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: you know, the linemen are smaller, the game is more
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: based around finesse, and it's less popular, and I think
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: that that's part of the reason even less popular even again,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: well it's it's it's like it's softer. It's still a
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: physical collision sport. It's just somehow that you they're they're
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: always trying to find the line between how physical can
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: we make this and not have it become something that
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: is disturbing to people or or or or you know,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: like you know, early look, I think that's a challenge
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: for UFC.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: I'm surprised at how popular it is and at some
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: point I think people will WinCE, But I don't know
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: I've been wrong about UFC.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: I've totally missed that timon. But what is interesting about
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: the UFC is I don't know, like I can't get
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: more present, you can't get more I mean like like
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: they're not gonna yeah.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: But I think the violence is the point, Like I
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: think it's the feature, not the bug. I mean, where
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: in football, I think violence is still the bug. The
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: risk is the feature it is, but the actual violence
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: is a bug.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: I think one factor we often, you know, overlooking this
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: is that the population keeps getting larger. Right, so if
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: there was only one when I graduated high school, I
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: believe the number we always used for the population of
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: the US was two hundred and twenty million. I feel
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: like that was the number. So you go like, well,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: let's say one percent of that group of that two
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: hundred and twenty million craves a violent activity to watch
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: the most violent thing possible. Well, if that number is
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: still one percent.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: But now it's three hundred row numbers bigger, added a
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: lot of audience.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's one of by more kind of radical
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: ideas as. Sometimes I think that the democracy has a
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: like a ceiling of how many people can be involved. Well,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: India is testing. It's interesting you say that that's the
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: largest tomorrow, and now we look at that. It feels
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: unruly and it's not a real democracy to us. In
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: a whey, there's something that it seems like they are
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: faking things or whatever, you know, and I do suspect that,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: you know, so I'm obsessed.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: One of my hobby horses is that I think would
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: should be the better response to the Building Rights Act
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: decision is we need to uncap the House. The House
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: of Representatives, as far as the founders were concerned, was
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: supposed to expand with the.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: Size of the population.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: And yet try to make the case that you know,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: America's political problems and why we're polarized because we don't
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: have enough politicians, and you're going to just get people
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: looking at you. That's crazy. I don't want Congress is
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: four than thirty five people. You're saying it should be
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: seven hundred, and I'm like, well, if we grew at
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: the same rate that we grew Congress, yes, it actually
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: should be about eight hundred ninety if you were to
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: be at the same ratio when we shut it down.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: And yet that scares people. It feels unruly and I'll admit,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: when I look at India, I think, oh, man, I
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: don't know how they do a billion people and count
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: all the votes.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: Well, yes, I mean this is a we have to
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: go another hour for all this. But I know what
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: you're saying, Yeah.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: Well, look, I know you have another book out, and
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: I know timing. You know what what is what is
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: the next what is the next book?
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: Well, this book was actually written prior to the Football Book,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: and for a variety of reasons, the publisher elected not
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: to put on me just kind of thought it was
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: too weird. I will just kind of give the premise,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: and that's what I'll say. Basically, it's a fictional history
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: of rock music, and it starts from the premise that
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: the Velvet Underground's first record comes out and is substantially
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: and immediately far more popular than the Beatles and the
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: Stones combined, and the entire monoculture becomes based off or
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: to the aesthetics and the attitude and the perception of
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: the Velvet Underground, and everything about culture reverses. And it
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: also in this book rock music becomes taken much more seriously.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: It kind of becomes the defining art form of the
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: United States. And of the world. And it ends in
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: two thousand and one with nine to eleven being blamed
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: on the strokes.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: I see where you're going because this scratches an itch
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: of mine, and it just is proof that, you know, essentially,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: culturally we're practically the same age, We're culturally very similar.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: This is the gen x.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: It bugs me to all get out that the electric
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: guitar has basically been confined to country music. Well I am,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: I am I being too snarky about that.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: No, I mean, well, I mean con fined. I guess
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: it's I mean, it's still in right, it's just and fine.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: It just feels like I don't hear it. And what
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: is rock now? Is there? Does rock still exist? Well,
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: it's still I mean, it exists in the way that
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: bluegrass exists. It exists in the way.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: That you know, is it just a nostalgic era of
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: genre or is there new innovative things happening.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: Rock has one sort of inherent limitation, which is that
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: a decision was made in the fifties. Not I mean
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: that a decision like a group people voted on this.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: It just sort of worked out this way that there
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: were going to be sort of formal like formal limitations
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: to rock. It's going to be guitar, bass, drums, maybe keyboards,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: maybe one extra instrument, and vocals. The songs are going
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: to be between two and a half and five minutes long.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: There it's going to be the only art form that's
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: specifically geared toward young people. That the whole idea is
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: that this is art for young people. And I do
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: think that probably by you know, once we probably really
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: moved into the nineteen eighties, I think a lot of
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: the of like the potentiality of what rock could be
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: was already kind of set in stone, and when it
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: reached the nineties, it became a self aware for him
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: that the musicians like Nirvana and.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: Pearl Jen No I know, you go from the glam
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: rock of the eighties to the super realist realists of
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: the nineties.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: Also not just super realist, but like an understanding of
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: like the idea that like there's something kind of idiotic
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: about the idea of a rock star and all these things.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: Now rock kind of kept going. Nobody thought this rock
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: in a way kind of ends as a meaningful thing.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: In the nineties, I believe that, I mean, that's why
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: your faked ending of this of yes, now it feels
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: about right. I mean I joke that The Killers is
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: the last rock band.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: Well as far as for me like that, yeah, I
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: think that, like you know, there was you know, I
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: after this period, I still loved Radiohead, I still look steady,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: I still love all you know, and there are there
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: is no shortage of bands making rock music now. In fact,
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: there's probably the number of new songs being created by
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: rock artists now is probably never been, never been high
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: more than ever, right, because the burier entry is lower,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: but the meaning is different. There was a period when
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: it was sort of seen as a way to understand
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: what a young person was like and the values of
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: all those things and that, and then that that got
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: kind of used to so hip hop took that. Hip
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: hop took it now hip hop is Oh you look
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: at the Billboard Top one hundred, you will not find
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: a rap song. Like it's like that, what what what
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: is the genre that's winning? Wow? Pop music? Latino pop too, right,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: That's just like I mean because if we just say,
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: you know, in some ways, pop music always wins because.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: Because it's by definition what's popular banks nodras pop sure,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: and Olivia or Rigo is pop.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: So said, but but that but in a sense, because
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: it always wins, we don't really kind of look at
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: it and it's like it's just sort of sure, it's
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: just always going to be something.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: I guess the question is is there a pop genre
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: today that will Is there a pop wouldn't you become a.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: Genre that isn't pop? Right? When you have a specific
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: to find sound someone like like you look there was
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: like reggaetne was that sort of briefly, I think people
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: thought that this is what, Yeah, these little kind of
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: micro genres will come up. It's just like I think
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: it's possibly the idea of something of any kind of
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: art form like that occupying the space that rock music
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: once held with like the film held in the seventies
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: or least, that just might not be how it is anymore.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, we've we we have succeeded at the thing
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: that we said we always wanted, right, We wanted to
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: have as much choice as possible. We want everybody to
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: be able to have their own.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: Always thought, wouldn't it be great if I could get
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: any song at any moment in time.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: I know, and I remember thinking how cool that would
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: be when we.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: Got those first jukeboxes that were digital. You're like, wow,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: the opportunity here, and then all of a sudden we
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: got it in our hand and I listened to the
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: same six hundred songs.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, for me, when I was in fifth grade
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: or eighth grade, was in eighth grade. For a long time,
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: I had five cassettes. I played those five That's all
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: I could afford. And I played those cassettes over and
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: over and over again. Now, if you'd have told me that,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: if you want, I can also give you a machine
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: that will have every song possible, every song that's there is,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: you know, I would be like, yes, there's no one.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: And yet as a like almost a predictable consequence, it
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: made music individual artists, individual songs and less important. I mean,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: those five cassettes I had, I was getting I was
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: pulling things out of that that weren't even there to
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: the artist because I was so you know, it was
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: just like I assumed it and just repetition, just the
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: repetition of hearing the thing over and over again in
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: your own and now it's sort of like it it
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: has to be ephemeral, because it would be very listen
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: the same six hundred songs. I mean that in some ways,
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: even that I think might be like a vestige of
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: the past, because maybe in your mind, in truth, the
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: CD or record collection in your mind should be you know,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: you know, fifty eight records or something. Right.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I remember I was real proud I had the
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: four hundred disc CD player, remember those suckers for that
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: brief period, and a friend of mine talked me into it.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: He says, it's like building your own personal radio station.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: And I did it on shuffle, and you know, back
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: then with the little thing it would take.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: It had about a it felt.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: Like ten minute lag, but it was probably about a
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: fifteen second lag between as it circulated around looking for
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: a song, and I thought that was Nirvana, you know
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: that ability. And then I already got a second one
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: because I decided I'm going to store all my CDs
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: this way. And then it's like and then and then
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: iTunes came out, and you're like, oh, well, there there,
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: this is a waste. It is literally sat in my
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: attic for a while until I finally gave it up.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: But although, yeah, you know, I got rid of all
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: my during that period, because if you regret it, I
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: do I do, because what I what I now? You know?
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: At first, you know, my wife was really like, we
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: cannot now we sound like our parents.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: I remember my father going around to with some some
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: we'd be at some antique show to goes.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: Those toy soldiers are worth? How much?
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: I had a million of those? I should have thrown
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: them away. And I almost feel that way about CDs.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: I think more from a practical thing, like okay, so
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: like when I got rid of all of those CDs,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: there was only I had, you know, just like you know,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: a few imports or whatever. It's like I can't find
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: this song anywhere, so I'm keeping this one or whatever.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: But I is. I don't think anyone out there would
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: be surprised if there is some era in the future
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: where there are multiple, you know, broken up streaming services
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: and none of them have everything, so that either you
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: have to have, you.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: Know, and and we're gonna wish we had that and some.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: Like you know, CDs were supposed to last forever. Turns
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: out they did not. It was but you know, as
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: a consequence, if something, know, some minor act that we
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: don't even know should be meaningful came out in like
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three, and that CD is one point. It's
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: not going to work anymore. If that isn't somewhere accessible,
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: if it's not on YouTube or whatever, it's going to
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: be gone. I mean it's like I think that that.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: Well, imagine dying in the late eighties before the Internet. Yeah,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: well my father died in eighty eight. You can't find
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: anything about him on the internet. Oh yeah, nineteen eighty eight.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: So it's sort of like what you just described, like
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: if you don't survive into the cloud world, you know,
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: you might as well have not existed.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: And I think it was in nineteen ninety seven or
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: ninety eight that was actually the peak of fax machine sales.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: But we don't think. We don't think of that right
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: because we think that's when the Internet was taking over.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: Because the Internet can write its own history. The fax
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: machine can't. Like in nineteen ninety eight or whatever, a
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: business still needed a fax machine more than Wi Fi
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: with wife. I wasn't even there yet, I don't think.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: But it's like, if there's nobody there to write the history,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: it just goes. And if like if there is some
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: record on like Touch and Go or whatever that's not
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: on it's just going to be gone. You know.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: Uh, I got to stop asking you questions because we
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: end up down new rabbit holes. But I understand why.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: That's me on.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: I appreciate a favorite guest of so many podcast hosts
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: because you you've you've got a terrific mind. I always
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: enjoy my conversation. I appreciate it much. Go by the
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: book it is. I I enjoyed all parts of it.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: It's both a cultural experience and a sports fan experience.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: And I'm in the middle of doing my own sports
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: history stuff and I just read this Dan Rooney autobiography
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: right before I read your book, and it just sort
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: of Dan Rooney did it. I don't know how many
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: books you read to prepare for writing your football book.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: It it really is a pretty good history of the
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: NFL book.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean that family is. Yeah, tomorrows are
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: as important as you're gonna get kind of but.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it was, and it just it's a very
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: it's a it was. It's a very rich experience reading book.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: So please read it.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, Well, thanks, my friend talksic mm hmmm mm hm