Latest / Notable Nostalgia / 123. Interview with Ross Benes

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123. Interview with Ross Benes · Notable Nostalgia

0:00
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Speaker 1: And what if I lost both my hands tomorrow.
1:17
Speaker 2: You could be a seat model start. I was sixteen
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Speaker 2: at the time, or fifteen, And and then hook it
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Speaker 2: up with a witch And that was that. Cats can
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Speaker 2: smile apparently, whoa weird. Yeah, but it doesn't always mean
1:34
Speaker 2: that they're happy.
1:35
Speaker 3: Yet.
1:35
Speaker 1: Lucy receives a call from what I can only assume
1:38
Speaker 1: is the future winner of every acting award ever.
1:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jennyman is a star. Her looks looks weren't a
1:45
Speaker 2: part of the issue.
1:47
Speaker 1: He's like, I had to sell my last top hat
1:49
Speaker 1: for Jannas.
1:51
Speaker 2: Maybe this is not appropriate EI there, but.
1:53
Speaker 3: Let's see.
1:58
Speaker 1: What's up nostalgia nerds. Today we have a very special guest.
2:02
Speaker 1: This guest has written in Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, Them,
2:06
Speaker 1: The Smithsonian Magazine, and Entertainment Weekly. And on top of that,
2:10
Speaker 1: he also has written multiple books. But today we're here
2:13
Speaker 1: to discuss his most recent book, nineteen ninety nine, The
2:17
Speaker 1: Year Low Culture Conquered America and kickstarted our bizarre times.
2:21
Speaker 1: I'm speaking none other than journalist, market research analyst and
2:26
Speaker 1: author Ross Benish.
2:36
Speaker 2: Awesome and then so definitely our podcast is definitely all
2:39
Speaker 2: obviously a notable nostalgia is a nostalgia based but we
2:43
Speaker 2: definitely are a little Zanian comedic too, So some of
2:48
Speaker 2: my are sidebars might got a little crazy sometimes. I
2:53
Speaker 2: was gonna start with a quick lightning round to get
2:55
Speaker 2: to know you a little bit better. So just clear
2:57
Speaker 2: your head and just go with your flow. Go with
3:00
Speaker 2: the flow, all right, are you ready?
3:03
Speaker 3: I'm ready?
3:04
Speaker 1: Perfect? Okay?
3:06
Speaker 4: Which is your favorite.
3:06
Speaker 1: Spice girl.
3:09
Speaker 3: Sporty?
3:09
Speaker 2: Right?
3:10
Speaker 3: Okay?
3:10
Speaker 2: That that question might seem silly, but it tells a
3:13
Speaker 2: lot about somebody.
3:14
Speaker 4: Okay, favorite film.
3:16
Speaker 2: Of the nineteen nineties, the Matrix, favorite show of the
3:21
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties, Seinfeld Pudding or Yogurt.
3:29
Speaker 3: Yogurt?
3:30
Speaker 2: Okay? Backstreet Boys are in sync?
3:33
Speaker 1: Oh, Backstreets, I love in sync. I like Back You
3:36
Speaker 1: Boys too, but.
3:38
Speaker 3: I like them both too. But I think the backshe
3:41
Speaker 3: Boys just have more depth like their their their song
3:44
Speaker 3: catalog just is fuller. You know.
3:47
Speaker 1: The thing I'll give it to backsh Boys is it's
3:49
Speaker 1: more of like a full band. We're in sync. For me,
3:52
Speaker 1: it was just more like justin Timberlake and.
3:53
Speaker 3: In sync, you know, so yeah, totally. I like Timberlake
3:57
Speaker 3: is reached a pinnacle success that no other individuo from
4:00
Speaker 3: that boy band era did. But and I think the
4:04
Speaker 3: backing group of the Battery is better.
4:06
Speaker 2: Definitely.
4:06
Speaker 3: I'm making this a slow lightning round. No.
4:09
Speaker 1: I love it though.
4:10
Speaker 2: This is all like we brought. You want to talk
4:11
Speaker 2: about your boge but this is all we're talking about
4:13
Speaker 2: bas boys.
4:15
Speaker 3: Wish Lou Pearlman was such a son of a bit.
4:18
Speaker 4: Oh my god, Oh I know right.
4:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, For a second when you said that, in my head,
4:22
Speaker 1: I thought of real Perlman and I'm like, whoa, whoa.
4:24
Speaker 2: We are pro real Pearlman on this, but no Lou Pearlman.
4:29
Speaker 2: And then he had the audacity to do the whole
4:31
Speaker 2: like making the band. Everybody from making the band was
4:34
Speaker 2: problematic because then when it went to P Diddy later,
4:36
Speaker 2: I was like.
4:36
Speaker 4: Oh my god, okay, Wishbone or Bill.
4:40
Speaker 2: Nye, Bill Nye And then this one is less pop
4:46
Speaker 2: culture but the power to fly or super strength power
4:53
Speaker 2: to fly. Awesome. I will put this through our our
4:57
Speaker 2: data base database and see what this all, what your
5:01
Speaker 2: answers all mean, and break it down.
5:03
Speaker 3: But listen, it doesn't show that I'm a sociopath.
5:09
Speaker 4: Probably not.
5:10
Speaker 2: The yogurt was the only one that most people say putting,
5:13
Speaker 2: so I found that very very unique. The listener, we
5:17
Speaker 2: are excited today because we have the author of nineteen
5:19
Speaker 2: ninety nine, the year Low Culture conquered America and kickstarted
5:23
Speaker 2: our bizarre times, and Listener, this is our first official
5:28
Speaker 2: Notable Nostalgia book Club selection. So listener, get get it,
5:32
Speaker 2: get it on Amazon, get it at your local bookstore,
5:35
Speaker 2: special order, whatever you need to do. But I think Andy,
5:39
Speaker 2: you have the first question to kick us off.
5:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know you've been on quite a few podcasts,
5:43
Speaker 1: a big podcasts already, and you've probably already answered this
5:46
Speaker 1: question more times than you can count. But for our listeners,
5:50
Speaker 1: we want to know, like, what inspired you to write
5:53
Speaker 1: a book about pop culture subjects, like especially at the
5:56
Speaker 1: end of the millennium.
5:59
Speaker 3: So the end in the millennium is the stuff that
6:02
Speaker 3: I really grew up with. And I just I have
6:04
Speaker 3: noticed in the last like six years or so insane
6:08
Speaker 3: things happen in our country that harkened back to the
6:11
Speaker 3: trashiest stuff I liked as a kid. So like I'm
6:15
Speaker 3: just I've seen enough, like Jerry Springer like moments in
6:20
Speaker 3: our politics and our pop culture even that made me
6:24
Speaker 3: want to go back and re examine the influence of
6:28
Speaker 3: specifically the worst aspects of the nineties.
6:31
Speaker 1: Like in your book, there's a part where you talk
6:33
Speaker 1: about how, right now we have a reality star president
6:37
Speaker 1: and you know, now it's like America is in a
6:39
Speaker 1: reality show, and that hit me so hard. I'm like,
6:42
Speaker 1: oh my gosh. Every day it's some kind of crazy
6:45
Speaker 1: thing that we never thought would freaking happen, and now
6:47
Speaker 1: it's happening. So yeah, that's yeah.
6:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, something being exciting doesn't mean it's good, right, yeah, exactly,
6:54
Speaker 3: Like it's entertaining and you don't know where it's going
6:55
Speaker 3: to go. But oh boy, so did you feel like the.
7:02
Speaker 2: Because reading your book, I'm gonna be honest with you,
7:05
Speaker 2: I was finding myself because I grew up like you
7:08
Speaker 2: and Andy grew up knee deep in this pop culture.
7:11
Speaker 2: So I found myself getting a little bit protective of
7:14
Speaker 2: even my the trashy pop culture, like not just with
7:18
Speaker 2: your voice, but also with the facts that you laid out.
7:21
Speaker 2: So how do But then I put the book down
7:25
Speaker 2: and I live life for a couple of days, and
7:27
Speaker 2: I was like seeing the connections for modern day like
7:31
Speaker 2: even with like the beanie baby obsession and like the
7:34
Speaker 2: the toxicity with that now with the uh with the
7:37
Speaker 2: loot la boo boos, like the have you seen those? Like, yeah,
7:43
Speaker 2: it was it was everywhere I went. Everything I was watching,
7:46
Speaker 2: like Jerry Springer was so nostalgic to me and comforting
7:49
Speaker 2: because when I was home sick, I was laying in
7:51
Speaker 2: bed and I would just turn on Jerry Springer and
7:54
Speaker 2: price is Right and everything. And then I am slowly
7:57
Speaker 2: getting into like TikTok, and I feel like TikTok is
8:01
Speaker 2: pretty much Jerry Springer but like in our pockets. So
8:04
Speaker 2: how do you this might be a broad question or
8:07
Speaker 2: maybe one that is hard to explain, but how do
8:10
Speaker 2: I or our listener come to terms with something being
8:15
Speaker 2: nostalgic and we have that sweet spot for it but
8:19
Speaker 2: also the toxicity of it.
8:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it's a tough balance. And I'm a fan
8:24
Speaker 3: of all this stuff. Like everything that's in the book
8:27
Speaker 3: is something I liked as a kid that I even
8:29
Speaker 3: like now, Like I'm like you, if I go back
8:31
Speaker 3: and watch Jerry Springer clips, I just laughed my ass off,
8:36
Speaker 3: like I didn't. The show is just crazy and wild,
8:39
Speaker 3: and I was entertained. But I would say that, yeah,
8:48
Speaker 3: your fandom is just one aspect of the influence of
8:52
Speaker 3: these things. You know that they have a broader grip
8:54
Speaker 3: on culture that goes beyond just people being fans of
8:59
Speaker 3: that at the moment. But that doesn't necessarily have to
9:03
Speaker 3: be all terrible, although much of it.
9:04
Speaker 1: Is for sure. Yeah, And actually I wanted to touch a
9:08
Speaker 1: little bit about the subjects because you you touch on
9:11
Speaker 1: a lot of these subjects, and you know the specific
9:13
Speaker 1: subjects in the book, So when you chose them, were
9:16
Speaker 1: like they the most like inflammatory were they the most
9:19
Speaker 1: important to you? Do you think there's you were able
9:23
Speaker 1: to find more information about these subjects, Like, so why
9:25
Speaker 1: did you choose these specific subjects and not maybe you
9:28
Speaker 1: know other ones like uh, there we do. You do
9:31
Speaker 1: talk a little about Howard Stern, but like not so
9:34
Speaker 1: much so like out of curiosity, like Jerry Springer instead
9:36
Speaker 1: of Howard Stern. You know, so why did you choose
9:38
Speaker 1: these specific subjects?
9:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, for the listener, there's six things and it's talk
9:42
Speaker 3: shows and reality, porn, pro wrestling, video games, beanie babies
9:48
Speaker 3: in the Insane clown posse, and I just felt they
9:52
Speaker 3: were the stuff that was the most mocked at the time. Sure,
9:57
Speaker 3: so like some I call them low culture, and it's
10:00
Speaker 3: low culture for the nineteen nineties, like video games or
10:03
Speaker 3: example that today they're looked at as like pop art
10:06
Speaker 3: and the genesis of world's most valuable intellectual property and franchises.
10:11
Speaker 3: In the nineties, they were not viewed that way. So
10:15
Speaker 3: it's like which pop culture faced the most, like heat
10:19
Speaker 3: from sensors, from critics, from people just making fun of it,
10:22
Speaker 3: the sort of thing that people are fans of but
10:24
Speaker 3: like not wanting to be open about in public being
10:28
Speaker 3: fans of. That's kind of what I wanted to cover.
10:30
Speaker 3: And then I am there is a bias. I coalesced
10:34
Speaker 3: around those six things because I had familiarity with them
10:38
Speaker 3: and I'm a fan. There's like one thing I didn't include,
10:41
Speaker 3: which would make a great topic would be nineties infomercials. Sure,
10:46
Speaker 3: and yeah, there were so many. I mean, I miss
10:49
Speaker 3: Cleos my favorite of those. Yeah.
10:52
Speaker 1: I just watched that miscleodocumentary probably about six months ago,
10:55
Speaker 1: and I had no idea, like, yeah, I was like, wow,
10:57
Speaker 1: that's a lot behind the scenes that I never thought.
10:59
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, her life was all over the place, but
11:03
Speaker 3: I didn't know I didn't have anything interesting to say
11:05
Speaker 3: about infomercials. I think you could make a similar case
11:09
Speaker 3: about like, you know, we talked about Backstreet Boys and
11:11
Speaker 3: then seeing the pop groups of that era were often
11:16
Speaker 3: made fun of and looked down upon, even though they
11:18
Speaker 3: were breaking sales records and have fans all over the world.
11:21
Speaker 3: Some people would probably view them as trashy or low culture.
11:24
Speaker 3: But I didn't know where to exactly go with that,
11:27
Speaker 3: and I felt like the pop groups weren't trashy enough,
11:30
Speaker 3: Like I gets saying clown Posse is a different level
11:32
Speaker 3: of trash than like and Sync. You know.
11:35
Speaker 2: You know, when I started my job, I was talking
11:39
Speaker 2: to the assistant that that works there, and I was like,
11:41
Speaker 2: this is gonna sound this is probably the most professional question.
11:44
Speaker 2: But I was looking at her and I was chat
11:46
Speaker 2: I was like, are you a Juggalo.
11:48
Speaker 4: And she is like, yes, Lou, did you know? And
11:51
Speaker 4: I was like, I just knew how. I don't know
11:54
Speaker 4: if what are your thoughts?
11:58
Speaker 2: And I'm sorry if the interview is going to be
11:59
Speaker 2: kind of like all over the place, but we're just
12:01
Speaker 2: excited to like, there's a lot to talk about. How
12:04
Speaker 2: do you feel like that gener that time period was
12:11
Speaker 2: like the differences between the genders because a lot of
12:13
Speaker 2: like WWE was more pushed towards like boys at the time.
12:18
Speaker 2: I guess, you know, definitely those the teen Bop you
12:22
Speaker 2: know magazines and the boy groups, but it definitely seems
12:24
Speaker 2: like I don't know, like that maybe girls had it
12:27
Speaker 2: a little bit easier with the trash pop culture at
12:30
Speaker 2: the time. I don't know, what are your thoughts about well.
12:32
Speaker 3: I would say there was a lot of programming by
12:36
Speaker 3: the major media corporations, especially viacom, aimed at young men,
12:43
Speaker 3: and that's like the stuff that's in the book, like
12:47
Speaker 3: these are very male things, pro wrestling and saying clown
12:50
Speaker 3: posse especially you know, talk shows are kind of both genders.
12:54
Speaker 3: I would say Beanie Babies is the same as well.
12:57
Speaker 3: Video games pretty male skewed. Especially in the nineties, there
13:02
Speaker 3: was an over emphasis I think on making shows for
13:07
Speaker 3: young guys at the moment. I think it's more balanced now,
13:11
Speaker 3: probably maybe not as much as it should be, but
13:14
Speaker 3: there was like I read this study where it was
13:18
Speaker 3: like the percentage of entertainment executives and producers at the time,
13:22
Speaker 3: like in the late nineties that were men. I think
13:24
Speaker 3: it was like eighty five percent or you know, some
13:27
Speaker 3: crazy figure, and then that informs what gets produced. So
13:30
Speaker 3: I think there was you know, even even though girls
13:33
Speaker 3: are half the population, I think there was more stuff
13:37
Speaker 3: directed at young guys than girls. There's obviously like Spice
13:39
Speaker 3: Girls and all these other phenomenon that were female centric,
13:42
Speaker 3: but boy, MTV and Comedy Central and everything owned by
13:47
Speaker 3: Viacom was like really pumping it for the you know,
13:50
Speaker 3: the young the young guy like the Tom Green Show
13:53
Speaker 3: and all that stuff. Man Show, it was. It was
13:55
Speaker 3: aggressive targeting to my demographic. You know, I was a
14:01
Speaker 3: young male at the time that probably received more programming
14:04
Speaker 3: named at me than our population should dictate on its own.
14:08
Speaker 1: Yeah.
14:08
Speaker 2: I think you mentioned that in the book as well,
14:10
Speaker 2: just about like the the target demographic that the yeah,
14:16
Speaker 2: the marketers and the companies wanted to target was the
14:19
Speaker 2: boys and not so much as much as the girls.
14:21
Speaker 2: But how did you I don't know if you mentioned
14:25
Speaker 2: this either, but just the quote unquote like latch Key
14:28
Speaker 2: generation was kind of our generation where it was one
14:31
Speaker 2: of the first ones where both parents pretty much worked
14:36
Speaker 2: a lot of the time. How do you think that,
14:38
Speaker 2: like maybe the latch Key generation influenced pop culture at
14:41
Speaker 2: that time.
14:44
Speaker 3: Oh well, that's a yeah, I haven't thought about that. Well,
14:49
Speaker 3: we were the like the I feel like the first
14:52
Speaker 3: generation who was online when our parents had no familiarity
14:58
Speaker 3: with it, or most of our parents did it, you know,
15:01
Speaker 3: like my kids or any even Gen Z like who
15:05
Speaker 3: have Gen X parents, they are online, but their parents
15:09
Speaker 3: understand what they're saying, and they have their own smartphones
15:12
Speaker 3: and they've been using the Internet for most of their lives.
15:14
Speaker 3: You know. Our generation, like the our parents are getting
15:17
Speaker 3: exposed to the internet for the first time that we're
15:19
Speaker 3: getting exposed the Internet because it's brand fucking new.
15:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, And.
15:24
Speaker 3: I think that informs a lot of the fandom. Is
15:26
Speaker 3: like young kids are on the internet, that's what makes
15:31
Speaker 3: Beanie babies take off, for instance, And they're kind of
15:35
Speaker 3: on the frontier of this and their parents don't like
15:38
Speaker 3: understand what the hell they're doing at all, whether you know,
15:42
Speaker 3: maybe they're working and not even around with this is happening.
15:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because I remember like the you know, we were
15:47
Speaker 2: Andy and I had a previous episode we're talking about
15:49
Speaker 2: like chat rooms we would go into, and that kind
15:52
Speaker 2: of like the lingo of those chat rooms. Our parents
15:54
Speaker 2: had no idea what was going on with that, with
15:57
Speaker 2: that landscape.
15:57
Speaker 3: Are you like on AOL?
15:59
Speaker 2: Yeah?
15:59
Speaker 1: And then you know, I'm up at like, you know,
16:01
Speaker 1: two or three am on a chat room talking to
16:03
Speaker 1: somebody who's probably not who they say they are. But
16:07
Speaker 1: I didn't know, you know what I mean.
16:09
Speaker 3: I definitely inflated my age by like fifteen years old,
16:12
Speaker 3: you know for sure. And I was like, yep, if
16:13
Speaker 3: I was fourteen, I was twenty nine in that chat.
16:16
Speaker 1: Yesl I was always like, you know, like twenty and
16:18
Speaker 1: then I always said Hawaii for some reason. I don't
16:20
Speaker 1: know why. It just seemed cooler, I guess, But yeah,
16:24
Speaker 1: I kind of want to touch back a little bit
16:25
Speaker 1: about the uh, the executives, you know, being male, you know,
16:29
Speaker 1: fallocentric and everything. And I was thinking about it too,
16:32
Speaker 1: because at their age, they were probably between like forty
16:35
Speaker 1: five and sixty, so they grew up without even having
16:39
Speaker 1: any type of like female influence in their lives. Because
16:43
Speaker 1: every so it kind of makes sense that when they
16:45
Speaker 1: get into a place of power, they're just that's why
16:48
Speaker 1: I think in like representation matters, because maybe if they
16:53
Speaker 1: had some representation of like femal, maybe they wouldn't have
16:56
Speaker 1: been so just focused on the male, you know, the
16:58
Speaker 1: whole consumerism of that part. But I don't know, I
17:00
Speaker 1: just want to tell you that for some reason, so I.
17:03
Speaker 3: Look at the ads that were like airing in those shows,
17:05
Speaker 3: because I feel like you get an idea of like
17:07
Speaker 3: what the entertainment companies think of the audience watching the
17:11
Speaker 3: show by watching the ads. And it was just like,
17:15
Speaker 3: you know, beer, yeah, tits are you would? You were
17:19
Speaker 3: like a are? You were like a dumb new Anderthal
17:22
Speaker 3: man by this thing, like it's like, you know, like
17:24
Speaker 3: watching a football game.
17:25
Speaker 1: Yeah.
17:27
Speaker 3: I was like, wow, that's the only thing they think
17:29
Speaker 3: that the people watching this one and buy.
17:31
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, No, I'm growing up. I couldn't stand
17:34
Speaker 1: like The Man Show and Howard Stern. I just couldn't.
17:36
Speaker 1: But I was mainly raised by my mom and my sister,
17:39
Speaker 1: So I think if that wasn't the case, I probably
17:41
Speaker 1: would have just been straight like oh, Man show boobs,
17:43
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But being raised by that
17:45
Speaker 1: was me. Yeah, yeah, if you go.
17:48
Speaker 2: Manda was asking like, yeah, what was your kind of home,
17:51
Speaker 2: like like did you were you raised by?
17:53
Speaker 4: Who were you raised by?
17:54
Speaker 2: And that kind of thing to kind of put in context.
17:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, my parents and they're still together. I have three
18:04
Speaker 3: older siblings, but I'm like quite a bit younger. So
18:08
Speaker 3: by the time I was in sixth grade, I was
18:10
Speaker 3: like the only kid still at home. And then I
18:14
Speaker 3: was with my nephews and nieces quite a bit because
18:16
Speaker 3: they were closer and it aged me and lived in
18:19
Speaker 3: nearby towns. But I had a lot of I'm in
18:21
Speaker 3: a town of three hundred people in the Midwest was
18:24
Speaker 3: where I'm from, Nebraska, and I had a lot of
18:29
Speaker 3: on my parents. I think because I was young, and
18:32
Speaker 3: like I'm not because I was young, because they were
18:34
Speaker 3: old when they had me. I think they were tired
18:37
Speaker 3: and done, and I had a lot of on supervised time.
18:41
Speaker 3: They were just like we've been parents for too long. Yes,
18:45
Speaker 3: do whatever you want. So they're there, but they didn't
18:48
Speaker 3: really have any guardrails on like what I could do
18:50
Speaker 3: or watch. They just kind of checked out.
18:53
Speaker 1: Well, there's a part in your book where you talk
18:54
Speaker 1: about you You're talking to your friends fro New York
18:55
Speaker 1: and you're saying, like, hey, you know, when I was
18:57
Speaker 1: a kid, I would go like, you know, fireworks off
19:00
Speaker 1: would be gone all day and like explosion stuff, and
19:02
Speaker 1: all your friends are like, well that sounds crazy, but
19:04
Speaker 1: when you don't grow up in like a big town
19:05
Speaker 1: or a lot of money. I blew up shit all
19:08
Speaker 1: the time growing up, and yeah, my parent, my dad
19:10
Speaker 1: was at work, you know and everything, so I had
19:12
Speaker 1: nobody to like, hey, you should be blowing stuff up,
19:14
Speaker 1: but it was just what you did at the time.
19:16
Speaker 1: I guess.
19:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely be in a small town because it is
19:20
Speaker 3: part of that with that unsupervised like you feel more
19:25
Speaker 3: at ease letting your kids just ride their bike around
19:29
Speaker 3: town or go to the swimming pool for seven hours
19:32
Speaker 3: by themselves even though they're only nine years old, you
19:34
Speaker 3: know what I mean. Ye, Now, like where I live
19:37
Speaker 3: in New York, like someone would fucking call you in
19:40
Speaker 3: if your kid was on their own at the pool
19:44
Speaker 3: for that long by themselves.
19:45
Speaker 1: I think the Internet really goes into play in that too,
19:47
Speaker 1: because when I was a kid, like, yeah, there's video games,
19:50
Speaker 1: but they're not like video games nowadays. There's video games
19:52
Speaker 1: where I've cried like multiple times on like replay, like
19:55
Speaker 1: video games now compared to I think like in the
19:57
Speaker 1: you know, mid to late nineties, two different things. So yeah,
20:00
Speaker 1: you could play vida against for a while. But the
20:02
Speaker 1: reason I feel like I left the house so much
20:03
Speaker 1: is because there's really nothing else to do. If I
20:05
Speaker 1: had internet now, I probably wouldn't leave the house as
20:08
Speaker 1: a kid either, I'd be like what the fuck? What's
20:10
Speaker 1: the point?
20:10
Speaker 3: You know, because you can connect with people online?
20:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you get your social aspect yea, all that stuff.
20:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and kind of like with a lot of
20:17
Speaker 2: the categories that you talk about. So when you do
20:21
Speaker 2: mention video games, that seems like, like you mentioned earlier,
20:24
Speaker 2: that kind of evolution went kind of a more positive
20:28
Speaker 2: route because when our our generation was in high school,
20:31
Speaker 2: there was a column by Massacre everybody was targeting saying
20:35
Speaker 2: that you know, video games cause mass shootings, like making
20:38
Speaker 2: that connection. So how why do you think that video
20:43
Speaker 2: games evolved almost into like a net positive especially with
20:47
Speaker 2: like this There was a report I read recently where
20:50
Speaker 2: people that play video games have a higher level of
20:54
Speaker 2: success with like air traffic control as a career. So
20:59
Speaker 2: so what what do you think was the cause of
21:01
Speaker 2: like a positive evolution with video games that.
21:05
Speaker 3: They became mass popular and that there was more familiarity,
21:12
Speaker 3: so when they were condemned, like Columbine was an example
21:15
Speaker 3: you provided. At that time, gaming was more of like
21:18
Speaker 3: a hobbyist thing. There were a lot of gamers, but
21:22
Speaker 3: like most kids weren't gaming. It was kind of like, oh,
21:25
Speaker 3: you're a gamer. That's interesting, Like just to give you
21:27
Speaker 3: some scope, Like Sega, Genesis and Super Nintendo combined sold
21:35
Speaker 3: fewer than fifty million consoles at the time, PlayStation one
21:40
Speaker 3: goes over one hundred million, PS two goes way over
21:43
Speaker 3: one hundred million. Now people like ninety percent of kids
21:47
Speaker 3: are playing games on their phones if they don't have
21:49
Speaker 3: a console, So when they in the nineties, when they're condemned,
21:54
Speaker 3: there's just less familiarity with them, and so it's easier
21:58
Speaker 3: to project that image. Same thing happened to movies and
22:02
Speaker 3: comic books and radio and the printed novel. By the
22:07
Speaker 3: mid two thousands, when everyone's a gamer and the average
22:10
Speaker 3: age of gamers has shot up from like twenty to
22:13
Speaker 3: thirty five, it has a much different perception in society collectively,
22:20
Speaker 3: just due to that mass popularization. And now that you
22:24
Speaker 3: don't see the you see a republican doing every once
22:27
Speaker 3: in a while, but much less often than in the
22:28
Speaker 3: nineties when everyone was pointing the finger at games some
22:32
Speaker 3: ass shooting. Now, like games aren't the first thing that's
22:34
Speaker 3: site right comes up and blamed. It's way different.
22:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's a stat in your book. I
22:40
Speaker 1: could be a little bit wrong, but if a white
22:42
Speaker 1: shooter shot something up, it was eight times more likely
22:45
Speaker 1: that video games would be brought up than if someone
22:47
Speaker 1: from color shot something up. And then you know, if
22:50
Speaker 1: someone from color is like community and rage and everything.
22:52
Speaker 1: But it's just it's so crazy to show how different, like,
22:56
Speaker 1: oh hey buddy, it's not your fault, it's the video games.
22:59
Speaker 1: But you know someone of color, they're like, hey, you loser.
23:03
Speaker 2: So not to get too dark and way off subject,
23:06
Speaker 2: but like why do you think that? And this is
23:09
Speaker 2: kind of like almost like rhetorical almost, I guess, but
23:11
Speaker 2: like why do you think that more men are mass shooters?
23:16
Speaker 1: Is it because are done by well? Yeah, well you know.
23:21
Speaker 2: Like do you do you think like it is pop
23:24
Speaker 2: culture or do you think it's just society or do
23:26
Speaker 2: you think it's just the chemicals in our bodies or like.
23:30
Speaker 3: I mean, on the on the men thing, I mean
23:31
Speaker 3: that's like around the world around time too. I mean, god,
23:36
Speaker 3: the percentage of murders committed in human history by men
23:39
Speaker 3: has got to be extremely high. You know. I don't
23:43
Speaker 3: have a great answer to that, other than like, men
23:45
Speaker 3: are the ones that generally commit violent crimes, especially gun violence,
23:51
Speaker 3: whether it's a mass shooting or not, whether it's in
23:53
Speaker 3: America or not, whether it's this time frame or not.
23:55
Speaker 3: That's like a terrible thing about men. And that's like timeless.
24:04
Speaker 2: You know, it's because there is one of those like
24:07
Speaker 2: horrific things that happen. It's always you know, it's always weapons. Yeah, men,
24:14
Speaker 2: they talk about access to weapons and mental health, but
24:17
Speaker 2: they never talk about it being a man as much
24:19
Speaker 2: another man did it, you know. But I'm just kind
24:21
Speaker 2: of random, but I was curious. On the cover of
24:25
Speaker 2: your book, you have insane clown posse, Jerry Springer wwe
24:28
Speaker 2: Beanie Babies. But then how come you chose Sonia from
24:32
Speaker 2: Mortal Kombat.
24:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Moral Kombat didn't come out in ninety nine,
24:38
Speaker 3: but when I have it in there, because video games
24:40
Speaker 3: are condemned in ninety nine, and Moral Kombat is one
24:44
Speaker 3: of the games that like gets resurfaced. So Mortal Kombat
24:47
Speaker 3: face congressional hearings in ninety three and ninety four. After Columbine,
24:52
Speaker 3: it again starts appearing in the news and blamed for shit.
24:55
Speaker 3: So I just felt like it was a pioneer for
24:58
Speaker 3: video games and like one of the ones that took
25:02
Speaker 3: the most heat. And also I didn't put the marine
25:05
Speaker 3: from Doom on there because it's already a sausage fest
25:09
Speaker 3: on the cover of that book. Yeah, because that's how
25:12
Speaker 3: like I was, like, I should have like a female character, because.
25:14
Speaker 2: That's how like I entered because I think like being
25:17
Speaker 2: like a gay man, especially in the nineties, the gay
25:22
Speaker 2: people in pop culture weren't really there as much unless
25:25
Speaker 2: there were stereotypes. So a lot of gay men do
25:28
Speaker 2: kind of align with like strong feminine, feminist icons. And
25:33
Speaker 2: so when I saw that I and I'm reading the book,
25:36
Speaker 2: I I have it in my head as like a
25:38
Speaker 2: bias going into it that there is going to be
25:41
Speaker 2: such a clear line of men that consume this pop
25:45
Speaker 2: culture and we're targeted. It's a net negative, but women's
25:49
Speaker 2: or girls is going to be a positive. Be cause
25:50
Speaker 2: Sonia was like a pretty feminist icon for that, even
25:56
Speaker 2: though she was you know, worrying, you know, had to
25:58
Speaker 2: have her mid mid room showed or didn't have like
26:01
Speaker 2: the same powers and stuff.
26:02
Speaker 4: So but yeah, I thought that was kind of.
26:04
Speaker 2: Interesting that that Sonya was on there. I was like, okay,
26:07
Speaker 2: like and just the stuff that I was funneled in
26:10
Speaker 2: in my youth was definitely I related to it that
26:13
Speaker 2: it was more toxic, Like I wasn't a Juggalo, but
26:15
Speaker 2: I was Juggalo adjacent w W w W and jacent.
26:20
Speaker 2: But my sister was getting like all of this positive
26:24
Speaker 2: pop culture funnel to her. So I thought that was interesting.
26:28
Speaker 3: I saw to go back to Sonia. Carrie Anne Hoskins
26:34
Speaker 3: reached out to me because she saw the book online
26:36
Speaker 3: and I sent her a copy. She's the original. She's
26:40
Speaker 3: like the actress who played Sonya for the video game. Yeah,
26:42
Speaker 3: because Mortal Kombat was like an innovative game that had
26:45
Speaker 3: actors with like the green screen, like those are actual
26:48
Speaker 3: people that they took the images of and stuff. So
26:50
Speaker 3: I thought that was pretty cool. But then also you
26:52
Speaker 3: said she was a feminist icon and that's cited in
26:56
Speaker 3: a court case. So Richard Posner, he's a really famous
27:02
Speaker 3: like law professor. He was also like a judge for
27:10
Speaker 3: several appellate courts. He wrote this decision defending video games.
27:15
Speaker 3: It was before they got First Amendment protection in twenty eleven,
27:18
Speaker 3: from the Brown Versus Merchant's decision prior to that, which
27:22
Speaker 3: helped build the case for video games get First Amendment protection.
27:25
Speaker 3: Posner backs them in a case and he cites Sonya
27:31
Speaker 3: Blade because he says that, well, games can actually have
27:34
Speaker 3: like a feminist message. If you play Mortal Kombat, the
27:40
Speaker 3: female character is just as strong as the male characters,
27:43
Speaker 3: and he kind of he kind of like is lighthearted
27:45
Speaker 3: talking about it, but he's also making a point. So
27:47
Speaker 3: he basically cites Sonya Blade's character as a legal reason
27:54
Speaker 3: for why there's there can be ideology and thought and
28:01
Speaker 3: ideas in video games, because when they were denied First
28:04
Speaker 3: Amendment protection for years, going back to the eighties, the
28:08
Speaker 3: argument legally was that games are like pinball or they're
28:10
Speaker 3: like baseball. They're just games that they don't they're not
28:13
Speaker 3: a piece of media like a movie or a book is.
28:18
Speaker 3: But yeah, Sonya's you know, a case study, I guess
28:23
Speaker 3: in that way.
28:24
Speaker 2: How did she feel about it when when about the
28:27
Speaker 2: book and like, uh like was her response?
28:32
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, I don't know if she's ready yet.
28:33
Speaker 3: I just uh, she saw the images, she thought it
28:37
Speaker 3: was cool.
28:38
Speaker 2: That's that's that's that's iconic to like be in connection
28:42
Speaker 2: with somebody that you've played the game like that. That's amazing.
28:45
Speaker 1: Are you still a game er now? Do you game?
28:48
Speaker 3: Not much? I hope to get back into it, like
28:53
Speaker 3: when my kids are older. I play games like if
28:56
Speaker 3: I'm back home with my nephews, but not right now
29:00
Speaker 3: too much. But I I do appreciate them a lot still.
29:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, you guys game I do a lot. Yeah.
29:10
Speaker 2: No, I went to there's an adult arcade, not like
29:13
Speaker 2: a porn artcade, but like adults only like you know,
29:17
Speaker 2: vintage you know games. I went to that last weekend
29:19
Speaker 2: and played like bubble Bobble on arcade and like Penball
29:22
Speaker 2: and like that kind of thing. I do play like more.
29:25
Speaker 2: I am a fandom Mortal Kombat, but I think I
29:27
Speaker 2: started more like after the first movie came out. I
29:31
Speaker 2: got really into it. So but yeah, other than that,
29:35
Speaker 2: my attention SPAN's pretty horrible.
29:37
Speaker 1: When I was in second grade, there's this I lived
29:39
Speaker 1: in a little town in Oregon, and I don't know
29:41
Speaker 1: how what the populations was really tiny, but there was
29:43
Speaker 1: a convenience store, and the owner of the convenience store
29:46
Speaker 1: was this old Asian man and he was cool as shit, right,
29:49
Speaker 1: and then me and my buddies would go and play
29:50
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat, and then he goes out of every time
29:54
Speaker 1: we every time we showed up, he would say, whoever
29:56
Speaker 1: wins out of all of you guys will face me,
29:58
Speaker 1: and if you beat me, you guys who play for
30:00
Speaker 1: the rest of the day. And we never fucking beat
30:03
Speaker 1: him once every time he beat us. But it was
30:07
Speaker 1: cool though. It's like a core moment of my childhood
30:10
Speaker 1: remembering this, like really cool, Like dude, that is like
30:12
Speaker 1: if anybody beats me, then you guys play it all
30:14
Speaker 1: day for free.
30:15
Speaker 2: But yeah, and then kind of shifting gears to like
30:18
Speaker 2: kind of like the consumersm with tangible items, so with
30:21
Speaker 2: beanie babies, like like my at least history with that
30:25
Speaker 2: is like our aunt and I like our aunt and
30:28
Speaker 2: my cousins, we would all collect them, like spend some
30:31
Speaker 2: of our allowance, you know, we would trade them that
30:34
Speaker 2: kind of thing. Definitely, there are some pretty horror stories
30:38
Speaker 2: of people spending way too much more than they can afford.
30:42
Speaker 2: On Beanie babies and it being like a fanatic thing,
30:44
Speaker 2: like similar to like the Tickle Meomo.
30:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, chaos.
30:48
Speaker 2: So what do you want kind of our listeners to
30:50
Speaker 2: and like your readers to know about like that part
30:53
Speaker 2: of the book more about like the consumers and with
30:56
Speaker 2: like beanie babies.
30:58
Speaker 3: Just how crazy it I mean, there were robberies, there
31:01
Speaker 3: was a murder over them. There was people in Atlanta
31:05
Speaker 3: like getting out of their cars on the interstate because
31:07
Speaker 3: a box of Beanie babies had fallen off of a
31:11
Speaker 3: spilled semi trailer and they're gonna risk their lives to
31:15
Speaker 3: you know, grab twenty stuffed animals and uh I at
31:21
Speaker 3: my point with beanie babies and I talk about crypto
31:24
Speaker 3: then as like a more current thing is these booms
31:27
Speaker 3: and bus whether it's a low grade thing like beanie
31:30
Speaker 3: babies or something in the macro economy like the dot
31:33
Speaker 3: com bubble. At the time, you really see the vulnerabilities
31:38
Speaker 3: of capitalism as well as some of the innovations through
31:42
Speaker 3: its zaniness.
31:44
Speaker 2: So with on that subject, like how do we or
31:48
Speaker 2: do do you have an answer? Like how do we
31:50
Speaker 2: as society avoid this from happening?
31:56
Speaker 4: Like I'm nervous about the world.
31:58
Speaker 2: Like I took to Tea the other day instead of Indicas,
32:01
Speaker 2: and I was like, folk, so I see some reassurance.
32:05
Speaker 2: I think for me that like we're gonna be okay.
32:09
Speaker 3: Well, uh, just these schemes where people get behind them
32:14
Speaker 3: and they feel like you gotta get it right now.
32:17
Speaker 3: It's the hot new thing. You know, disregard every sense
32:22
Speaker 3: of reason that tells you that this is irrational. Just
32:25
Speaker 3: go in, go in on that, on it, Like that's
32:28
Speaker 3: just a recipe for disaster. We need to stop listening
32:31
Speaker 3: to those people. Like like when when people were you know,
32:33
Speaker 3: hyping up NFTs, like yeah, four years ago, everyone should
32:38
Speaker 3: have just like closed their ears and said, shut the
32:39
Speaker 3: hell up, you know, like you're not gonna make money
32:41
Speaker 3: off this, like some people will. Most of us are
32:44
Speaker 3: gonna lose their asks because this is just a nonsensical
32:46
Speaker 3: thing that isn't actually worth anything, let alone millions of
32:49
Speaker 3: dollars to pay for an image of the first tweet.
32:52
Speaker 3: My god, but this this stuff has always been with us.
32:55
Speaker 3: You know, you have the tulips going way back rush
33:01
Speaker 3: gold Rush, Yeah.
33:02
Speaker 1: Made most money gold rusher, the ones selling the equipment
33:05
Speaker 1: for people to dig for gold.
33:08
Speaker 3: You had that with the Beanie Babies, you have tons
33:10
Speaker 3: of people making money on authentication services.
33:13
Speaker 1: They would charge.
33:14
Speaker 3: Twenty five bucks, which is five times the price of
33:16
Speaker 3: a retail value of going and buying the Beanie Baby itself.
33:20
Speaker 3: So you're buying the Beanie Baby for five dollars, you're
33:22
Speaker 3: gonna pay twenty five dollars to get it authenticated to
33:25
Speaker 3: prove that it's real. I mean, what a what a racket?
33:27
Speaker 1: You know, like baseball cards too. The same people that
33:30
Speaker 1: are making those Becket books or the same ones printing
33:32
Speaker 1: the cards, so they go, hey, this I can't Griff
33:34
Speaker 1: Junior is worth one hundred bucks. So people are just
33:36
Speaker 1: buying it like crazy, and they're just printing their own money.
33:38
Speaker 2: It's just the only baseball card I would ever want
33:41
Speaker 2: is the one we're in the background.
33:43
Speaker 1: It has the I have that one. It's the Mark Jacksons.
33:46
Speaker 2: What's called is a Mendoza.
33:50
Speaker 3: There's a Mark Jackson card that has the Mendoza.
33:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's after they killed their parents too, And it's like, yeah, it's.
33:57
Speaker 2: Crazy, Yeah, that's amazing you on that?
34:00
Speaker 4: Can I have it?
34:00
Speaker 1: Sure?
34:01
Speaker 4: Really?
34:02
Speaker 3: Fuck yeah?
34:02
Speaker 1: I bought it for like tailors on eBay and then
34:04
Speaker 1: after that Newest Documentary went now and it went up
34:06
Speaker 1: for like twenty six bucks. Sweet.
34:08
Speaker 3: No, that's awesome, but I meant that with an OJ
34:12
Speaker 3: Rookie card.
34:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a signature for one of OJ's lawyers.
34:17
Speaker 1: I like to collect weird things.
34:19
Speaker 3: Was it was it Robert Kardashian.
34:20
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't one of the famous ones it was,
34:22
Speaker 1: but he does. I can't remember his name right now,
34:23
Speaker 1: but he does claim that he's the one who came
34:25
Speaker 1: up with if the glove doesn't fit, you gotta quit,
34:28
Speaker 1: he claims that. So I don't know. I don't know
34:30
Speaker 1: if it's true or.
34:30
Speaker 2: Not, but that's awesome. Well, Amanda Knox wish my dog
34:34
Speaker 2: a happy birthday on Instagram, So that's like, you know,
34:38
Speaker 2: I love that kind of Like, so I guess, I
34:40
Speaker 2: guess Andy and I are kind of the fucking problems.
34:42
Speaker 2: Like back in the day, I was consumed with Tanya
34:46
Speaker 2: Harding and just being obsessed with her Monica Lewinsky, Like
34:49
Speaker 2: I was way too young to be knowing what was
34:51
Speaker 2: going on with Bill Clinton and her, but I was
34:53
Speaker 2: glued to my television. So I was like, oh my god,
34:55
Speaker 2: this is provocative. I'm kind of at that age where
34:58
Speaker 2: I shouldn't know about sex, but like if they're talking
35:01
Speaker 2: about on the news, I kind of have to have
35:03
Speaker 2: those conversations with my parents. So when you talk about
35:07
Speaker 2: segueing into porn, do you feel like porn from nineteen
35:12
Speaker 2: ninety nine to now would be has evolved positively or
35:17
Speaker 2: that might be kind of like a subjective turn like verbiage.
35:21
Speaker 4: But talk to us about.
35:23
Speaker 2: Porn from nineteen ninety nine.
35:27
Speaker 3: Gosh, the craziest thing what porn in ninety nine was
35:30
Speaker 3: all these porn stars trying to set sex records, like
35:33
Speaker 3: Bonnie Blue, you know, for those unfamiliar, did a bunch
35:37
Speaker 3: of guys in a day and it was scandalous and
35:41
Speaker 3: people were really upset about it. And I was like,
35:44
Speaker 3: this isn't new. Like Jerry Springer had four different guests
35:49
Speaker 3: doing the same damn thing between like ninety seven and
35:52
Speaker 3: two thousand. This is a stunt that's been around for
35:56
Speaker 3: a long time. So, you know, porn was becoming more
35:59
Speaker 3: pervasive because the Internet was blown up finally, but it
36:04
Speaker 3: was also on cable TV all over the place. You know,
36:08
Speaker 3: some of it was really skeazy, you know, like girls,
36:10
Speaker 3: gun wild and commercial is probably the worst of the bunch.
36:14
Speaker 3: But what I look at in the book is whether
36:16
Speaker 3: or not you find porn objectable. You know, whether you
36:22
Speaker 3: think everyone who views it should go to hell or not.
36:25
Speaker 3: That's beside the point. Porn has had a massive impact
36:30
Speaker 3: technologically and legally on our country, and a big part
36:37
Speaker 3: of that happened in the nineties. As you know, the
36:40
Speaker 3: Internet expanded, and the first things that they argued about
36:43
Speaker 3: when they tried to censor the Internet was regulating porn.
36:47
Speaker 3: That was the Child Communications Decency Act of the nineteen
36:51
Speaker 3: ninety six, which was ultimately struck down. But now we're
36:53
Speaker 3: in a weird place because a lot of that precedent
36:57
Speaker 3: that these pornographers helped established has been disregarded, like like
37:07
Speaker 3: the age verification stuff has been a loss for the
37:10
Speaker 3: point industry, which could have broader privacy implications. So, you know,
37:17
Speaker 3: the idea that porn is always advancing the law or
37:19
Speaker 3: advancing technology that doesn't seem like it quite holds up, though,
37:23
Speaker 3: because you can also lose those freedoms as quickly as
37:29
Speaker 3: you gain them.
37:30
Speaker 2: I appreciate that technology because back in the day, I
37:32
Speaker 2: would just continue to like destroy my family computer by
37:35
Speaker 2: looking at porn all the time, so at least nowadays,
37:38
Speaker 2: like it's pretty like secure, you know. But you're right,
37:41
Speaker 2: like it's so interesting that like there's still adult shops
37:44
Speaker 2: that sell pornography, which is bizarre to me that people
37:46
Speaker 2: still go and rent porn. But no shame though to
37:50
Speaker 2: teach their own. But yeah, the kids aren't allowed into
37:53
Speaker 2: the adult shops, but yet they have easy access if
37:55
Speaker 2: they have a cell phone or what, or access to
37:57
Speaker 2: a computer to look at porn. And yeah, it's very.
38:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, recently, I was driving and I saw this place
38:05
Speaker 1: at selles porn. It said four DVDs for nine ninety nine,
38:08
Speaker 1: and then I'm like, okay, all I need to do
38:09
Speaker 1: is go buy a DVD player. Then like I don't
38:12
Speaker 1: even have one of those anymore, you know. So yeah,
38:15
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's hard to say, because you know,
38:17
Speaker 1: I do feel like with technology nowadays, the people creating it,
38:20
Speaker 1: it's more in their own pocket, like they can choose
38:25
Speaker 1: what they want to do now, and I feel like
38:27
Speaker 1: they are probably making more money than back in the day,
38:30
Speaker 1: where there was like some like you know, some producer
38:32
Speaker 1: with a gold tooth, gold like I could make you
38:34
Speaker 1: a stop. So now they have like only fans of
38:36
Speaker 1: stuff to where they can be their own bosses. So yeah,
38:38
Speaker 1: that's tough.
38:39
Speaker 2: Like so just for the listener and the and the
38:41
Speaker 2: future reader. I am not for kids watching Born, I mean,
38:46
Speaker 2: but but like I what I am against is that,
38:48
Speaker 2: like just going on a random subject, is that prostitution
38:52
Speaker 2: is pretty much illegal throughout the country unless you're videotaping
38:55
Speaker 2: it then it's legal. Like that's that part is kind
38:58
Speaker 2: of a fuck. You know, yeah, that's.
39:00
Speaker 3: Been that way for for for a while. There was
39:04
Speaker 3: a California State Supreme Court case on that whole issue,
39:10
Speaker 3: and it was like, well, porn, you know, the production
39:12
Speaker 3: of porn should be illegal. This was like thirty years
39:15
Speaker 3: ago because basically, basically it's prostitution. You're you're, you know,
39:19
Speaker 3: you're paying someone to have these sex acts. But it
39:21
Speaker 3: was like, but you're producing this media. And that was
39:24
Speaker 3: the technicality that ruled the day. But it can be
39:31
Speaker 3: quite wishy washy. The the idea though, of preventing kids
39:37
Speaker 3: from accessing it, which you know, everyone would support the issue,
39:41
Speaker 3: as if in doing so, the law becomes restrictive enough
39:45
Speaker 3: that it prevents adults from accessing speech that's already protected,
39:49
Speaker 3: and that's the same shit they argued about in the nineties.
39:52
Speaker 3: Playboy was arguing about this in nineteen ninety nine and
39:55
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court case when they struck down a part
39:59
Speaker 3: of the Decency Act, and uh, well, shit, we're still
40:02
Speaker 3: arguing about it now. Every new technology just brings back
40:06
Speaker 3: the the old anxieties.
40:11
Speaker 2: As this kind of broader question, but just as a
40:14
Speaker 2: researcher and an author is has that always been kind
40:18
Speaker 2: of your style or do you ever fall into like
40:21
Speaker 2: more commentary and more opinion because it seems like in
40:24
Speaker 2: your writing I can kind of tell where you fall politically,
40:28
Speaker 2: but I'm assuming, But do you feel like you're more
40:31
Speaker 2: of like kind of a historian reporter or how do
40:34
Speaker 2: you how did you decide and come to where you
40:36
Speaker 2: are with with with your authorism.
40:40
Speaker 3: Oh that's a good question. I I tried to present
40:47
Speaker 3: things impartially, but I write them as if I have
40:53
Speaker 3: an OpEd with the viewpoint. So I don't think it's
40:56
Speaker 3: hard to read my books and know where I stand
40:58
Speaker 3: on most issues. I'd be very surprised if someone actually
41:01
Speaker 3: read my book and is like, oh, that guy's a
41:04
Speaker 3: big right winger. Yeah, But I try to not beat
41:15
Speaker 3: them over the head. With it, So I don't want
41:17
Speaker 3: it to be a screed or I'm just saying, like,
41:19
Speaker 3: I know all my opinion is sacrist saying like just
41:24
Speaker 3: listen to me, shout you down while you're wrong. I
41:26
Speaker 3: think like Paul Krugman does that, even though he's a
41:29
Speaker 3: very smart economist that I find his columns unbearable to read.
41:32
Speaker 3: But the like authors I like to read and opinion
41:37
Speaker 3: writers I like to read, are informed and you kind
41:40
Speaker 3: of know where they're going with it, but they they
41:43
Speaker 3: at least present the other side enough that you can see, well,
41:49
Speaker 3: maybe I'm not with him on this, but I could
41:51
Speaker 3: see why he's saying that.
41:53
Speaker 2: You kind of think as a compliment, But you kind
41:55
Speaker 2: of remind me of like a Rachel Maddow because like
41:58
Speaker 2: every time I watch her, or like even hear her,
42:01
Speaker 2: it's like she does like a history lesson to get
42:03
Speaker 2: to the point, and by the time she gets to
42:06
Speaker 2: like the current point, she's already made her case. So
42:08
Speaker 2: it'd be really hard to like debate you, I feel
42:10
Speaker 2: on anything you have question.
42:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I'm assuming most of our listeners have never
42:18
Speaker 1: like written a book let alone five five books? Uh
42:22
Speaker 1: so just four four? Because I saw the one about
42:25
Speaker 1: was it Nebraska?
42:27
Speaker 2: Oh?
42:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's one about Nebraska. I could see how
42:29
Speaker 3: it look like five books turned on in sex effect
42:31
Speaker 3: or the same book. They gave it a different title
42:35
Speaker 3: and cover for the paperback, but it's like the same shit.
42:37
Speaker 1: Got it? Okay?
42:38
Speaker 3: Yeah?
42:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I've never Yeah, most of our listeners probably
42:41
Speaker 1: haven't written a book. So you've written multiple How what
42:44
Speaker 1: would you say is the hardest part?
42:45
Speaker 3: Like?
42:46
Speaker 1: Is it doing the research? Is it? How many? Like
42:49
Speaker 1: do you ever write something? Oh? That's it and then
42:51
Speaker 1: you keep thinking about it? Go, that's all I gotta
42:53
Speaker 1: readal Like, Like, how, what's the hardest part? I would say, Yeah,
42:55
Speaker 1: I'm asking.
42:57
Speaker 3: Getting an agent and getting the publisher. Getting to the
43:02
Speaker 3: point where you're gonna get someone to give you the
43:05
Speaker 3: chance to write the book is harder than executing and
43:09
Speaker 3: writing the book itself. I mean, man, getting an agent
43:13
Speaker 3: is uh. And you don't have to go that route.
43:15
Speaker 3: There are publishers that don't require an agent. You can
43:18
Speaker 3: self publish, You can do all sorts of shit without
43:21
Speaker 3: going that traditional route. But if you're going that traditional route,
43:23
Speaker 3: I mean, god, you got to write like query letter
43:26
Speaker 3: and you got to have a proposal, and every agent
43:30
Speaker 3: wants it in a different order or they want different
43:32
Speaker 3: things in it. So like you might have your template
43:35
Speaker 3: that you work off of, but you you have to
43:37
Speaker 3: read position everything and rework it for every single person
43:41
Speaker 3: you pitch. And like I I'm pretty shameless and how
43:47
Speaker 3: I blanket message and I'm persistent sometimes to my own
43:52
Speaker 3: detriment in my personal life. But professionally it works out.
43:55
Speaker 3: And I mean I got rejected by almost ninety literally
44:00
Speaker 3: agents before I got one, So that was like, that
44:02
Speaker 3: was a that was a fucking terrible process that to
44:05
Speaker 3: me was more painful and boring and just a slog
44:10
Speaker 3: then actually sitting down and writing the book.
44:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, have you found it a little bit easier now
44:15
Speaker 1: that you have a few books under your belt, like
44:16
Speaker 1: or people are more willing to like take a meeting
44:18
Speaker 1: with you and everything.
44:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does get easier. The first one is is
44:24
Speaker 3: the hardest, and like I mean I still have never
44:27
Speaker 3: had like a huge contract with like as Simon and
44:30
Speaker 3: Schuster or something like that, but you know, the response
44:35
Speaker 3: rate is higher, and also putting them together I think
44:38
Speaker 3: is easier. Like the amount of time it took me
44:43
Speaker 3: to write this book is like much less than it
44:46
Speaker 3: took me to do sex effect And you're always read
44:48
Speaker 3: positioning shit and this was pure reviewed, so I had
44:51
Speaker 3: you know, a process with that too, but it wasn't
44:55
Speaker 3: like doing it the first time, just is more challenging.
45:00
Speaker 2: And in hindsight with uh, that's the subject of the book,
45:04
Speaker 2: really book, really quick. So hindsight is twenty twenty. But like,
45:07
Speaker 2: what are you with these you know, cultural you know,
45:11
Speaker 2: low points. What are you seeing nowadays that you're like,
45:15
Speaker 2: this is gonna be a book I'm gonna have to
45:18
Speaker 2: write in twenty years about right now?
45:20
Speaker 1: Great?
45:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, Like what are you what are you
45:23
Speaker 2: noticing that you're like, oh my god, here we go.
45:27
Speaker 3: Oh man, I mean in our you know, in our
45:30
Speaker 3: in our society and in our in our national politics.
45:33
Speaker 3: It's kind of everything's a shit show. But like you're
45:37
Speaker 3: talking more specifically like pop culture.
45:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, more pop culture society.
45:42
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. I would say the stuff that's pretty interesting
45:47
Speaker 3: in pop cultures is like what's happening with I'd say
45:52
Speaker 3: influencers online and yeah, and then in what podcast? There's
45:57
Speaker 3: two And I wouldn't say that necessarily has to be
45:59
Speaker 3: low culture, but the you know, podcasts, I feel like
46:04
Speaker 3: we're pretty dismissed until not that long ago by like
46:08
Speaker 3: a lot of people like, oh, you have you have
46:09
Speaker 3: a podcast? Everyone has a podcast? Whatever? What are these
46:12
Speaker 3: podcast things? And now like they they have more sway
46:16
Speaker 3: than like TV shows do or or then like you know,
46:20
Speaker 3: television talk shows do. I mean, my god, the influence
46:23
Speaker 3: of the election was crazy with podcasters. So I feel
46:28
Speaker 3: like we're in a golden age of of those two
46:30
Speaker 3: things with like social media influencers and podcasters and those
46:34
Speaker 3: are linked, like, you know, a lot of the most
46:36
Speaker 3: popular podcasters are have big social accounts, and uh, I
46:43
Speaker 3: think the influence of it will be better appreciated than
46:47
Speaker 3: half a generation from now.
46:48
Speaker 2: So that's that's more of like a net positive that
46:51
Speaker 2: it might It's almost like video games, where when it
46:53
Speaker 2: started it was more negatively looked at, but now it's
46:57
Speaker 2: kind of evolved already to a positive. But the influencer
47:00
Speaker 2: culture is one that you're like that might not age
47:04
Speaker 2: very well.
47:05
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think influencers, you know, they're producing
47:09
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff, so it's you know, it can
47:11
Speaker 3: be viewed as amateurish, but even now some of the
47:17
Speaker 3: stuff they do is probably like consider it of you know,
47:22
Speaker 3: amy type material like that, like the top the top
47:24
Speaker 3: tier influencers, and with the people younger than me, they
47:29
Speaker 3: won't see much of a difference between an influencer and
47:32
Speaker 3: like a A list celebrity that's in the Newest Disney movie,
47:37
Speaker 3: whereas like someone who's fifty, Like they're like, what the
47:39
Speaker 3: fuck is this influencer? I never heard of them? What
47:40
Speaker 3: do they matter? But like someone under thirty, that's just
47:45
Speaker 3: their celebrity. And I think that's very interesting if that is.
47:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, my kid is fourteen and doesn't know really that
47:52
Speaker 2: many celebrities like I'm sure he's recognized them, like the
47:55
Speaker 2: movie stars, but yeah, if he noticed these people that
47:59
Speaker 2: go on gaming streams and just like scream and like
48:05
Speaker 2: or they are like very provocative on social I don't
48:09
Speaker 2: know who these people are, but yeah, they're just like
48:11
Speaker 2: in a in a basement somewhere. I don't know. But
48:14
Speaker 2: he has no idea who like Nicole Kid. Well he
48:15
Speaker 2: does because I'm his dad, So he does no no
48:17
Speaker 2: Cold kid Man. He has no you know Tom Cruise.
48:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, he doesn't know Tom Cruise.
48:22
Speaker 3: I don't know if he does or not.
48:24
Speaker 2: I've been pushing my kids. I've been like trying to
48:31
Speaker 2: because the right wings always like, oh, the gays are
48:34
Speaker 2: trying to push their agenda.
48:35
Speaker 3: Yeah.
48:35
Speaker 2: I've been trying to push Judy Garland on him for
48:38
Speaker 2: so long and he just always comes back with like
48:41
Speaker 2: one of the Peyton Manning.
48:42
Speaker 1: Or whatever they are called. So I try.
48:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, the kids can't be influenced.
48:49
Speaker 3: What would you like he's experiencing. I think that's pretty common,
48:53
Speaker 3: like that view on celebrity. I think that's really common
48:56
Speaker 3: with a kid that age. Yeah.
48:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have two daughters and six teen to seventeen,
49:00
Speaker 1: and I've heard them talking about like like my daughter
49:04
Speaker 1: is like, hey, have you heard about I don't know.
49:05
Speaker 1: I'll just make of a name, Ashley Building's Worth and
49:09
Speaker 1: then I don't know. And then Maddie, my older daughter,
49:12
Speaker 1: was like, oh yeah I heard that's crazy they broke off.
49:13
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, who's that. I thought it was one
49:15
Speaker 1: of their friends. Oh, just some influencers. I'm like, oh,
49:17
Speaker 1: crazy that. It's like a thing. I don't know. Yes,
49:20
Speaker 1: I feel like.
49:20
Speaker 2: The generation, like our generation, the millennial generation, is the
49:23
Speaker 2: one that really got sucked over with pop culture. Was
49:25
Speaker 2: like you were saying, because it was like the Internet,
49:27
Speaker 2: our parents didn't know what was going on, but like
49:29
Speaker 2: I was playing grand theft daughter and I was like,
49:31
Speaker 2: how do you turn it off where like the police
49:33
Speaker 2: can't come when you start killing people? And Jackson was.
49:36
Speaker 4: Like, don't do that.
49:37
Speaker 5: Like my kid was like, don't just shoot people like
49:40
Speaker 5: and I was like, oh, valid, sorry, hopefully your agents
49:45
Speaker 5: are your people are don't listen to our podcast, even
49:48
Speaker 5: though we are two time award winning we do have
49:51
Speaker 5: some Have you listened to any of our episodes?
49:55
Speaker 3: Only when I started prepping for this.
49:57
Speaker 2: Oh what what episode did you listen to? If youn't
49:59
Speaker 2: liked me asking? My gosh with the one where I
50:02
Speaker 2: my pants, it.
50:03
Speaker 3: Was within the last like month, like it was it
50:06
Speaker 3: was a recent one.
50:06
Speaker 2: Oh okay, Yeah, the Blueberry episode is a news episode
50:11
Speaker 2: that I talk about how I like accidentally poop myself.
50:14
Speaker 3: Anyway, listen to the I listened to the eighties special
50:17
Speaker 3: was one of Oh that was a good one.
50:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we weren't.
50:19
Speaker 3: I don't remember anyone pooping themselves.
50:20
Speaker 2: Oh that's the next episode, but okay, it happens with
50:24
Speaker 2: a It's all good.
50:24
Speaker 3: I mean I got alsted of clitus, I've I've shipped
50:27
Speaker 3: my pants. Before it happened.
50:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, we need to rate, like break the stigma. What
50:31
Speaker 2: would you like our listener to take away from your
50:34
Speaker 2: book and you know your.
50:36
Speaker 3: Future reader, Oh, just that the aspects of pop culture
50:42
Speaker 3: that are the most mocked or the ones that seem
50:47
Speaker 3: like they turned people off the most can actually be
50:50
Speaker 3: very powerful and influence our world in ways that are underappreciated.
50:55
Speaker 3: So we learn a lot by paying attention to those
50:57
Speaker 3: things rather than just dismissing them.
51:01
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you kind of have to like not just
51:02
Speaker 2: take it for surface value.
51:05
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's also to be it could also
51:09
Speaker 1: be taken as like a warning, like something that's something
51:11
Speaker 1: just so submissive. You never know the outcome of what
51:13
Speaker 1: this could be in the future, you know, like who
51:15
Speaker 1: would have thought that Joe Rogan, you know, ten years
51:18
Speaker 1: ago starting that podcast would have had this fucking crazy,
51:21
Speaker 1: awful thing on America now where all these like awful dude, Like,
51:25
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's.
51:25
Speaker 2: Just what's the other side is like us where we're
51:28
Speaker 2: liberals and I'm like, which terrorist hijacker would I fuck?
51:30
Speaker 1: Yeah?
51:31
Speaker 2: Like, so liberals are doing much to help and.
51:33
Speaker 1: I've been pretentious my whole life. I'm like yeah, of
51:35
Speaker 1: course I go to the ballet. You don't, so thank you.
51:39
Speaker 2: Uh ROSSI You're gonna be like the savior for our generation.
51:44
Speaker 2: People like you because Andy and I are sometimes we're
51:48
Speaker 2: we're the low part of culture sometimes with our podcast.
51:51
Speaker 1: And I'm like, yeah, of course I watched Singing It
51:52
Speaker 1: at the Rain last night, and then my friends will
51:54
Speaker 1: make fun of I'm like, okay, whatever, just because your
51:56
Speaker 1: own culture.
51:57
Speaker 2: I've seen every single celebrity the sex.
52:01
Speaker 1: Tape, I would like to think, so I've seen, yeah, yeah,
52:05
Speaker 1: that I would.
52:07
Speaker 3: I think I stopped anything post twenty ten. I probably
52:11
Speaker 3: haven't seen, but like Pam Anderson to like twenty ten,
52:15
Speaker 3: I've probably seen. Yeah, that was like the hated the whole.
52:19
Speaker 2: That one was more real. The court was more within
52:22
Speaker 2: the last like five or ten years where he got
52:23
Speaker 2: like like three mills.
52:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think the Hogan court case was probably
52:30
Speaker 3: like twenty sixteen, but the sex tape would have been
52:33
Speaker 3: sooner than that.
52:34
Speaker 2: And he was so why did did you do much
52:38
Speaker 2: reading into that court case?
52:40
Speaker 3: Like yeah, well, so, I mean I I used to
52:42
Speaker 3: work for dead Spin, which was owned by Gocker, which
52:46
Speaker 3: you know died in this thing that we're uh discussing
52:52
Speaker 3: and in fact, this whole Togan thing is one of
52:55
Speaker 3: those crazy moments that like made me want to write
52:59
Speaker 3: this book because he's like pretending to be the wrestler
53:02
Speaker 3: even when he's in court.
53:03
Speaker 1: Oh that part blew my mind. In your book when
53:06
Speaker 1: he's like, no, my penis size, that's Hulks penis size,
53:09
Speaker 1: but not Harry. But I was like, what that's great? Yeah, yeah,
53:15
Speaker 1: weird he blew.
53:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, that blew my mind. Brick, you have any anything else?
53:21
Speaker 3: Now him and his uh ten inch penis or his
53:25
Speaker 3: character's tenanch penis are dead and gone.
53:29
Speaker 1: I just do you think in nineteen ninety nine or
53:31
Speaker 1: someone while you're watching like Hollywood Hogan, Right, if somebody
53:34
Speaker 1: went like, hey, when you become an adult, he's gonna
53:37
Speaker 1: have a sex video that's gonna make you lose your job.
53:39
Speaker 1: You're gonna be like, wait, what is this gonna affect me?
53:43
Speaker 2: Wait? What's going on?
53:44
Speaker 3: That is a weird butterfa.
53:47
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly cool, perfect, uh perfect.
53:51
Speaker 3: Well that's interesting brother.
53:54
Speaker 2: Well well, Ross, where can our listener and your future
53:57
Speaker 2: reader find you and find your books? Well?
54:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, you can reach me at my website ros
54:03
Speaker 3: spinish dot com I'm occasionally on Twitter, but I I
54:09
Speaker 3: don't tweet a whole lot.
54:10
Speaker 2: You don't twat very much.
54:12
Speaker 1: I don't.
54:14
Speaker 2: Sorry, Please, what are and I don't know if you're
54:18
Speaker 2: allowed to say, but what are you working on now?
54:22
Speaker 3: I don't have any book thing going. I have my
54:24
Speaker 3: day job as a market analyst, and I'm watching watching
54:29
Speaker 3: two little kids all day.
54:31
Speaker 4: That's full.
54:32
Speaker 2: That's two full time jobs right there. But I'm really
54:34
Speaker 2: curious to see. I'm curious to get into your other
54:36
Speaker 2: books and because it's definitely I'm curious to see what
54:40
Speaker 2: I'm going to learn from it. And because I need
54:44
Speaker 2: to be.
54:44
Speaker 4: More well read number one, because I do read a lot.
54:47
Speaker 2: But I am bringing back the tabloid magazines again, another
54:51
Speaker 2: low point in culture. But I'm starting I want to
54:53
Speaker 2: bring that back, like something about having that tangible like
54:57
Speaker 2: that ink that just smears on your fingertips.
55:00
Speaker 1: I love that.
55:01
Speaker 2: I crave it so.
55:02
Speaker 1: And is there a specific spot you would like the
55:05
Speaker 1: listeners to find your book at, Like is one better
55:07
Speaker 1: than the other, like Barnes and Noble, Amazon or wherever
55:10
Speaker 1: you know?
55:10
Speaker 3: I mean, you know bookshop is better than that, Amazon
55:13
Speaker 3: for sure. And University Press of Kansas websites pretty decent.
55:19
Speaker 3: They usually have a promo to get free shipping. I
55:22
Speaker 3: don't know what the hell the code is now, because
55:23
Speaker 3: the last one ran sorry, last one ran out. I
55:28
Speaker 3: should ask them for a promo code.
55:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you get one to us and we can
55:31
Speaker 2: put it in our show notes, I'm like, where to
55:32
Speaker 2: find you and and where the preferred route would be
55:36
Speaker 2: to the listener. I definitely think this is a book
55:38
Speaker 2: to grab if you are somebody that, well, if you're
55:42
Speaker 2: gonna read this book, you at least have a little
55:44
Speaker 2: bit of like intelligence. Still, the ones that are like
55:47
Speaker 2: we're smashing their heads with like chairs and stuff, they're
55:49
Speaker 2: probably not gonna they should.
55:50
Speaker 1: Be read wrestlers.
55:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I do. I go. I go to hold
55:55
Speaker 2: things like I am, I am. I want to be
55:59
Speaker 2: a Juggalo, like full on. I used to go to
56:01
Speaker 2: local wrestling matches and be like his knob and then
56:04
Speaker 2: people be like, dude, this is like a family event.
56:07
Speaker 2: I'm like, are you kidding me? This is like fucking
56:09
Speaker 2: gay porn right there?
56:10
Speaker 4: This is gay.
56:11
Speaker 2: This is sophomore gay porn. What I'm watching Jesus.
56:14
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, especially if you're listening to this podcast, you
56:16
Speaker 1: will enjoy this book because I loved it. I had
56:18
Speaker 1: the whole thing. I read it in like three days
56:20
Speaker 1: or something like that, and it was awesome and just
56:22
Speaker 1: so many little things facts I didn't like. Some of
56:25
Speaker 1: the stuff that I got I took away from it
56:27
Speaker 1: blew my mind. I was like, and then, just like
56:29
Speaker 1: you said earlier, after you read it and you start living
56:32
Speaker 1: your life and you're just seeing all these and then
56:34
Speaker 1: you're like, fuck, there's another connection and it really brought
56:37
Speaker 1: brought into your outlook on like.
56:39
Speaker 4: This is how sad I was.
56:40
Speaker 2: I was like defensive of Limp Biscuit while reading this book,
56:43
Speaker 2: and then I.
56:44
Speaker 1: Like, I took I love.
56:48
Speaker 4: Learning that, like I'm moving.
56:50
Speaker 2: In a move oll like I remember like learning that
56:52
Speaker 2: little dance move and ship like. I was super defensive.
56:56
Speaker 2: And then once I like, know, y'all be loving and
57:00
Speaker 2: then when you like, when you break down how we
57:03
Speaker 2: were programmed to like Limp Biscuit at that time, I
57:05
Speaker 2: was like, fuck, here we go.
57:07
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the whole Payola scandal from like
57:10
Speaker 1: the fifteen seconds. I was like, Wow, that's connection. Yeah, yeah,
57:13
Speaker 1: those really Yeah.
57:15
Speaker 3: I like Limp Biscuit though, too. Chocolate Starfish was yeap
57:19
Speaker 3: was one of my favorite albums when I was like
57:21
Speaker 3: ten years old.
57:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think for the listener that that's more
57:24
Speaker 2: like me and the future here, that's more like me.
57:27
Speaker 2: Just you can love what you love, but you can
57:32
Speaker 2: still be critical of what you love, and I think
57:34
Speaker 2: that's that's the point of the Jeff listener. Yeah yeah,
57:38
Speaker 2: all right, Well.
57:38
Speaker 3: That's a good way to put it.
57:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's great.
57:40
Speaker 3: Yeah.
57:41
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, Ross, thank you so much for coming by
57:44
Speaker 2: and like and hit and staying up late with us,
57:46
Speaker 2: and and I'm excited to touch base with you about
57:49
Speaker 2: finding more info about where listeners can find you, and
57:52
Speaker 2: then I'm excited to dive into some more of your
57:54
Speaker 2: more of your work.
57:56
Speaker 3: Well, thanks so much, guys, Yeah, thank you.
57:57
Speaker 1: We really appreciate it.
57:58
Speaker 2: Have a good night.
58:04
Speaker 1: Well that was our interview with Ross.
58:06
Speaker 2: So Andy, I wanted to do a deep dive really
58:10
Speaker 2: quick and talk to you about some of the reviews
58:14
Speaker 2: of the book, but I think that's more what you got.
58:16
Speaker 2: What I got is I did some research on Ross's book,
58:19
Speaker 2: and I found some of the five star reviews. But
58:22
Speaker 2: what I did was I went on Amazon, found the
58:24
Speaker 2: five star reviews, and then I went to what the
58:25
Speaker 2: reviewer was also reviewing on Amazon nice and I found
58:30
Speaker 2: one of his five star reviewers had recently purchased a
58:33
Speaker 2: stroller for their dog. Gave them a three star review
58:35
Speaker 2: for the stroller, gave a five star to Ross's book,
58:39
Speaker 2: bought glitter, platform sneakers, and a Seanda Rhyme's books she's
58:44
Speaker 2: the creator of like Grey's Anatomy and How to Get
58:47
Speaker 2: Away with Murder and stuff. I guess she like writes
58:49
Speaker 2: books too. Another reviewer recently bought and reviewed a bidet,
58:55
Speaker 2: saying that the bidet is easy to install and works well.
58:58
Speaker 2: Only complaint is the water pressure is very high. We
59:01
Speaker 2: have to barely turn the knob otherwise the pressure is
59:04
Speaker 2: too strong. That review We're also bought and reviewed another
59:09
Speaker 2: one of the book books of Ross's Rural Rebellion, and
59:13
Speaker 2: also gave it a glowy in review. So his listeners
59:17
Speaker 2: are readers that are really into his books, have clean tushies,
59:21
Speaker 2: and they really care about their dogs and.
59:22
Speaker 1: Glitter yeah, and The Gray's Anatomy.
59:26
Speaker 3: Yeah.
59:26
Speaker 4: So I thought that was rad.
59:27
Speaker 2: So I think I think that was awesome that he
59:31
Speaker 2: came on our podcast. I think it's a valid book
59:34
Speaker 2: to it totally makes sense that he would be our
59:36
Speaker 2: first official Notable Nostalgia Book Club selection. So anything else
59:41
Speaker 2: you want to say.
59:43
Speaker 1: No, we just want to say, you know, thank you
59:44
Speaker 1: so much. Ross. It was great to have you on
59:46
Speaker 1: the podcast. Every time we do an interview. You're always
59:48
Speaker 1: a little nervous, well at least for me. I don't
59:49
Speaker 1: want to speak for you, but I'm always a little nervous.
59:51
Speaker 1: But you're really easy to talk to. Hopefully we'll be
59:53
Speaker 1: back on the podcast and to all our listeners, make
59:55
Speaker 1: sure you go check out that book because while you're
59:57
Speaker 1: reading it, it's going to start bringing back all these
59:59
Speaker 1: memories that you got you had from the nineties. That's
1:00:01
Speaker 1: pretty cool.
1:00:01
Speaker 2: And if you if you think I'm not a good interviewer,
1:00:04
Speaker 2: Andy's not. Andy's a great interviewer. But if you think
1:00:06
Speaker 2: I'm a bad interviewer, then fuck you, because you're judging
1:00:09
Speaker 2: somebody that's interviewing on a podcast. You're listening to a podcast,
1:00:12
Speaker 2: Like how pathetic do you have to be to listen
1:00:14
Speaker 2: to a podcast?
1:00:15
Speaker 1: Make sure you leave us a five star review, leave
1:00:17
Speaker 1: us a five star review on all of the you
1:00:20
Speaker 1: know platforms.
1:00:21
Speaker 2: If you leave us a five star review, that would
1:00:23
Speaker 2: be fabulous and follow us on social media. Follow Guscus
1:00:26
Speaker 2: My Dog and at guscus Underscore the dog Bing on
1:00:29
Speaker 2: Instagram and at the beginning of the show we talked
1:00:33
Speaker 2: about the AIDS Walk that I'm doing. So if you
1:00:37
Speaker 2: want to signed picture of gus then follow the links
1:00:40
Speaker 2: on our socials and Guscus will send you a signed
1:00:43
Speaker 2: photo of himself every Yeah, until next time, I'm.
1:00:46
Speaker 1: Jeff, I'm Andy Blade, all right, and we'll.
1:00:48
Speaker 2: See you next Tuesday.
1:00:50
Speaker 1: Tell the wire and that's a wrap for this episode
1:00:56
Speaker 1: of Notable Nostalgia. We hope you enjoyed our trip down
1:00:59
Speaker 1: memory lane just as much as we did. If you
1:01:01
Speaker 1: love reminiscing with us, don't forget to subscribe great and
1:01:04
Speaker 1: leave a review and be sure to tune in next
1:01:06
Speaker 1: time for more nostalgic fund Notable Nostalgia was created by
1:01:09
Speaker 1: Alij Warren, produced by Andrew Lipsy, and edited by Andrew Lipsy.
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Speaker 1: You can find us at Facebook dot com, slash Notable Nostalgia,
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Speaker 1: email at Notable Nostalgia ninety at gmail dot com. Catch
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Speaker 1: you on the flip side Nostalgia nerds,