Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to What Future. I'm your host, Joshua Topolski,
Speaker 1: and I'm very excited about today's show. We've got a
Speaker 1: tremendous guest. I've been listening to this podcast which just
Speaker 1: came out to its early days called Stiff, which is
Speaker 1: really about I'm not going to get too much into
Speaker 1: the explanation, is that two of my favorite things, which
Speaker 1: is pornography and magazines. So we should just get into
Speaker 1: the conversation. We've got the creator and the host here,
Speaker 1: Jennifer Ramalini, and she's going to tell us all about
Speaker 1: it and talk about this fascinating story.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I should bring this up, but
Speaker 2: I'm just going to bring it up place do. I
Speaker 2: was like, I know him? How do I know him?
Speaker 2: Because I, on my own career was a digital media
Speaker 2: executive and your name came up a lot. But I
Speaker 2: was mixing you up with some other guy who's a
Speaker 2: total asshole, and is it I want to know it?
Speaker 2: Like another boy genius who got to be like the
Speaker 2: head of something, while like no ladies were getting any
Speaker 2: funding except if they were strutting around like men. So
Speaker 2: that was it. And I was like, is this going
Speaker 2: to give me PTSD being on this, you know, like,
Speaker 2: and then I looked up and I was like, oh, no,
Speaker 2: it's him.
Speaker 1: I hope not. I'm pretty I'm pretty harmless for the
Speaker 1: most part. I think I probably the first off first
Speaker 1: a huge compliment. I think you kind of off handedly
Speaker 1: referred to me as a boy genius, which I like
Speaker 1: sounds great, which one makes me feel youthful, which I'm
Speaker 1: definitely not, and also like a genius anyhow, Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't think we've ever actually met, no, but I feel
Speaker 1: like we know a ton of the same people, which.
Speaker 2: Is, yeah, we know a lot of this, all the
Speaker 2: same scammers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. You know, it's funny. I'm dying now to
Speaker 1: know who this person is you're thinking of. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: going through there's so many men who kind of could
Speaker 1: fit the description of like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like bullshitters who were just getting all the
Speaker 2: money in the time when I was working in digital
Speaker 2: media where I was like getting pats on the head
Speaker 2: and like that I should wear more fuck me pumps and.
Speaker 1: Like, oh my god, somebody somebody actually say you should
Speaker 1: wear more fuck me pumps.
Speaker 2: Oh, one hundred percent. That's like the least of it.
Speaker 2: I was getting pats on the head, pats on the
Speaker 2: bare knees, you know.
Speaker 1: I know, no actual pats, Yeah, pats, real pets. I now, listen,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm going to be confronted with something in the future.
Speaker 1: But I feel like when I hear these stories about
Speaker 1: guys in media, I'm like, wow, I'm like pretty normal
Speaker 1: or whatever. Yeah, as far as I know, it never
Speaker 1: occurred to me to like pat anybody on the head.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know who knows well.
Speaker 2: To be fair. This was the time when like just
Speaker 2: the worst businessmen, like not a creative in their body,
Speaker 2: like it could barely even spell. We're like taking over media.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of so many people right now that would
Speaker 1: fall into this category.
Speaker 2: And it was like they're giving you direction. And at
Speaker 2: this point, I'm doing this for ten fifteen years and
Speaker 2: they're saying no, no, no, you need a story on this, right.
Speaker 2: I remember some one guy was like, you should put
Speaker 2: more nip slips on the webs on the website, and
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't think women want to see
Speaker 2: nip slips, certain.
Speaker 1: Nip slips, Okay, sorry what website?
Speaker 2: Was this just to because I was I was in
Speaker 2: magazines for a long time. I was in magazines for
Speaker 2: like the first eight years of my career, and then
Speaker 2: then for the next ten or so I was in digital.
Speaker 2: I was at Yahoo for a long time. I love Yahoo,
Speaker 2: and then come on my favorite Yahoo.
Speaker 1: Nobody I worked today, well when I started this business, so.
Speaker 2: Nobody loves Yahoo, and nobody's loved Yahoo since it was
Speaker 2: like a competitor with Alta Vista, Like, it's.
Speaker 1: Time to return to Yahoo's what the world I don't.
Speaker 2: Even know what it's called now, It's like Verizon Yahoo.
Speaker 2: It's like Verizon who I don't it's changed names so
Speaker 2: many times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but no.
Speaker 2: A lot of male executives like sort of like circled
Speaker 2: through there and I ran a very successful women's site
Speaker 2: for them, and it was not quality, but it was
Speaker 2: very successful and met all of the demands that needed
Speaker 2: to meet.
Speaker 1: Nip nip slips on that website.
Speaker 2: No nip slips, but you know a lot of like
Speaker 2: you know, things you didn't know you could do with
Speaker 2: your dishwasher, okay, like low budget recipes. It was like
Speaker 2: I understood the directive, which was, let's make a USA
Speaker 2: today for you know, for women online, and that's what
Speaker 2: we did. And we had fifty million unique users, and
Speaker 2: you know it was crazy.
Speaker 1: It's like a broad consumer offering for the ladies.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get that. I get that. Lots of that
Speaker 1: on the Internet now, too much of it now. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we have to we have to stop. We have to
Speaker 1: stop the Internet. Okay, So I've been listening to the podcast.
Speaker 1: You've got this new podcast called Stiff, which is about
Speaker 1: a lot of what we're talking about. Actually right now,
Speaker 1: I assume it's on your mind. Yeah, it's also for me.
Speaker 1: I'm a magazine like freak, like I love magazine. Yes,
Speaker 1: to me, this story is such a media story about
Speaker 1: the creation of a magazine and all of the things
Speaker 1: that can go wrong, and all of the personalities and
Speaker 1: the ways they can clash. But just to get into it,
Speaker 1: can you tell me if you oka you're describing this
Speaker 1: podcast as somebody who's never heard of it before, could
Speaker 1: you give me the description of what the show is
Speaker 1: about and what you want it to be about.
Speaker 2: So, in nineteen seventy three, Bob Guccioni launches a feminist
Speaker 2: porn magazine called Viva. The price of Admission for these
Speaker 2: feminist writers, these very scrappy seventies feminist writers, very smart,
Speaker 2: coming from the village voice, coming from Miz, coming out
Speaker 2: of Newsweek. The price of admission for them to be
Speaker 2: able to write all of these stories that they really
Speaker 2: want to write, really progressive stories about sexuality and desire
Speaker 2: and careers and ambition and almost really interesting, meaty topics.
Speaker 2: They published a lot of fiction, really interesting magazine. The
Speaker 2: price of admission for them is that they are in
Speaker 2: a feminist porn magazine. And next to their really smart
Speaker 2: and compelling articles that have like beautiful headlines and beautiful art,
Speaker 2: are these very clumsy pictures of Dix. So it was
Speaker 2: supposed to be a porn magazine, Eurotica magazine for women,
Speaker 2: but Guccioni never let them in on any of the decisions.
Speaker 2: Bob Guccioni, in case anybody doesn't know it, was the
Speaker 2: founder of Penhouse. Penhouse. When he published it was a
Speaker 2: runaway success, one of the biggest magazine success stories of
Speaker 2: all time. It started to beat Playboy right away. He
Speaker 2: had very good business instincts. He started to show pubis
Speaker 2: because Hugh Hefner was not.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a great instinct.
Speaker 2: I mean, no, I mean it was, I mean the
Speaker 2: way and the way he showed it was not It
Speaker 2: was not raunchy at least then he was. He was
Speaker 2: doing a lot of the photography himself. It was done
Speaker 2: really cheaply. Some of the people who worked for him,
Speaker 2: who went on to work at startups were like, working
Speaker 2: for him was how I to work at a startup
Speaker 2: because everything was pretty budget but it looked really good. Right.
Speaker 2: So he's come off this like runaway success with Penhouse.
Speaker 2: He's got all this money and he decides or he
Speaker 2: steals the idea from one of his female editors at
Speaker 2: Penhouse to start a Penhouse for women, and he hires
Speaker 2: all of these, as I said, smart feminist, scrappy writers,
Speaker 2: but he doesn't give them any say on what the
Speaker 2: erotica looks like. So the magazine is incredibly disjointed. It's
Speaker 2: like almost a parody of female sexuality in terms of
Speaker 2: its erotica, and it's porn. I mean, it's just these
Speaker 2: like balancing dicks in ridiculous poses. All the editors are like, ugh,
Speaker 2: I would have never have been turned on by that.
Speaker 2: But they get to write anything they want. They have
Speaker 2: a lot of money, they're paying a lot by the word,
Speaker 2: they're hiring really incredible writers. They're doing like feminist symposiums.
Speaker 2: It's a really interesting magazine that makes absolutely no sense,
Speaker 2: and it's beautiful, it's highly designed, it's expensive, and I
Speaker 2: am also a magazine freak. Like it was the only
Speaker 2: thing I ever wanted to do. I've been collecting magazines forever.
Speaker 2: When I came across this in like two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: no earlier than that, like two thousand and four, actually
Speaker 2: I had never seen anything like it. It was like,
Speaker 2: this was the magazine I had wished I had worked for. Right,
Speaker 2: you could feel that this was a time when this
Speaker 2: was writing and stories and not content. This was before
Speaker 2: we started calling what we do content. And like Viva
Speaker 2: never made any money, and it wasn't about that. It
Speaker 2: was about like this sort of spirit of creativity and collaboration.
Speaker 2: And so the podcast just sort of follows the whole
Speaker 2: arc of the magazine, which is from seventy three to
Speaker 2: seventy nine, and it really tracks that entire time period,
Speaker 2: like the early seventies hopefulness, you know, Roe V. Wade
Speaker 2: has passed to seventy nine, when the moral Majority is
Speaker 2: coming in, Reagan's coming in, everything's changing, the feminist movement
Speaker 2: is fractured and so it's losing all its power. So
Speaker 2: I really wanted to tell the story about this magazine
Speaker 2: and tell a really dorky inside baseball story about magazines,
Speaker 2: but also the arc of the sexual revolution, the parallels
Speaker 2: to today, how the sexual revolution wasn't actually that revolutionary
Speaker 2: for women at all, all of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I've been listening to it. I haven't listened
Speaker 1: to all of it. I don't even know if is
Speaker 1: all of it out yet or are you're releasing it now?
Speaker 1: Like it's a week we're.
Speaker 2: In we're in process of releasing, so I think we're
Speaker 2: up to episode As of the time we're recording this,
Speaker 2: we're up to episode four.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I've listened to I started the third episode,
Speaker 1: so I'm not too not doing too bad. Your description
Speaker 1: of it encompasses a lot of I mean, it's such
Speaker 1: an interesting story and the character is in it, and
Speaker 1: I have to actually say, and perhaps this will make
Speaker 1: me sound like a complete pervert, but I'm interesting in
Speaker 1: particularly from these past eras like sixties and seventies Playboy,
Speaker 1: and so I've collected a few of these types of
Speaker 1: magazines that you know, like but I had never heard
Speaker 1: of Viva, and as soon as I started listening to it,
Speaker 1: I'm all right, let me Google, let me look at
Speaker 1: this thing. And it is like extremely fucking cool looking,
Speaker 1: like it just looks like a really really cool magazine.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was a teenager, I guess, and
Speaker 1: I first saw like Nylon, which was a magazine that
Speaker 1: was not for boys. I guess, like generally speaking, it
Speaker 1: was like a girl's magazine. Yeah, And I bought issues
Speaker 1: of it because I was like, this is so cool
Speaker 1: and interesting and has such good stories, like I don't
Speaker 1: even care like who it's supposed to be for or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I feel like looking at Viva had a very
Speaker 1: similar reaction. But like I was looking at images of
Speaker 1: it and then listening to your show, and there's such
Speaker 1: an interesting thread of like dissonance that that you kind
Speaker 1: of center on in a lot of these conversations where
Speaker 1: in my mind I only imagine Bob Guccioni, and he's
Speaker 1: sort of like this very tan guy. He's like a
Speaker 1: very very tan seventies guy.
Speaker 2: He's like a caricature of seventies masculine. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he doesn't even look like a real person. He's got
Speaker 2: the gold chains, the chest hair, he's greasy's the exactly
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: And in my mind, because I grew up, you know,
Speaker 1: the seventies, is you know, sort if I was a
Speaker 1: baby in the seventies, late seventies. But Bob Goocjdi was
Speaker 1: in the public light still for a long a long time,
Speaker 1: and he was like a figure, you know, he was
Speaker 1: like a Hugh halfnar kind of guy. But in my
Speaker 1: mind I always imagined him as being this extra sleazy
Speaker 1: seventies guy like which he definitely was to some extent.
Speaker 1: But you have a ton of recordings of him talking,
Speaker 1: and he sounds so much more interesting and intelligent than
Speaker 1: I think my or the public perception of him was.
Speaker 1: As you started to research this, was that surprising to
Speaker 1: you at all?
Speaker 2: I guess it was surprising. But he was a big
Speaker 2: draw for me because as soon as I started to
Speaker 2: learn anything about him, I realized that he was a
Speaker 2: fascinating character and that it wasn't going to be easy
Speaker 2: to just paint him as a villain, which who wants that?
Speaker 2: Who wants like a boring villain? That he was multifaceted
Speaker 2: and he didn't really want to be a pornographer. He
Speaker 2: wanted to be an artist, Like he really wanted to
Speaker 2: be an artist. He moved to Europe when he was
Speaker 2: like in his early twenties with like a couple of
Speaker 2: paint brushes and twenty four dollars. And I actually own
Speaker 2: one of his lithographs. Like his style is like very
Speaker 2: like Picasso want to be.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: But he really he really loved art, and he really
Speaker 2: loved women. And he was still a product of his time,
Speaker 2: you know, in terms of gender roles, and you know,
Speaker 2: his masculinity and like dominating and everything else. And he
Speaker 2: was also Italian American, which was also interesting for me
Speaker 2: because I'm Italian American. But he was a really complicated
Speaker 2: person and I think did a lot of good for
Speaker 2: a lot of people. He was really loyal, He paid
Speaker 2: women really well. He made women executives. You know, a
Speaker 2: lot of the women I spoke to said he made
Speaker 2: me in my career, he let me. That's where I
Speaker 2: came alive, was working under him. Like it's when it
Speaker 2: was the best time of my life.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And I don't hear that shit about Hugh Hefner.
Speaker 1: I mean that is interesting. Hefner certainly a larger figure
Speaker 1: on like this on the global stage when it comes
Speaker 1: to this space. But I guess not a great person.
Speaker 1: You know, I haven't done enough of like reading on
Speaker 1: Hugh Aftn to know exactly all of his flaws, though
Speaker 1: I understand there were many. One of the things I
Speaker 1: love about shows like yours, and in particular, what I've
Speaker 1: enjoyed so far in this is like I didn't know
Speaker 1: any of this, and I think I had a perception
Speaker 1: of who these people were in this place in time
Speaker 1: that was not actually square with reality. And and so
Speaker 1: I think like kind of as an aside, not even
Speaker 1: like your main course is not like let me recontextualize
Speaker 1: Bob GUCCIONI for you, but it is a very interesting
Speaker 1: thing to hear. And on top of that, and this
Speaker 1: is one that I think you haven't so far, you
Speaker 1: haven't talked about explicitly, but at the time, like magazines
Speaker 1: were massively important in a way that they're not now,
Speaker 1: And I'm interested to know, like you talk about Penhouse,
Speaker 1: which in my lifetime has always just been like, it's
Speaker 1: a porn magazine. Yeah, And in fact, my understanding of
Speaker 1: Penhouse was like it's not just a porn magazine, but
Speaker 1: like where Playboy was known for the articles or for
Speaker 1: the great writers or whatever. Penhouse was like, it's whatever,
Speaker 1: weird step cousin that didn't care about any of that
Speaker 1: and was just invested in like showing as much as
Speaker 1: they could. Is that also an inaccurate perception of like
Speaker 1: what he'd been doing with Penhouse?
Speaker 2: It is. I think Guccioni had a branding problem, right.
Speaker 2: Unlike hef who was like playing by the rules, super slick,
Speaker 2: Guccioni was like pushing boundaries everywhere.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So for the answer to the beginning of your question,
Speaker 2: it's absolutely Penhouse had great articles, it had great writers,
Speaker 2: it had no problem, It had amazing celebrity interviews. Because
Speaker 2: the seventies, people wanted to be associated with porn, which
Speaker 2: is a weird thing to say now because we can't
Speaker 2: even imagine that now, right, Like it's just it's a
Speaker 2: totally different life, But there was pornosk happening in the seventies.
Speaker 2: You know, Deep Throat is in mainstream theaters. Celebrities like
Speaker 2: Johnny Carson and Angela Lansberry are lining up to see
Speaker 2: Deep Throat like proudly it's separately, but like Jack Nicholson,
Speaker 2: like it was like a cool thing. It's like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's cultural currency.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So they had no problem, even Penhouse at the time,
Speaker 2: getting real writers, real stories. So the journalism was really excellent.
Speaker 2: Bob GUCCIONI just wanted the world to be different. He
Speaker 2: thought it was such bullshit that we were so uptight
Speaker 2: about sex, that we were so uptight about naked bodies.
Speaker 2: That he just was trying to like break through every
Speaker 2: sort of taboo. And he was really brave in a
Speaker 2: way that I think Hugh Hefner was not. And he
Speaker 2: pushed limits. You know, he did the oh god, why
Speaker 2: can I think of her name? The Miss America photos
Speaker 2: of Vanessa Williams. Vanessa Williams, Yes, right, yes, he published
Speaker 2: those in Penhouse. He published Vanessa Williams photos and Penhouse
Speaker 2: and people were up in arms about this, and he
Speaker 2: was like, he was like, look, she signed the release,
Speaker 2: she knew what she was doing. There's no reason. But
Speaker 2: also it's not a big deal. These photos are not
Speaker 2: a big deal.
Speaker 1: Right. That comes up a lot his attitude towards sex
Speaker 1: and nudity. I mean, it is He's right, I mean
Speaker 1: it is insane, I think, particularly in America. I mean
Speaker 1: obviously this is not just an American thing, but we
Speaker 1: are insanely puritanical and prudish about things that don't seem
Speaker 1: like that big of a deal. And the point about
Speaker 1: like it being like this kind of moment where like
Speaker 1: porn was having a moment is interesting because I do
Speaker 1: think it seeped into the culture. I think it's much
Speaker 1: more like I think if you're like you could be
Speaker 1: a huge celebrity and then you have an OnlyFans like
Speaker 1: where you do some nudity or whatever, I don't know
Speaker 1: that that's a big deal anymore. Like I feel like
Speaker 1: we've we've moved beyond that, you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like to think about all of this and to kind
Speaker 1: of think about this like liberation moment or this moment
Speaker 1: like you were talking about, and frankly, like what what
Speaker 1: drives Viva's existence? In some ways, this sort of moment
Speaker 1: for women where you didn't have to be you know,
Speaker 1: the housewife or whatever or be ashamed about, you know,
Speaker 1: your sexuality or whatever. In light of what's going on
Speaker 1: in the world right now where we've got like, you know,
Speaker 1: these huge political movements that are like trying to like
Speaker 1: rewind the clock in some way. It's interesting to hear
Speaker 1: how how many women were like wanted to participate in
Speaker 1: this in this space, like and I think like the
Speaker 1: hearing like a lot of the people who joined Viva,
Speaker 1: they were both embracing like the concept that there would
Speaker 1: it would be about sex, and it would be about
Speaker 1: porn and all these other things like, but also that
Speaker 1: it didn't have to just be about that. And I
Speaker 1: feel like we've lost That's the thing that feels like
Speaker 1: it's missing now, that like porn or sexuality or expl
Speaker 1: duration of that stuff can coexist on a higher intellectual
Speaker 1: plane in a popular form. That to me is something
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist anymore, Like we've neutered like that type
Speaker 1: of content. And I just wonder, like, you know, can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about what the editorial ethos
Speaker 1: was for the women working at Viva versus what Bob
Speaker 1: Goccioni was trying to do.
Speaker 2: So Viva comes out of the late sixties early seventies
Speaker 2: pro sex feminist movement right where they're really starting to
Speaker 2: talk about the c literal orgasm. They're starting to talk
Speaker 2: about female pleasure because the pill had come along in
Speaker 2: the sixties, So now women are sort of free to
Speaker 2: explore their sexuality a little bit, right, Yeah, and this
Speaker 2: was a very confusing time for women because they're all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, they have all this sexual freedom, but
Speaker 2: they don't have any sexual protections. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: sexual assault happening. There's a lot of men demanding that
Speaker 2: their hip and sexy men pretty quickly comman dear this
Speaker 2: this sort of sexual freedom and take it away from them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy. Who could imagine such a shop exactly.
Speaker 2: You look at a movie like Deep Throat, which is
Speaker 2: about a woman who has orgasms can only have an
Speaker 2: orgasm because her clitteress is in the back of her throat,
Speaker 2: and she can only have an orgasm from giving a
Speaker 2: deep blowjob. Right.
Speaker 1: Is that's and that's medically accurate. That's a problem for
Speaker 1: a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously, no, I mean, look so, but what happens
Speaker 2: is this becomes a mockery of everything that these women
Speaker 2: in the late sixties early seventies were trying to do, right,
Speaker 2: which is liberate themselves and say we're sexually free beings.
Speaker 2: And so what happens is men sort of commandeer it.
Speaker 2: Let's say, straight white men sort of commandeer this. This liberation,
Speaker 2: and then the feminist movement fractures in two. There's still
Speaker 2: sort of pro sex, sex positive feminine and there's the
Speaker 2: second arm of feminism, which is the anti porn feminist
Speaker 2: like Andrea Dworkin, who say, you know, porn equates violence.
Speaker 2: No matter what, porn is always violent, And these pro
Speaker 2: sex feminists are saying, well, you know, actually, actually this
Speaker 2: could be about you know, our desire and our pleasure.
Speaker 2: So Viva's like coming right as this moment is happening
Speaker 2: in the in the feminist movement, and what it should
Speaker 2: have been able to do was build a bridge between
Speaker 2: the two sects of feminism, right, the two sections of feminism.
Speaker 2: It should have been able to build that bridge and
Speaker 2: say because they did this big rape issue that Bob
Speaker 2: actually fired a senior editor over because he didn't want
Speaker 2: their magazine to be about like, you know, sad issues
Speaker 2: like rape and sexual assault. He wanted to be entertainment.
Speaker 1: I actually saw the cover of that one, which is
Speaker 1: really dissonant. Like the cover I believe is like a
Speaker 1: man and a woman that look like they're having a
Speaker 1: blast or whatever. That I think is related to.
Speaker 2: He's got a gun. He's got a gun. And she's
Speaker 2: got a gun, he's smoking a cigar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's super And then it's like rape. It's like
Speaker 1: the rape issue or something. I'm like, uh, okay, like
Speaker 1: what is going on? It's like a yeah, actually it's funny,
Speaker 1: but it encapsulates a lot of the dissonance you're talking
Speaker 1: about within that magazine, within the culture of it, like
Speaker 1: is this serious? Is it joking? Like? And if it's joking,
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem like a good place to be. So yeah, interesting,
Speaker 1: he fired somebody over that issue.
Speaker 2: He fired somebody over that issue. He didn't know about it.
Speaker 2: He was one of those bosses who sort of dips
Speaker 2: in and out, but when he parachutes in he knows
Speaker 2: best and like he sort of fucks up all the work.
Speaker 2: You but can I curse on this podcast?
Speaker 1: You absolutely can and should Okay.
Speaker 2: He would air drop in and so the the other
Speaker 2: thing is is if you ever have run any like
Speaker 2: any editorial product, right, you know that one thing that
Speaker 2: you really need is cohesion. When we worked at magazines,
Speaker 2: you know, Kim Frantz who was my boss at Lucky Magazine,
Speaker 2: who had been at Sassy in a bunch of other places.
Speaker 2: One thing she said to me was she would open
Speaker 2: the magazine of Luck and she would be like, you see,
Speaker 2: you know exactly where you are in this magazine when
Speaker 2: you open it. There's never a moment where you don't
Speaker 2: understand what's happening visually with the word. Like the design matches,
Speaker 2: the words matches, the pacing. You know, this is this
Speaker 2: goes in the front of the book. This is the feature. Well,
Speaker 2: this is the back of the book. Viva had none
Speaker 2: of that. It was just really anything could be happening
Speaker 2: on any page interesting. It was like am Bancroft and
Speaker 2: then the next page is like just a really overtan
Speaker 2: naked man's ass, like.
Speaker 1: Nothing, okay, hold on the ass is is to titillate?
Speaker 1: Or like is that supposed to be? Like the hot
Speaker 1: part of it?
Speaker 2: It was, but it didn't make sense next to this,
Speaker 2: like Q and A. If you ever have worked in
Speaker 2: a magazine, you know that on the you know, on
Speaker 2: a wall of the office you work in, you have
Speaker 2: the entire issue, the page by page, right, yeah, and
Speaker 2: you're looking at it and you're moving things around and saying, well, wait,
Speaker 2: does that make sense there? Does that ad make sense?
Speaker 1: There?
Speaker 2: You're trying to create one experience, which is part of
Speaker 2: the delight of the entire enterprise, right yeap. This was
Speaker 2: when I started to realize this was going to be
Speaker 2: a really fascinating story, when I really started paging through
Speaker 2: and was like, oh, there's like there's like nobody really
Speaker 2: in charge here.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's interesting. Okay, So I because I started looking,
Speaker 1: I'm like, maybe I should buy some issues of this,
Speaker 1: because I really as soon as I was listening to
Speaker 1: the story and you begin telling the tale and hearing
Speaker 1: these people talk about it, I'm like, Okay, this sounds
Speaker 1: like something I want to look at. And you look
Speaker 1: at the covering and you're like, that's awesome. But it
Speaker 1: is exactly to your point. I mean, what makes a
Speaker 1: great magazine is that cohesion. It is that you've collected
Speaker 1: all of these things that seem like they might be
Speaker 1: disparate in some other contexts, and you've pulled them together
Speaker 1: and made them feel of a kind like and you've
Speaker 1: made it feel like a journey from beginning to end.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: That is what I love about the best magazine. It's
Speaker 1: like like like in my mind's eye, I'm like thinking
Speaker 1: of the great moments and magazines that I love and
Speaker 1: the great sections not just right because you go, oh,
Speaker 1: there's that.
Speaker 2: Thing, the great, great colleague everything. I mean, yes, they're
Speaker 2: so fun and.
Speaker 1: To do this ambitious thing that you're describing, which is
Speaker 1: like can it change the conversation about like women's sexuality
Speaker 1: and all this? And it's like, oh, like you we
Speaker 1: were just doing whatever? I mean? Is that Guccioni, Is
Speaker 1: that his like air dropping in or is it just
Speaker 1: like they don't have the person who's like truly every
Speaker 1: day in charge, Like how does that happen?
Speaker 2: Well, it's a couple of things, right, So it's it's
Speaker 2: Bob Guccioni and his partner Kathy Keaton were not real
Speaker 2: publishing people. They had one success with Penhouse, and that
Speaker 2: was a little bit of luck and a fluke, right,
Speaker 2: he kind of knew what he was doing. It was
Speaker 2: a little bit of luck. And then he hired some
Speaker 2: smart editorial people, mostly women actually to run Penhouse, and
Speaker 2: then because of the success of that, he has a
Speaker 2: lot of hubris and he thinks he knows best. So
Speaker 2: he goes to the next thing and he doesn't know
Speaker 2: how to hire an editor. And when he does finally
Speaker 2: hire an editor in Patricia Bosworth, which I don't know
Speaker 2: if you know Patricia Bosworth at all, but she's a
Speaker 2: fatacinating figure out.
Speaker 1: I know that name. Really, this sounds really familiar to me.
Speaker 1: Why do I know that?
Speaker 2: She was a model for Diane Arbis. She was an actress,
Speaker 2: She was in a movie alongside Audrey Hepburn, and then
Speaker 2: she was a big publishing person in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 2: and then she wrote a number of celebrity biographies. So
Speaker 2: she wrote the one on Montgomery Cliff, she wrote one
Speaker 2: on Marlon Brando, and that was sort of how like
Speaker 2: she wrote the definitive books.
Speaker 1: She the person who unearthed the story about Montgomery Cliff
Speaker 1: with the Elizabeth Taylor's story. Is that am I thinking
Speaker 1: of the right person? Who? Do you know? The story? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure about.
Speaker 2: The details of it. But she was the celebrity biographer
Speaker 2: for a while. But for this minute, she was at
Speaker 2: Harper's Bazaar and Bob Guccioni calls her up and he says, hey,
Speaker 2: I need a really classy editor to wrote throughout this magazine.
Speaker 2: And she comes in and she really knows what she's doing,
Speaker 2: and you can really see from like the end of
Speaker 2: seventy four into seventy five, even maybe I would say
Speaker 2: a little seventy six. The magazine is the best it's
Speaker 2: ever been. It makes sense. It has that sort of
Speaker 2: journey feeling. It starts and it ends, it's lovely, and
Speaker 2: then she's sort of sidelined because who knows why the
Speaker 2: magazine's not making money. It's you know that he's blaming
Speaker 2: on her. It's really because they can't get cosmetic ads
Speaker 2: because there are penises in the magazine. You know, it's
Speaker 2: like right, but he blames it on her and she
Speaker 2: winds up getting fired. And they went through I think
Speaker 2: I forget the exact number right now, but I think
Speaker 2: they went through something like seven editors in as many years,
Speaker 2: which is just not enough time to get people to know,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: That's crazy, Like an editor a year is insane. Yeah, However,
Speaker 1: the idea came up because there is a kind of
Speaker 1: dispute about who actually had the idea for the magazine,
Speaker 1: right right, But it seems like it was like, hey,
Speaker 1: here's a great idea, Like I've done this, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've done it. Where you go, I've got a great idea,
Speaker 1: and it's just the you can just describe the concept
Speaker 1: to somebody and it's like, hey, that would make a
Speaker 1: great whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like I have a book series that I've been talking
Speaker 1: about jokingly for like more than a decade, and I
Speaker 1: can describe like the rough outline of the plot of
Speaker 1: this book. Yeah, but I haven't sat down or written,
Speaker 1: and I have a feeling that when I do, if
Speaker 1: I do, which who fucking knows, right, it's a lot
Speaker 1: more complicated to write the book that it is to
Speaker 1: kind of pitch the idea to somebody, right, And it
Speaker 1: feels like this was like a magazine that had an
Speaker 1: awesome pitch, ye, Like the pitch is awesome, right, Like
Speaker 1: it's really good. And when you hear like a GUCCIONI
Speaker 1: like talking about, you know, his view on women and everything,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, this totally checks out. But beyond the pitch,
Speaker 1: just like if you don't have somebody who's driving it
Speaker 1: every day and it knows what it's supposed to look like,
Speaker 1: it's just a pitch.
Speaker 2: Right, and knows what it's supposed to be and knows
Speaker 2: who it's for.
Speaker 1: Who is this for? Yeah?
Speaker 2: And I think that that's always the question you're asking
Speaker 2: whenever you're putting out any kind of editorial product, what's
Speaker 2: our core audience here and how, you know, how do
Speaker 2: we sort of super serve them? And there was there
Speaker 2: was not that understanding. But you know, also a lot
Speaker 2: of these editors. The cool thing about Patti Bosworth when
Speaker 2: she came in, she's in her early forties. Most of
Speaker 2: the editors and writers who have worked there were in
Speaker 2: their twenties. It's it's harder to lead when you're in
Speaker 2: your twenties. It's harder to have that big picture vision
Speaker 2: because you just haven't done that much yet, you know, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's complicated works. Yeah, you know, I'm sort of
Speaker 1: confused though, like and to your point about who it's
Speaker 1: for and who the audience is and how they get
Speaker 1: advertising stuff for a product like this, these kinds of
Speaker 1: questions exist still, Like as you talk about like who's
Speaker 1: the audience? Yep, I think we're actually returning a bit
Speaker 1: in media to a who's the audience? Know? But for real,
Speaker 1: like who is the actual audience? Because we went through
Speaker 1: this whole phase of oh, there's so many people out there,
Speaker 1: just get a huge amount of people to look. It
Speaker 1: doesn't fucking matter who the audience is, right or it's
Speaker 1: a whole generation of people. It's the audience. And it's like, no, actually,
Speaker 1: like what you really need to do is zero in
Speaker 1: on like this small amount but still very valuable group
Speaker 1: of people who will really love the thing that you
Speaker 1: do and give a shit about it. Yes, And what
Speaker 1: I'm what I'm trying to figure out is like, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea is a little bit like a counterpart to
Speaker 1: a Penthouse or a Playboy for women, right right, And
Speaker 1: so there's a great writing all the like the first
Speaker 1: issue or something is like Norman Mailer's in it, which
Speaker 1: is a hilarious choice. I don't the first issue, but
Speaker 1: it's early.
Speaker 2: It's the first issue.
Speaker 1: It's my face.
Speaker 2: It's one of my favorite details of the whole shell.
Speaker 1: It's amazing the Norman Mailers in like Playboy a lot,
Speaker 1: and like is I've always thought like it's interesting because
Speaker 1: you go back and look at old Playboys. There's like
Speaker 1: an incredible writer. I'm not a Mailer fan, like I
Speaker 1: know a lot of people are, but I'm not. And
Speaker 1: but but he's like the quintessential worst choice, like the
Speaker 1: most perfect bad choice for like a women's publication. He's
Speaker 1: like a guy who like pretty much hates women. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting. But like, here's the thing that I don't understand,
Speaker 1: and you perhaps can shed some light. Perhaps the show
Speaker 1: will at some point. This is again be sound like
Speaker 1: a really fucking dumb question. Let me think of the
Speaker 1: best way to frame this question. Show me give Did
Speaker 1: women actually want a magazine with pornography in it like that?
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying women don't like porn that's not
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting that, But like in the context of
Speaker 1: like a Playboy or a Penthouse, was there a market
Speaker 1: demand or did the women who were coming to work
Speaker 1: at it go I want to have these great pieces
Speaker 1: or I want to do an issue about rapists. It's
Speaker 1: like a topic that needs that we need to be
Speaker 1: talking about more. But also it'd be great if there
Speaker 1: was like erotic imagery, because we're talking about imagery. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: it could be stories whatever, But like these magazines dealt
Speaker 1: in Playboy and Penthouse dealt in they sold on sexy photos.
Speaker 1: Like to just put it simply, was there a market
Speaker 1: and was there a legitimate interest from the people who
Speaker 1: made it who were not Bob GUCCIONI for like that
Speaker 1: type of pornography for women.
Speaker 2: So this is a central question of the podcast, and
Speaker 2: I think that one of the things that I came
Speaker 2: up against again and again from all of the editors
Speaker 2: first off, who would talk to me about their sex
Speaker 2: lives at the time and be very open about that,
Speaker 2: but then would say, oh, you know, can you cut that,
Speaker 2: or I'm so sorry I told you about the people
Speaker 2: I had sex with. Like, there was still a lot
Speaker 2: of shame surrounding sexuality and sexual freedom for these women. Now.
Speaker 2: Like I said, this was a really challenging time for
Speaker 2: them because they didn't really know what they wanted yet.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if they can answer that question
Speaker 2: accurately given everything they were up against, given the internalized patriarchy,
Speaker 2: given all of that, right, yea, they certainly didn't want
Speaker 2: male photographers and male art directors. They didn't want the
Speaker 2: porn that was in Viva, which was a man's idea
Speaker 2: of what a woman wanted. Now, if there had actually
Speaker 2: been erotica through a literal female lens, I don't know
Speaker 2: how that would have went differently, But that was sort
Speaker 2: of unheard of. There weren't women out there shooting porn.
Speaker 2: I mean, right, there were, but it was very niche
Speaker 2: they didn't, you know, they weren't connected to Bob GUCCIONI.
Speaker 2: I think that Candy de Royale doesn't really come along
Speaker 2: till the eighties and we really get into like really
Speaker 2: quality feminist porn. But to answer your question, most simply,
Speaker 2: none of the women who worked there wanted these dicks.
Speaker 2: What they wanted was to make an Esquire for women. Yes,
Speaker 2: that was what they desperately wanted, because Esquire, you know,
Speaker 2: at this time, was like amazing, and they're like, why
Speaker 2: do I have to work on this stupid bullshit A
Speaker 2: good housekeeping?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: I want to I want to make an Esquire for women,
Speaker 2: and that everybody wanted. I mean when I got into
Speaker 2: magazines in two thousand, we were still like, why is
Speaker 2: there no Esquire for women?
Speaker 1: Right? Right? No? I mean that's why I asked, because like,
Speaker 1: what it feels like is like, you want an adult
Speaker 1: magazine that is like addressing women as like complete human beings,
Speaker 1: not like a housewife or like the girlfriend or whatever
Speaker 1: it is that all these magazines would depict. You're pointed
Speaker 1: about Esquire, and there are lots of other publications at
Speaker 1: the time, and certainly Play a Boy was doing this
Speaker 1: where it was for adult men, like he was trying
Speaker 1: to capture this full picture of like your experience as
Speaker 1: a man, you know, and things you might be interested in,
Speaker 1: and things that would titillate you, and things that would
Speaker 1: educate you and you know, struggles or whatever. To me,
Speaker 1: it's like it feels like it's all that but not
Speaker 1: the porn like for women, Like it's all the media
Speaker 1: adult stuff. And I think it's interesting that like maybe
Speaker 1: in some way at that point in time and maybe
Speaker 1: today still like what looks like like I don't know,
Speaker 1: adult content's the wrong word, but I mean it in
Speaker 1: the most direct way of saying, an adult like for
Speaker 1: people who want to think about more than just the
Speaker 1: surface shit, right, Like for it's like stuff that's like
Speaker 1: real and not just like porn. But at that time,
Speaker 1: like if you didn't merge the two, like was sort
Speaker 1: of like how can you make the product right?
Speaker 2: Right? Well, because there weren't as many delivery systems, let's
Speaker 2: put it that way, right, there just weren't there weren't
Speaker 2: as many delivery systems for porn, right. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think that we can go down a path that I
Speaker 2: think is inaccurate and like is overly generalized. And you know,
Speaker 2: oh well, one of the things that the women said
Speaker 2: to me, the women who work there, many of them
Speaker 2: said to me, was you know, well, women are just
Speaker 2: not turned on visually like men are. You know, women
Speaker 2: need touch, they need softness, you know. And then when
Speaker 2: I talked to some like modern day feminist pornographers, they
Speaker 2: were like, that's absolute bullshit, right, like straight women are
Speaker 2: turned on by by looking at men's penises, Like this
Speaker 2: is this is absolute garbage, like that women are like
Speaker 2: soft and oh my god, read me a romance novel.
Speaker 1: We have a clout in there or an audio stimpet
Speaker 1: of somebody that you interviewed saying that exact thing, which
Speaker 1: and I was like, yes, I was like, this is
Speaker 1: a thing I've heard, I feel like all my life
Speaker 1: and has been like it's like a cliche about women.
Speaker 1: It's like men are visual and w and need all
Speaker 1: of this other. And I'm not saying that's not true,
Speaker 1: but it's also like, yeah, this is sort of like
Speaker 1: what's so interesting to me is like because it is
Speaker 1: very straightforward, but you're saying it's not. Is it pictures
Speaker 1: of nude men or whatever? It's like what those pictures?
Speaker 1: How those pictures are done like what the right like
Speaker 1: to some extent, there's.
Speaker 2: Shot they were shot by male photographers. They were shot
Speaker 2: by straight male photographers, right. And what's interesting is that,
Speaker 2: you know, Viva, like Playboy's readership wound up or a
Speaker 2: subscriber base. At least I don't know about the readership.
Speaker 2: I don't know about women who read it. But let's
Speaker 2: just say the people who subscribed to Viva once they
Speaker 2: really got into the subscriber list, it's mostly gay men, right,
Speaker 2: I mean because there were very few places, oh right, see,
Speaker 2: and that's the same thing with Playgirl, right. Yeah, But
Speaker 2: it also makes sense to me thinking about these these
Speaker 2: male photographers shooting male nudes. It's a male lens. It's
Speaker 2: gay men enjoy it, right, Huh.
Speaker 1: That wasn't like forty chests or something, right Like, it
Speaker 1: wasn't Bob GUCCIONI wasn't like I'm saying, I'm making a
Speaker 1: ladies magazine but really making a magazine for gay men. No.
Speaker 2: I think he really thought he was making a ladies magazine.
Speaker 2: And I think that in part, you know, whether it
Speaker 2: was his idea or not, I think he did it
Speaker 2: because Playgirl had just come out earlier that year, and
Speaker 2: I think he was obsessed with Heffner. He Guccioni hated Hefner,
Speaker 2: He hated everything about him. He found him to be
Speaker 2: a phony and a starfucker and just like the worst.
Speaker 2: And they warred with each other until Guccioni died basically right,
Speaker 2: So I think that Viva was for sure him keeping
Speaker 2: pace with Hefner.
Speaker 1: Oh so Playgirl precedes Fiva.
Speaker 2: By a couple of months.
Speaker 1: Because Playgirl seems like, I don't know was it successful.
Speaker 1: I feel like, do they still make Playgirl or did
Speaker 1: they make it up until pretty recently, I feel like
Speaker 1: it never went away play Girl.
Speaker 2: According to Bob Guccioni's son, Bob Guccioni Junior, Yes, Playgirl
Speaker 2: knew it was for gay men. It really had a
Speaker 2: better idea that it was for gay men. Where I
Speaker 2: don't think that the Viva editors understood how many what
Speaker 2: they're that their readership was mostly gay men, or at
Speaker 2: least they're subscribers.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Playgirl just wasn't as ambitious in any way. It was smaller,
Speaker 2: the trim size was smaller, the photo shoots were not
Speaker 2: as ambitious. The writing was for sure not as ambitious.
Speaker 2: And I mean when I looked at old issues of Playgirl,
Speaker 2: I was like, this is like a nothing burger. I
Speaker 2: don't care about this at all.
Speaker 1: Right, there's no substance to it.
Speaker 2: Viva's dreamy and weird and magical, Like there's just so
Speaker 2: many strange things that happen in it. And then you know,
Speaker 2: at some point Ana windtur comes on and is the
Speaker 2: fashion editor, which is like so wild. And also every
Speaker 2: major feminist writer in the seventies wrote for Viva at
Speaker 2: some point, and I just think that that is so.
Speaker 2: I think I just can't believe nobody knows about it, right,
Speaker 2: And I really wanted to resurrect this. I really wanted
Speaker 2: to showcase this work because one of the things that
Speaker 2: happens with not just magazines, but any kind of writing
Speaker 2: we've ever done, is it just goes away. It's just
Speaker 2: gone forever, you know. Yeah, I knew this was special.
Speaker 2: I could feel it, and I really wanted to showcase
Speaker 2: all of their.
Speaker 1: Work, right. I mean, I have to say, just the
Speaker 1: fact that it's been buried the way it has, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: up until I started listening to episode one, didn't really
Speaker 1: know anything about its existence nor the kind of scope
Speaker 1: of first off, it was around for a long time,
Speaker 1: like a pretty long time all things considered. Yeah, longer
Speaker 1: than a lot of publications that start these days, you know,
Speaker 1: and had, like you said, like some pretty incredible talent.
Speaker 1: Like now, I don't know, you've you get more into
Speaker 1: the Anna Wintour aspect. Obviously she was pretty early in
Speaker 1: her career. I assume, yeah, she was.
Speaker 2: It was there second job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like you don't hear about that mentioned a
Speaker 1: lot in like when people talk about in wintor that. Oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, she was the fashion either at like
Speaker 1: Bob Guccioni's like Ladies porn magazine, which is cool. It's
Speaker 1: like one of the coolest things I've heard about her.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean it's striking, Like to your point
Speaker 1: about how things go away, you think about all the
Speaker 1: art and thought and sort of love that went into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's easier to write off this stuff, right because there
Speaker 1: are like, you know, dicks in it or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean a lot of my work is already gone.
Speaker 2: I wrote for magazines that went under, you know, some
Speaker 2: of my favorite stories are just they're just gone. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: Like maybe I have a clip somewhere, but it's just
Speaker 2: like goes away. And I don't know if that has
Speaker 2: to do with GUCCIONI or just sort of the fleeting
Speaker 2: nature of all of this. You know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Of all of this, like meaning existence or the magazine world.
Speaker 2: Well all, well, I mean everything. I mean the magazine world,
Speaker 2: publishing media. I mean think about like, you know a
Speaker 2: lot of these women. What was interesting is a lot
Speaker 2: of them wrote books and I couldn't find their books.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, they're long out of print.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, We've had this belief that the internet would
Speaker 1: save everything. I mean honestly for real, in the nineties
Speaker 1: and stuff, people talked about the Internet and you're like,
Speaker 1: you'll never lose anything ever again. And what I've found
Speaker 1: to be true, and it particularly in regards to things
Speaker 1: like this, to physical publications or you know, things like records,
Speaker 1: and not only have they gone away, but they're almost
Speaker 1: impossible to get again to find again, right, Like I
Speaker 1: don't know, they're digitized versions of Viva that exist anywhere.
Speaker 1: Like no, I was like, oh, in my buying one,
Speaker 1: like somebody's selling a copy of for one hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: which is not a tenable way to you know, keep
Speaker 1: that I could build my own archive of it. But
Speaker 1: it's a big investment, right Like magazines, I guess are
Speaker 1: by nature or seem to be an ephemeral sort of medium,
Speaker 1: right like you throw it out, but you're done with it.
Speaker 1: This month is gone, like a newspaper. But magazines have
Speaker 1: I feel like the stories that are in them and
Speaker 1: in the product that they became has value. Of course.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in a room that just off camera, there
Speaker 1: is a I think you have one behind you. It
Speaker 1: looks like one of those Ikia bookcases. I think they
Speaker 1: used to be called Lack They're now called Calyx or something.
Speaker 1: And I have the larger version over next to me,
Speaker 1: and it is filled with magazines. But for me, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I need to keep these for some reason, and I
Speaker 1: don't know why. I don't crack into them very often.
Speaker 1: The other day I was cleaning up and I found
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra has a cold, which no, really, it's amazing
Speaker 1: sitting just over there. I actually put on Instagram, so
Speaker 1: I was like, here it is. I forgot that I
Speaker 1: had it, like the original, you know, issue, and maybe
Speaker 1: that's worth something. I don't even know. But it was
Speaker 1: meant as an ephemeral medium, but there's so much value
Speaker 1: to it. Actually, the work you're doing is like has
Speaker 1: interesting like archival value. I feel like to it.
Speaker 2: I feel yeah, I think that, you know, information is
Speaker 2: just too diffuse. Like what this is all about, the
Speaker 2: nostalgia for this and why we all are like, oh
Speaker 2: print please magazines is we're all nostalgic for monoculture, right,
Speaker 2: Like we all want that moment. If you pick up
Speaker 2: a couple of magazines from nineteen seventy eight, you understand
Speaker 2: a lot about that year because magazines were so hugely influential. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: you don't have that by reading a couple of pages
Speaker 2: of a or you know, a couple of screens full
Speaker 2: of a website. Really it's not the same thing, right,
Speaker 2: And I think we all miss that, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: everything's even worse now than it was, you know, ten
Speaker 2: years ago. I was thinking about. I found a deck
Speaker 2: the other day, found an old BuzzFeed deck that I
Speaker 2: had held on, I had gotten my hands on when
Speaker 2: they were really you know, the biggest name in town.
Speaker 1: There are billions and billions there were with.
Speaker 2: Billions, And it was a deck called sixteen Ways to Viralize, right,
Speaker 2: And it was around the time of like the dress,
Speaker 2: and I was thinking about how quaint the dress was
Speaker 2: that we were all sort of like, is it gold?
Speaker 2: Is it blue? Like it doesn't feel that way anymore.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's an interesting observation because the dress doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like it was that long ago. God, even saying
Speaker 1: the dress, there's a whole generation of people who probably
Speaker 1: when we say it, they don't even know what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. Right, Like, if you're a person who lives
Speaker 1: on TikTok right now, you probably are not thinking too
Speaker 1: much about what the dress means when we say it.
Speaker 1: But no, I mean, you're talking about something that I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time thinking about and listening to
Speaker 1: your podcast because it's so much steeped in the culture
Speaker 1: of a time that it just we could never I
Speaker 1: feel like we can never recapture unless we like literally
Speaker 1: turn off the Internet. It's hard to and I mentioned
Speaker 1: this before, but it's hard for people, I think to understand.
Speaker 1: I certainly understand it. The power of magazines, like like
Speaker 1: the power of publications, because there weren't that many of them.
Speaker 1: It was hard, like there were not that many time
Speaker 1: magazines because it was really fucking hard to make a
Speaker 1: magazine that every that almost every person or some amount
Speaker 1: high amount of people in like a country would want
Speaker 1: to read it every week, you know. And I think, like,
Speaker 1: in one way it's wonderful because we've distributed like information
Speaker 1: in a way that's like makes it more accessible for
Speaker 1: other people, people who would not normally. I mean this,
Speaker 1: this podcast of yours is about people who did not
Speaker 1: get a shot to make the kind of publication they
Speaker 1: wanted to make, trying to make that publication and getting
Speaker 1: like getting kind of screwed and and defeated in the
Speaker 1: process in many ways. I mean, also having great like successes,
Speaker 1: like you said, like and going on to do amazing stuff.
Speaker 1: But we've leveled that you can now if you want
Speaker 1: to create this weirdest fucking publication that you you know,
Speaker 1: or a new one that doesn't exist, you can go
Speaker 1: do it. So we've removed keepers. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: to your point about monoculture, we can't even imagine that
Speaker 1: cultural moment of everybody reading, like seeing the cover of
Speaker 1: Time this week that's right, and going and going, oh
Speaker 1: my god, like this you know, whatever story it is
Speaker 1: becomes the topic of conversations for.
Speaker 2: The magazine or even smaller, like enough people rallying around
Speaker 2: something like spy, right, like this is. But the thing
Speaker 2: is what I really attracted me so much to this
Speaker 2: was there was a lack of self consciousness about this
Speaker 2: because there's no Internet, because they don't have to put
Speaker 2: their shit on Twitter. There's a lack of self consciousness, right.
Speaker 2: And there's also they're really working together in this very
Speaker 2: pure way of what makes a good story. What's a
Speaker 2: compelling and fun headline that will sell this not for
Speaker 2: fucking seo, right, but we'll actually like look good and
Speaker 2: be cool. And what's the art that goes along with
Speaker 2: this story? All those creative collaboration of components that I
Speaker 2: think that's what we all want again, that kind of feeling,
Speaker 2: that's something, it's something tangible. It feels good to make.
Speaker 1: No, I mean this is to me is like it's
Speaker 1: why I still feel attracted to magazines. I think it's
Speaker 1: because like you can create this singular sort of object, right,
Speaker 1: it's and it's it's real, it's physical, you hold in
Speaker 1: your hands, you like, it lives in your house, like
Speaker 1: it's not an abstract, floating bit of data that exists.
Speaker 1: Like and to your point about like the SEO, and
Speaker 1: I think perhaps, like if you're listening to this and
Speaker 1: you are not in the media world, which is like,
Speaker 1: I hope, I fucking hope there's a bunch of people
Speaker 1: that you're not part of that world. But I do
Speaker 1: think it touches on these things, like when you talk
Speaker 1: about stuff like that, if you look at the landscape
Speaker 1: of information, you look at the complaints or the arguments
Speaker 1: against like monolithic media. It's funny because this cuts slices
Speaker 1: so many ways when you people talk about the media
Speaker 1: narrative and monolithic media and how you can't trust the
Speaker 1: media or whatever they are describing the thing that we're
Speaker 1: talking about having a desire for. Yeah, and yet at
Speaker 1: the time of that of that thing, that monolithic media
Speaker 1: sort of existence, people, most people, most consumers of it,
Speaker 1: weren't like this is bullshit, I can't trust this. They
Speaker 1: were like, these people are telling me what I need
Speaker 1: to know, like and to make a magazine like the
Speaker 1: one that you're talking about, like Viva to add to
Speaker 1: that conversation was not a small feat because he couldn't
Speaker 1: just appear. I think there's so much that is relevant,
Speaker 1: like to you know, in listening to it, this relevant
Speaker 1: to this moment. I think particularly in just thinking about
Speaker 1: how the stories that we see and hear and read
Speaker 1: get from somebody's some unique person's brain to like into existence.
Speaker 1: And here's an example of like a lot of people striving.
Speaker 1: GUCCIONI to some extent, though he in a very wayward sense,
Speaker 1: like you know, it's striving to make something that's legitimately,
Speaker 1: you know, valuable to an audience, and it is a
Speaker 1: cynical and.
Speaker 2: Not cynical, which is like, oh god, how refreshing.
Speaker 1: Right, I definitely what makes me want to return to
Speaker 1: a time when like those people are making that's they're
Speaker 1: making the content, and it's not called content. It's like
Speaker 1: just great stories.
Speaker 2: That was That was what ruined us when it switched
Speaker 2: to content. That was when it was over.
Speaker 1: That was it. Do you think there's any going back.
Speaker 1: Do you think we can fix it?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Look, I mean this podcast that I
Speaker 2: got to write, it's not going to be in the
Speaker 2: same form, but I got to write this podcast. I
Speaker 2: got to report it out. I worked with a brilliant
Speaker 2: editor who edited it. I worked with a producer who
Speaker 2: knew when to dip in and when to like let
Speaker 2: me kind of go wild. So this was the most
Speaker 2: satisfying creative project I have, writing project I've had in
Speaker 2: I can't even remember how long I had that same
Speaker 2: journalistic like just real that I had early in my career,
Speaker 2: like chasing down stories in New York. So I don't
Speaker 2: think that it's going to look the same way, but
Speaker 2: I think that we could still tell stories.
Speaker 1: I think it's a perfect place to leave it. It's
Speaker 1: sort of it's it kind of makes me feel a
Speaker 1: bit hopeful. I mean, I think that's a great that's
Speaker 1: a great point. Like there are I mean, there are
Speaker 1: avenues that we didn't have that those that those folks
Speaker 1: would have never had. So you know, the fact that
Speaker 1: you get to tell this story and tell it in
Speaker 1: such detail is like it does kind of harken back
Speaker 1: to what they were trying to do. Yeah, amazing, Jen,
Speaker 1: this has been such an interesting conversation. It's such a
Speaker 1: good listen by the way, like just on top of
Speaker 1: all this stuff we're talking about, all this heavy shit
Speaker 1: about media, it's a fun show to listen to. It's
Speaker 1: like entertaining. You've got tons of great like interviews and
Speaker 1: comments and quotes and some like Bob GUCCIONI texts that
Speaker 1: are read and like, it's a really great listen. So
Speaker 1: beyond the podcast, if people want to find you elsewhere,
Speaker 1: how can they how can they follow your work?
Speaker 2: I am Jen Ramalini us all platforms D E N
Speaker 2: N R O, M O, L I N I.
Speaker 1: That's smart, that's smart. That's to keep it consistent. And
Speaker 1: also your name. I've done the same thing.
Speaker 2: It's a very old person. It's a very old person
Speaker 2: thing to do. But that's that's what I should. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it is. I think the young people are like, I'm
Speaker 2: like tiny lyon or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's a good that's a good way to
Speaker 1: but that way you can escape quickly. Now I can
Speaker 1: never get away from this ship like exactly. I can
Speaker 1: never just Joshua Tepolski all over social media forever. So
Speaker 1: it's not like I can hide. Yeah no, I can't.
Speaker 1: George Santos, this situation.
Speaker 2: Nope.
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming on and talking about this. And
Speaker 1: next time you create something a work like this, you
Speaker 1: got to come back and tell us about it. This
Speaker 1: was great, Well, that was great. I have to say.
Speaker 1: I I like talking to people who know about magazines
Speaker 1: and have a love for them, even if it's misguided
Speaker 1: like my love for magazine. But that was super fascinating
Speaker 1: and everybody, if you haven't listened to it, haven't started
Speaker 1: listening to it. Definitely listened to it. I highly recommend it.
Speaker 1: You will not be disappointed. It's highly entertaining. And that
Speaker 1: is our show for this week, where Rat We're just
Speaker 1: gonna wrap up. It's gonna get right into the end
Speaker 1: of this. We'll be back next week with more what future,
Speaker 1: And as always, I wish you and your family the
Speaker 1: very best.