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Speaker 1: So I'm reading from this Viva issue, the international magazine

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Speaker 1: for women.

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Speaker 2: It's been a minute since Viva's sex advice columnist, Doctor

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Speaker 2: Judy has seen a physical copy of Viva magazine, since

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Speaker 2: she could actually look at and reflect on her work.

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Speaker 1: First thing I open is, I'm captured by this photograph

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Speaker 1: opposite my column with a naked woman just on her top, naked,

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Speaker 1: there's a pincer on her nipple.

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Speaker 2: Truth is, unless you held on to them since the

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Speaker 2: nineteen seventies issues of Viva, they're extremely hard to find.

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Speaker 2: It's like the work of Viva's women, like most all work,

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Speaker 2: if you think about it, has just poof disappeared. But

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Speaker 2: I have all the issues. I've been collecting them for years.

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Speaker 2: I brought them to every editor and writer I met

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Speaker 2: in person, including doctor Judy.

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Speaker 1: So I'm fascinated with this photograph. And then opposite it

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Speaker 1: is my column Sexual Fantasies, a study of erotic fantasies

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Speaker 1: their meaning, significance in contribution to the human sexual condition,

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Speaker 1: which is really kind of cool because it's not just

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Speaker 1: the fantasy, but my analysis of it, which comes from

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Speaker 1: intelligence and a lot of experience and some scientific understanding

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Speaker 1: and analytic understanding.

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Speaker 2: When Bob first launched FEVA, the sex Fantasy's column was

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Speaker 2: written by a man, But when Doctor Judy took over,

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Speaker 2: she blew this other guy's work out of the water.

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Speaker 2: Just listen to one of her pieces.

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Speaker 1: Fantasy nourishes our sexual psychees and charges our sexual energies.

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Speaker 1: It adds the luster of the unexplored to our sexual

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Speaker 1: experiences and experiments. Nearly every individual falls through some secret

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Speaker 1: erotic fantasy. The range of these is as wide as

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Speaker 1: the range of humanity. So true, and that is why,

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Speaker 1: like humanity, they are infinitely interesting. Yes, this month, Viva

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Speaker 1: continues exploring the complex, fascinating world of sexual fantasy.

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Speaker 2: For just a second. In our interview, doctor Judy gets

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Speaker 2: lost in the work, in her work, she'd forgotten. She's proud.

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Speaker 1: Oh I love this. Okay, it was always my thought.

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Speaker 1: Your fantasy is you are the I love this. I

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Speaker 1: would always tell people this. You are the producer, the director,

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Speaker 1: and all the actors in your fantasy. You are not

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Speaker 1: just you.

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Speaker 2: You created them.

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Speaker 1: So you are the guy or the girl or whatever

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Speaker 1: whoever else is in your fantasy. You made them up

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Speaker 1: and you're the one who's directing the show, so all

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Speaker 1: of it belongs to you. You create the whole thing.

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Speaker 1: So that was my favorite lesson and I loved it.

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Speaker 2: The women I talked to for this podcast were almost

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Speaker 2: all in their seventies and eighties. There were decades away

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Speaker 2: from their time at Viva, but they remembered it often vividly.

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Speaker 2: When Viva shuddered in January of nineteen seventy nine, it

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Speaker 2: wasn't just the end of a magazine, it was the

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Speaker 2: end of an era.

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Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, all the openness about sex

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Speaker 1: publicly stopped, and so people didn't have an outlet anymore.

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Speaker 1: Whereas things were going upwards to being more educated on

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Speaker 1: different levels, all of that was cut off.

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Speaker 2: So what happened? Why did Bob pull the rug out

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Speaker 2: from under everyone? And what can Viva's legacy reveal to

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Speaker 2: us about sex and feminism today? From Crooked Media and iHeartMedia,

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Speaker 2: I'm Jennifer Romalini and this is the final episode of Stiff,

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Speaker 2: Episode eight, The last Word, Act one. The light bulb

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Speaker 2: does not want to change.

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Speaker 3: The formula should have worked, and to this day, I

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Speaker 3: really don't know why it didn't.

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Speaker 2: That's Gaye Bryant, who you may remember had the original

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Speaker 2: idea for Viva. Gaze still a bit flu mixed over

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Speaker 2: why her idea didn't succeed, and so are some of

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Speaker 2: Viva's editors, like Robin Willaner.

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Speaker 4: The editorial vision I think absolutely could have worked. I

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Speaker 4: think the vision for it could have succeeded.

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Speaker 2: Now, some of the editors I talked to thought Viva's

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Speaker 2: failure had nothing to do with content or vision or execution,

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Speaker 2: but something much bigger, something systemic. Here's Viva and Penthouse

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Speaker 2: editor Peter Block.

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Speaker 5: I think the main reason Viva failed is that I

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Speaker 5: can't think of a good, intelligent women's magazine that succeeded ever.

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Speaker 5: I mean, one after the other. There's been some great magazines,

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Speaker 5: and they all go by the way saw it. None

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Speaker 5: of them succeed.

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Speaker 2: But most people I interviewed for this series hung Viva's

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Speaker 2: downfall on one fatal misstep. Here's Viva writer Annie Gottlieb.

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Speaker 6: The very same pictures failed to attract women. I mean,

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Speaker 6: I think they missed the target of female sexuality, you know,

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Speaker 6: by a mile, at least in the visuals.

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Speaker 2: And here's Bob Guccioni Junior explaining.

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Speaker 7: You know, women with disdainfull of at the average women

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Speaker 7: in the street, if they knew about it, just thought

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Speaker 7: it was a magazine with men's genitate issuing.

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Speaker 2: And even if some of Viva's readers claimed they wanted

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Speaker 2: quote more cock.

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Speaker 7: It lacked the sort of subtlety and imagination and you know,

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Speaker 7: fantasy element that women wanted in the magazine. That it

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Speaker 7: was too in your face, too blunt, and they didn't

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Speaker 7: want to necessarily see this much and they get male flesh,

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Speaker 7: and it was just a different perception. The way a

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Speaker 7: man gets excited was the way a woman.

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Speaker 2: Gets excited, even gay seconds this sentiment, if.

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Speaker 3: I had to put it in a sentence, I think

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Speaker 3: that the physical turns men on and the emotional turns

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Speaker 3: women on.

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Speaker 2: Okay, Since the beginning of reporting this series, I've wondered

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Speaker 2: a lot about this. Every Viva editor I talked to

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Speaker 2: repeated this line. Women just aren't turned on visually. Women

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Speaker 2: who are into men don't actually like looking at men's

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Speaker 2: bodies and especially not their dicks. Women need subtlety and softness.

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Speaker 2: The male nudes could never work. Viva was doomed from

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Speaker 2: the start. Blah blah blah. And this line about women

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Speaker 2: not liking porn is not limited to this story. It's

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Speaker 2: a line used by cis white heterosexual men for decades

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Speaker 2: as the reason not to fund female pornographers. It's a

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Speaker 2: big part of why the porn industry still doesn't cater

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Speaker 2: to women in a meaningful way anywhere near the same

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Speaker 2: way it caters to men. And here's the thing, it's

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Speaker 2: just that it's not true.

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Speaker 8: You know, it's absolute bollocks that women are not visually stimulated.

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Speaker 8: You fucking bet we are.

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Speaker 2: That's Cindy Gallup. She's the founder of Make Love Not Porn,

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Speaker 2: a feminist sex site. There's a little bit social network,

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Speaker 2: a little bit porn hub, except ethically curated and without

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Speaker 2: the copious misogyny.

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Speaker 8: You know, and research on its being done. That show

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Speaker 8: show us porn, show us men's snakered bodies. You bet

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Speaker 8: we get wet. You know, that's a load of crap

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Speaker 8: that we need emotion. I mean, women absolutely enjoy looking

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Speaker 8: at men's naked bodies. You bloody bet we do.

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Speaker 2: Cindy says, the challenge of being a feminist in the

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Speaker 2: porn business comes down to one very very obvious thing,

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Speaker 2: the patriarchy.

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Speaker 8: We as women have never been allowed to bring our

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Speaker 8: lens to bear on human sexuality, and the world is

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Speaker 8: a poorer place for it. The world makes it fucking

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Speaker 8: difficult to innovate and disrupt social narratives around sex.

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Speaker 2: And this tracks with the Viva story too, with Bob

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Speaker 2: and the male photographer's art directing photo shoots, deciding what

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Speaker 2: women desire without ever asking the women themselves. And as

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Speaker 2: much as things have changed for women in the decades

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Speaker 2: since Beava launched, this hasn't. It's an American societal norm

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Speaker 2: that seems, for a variety of reasons, immovable. We're stuck.

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Speaker 8: And so here's what has not changed since the seventies

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Speaker 8: and is still enormously problematic today. Any industry that is

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Speaker 8: male dominated at the top inevitably produces output that is

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Speaker 8: objectifying and offensive and objection to women.

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Speaker 2: But what about feminism's gains more women in boardrooms? Hell,

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Speaker 2: all those female penhouse executives Bob loved talking about Kathy

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Speaker 2: Keaton at the top of Viva's masthead. Cindy's not hearing it.

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Speaker 8: It's slightly old joke about the light bulb. How many

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Speaker 8: therapists does it take to change of light bulb? Only one?

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Speaker 8: But the light bulb has to already want to change

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Speaker 8: in every single industry in popular culture that informs our

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Speaker 8: views on everything, including the roane of men, the roan

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Speaker 8: of women, the role of sexuality, what makes you sexual desirable?

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Speaker 8: What doesn't? The light bulb does not want to change.

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Speaker 2: And so maybe it wasn't that women didn't like looking

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Speaker 2: at dis in Viva. It's more that the men in charge,

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Speaker 2: the gatekeeping dicks themselves held on tight two well, the dicks.

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Speaker 2: They didn't actually ask the question what do women want? Instead,

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Speaker 2: they just asked what would I do if I were

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Speaker 2: a woman. But we kind of knew all this right.

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Speaker 2: Over the last eight episodes, we've covered all the iterations

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Speaker 2: that Viva went through during its brief existence, and there

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Speaker 2: were a lot naked women, naked men, no dicks, flaccid dicks,

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Speaker 2: back to no dicks again, cool, smart feminist writing, weird

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Speaker 2: anti feminist writing, low brow humor, high brow fashion, etc.

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Speaker 3: Etc.

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Speaker 2: And the thing is that even though the editors tried

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Speaker 2: a bunch of different things, none of them were commercially successful.

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Speaker 2: Though it's hard to quantify how much of this was

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Speaker 2: tied to Bob and the controversy that surrounded him. His

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Speaker 2: reputation was for sure at least a small factor, especially

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Speaker 2: when it came to making money through ads. Here's editor

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Speaker 2: Robin will Lanner.

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Speaker 4: Again, Viva had the problem of coming out of the

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Speaker 4: Penthouse organization that didn't give any comfort to advertisers, and

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Speaker 4: nobody was ever going to give Viva the benefit of

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Speaker 4: the doubt on advertising.

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Speaker 2: Magazines need advertising money, period, and mainstream advertisers of all stripes,

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Speaker 2: especially those who advertise in women's magazines like cosmetics brands,

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Speaker 2: are today and have always been wary to be publicly

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Speaker 2: aligned with porn and pornographers like Bob, and if Viva

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Speaker 2: was unable to get ads, this would be reason enough

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Speaker 2: to shudder it. But Viva also struggled on newsstands. It

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Speaker 2: was never in, say, the supermarket checkout line, but instead

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Speaker 2: it was relegated to the dirty magazine section where only

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Speaker 2: men shopped. But even beyond the dearth of ad or

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Speaker 2: newsstand money, Bob and Kathy often made big, expensive, not

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Speaker 2: entirely thought out bets with Viva's budget. I mean, just

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Speaker 2: think about Anna Wintour's extravagant photo shoots or even basic

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Speaker 2: things like paper. Here's Peter again.

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Speaker 5: He was printing it on sick beautiful paper. It was

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Speaker 5: just for a commercial magazine. It just costs too much.

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Speaker 2: But Viva had always lost money. Bob had been bleeding

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Speaker 2: buckets of money into it from the beginning since nineteen

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Speaker 2: seventy three, and it hadn't mattered to him much before

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Speaker 2: he could afford it.

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Speaker 7: That wasn't the issue, and that was so successful. It

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Speaker 7: was probably a very efficient tax right off?

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Speaker 2: You wait, a tax right off? Was Viva just an

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Speaker 2: elaborate scheme for one man to pay less than his

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Speaker 2: fair share in taxes? When trying to pinpoint why Viva

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Speaker 2: shut down, it's easy to get lost in the content

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Speaker 2: of the magazine, what worked, what didn't. But a lot

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Speaker 2: of times these things are more just straight up ruthless

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Speaker 2: gaming of capitalism than you'd think, because what we know

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Speaker 2: is that from the beginning of Viva, Bob was able

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Speaker 2: to use his women's magazine failure to offset his men's

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Speaker 2: magazine Penthouse's success.

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Speaker 4: I mean, it's always been my understanding that they kept

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Speaker 4: Viva going until Bob could no longer use the losses

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Speaker 4: to offset income from Penthouse, you know, But my understanding

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Speaker 4: was that if you kept funding a losing business venture

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Speaker 4: like Viva, was past seven years, the IRS no longer

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Speaker 4: considered that an investment.

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Speaker 9: They considered it a hobby.

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Speaker 4: I always heard that that timing, whatever that was, whether

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Speaker 4: it was seven years or nine years, was correlated to

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Speaker 4: Bob's inability to write off the losses.

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Speaker 2: With the tax right off. It's fair to question what

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Speaker 2: level of urgency, if any, Bob had to improve Viva's numbers.

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Speaker 2: And like what Cindy Gallups said, the light bulb really

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Speaker 2: has to want to change, and in many ways change

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Speaker 2: wasn't exactly in Bob's nature either.

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Speaker 5: Here's Peter again, and he said, Peter, let me tell

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Speaker 5: you something. When somebody tells me I'm wrong, I know

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Speaker 5: I'm right. If you have that belief and you follow

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Speaker 5: through on it, it's a prescription for disaster, because you

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Speaker 5: can be Because he remembered, at at least in his mind,

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Speaker 5: that people had told him he was wrong, he wasn't

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Speaker 5: going to succeed with penh House, And of course he succeeded,

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Speaker 5: but he you know, it's he hired a lot of

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Speaker 5: terrific people, but ultimately he didn't take any of their

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Speaker 5: advice on things.

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Speaker 2: It's late nineteen seventy eight when Bob decides to shut

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Speaker 2: it all down. Heva was a full five years old.

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Speaker 2: Here's Peter again, only this time he's not on the phone.

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Speaker 10: Well, look, this is what I heard working there as

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Speaker 10: the years were going on. Was definitely people said a

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Speaker 10: lot of things, so, you know, but people would say, well,

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Speaker 10: Bob can take this as a tax writer for five years,

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Speaker 10: but then he's you know, he's just not going to

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Speaker 10: keep doing it because he's just losing money. And I

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Speaker 10: think it did end after five years.

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Speaker 2: And for me, this timing is just a little too coincidental.

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Speaker 2: So was Viva just a tax write off a quote

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Speaker 2: hobby for Bob GUCCIONI Was he ever invested in its

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Speaker 2: six or was it actually better for him the whole

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Speaker 2: time if it failed?

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Speaker 10: Just knowing Bob, he certainly didn't start this thing as

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Speaker 10: a tax writer off. He would never do anything for

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Speaker 10: the money, which is why he ended up dying without assent.

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Speaker 10: But at some point if the magazine was failing after

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Speaker 10: years and just not working, and his accountant said, look,

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Speaker 10: after five years, you're going to have to start paying

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Speaker 10: real money's no longer a tax write off, I could

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Speaker 10: see him listening, because I mean, he stopped other magazines too,

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Speaker 10: But there's no way he started this magazine as a

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Speaker 10: tax write off or as an experiment, or I think

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Speaker 10: he really believed that this was something that could work.

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Speaker 2: Bob Guccioni was a stubborn cisgender white man of the

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Speaker 2: twentieth century. He was a product of his time, the

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Speaker 2: early seventies sexual revolution, which, by the time Viva ultimately fails,

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Speaker 2: is coming to an end. Here's Viva, writer Annie.

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Speaker 6: The late sixties were like this rocket that propelled us

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Speaker 6: into the seventies with all that hope and energy and exploration.

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Speaker 6: But then there was there was also inflation, as we

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Speaker 6: have now, as the seventies progressed, and so it became

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Speaker 6: harder to live on a little bit. You know, you

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Speaker 6: couldn't just live this kind of gypsy life and this

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Speaker 6: exploratory life.

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Speaker 9: You had to work.

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Speaker 6: You had to you know, you had to make more money,

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Speaker 6: and that brought people down, of course, So that's part

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Speaker 6: part of what happened, was economic.

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Speaker 2: When Viva finally folds, the seventies are all but over.

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Speaker 2: No matter if Bob fumbled Viva or not. The brief

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Speaker 2: window where a mainstream audience would have embraced a feminist

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Speaker 2: porn Magazine is closing, Porno Chic is dead. In just

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Speaker 2: a few months, Ronald Reagan will announce his presidential bid.

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Speaker 6: Everything's changing, this whole feeling that it's a new morning

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Speaker 6: in America. It's morning in America.

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Speaker 11: Right.

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Speaker 6: That party, the stale party, you know, all of the

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Speaker 6: crack files and the condoms and the cocaine dust that's

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Speaker 6: been lying around has all been swept out and everything

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Speaker 6: is clean.

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Speaker 2: Because once the eighties are ushered in, well, we went backwards.

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Speaker 1: Society went backwards, and I watched it happen. What happened

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Speaker 1: was that society stopped being open of that sex.

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Speaker 2: So where did that leave the Viva editors and other

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Speaker 2: talented women who worked at the magazine. We'll get to

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Speaker 2: that after the break at two. Afterglow, Viva Magazine was

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Speaker 2: Robin and Gaze and Anna wind Tours and dozens of

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Speaker 2: women's first big job, a place where they learned how

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Speaker 2: to do their work. It was all because of Bob

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Speaker 2: GUCCIONI a flawed, difficult pain in the ass of a

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Speaker 2: man who also happened to do a lot of good.

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Speaker 2: Here's Bob's head of pr Leslie J.

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Speaker 11: He definitely empowered me there's no doubt about it. I mean,

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Speaker 11: I really think I came live in that office doing

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Speaker 11: what I did. I was able to reach my potential

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Speaker 11: and go beyond even you know, I loved my job.

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Speaker 2: Because Bob did give all these women opportunities when a

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Speaker 2: lot of the world was not.

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Speaker 10: I mean, he'd call you honey, but he'd make you

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Speaker 10: editor in chief.

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Speaker 2: Many of them still admire both Bob and Kathy.

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Speaker 1: I just saw that they were a team and that

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Speaker 1: they always were into something new and what was coming.

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Speaker 1: And I personally resonated with that because that was how

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Speaker 1: I lived my life, like what's coming next, where's the

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Speaker 1: world going? How can we be on the edge of discovery?

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Speaker 2: After Viva, Bob and Kathy continue on their path of

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Speaker 2: professional discovery. They try to start a casino in Atlantic City.

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Speaker 2: I was the second person to buy land in Atlantic City.

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Speaker 2: I'd beat everybody except results. They dapple in animation.

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Speaker 7: We've done a dozen Shakespearean plays that have been animated

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Speaker 7: and sold.

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Speaker 2: The Love of the World. They're years ahead of predicting

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Speaker 2: virtual reality and cyber sex, though they never implement it.

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Speaker 2: Here's Kathy on Phil Donahue's show in nineteen ninety four.

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Speaker 4: The other interesting thing about this is you do not

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Speaker 4: have to appear in virtual reality as you You can

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Speaker 4: appear as a fantasy creation of yourself.

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Speaker 2: But their biggest success comes from the new magazines they

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Speaker 2: launched together.

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Speaker 1: I totally loved when they got into the Omni magazine.

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Speaker 1: I mean, they made this commitment to live one hundred

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Speaker 1: years and longevity, and sadly both of them died it cancer,

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Speaker 1: you know, way young.

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Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety seven, Kathy Keaton, by then one of

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Speaker 2: the wealthiest and highest ranking publishing executives in the world,

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Speaker 2: dies of complications from breast cancer. She was fifty eight.

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Speaker 4: She reached out to me while she was dying of

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Speaker 4: breast cancer and was in a real state of denial

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Speaker 4: about her chances. And I went to New York to

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Speaker 4: see her before she died, and it was really, you know,

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Speaker 4: quite moving because she was hooked up to morphine but

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Speaker 4: wearing one of those outfits that she was always known for,

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Speaker 4: you know, the skin tight tank top with her bra

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Speaker 4: showing and you know, leopard skin or a snake skin leggings.

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Speaker 4: The idea of getting into an outfit like that when

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Speaker 4: you're sick enough to be hooked up to morphine is

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Speaker 4: mind boggling to me. But Kathy had tremendous self discipline.

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Speaker 2: Bob's never the same without Kathy. Here's his longtime friend,

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Speaker 2: the photographer Earl Miller, who shot me of Viva's nudes.

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Speaker 9: When Cathy died, he lost his own tucks. He became

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Speaker 9: a recluse afterwards. His story is like a Greek tragedy,

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Speaker 9: the story of from rags to riches back to rags.

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Speaker 9: One of the richest men in the world, and he

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Speaker 9: went broke.

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Speaker 2: Bob had started Penhouse with Kathy, and truth is he

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Speaker 2: doesn't know how to run it without her. Penhouse is

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Speaker 2: the lynchpin of Bob's company, and he fails to evolve

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Speaker 2: it at pace with the digital times, is too slow

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Speaker 2: to bring Penhouse online. By the early two thousands, the company,

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Speaker 2: which was such a product of the seventies, collapses, and

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Speaker 2: with it, so does Bob. He leverages everything to save

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Speaker 2: his empire. He's forced to sell his Manhattan mansion and

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Speaker 2: even his beloved art collection. He fights to the end, and.

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Speaker 12: Then, of course he got his own cancer. And one

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Speaker 12: of the profound impacts that he had with his own

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Speaker 12: physical presence was that incredibly easy relaxed baritone voice. The

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Speaker 12: surgery in his throat changed his voice became a high pitched,

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Speaker 12: almost inaudible. Yet I had to put my ear up

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Speaker 12: to his mouth to understand what he was saying.

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Speaker 2: Bob Guccioni, the proud lion of porn publishing, goes out

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Speaker 2: not with a roar but a whisper. He died in

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Speaker 2: twenty ten. He was seventy nine. Bob may have died

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Speaker 2: with nothing, but he left a lot behind. Here's his son,

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Speaker 2: Bob Junior.

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Speaker 13: I say his legacy is a great visionary, great artists,

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Speaker 13: great painter, a great editor. You know, believed and fought

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Speaker 13: for the First Amendment unlike any other publisher has ever done. Frankly,

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Speaker 13: I think his legacy is strong. It was a very powerful,

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Speaker 13: wonderfully flowed, brilliant genius.

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Speaker 2: Bob and Kathy aside, some of Viva's biggest legacies are

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Speaker 2: the women who worked there. Here's editor Betty Jane.

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Speaker 14: I'm proud of what we did. And I look at

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Speaker 14: the stuff sometimes and I look at what's surprisingly not updated.

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Speaker 14: I look if something is still funny, or if something

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Speaker 14: is still prescient or hits the nail on the head

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Speaker 14: or whatever, and some of it I'm not happy about,

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Speaker 14: but most of it I am. I think it stands up. Okay,

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Speaker 14: I mean, I look back and I have such fond

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Speaker 14: feelings about that period of my life, you know, freedom choices.

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Speaker 2: After losing her job at Viva, Betty Jane went on

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Speaker 2: to be a columnist a dozens of magazines and newspapers.

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Speaker 2: She'd build a tight professional community at Viva and collaborated

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Speaker 2: with her former Viva colleagues for the rest of her career.

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Speaker 14: We may not have had the well, look, I lost

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Speaker 14: my job because I you know, because we didn't have

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Speaker 14: any power, but we.

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Speaker 11: Had each other.

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Speaker 2: The people they worked with were meaningful, and so was

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Speaker 2: the time they were working in.

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Speaker 4: And the resilience that we had in the seventies were

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Speaker 4: the expectations were so low for us that whenever we

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Speaker 4: did something that was better, it was like whoa. Everything

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Speaker 4: that we achieved was sort of like WHOA, I you know,

399
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Speaker 4: I did that.

400
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Speaker 3: I could do that.

401
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Speaker 2: After Viva, Robin went on to be the publisher of

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Speaker 2: Mother Jones, the founder and CEO of Parenting Magazine, and

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Speaker 2: a vice president at c NEET. Today, she's an advisor

404
00:24:38,480 --> 00:24:41,480
Speaker 2: to tech startups and author of a book of business

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Speaker 2: advice for women and for the women of Viva. This

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Speaker 2: sense of achievement that Robin just talked about it meant everything.

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Speaker 3: I sometimes wonder if that was a period of plenty

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Speaker 3: when we were allowed to loss and move ahead. We

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Speaker 3: were in a business that was a bit frontier, you know,

410
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Speaker 3: wild west, and we picked it up and ran with it.

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Speaker 3: If you were determined and you were good at it,

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Speaker 3: you could go anywhere.

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Speaker 2: Post Viva, Gay went lots of places. She was the

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Speaker 2: editor in chief of Working Woman, of Mirabella. She was

415
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Speaker 2: a vice president at the New York Times.

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Speaker 3: I didn't seem to want to get involved in the

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Speaker 3: sexual freedoms of the time, but I did get very,

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Speaker 3: very much turned on by the freedoms that women were achieving.

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Speaker 3: To have your own money, to decide your own life,

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Speaker 3: and so on. Those freedoms to me were and are

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Speaker 3: so huge.

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Speaker 2: And even for all its misfires, the ridiculous flaccid dix,

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Speaker 2: the gender caricature bosses, the feminist contradictions, Viva still meant something.

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Speaker 2: It was a step forward. Like all the best kinds

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Speaker 2: of failures, Viva was an ambitious one or out of hope.

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Speaker 2: It's a hopefulness many of us have in the beginning

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Speaker 2: of our careers if we're lucky, this feeling that what

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Speaker 2: we do has or will soon have meaning, no matter

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Speaker 2: how small. But it's a feeling that's hard to hold

430
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Speaker 2: on to as we're burned out and screwed over professionally,

431
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Speaker 2: as cynicism creeps in. And maybe that's why I was

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Speaker 2: attracted to Viva in the first place. That first time

433
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Speaker 2: I saw it, when I was sitting at a desk

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Speaker 2: at a women's magazine feeling disillusioned myself. I could feel

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Speaker 2: the hope and urgency in its pages, how the editors

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Speaker 2: felt everything could change, it could all be different, and

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Speaker 2: they could be part of how they were planning of flag.

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Speaker 2: They were planning a flag. It might not have worked,

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Speaker 2: but I think they were really trying to do.

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Speaker 6: Something yeah, or at least to put a marker down

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Speaker 6: so that you could come back and do what you're doing, like,

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Speaker 6: let's carry it on.

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Speaker 2: Viva came out of a culture of risk taking, a

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Speaker 2: progression of flawed people using their power to give others

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Speaker 2: at least a bit more freedom to try something innovative

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Speaker 2: and new, even if it too was flawed.

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Speaker 1: What I really admired about Bob and Kathy is that

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Speaker 1: they were brave. They went where other people did not

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Speaker 1: dare to go, but fantasized about going, and they took risks,

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Speaker 1: and that was tremendous because it allowed all the rest

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Speaker 1: of us to go further and further towards that without fear.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, Bob, Thank you Kathy.

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Speaker 2: Stiff is an original podcast from iHeartMedia and Crooked Media.

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Speaker 2: It's produced by Crooked Media. It's hosted and written by

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Speaker 2: me Jennifer Ramalini and produced by Megan Donnas. Sidney Rapp

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Speaker 2: is our associate producer, story editing by Mary Knoff, music

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Speaker 2: sound design and engineering by Hannes Brown. Our fact checker

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Speaker 2: is Julia Paskin. Additional production support from Nafila Cato and

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Speaker 2: Inez Maza from Crooked Media. Our executive producers are Sarah Geismer,

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Speaker 2: Katy Long, and Mary Knaff, with special thanks to Alison

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Speaker 2: Falsetta and Lyra Smith from iHeartMedia. Our executive producers are

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Speaker 2: Beth Anne Macaluso and Julia Weaver to