Speaker 1: It feels appropriate to be sitting here at newsstand Studios
Speaker 1: with Graydon Carter, where his and My magazines were likely
Speaker 1: once sold. Graydon is famously the editor who established the
Speaker 1: Voice of Vanity Fair, making it the intersection of celebrity
Speaker 1: news and high quality reportage. He has been writing and
Speaker 1: editing since he left college to run The Canadian Review.
Speaker 1: His new memoir, When the Going Was Good, shares hilarious
Speaker 1: stories and insights from the glamorous world of late twentieth
Speaker 1: century journalism as only he can. Welcome to my podcast, Graydon,
Speaker 1: it's such an honor to be here. Well, it's so
Speaker 1: nice to have you here. That's right, Old editors on
Speaker 1: old editor. Are you still a good editor?
Speaker 2: I'm a better editor now than I was twenty five
Speaker 2: years now.
Speaker 1: Oh you're still busy. You're still editing air mail?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, no, And it's the same sort of job.
Speaker 2: Get a little better at it every year. Thank god.
Speaker 2: It goes that way rather than the other way.
Speaker 1: And what about writing, well, other.
Speaker 2: Than the book? I you know, I write occasionally for Airmail.
Speaker 2: I'll do more now that this my book is done,
Speaker 2: because that took a lot of my time.
Speaker 1: I bet it did. And you had great archives to
Speaker 1: write this beautiful book.
Speaker 2: I didn't consult any archives whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Not really.
Speaker 2: No, if I didn't remember it, I felt it wasn't
Speaker 2: that interesting. And I just wanted to have stories that
Speaker 2: I thought would interest others. I didn't. I didn't go
Speaker 2: consult my diary or anything like that. I just and
Speaker 2: I basically have a decent memory, not a perfect memory.
Speaker 2: And I had a fact check who went through and
Speaker 2: afterwards and made sure that I actually got things correct.
Speaker 1: That is so great. Yeah, I'm trying to write mine now.
Speaker 2: I'll be interested.
Speaker 1: I got it like another year and a half to
Speaker 1: get it.
Speaker 2: Need it?
Speaker 1: I know, oh, I need it. But I was going
Speaker 1: to ask your opinion, because did you feel like you
Speaker 1: went down the rabbit hole?
Speaker 2: No? No, I didn't feel that because most of my
Speaker 2: stories it was broken up over you know, childhood in
Speaker 2: Canada and Time magazine and Life magazine, then Spy and
Speaker 2: vanity fairs.
Speaker 3: So you have a good chronological memory, reasonably good, yes,
Speaker 3: but you can't write it chronologically.
Speaker 2: I start off with coming back from my honeymoon on
Speaker 2: the day we broke the story of Deep Throat, So
Speaker 2: you and I had help with that because a friend
Speaker 2: James Fox, helped me out a lot on this in
Speaker 2: organizing the book, so it wasn't just chronological.
Speaker 1: Because I have vast archives. I mean I have photo
Speaker 1: and diary and notes. Okay, I saved everything, my entire life. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it makes it hard in a way but also
Speaker 1: kind of very interesting.
Speaker 2: But you don't want to get bogged down on that stuff.
Speaker 2: You want to just tell the fun stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I have. I have good chaft for
Speaker 1: your titles.
Speaker 2: I've got.
Speaker 1: But your book is so amusing but also so informative
Speaker 1: and so introspective, and yet it tells you, I mean
Speaker 1: tells us so much about what went on in the
Speaker 1: world of media, especially in the United States and in
Speaker 1: New York City.
Speaker 2: Well, we were there with magazines in the nineteen a
Speaker 2: the eighties, nineties and odds were an amazing time because
Speaker 2: magazines drove the culture and they you know, they both
Speaker 2: reflected the culture and were a big part of it.
Speaker 1: Your memoir, When the Going Was Good is about a
Speaker 1: time when the magazine industry was, as a title suggests,
Speaker 1: good it was. It was the best.
Speaker 2: Well, also it was the Golden Age. For a singular
Speaker 2: reason is that so many magazines were good then, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean your magazine was brilliant. I mean Esquire was
Speaker 2: great then. Time and news we were firing on all cyliners.
Speaker 2: You had The New Yorker, and you had Harper's in
Speaker 2: the Atlantic and New York Magazine. There were Food.
Speaker 1: Magazine, Magazine. I mean they were all good, good, editorially excellent,
Speaker 1: beautiful photography. It was the heyday for photographers.
Speaker 2: That and it was it was a great time because
Speaker 2: young people came out of schools wanting to be in
Speaker 2: the magazine business. So we got the sort of the
Speaker 2: best in the brightest rather than the banks as it
Speaker 2: is now.
Speaker 1: You know, oh yeah, nobody wants to do anything but
Speaker 1: run to a bank or to an investment investment house.
Speaker 1: That's it, right.
Speaker 2: I know it's very sad.
Speaker 1: So start back a little bit because I want people
Speaker 1: to understand that you have always worked in media straight
Speaker 1: out of college. You were born in Canada, right, and
Speaker 1: then what happened?
Speaker 2: Well, I played, you know, I had a normal childhood
Speaker 2: in Canada, and I involved playing a lot of hockey
Speaker 2: and skiing, and I I started college and I was
Speaker 2: stumbled in this office and these fellow students were starting
Speaker 2: up a political literary magazine, and I went in to
Speaker 2: talk to them and they said they were looking for
Speaker 2: an art director, and I said, well, I can draw,
Speaker 2: and so I became the art director. And little magazines
Speaker 2: are always very bitter, little vessels of hatred and infighting,
Speaker 2: and so one by one they left and I became
Speaker 2: the editor, and I ran it for the next or
Speaker 2: three and a half four years. It did nothing but
Speaker 2: lose money. It wasn't particularly good, but it got me
Speaker 2: a job at Time Magazine and York and that was
Speaker 2: the beginning of my sort of proper adult life. What
Speaker 2: year was that, nineteen seventy eight, oh long? And so
Speaker 2: the city was, you know, still coming out of bankruptcy.
Speaker 2: Rents were low. My I had a gorgeous apartment in
Speaker 2: Greenwich Village that I paid two hundred dollars a month for, which.
Speaker 1: Is my rent was fifty a month, a fortunate six
Speaker 1: and a half rooms on the US River.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: It was so nice, I know.
Speaker 2: So you know, I probably had roughly the same directory
Speaker 2: you did. And then I worked at Time for five years.
Speaker 2: I was not particularly accomplished, I.
Speaker 1: Was I was the editor at that time.
Speaker 2: Ray k was the editor and Henry Greenwall was the
Speaker 2: editor in chief. But I came in. So I came in.
Speaker 2: They had restocked the magazine. There'd been a strike and
Speaker 2: they'd restocked the magazine with this whole new group of
Speaker 2: incredibly clever people. And we're all about the same age.
Speaker 2: And so it was Frank Rich, you know, became the
Speaker 2: chief theater critic of the Times and now as the
Speaker 2: producer of Succession and other HBO hits. Michiko Kakutani became
Speaker 2: the chief book credit of the New York Times, Maureen Dowd,
Speaker 2: who's still the acclaimed Politzer Prize winning columnists of the Times.
Speaker 2: Kurt Anderson, my partner at Spy, Alessander Stanley, my partner
Speaker 2: at Airmail, Jim Kelly who became the editor of Time,
Speaker 2: Walter Isaacson who became the editor Time and later, you know,
Speaker 2: the acclaimed biographer. So and there was like six other
Speaker 2: people like this. It was just an extraordinary gu It
Speaker 2: was the best group. It was amazing and we're all
Speaker 2: still close and friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Nice. So after Time, what happened?
Speaker 2: So I went to I had to They sent me
Speaker 2: up to White Planes to work on a magazine that
Speaker 2: they wanted to start, it was going to compete with
Speaker 2: TV Guide, which was then, you know, the biggest magazine
Speaker 2: in the country, and that failed.
Speaker 1: I was there for twenty five million subscribers.
Speaker 2: To think about it, this.
Speaker 1: Is for TV Guide, everybody. The only other magazine that
Speaker 1: had such a subscription rate, I think was Reader's.
Speaker 2: Was Reader's Digest yea. And remember TV Guy got sold
Speaker 2: for three billion dollars of this point. So that came
Speaker 2: back after two months and that was sent to Life magazine.
Speaker 2: And while I was there, I could do most of
Speaker 2: my work in five hours a week. But so then
Speaker 2: I kicked around this idea for a spy magazine and I.
Speaker 1: Are they paying well? I mean, what do you remember
Speaker 1: what you were making?
Speaker 2: They were thirty seven five you remember, yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 2: paid that little and with small numbers.
Speaker 1: You didn't have five children then you just had one child.
Speaker 2: I had to true. So Kurt Anderson I we started
Speaker 2: plotting what spy magazine would be like. And it was
Speaker 2: the you know, the middle of the eighties was a
Speaker 2: lot of magazines started around that period.
Speaker 1: It was Funny. That was a really funny magazine.
Speaker 2: It was a funny, reported magazine about the characters who
Speaker 2: made up New York and and then gradually and were
Speaker 2: you there.
Speaker 1: When they wrote that horrible story about me? No, oh,
Speaker 1: so it was Pegazzi that did it.
Speaker 2: It was Pigazzi.
Speaker 1: They wrote a story about me, and I hated Spy
Speaker 1: magazine from that day, that day fourth but but I
Speaker 1: think I still have the article.
Speaker 2: Well, funny, after I left, they they had a couple
Speaker 2: of negative things about me, So it just it went
Speaker 2: with the territory. But Nora Efron used to say she'd
Speaker 2: go to the newstand leaf quickly leave through a copy
Speaker 2: to see if her name was mentioned, and be relieved
Speaker 2: and then slightly miffed that she wasn't mentioned, because if
Speaker 2: you weren't in that Spy, it meant you didn't have
Speaker 2: sort of purchase in the in the constellation of the we.
Speaker 1: Had to be mentioned. Yes, yes, So then what happened
Speaker 1: after Spy? So what did you sell it for? Do
Speaker 1: you remember?
Speaker 2: Not that much money? I mean, nothing to change your
Speaker 2: life or anything like that. And we sold it to
Speaker 2: Johnny Pagazzi, who was a you know, European art collector
Speaker 2: and man about town, and Charles Sauci. The advertisings aar
Speaker 2: went on.
Speaker 1: Then how did you get your vanity fair.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to start up a newspaper and it
Speaker 2: would be twice a week newspaper berliner's size, which is
Speaker 2: just a thinner version of a tabloid, but with a
Speaker 2: of the front page that would look like a broadsheet.
Speaker 2: And I was going to bring it out on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays and it would be not it wouldn't be
Speaker 2: about city, but it'd be built the industries that ran
Speaker 2: the city, like publishing, television, the law, city government, and
Speaker 2: fashion and things like that. So I was going around
Speaker 2: trying to raise money for it, and I bumped into
Speaker 2: Arthur Carter, who was a banker who owned a newspaper
Speaker 2: called very sleepy Upper east Side newspaper called the New
Speaker 2: York Observer, and he said, why don't you take this
Speaker 2: over and run this for me, and you can learn
Speaker 2: how to do it. So the Observer was a big broadsheet.
Speaker 2: It was salmon colored and it looked.
Speaker 1: All it loved.
Speaker 2: I loved it was beautiful looking, loved it, and so
Speaker 2: I worked out I said, okay, So I worked at
Speaker 2: a plan to change it. It was very it was
Speaker 2: really dull, and I thought I had a six month
Speaker 2: twelve month eighteen month plan of what I would do
Speaker 2: and who I'd bring in. There wasn't a lot of
Speaker 2: money attached to it. I mean, we didn't have a
Speaker 2: huge budget like that. But by about the eighth month,
Speaker 2: people were reading and it became a thing in New York.
Speaker 2: So I started sending copies to friends mine, complimentary copies
Speaker 2: every week to friends mine around the world, including a
Speaker 2: lot of editors in Europe. And I didn't know this
Speaker 2: at the time, but sign new House would take twice
Speaker 2: a year tour of all his media properties in Europe
Speaker 2: when he would stop off in London, in Paris and Milan,
Speaker 2: and he noticed that in so many of his editors
Speaker 2: in baskets were copies in The New York Observer. And
Speaker 2: as he told me much later, he returned from Europe
Speaker 2: thinking this was some huge international hit. So he and
Speaker 2: I'd gone to him originally as well when I was
Speaker 2: writing trying to raise money for this. So he called
Speaker 2: me and said would you like to meet? And I
Speaker 2: said absolutely. And I was happy of the Observer. Though
Speaker 2: I wasn't making a lot of money, but I was
Speaker 2: running well. I loved my staff, and we worked in
Speaker 2: an old sort of townhouse on the Upper East Side,
Speaker 2: and I was worried that SI was going to offer
Speaker 2: me like a men magazine or something like that. And
Speaker 2: I've never really I've written for end's magazines, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't my thing. I didn't read them that much. And
Speaker 2: I was worried that I'd have to turn him down
Speaker 2: because I was happy where I was. But then we
Speaker 2: ment to his apartment over on Ewan Plaza and he
Speaker 2: offered me two magazines. He said, I've got The New
Speaker 2: Yorker and I've got Vanity Fair. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: this is slightly awkward because for the last five years
Speaker 2: we sort of made fun of Vanity Fair. We made
Speaker 2: fun of at Spy magazine, we made fun of the editor,
Speaker 2: we made fun of some of the writers, we made
Speaker 2: fun of some of the editors, and they she was
Speaker 2: the editor, and we made fun of their sort of
Speaker 2: the baroque writing style in the magazine. So he said, okay,
Speaker 2: it's the other one, and so I laughed, you know,
Speaker 2: and I so it was going to be The New Yorker.
Speaker 2: So I laughed, and I only told a few people.
Speaker 2: I told my wife and children, my best friend Jim Kelly,
Speaker 2: and my agent Andrew Willie when we'd go out for
Speaker 2: dinner if we wanted to discuss it. We had a
Speaker 2: code word for it when we call it the pencil,
Speaker 2: in case anybody overheard us. And I worked at this
Speaker 2: plan and then the day it was supposed to be announced,
Speaker 2: I got a call from Anna Wintor who said, it's
Speaker 2: going to be the other magazine. So he said, Street said,
Speaker 2: so it's going to call you Act Surprise, and so
Speaker 2: he called a few minutes later and he said, it's
Speaker 2: going to be Vanny Fair. Is that okay? I said absolutely,
Speaker 2: because I was going to be making about four times
Speaker 2: more at Vanny Fair than I was and I had
Speaker 2: three children by this time.
Speaker 1: You're going to have a carne driver.
Speaker 2: Well I didn't even know any of that. But then,
Speaker 2: so that's a vany Fair. But the thing is I
Speaker 2: didn't have time to work out a plan, and so
Speaker 2: I had to start pretty soon. And yeah, for the
Speaker 2: first two years a bunch I fired, none of the staff.
Speaker 2: I inherited the entire staff. They hated me at first
Speaker 2: because new editors can mean unemployment and because we've made
Speaker 2: fun of so many of them along the way, but
Speaker 2: lot most of them came around, and I'm a very
Speaker 2: collegial person and I like a non dramatic office. And
Speaker 2: eventually it settled down to like three people. They were
Speaker 2: most of them were just spent their time spreading news
Speaker 2: of my inadequacies around town at dinner parties and that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. One week I got rid of three
Speaker 2: of the troublemakers. And there was two years in and
Speaker 2: things just sort of changed. Then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: people started working together and saying please and thank you,
Speaker 2: and we're being working together rather than being combative with
Speaker 2: each each other.
Speaker 1: And the magazine got fatter and fatter. I remember that
Speaker 1: was the time.
Speaker 2: No, they'd be like three quarters of an inch for
Speaker 2: Oh yes.
Speaker 1: I loved those magazines. It was so much fun to
Speaker 1: get that in the mail. Oh my god.
Speaker 2: A lot of work to put together. I was able to,
Speaker 2: you know, compile one of the greatest stables of writers
Speaker 2: and photographers probably ever assembled under one room.
Speaker 1: Indible.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But at the same time, because it was a
Speaker 2: golden age, everybody else was really good, so you could
Speaker 2: never rest on your laurels, and you know, and a
Speaker 2: lot of the competition was weekly. We were a big
Speaker 2: lumbering monthly that took. You know how long it takes
Speaker 2: to print your magazine? They bound magazine and I would
Speaker 2: go to the printer color correct, would you really? Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I didn't do that.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I was real fun.
Speaker 2: I didn't know where the printer was. It was in
Speaker 2: Kentucky maybe, yeah, I know. We had a person who
Speaker 2: did that for us, a company person, so I didn't
Speaker 2: have to do that.
Speaker 1: But what was it? What was the highest circulation of
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair when you were there?
Speaker 2: We never tried. You know, the thing is we charged
Speaker 2: so much per page. We're charging one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 2: per page. If we increased the circulation too much, we'd
Speaker 2: have to raise that above that and that would be
Speaker 2: a sort of That was a tipping point for a
Speaker 2: lot of advertisers.
Speaker 1: But what was then the readership?
Speaker 2: Oh like one point three million, and then with the
Speaker 2: European edition one point four million. But we tried to
Speaker 2: grow it like one percent a year, just to show growth,
Speaker 2: but not go much beyond that.
Speaker 1: And beautiful printing, beautiful photography. Great, you hit the best photographer.
Speaker 2: Any and and her Breds.
Speaker 1: Yes, I just worked with any a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 2: The best is amazing.
Speaker 1: Still. I mean, it's still so fabulous.
Speaker 2: When you would have a discussion or an argument, who
Speaker 2: would win?
Speaker 1: I would?
Speaker 2: Are you serious?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And I'm admiring of you. I lost every single argument
Speaker 2: with Annie, every single one.
Speaker 1: Yet she was But but I don't like to argue
Speaker 1: with her. I just love to I just love to
Speaker 1: talk to and her point of view, and she works.
Speaker 2: Hard, unbelieva, she works even harder than you. And that's
Speaker 2: saying something.
Speaker 1: No, no, she does, and and her her sense of perfection.
Speaker 1: What did you hope to add to the legacy of
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair when you took over it? I mean you
Speaker 1: didn't really have time to think about that right away,
Speaker 1: But what did you hope and your mind when you
Speaker 1: when you realize here I am, I'm at the helm
Speaker 1: of one of the finest magazines ever.
Speaker 2: I just I didn't have any grand plans. My greatest
Speaker 2: hope was just keeping the job because at some point,
Speaker 2: at a certain point, I had four children and that's family. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so I just want the first couple of years,
Speaker 2: I just wanted to hold onto the job because there
Speaker 2: were rumors that I was going to be losing it.
Speaker 2: And they used to have a sort of peg bulletin
Speaker 2: board sort of on the and the foyer three point
Speaker 2: fifty Madison where where the conte Nast was, and it
Speaker 2: had all the names of the editors and the executives.
Speaker 2: And every day when I go into work, I just
Speaker 2: like quickly glance at my name was still on it.
Speaker 2: And then there was a couple around the newstand called
Speaker 2: Market and Helmet, and they sort of knew everything before
Speaker 2: anybody else, and I would say hello to them in
Speaker 2: the morning and just be able to gauge by their
Speaker 2: faces whether they had heard some horrifying news about me.
Speaker 2: And so I had no plans at all. Most of
Speaker 2: the things, the the innovations, strange enough, were not my ideas.
Speaker 2: The one was the the Oscar party I'd gone to.
Speaker 2: So when I got to the magazine, I wanted to
Speaker 2: meet Sweti Lazar. So we went out to lunch, and
Speaker 2: I don't think he knew what to make of me,
Speaker 2: because it was so fascinated by all the writers. He
Speaker 2: had William Saroyan, and he had Noel Coward and Moss Hard.
Speaker 2: But then he represented all the major film stars. You
Speaker 2: probably met him the first sort of major superagent in
Speaker 2: the world. So we had we had lunch, and he
Speaker 2: invited me to his Oscar party that year. He had
Speaker 2: it at Spago, which was divided into two rooms, so
Speaker 2: you had and you could see that there was an
Speaker 2: A room and a b room, and the A room
Speaker 2: was like the Gregory Pax and the Billy Wilders, the
Speaker 2: Henry Fondos, and the b room was like people like
Speaker 2: me below the line talent. And he dies in December,
Speaker 2: and I think, you know something, Benny Fair could take
Speaker 2: that spot. So I we booked Morton's restaurant, and which
Speaker 2: was then the power restaurant in Los Angeles at the time.
Speaker 1: And another guy.
Speaker 2: I was in love with Peter Morton. Yes, I think
Speaker 2: he's taken.
Speaker 1: I know he was taking no, but but he was
Speaker 1: so attractive.
Speaker 2: Does he know this?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'll tell him that, Okay, okay, I was just pretty.
Speaker 2: I feel like Dolly Levi here. So I wanted to
Speaker 2: I was worried because SI loves Hollywood, he loves movies,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to make sure that we were successful,
Speaker 2: and if we weren't, I wanted to fail on a
Speaker 2: small scale. So I we had one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: people for dinner and it was one room, so there
Speaker 2: was no ab delineation, and a lot of big parties
Speaker 2: in those days would have a sort of roped off
Speaker 2: VIP area, so called VIP area. I wanted none of that,
Speaker 2: and once you got in, everybody was the same.
Speaker 1: I like that, so we did.
Speaker 2: I had one hundred and fifty people for dinner, and
Speaker 2: then about one hundred and fifty two hundred people came
Speaker 2: after the Oscars. We weren't a huge success yet, but
Speaker 2: we hadn't failed. And then you know, the next year,
Speaker 2: it just grew and grew and grew, and then cy
Speaker 2: when late at lunch, he said, have you ever thought
Speaker 2: of doing a Hollywood issue?
Speaker 1: And oh, it was his idea.
Speaker 2: It was his idea, and so I sort of resisted
Speaker 2: at first because I thought one of the great joys
Speaker 2: of a magine, a big general interest magazine like Vanny Fair,
Speaker 2: was the the fact that there's so many different types
Speaker 2: of stories. And but then I was working at home
Speaker 2: one night in the kitchen I thought I tried to
Speaker 2: sketched what I thought could be a lineup for a
Speaker 2: Hollywood issue, where you would have a crime story involving Hollywood,
Speaker 2: and a business story and a historic story and a
Speaker 2: you know, a contemporary story with limitless it was, as
Speaker 2: it turns out, it was. We did that the next
Speaker 2: year and that created a huge sort of old cover.
Speaker 2: Did you give a fulld oup coverage? Yes, we had, Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I wanted at that time. First of all, the
Speaker 2: Oscars had they they'd sort of lost their loster. They
Speaker 2: were not considered cool, and young people thought they they
Speaker 2: were incredibly uncol and people stayed away in droves. But
Speaker 2: we sort of we sort of told the story of
Speaker 2: Hollywood glamour back to Hollywood because they'd sort of forgotten
Speaker 2: that this was one of their sort of major trading assets.
Speaker 2: And the Hollywood issue became a fiction. And then we
Speaker 2: said we had this huge tent pole in Los Angeles
Speaker 2: in the spring for the magazine. And then the other
Speaker 2: sort of major tent pole issue I did was I
Speaker 2: was having lunch with David Halberstam. I'm sure you had
Speaker 2: a cross on him as well. Oh, okay, I did.
Speaker 2: We were talking and we were at lunch and we
Speaker 2: were talking about that. He was saying that the economy,
Speaker 2: the American economy this is like nineteen ninety four, had
Speaker 2: shifted from being an economy that made things and shipped
Speaker 2: them overseas, like you know, steel and cars and tires
Speaker 2: and that sort of thing, and was now more of
Speaker 2: an information entertainment based economy, and what we shipped around
Speaker 2: the world were sort of intellectual products and books, movies, books, movies, television.
Speaker 2: Technology was coming out of Silicon Valley. So I thought,
Speaker 2: if that is the case, because I thought most people
Speaker 2: could name the heads of the movie studios, but not
Speaker 2: the heads of like US Steel and General Motors. So
Speaker 2: I thought there must be then a new establishment as well,
Speaker 2: because the old establishment was like you know, Wall Street
Speaker 2: and Washington man in gray suits and I so I
Speaker 2: sketched out what I thought we could do, and I thought,
Speaker 2: you know, I have I have one of this the
Speaker 2: greatest assets that any editors ever had, I had, any Liebitts.
Speaker 2: So we decided we had to show what this new
Speaker 2: establishment looked like. So Annie spent six months photographing I'm
Speaker 2: sure you know most of these.
Speaker 1: Things people I loved.
Speaker 2: I loved those issues well they were and it just
Speaker 2: it sort of created a new look. And it was like,
Speaker 2: h and I always wanted to have a Fortune five
Speaker 2: hundred type list. And so we had created the new
Speaker 2: establishment list, and it became and it was you know,
Speaker 2: it was technology, entertainment and information and back when news
Speaker 2: and that sort of thing was still a big thing.
Speaker 2: And that became a big tent pole. And then again
Speaker 2: it wasn't my idea, but my publisher, ed Manikeski, he
Speaker 2: kept pestering me, as did one of my staff members,
Speaker 2: Betsy Lack, to do like a summit built around the
Speaker 2: new establishment. So about three years in we decided to
Speaker 2: do that. And then so that that became a huge
Speaker 2: successful thing. And so we had sort of tent poles shoes,
Speaker 2: one in the in the spring and one in the fall,
Speaker 2: and that was that was a very useful thing, both
Speaker 2: for the business and for the overall halo image of
Speaker 2: the magazine.
Speaker 1: It's like the met you know, you had, you had
Speaker 1: your a costume institute ball, I mean, you had those.
Speaker 2: The Oscar party was more fun than it is more fun.
Speaker 1: I've been to the Oscar Party and it was so
Speaker 1: much fun that I felt lost there. But it was amazing.
Speaker 1: By the way, So the culture around you while you
Speaker 1: were doing all this amazing development for cy New House
Speaker 1: and Conde Nast, what was the culture like.
Speaker 2: A Cone nas Yeah, it was very competitive between titles.
Speaker 2: I mean, Vogue and Vanny Fair competed desperately for advertising pages.
Speaker 1: And and cover stars.
Speaker 2: Weazy won the cover battle, yes, and.
Speaker 1: Because a bigger circulation, or.
Speaker 2: I would rather be on the cover of Vanity Fair
Speaker 2: than Vogue. And but the and SI was very generous
Speaker 2: in the way he paid people. And so you know,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, I was making a decent salary,
Speaker 2: and you had a car and driver, and I was
Speaker 2: able to buy an apartment in the Dakota and uh
Speaker 2: and then a house downtown, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: I didn't have the money worries i'd had before, because
Speaker 2: I think he wanted you to just focus right on
Speaker 2: your magazine. And so as a result, I was able
Speaker 2: to track this incredible array of writers and photographers and editors.
Speaker 2: By the way, but.
Speaker 1: The writers, I mean, the list goes on and on.
Speaker 1: And the photographers that whose careers you built.
Speaker 2: I didn't build. And most of them were already built
Speaker 2: by the time I got.
Speaker 1: But you made them.
Speaker 2: We burnished them. Yeah they were, they were beautiful.
Speaker 1: You know, some of them started at my place, I'm
Speaker 1: sure they did, and then they moved on to Vanity Fair.
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of that too, because I started, I
Speaker 1: took a lot of novice photographers or newbies we used
Speaker 1: to and trained them in still life and trained them
Speaker 1: and nature and stuff, and boy did they shine.
Speaker 2: They were bad. Your magazine was exquisite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had great, great imagery, great photography, great editorial,
Speaker 1: no mistakes. No editorial mistakes. I think we had one
Speaker 1: in ten years.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm sorry. Food is a lot easier to not
Speaker 2: make a mistake out they're writing about people and this
Speaker 2: is the Yeah. Maybe, so maybe we made We had sometimes,
Speaker 2: you know, forty fact checkers working on an issue, but
Speaker 2: we would make mistake, I remember, and I would take
Speaker 2: any phone call from anybody. So the man we had
Speaker 2: a story about Salvador Dolly and in the story we
Speaker 2: write this man, we say his name and said that
Speaker 2: he was Salvador Dally's wife Galley's boy toy. Oh, and
Speaker 2: that he was dead. So the man calls me up
Speaker 2: and he said, so, first of all, I said, mister
Speaker 2: Carter's like to point out that, hey, it was not
Speaker 2: Galley Daly's boy toy. And that's number one and number two,
Speaker 2: I'm still alive. So we had a lot kind of
Speaker 2: corushtion in the next.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, that's embarrassed. Yeah, that's so embarrassed.
Speaker 2: I felt badly. I felt just terrible for him.
Speaker 1: Were you the editor when when Vanity Fair did a
Speaker 1: cover on me? Do you remember it was a cover
Speaker 1: with me holding my dog Francesco Plaser, I think, And
Speaker 1: it was written by Matt turn Hour, one of your
Speaker 1: star Weber's photographed. Remember, beautiful, beautiful pictures, and.
Speaker 2: You're mad, you're going to lead to a mistake of something.
Speaker 1: No, Matt, No, Matt put in a mistruth in there,
Speaker 1: and it caused me five months of home confinement because
Speaker 1: my parole officer read in there that I took my bracelet,
Speaker 1: my bracelet off after I went and he said, he
Speaker 1: said I took it off, that I knew how to
Speaker 1: take it off, or maybe I joked about it. I
Speaker 1: might have joked about but it got into print and
Speaker 1: then I had five months of apologize.
Speaker 2: Is that why we're here just so you can say this?
Speaker 1: No, okay, I just think it's very funny in retrospect.
Speaker 1: It's funny, but it's also pitiful. Anybody ever has to
Speaker 1: wear a bracelet and have to be at home confined Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what I mean. So do you consider yourself an
Speaker 1: editor first and then a writer or vice versa.
Speaker 2: An editor first? Yes, yeah, and and I've been an
Speaker 2: editor off and on for the last half century. I
Speaker 2: was one of the youngest when I started out, and
Speaker 2: I'm one of the oldest now. But I love writing.
Speaker 2: And but editing is editing is woodworking. That's the writing
Speaker 2: is sort of whittling for me.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's interesting analogy. It's very interesting. You wrote that
Speaker 1: in the book that an editor is only as good
Speaker 1: as his or her proprietor. What was your working relationship
Speaker 1: with Si like well, So.
Speaker 2: I was like a second father to me. He I
Speaker 2: simply adored him, and we would have lunch every two weeks.
Speaker 2: We traveled to Los Angeles together, We'd often be in
Speaker 2: London together. And uh he so I had a he
Speaker 2: had a wisdom about things that the way beyond magazines.
Speaker 2: He taught me a lot, and he had an interesting
Speaker 2: way when there was a problem with the magazine, he
Speaker 2: would he would sort of have his own awkward, socratic
Speaker 2: way of geting to a solution. Need ask you questions
Speaker 2: if you tried to just if you thought about.
Speaker 1: That, and what kind of problem.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's just always problems, you know, just every but
Speaker 2: when there were bigger problems when they finally got to him.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, he was he just loved
Speaker 2: he loved magazines and he loved books. So he ran
Speaker 2: random House and he ran Connie asked, and he liked
Speaker 2: big gestures. And I remember one day at lunch, he said,
Speaker 2: what's going on with the magazine? I said, well, I
Speaker 2: got some good news and bad news. He said, what's
Speaker 2: the bad news? I said, we were shooting a Hollywood
Speaker 2: cover that Annie was shooting and we had to move
Speaker 2: this set around the world to three different spots. And
Speaker 2: he said, I said, we're right now. We're about four
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy five thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: And over budget.
Speaker 2: Yeah, by way over budget. And so he said, well, wait,
Speaker 2: what's the good news. I said, it looks like the
Speaker 2: most expensive magazine cover of all time. So he but
Speaker 2: he he was great on big gestures like that, and
Speaker 2: he he liked it when you swung for the fences
Speaker 2: and if you if you didn't make it, you're still okay.
Speaker 2: He was just so supportive and whatever wobbles he might
Speaker 2: have had when I in my first two years because
Speaker 2: they were they were uneven my first two years. He
Speaker 2: never let me know, which gave me a you know,
Speaker 2: a lot. And that's all you have is that there's
Speaker 2: no school for being an editor. There's no textbook, and
Speaker 2: so it's all. We didn't do studies of what readers like.
Speaker 2: We didn't know, you know, it was just everything was
Speaker 2: from the got.
Speaker 1: I never had a mentor like that. I just wish
Speaker 1: I had had.
Speaker 2: You would have adored him.
Speaker 1: No, no, I knew him. He let me start my
Speaker 1: magazine at Condina.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I went to see first. I went when
Speaker 1: I was when I got the idea to do a
Speaker 1: magazine because I wanted to incorporate all the interests of
Speaker 1: living into one place, not just write a book a year.
Speaker 1: I wanted to do a magazine. So I went to
Speaker 1: Rupert Murdoch first, and he said, oh, you know, Martha,
Speaker 1: I'm closing magazines at this time, he was closing seventeen
Speaker 1: or selling them off. And he said, go see SI.
Speaker 1: So I went to see mister Newhouse and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a very nice idea, and he said, I
Speaker 1: will give you two. I'll give you an art director
Speaker 1: and an editor and make me a prototype. I want
Speaker 1: to see what you're thinking about. So I worked for
Speaker 1: a few months on a prototype and showed it to
Speaker 1: him and he said, what do you want the name
Speaker 1: to be? And I said, well, living is the title
Speaker 1: that I've sort of stuck on. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: what do you mean living? I said, well, Martha Stewart living,
Speaker 1: and he said he thought about it for about one
Speaker 1: one minute and he said, well, you know, our name
Speaker 1: is Condye Nast, and so it has to be Condy
Speaker 1: Nast Living.
Speaker 2: Not as good a title.
Speaker 1: And I don't think so either, And.
Speaker 2: Nobody knows what connye Nast means. And it was an
Speaker 2: actual man I know, but.
Speaker 1: I said that that's not sort of what I mean.
Speaker 1: This is all coming out of here, mister newhouse. And
Speaker 1: we say friends after that. But he gave me the prototype,
Speaker 1: he said here, take it, good luck, and so then
Speaker 1: I took it to Time and although they were kind
Speaker 1: of you know, difficulty.
Speaker 2: You're an not fit for the time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but they couldn't believe that I could keep
Speaker 1: it going month to month. They thought it was a
Speaker 1: limited subject matter. I said, living is the most limitless
Speaker 1: subject matter. And on Earth, I said, I can do July.
Speaker 2: We were obsessed with Maze, I know.
Speaker 1: But it was a July issue of the proto type,
Speaker 1: what are you going to do next July? This is
Speaker 1: the whole thing, I said, just wait. So of course
Speaker 1: we never repeated ourselves. We never did the same same
Speaker 1: flag thing twice, right, But it was very interesting. I
Speaker 1: loved him, and I met with him like once every
Speaker 1: six months after that for a while.
Speaker 3: That.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a really interesting he took. It's such
Speaker 1: an interesting take in the in the media world.
Speaker 2: I agree. He you know, he'd pause along often between sentences,
Speaker 2: like if you asked him a.
Speaker 1: Question, Yeah, almost the stutter a mental stutter way.
Speaker 2: He would never say anything stupid because he'd think of
Speaker 2: what he was going to say rather than just the
Speaker 2: way we're talking is now.
Speaker 1: And I loved going to his home at the u
Speaker 1: n Plausa because the art collection was so amazing, you know,
Speaker 1: and and intuitive. I mean, it was just so interesting.
Speaker 2: Well, one time I asked him, I said, the insurance
Speaker 2: on this must be extraordinary. He says, isn't. I can't
Speaker 2: even again insurance. He said, First of all, nobody's going
Speaker 2: to see all the stuff so ugly anyway, well.
Speaker 1: Also in a glass towers. My gosh. So your world
Speaker 1: is both professional and socially driven, and it has been
Speaker 1: for a very long time. When is a colleague also
Speaker 1: a friend or is it always a colleague, always a friend.
Speaker 2: A lot of colleagues become friends, and I see, like,
Speaker 2: I see all the old I just had lunch with
Speaker 2: two Vanity Fair staff members that are dear friends today,
Speaker 2: and I see all my old colleagues from Spy, from
Speaker 2: Time and from Vanity Fair.
Speaker 1: But I love that you have your same circle of
Speaker 1: friends from the olden days, the Walter Isaacson's I mean
Speaker 1: I met all those guys when I was at Time
Speaker 1: because they were publishing my magazine for a couple of
Speaker 1: years before I moved on. But wow, it was such
Speaker 1: an exciting group of intelligent really breathtaking, yeah, breathtaking intelligen
Speaker 1: And Walter I love his writing and he's been, he's been.
Speaker 1: He's a charm charming, fabulous uh A biographer of course.
Speaker 1: I love his work. Dominic done too. I mean, you had.
Speaker 2: That was a huge asset. I mean, Dominic, you know
Speaker 2: so when because we had two of the greatest murder
Speaker 2: trials of the last half of the last century. And
Speaker 2: one was the Menandaz Brothers, and one was O. J. Simpson.
Speaker 2: And you know Nick, because his daughter had died and
Speaker 2: was killed by by her boyfriend. He would go into
Speaker 2: a murder story on this. He didn't. He wasn't objectively.
Speaker 2: He was on the side of the victim. Yes and so,
Speaker 2: and rightly so and rightly so. So let's say, for
Speaker 2: the O. J. Simpson trial, every newspaper in the world
Speaker 2: and every TV network they were on this every single day.
Speaker 2: So the news is just out there all the time.
Speaker 2: And here we were a monthly magazine, so that often
Speaker 2: some of the details of the trial wouldn't be on
Speaker 2: the newstand for two months. So we would send him
Speaker 2: out and he would say the Chateau Marmont for eight
Speaker 2: or nine months, and he would we'd have to craft
Speaker 2: stories each month. He had to dispatch every single month.
Speaker 2: It would tell the narrative of that period and bring
Speaker 2: in color from dinner parties he would go to. And
Speaker 2: he would spend a lot of time in the corridors
Speaker 2: outside the courtroom, talking to witnesses, talking to the lawyers.
Speaker 2: It was a hugely expensive for us, and to keep
Speaker 2: them out there and have a car and driver. But
Speaker 2: the advertisers, you know, fell over themselves average get around
Speaker 2: his columns. He became probably the most famous print magazine
Speaker 2: in the world over that decade.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was. He was amazing. I have a little
Speaker 1: church up in Maine on my property called Holy Family Church.
Speaker 1: It's a Catholic church that was built for the housemaids
Speaker 1: and the workers who had no Catholic church on the island.
Speaker 1: And Dominic wanted to come up for the weekend, and
Speaker 1: I put out a little ad that he was going
Speaker 1: to come to the church and give a talk, and
Speaker 1: that that place was packed. I mean, he was such
Speaker 1: a draw. He was such a draw to anybody who
Speaker 1: read anything. Yes, they wanted to hear.
Speaker 2: But he had five best sellers, all of which became
Speaker 2: a mini series which then were a big point of
Speaker 2: the realm.
Speaker 1: His work at your Place and uh, and his work
Speaker 1: on media today was just vast, wasn't it huge? Big impact?
Speaker 2: No, he owned those two trials.
Speaker 1: How do you feel now about media and about the
Speaker 1: demise of magazines.
Speaker 2: I mean I find it very upsetting, you do, yeah,
Speaker 2: And I think that, you know, one of the things
Speaker 2: was the people like Cy and the people at time
Speaker 2: they loved magazines. And I think that the media companies
Speaker 2: now are owned by ear least magazine companies are owned
Speaker 2: by people who don't think magazines are just the greatest
Speaker 2: things on earth. And the same thing goes with newspapers.
Speaker 2: Newspapers used to be owned by families. Now they're owned
Speaker 2: by a lot of them are owned by billionaires or
Speaker 2: venture capital firms, and it's not the same level of concerned,
Speaker 2: loving ownership that you have.
Speaker 3: And for editorial trustworthy, I mean, and I just look
Speaker 3: at and even the networks back when you know, say
Speaker 3: the Watergate days, the networks, you know, and before that,
Speaker 3: we're owned by by people rather.
Speaker 2: Than being part of some larger conglomerates. So all that
Speaker 2: has changed. I have no idea what the future looks like.
Speaker 2: But there's still a lot of great journalists out there
Speaker 2: and magazines that invest in what they do, like The Atlantic,
Speaker 2: like the New Yorker, like New York Magazine, they're thriving.
Speaker 1: The economists, they love the economy. I get very few magazines.
Speaker 1: I get the New Yorkers Economists, the new Town b
Speaker 1: the new Town Anti Saper magazine. But I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just it's just something very different.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Actually I looked at the Architectural Digest. They you know,
Speaker 2: it's as beautiful as it ever was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really is very good. So your reporters were
Speaker 1: out in the field, not working from their discs. Why
Speaker 1: was that important for you?
Speaker 2: See? I mean I didn't want to rely just on
Speaker 2: myself for the ideas. You wanted editors and staff members
Speaker 2: to be out and about and to come in with
Speaker 2: ideas they've heard not just from reading newspapers but from
Speaker 2: other people. And because we had to come up with
Speaker 2: ideas of vany fair that. You know, sometimes we just
Speaker 2: sign a story in February, it would take the writers,
Speaker 2: say two and a half three months to report and
Speaker 2: write the story. It would take us a month and
Speaker 2: a half to edit the story, lay out the story,
Speaker 2: get the photographs in BacT, check the story, and then
Speaker 2: maybe another month to print it and distribute it. So
Speaker 2: you need you would sometimes have five or six months
Speaker 2: between when you assigned it and when somebody could read it.
Speaker 2: So we had to have stories that would play off
Speaker 2: the news but would still be relevant half a year
Speaker 2: down the road later.
Speaker 1: I had to do Christmas in July. I mean you
Speaker 1: don't know, or the year before for the next year.
Speaker 1: It was so depressing sometimes because when the real Christmas
Speaker 1: came around, you know, I'd already done it. So what
Speaker 1: was your biggest scoop of all time? Would you say?
Speaker 2: Well, it was the unmasking of Deep Throat, which you
Speaker 2: know was a great mystery in journalism circles for fifty
Speaker 2: years at that point. And I was at my office
Speaker 2: one day and as they say, I took a call
Speaker 2: from anybody, and this lawyer called me, and I picked
Speaker 2: up the phone and he said he he represented the
Speaker 2: man who was deep Throat. This was two thousand and three,
Speaker 2: pre sort of internet. You couldn't just immediately google anything.
Speaker 2: So I talked to him for a while and he
Speaker 2: didn't give me the man's name, but I said, look,
Speaker 2: let me I have an editor get back to you.
Speaker 2: So I called in David Friend, who was one of
Speaker 2: my editors and we'd worked together at Life magazine, and
Speaker 2: he over the next two years he dealt with this person.
Speaker 2: And so we had problems because the person was deep
Speaker 2: throw found out. First of all, his name was Mark Felt.
Speaker 2: We had never heard of him before. He was the
Speaker 2: number two at the FBI and then, but the troubles.
Speaker 2: He'd had a stroke and he was suffering from dementia.
Speaker 2: So we'd told some members of his family that he
Speaker 2: was deep throat, but we couldn't be one hundred percent sure,
Speaker 2: and so we photographed him. We thought we were about
Speaker 2: ninety five percent right. So I go away on my honeymoon.
Speaker 2: My wife and I get married, and we go in
Speaker 2: our honeymoon. We're in the Bahamas and we're coming back.
Speaker 2: We're in the the International airport and NASA, and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, I didn't have a cell phone in
Speaker 2: those days. My wife had a one of the old
Speaker 2: flip phones. And she gets a call. It it's from
Speaker 2: David Friend and I see if passes it to me
Speaker 2: and he said, you know, we released the deep Throat
Speaker 2: story this morning. I said, oh my god, I completely
Speaker 2: forgot about this during the of course of my honeymoon.
Speaker 2: And I said, and what's happened?
Speaker 3: He said, wellmoon, it was a very nice honeymoon.
Speaker 2: And he said he said, well, Woodward of Bernstein haven't
Speaker 2: said anything yet, he said, but they said they might
Speaker 2: make an announcement later today. So I thought, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I can't get on this plane unless I know one
Speaker 2: way or the other, and I could have called Carl
Speaker 2: or Bob to be one hundred percent sure, but I
Speaker 2: thought if I called Carl, who was actually on our
Speaker 2: mass head, he would call Bob and Bob would get
Speaker 2: it in the Washington Post the next day. And I
Speaker 2: couldn't call Bob because the same thing would happen. So
Speaker 2: we waited, and we kept moving to the back of
Speaker 2: the line as they were trying to board the plane.
Speaker 2: And just before we got to the gate, David Friend
Speaker 2: called and said Woodward and Bernstein just confirmed that it
Speaker 2: was deep and I was I was so relieved, and
Speaker 2: we got on that plane. I just came home and
Speaker 2: I thought, what a wonderful way to end a honeymoon.
Speaker 2: And it was on the front page of every newspaper
Speaker 2: in the world the next day.
Speaker 1: So who was your favorite cover star?
Speaker 2: My favorite cover star? Well, I do think George Clooney
Speaker 2: is the funniest non professional person I've ever met in
Speaker 2: my life. Noun professional, I mean he doesn't and I
Speaker 2: wasn't play it. He's not a comedian. He's really authentically funny.
Speaker 1: And what about what was the most difficult cover to shoot?
Speaker 2: The least popular person on our covers by from the
Speaker 2: staff was Hugh Grant? Really, yeah, they didn't like them
Speaker 2: at all. Why you're just not a very nice person.
Speaker 2: Oh he's not even a charming person.
Speaker 1: What about now he's playing like old man?
Speaker 2: He's right, Yes, I think that's probably more his personality.
Speaker 2: But the staff did not like him real No, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean he's adorable looking.
Speaker 1: You know, how have you personally adapted to the world
Speaker 1: where the news is broken on social media every single
Speaker 1: day so rapidly. I mean, it's so different from what
Speaker 1: we were brought up in.
Speaker 2: I know, No, it's just voracious. Well, first of all,
Speaker 2: air mail is sort of the antidote to news. I
Speaker 2: wanted to features, and I wanted to a lot of
Speaker 2: stories that.
Speaker 1: And it's so good. I love airmail, I do, I
Speaker 1: do know, And it's to it.
Speaker 2: I look as twice a week, well the big one
Speaker 2: on Saturday Marning, okay, like on the internet, like the
Speaker 2: big edition of a newspaper. But we do features and
Speaker 2: we're on the news, but not a news organization. I
Speaker 2: don't have the energy for that anymore, or quite frankly,
Speaker 2: the inclination. How many writers know, there's probably like thirty
Speaker 2: regular writers, and and a lot of young people by
Speaker 2: the piece, paid by the story story, and with a
Speaker 2: lot of staff people. Yeah, and it's just it's a
Speaker 2: it's one of my the happiest experience in my life,
Speaker 2: the night with The great thing about the Internet is
Speaker 2: you can do it from anywhere, and I organize this
Speaker 2: all from we were living in Provence and I'd organize
Speaker 2: this all from from France and we were there during
Speaker 2: the pandemic. The downside of the Internet is that can
Speaker 2: follow you everywhere, so that you can never get away
Speaker 2: from work. The upside is you can do your job
Speaker 2: from anywhere. If it's that it doesn't involve physical labor any.
Speaker 1: Well, good luck with airmil because I think it does
Speaker 1: serve a very good purpose and is very informative and fun.
Speaker 2: It's fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't hang your head in grief afterwards like
Speaker 2: you do with a newspaper.
Speaker 1: And I love your I love your graphics. It's it's
Speaker 1: just fun to get thank you. I really like it.
Speaker 1: I think we've covered so much, so much territory.
Speaker 2: You should do this professionally, Jay, I'll do it professionally.
Speaker 1: And the book that we have been talking about Graydon Carter,
Speaker 1: and I the great journalist Graydon Carter, when the Going
Speaker 1: was Good. And you know what, he doesn't sound terribly regretful,
Speaker 1: which is a very nice things, very nice thing. And
Speaker 1: the last chapter I love so much. And I'm not
Speaker 1: going to even tell them what it is. It's just
Speaker 1: called some Rules for Living. I love rules and and
Speaker 1: I love lists, and I love what you wrote in
Speaker 1: this last chapter. It is really really great. So get
Speaker 1: this book, of course, on Amazon and your favorite bookstore.
Speaker 1: When the Going was Good? Great, and Carter, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. What a nice, nice interview.
Speaker 2: Ye heaven