0:18

Hey, and welcome to What Future. I'm

0:20

your host, Joshua Topolski, and I'm

0:22

very excited about today's show. We've

0:25

got a tremendous guest. I've been listening to this podcast

0:28

which just came out to its early

0:30

days called Stiff, which

0:32

is really about I'm not going to get too much into the explanation,

0:35

is that two of my favorite things, which is pornography

0:38

and magazines. So we should

0:40

just get into the conversation. We've got the creator

0:43

and the host here, Jennifer Ramalini, and she's

0:45

going to tell us all about it and talk about this

0:48

fascinating story.

1:06

I don't know if I should bring this up, but I'm just going to bring it up

1:08

place do. I was like, I know him?

1:10

How do I know him? Because

1:12

I, on my own career was a

1:14

digital media executive and your name came up

1:16

a lot. But I was mixing you up with some other guy who's

1:18

a total asshole, and

1:21

is it I want to know it? Like another boy genius

1:23

who got to be like the head of something, while

1:25

like no ladies were getting any funding except

1:28

if they were strutting around like men. So

1:30

that was it. And I was like, is this going to give

1:33

me PTSD being on this, you know, like,

1:35

and then I looked up and I was like, oh, no, it's him.

1:37

I hope not. I'm pretty I'm pretty

1:40

harmless for the most part. I think I

1:42

probably the first off first a huge compliment.

1:45

I think you kind of off handedly referred

1:47

to me as a boy genius, which I like sounds

1:49

great, which one makes me feel youthful, which I'm definitely

1:51

not, and also like a genius anyhow,

1:53

Okay, I don't think we've ever actually met, no,

1:55

but I feel like we know a ton of the

1:57

same people, which.

1:58

Is, yeah, we know a lot of this, all the same scammers.

2:01

Yeah, exactly. You know, it's funny. I'm

2:03

dying now to know who this person is you're thinking of.

2:05

And I'm like, going through there's so many men who

2:08

kind of could fit the description of

2:10

like.

2:11

Yeah, just like bullshitters who

2:13

were just getting all the money in the time

2:15

when I was working in digital media where I was

2:17

like getting pats on the head and like that

2:19

I should wear more fuck me pumps and.

2:21

Like, oh my god, somebody somebody

2:23

actually say you should wear more fuck me pumps.

2:25

Oh, one hundred percent.

2:28

That's like the least of it. I was

2:30

getting pats on the head, pats on the bare knees,

2:33

you know.

2:33

I know, no actual pats, Yeah,

2:36

pats, real pets. I now,

2:38

listen, maybe I'm going to

2:40

be confronted with something in the future.

2:42

But I feel like when I hear these stories about guys

2:45

in media, I'm like, wow, I'm like

2:47

pretty normal or whatever. Yeah, as

2:49

far as I know, it never occurred to me to like pat anybody

2:51

on the head. Of course, you know who knows

2:53

well.

2:53

To be fair. This was the time when

2:55

like just the worst businessmen,

2:58

like not a creative in their body, like

3:01

it could barely even spell. We're like taking

3:03

over media.

3:04

I'm thinking of so many people right now that would

3:06

fall into this category.

3:07

And it was like they're giving you direction.

3:10

And at this point, I'm doing this for ten

3:12

fifteen years and they're saying no, no, no,

3:14

you need a story on this, right. I remember

3:17

some one guy was like, you should put

3:19

more nip slips on the webs

3:21

on the website, and I was like, I don't think

3:23

women want to see nip slips, certain.

3:25

Nip slips, Okay, sorry what website?

3:27

Was this just to because I was I was

3:29

in magazines for a long time. I was in magazines

3:31

for like the first eight years of my career, and

3:33

then then for the next ten

3:36

or so I was in digital. I

3:39

was at Yahoo for a long time. I

3:41

love Yahoo, and then come on my

3:43

favorite Yahoo.

3:44

Nobody I worked today,

3:46

well when I started this business, so.

3:48

Nobody loves Yahoo, and nobody's loved Yahoo

3:51

since it was like a competitor with Alta Vista,

3:53

Like, it's.

3:55

Time to return to Yahoo's what

3:58

the world I don't.

3:58

Even know what it's called now, It's like Verizon

4:01

Yahoo. It's like Verizon who I don't

4:03

it's changed names so many times.

4:05

Yeah, but no.

4:05

A lot of male executives like sort of like

4:08

circled through there and I

4:10

ran a very successful women's site for

4:12

them, and it was not quality, but it was very successful

4:14

and met all of the demands that needed

4:17

to meet.

4:17

Nip nip slips on that website.

4:19

No nip slips, but you know a lot

4:22

of like you know, things you didn't know you

4:24

could do with your dishwasher, okay, like

4:26

low budget recipes. It was like I

4:28

understood the directive, which was, let's make

4:30

a USA today for you

4:32

know, for women online, and that's

4:34

what we did. And we had fifty million unique

4:37

users, and you know it was crazy.

4:38

It's like a broad consumer offering

4:41

for the ladies.

4:42

Exactly.

4:43

Yeah, I get that. I get that. Lots of that on the

4:45

Internet now, too much of it now. Unfortunately,

4:47

we have to we have to stop. We have to stop the Internet.

4:50

Okay, So I've been listening to the

4:52

podcast. You've got this new podcast called Stiff, which

4:55

is about a lot of what we're talking about. Actually

4:57

right now, I assume it's on your mind. Yeah, it's

5:00

also for me. I'm

5:03

a magazine like freak, like I love

5:05

magazine. Yes, to me, this story

5:07

is such a media story

5:09

about the creation

5:11

of a magazine and all of the things that

5:14

can go wrong, and all of the personalities and

5:16

the ways they can clash. But just to get

5:18

into it, can you tell me if you oka you're

5:20

describing this podcast as somebody who's never

5:22

heard of it before, could you give me the

5:25

description of what the show is about and what you want it

5:27

to be about.

5:27

So, in nineteen seventy three, Bob

5:30

Guccioni launches a feminist porn

5:32

magazine called Viva. The price

5:34

of Admission for these feminist writers,

5:37

these very scrappy seventies feminist

5:39

writers, very smart, coming from the village

5:41

voice, coming from Miz, coming out of Newsweek.

5:44

The price of admission for them to be able to

5:46

write all of these stories that they really want

5:48

to write, really progressive stories

5:51

about sexuality and desire

5:53

and careers and ambition and

5:56

almost really interesting, meaty topics.

5:59

They published a lot of fiction, really interesting

6:01

magazine. The price of admission for them

6:03

is that they are in

6:06

a feminist porn magazine. And next

6:08

to their really smart and compelling articles

6:10

that have like beautiful headlines and beautiful art,

6:12

are these very clumsy pictures of Dix.

6:15

So it was supposed to be a porn

6:18

magazine, Eurotica magazine for women,

6:20

but Guccioni never let them

6:22

in on any of the decisions. Bob Guccioni,

6:25

in case anybody doesn't know it, was the founder

6:27

of Penhouse. Penhouse. When he published

6:29

it was a runaway success, one of the biggest

6:32

magazine success stories of all time. It

6:35

started to beat Playboy right away. He had very

6:37

good business instincts. He started to show pubis

6:40

because Hugh Hefner was not.

6:41

I mean, that's a great instinct.

6:44

I mean, no, I mean it was, I mean the

6:46

way and the way he showed it was not It

6:49

was not raunchy at least then he was.

6:51

He was doing a lot of the photography himself. It

6:53

was done really cheaply. Some of the people who

6:56

worked for him, who went on to work at startups

6:58

were like, working for him was how I to

7:00

work at a startup because everything

7:02

was pretty budget but it looked really good. Right.

7:05

So he's come off this like runaway

7:07

success with Penhouse. He's got all this money

7:09

and he decides or he steals the idea

7:12

from one of his female editors at

7:14

Penhouse to start a Penhouse

7:16

for women, and he hires

7:18

all of these, as I said, smart feminist,

7:20

scrappy writers, but he doesn't give them

7:23

any say on what the erotica looks

7:25

like. So the magazine

7:27

is incredibly disjointed. It's like

7:31

almost a parody of female sexuality

7:33

in terms of its erotica, and it's porn.

7:35

I mean, it's just these like balancing dicks

7:38

in ridiculous poses. All

7:40

the editors are like, ugh, I would have never

7:43

have been turned on by that. But they

7:46

get to write anything

7:48

they want. They have a lot

7:51

of money, they're paying a lot by the word, they're

7:53

hiring really incredible writers. They're

7:56

doing like feminist symposiums. It's

7:58

a really interesting magazine

8:00

that makes absolutely no sense,

8:02

and it's beautiful, it's

8:05

highly designed, it's expensive, and

8:07

I am also a magazine freak. Like it was

8:10

the only thing I ever wanted to do. I've been collecting

8:12

magazines forever. When I came across this

8:14

in like two thousand and eight, no

8:17

earlier than that, like two thousand and four, actually

8:20

I had never seen anything like it.

8:23

It was like, this was the magazine I had wished

8:25

I had worked for. Right, you

8:27

could feel that this was a time when

8:30

this was writing and stories and

8:32

not content. This was before we

8:34

started calling what we do content.

8:36

And like Viva never made any

8:39

money, and it wasn't about

8:41

that. It was about like this sort of spirit

8:43

of creativity and collaboration. And

8:45

so the podcast just sort of

8:48

follows the whole arc of the magazine, which is

8:50

from seventy three to seventy nine, and

8:52

it really tracks that

8:54

entire time period, like the

8:56

early seventies hopefulness, you know,

8:58

Roe V. Wade has passed to seventy

9:01

nine, when the moral Majority is coming in,

9:03

Reagan's coming in, everything's

9:05

changing, the feminist movement is fractured

9:08

and so it's losing all its power. So

9:10

I really wanted to tell the story about

9:13

this magazine and tell a really dorky

9:15

inside baseball story about magazines,

9:17

but also the arc of the sexual

9:20

revolution, the parallels

9:22

to today, how the sexual revolution

9:24

wasn't actually that revolutionary for women at all,

9:27

all of that.

9:28

Yeah, well, I've been listening

9:30

to it. I haven't listened to all of it. I don't even know if is

9:32

all of it out yet or are you're releasing

9:34

it now? Like it's a week we're.

9:36

In we're in process of releasing, so I think

9:38

we're up to episode As of the

9:40

time we're recording this, we're up to episode four.

9:42

Yeah, I think I've listened to I started

9:45

the third episode, so I'm not too not

9:47

doing too bad. Your description of it encompasses

9:50

a lot of I mean, it's such an interesting

9:52

story and the character is in it,

9:54

and I have to actually say, and

9:56

perhaps this will make me sound like a complete pervert,

9:58

but I'm interesting in particularly

10:01

from these past eras like sixties

10:04

and seventies Playboy, and so

10:06

I've collected a few of these types of magazines

10:08

that you know, like but I

10:10

had never heard of Viva, and as

10:13

soon as I started listening to it, I'm all right, let me Google,

10:15

let me look at this thing. And it is like extremely

10:17

fucking cool looking, like it just looks like a really

10:20

really cool magazine. I

10:22

remember when I was a teenager, I guess,

10:24

and I first saw like Nylon, which

10:26

was a magazine that was not for boys.

10:28

I guess, like generally speaking, it was like a girl's

10:31

magazine. Yeah, And I bought issues of it because

10:33

I was like, this is so cool and interesting and has

10:35

such good stories, like I don't even care like

10:37

who it's supposed to be for or whatever. And I feel like looking

10:39

at Viva had a very similar reaction. But

10:42

like I was looking at images of it and then listening

10:44

to your show, and there's such an

10:46

interesting thread of like dissonance

10:49

that that you kind of center on in a lot of

10:51

these conversations where in

10:54

my mind I only imagine Bob Guccioni,

10:56

and he's sort of like this very tan guy.

10:59

He's like a very very tan seventies guy.

11:01

He's like a caricature of seventies masculine.

11:04

He's like, yeah, he doesn't even look like a real person. He's

11:06

got the gold chains, the chest hair, he's

11:08

greasy's the exactly

11:10

all right.

11:11

And in my mind, because I grew up, you

11:13

know, the seventies, is you know,

11:15

sort if I was a baby in the seventies, late seventies.

11:17

But Bob Goocjdi was in the

11:19

public light still for a long a long

11:21

time, and he was like a figure, you know, he was like a Hugh halfnar

11:24

kind of guy. But in my mind I always

11:26

imagined him as being this extra sleazy

11:29

seventies guy like which he definitely

11:31

was to some extent. But you have a ton of recordings

11:33

of him talking, and he

11:36

sounds so much more interesting and

11:39

intelligent than I think my or

11:41

the public perception of him was.

11:44

As you started to research this, was that surprising

11:46

to you at all?

11:48

I guess it was surprising. But he was a big

11:50

draw for me because as soon as I started to learn

11:52

anything about him, I realized

11:55

that he was a fascinating

11:57

character and that

11:59

it wasn't going to be easy to just paint him as

12:01

a villain, which who wants that? Who wants like a boring

12:04

villain? That he was multifaceted and

12:07

he didn't really want to be a pornographer. He

12:09

wanted to be an artist, Like he really wanted

12:11

to be an artist. He moved to Europe when

12:13

he was like in his early twenties with

12:15

like a couple of paint brushes and twenty four

12:17

dollars. And I actually own one of his

12:19

lithographs. Like his style is

12:22

like very like Picasso want to

12:24

be.

12:24

You know.

12:25

But he really he really

12:27

loved art, and he really

12:29

loved women. And he was still a product

12:32

of his time, you know, in

12:34

terms of gender roles, and you know, his

12:36

masculinity and like dominating and

12:38

everything else. And he was also Italian American, which

12:40

was also interesting for me because I'm Italian

12:42

American. But he

12:45

was a really complicated

12:47

person and I think did a

12:49

lot of good for a lot of people. He was

12:51

really loyal, He paid women

12:54

really well. He made women executives.

12:56

You know, a lot of the women I spoke to said

12:59

he made me in my career, he let me. That's

13:01

where I came alive, was working under him.

13:03

Like it's when it was the best time of my life.

13:06

Right.

13:06

And I don't hear that shit about

13:08

Hugh Hefner.

13:10

I mean that is interesting. Hefner

13:14

certainly a larger figure on like

13:16

this on the global stage when it comes

13:18

to this space. But I

13:21

guess not a great person. You know, I haven't

13:23

done enough of like reading on Hugh Aftn to know

13:25

exactly all of his flaws, though I understand

13:27

there were many.

13:38

One of the things I love about shows like yours,

13:40

and in particular, what I've enjoyed so far in

13:42

this is like I didn't know any of

13:44

this, and I think I had a perception of

13:46

who these people were in this place in time

13:49

that was not actually square with reality.

13:52

And and so I think like

13:54

kind of as an aside, not even like your main

13:56

course is not like let me recontextualize

13:59

Bob GUCCIONI for you, but it

14:01

is a very interesting thing to hear. And

14:04

on top of that, and this is one that I

14:06

think you haven't so far, you haven't talked about

14:09

explicitly, but at the time, like

14:11

magazines were massively important in a way

14:14

that they're not now, And I'm

14:17

interested to know, like you talk about Penhouse,

14:19

which in my lifetime has always just been

14:21

like, it's a porn magazine. Yeah,

14:24

And in fact, my understanding of Penhouse

14:26

was like it's not just a porn magazine,

14:28

but like where Playboy was known for the articles

14:31

or for the great writers or whatever. Penhouse

14:33

was like, it's whatever, weird

14:36

step cousin that didn't care about any

14:38

of that and was just invested in like showing as much

14:40

as they could. Is that also an inaccurate perception

14:42

of like what he'd been doing with Penhouse?

14:45

It is. I think Guccioni had a

14:47

branding problem, right. Unlike hef

14:49

who was like playing by the rules, super

14:51

slick, Guccioni was like pushing boundaries

14:54

everywhere.

14:55

Right.

14:55

So for the answer to the beginning of your question, it's

14:58

absolutely Penhouse had great articles,

15:00

it had great writers, it had no problem,

15:02

It had amazing celebrity interviews.

15:04

Because the seventies, people wanted to be

15:07

associated with porn, which is a weird thing

15:09

to say now because we can't even imagine that

15:11

now, right, Like it's just it's a totally

15:13

different life, But there was pornosk

15:15

happening in the seventies. You know, Deep Throat is in

15:17

mainstream theaters. Celebrities

15:20

like Johnny Carson and Angela Lansberry

15:22

are lining up to see Deep Throat

15:24

like proudly it's separately,

15:28

but like Jack Nicholson, like it was like a cool

15:30

thing. It's like, you know, it's it's cultural currency.

15:32

Right.

15:33

So they had no problem,

15:35

even Penhouse at the time, getting real

15:37

writers, real stories. So the journalism

15:40

was really excellent. Bob

15:42

GUCCIONI just wanted the

15:44

world to be different. He thought it was such

15:46

bullshit that we were so uptight about

15:49

sex, that we were so uptight about naked

15:51

bodies. That he just was trying

15:53

to like break through every sort of

15:56

taboo. And he was really brave in a way

15:58

that I think Hugh Hefner was not. And

16:00

he pushed limits. You know, he

16:03

did the oh god, why can I

16:05

think of her name? The Miss America photos

16:07

of Vanessa Williams. Vanessa

16:09

Williams, Yes, right, yes, he published

16:12

those in Penhouse. He published Vanessa

16:14

Williams photos and Penhouse and people

16:16

were up in arms about this, and he was

16:18

like, he was like, look, she signed

16:21

the release, she knew what she was doing.

16:23

There's no reason. But also it's not a big deal.

16:25

These photos are not a big deal.

16:27

Right. That comes up a lot his attitude

16:29

towards sex and nudity.

16:32

I mean, it is He's right, I

16:34

mean it is insane, I think, particularly in America.

16:36

I mean obviously this is not just an American thing,

16:38

but we are insanely puritanical

16:41

and prudish about things that don't seem

16:43

like that big of a deal. And the point

16:45

about like it being like this kind of moment

16:48

where like porn was having a moment is interesting

16:50

because I do think it seeped into the culture. I

16:52

think it's much more like

16:55

I think if you're like you could be a huge

16:57

celebrity and then you have an OnlyFans like

16:59

where you do some nudity or whatever, I don't know that that's

17:01

a big deal anymore. Like I feel like we've

17:04

we've moved beyond that, you

17:06

know, I don't know, like to think about all

17:08

of this and to kind of think about this like liberation moment

17:10

or this moment like you were talking about, and

17:12

frankly, like what what drives Viva's existence?

17:15

In some ways, this sort of moment for women where

17:18

you didn't have to be you know, the housewife

17:20

or whatever or be ashamed about, you know, your

17:22

sexuality or whatever. In

17:25

light of what's going on in the world right now

17:27

where we've got like, you know, these huge political

17:29

movements that are like trying to like rewind

17:32

the clock in some way. It's interesting

17:34

to hear how how many

17:36

women were like wanted

17:38

to participate in this in this space,

17:41

like and I think like the hearing like a

17:43

lot of the people who joined Viva, they

17:45

were both embracing like the

17:47

concept that there would it would be about sex, and it would

17:49

be about porn and all these other things like, but

17:52

also that it didn't have to just be about that. And I feel

17:54

like we've lost That's the thing that feels

17:56

like it's missing now, that like porn

17:58

or sexuality or expl duration of that stuff

18:00

can coexist on a higher intellectual

18:03

plane in a popular form.

18:06

That to me is something that doesn't exist anymore,

18:08

Like we've neutered like that

18:11

type of content. And I

18:13

just wonder, like, you know, can you talk a little bit about

18:16

what the editorial ethos was for the women

18:18

working at Viva versus what Bob Goccioni was trying

18:20

to do.

18:22

So Viva comes

18:24

out of the late sixties

18:27

early seventies pro sex

18:29

feminist movement right where they're

18:31

really starting to talk about the c literal

18:34

orgasm. They're starting to talk about

18:36

female pleasure because the pill

18:38

had come along in the sixties, So now women

18:40

are sort of free to explore their sexuality

18:43

a little bit, right, Yeah, and this

18:46

was a very confusing time for women

18:49

because they're all of a

18:51

sudden, they have all this sexual freedom, but

18:53

they don't have any sexual protections. There's

18:56

a lot of sexual assault happening.

18:58

There's a lot of men demanding

19:00

that their hip and sexy men

19:03

pretty quickly comman dear this

19:06

this sort of sexual freedom and

19:08

take it away from them.

19:09

Yeah, it's crazy. Who could imagine such

19:11

a shop exactly.

19:13

You look at a movie like Deep Throat, which

19:15

is about a woman who has orgasms

19:18

can only have an orgasm because her clitteress is

19:20

in the back of her throat, and she can only have an

19:22

orgasm from giving a deep blowjob.

19:25

Right.

19:25

Is that's and that's medically accurate. That's

19:27

a problem for a lot of people.

19:29

Yeah, obviously, no, I mean, look so,

19:31

but what happens is this becomes a mockery

19:33

of everything that these women in the late sixties

19:36

early seventies were trying to do, right,

19:38

which is liberate themselves

19:41

and say we're sexually free beings.

19:44

And so what happens is men

19:46

sort of commandeer it. Let's say, straight white

19:48

men sort of commandeer this. This liberation,

19:52

and then the

19:54

feminist movement fractures in two. There's

19:56

still sort of pro sex, sex

19:59

positive feminine and there's the second

20:01

arm of feminism, which is the anti porn

20:04

feminist like Andrea Dworkin, who say, you

20:06

know, porn equates violence.

20:09

No matter what, porn is always

20:11

violent, And these pro sex feminists

20:14

are saying, well, you know, actually, actually

20:17

this could be about you know, our desire

20:20

and our pleasure. So Viva's

20:22

like coming right as this moment

20:24

is happening in the in the feminist movement,

20:26

and what it should have been able

20:29

to do was build a bridge between

20:31

the two sects of feminism,

20:33

right, the two sections of feminism. It should

20:35

have been able to build that bridge and say because they

20:38

did this big rape issue that Bob

20:40

actually fired a senior

20:42

editor over because he didn't want their magazine

20:44

to be about like, you know, sad

20:46

issues like rape and sexual assault.

20:48

He wanted to be entertainment.

20:50

I actually saw the cover of that one, which

20:52

is really dissonant. Like the

20:54

cover I believe is like a man and a woman

20:56

that look like they're having a blast or whatever.

20:58

That I think is related to.

20:59

He's got a gun. He's got a gun.

21:01

And she's got a gun, he's smoking a

21:03

cigar.

21:04

Yeah, it's super And then it's like rape. It's

21:06

like the rape issue or something. I'm like, uh, okay,

21:08

like what is going on? It's like a yeah, actually

21:11

it's funny, but it encapsulates a lot of the dissonance

21:13

you're talking about within that magazine, within

21:16

the culture of it, like is this serious?

21:18

Is it joking? Like? And if it's joking,

21:21

that doesn't seem like a good place

21:23

to be. So yeah, interesting, he fired

21:25

somebody over that issue.

21:26

He fired somebody over that issue. He didn't

21:28

know about it. He was one of those bosses

21:30

who sort of dips in and out, but when he parachutes

21:33

in he knows best and like he sort of

21:35

fucks up all the work. You but can I curse on

21:37

this podcast?

21:38

You absolutely can and should Okay.

21:40

He would air drop in and so the the other thing is

21:42

is if you ever have run any like any

21:44

editorial product, right, you

21:47

know that one thing that you really need is

21:49

cohesion. When we worked at magazines,

21:51

you know, Kim Frantz who was my boss at Lucky

21:54

Magazine, who had been at Sassy in a bunch of

21:56

other places. One thing she said to me was

21:58

she would open the magazine of Luck and she

22:00

would be like, you see, you know exactly

22:02

where you are in this magazine

22:04

when you open it. There's never a moment where

22:06

you don't understand what's happening visually with

22:09

the word. Like the design matches, the words

22:11

matches, the pacing. You know, this is this goes

22:13

in the front of the book. This is the feature. Well, this

22:15

is the back of the book. Viva

22:17

had none of that. It was just

22:20

really anything could

22:22

be happening on any page interesting.

22:24

It was like am Bancroft

22:27

and then the next page is like just

22:29

a really overtan naked man's

22:31

ass, like.

22:32

Nothing, okay, hold on the ass is

22:35

is to titillate? Or like

22:37

is that supposed to be? Like the hot part of it?

22:39

It was, but it didn't make sense next to this,

22:41

like Q and A. If you ever have

22:43

worked in a magazine, you know that on the

22:45

you know, on a wall of the office you work

22:47

in, you have the entire issue, the

22:50

page by page, right, yeah, and you're looking

22:53

at it and you're moving things around and saying, well, wait, does

22:55

that make sense there? Does that ad

22:57

make sense?

22:58

There?

22:58

You're trying to create one experience,

23:01

which is part of the delight of the entire

23:03

enterprise, right yeap. This was when

23:05

I started to realize this was going to be a really

23:07

fascinating story, when I really started paging

23:09

through and was like, oh, there's like there's

23:12

like nobody really in charge here.

23:15

Wow, that's interesting. Okay, So I because

23:17

I started looking, I'm like, maybe I should buy some issues of

23:19

this, because I really as soon as I was listening to the story

23:22

and you begin telling the tale and hearing

23:24

these people talk about it, I'm like, Okay,

23:26

this sounds like something I want to look at. And you

23:28

look at the covering and you're like, that's awesome. But it

23:31

is exactly to your point. I mean, what

23:33

makes a great magazine is that

23:36

cohesion. It is that you've

23:38

collected all of these things that

23:40

seem like they might be disparate in some other contexts,

23:43

and you've pulled them together and made them

23:45

feel of a kind like and you've made it feel

23:47

like a journey from beginning to end.

23:49

That's right.

23:49

That is what I love about the best magazine.

23:51

It's like like like in my mind's eye,

23:53

I'm like thinking of the great moments and magazines

23:55

that I love and the great sections not just right

23:58

because you go, oh, there's that.

23:59

Thing, the great, great

24:01

colleague everything. I mean, yes, they're so

24:03

fun and.

24:04

To do this ambitious thing that you're describing,

24:07

which is like can it change the conversation

24:09

about like women's sexuality and

24:11

all this? And it's like, oh, like you we

24:14

were just doing whatever? I mean? Is

24:16

that Guccioni, Is that his like

24:18

air dropping in or is it just like they

24:20

don't have the person who's like truly

24:23

every day in charge, Like how does that

24:25

happen?

24:26

Well, it's a couple of things, right, So it's it's

24:29

Bob Guccioni and his partner Kathy

24:31

Keaton were not real publishing people. They had

24:33

one success with Penhouse, and that was a little

24:35

bit of luck and a fluke, right, he kind of knew

24:37

what he was doing. It was a little bit of luck. And then he hired some

24:40

smart editorial people, mostly women

24:42

actually to run Penhouse, and

24:45

then because of the success of that, he has

24:47

a lot of hubris and he thinks he knows best. So he

24:50

goes to the next thing and he doesn't know how to hire

24:52

an editor. And when he does finally

24:54

hire an editor in Patricia Bosworth,

24:56

which I don't know if you know Patricia Bosworth at all, but

24:58

she's a fatacinating figure

25:01

out.

25:01

I know that name. Really, this sounds really

25:03

familiar to me. Why do I know that?

25:05

She was a model for Diane

25:08

Arbis. She was an actress, She was

25:11

in a movie alongside Audrey Hepburn, and

25:13

then she was a big publishing

25:16

person in the seventies and eighties, and

25:18

then she wrote a number of celebrity

25:21

biographies. So she wrote the one on Montgomery

25:23

Cliff, she wrote one on Marlon Brando,

25:25

and that was sort of how like she wrote the definitive

25:28

books.

25:29

She the person who unearthed the story about

25:31

Montgomery Cliff with the Elizabeth

25:33

Taylor's story. Is that am I thinking of the right person?

25:35

Who? Do you know? The story? Yeah?

25:37

I'm not sure about.

25:38

The details of it. But she was the celebrity

25:40

biographer for a while. But for this minute,

25:43

she was at Harper's Bazaar and Bob Guccioni

25:45

calls her up and he says, hey, I need a really classy

25:48

editor to wrote throughout this magazine.

25:51

And she comes in and she really

25:53

knows what she's doing, and you can really see

25:56

from like the end of seventy four into

25:58

seventy five, even maybe

26:00

I would say a little seventy six. The magazine

26:03

is the best it's ever been. It makes sense. It

26:05

has that sort of journey feeling. It

26:07

starts and it ends, it's lovely,

26:10

and then she's sort of sidelined because

26:13

who knows why the magazine's not making money.

26:16

It's you know that he's blaming

26:18

on her. It's really because they can't get cosmetic

26:20

ads because there are penises in

26:22

the magazine. You know, it's like right, but he

26:25

blames it on her and she winds

26:27

up getting fired. And they

26:29

went through I think I forget

26:32

the exact number right now, but I think they went through

26:34

something like seven editors in as

26:36

many years, which is just not enough time

26:38

to get people to know, you know.

26:40

That's crazy, Like an editor a year is

26:42

insane. Yeah,

26:54

However, the idea came up because there is a kind

26:56

of dispute about who actually had the idea

26:58

for the magazine, right right, But

27:01

it seems like it was like, hey, here's a great idea,

27:04

Like I've done this, I'm sure you've done it. Where you go, I've got

27:06

a great idea, and it's just the you can just

27:08

describe the concept to somebody

27:10

and it's like, hey, that would make a great whatever.

27:13

Yeah.

27:13

Like I have a book series that I've been talking about

27:16

jokingly for like more than a decade, and

27:18

I can describe like the rough outline

27:20

of the plot of this book. Yeah, but

27:22

I haven't sat down or written, and I have a feeling

27:24

that when I do, if I do, which

27:27

who fucking knows, right, it's a lot

27:29

more complicated to write the book that it is to

27:31

kind of pitch the idea to somebody, right, And it feels

27:33

like this was like a magazine that had an awesome

27:36

pitch, ye, Like the pitch is awesome, right, Like

27:38

it's really good. And when you hear like a GUCCIONI

27:41

like talking about, you know, his view

27:43

on women and everything, you're like, oh, this totally checks

27:45

out. But beyond the pitch, just like if you

27:47

don't have somebody who's driving it every day and

27:49

it knows what it's supposed to look like, it's

27:52

just a pitch.

27:52

Right, and knows what it's supposed to be and knows

27:55

who it's for.

27:56

Who is this for? Yeah?

27:58

And I think that that's always the question

28:00

you're asking whenever you're putting out any kind

28:02

of editorial product, what's our core audience

28:05

here and how, you know, how do we

28:07

sort of super serve them? And there

28:09

was there was not that understanding. But

28:12

you know, also a lot of these editors.

28:14

The cool thing about Patti Bosworth when she came in,

28:16

she's in her early forties. Most of the

28:18

editors and writers who have worked there were in their

28:21

twenties. It's it's

28:23

harder to lead when you're in your twenties. It's

28:25

harder to have that big picture vision because

28:27

you just haven't done that much yet, you know, right.

28:30

Yeah, it's complicated works. Yeah,

28:33

you know, I'm sort of confused though, like and

28:35

to your point about who it's for and who the audience is

28:37

and how they get advertising stuff for a product like this,

28:40

these kinds of questions exist

28:42

still, Like as you talk about like who's

28:44

the audience? Yep, I think we're actually returning

28:46

a bit in media to a who's the

28:48

audience? Know? But for real, like who is the actual

28:50

audience? Because we went through this whole phase of

28:53

oh, there's so many people out there, just get a

28:55

huge amount of people to look. It doesn't fucking matter who the

28:57

audience is, right or it's a whole generation

28:59

of people. It's the audience. And it's like, no, actually,

29:01

like what you really need to do is zero in on

29:03

like this small amount but still

29:06

very valuable group of

29:08

people who will really love the thing that you do

29:10

and give a shit about it. Yes, And what I'm

29:12

what I'm trying to figure out is like, you

29:14

know, the idea is a little bit like a counterpart to

29:16

a Penthouse or a Playboy for women,

29:19

right right, And so there's a great

29:21

writing all the like the first issue or something is

29:23

like Norman Mailer's in it, which is a hilarious choice.

29:25

I don't the first issue, but it's early.

29:27

It's the first issue.

29:28

It's my face.

29:29

It's one of my favorite details of the whole shell.

29:31

It's amazing the Norman Mailers in like Playboy

29:33

a lot, and like is I've always thought like it's interesting

29:35

because you go back and look at old Playboys. There's like an incredible

29:37

writer. I'm not a Mailer fan, like I know a lot of

29:39

people are, but I'm not. And but but he's

29:42

like the quintessential worst choice, like the most

29:44

perfect bad choice for like a women's

29:47

publication. He's like a guy who

29:49

like pretty much hates women. So

29:51

it's interesting. But like, here's the thing that I

29:53

don't understand, and you

29:55

perhaps can shed some light. Perhaps the show will

29:58

at some point. This

30:01

is again be sound like a really fucking dumb question. Let

30:03

me think of the best way to frame this question. Show me

30:05

give Did

30:08

women actually want a magazine

30:10

with pornography in it like that? And I'm not saying

30:13

women don't like porn that's not I'm not suggesting

30:15

that, But like in the context

30:17

of like a Playboy or a Penthouse, was

30:20

there a market demand or did the women who were

30:22

coming to work at it go I

30:25

want to have these great pieces or I want

30:27

to do an issue about rapists. It's like a topic

30:29

that needs that we need to be talking about more. But

30:31

also it'd be great

30:33

if there was like erotic imagery,

30:36

because we're talking about imagery. I mean, yes, it could

30:38

be stories whatever, But

30:40

like these magazines dealt in Playboy

30:42

and Penthouse dealt in they sold on sexy

30:46

photos. Like to just put it simply, was

30:48

there a market and was there a legitimate interest

30:51

from the people who made it who were not Bob GUCCIONI

30:54

for like that type

30:56

of pornography for women.

30:59

So this is a central question

31:01

of the podcast, and I think that

31:05

one of the things that I came up against again

31:07

and again from all of the editors first off, who

31:09

would talk to me about their sex lives at the time

31:11

and be very open about that, but then would

31:14

say, oh, you know, can you cut that, or I'm so

31:16

sorry I told you about

31:18

the people I had sex with. Like, there was

31:21

still a lot of shame surrounding

31:24

sexuality and sexual freedom for

31:26

these women. Now. Like

31:28

I said, this was a really challenging time

31:30

for them because they didn't really know what they wanted

31:32

yet. And I

31:35

don't know if they

31:37

can answer that question accurately given

31:39

everything they were up against, given the internalized

31:41

patriarchy, given all of that, right,

31:44

yea, they certainly didn't want

31:47

male photographers and

31:49

male art directors. They didn't want

31:51

the porn that was in Viva, which was

31:54

a man's idea of what a woman wanted.

31:56

Now, if there had actually been

31:59

erotica through a literal female

32:01

lens, I don't know how

32:03

that would have went differently, But that was sort of

32:06

unheard of. There weren't women out

32:08

there shooting porn. I mean, right, there were,

32:10

but it was very niche they didn't, you know, they weren't

32:12

connected to Bob GUCCIONI. I think that Candy

32:15

de Royale doesn't really come along till the eighties

32:17

and we really get into like really

32:20

quality feminist porn. But to

32:23

answer your question, most simply, none of the women

32:25

who worked there wanted these dicks. What they wanted

32:28

was to make an Esquire for women.

32:30

Yes, that was what they desperately wanted,

32:32

because Esquire, you know, at this time, was like amazing,

32:35

and they're like, why do I have to work on this stupid

32:37

bullshit A good housekeeping?

32:39

Right?

32:39

I want to I want to make an Esquire for

32:41

women, and that everybody

32:44

wanted. I mean when I got into magazines in

32:46

two thousand, we were still like, why is there

32:48

no Esquire for women?

32:49

Right? Right? No? I mean that's why I asked, because

32:51

like, what it feels like is like, you want an adult

32:54

magazine that is like addressing women

32:56

as like complete human beings, not like

32:59

a housewife or like the girlfriend

33:02

or whatever it is that all these magazines would

33:04

depict. You're pointed about Esquire, and there

33:06

are lots of other publications at the time,

33:08

and certainly Play a Boy was doing this where

33:11

it was for adult men, like

33:13

he was trying to capture this full picture of like

33:16

your experience as a man, you know, and

33:18

things you might be interested in, and things that would titillate

33:21

you, and things that would educate you and

33:23

you know, struggles or whatever. To

33:26

me, it's like it feels like it's all that but

33:28

not the porn like for women, Like it's

33:30

all the media adult stuff.

33:32

And I think it's interesting that like maybe in

33:34

some way at that point

33:36

in time and maybe today still like

33:40

what looks like like I don't

33:43

know, adult content's the wrong word, but

33:45

I mean it in the most direct way

33:47

of saying, an adult like for people

33:49

who want to think about more than just the

33:51

surface shit, right, Like for it's like stuff

33:54

that's like real and not

33:56

just like porn. But at that time,

33:58

like if you didn't merge the two, like was sort of like how

34:00

can you make the product right?

34:03

Right? Well, because there weren't as many delivery

34:05

systems, let's put it that way, right, there just

34:07

weren't there weren't as many delivery systems for

34:09

porn, right. I mean, I think

34:11

that we can go down a path that I

34:13

think is inaccurate and like is overly generalized.

34:16

And you know, oh well, one of the things that the

34:19

women said to me, the women who work there,

34:21

many of them said to me, was you know, well,

34:23

women are just not turned on visually

34:25

like men are. You know, women need touch,

34:28

they need softness, you know. And then when

34:30

I talked to some like modern day feminist

34:32

pornographers, they were like, that's absolute

34:35

bullshit, right, like straight women

34:37

are turned on by by looking at

34:39

men's penises, Like this is this is

34:41

absolute garbage, like that women are

34:43

like soft and oh my god, read me a

34:45

romance novel.

34:46

We have a clout in there or an audio

34:48

stimpet of somebody that you interviewed saying that exact

34:50

thing, which and I was like, yes, I

34:52

was like, this is a thing I've heard, I feel like all my

34:54

life and has been like it's like a cliche

34:57

about women. It's like men are visual and w and

35:00

need all of this other. And I'm not saying that's not

35:02

true, but it's also like, yeah,

35:06

this is sort of like what's so interesting to me is like

35:08

because it is very straightforward, but you're saying

35:10

it's not. Is it pictures of nude

35:13

men or whatever? It's like what those

35:15

pictures? How those pictures are done like what

35:17

the right like to some extent, there's.

35:19

Shot they were shot by male photographers.

35:21

They were shot by straight male photographers,

35:23

right. And what's interesting

35:26

is that, you know, Viva, like Playboy's

35:29

readership wound up or

35:31

a subscriber base. At least I don't know about the

35:33

readership. I don't know about women who read it. But let's just say

35:35

the people who subscribed to Viva once they really

35:37

got into the subscriber list, it's mostly gay

35:39

men, right, I mean because there

35:41

were very few places, oh right, see,

35:44

and that's the same thing with Playgirl, right. Yeah,

35:47

But it also makes sense to me thinking

35:49

about these these male photographers

35:52

shooting male nudes. It's

35:55

a male lens. It's gay

35:57

men enjoy it, right,

36:00

Huh.

36:00

That wasn't like forty chests or something, right Like,

36:02

it wasn't Bob GUCCIONI wasn't like I'm

36:05

saying, I'm making a ladies magazine

36:07

but really making a magazine for gay men. No.

36:10

I think he really thought he was making a ladies magazine.

36:12

And I think that in part, you know, whether it was his

36:14

idea or not, I think he did it because

36:16

Playgirl had just come out earlier that year,

36:19

and I think he was obsessed with Heffner.

36:21

He Guccioni hated Hefner, He

36:24

hated everything about him. He found him to be a phony

36:26

and a starfucker and just like the

36:29

worst. And they warred

36:31

with each other until Guccioni died

36:33

basically right, So I think that Viva

36:35

was for sure him keeping

36:38

pace with Hefner.

36:39

Oh so Playgirl precedes Fiva.

36:41

By a couple of months.

36:43

Because Playgirl seems like, I don't know was it

36:45

successful. I feel like, do they still

36:47

make Playgirl or did they make it up until pretty

36:49

recently, I feel like it never went

36:51

away play Girl.

36:52

According to Bob Guccioni's son, Bob

36:55

Guccioni Junior, Yes, Playgirl knew

36:57

it was for gay men. It

37:01

really had a better idea that it was for gay

37:03

men. Where I don't think that the Viva editors

37:05

understood how many what they're

37:07

that their readership was mostly gay men, or at least

37:09

they're subscribers.

37:11

Right.

37:11

Playgirl just wasn't as ambitious

37:13

in any way. It was smaller, the trim

37:15

size was smaller, the photo

37:18

shoots were not as ambitious. The writing

37:20

was for sure not as ambitious. And

37:24

I mean when I looked at old issues of Playgirl, I was

37:26

like, this is like a nothing burger. I don't care about

37:28

this at all.

37:29

Right, there's no substance to it.

37:32

Viva's dreamy and weird

37:35

and magical, Like there's just so many

37:37

strange things that happen in it. And then you

37:39

know, at some point Ana windtur comes on and

37:42

is the fashion editor, which is like so

37:45

wild. And also every

37:48

major feminist writer in the seventies

37:51

wrote for Viva at some point, and

37:54

I just think that that is so.

37:58

I think I just can't believe nobody knows about it, right,

38:00

And I really wanted to resurrect this.

38:02

I really wanted to showcase this work

38:04

because one of the things that happens with not

38:07

just magazines, but any kind of writing we've ever

38:09

done, is it just goes away. It's

38:11

just gone forever, you know. Yeah,

38:13

I knew this was special. I could feel

38:15

it, and I really wanted

38:18

to showcase all of their.

38:19

Work, right. I mean, I

38:21

have to say, just the fact that it's

38:24

been buried the way it has, I mean, like,

38:27

up until I started listening to episode

38:29

one, didn't really know

38:31

anything about its existence nor the

38:33

kind of scope of first off, it was around

38:35

for a long time, like a pretty long time all things considered.

38:37

Yeah, longer than a lot of publications

38:40

that start these days, you know, and had,

38:43

like you said, like some pretty incredible talent.

38:45

Like now, I don't know, you've you get more into the

38:48

Anna Wintour aspect. Obviously

38:50

she was pretty early in her career.

38:52

I assume, yeah, she was.

38:53

It was there second job.

38:55

Yeah, but like you don't hear about that mentioned

38:57

a lot in like when people talk about in

38:59

wintor that. Oh, by the way, she was the fashion either

39:01

at like Bob Guccioni's like Ladies

39:03

porn magazine, which is cool.

39:06

It's like one of the coolest things I've heard about

39:08

her. But yeah, I mean it's striking,

39:11

Like to your point about how things go away, you

39:13

think about all the art and thought and sort

39:15

of love that went into it. Yeah,

39:27

it's easier to write off this stuff, right because there

39:30

are like, you know, dicks in it or whatever.

39:33

Yeah, I mean a lot of my work is

39:35

already gone. I wrote for magazines

39:37

that went under, you know, some of my favorite stories

39:40

are just they're just gone. Yeah,

39:42

right, Like maybe I have a clip somewhere,

39:44

but it's just like goes away. And

39:48

I don't know if that has to do with GUCCIONI or

39:50

just sort of the fleeting nature of all

39:52

of this. You know, I don't know.

39:54

Of all of this, like meaning existence or

39:57

the magazine world.

39:58

Well all, well, I mean everything. I mean

40:00

the magazine world, publishing media.

40:03

I mean think about like, you know a lot of

40:05

these women. What was interesting is a lot of them wrote

40:07

books and I couldn't find their books. You

40:09

know, yeah, they're long out of print.

40:12

Well yeah, We've had this belief

40:14

that the internet would save everything. I mean

40:17

honestly for real, in the nineties and stuff,

40:19

people talked about the Internet and you're like, you'll never lose

40:21

anything ever again. And what I've

40:24

found to be true, and

40:26

it particularly in regards to things

40:28

like this, to physical publications

40:31

or you know, things like records, and

40:33

not only have they gone away, but they're almost

40:36

impossible to get again to find again,

40:38

right, Like I don't know, they're digitized versions

40:41

of Viva that exist anywhere. Like no, I

40:43

was like, oh, in my buying one, like somebody's selling a copy

40:45

of for one hundred dollars, which is not a

40:47

tenable way to you know, keep that

40:50

I could build my own archive of it. But it's

40:53

a big investment, right Like magazines,

40:55

I guess are by nature or seem to

40:57

be an ephemeral sort of medium, right

40:59

like you throw it out, but you're done

41:01

with it. This month is gone, like a newspaper.

41:04

But magazines have I

41:06

feel like the stories that are in them and in the product

41:09

that they became has

41:11

value. Of course. I'm sitting in a room that

41:14

just off camera, there is a I

41:16

think you have one behind you. It looks like one of those Ikia

41:18

bookcases. I think they used to be called Lack They're

41:20

now called Calyx or

41:23

something. And I have the larger

41:25

version over next to me, and

41:27

it is filled with magazines. But

41:30

for me, I'm like, I need to keep these for some

41:33

reason, and I don't know why. I don't crack into them

41:35

very often. The other day

41:37

I was cleaning up and I found Frank Sinatra has a

41:39

cold, which no,

41:41

really, it's amazing sitting just over there. I actually

41:43

put on Instagram, so I was like, here it is. I

41:46

forgot that I had it, like the original, you

41:48

know, issue, and maybe

41:51

that's worth something. I don't even know. But it

41:54

was meant as an ephemeral medium, but there's

41:57

so much value to it. Actually, the work

41:59

you're doing is like has interesting like

42:01

archival value. I feel like to it.

42:03

I feel yeah, I think that,

42:06

you know, information is just too diffuse.

42:09

Like what this is all about, the nostalgia

42:11

for this and why we all are like, oh print

42:13

please magazines is we're all nostalgic

42:16

for monoculture, right,

42:19

Like we all want that moment. If

42:21

you pick up a couple of magazines from nineteen

42:24

seventy eight, you

42:26

understand a lot about that year because

42:29

magazines were so hugely influential.

42:32

Yeah, right, you don't have

42:34

that by reading a couple of pages

42:36

of a or you know, a couple of screens

42:39

full of a website. Really it's

42:41

not the same thing, right, And

42:44

I think we all miss that, you know, I

42:47

mean, everything's even worse now than it was,

42:50

you know, ten years ago. I was thinking about.

42:52

I found a deck the other day, found

42:54

an old BuzzFeed deck that I had held on,

42:56

I had gotten my hands on when they were really

42:58

you know, the biggest name

43:01

in town.

43:01

There are billions and billions there were with.

43:03

Billions, And it was a deck called sixteen

43:06

Ways to Viralize, right, And it was around

43:08

the time of like the dress, and

43:11

I was thinking about how quaint the

43:13

dress was that we were all

43:15

sort of like, is it gold? Is it blue?

43:18

Like it doesn't feel that way anymore.

43:21

Right, Yeah, that's an interesting

43:23

observation because the dress doesn't feel

43:25

like it was that long ago. God, even

43:27

saying the dress, there's a whole generation of people who

43:30

probably when we say it, they

43:32

don't even know what we're talking about. Right, Like,

43:34

if you're a person who lives on TikTok right now, you probably

43:37

are not thinking too much about what the dress means

43:39

when we say it. But no, I mean,

43:41

you're talking about something that I spent a lot of time thinking about

43:43

and listening to your podcast

43:46

because it's so much steeped in the

43:48

culture of a time that it just we

43:50

could never I feel like we can never recapture

43:53

unless we like literally turn off the

43:55

Internet. It's hard to and I mentioned

43:57

this before, but it's hard for people, I think

43:59

to understand. I certainly understand it. The power

44:02

of magazines, like like the power

44:04

of publications, because there weren't that many

44:06

of them. It was hard, like there

44:08

were not that many time magazines because it was really

44:11

fucking hard to make a magazine that every

44:13

that almost every person or some amount

44:15

high amount of people in like a country would want

44:18

to read it every week, you

44:20

know. And I think,

44:22

like, in one way it's wonderful

44:25

because we've distributed like information in

44:27

a way that's like makes it more accessible

44:29

for other people, people who would not normally.

44:31

I mean this, this podcast of yours is about

44:35

people who did not get a shot to make the kind of publication

44:37

they wanted to make, trying to make that publication

44:40

and getting like getting kind of screwed

44:42

and and defeated in the process

44:44

in many ways. I mean, also having great like

44:46

successes, like you said, like and going on to

44:48

do amazing stuff. But we've

44:51

leveled that you can now if you want

44:53

to create this weirdest fucking publication that

44:55

you you know, or a new one that doesn't

44:57

exist, you can go do it. So we've

44:59

removed keepers. But at the same time, to your

45:01

point about monoculture, we can't

45:03

even imagine that cultural

45:06

moment of everybody reading,

45:09

like seeing the cover of Time this week that's

45:11

right, and going and going, oh my god,

45:13

like this you know, whatever story

45:15

it is becomes the topic of conversations

45:18

for.

45:19

The magazine or

45:20

even smaller, like enough

45:23

people rallying around something like spy,

45:25

right, like this is. But the thing

45:28

is what I really attracted

45:30

me so much to this was there was

45:32

a lack of self consciousness about

45:35

this because there's no Internet, because they don't

45:37

have to put their shit on Twitter. There's a lack of self

45:39

consciousness, right. And there's also they're

45:42

really working together in this very pure

45:44

way of what makes a good story.

45:47

What's a compelling and fun headline

45:49

that will sell this not for fucking seo, right,

45:51

but we'll actually like look good and be cool.

45:54

And what's the art that

45:56

goes along with this story? All those

45:58

creative collaboration of components

46:01

that I think that's

46:03

what we all want again, that

46:05

kind of feeling, that's something, it's

46:08

something tangible. It feels good

46:10

to make.

46:11

No, I mean this is to me is like it's

46:16

why I still feel attracted to magazines. I think

46:18

it's because like you can create this singular

46:20

sort of object, right, it's and it's

46:22

it's real, it's physical, you hold in your hands,

46:25

you like, it lives in your house, like

46:27

it's not an abstract,

46:29

floating bit of

46:31

data that exists. Like and to your point

46:33

about like the SEO, and I think perhaps,

46:36

like if you're listening to this and you are not in

46:38

the media world, which is like, I hope, I

46:40

fucking hope there's a bunch of people that you're

46:44

not part of that world. But I do think

46:46

it touches on these things, like when you talk about

46:48

stuff like that, if you look at the landscape

46:51

of information, you look at the complaints or

46:53

the arguments against like monolithic

46:56

media. It's funny because this cuts slices so

46:58

many ways when you people

47:00

talk about the media narrative

47:02

and monolithic media and how you can't trust

47:04

the media or whatever they are describing

47:07

the thing that we're talking about having

47:09

a desire for. Yeah, and

47:12

yet at the

47:14

time of that of

47:16

that thing, that monolithic media

47:18

sort of existence, people,

47:21

most people, most consumers of it, weren't

47:23

like this is bullshit, I can't trust

47:25

this. They were like, these people

47:27

are telling me what I need to know, like and

47:30

to make a magazine like the one that you're talking about,

47:32

like Viva to add

47:34

to that conversation was

47:36

not a small feat because he couldn't just appear.

47:39

I think there's so much that is relevant, like to you

47:42

know, in listening to it, this relevant to this moment.

47:44

I think particularly in just thinking

47:46

about how the stories that we see

47:49

and hear and read get

47:51

from somebody's some unique person's

47:53

brain to like into existence. And

47:56

here's an example of like a

47:58

lot of people striving. GUCCIONI

48:00

to some extent, though he in

48:03

a very wayward sense, like you know,

48:06

it's striving to make something that's legitimately,

48:09

you know, valuable to

48:11

an audience, and it is a cynical

48:14

and.

48:14

Not cynical, which is like, oh god,

48:16

how refreshing.

48:18

Right, I definitely what makes me want to return

48:20

to a time when like those people are making that's

48:22

they're making the content, and it's not called

48:24

content. It's like just great stories.

48:27

That was That was what ruined us when it switched

48:29

to content. That was when it was over.

48:30

That was it. Do you think there's any going back.

48:33

Do you think we can fix it?

48:34

I don't know. Look, I mean this podcast that I

48:36

got to write, it's not going to be in the same form, but

48:39

I got to write this podcast. I got to report it out.

48:41

I worked with a brilliant editor who

48:43

edited it. I worked with a producer

48:45

who knew when to dip in and when to like

48:48

let me kind of go wild. So this

48:50

was the most satisfying creative project I

48:52

have, writing project I've had in I

48:54

can't even remember how long I

48:57

had that same journalistic like

48:59

just real that I had early in my

49:01

career, like chasing down stories in New York.

49:04

So I don't think that it's going

49:06

to look the same way, but

49:08

I think that we could still tell stories.

49:11

I think it's a perfect place to leave it.

49:13

It's sort of it's it kind of makes me feel

49:15

a bit hopeful. I mean, I think that's a

49:17

great that's a great point. Like there are I mean,

49:19

there are avenues that we didn't have

49:21

that those that those folks would have never had. So

49:24

you know, the fact that you get to tell this story and tell

49:26

it in such detail is like it

49:28

does kind of harken back to what they were

49:30

trying to do. Yeah, amazing, Jen,

49:33

this has been such an interesting conversation. It's

49:35

such a good listen by the way, like just on top

49:37

of all this stuff we're talking about, all this heavy shit about media,

49:40

it's a fun show to listen to. It's

49:42

like entertaining. You've got tons of great like

49:45

interviews and comments and quotes

49:47

and some like Bob GUCCIONI

49:50

texts that are read and like, it's

49:52

a really great listen. So beyond the

49:54

podcast, if people want to find you elsewhere,

49:56

how can they how can they follow your work?

49:58

I am Jen Ramalini us all

50:00

platforms D E N N R O, M O,

50:03

L I N I.

50:04

That's smart, that's smart.

50:06

That's to keep it consistent. And also your name.

50:08

I've done the same thing.

50:10

It's a very old person. It's a very old person

50:12

thing to do. But that's that's what I should. Yeah,

50:14

it is. I think the young people are like, I'm like

50:17

tiny lyon or whatever.

50:19

Yeah, that's that's a good that's a good way

50:21

to but that way you can escape quickly. Now

50:23

I can never get away from this ship like exactly.

50:25

I can never just Joshua Tepolski

50:27

all over social media forever. So it's not

50:30

like I can hide. Yeah

50:32

no, I can't. George Santos, this situation.

50:35

Nope.

50:36

Thank you for coming on and talking about this. And next

50:38

time you create something a work

50:40

like this, you got to come back and tell us about it. This

50:43

was great, Well,

50:50

that was great. I have to say.

50:52

I I like talking to people who

50:54

know about magazines and have

50:56

a love for them, even if it's misguided

50:59

like my love for magazine. But that was super

51:01

fascinating and everybody, if you haven't

51:03

listened to it, haven't started listening to it. Definitely

51:05

listened to it. I highly recommend it. You will

51:07

not be disappointed. It's highly

51:09

entertaining. And that is

51:11

our show for this week, where Rat We're just gonna

51:13

wrap up. It's gonna get right into the end of this. We'll

51:16

be back next week with more what future,

51:19

And as always, I wish you and your family the

51:21

very best.