‘Slow Horses’ Season 6 Is an Energetic Return to Form. Plus, Chuck Klosterman!

Chris and Andy talk about the ‘Slow Horses’ Season 6 premiere, the consistent excellence of the series for the past several years, and why this season feels special (2:30). Later, Chris is joined by Chuck Klosterman to talk about his upcoming book, ‘Rock*: A Mainstream Alternative History of Alternative Mainstream Music’; why he was drawn to speculative nonfiction as a genre; his personal relationship to the Velvet Underground; and more (25:36). Click here to preorder Chuck Klosterman’s book! Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Follow us on IG and TikTok! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Chuck Klosterman Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Studio Production: Jon Jones and Jamie Yukich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:05Chris Ryan?

  I need sports staff to clear the room.

• 1:08Speaker 03

  Stand up and walk now.

• 1:11Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me in the studio after stiffing me for the bill at an Italian restaurant, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 1:24Andy Greenwald?

  We did have a nice Italian meal in London recently.

• 1:26Chris Ryan?

  We did.

• 1:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, we split it, though.

• 1:28Chris Ryan?

  We did.

• 1:29Andy Greenwald?

  We had to.

• 1:30Chris Ryan?

  It is Thursday, and today we are talking about the first episode of the sixth season of Slow Horses.

• 1:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:37Chris Ryan?

  And then later in the episode, I talked to Chuck Klosterman about his new book, his upcoming new book, Rock. It was a great conversation with Chuck. I've known Chuck for two decades now, more than two decades, and it's awesome that he is still writing books that provoke and intrigue.

• 1:56Andy Greenwald?

  I love this premise.

• 1:57Chris Ryan?

  And the premise of his book is really fascinating. It's what if the Velvet Underground had essentially flipped positions with the Beatles in 1967 and become the biggest band in the world? And how would the world have changed going forward?

• 2:09Andy Greenwald?

  We have talked about this in different contexts on this podcast, but I think of everyone that I've ever met in this long and winding road of life.

• 2:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:18Andy Greenwald?

  There are only two people who are exactly consistent and exactly the same on the page, on the pod, and in person, and they are Chuck Klosterman and Bill Simmons.

• 2:27Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. Do you think I have like a weird dark side that I don't show on the page or the pod?

• 2:31Andy Greenwald?

  No, it's weird. You're kind of more musical theater off the pod. You're very merry.

• 2:35Chris Ryan?

  I do. So, so excited to be alive.

• 2:37Andy Greenwald?

  Jazz hands all the time.

• 2:39Chris Ryan?

  I am excited to be alive. You want to know why? Because I still get consistent pleasure like Slow Horses in my life. So we're going to talk about this first episode. Spoilers for the first episode.

• 2:48Andy Greenwald?

  But do you want to say also just no spoilers for life? Because we are recording this early. So like, what if something crazy happens in TV on Wednesday or Thursday? Are you going to drop in some news?

• 2:56Chris Ryan?

  Maybe, yeah. But it would have to be pretty significant.

• 2:58Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I'm really excited to see what fits the bill.

• 3:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there's usually like, it's like the same thing with like, if an all-star gets traded, it's an emergency post, but not if it's like the 23rd best player in the league.

• 3:11Andy Greenwald?

  Should we just run through some like reusable headlines? You know, like Paramount Warner Brothers merger hit another speed bump on the road to approval.

• 3:22Chris Ryan?

  I don't think that would, that would not bring me into the office.

• 3:25Andy Greenwald?

  Should we do some obituaries?

• 3:26Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 3:27Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, all right. I'm just trying to be helpful, but I'm not going to be here.

• 3:30Chris Ryan?

  Um, all right, let's do, let's, let's do sort of broad strokes.

• 3:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 3:34Chris Ryan?

  There's some important things to note about series six, season six of Slow Horses. I would say probably one of the most consistently rewarding television shows of this decade. And one of the most consistent.

• 3:46Andy Greenwald?

  Certainly the most consistent.

• 3:47Chris Ryan?

  Productions of this decade, I would say. The idea of adapting a long-running spy series by Mick Herron and using a book per season, although this, this particular season uses multiple books, has just been an absolute boon. I think it's a show that I anecdotally feel like grows over time, that people go back and, and rediscover or discover as they, more and more people inevitably wind up using Apple TV as their like, either as their set-top box or as like a streaming service of choice. And I think tonally is probably for too long been thought of as just one thing.

• 4:30Chris Ryan?

  And one of the cool things about this season is I think it's going to explore some darker corners of the Slow Horses world.

• 4:37Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 4:37Chris Ryan?

  And I think you could see that in the first season, first episode.

• 4:40Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's also worth noting, and I apologize if you did, I was, I just been, I've just fallen down a Google rabbit hole about Spanish golfers shouting out our Monday podcast. It's a much richer text than you might have believed.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  Tuesday podcast.

• 4:54Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, sorry, Tuesday podcast, this guy said.

• 4:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:56Andy Greenwald?

  Quick question, what day is it today?

• 4:58Chris Ryan?

  It is still Tuesday.

• 4:59Andy Greenwald?

  Thursday?

• 5:00Chris Ryan?

  We're just recording it for Thursday.

• 5:01Andy Greenwald?

  Crushing this. Um, Unstuck in Time, Not Penny's Boat. Yeah, that, there's a new showrunner.

• 5:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that was my next big, big thing was that Will Smith, who had guided the first five seasons.

• 5:12Andy Greenwald?

  And not that Will Smith, and also not the other one.

• 5:15Chris Ryan?

  Uh, the Dodgers catcher?

• 5:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:18Andy Greenwald?

  Not the catcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

• 5:21Chris Ryan?

  Yes, he did not make Slow Horses. But Will Smith was, has been on our podcast, the writer.

• 5:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 5:26Chris Ryan?

  And showrunner for Slow Horses. And he did yeoman's work, uh, running five seasons, pretty much back to back to back to back to back. And, um, has, has left the show for practical purposes and also because he was working on other things. And Gabby Chiappi has come on and done season six.

• 5:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 5:44Chris Ryan?

  And I believe a different writer is showrunning season seven.

• 5:47Andy Greenwald?

  Ben Van Stone.

• 5:48Chris Ryan?

  And it sounds like they are now kind of settling into a, there's one crew that works on the odds and one crew that works on the evens.

• 5:55Andy Greenwald?

  Which is what happens also with the directing, because Adam Randle, who's directing this season, directed season four. Saul Metzstein, who won an Emmy this week for directing season five, also directed season three.

• 6:07Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 6:07Andy Greenwald?

  So it is funny. I mean, I can speak from experience, but it is just remarkable how there actually are ways to quote unquote, make this work, consistent television, yearly television. But you have to plan for literally things like this. Like, one person can't do two, let alone three seasons all at once. And it is funny how in every example, other than The Pit, uh, which I think is more explicitly on like a 90s model, like it's taken a lot of these shows, multiple seasons to figure it out.

• 6:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:38Andy Greenwald?

  And this speaks very well of their operation and what they have going forward. Because this is no slight at Will Smith, who, as you said, has done something amazing in adapting the show and getting it up to this level for five straight seasons. But I have to tell you, in front of you and Kaya and Kai, and if anyone's listening, you know, now that they don't know what day it is anymore, I thought the last season was kind of the weakest.

• 7:00Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 7:01Andy Greenwald?

  And I, I am not sure if that is like qualitatively the case, but I was less taken with it. I found its attempt to get its arms around some real world stuff in modern London and politics and right-wing journalism just felt a little more ham-handed with the overall comic tone of everything. I also have to say, my previous weakest season was the one before, which lurched in the opposite direction. It introduced darkness, played by Hugo Weaving, as like the Darth Vader character that's haunting this whole thing. So I was kind of in a place with the show where I was like, it's always a B to B plus, but I am not sure if I'm deeply in love with either the broader comic version of it, ripped from the headlines and having a laugh, or the like, actually, it's all one story and there's darkness.

• 7:45Andy Greenwald?

  And then, Chris, I fired up season six.

• 7:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:49Andy Greenwald?

  And this show fucking rips again.

• 7:51Chris Ryan?

  Do you?

• 7:51Andy Greenwald?

  I loved it.

• 7:52Chris Ryan?

  Did you watch more than season first episode?

• 7:54Andy Greenwald?

  I watched the first two, we won't spoil it.

• 7:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:56Andy Greenwald?

  But I was so excited by the first one, I had to keep going a little bit to see where we were headed.

• 8:01Chris Ryan?

  You've put your finger on something really interesting. I think I was higher on the other two seasons that you just mentioned.

• 8:05Andy Greenwald?

  And they were good. I just meant in terms of my relationship to the show.

• 8:08Chris Ryan?

  But they were kind of doing something that I guess, you know, I've read some of the Mick Herron books, I have not read all of them. Um, I, I think that there is a common kind of twist in them where it's, starts out with, you think it's this adversary, but it turns out this adversary is the one pulling the strings. And, you know, you basically, you'll, you'll think, ah, the Libyans are attacking, attacking London, why? And then it's like, oh, it's white, white nationalists are actually doing it.

• 8:34Andy Greenwald?

  Gotcha.

• 8:35Chris Ryan?

  Um, I feel like that move had been pulled a couple of times in various ways. What I also noticed was that it was maybe breaking under the, we're going to just put these people in their roles.

• 8:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 8:50Chris Ryan?

  And they never deviate from established behavior.

• 8:52Andy Greenwald?

  In every scene, Roddy will say this, um, River will do this, and they're stuck.

• 8:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:58Andy Greenwald?

  Much like the characters are stuck in Slough House.

• 9:00Chris Ryan?

  And I, I thought that there were some like reasons for Real Hope, because, you know, River's constant moaning about why is he at Slough House? He wants to do real work and get out of this place. And, you know, there, there had been some steps towards like three-dimensionality that I think was really helpful.

• 9:17Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:19Chris Ryan?

  It explodes in this season. I think that this season is, is among the best of, of the lot, if not since the beginning. I know I've, I, I think I said last season, like Slow Horses is fucking back. And I will admit that I have no self-control when it comes to Slow Horses screeners, that I watch them, I tend to watch them in a, basically a binge. My secret shame is that I think Slow Horses would be the, like an elite binge show. It's six episodes. I think people could watch them in three or four nights and maybe even like understand the totality of the stories even better.

• 9:54Andy Greenwald?

  I struggle with.

• 9:54Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, this is a one crazy night season, and I think it would almost be. Better ingested that way. I know that there are a lot of people who also wait several weeks for Slow Horses to be done airing so that they can watch in this fashion. It's just a note, I thought that this first episode was wonderful.

• 10:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 10:15Chris Ryan?

  First of all,

• 10:16Andy Greenwald?

  So good.

• 10:16Chris Ryan?

  Even though Randall has previous experience directing this show, I thought that there was a noticeable difference from the visual palette of the show.

• 10:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 10:26Chris Ryan?

  There was more handheld. This felt less like I was on a set or like a pre-established group of sets in London. And more like a, I'm hunting around this city with these people as they try to figure out what's going on.

• 10:41Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, the show is, has been elite at saying, well, now we're going to shoot Hackney this way, or we're going to use the Barbican that way. Or even in this season, like Topath Cafe and the small boats, like it's a beautiful, characterful slice of London that isn't always on our American screens. And it always takes good advantage of that. But I'm completely on board with what you're saying because there is a different visual language already, which is a cool idea for a show that, you know, has different personalities season to season and is telling a single story each season. But some of the, just the shot composition and the framing, like in the, um, not the trailer park, but the, um, what would you call it? The storage container park that begins the action is, like, I paused it.

• 11:23Andy Greenwald?

  Slow Horses, despite it winning an Emmy for directing, has never been a show where I'm like, boy, the visual storytelling is what brings me back.

• 11:30Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 11:30Andy Greenwald?

  And this season was, was artier.

• 11:33Chris Ryan?

  I also think that there's this interesting line where some people come to shows and they want that show to be a repeatable pleasure. And I think that this has been that for several years. If they had continued to just do the exact same thing, and obviously they're adapting books, these, this season, uh, I believe is Slough House and Joe Country, I want to say.

• 11:56Andy Greenwald?

  That's right.

• 11:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Joe Country and Slough House, the two McCarran novels that this season has drawn from. And, uh, it's already been renewed for season eight. And I would, like I said, I think they'll go for 10, but who knows? It's really as long as Oldman wants to do it. The, the reason why the, the new director, the new direction for the show, or the new visual like language of the show worked is that you can't just do what these people do forever and not have your worldview changed. And so the show needs to reflect that. And I felt like you could just look around London and it just felt like decay.

• 12:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:29Chris Ryan?

  It's pissing rain constantly.

• 12:31Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:31Chris Ryan?

  The sky is completely washed out white, like there's no skyline, there's no.

• 12:36Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry, this all felt quite familiar.

• 12:37Chris Ryan?

  Scenery. And I think that we're more in like, like you mentioned, the, the opening scene takes place in this port district of, of shipping containers stacked on top of one another, where an ex Slough House agent has retired to teach karate to children and try and pitch people on his idea of like vertical integrated, like shipping containers as apartments, the new flats of the future.

• 13:10Andy Greenwald?

  Now, the, I, I, I'm curious your opinion on this. It's either the beauty of the show or the challenge of the show. So I remembered, I don't, I've not re-watched the series. I remembered that there was a Scottish Slow Horse in the first season who got fired. I assumed when the season began on him that that was the same guy, but I can't say I carried a lot of institutional memory of Strew and Loy or had feelings about him, which is maybe the point. Later in this, in, uh, in this episode, or, you know, in, in the episodes that we've seen, um, another character that has made a similarly brief appearance on the show is brought back. But another character who I believe we've never seen is also targeted. Because we could say this conceit for the season, I'm sure other shoes are going to drop,

• 13:53Andy Greenwald?

  is that there is a targeted, a team of assassins, one of whom excitedly, I would say, is played by Kyle Stoller, who we adore from Andor, are tracking down ex.

• 14:06Chris Ryan?

  Solar.

• 14:07Andy Greenwald?

  Kyle Solar, sorry. Ex Slow Horses and killing them.

• 14:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Andy Greenwald?

  So I, I have to say, I've never watched Slow Horses with that kind of encyclopedic, like Sopranos-esque, like, oh, I remember that's the capo of Jersey from season one. I can't believe he's stepping up into this bigger role.

• 14:23Chris Ryan?

  I don't think it asked you to.

• 14:23Andy Greenwald?

  But I don't think it needed to.

• 14:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:25Andy Greenwald?

  But you, you're, you may have experienced that as a viewer of a little bit of disorientation of like, am I supposed to know this? The show makes it okay for you, but if you, it does, I guess, reward the memory.

• 14:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and Paul Higgins, who plays Strew and Loy, was most notably like, one of the funniest characters of all time on The Thick of It.

• 14:43Andy Greenwald?

  He's a great comedic actor.

• 14:46Chris Ryan?

  I just feel like you can feel mildew, rust. This, this is, and, and this is reflective, I think, of England's kind of constant identity crisis of like, are we an imperial country? Are we still, you know, a powerful intelligence service? Are we influencing the world around us or are we just lucky to be here? You know, this small island that doesn't make anything anymore, you know? And that came across in the, the visual language of, of this episode, I thought.

• 15:19Andy Greenwald?

  And there's a great scene that does this in the first episode that accomplishes so many things. But it's the first time we see River this season in Diana's new office as first desk. And the, the combination of the rain and the giant windows, which play quite differently than the giant windows in another Regent's Park set spy show, The Agency, the dampness leaking through the windows as the scene is an attempt at being emotional, but fails.

• 15:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it's, it's operating on a, on a higher level.

• 15:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I thought, like, you know, Jack Loudon, who may or may not become James Bond soon.

• 15:54Andy Greenwald?

  Crazy.

• 15:54Chris Ryan?

  I think he had been underserved as, River has been underserved as a character perhaps over the last couple of seasons, specifically last season, even though I was enthusiastic about the season itself.

• 16:06Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 16:06Chris Ryan?

  I felt like you could see over the last couple, when they had to shoot Jack Loudon out.

• 16:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 16:13Chris Ryan?

  And that his schedule, because he is obviously a pretty popular actor and is in Pride and Prejudice coming up, and, you know, maybe scarce if, if he is James Bond, that you could see certain scenes where, where certain sequences or certain storylines that felt like, this is how much, we have three weeks with him. We have to shoot his stuff. He's going to be in France.

• 16:33Andy Greenwald?

  Look at, wearing like a super sick, all black, like,

• 16:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:37Andy Greenwald?

  travel ensemble.

• 16:38Chris Ryan?

  Some of that is probably from books. Some of that is creative choices, but some of it, I think, is this is how much time we have this person. When you're shooting a show basically every year, you, you can, you have to work around the schedules of the actors. And if it's going to go on for this long and these actors are starting to get bigger and bigger, Rosalind Elizar is now like the star of the Chris Rock movie.

• 16:59Andy Greenwald?

  And she was absent last season. I mean, she had one moment and then was gone and now is going to be back.

• 17:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Gary Oldman is really the most consistent figure in this entire scenario. So it was exciting to me to see River with Diana, River with Jackson, River in the office again, like River moving around and this show kind of relocating itself around his character.

• 17:22Andy Greenwald?

  And, you know, I don't know if we're spoiling the first episodes, I'll refrain from it, but putting him in a different position emotionally, starting him.

• 17:28Chris Ryan?

  No, we can spoil the first episode.

• 17:29Andy Greenwald?

  So in the first episode, it's established that his grandfather, played by Jonathan Pryce, has died.

• 17:34Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 17:35Andy Greenwald?

  Between seasons, now he still is appearing flashbacks. And I think Jackson is like, show me the body. But, but it gives Jack Loudon different notes to play and also allows him to be kind of disgusted and over all of it, not ping ponging between what he wants the park to be and what he knows Slough House to be. He's just kind of sick of it.

• 17:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:54Andy Greenwald?

  And moving at his own tempo. But then also just the stakes are super high. Like it is, you can't pull this card every year in a show like this. But this is the season where they like pull a trip an alarm and they're like code black, like turn off your phones, like we're going dark.

• 18:09Chris Ryan?

  We all have to go to safe houses.

• 18:10Andy Greenwald?

  And we all have to like, and it's, it's incredibly, it's incredibly exciting. And it, and, and again, I don't necessarily want to credit the new showrunner, but maybe I would credit some more time and space for this unit to work on this season. But the integration of, for example, Roddy's demeanor and his one-liners and his complete obliviousness.

• 18:29Chris Ryan?

  Much more seamless.

• 18:30Andy Greenwald?

  It's much, it's toned down a lot.

• 18:32Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 18:32Andy Greenwald?

  Like last season, at its best, I think, was a situation comedy, and I say that as high praise. But it was like four people standing in a room and River would say the river line. Jackson would, uh, pass gas and then Roddy would be like on a different planet and on a different show without any reality of like,

• 18:51Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 18:51Andy Greenwald?

  I almost died tonight.

• 18:52Chris Ryan?

  And I also, you know, they have a nice big ensemble, but they don't always have something for everyone to do. Or they'll have like a, you know, I, I enjoyed River and Co. kind of being off.

• 19:04Andy Greenwald?

  That was good last year.

• 19:05Chris Ryan?

  Doing stuff together. Uh, there, there was a lot of really good stuff from last season, but everything seems to be playing in harmony this season. And everything is in its right place. And I do wonder if they, if they kind of like turn the knob down on Jackson.

• 19:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 19:22Chris Ryan?

  One or two slots, not necessarily in terms of like his behavior, although it's, you know, it's still grotesque. But.

• 19:31Chris Ryan?

  He was in so much, I feel like, over the last couple of seasons that I was starting to be like, is this like a comedy about this guy?

• 19:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 19:39Chris Ryan?

  And it's about like, he's the smartest guy in the room, but first he's gonna fart in it, and then he's gonna drink everything, and then he's gonna smoke indoors.

• 19:45Andy Greenwald?

  And always be right.

• 19:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:46Andy Greenwald?

  And always be smart. And that became a little bit of a crutch. Yeah, there was just something that was just really bracing about the A to B to C of this episode, in which Struynloy is killed, Flynn, who's the head of the dogs, finds out about this and asks.

• 20:02Chris Ryan?

  Flight.

• 20:03Andy Greenwald?

  What's that?

• 20:03Chris Ryan?

  Flight.

• 20:03Andy Greenwald?

  Flight, sorry. I'm watching, like, it's slightly off-speed, so I'm getting the names just like one. Or I'm just testing you. You know what I mean? It's the Mandela Effect.

• 20:14Chris Ryan?

  I'm just a very big Flight fan.

• 20:15Andy Greenwald?

  But on my version, it's Flynn.

• 20:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:18Andy Greenwald?

  You know?

• 20:18Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 20:18Andy Greenwald?

  Like, the Berenstein bears with an E. She goes to Diana, who says, don't, saying, maybe we should tell Lamb, and Diana says, no, and then she does go to Lamb. And what I liked about it was, there was no, Lamb's gonna behave the way he's gonna behave, but it didn't go through the comedic motions of him not caring about this.

• 20:36Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 20:36Andy Greenwald?

  Like, clearly, this is significant and concerning, and it's just pushing those emotional chips forward in a way, like you said, it's subtle, but like, his treatment of Standish, you know, his history with Standish, that is, a spotlight is shown on it this season, and, you know, her own struggles happening in the midst of this Night from Hell. It's just smart pacing and structure to give everyone a chance to do something a little bit deeper and more surprising.

• 21:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't remember feeling this reinvigorated about a show hitting season six in a while.

• 21:09Andy Greenwald?

  That was my next question for you.

• 21:10Chris Ryan?

  I mean, like, you can have Breaking Bad's and Mad Men's and what have you's that remain consistently, like, on an upward trajectory, but it's hard to remember a show, well, first of all, I, you know, the way that they are doing the British television model at the scale they're doing it at, with the amount of acting talent that they have, and the sort of treasure chest of IP to pull from, is stunning. It would be fascinating to me, I believe there are some prequel novels, I believe there, I think that there, and there are also some side stories in the McCarran universe, and I wonder whether or not they would either wait for Slow Horses to be over, or would

• 21:52Chris Ryan?

  they ever do a, hey, actually, season eight of Slow Horses is going to be a flashback season?

• 22:00Andy Greenwald?

  I'm fascinated, too, I mean, you know more than I do about it, but that they would actually chew up two books in one season. Does that mean there's gonna be bits of these books left over? For them to revisit? Because where we are in terms of the writing of them, this leaves three books still ahead of them.

• 22:18Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 22:19Andy Greenwald?

  Now, he's continuing to write, so as long as he, it's the anti-George R. Martin here, because he's written, I believe, four books since the show was in active development and production.

• 22:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Which also, I think, helps keep the show pretty relevant. One of the things that's tough about spy series and spy novels is that sometimes you finish them and they're like, well, this is the genius of, like, setting your spy show or spy movie in the recent past, is because you don't wanna be too contemporary, because the contemporary world changes every day so drastically.

• 22:50Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't know that he wrote a Slow Horses novella called The Marley Bone Drop, which is what I refer to the time that Kaya arranged for me to get a podcast microphone, and what happened to me when I was trying to carry it back across Oxford Street.

• 23:05Chris Ryan?

  Did you find it difficult to carry a podcast microphone?

• 23:07Andy Greenwald?

  I was carrying a lot.

• 23:08Chris Ryan?

  Don't you go to, like, Pilates five times a week?

• 23:09Andy Greenwald?

  It wasn't, thank you. Thank you for noticing. After all these years.

• 23:14Chris Ryan?

  I don't really understand.

• 23:15Andy Greenwald?

  It wasn't the weight, it was the...

• 23:18Chris Ryan?

  Emotional labor.

• 23:19Andy Greenwald?

  Well, no, I was just crushed under, like, I assume, your gratitude for continuing podcasts from such a vast distance. No, it was, it was the, it was an ungainly box, and I had other bags, because, you know, I probably hadn't been able to finish my steamed fish and lentils, and I'd probably gotten it to go. So, do you wanna talk more about that?

• 23:39Chris Ryan?

  I mean, nothing ages better than steamed fish and lentils.

• 23:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 23:42Chris Ryan?

  In a box, in your backpack.

• 23:45Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like the gentleman in the elevator with me agreed, you know?

• 23:49Chris Ryan?

  Well, to your previous criticism of the past seasons of the show, did you blanch at Hugo Weaving's Harkness character reappearing at the end of the first episode?

• 24:03Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think everything else was so exceptional, and felt like a collective step into a different version of the show. I mean, also, I knew it was coming, because, like, you don't create a character like that, not to bring him back, but tonally, the show had done such work in the first 50 minutes, or whatever it was, to prepare the entire series for his return, as an existential threat to everyone, that it made me interested. Now, how they play him, and is it just more bad dad, he's more violent than anyone else? Like, that's, that's not as interesting to me, I would say, but everything feels stakesier and less clever.

• 24:40Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 24:41Andy Greenwald?

  And so that character potentially can jive more. I mean, it's not that different than what you were saying about Roddy, but from a different extreme. If you just move the little window a little bit, people fit more into the frame.

• 24:52Chris Ryan?

  Exactly right. Exactly right. All right, well, we're gonna have fun talking about this show this year.

• 24:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I'm super into it.

• 24:57Chris Ryan?

  Six episodes, one per week. We should get into my interview with Chuck.

• 25:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 25:03Chris Ryan?

  This is an extraordinary book that Chuck wrote, called Rock. It's not only just because of, like, the imaginative sort of breadth of it, and to rewrite rock history through this, what if, you know, this slight turn of events, although I guess it's a massive turn of events, if the Velvet Underground had become the biggest band in the world in 1967, but the reverberations it has through politics, society, culture, youth culture, it's just really, like, every chapter is invigorating, because you just never know where he's gonna go. I also thought it was really interesting, because I, it feels like a really personal book for Chuck in a lot of ways, just because I know his relationships to a lot of this, a lot of these bands, and his relationship to writing about music professionally, anyway,

• 25:47Chris Ryan?

  and it was great to talk to him about it. It's, I highly encourage everybody to preorder it, and to go out and get it when it comes out. If you've read all of Chuck's books, if you've never read any of Chuck's books, you know, I think it serves, even though it is in a speculative history of an almost science fictional world, it still is actually like a great rock history book, and it was really awesome to talk to Chuck. So let's get into my interview with him.

• 26:17Andy Greenwald?

  One of our oldest friends.

• 26:18Chris Ryan?

  One of our buds.

• 26:18Andy Greenwald?

  And one of the best people.

• 26:19Chris Ryan?

  Thanks to Kai and Kyle, we'll be back next Monday with some lanterns and some other stuff, and can't wait to do it.

• 26:26Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think we should hit the Emmys again? I know you love it.

• 26:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I really, I thought, I thought we left a lot on the table.

• 26:31Andy Greenwald?

  Emmy's 2026 re-watch.

• 26:34Chris Ryan?

  Talk to you guys soon.

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• 28:20Chris Ryan?

  My guest today is Chuck Kloster. What's up, buddy?

• 28:22Speaker 05

  Not too much, my friend.

• 28:23Chris Ryan?

  Chuck has a new book called Rock Asterix. And how do you, like, how do you refer to this book? Just rock?

• 28:30Speaker 05

  I just call it rock. The asterisk almost is a design element.

• 28:34Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 28:35Speaker 05

  Early enough in the process, I was like, I think I'm just gonna keep it as the title as well. Although I suppose this could make it complicated for people to search for.

• 28:43Chris Ryan?

  I was gonna ask you about SEO, just right off the bat.

• 28:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, but you know, it's not, it's not, you know, but I can't worry about such things, you know?

• 28:53Chris Ryan?

  How?

• 28:54Speaker 05

  People will find this book through fine podcasts like this.

• 28:57Chris Ryan?

  Exactly. Well, this, this will go up, I think, with a few days before the book is available in order to rally the troops to come, send you into some kind of bestseller Valhalla. But how, how spoilery do you feel? I mean, this book has elements of surprise to it. There are, as you go through the book, and we could talk about the concept of it, there are aspects of it that I found to be delightfully surprising. And I'm curious whether or not you're like, I want to talk about that publicly, or I want people to discover it on their own.

• 29:32Speaker 05

  Well, it's a strange deal because it's a fiction book involving almost exclusively nonfictional characters.

• 29:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 05

  So there's this temptation to talk about it like it's actually real. Like, if I had written an actual history of rock, it would be very sensible for people to be like, well, why do you think this happened with punk rock in 1978? Or like, what was your feeling about Duran Duran at the time? Now, because it's not real, it does seem strange to do that. I don't, I'm kind of at a loss on how to talk about it in some ways, but I have to try nonetheless.

• 30:07Chris Ryan?

  It was funny. It's like, so Chuck's book is essentially an alternative or speculative history? What do they call these? And like, when, when they have, is it speculative sci-fi or speculative histories? When it's like, what if Franklin Delano Roosevelt never became president?

• 30:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, okay, so, you know, I think probably that's what it would be classified. Is it science fiction? I guess there's no science to it.

• 30:33Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 30:33Speaker 05

  I mean, it's just, it's like an alternative reality. I mean, you know, the, the, there's, you know, historical fiction where it's like, you know, what was like John Adams talking about or whatever? It's like, the things are real, but we just sort of imagine how the conversation would have happened. This isn't that, obviously, because people are saying things that they either didn't say or they said in a totally different context. It's just sort of in a, like, kind of just an imagined world that is our world, where everything is different, except the release of music.

• 31:04Chris Ryan?

  Yes. And in this world, The Velvet Underground's debut album in 1967 becomes the biggest rock record of all time, has oceans of influence over American culture, a significant impact on American history, global history, and impacts all these other bands around them, sending The Beatles into essentially the dustbin of history, changing Elvis's career, and impacting a lot of behaviors and events in American history. It's a fascinating book, but I, you know, I did read it as if it was a history. And I found myself at times being like,

• 31:47Chris Ryan?

  I feel like The Rolling Stones have been underserved in this book that's about something that didn't happen. And I was curious whether or not you basically approached it as such. Did you approach it as if you were writing like, an almost objective history of something that didn't happen?

• 32:03Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, that's an interesting way of saying it, an objective telling of something unreal, because what would that necessarily be? But I guess that's what this is. I will say, it was a complicated book to write, because I had to essentially write a nonfiction history of rock, and then reverse virtually everything. But, so it was, it was almost like writing a book on top of another book. Because it's kind of, you know, sort of delivered like it's like an encyclopedia of music. And if you've got an encyclopedia of music, you probably would not read it straight through.

• 32:36Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 32:36Speaker 05

  You, you, people don't read encyclopedias straight through. But because this is fiction, it kind of necessitates that. The other tricky thing was, so, a lot of, obviously, The Velvet Underground become a big span ever, completely changes the monoculture of the 70s and the 80s. And I had to write about sort of these, these insane things, but I couldn't write about them as if they were insane, because that's not how nonfiction would work.

• 33:04Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 33:05Speaker 05

  You know, when we write about, you know, we, like, nobody writes like a history of rock, and they mention the 80s, and they go like, can you believe Reagan was president? It's like, they just are like, well, that happened. So I had to write everything as if these are things the reader should already know, that they should be obvious things, that, that, that, you know, that Yola Tangle is huge or whatever, and they would just know this automatically.

• 33:32Speaker 05

  But, so that, I think that they're, like, it's, I mean, it's certainly unlike the other books I've done.

• 33:38Chris Ryan?

  How, when you were deciding, like, the cause and effect of things that happen in the book,

• 33:46Chris Ryan?

  how did you go about doing that? Because obviously, like, The Rolling Stones still make, it's only rock and roll, right? Like, the songs are all the same songs.

• 33:54Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 33:55Chris Ryan?

  The reception of those songs are different, and even the artist's relationship maybe to their music is different. But I was curious, when it gets outside of music and you start playing around with, what would be different about the world if The Velvet Underground had assumed the central place in culture that The Beatles did? How do you decide, I mean, I have a very specific example in this, but like, how do you decide how those ripple effects hit people and hit these, these events and these, and these historical moments?

• 34:30Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, it, what's tricky about it is that when you're working in fiction, there is an expectation that events will happen for almost purely logical reasons. You know, that's just, we expect that. Like, in a nonfiction story, you are not surprised if something arbitrarily happens, or if somebody does the exact opposite of what sort of logic would dictate. But in fiction, that makes people bristle. They're like, well, he wouldn't have done that, or he wouldn't have said that, or that wouldn't have happened. So I was always just, you know, basically, say I'm writing about what's going on in 1972 or 73, I'm trying to, I'm kind of recreating these events, and then trying to think like, well, if that happened, you know, what would be the consequence of that?

• 35:16Speaker 05

  With the idea always being that as you move through time, the events get kind of more and more absurd and more attached from the reality. Like, the beginning of the book, from like, 67 to 72, that's just like an alternative history. It reads to someone like, oh, he's just sort of saying, what if this happened instead of that? But as it goes through time, these things kind of, sort of alter everything. It's, I, I, I, like, how do you go about doing it? I mean, I guess that's just the creative part.

• 35:44Chris Ryan?

  No, I, I think what I was curious about was whether there were certain things, like, for instance, there, if there was like a master key of what has happened, and then like, there are certain things that are different, like Gigi Allen becomes hugely famous. But then there are certain things that remain the same, which is, Mark David Chapman still assassinate someone famous, it's just a different person. So do you sit around for an afternoon thinking, was Mark David Chapman always destined to do something like this, and it was just a matter of replacing John Lennon with somebody else?

• 36:15Speaker 05

  In some ways, that's hard to answer, because there's also elements in this book where, you know, a lot of careers are completely reversed, you know, like Led Zeppelin is not like a critics band that has almost no commercial success. But like, Steely Dan's career is exactly the same as it's, yeah.

• 36:29Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 36:30Speaker 05

  It's exactly the same. They chart all the same, everything is the same. So what, you know, I mean, I guess I was kind of thinking about, I mean, you know, because the main thing I want is for this book to be entertaining and funny. That is my main goal. I'm not going to pretend that that isn't the main thing. My main motive for doing this is that people who really like rock music will be able to read about bands that they've read about 100 times before in this, kind of this funny new way. But there are some questions I did think about. I mean, a big question that I thought about my whole life and that we have talked about many, many, many times, is sort of like, well, why do things happen the way they happen? Why are things popular and why are certain things unpopular? Even if you listen to them in a vacuum, they might sound the same. And, you know, it's this, it's this strange, like, three-pronged thing.

• 37:16Speaker 05

  To some extent, it is marriage. To some extent, it is just chance. But then the largest part is that weird kind of third rail, where it's a little bit of both of those things, that we have to sort of look back historically as reasonable, or this was obvious how it had to happen, or this must be true. When it's, you know, it's, it's just, I'm just kind of fascinated by how these, like, when we talk about history, we talk about sort of the outcome. But I'm always sort of obsessed with sort of what made that outcome even possible, and how capricious it was.

• 37:56Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 37:56Speaker 05

  And how much, and how organized it was, you know?

• 38:00Chris Ryan?

  Do you feel like the binary of The Beatles and The Velvet Underground?

• 38:06Chris Ryan?

  Is something that's as capricious as a coin toss? Or as, as, as a, if, if weather systems had been different? If it had been a different situ- presidential, like, political environment that these bands were entering into, like, the, the, the planes could have been flipped like that? Like, that we could have been on a different axis? Or is the point to make the Velvet Underground the sort of central, like, dominant force? Kind of to point out, like, how absurd all of it is, you know?

• 38:41Speaker 05

  I would say closer to that. And also, just, I mean, maybe you will disagree with this, but I really think of the Velvet Underground as the beginning of the idea of a critics band, of a band that is more appreciated by sort of the serious consumer or the person in the media who talks about music, you know, as opposed to just the consumer at the time. Now, that doesn't feel that way now. It is kind of, I am kind of curious how this book will be received by somebody, a younger person who reads it, who I think probably in their mind feels like the Velvet Underground are a super famous band.

• 39:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:18Speaker 05

  The likelihood that they would have heard about or be familiar with the Velvet Underground is not that different than the likelihood that they would be familiar with the Rolling Stones or something like that. That was not the case when we were younger. It certainly wasn't the case when we first got into music. It was still sort of seen as this kind of aberrant thing that was like, you know, like this transgressive thing that, you know. What happened to this book? I'm not saying like, this could have been our reality, like, this couldn't happen. If we talk about the Beatles, I think it is, you know, a good question about, like, did it have to be them or was it going to be somebody?

• 39:52Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 39:52Speaker 05

  But was some band in the early 60s going to sort of create, make rock and roll and the idea of the counterculture, the mainstream culture? It did have to be them. I think people who love the Beatles always want to say, yes. I think a lot of people will be like, well, it could have been someone else. It was like, it's the ultimate time. I don't see a scenario where what happens to the Velvet Underground could have happened.

• 40:13Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:14Speaker 05

  But, you know, I'm just saying, like, you know, like, it's not, it, there is a, there is an aspect to this that is, you know, fantasy, you know, like, this is, you know? And I, I just, the whole idea that rock music becomes so important to the culture, that, I mean, that's like, that's kind of a fantastical way to look at, you know, writing about music or thinking about music. But it's almost like, you know, we talk a lot about rock bands and we talk about, you know, what do they mean politically? What do they mean symbolically? For the most part, those are just kind of interesting ways to describe something. And in this book, it's like, all of those things we say actually are happening.

• 40:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:53Speaker 05

  Like, the political meaning of these bands is a universal political sentiment in the entire, you know, Western world.

• 41:04Chris Ryan?

  Well, you're scratching at something that, I mean, this book was very nostalgic for me because it felt a lot like arguments and conversations that we had when we first met back in the early 2000s.

• 41:15Speaker 05

  I feel like I invented the first watch podcast.

• 41:17Chris Ryan?

  Did you really?

• 41:18Speaker 05

  Well, I met you and Chris, or you and Andy, at Greg Milner's barbecue. And then you had to walk a greyhound and then we went to the bar.

• 41:27Chris Ryan?

  I did. That's not in metaphor. I actually did have to walk a greyhound.

• 41:30Speaker 05

  Trying to convince me to watch Oz or something. I feel like that was the beginning of that, you know? But, you know, I, I know what you mean, sort of, it's sort of like, it does seem as though we kind of had playful conversations like this.

• 41:43Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Um, and in some ways, like, I think this book is almost a, it's a reminder that there was a time in my life where I think I thought I understood what other people thought and that I had a grip on the idea of, like, what my fellow person enjoyed or didn't enjoy or thought was cool or didn't think was cool. And even though that sample size was like, literally like, 27 dudes in New York City, it felt like because we were discussing a lot of these things that are in the book, that I, I had like, an idea of like, a curriculum and a continuum of culture, rather than just

• 42:26Chris Ryan?

  guessing, like, it seems like 20% of people think Geese is Jesus, 20% of people have never heard of them, 20% of people think they're a psyop, you know, like, and et cetera. Like, you just have like, this fractured landscape now. But it was, it was in a nostalgic book for you to write.

• 42:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, you say like, it maybe was just like, 27 dudes. But what was different, it was 27 dudes all operating from the perspective that there was a pre-existing consensus that either they agreed with or disagreed with.

• 42:54Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 42:54Speaker 05

  The canonical ideas were pretty much, you know, the, you know, the book ends in 2002 and, and part of the reason that that's when I picked, that the time I picked is because, so, that's when I moved to New York. So, I had that whole first part of my life in North Dakota and in Ohio, where my relationship to rock music was heavily mediated. Like, I was listening to the music and having an experience with it that was my own, but I was sort of reading what, you know, what, you know, the Rolling Stones meant and sort of being like, well, okay, I don't know if I necessarily believe this, but this is what they are viewed to mean. This is what the Clash are viewed to mean. This is what Madonna is, you know, meant to be.

• 43:36Speaker 05

  And, and I had to sort of kind of triangulate that information, my experience, and then sort of whatever the third kind of thing is that was still getting this. And then when I moved to New York, I realized, or I kind of saw how that mediated process works.

• 43:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 05

  Like, I, I, you know, I had kind of a, I think I had sort of a naive view. I think prior to moving to New York, I was of the perception that we overrate the difference between, you know, life in New York and life in the rest of the country. And then I moved there and I was like, actually, I think it's underrated. And I think it's very strange how so much of what is understood to be true does call from, come from a small group of people, um, who are not, like, it's not that they're not qualified or something, it's just that it starts there and because that's the inception point, every reaction from that is an interpretation of this, whatever, you know, what the original idea they express is. So that's, I, I felt like, in some ways, this book is, is it nostalgic, it's kind of

• 44:37Speaker 05

  nostalgic for me, I mean, I don't, because nostalgic to me is when you look back on something and you inject your own experience into it and then hear something back that's different. Or you, you think of, you inject something into a movie, you watch an old movie, you remember your life from that period, so then you kind of re-experience in this different way. That's not really what this is, I guess, because when I'm talking about these things from the past, you know, many events which certainly predate my life or, you know, um, it was, it was almost more like a, what I would imagine in my mind, listening to these albums, if I knew nothing about them? Like, if I some, you know?

• 45:20Speaker 05

  And I do in some ways miss that experience.

• 45:23Chris Ryan?

  Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel like you wanted to settle any scores that were, like, in your head? Do you think your treatment of certain bands in this book are consistent with how you actually feel about them? Like, when you're a little bit dismissive about, like, the Who or something like that? Like, is it because you're like, deep down, I kind of think these guys are jokes?

• 45:48Speaker 05

  Absolutely not.

• 45:48Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 45:49Speaker 05

  I mean, I, I would say, in fact, if I talk about a group in this book, or I talk about an artist in this book, it does mean, to some extent, I like them. Gigi Allen, maybe not. You know, but, you know, but at the same time, I like that Gigi Allen or something like that did exist, even though I had absolutely no interaction with it. So that was, you know, I, I, I'm glad, I'm really glad you asked that, because in some ways, I was worried about this. Um, because, you know, I mentioned, it's also like, a lot of writers I mention in this book and I have, I kind of turn, like, David Elverstan becomes a rock critic.

• 46:26Chris Ryan?

  New York Magazine does, yeah.

• 46:28Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah. Uh, you know, or like, you know, like, all these different people, you know, like, Pauline Kale becomes a rock critic and stuff. And I, I had this fear that it was like, well, are people going to see this and they're thinking that I'm like, trying to mock these people their way? And that's, that's not what it is. And I did try to pick people, in fact, for the most part, writers who were dead.

• 46:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:50Speaker 05

  Because I did, you know, I, I was sort of like, you know, and I, and in a way, I guess it's a compliment, because I'm saying that even in this alternative reality, you're still famous and successful. But, um, you know, and, and I'm kind of, you're trying to write in their style, but it's not exactly in their style. Because I just, it, one, one thing that was, the one easy part about this book is because it was all made up, if something was like, not fitting together perfectly, I was able to be like, well, I can do the best I can on this, but sometimes things don't fit together perfectly.

• 47:22Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 47:22Speaker 05

  Like, there are, you know, there are puzzle pieces that don't fit.

• 47:26Chris Ryan?

  Um, I was curious whether the book changed your relationship to the Velvet Underground or what relationship you had with the Velvet Underground going into it.

• 47:35Speaker 05

  Well, you know, I, I, do I, do I like the Velvet Underground? Absolutely. Are they one of my?

• 47:44Speaker 05

  Twenty-five favorite bands? Probably not, although somewhere close in that area, but they would be, you know, they're just outside the top twenty-five or whatever, you know? In part because, you know, there's just a lot of bands that I like. I mean, it's like, you know, it really is to say that you're not one of something's not one of your twenty-five favorite bands is not a criticism if you like a lot of other bands. This book did prompt me, of course, do a lot more research about their origin, you know, and there is an insane amount to be found about that. In fact, there was a book about the Velvet Underground that came out earlier this summer.

• 48:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and a couple of years ago, Todd Haynes did the documentary, which is great.

• 48:20Speaker 05

  Like that, because you, I, I started writing this book before I wrote the football book.

• 48:26Chris Ryan?

  Oh, right.

• 48:27Speaker 05

  This book, this book was written in like, you know, and it was delayed and didn't come out till now. So like when that Velvet Underground documentary came out, like I was already heavily into the book and I was, you know, and I was, you know, I liked that film a lot. I thought it was really good, although it wasn't exactly, you know, it didn't give, you really changed my perception of the group at all. I went back, like, you know, I read like the Andy Warhol diaries and stuff like this because it was like now Andy Warhol, because he's technically the producer of that first Velvet Underground record, then kind of becomes like a Ted Templeman producer of the seventies, like the super producer. So I was trying to sort of think about how, like, where his interests would lead to,

• 49:12Speaker 05

  like what he would be interested in producing.

• 49:14Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 49:15Speaker 05

  Sort of what his interest is in visual art.

• 49:17Chris Ryan?

  I, I listened to Velvet Underground and Nico yesterday for the first time in earnest, like outside of like playlists or, you know, this some song randomly coming on in a long time, like maybe I listened to it back when the Haynes documentary came out. It's so funny to go back and listen to it because there's about sixty percent of it that you're like, to my modern ear, sounds like pop music. And, you know, it is plausible that something like this could be much bigger than it is. And I think a lot of like, when I moved to New York, like, like you, there was a lot of conversation about like, in a more just world, X band would be much bigger, you

• 49:58Chris Ryan?

  know, Big Star, Teenage Fan Club, The Posies, you know, what, you know, like, you know, Lucinda Williams or Gillian Welch would be as big as Madonna, like they were just, there was a lot of effort put towards that. And I think in some ways, like that kind of thinking probably like ushered in, was among the reasons that pop optimism got ushered in, like, was like, this sort of like, not only are the, the muso bands that write their own songs great, but there's a whole other tier of these bands that should be even bigger than, and then I think it was that kind of rhetoric that probably, among other things, helped pop optimism come away. That's, besides the point. I, I was struck by this Velvet Underground record that Fem Fatale and Sunday Morning

• 50:43Chris Ryan?

  and Run Run and, and Waiting for the Man even, in its own way, you're like, this is just like a really good, solid pop song. Like, I mean, it's a really good, you could imagine in a different world, this being much more popular than it was. But the thing that you point to as this kind of near religious conversion moment for the country and the world is Venus and Furs, which is way the fuck out there, both sonically and is, and is about a dominatrix relationship. And I was curious whether you spent a lot of time listening to that record and what brought you to Venus and Furs to identify that as like the page turning moment for

• 51:27Chris Ryan?

  like all of culture?

• 51:29Speaker 05

  Well, okay, one thing I will say is, I feel when I listen to the Velvet Underground now, I think it holds up remarkably well.

• 51:35Chris Ryan?

  Me too, me too.

• 51:37Speaker 05

  I mean, you know, while I wouldn't necessarily say that one of, you know, one of my ten favorite bands, if you ask me what ten bands from the, you know, from the sixties or even, you know, pre nineteen seventy-five or whatever, that sound contemporary, I feel like that record really does at times in a surprising way. The thing with Venus and Furs is, you know, that was, that within, even on this album, like that's like the most transgressive thing, and I was kind of looking for the most transgressive thing. But what is, is I guess a little strange is that, you know, so when, when the Velvet Underground came out in nineteen sixty-seven, they seem completely disassociated from what music is popular at the time.

• 52:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:17Speaker 05

  Like compared to the Beatles or Creedence or things like that, you know, we're, we're coming out and all these things, I'm trying to think of other bands from that area, you know, that were, that were, you know, that Stones and with successful groups. Like it seemed much more dissident, the drone aspect to it was, would have been seen as like very kind of adversarial or contradictory. Like it, it does all that music now, when you get in long enough time, when you move far enough away from it, it all sort of fits together, like the Kinks don't seem that distant from, you know, the Beach Boys in some ways now, but they really did. So I, I'm not exactly sure what, why, you know, that song, I just, I guess in a way,

• 53:02Speaker 05

  because a big part of this book, the non-musical part of this book, is the idea that if the Velvet Underground were the biggest thing in the culture in the late sixties, the monoculture of the nineteen seventies would advance basically to the point where it is now. Like a lot of the ideas that we're talking about in culture now are talked about on these Velvet Underground records.

• 53:27Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 53:28Speaker 05

  So I was sort of trying to, I, I was looking for the opportunity to have that happen.

• 53:34Chris Ryan?

  Well, this gets into that, and we've had this conversation about Mark Fisher before and about like, you know, there's, there's, that guy, the guy from the nineteen seventy-five has that quote about how if you play music for somebody in two thousand, what was his point, it was like two thousand and ten, if you play them music from twenty years before, they're listening to like Atekra and Bjork and, and all this like different kinds of like EDM and music that sounds so different, up until a certain point, if you go back twenty years, the people of twenty years ago would be mind blown by what they were hearing. Seventy-nine, if you played the music in eighty-nine, they'd be like, what the hell is this?

• 54:16Speaker 05

  Like, if you, if you played people music from nineteen ninety-nine to somebody from nineteen seventy-nine, they might say like, this doesn't even seem like music to me.

• 54:25Chris Ryan?

  Right. And now if you played somebody, for the most part, I think there are some exceptions to this rule, but if you played somebody from twenty, two thousand and six, if you played them two thousand twenty-six's top ten, or even maybe the critical, most critically adored records of this year, they would largely be like, I am familiar with this music, like that there's been this, some kind of like slowdown of cultural discovery or innovation or the, are kind of, we are now in a recycle mode of like going back through genres and going back through stances. And I, I, that was what really left out of me while reading the book was like the idea

• 55:07Chris Ryan?

  that the Velvet Underground could have this profound effect on things being pushed up from, for lack of a better term, the underground, like even widespread heroin usage, you know, was like, that was like one of the most amazing parts of the book to me because I was like, this is kind of a provocative idea, but I do think it's, it's quite, quite possible.

• 55:29Speaker 05

  Well, you know, it is like, all like this, like this slow cancellation to the future stuff, which I realize I kind of seem like I talk about on every podcast, but it is, I am obsessed with it. I just think it's the most important idea in culture right now. And the thing that people will often, you know, when they hear that, they initially always want to push back against it. And what they will push back on is they'll say like, well, you know, to music that's popular right now, that, that, that sounds different than the music did ten years ago, or that sounds different than like Neon Indian or whatever, but what has changed is sort of the idea that the sequence of those records kind of needed to happen in a linear way. That like, you know, like the, the, the difference between music in like nineteen seventy-five,

• 56:12Speaker 05

  nineteen eighty-five and nineteen ninety-five, there is almost like, this was attempted and then this went a little farther.

• 56:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:19Speaker 05

  And this was attempted and this went a little farther still. And we sort of moved along as if like culture's like this river, but now it's not, now it's like this shallow ocean. So yes, like music and film and books and a lot of these things in twenty twenty-six, they're different than they were in two thousand and six, but there's no reason that order has to be as it is. You could swap the stuff from two thousand and six to now, and you could take, say, you know, you know, Taylor Swift and Olivia or whatever you want and stuff and move that back, and there's no way that there'd be like, well, that couldn't happen now. Like, like it, it, it has less to do, not that things don't change, it's that the changes are not built on the past.

• 56:58Speaker 05

  That's why everything kind of feels sort of retro now, because it's not something that is sort of moving on from the last thing we had, it's just sort of going back, taking part of it, taking part of something else and putting it together.

• 57:12Chris Ryan?

  You know, I was, I was thinking about this a lot this weekend because I went and saw a newish or a contemporary band on Friday night, and it was a fucking blast. And I realize, you know, I mean, this isn't, this is not a, like a unique perspective, but how much energy I get from like seeing bands that are active, you know, not just bands that are like, we're touring, the ten year anniversary of this, it's like bands that are like actively putting out records and changing their sound. And I was like, new music really does give me something. If the internet had never come along in the manner in which it did, and in your book, you address Napster, there's a section of the book about Napster, but I do think that

• 57:55Chris Ryan?

  part of the issue for a lot of people is that there used to be like, you'd have this period of your, of your life where you were actively a music fan and you were seeking out new music. And then probably at some point, whether it's when you have kids or maybe you, you move somewhere where there isn't like a really vibrant scene, you're like, I have my records and my, my musical taste is essentially going back through the music that I already know I like and listening to that. That's what my parents were like, they would just listen to Billy Joel over and over and over again. At a certain point though, in their lives, they were big new music fans, it's just that at a certain point that they stopped. And I think that if my mother or if, if anybody in nineteen eighty-nine had had all

• 58:38Chris Ryan?

  of music at their fingertips, plus a constant stream of information about new music, that they would have probably been pretty overwhelmed, but you would have seen. A different kind of musical behavior that that kind of collapsed what was new with what was old. And that's what I think is kind of happening now is that I often will be like driving into work and I can't decide between a brand new record or a Steely Dan record or a radio station that I found on the internet that plays like old BBC jungle mixes. And it's like, that's an access to music that I think is unique in human history.

• 59:18Speaker 05

  Oh, it absolutely is. I mean, I kind of, this is a, this is kind of a simple simplistic, maybe thing to express, but I am sort of of the opinion that every social change is ultimately economic and every cultural change is ultimately technological. And I think that the way the relationship to music that has shifted with people is solely an extension of these technological changes. I mean, because when you say when you go to see a show, that is as close to the old experience as you can get. They're playing, here I am, you know, so that the way music feels to you actually is the same. But when you're in your car and you have this different situation where now you have the ability to listen to anything in the

• 1:00:02Speaker 05

  world, any music you want, it does, I think, sort of depress how meaningful that is.

• 1:00:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:10Speaker 05

  Like, you know, the personal meaning goes down because, you know, it would just be like, if, with anything, if you have like, if someone had the ability to like, you know, to date any person they want, any person they can just do, they just date any person they want, I think that would change the depth of the relationship they have with the person they select.

• 1:00:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it would probably also change what they were looking for from relationships.

• 1:00:35Speaker 05

  Yeah. And there's like, you know, you can sort of have like, like buyer's regret just from listening to a song on Spotify. Like, I'm listening to a song, I'll be like, I should have listened to something else. And I'm going, you know, I don't like that feeling. I, it's something, and also, I do think that the, that one thing that people underrate when they say like, well, you know, everybody's weird how everyone seems to think music got bad when they were like a sophomore in college, or that they stopped finding music when they're 26. I think part of that is that the changes in the way the music is recorded, which might not seem on the top of your mind, you're super visible, are there.

• 1:01:18Speaker 05

  And people feel distanced from music sometimes. They're not sure why, because in their mind, they're really like, well, this actually, you know, this, you know, just go back, like, like, you know, Ace of Base came out. People would be like, well, I don't like Ace of Base. I like ABBA or whatever. And it was like, well, they're from the same country, they're doing the same thing. Why would it be different? And the thing that was different was how those records were recorded. And a lot of sort of the, the intangible terms that we use, like, oh, the warmth of something, or the urgency of something. It's like, I feel like that as technology improves, the main thing it does is shave those aspects off.

• 1:01:54Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:01:55Speaker 05

  We're now sort of in a situation where the expectation of a song is that because it can be made perfect, we should do that. Now, like, we were talking about Steely Dan, they had that same attitude, but it was very strange. We could hear like Gauchos and it would be perfect, because that meant it took them two years to do it over and over and over again. Like, it was, it was almost like novel and sort of like, just weird that you would do that. But now, that is how things can sound, because you can do that entire two-year process in an afternoon.

• 1:02:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Speaker 05

  Yeah. And I think that a lot of the reason that a lot of people feel like, that even young people sort of feel like the music they're consuming might not like, it doesn't seem possible that new music necessarily will have the, sort of the length beyond itself, the way like, say, Rumors from Fleetwood Mac or some of these are, or anything, tapestry or whatever. I, I do wonder if, paradoxically, it is the removal of the mistakes and therefore the removal of the humanity of these things that make them feel more disposable to people.

• 1:03:00Chris Ryan?

  It's impossible to say, because I, I don't, I'm very nervous to say that anyone's relationship to contemporary culture is in any way less significant than my relationship was to what contemporary culture was when I was their age, right? Like, I want someone to basically feel the way they feel about turnstile, the way I felt about Fugazi, you know. I do think that there's some truth to what you're saying. I also think that playing music now is like a much longer career than it used to be. So, there's a good possibility that we're going to still be able to have a chance to see Fleetwood Mac in some capacity play, you know?

• 1:03:41Speaker 05

  Oh, sure.

• 1:03:42Chris Ryan?

  And I think that changes like, the idea of what's, like, who's an old band versus what's a new band? Because like, this kind of constant, there's no, there's no retirement anymore. So there's no feeling like that thing is lost. There's nothing to promote. You, you still have engagement with all this stuff. And, I mean, I was curious, you know, you said that you feel like these changes are technological or economic. Did you, do you feel the same way about that classic rock period, that 67 to, you call the end date period? Because the romantic idea that I had in my head, especially when I started getting into rock criticism, was that these records were all in conversation with each

• 1:04:27Chris Ryan?

  other. And that people heard Pet Sounds, or people heard Sergeant Pepper, or people heard London Calling, and completely changed what they were doing based on the artistic influence, like the pure wave of creativity that they were getting, rather than the way in which it was delivered, or, or what have you.

• 1:04:49Speaker 05

  Well, that's tricky. I mean, you know, when, when we say like, classic rock, we generally mean, I think, like, basically post Sergeant Pepper, up through, I mean, maybe Appetite for Destruction, is that the end of it maybe now? I mean, I know.

• 1:05:08Chris Ryan?

  That almost gets extended out now because of how old we are, but it wasn't back then.

• 1:05:12Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, so 87 might be too far out or whatever. But, you know, that's a period where there was also, like, the economic side, was the realization of how much money can be made doing this.

• 1:05:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that would be 84, right? Is like, when you're like, Springsteen and Madonna and Michael Jackson are happening. And it's like, well, this is bigger than anything ever was before.

• 1:05:30Speaker 05

  Well, although there was like, like, bands like Led Zeppelin and Elton John and all these things, the amount of money they were making from touring at that time was, you know, insane. Like, because there was, it was kind of a Wild West scenario, you know? And there was some understanding, it's like, boy, if you get involved in the record business, you can make a lot of money. So it is justifiable to put a band in the studio for two years and buy them drugs and let them do what they want to sort of get this thing at the end. That obviously would not be true. Not, it would make no sense to give any artist, to give Kane and Paul or whatever, two years and a bunch of, it wouldn't make sense. What they could do sort of just, you know, on their own or whatever, it would be.

• 1:06:12Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:06:13Speaker 05

  So what was, what was, kind of what were you asking? What was the?

• 1:06:15Chris Ryan?

  Like, do you think that there was a period where culture was authentically being created by itself rather than outside forces, like economics and tech, technology? Because I guess it's not when you consider like, the cassette comes along, and the eight-track comes along, and the CD comes along, and all those things change. But my romantic idea of, of music at that time was that this was a conversation between artists and the works that they made. And even when I first heard The Velvet Underground in earnest, which was probably the box set, which I came to because I was told, this is going to rewrite rock history. Is that when you listen to all of this music, you're going to realize,

• 1:06:56Chris Ryan?

  first of all, the indie rock and punk that you like, this is the big bang. And second of all, that this is actually as significant as the Beatles album run, the classic Stones album run, whatever you want to put up against it.

• 1:07:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, that, I mean, that's a complicated thing, because in a way, what you were describing is the thing that we were kind of talking about earlier, which is this, you know, kind of gap between the mediated world of music and the individual experience of it. Because you're talking about records being in conversation with each other, that necessitates that you know about a lot of records.

• 1:07:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:34Speaker 05

  That like, and that you're maybe interested in albums you don't even personally like that much, because you know that there's some significance to this. Like, there's, whereas the individual experience, and when you talk about, when you would talk about, say, when you got into hardcore or whatever.

• 1:07:52Speaker 05

  I always sensed from your description of it that it was, it was less a thing like conversation and more something that it was like you had realized something, you felt something or you heard something that was individual to you.

• 1:08:05Chris Ryan?

  Well, actually, it's, it's the opposite. It was the first time I just felt like part of a community in that way.

• 1:08:10Speaker 05

  So that what? Okay.

• 1:08:11Chris Ryan?

  Like in terms of like, and I don't even mean like politically or in, in terms of like a worldview. It was like literally like when I found out that people were playing musics, music in basements or in VFW halls or in garages after the garage had closed at night. And there were 17 people or 30 people there in a rented PA. And it was completely unpoliced by like the, all the stuff that comes along with modern music. I was like, I feel connected to this music in a way that I don't to like watching Luna with 700 people, you know? And it was a really, really, really big change for me,

• 1:08:55Chris Ryan?

  even though I would say I probably like Luna's music more than most hardcore. You know what I mean?

• 1:09:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, it's just, it's, it's interesting to think about this. I think it's like the experience you had, like going to some of the shows and, you know, and then your experiences you had like in Boston and stuff like that, you know, they, uh, you know, that was a really kind of rarefied experience you had because you were in like a small world of people.

• 1:09:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:25Speaker 05

  You know, my experience because of where I was growing up and stuff, you know, it was really like putting a rap album into a boombox and laying on my bed and looking at the boombox.

• 1:09:38Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 1:09:38Speaker 05

  And just like listening to the music. And there was no community. It was, so then I'm, so I'm listening to this. And if it means something to me, I am forming that meaning. Okay. Like I, maybe I'm reading hit parader and circus and stuff like that. But in the sense, it's sort of like, you know, like I, I would hear things in the music I was into when I was young, that I am certain that the artist had no relationship to. Like I maybe thought, because I would just play, I had a limited, you know, there was scarcity. I had like six cassettes or whatever, and I would just play them over and over and over again, you know? Um, so I almost had like, like, it was like a community of one. And I think that that is probably why I became the person still who like prefers records

• 1:10:23Speaker 05

  to the live experience. I just, you know, um, I, I think maybe, you know, you asked earlier, like, you know, are you trying to like settle scores or whatever? Like there is, I wouldn't say I am, but there's one section in the book where like the rock media comes together and like almost kind of creates a constitution about like what we're supposed to appreciate about music. And in some ways, maybe those are reflections of my take.

• 1:10:48Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's almost like what would happen if rock critics were who musicians thought they were, which is this cabal of people who decide this is worthy of being in the front of Spin Magazine or getting best new music in Pitchfork or being, you know, at the top of Paz and Jop and The Village Voice. And that it seems like it's like, in some ways, they were right. Like a lot of these people were hanging out together and talking about music all the time, but they were wrong in that we couldn't agree on anything.

• 1:11:16Speaker 05

  And, and the agreement didn't, like, I shouldn't say it didn't mean anything because it did sort of, uh, almost sort of craft or curate these artists sort of reputation, but it did have very little effect on how that experience was to the people buying the records.

• 1:11:33Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:11:34Speaker 05

  And it always happens like, and then over time, that just becomes real obvious. I mean, it's sort of like, you know, the amount of negative reviews that Black Sabbath got from, you know, in the seventies, like, you know, it was, it was almost impossible to find positive reviews.

• 1:11:50Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:11:51Speaker 05

  And now that, that it was like, well, I guess all the people saying that were wrong. The people who loved the music knew what they were talking about. That, you know, that was a real thing. Um, we, we, they, they, they weren't just like underrated in the past. They were completely misunderstood. And like time kind of, or like I mentioned to Ava before, same thing. I mean, it was like, uh, I, I learned about Ava in a weekly reader at school in like third or fourth grade, like the little, you get a weekly reader?

• 1:12:18Chris Ryan?

  Sure. Yeah.

• 1:12:19Speaker 05

  For people who don't know, it's like, at school, you would get like a, like a little newspaper for kids. And for some reason, when I, in like third or fourth grade, the Weekly Mirror had a story about how disco sucked. And then the picture they used was Ava. That was, I can still see this so vividly in my mind. This, you know, I was like, that's, you know, but now no one thinks that way. If something is remembered from the distant past in culture, it almost always becomes positive. You know, like, you know, unless it's like, you know, like a, you know, like a, like a super racist movie from the past or for the most part, though, yeah. Um, that, that time does make everything seem kind of richer and more valuable.

• 1:13:02Chris Ryan?

  It's interesting to do the rewatchables because even when I go back and read the reviews of movies that are universally beloved, I often don't find the reviews sufficiently positive enough. Like even when it's like three and a half stars for Empire Strikes Back, I'm like, didn't this person know what they were watching? Like, and of course they didn't. And of course it didn't feel like that necessarily in the moment that people would talk about Empire Strikes Back as one of the best sequels ever made, one of the best movies like that ever made, maybe the best Star Wars movie ever made. And it's only in retrospect that people are able to have that confidence of their kind of clarity

• 1:13:43Chris Ryan?

  of vision of culture, you know? Cause like they, they have all of these different, um, all of these different landmarks to point at, to say like, well, look what this happened since then, you know?

• 1:13:55Speaker 05

  And plus, you know, like if you consider yourself a somewhat serious critic, you're very reluctant to be as enthusiastic as the thing might later cost about. Like there was a period in the 1990s when a lot of times I would look at like the new musical spreads, The Enemy from Britain, you know? And every, you know, like Gay Dad is the best band of all time. Over and over and over, they would put a band on there citing it as the most important music that had ever come out. Like Manic Street Creatures came out and they were like, this is like Guns N' Roses and Public Enemy in one band.

• 1:14:28Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:14:28Speaker 05

  And, and after a while, you kind of was like, well, none of this means anything then, right? You know, it's like the fact that they think everything is sort of changing the world means that the world's not changing, you know? Um, so when, you know, if you, when I was a movie critic, I, I was, I was much more willing to say a movie was incredibly terrible than to say it was profoundly good.

• 1:14:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:53Speaker 05

  It was going to be more measured because in some ways, like, uh, like for example, I, uh, do you remember, uh, me, you and your wife going to Benjamin Button?

• 1:15:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:15:04Speaker 05

  And then we all walked out and we thought it was like an amazing thing. We couldn't believe how good it was. Cause we saw a real early, early street.

• 1:15:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:12Speaker 05

  And somehow the next time we talked about it, we were all convinced it was bad. And like, and I, but like, I, I always wonder about that. It's like, what if everything was like that? What if everything I experienced was only that thing? That I didn't hear anything else about it. There was nothing before it, nothing after it. Or like, you know, like right now, I'm, I'm just obsessed with this Nathan Fielding movie coming out, right? And I'm going, I'm working so hard.

• 1:15:37Chris Ryan?

  To avoid anything about it.

• 1:15:38Speaker 05

  To avoid anything about it.

• 1:15:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:40Speaker 05

  Like anything, even someone saying it's interesting. If I know the person.

• 1:15:45Chris Ryan?

  What's interesting about it? Yeah.

• 1:15:47Speaker 05

  I know what you're like and what you would find out. Um, because I just, I guess I really crave that still. And it's so hard to do. It's so hard to have experiences like that now.

• 1:15:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, I think that the closest experience I have to something like that is music. Cause there's just so much of it and there's so little barrier of entry to checking it out, that I find that my most sort of like, I don't really give a shit what anybody else thinks. I like this, or I don't like this and I'm not going to listen to it anymore. And that's the thing I have the most fun with. I also just have almost zero connection to like what a critical consensus is around any given band, which I guess is a good segue to the last question I wanted to ask about, which was, like you mentioned, the book ends in oh two. I don't, I do not want to talk about how the book ends because I want people to happen upon that. But you mentioned you stopped it when you get to

• 1:16:39Chris Ryan?

  New York City and you start participating in perhaps the, uh, the critical hive mind that, that, you know, you lampoon, but also discuss in the book. But is there anything, did you have any impulse to like, take the thread even further and see, oh, you know, what, does Al Gore get elected president if, if we continue this thread?

• 1:17:03Speaker 05

  I guess I didn't for a couple of reasons. One, I feel like writing an alternative history about things that are happening in the present is strange. It's strange because it's like, um, you know, it, cause it's not history yet. And maybe some, I would say this and people will say, fuck you, I hate this guy now. But I, I kind of feel like...

• 1:17:26Speaker 05

  That period of thinking about music in the way that we were sort of raised in and did, I think that is kind of over.

• 1:17:35Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I don't think that's controversial.

• 1:17:36Speaker 05

  I don't think, like, there are still tons of records coming out. There's tons of good records coming out. There are people writing about it, but it is, the, the, the, this, the history of this book sort of requires the old way to be the way that never ends. And it's not like it necessarily ended even in 2002. I think it probably ended before that. And we just kind of kept going and pantomiming.

• 1:18:04Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:18:04Speaker 05

  But I feel like in a, I mean, this is now no longer a controversial thing to say. I think the first time I said it, I thought I was being provocative. Now many people think that. I do think that, you know, in the early 90s with grunge and Nirvana and some of those acts, rock music did sort of reach a point of self-awareness. Like, like the grunge artists were very aware of like what had happened in the 1980s in the Sunset Strip and they saw it happening to Seattle. And the idea of a rock star was not a positive thing. It was a pejorative thing. And it, you know, that you needed to have a degree of ironic distance from rock. Like you, like, you know, Sondar would still rock, but not in the, I remember they were

• 1:18:47Speaker 05

  touring with Guns N' Roses and MTV was doing a piece on them.

• 1:18:50Chris Ryan?

  They were pre-air metal rock, though.

• 1:18:51Speaker 05

  Yes. And they were like, what are you going to do on this tour? And they were like, we're bringing these books from the library. And like, they, it's like, we really like it. But it kind of kept going because I think that, you know, it was, it was set, rock was such a kind of all encompassing thing and it was so associated with the idea of what youth culture is, that if you were trying to understand young people, there was this idea that you understood it through rock music that had been the case in the 70s and the 80s. And I think we kind of just kept going with it, even though as sort of a, like a lever controlling culture, it, that kind of ends in the 90s, but we just kind of kept going and kept doing it. And like, you know, and, and, you know, I was part of this, I'm nervous, Spain, you were part of this, is like, we were, we were still kind of, I think, attempting to keep

• 1:19:36Speaker 05

  what had, the way rock had been as like an ongoing concern that was, mattered in the same way. And I kind of feel like that's kind of when it, by 2002, we were, it's, it still exists. There'll always be rock bands, you know, but it's never going to be the center of the culture again.

• 1:19:55Chris Ryan?

  I don't think there is a center of the culture, really. I mean, I think, I think you can have a temporary kind of like placeholder, like The Odyssey, or, you know, uh, it can feel like something is a center of the culture, like succession, but in reality, like, that.

• 1:20:12Speaker 05

  The internet, the center of the culture.

• 1:20:14Chris Ryan?

  That's what it is.

• 1:20:14Speaker 05

  Because the internet is different in the sense that it's a thing and it's a concept. Like, we're on the internet, it's, it's a, you know, it's, it's computers connected with other computers and stuff, but it's also like, if you say someone's too into the internet, or like they're too online, like, it sort of also suggests that internet can be like a way of being.

• 1:20:32Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:20:33Speaker 05

  You know, sort of a way that, that, that your life is bifurcated between the life you're living in reality and this other life. So in some sense, I mean, it's, it's sort of a sad idea in a sense, because when we talk about, say, television is the center of the culture, or rock is the center of culture, or, you know, baseball is the center of culture, any of these things, there is like, like, uh, like an artifice, there's like something to deal with. When we're talking about the internet, it's almost like we're talking about like a weather pattern, like this thing that just sort of encompasses everything.

• 1:21:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:08Speaker 05

  It's somehow tied together, like we, we know what it means when we talk about something only mattering on the internet. We all know what that means.

• 1:21:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I was having this, I was thinking about this this weekend with the AI doomerism stuff. It's something that I only understand in the most cartoonish aspects of like imagining Skynet happening, or I don't understand at all because like I don't really know what agents do in AI when you're, you know, like, I don't really understand why people would use it beyond like, can you write a paper for me or tell me like what happens in chapter five of Moby Dick? You know, like the kind of like advanced Googling that you would think people would use it for. And I realized like you can, for most part, in most of your social feeds, if you're, if you're seeing this news, opt out of that. You could just be like, I'm not interested in this and it'll stop telling you about it.

• 1:22:01Chris Ryan?

  And I was like, so even my relationship to this can be curated in a way that means it's not actually like central, like monoculture, but you're right that the platform that it is happening on is probably, and it's the closest thing we have.

• 1:22:19Speaker 05

  And it seems like the platform is essential to what the thing that's produced is, like, it can't, it couldn't be in any other way.

• 1:22:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:25Speaker 05

  Like, things on the internet couldn't be in books. Or like, you know, like you could, you know, there was that, I think that period in the early 2000s, when there was this belief that like, okay, we generate all these bloggers, all these, you know, these bloggers who are doing this brilliant kind of work that all these people are reading, that's going to be like the training ground for writing in the, like authors and book writing in the future. But as it turns out, those things were much more different than we realized at the time.

• 1:22:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:51Speaker 05

  Thing about blogging and writing about the internet is that it's just overwritten every single day. That you write something and the next day it can be overwritten, whereas book writing is the complete opposite. You write something for a year and it takes another year to come out. The hope is that someone's going to care in 25 years. So it may have been that blogging in some ways did the opposite. It made people less able to write and possibly read books. And that seems to be happening with nonfiction.

• 1:23:18Chris Ryan?

  Well, I apologize for blogging.

• 1:23:24Chris Ryan?

  Thank you so much for joining me today. This book's incredible. This is, this is one of my favorites by you. I hope people check it out, even if, even if they don't feel strongly about The Velvet Underground, I think they'll get a lot from the book. Chuck, this book comes out on the 22nd, correct?

• 1:23:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, like next week.

• 1:23:40Chris Ryan?

  Okay, well, people should, should cop it. And thanks so much for coming on, buddy.

• 1:23:45Speaker 05

  My pleasure.

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