Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) - ken bone, pt. 2

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Ken Bone reflects on the eight-year anniversary of his overnight viral success, how becoming a main character changed his life, and how his moment moved his politics forward. Donate to St. Patrick's Center here: https://www.stpatrickcenter.org/donate Los Angeles area heads, see Jamie live this November at the Lyric Hyperion! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-tiny-man-is-trying-to-kill-me-tickets-1039733048537?aff=oddtdtcreatorSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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truth he never thought he was going to get caught and i just looked at my computer screen i was just like gotcha this technology's already solving so many cases listen to america's crime lab on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Black Business Month and Black Tech Green Money is tapping in. I'm Will Lucas spotlighting black founders, investors, and innovators, building the future, one idea at a time. Let's talk legacy, tech, and generational wealth. I had the skill and I had the talent.

I didn't have the opportunity. Yeah. We all know, right? Genius is evenly distributed. Opportunity is not. To hear this and more on the power of Black and Innovation and Ownership, listen to Black Tech Green Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Don't let biased algorithms or degree screens or exclusive professional networks or stereotypes.

Don't let anything keep you from discovering the half of the workforce who are stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time to tear the paper ceiling. and see the stars beyond it. Find out how you can make stars part of your talent strategy at tear the paper ceiling.org. Brought to you by opportunity at work in the ad council. Callsone Media. Hey, it's Jamie here. Just quickly saying, if you live in the Los Angeles area, I'm starting to workshop my first one-person show in a couple of years.

It's called The Tiny Man is Going to Kill Me. Don't ask. Just show up. It's super silly. I'll be doing it at the Lyric Hyperion in Workshop. shop form on November 1st and November 20th and tickets are on sale now. I'll be doing a taping later and I'll let you know when tickets are on sale to that. But yeah, if you're in the LA area, come on out. The tiny man is going to kill me. And with that, here's our Ken Bone

part two episode. Bye. Let me a start, let's take it too far, then give me one more more. Let's see you. Sixteen minute of fame. Sixteen minute of fame. Sixteen minute of face. One more minute of fame. Welcome back to the internet

and see the internet and us about the internet and us. My name's Jamie Loftus, and this week is part two of two of our Ken Bone series. If you haven't listened to Part 1, Scroll down, King, you've got this. But if you're only here because you want to hear the dulcet tones of Ken himself, you're in the right place. It's now been eight years since Ken became an overnight sensation, creating what many thought was an irrational amount of media attention after asking a question at a presidential town hall debate in 2016, a particularly awkward and creepy event between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. You can hear all about the context of why Ken was so popular and what the history of these American debates are in part one. But this week, I'm going to let Ken take the mic. Here is our interview.

Okay. Ken Bone, hello. Hi, how are you today? How are things in your world right now? I'm realizing that I've known who you are for the better part of a decade now. Yeah, we're coming up on the eighth anniversary of me becoming a meme, which is weird. My life has changed a lot since then, but not necessarily because of meme stuff,

just because I'm older now. I have more green hair, and my son is a grown adult now, has graduated high school, and just a lot, you know, life moving on. Are you still living in the same place? Yeah, I live in the same house. I lived in when it all happened.

I've been here in this house for, I think this is 11 years this month since we had it built. Still largely the same. I work at the same job. I have a different title and different responsibilities now, but I've been working at the same place for 15 years now and still the same family situation and everything. I've been married for 20 years now and just our son's a little older. And this is now your third presidential election as a historic figure. The last three or four months since the election started heating up, it's been a little bit more. It is well that you have become synonymous with the concept of a debate. Yeah, it could. I mean, they don't really do debates the same way they did.

My debate was the town hall format run by the commission on presidential debates. We've seen what it's been in the last couple of months, a tremendous mess. So, no, you have to come on my channel. No, you have to come on my channel. You have to come where people will be sympathetic to me. Oh, no, you have to come. It's disgusting. It's our political climate.

is a national disgrace. It's the only way I can really think to put it. I am in an agreement with you there. I want to get there because what a election cycle to become a major part of. And I feel like, you know, the trust in cable news has severely declined since then. Not that it was great in 2016, but a great sort of stress test for everything about it that doesn't work. I wanted to just start by getting to know you a little better. I think it's interesting and kind of funny that like Part of why you're famous is because you are a normal person, something that really drew people to you originally. So I would love to know a little bit more about you. Where did you grow up?

What was life like? Sure. I'm, you know, my real name is Ken Bone. Some people thought that that was like a fake name or like a moniker or something I went by. You're like Judy Garland. Yeah, my name is Kenneth. My last name really is Bone. I was named after my grandfather who was also Kenneth Bone.

We both went by Ken. But when I came along, he started going by his middle name, Sherman. Most people call him Sherman. But yeah, I've been Ken Bone or Kenny Bone my whole life. I'm going to be 42 here really soon, just like a middle-aged guy. I'm from a working class town called Granite City. It's really close to St. Louis. We tell out-of-towners that were from St. Louis.

You can almost see the gateway arch from my house. Like if you get up on top of a building, but it's actually across the Mississippi River on the Illinois side. So the whole town was built around a steel mill that is sort of in operation these days. Steel prices have kind of driven production way down. But it's like a typical middle class or working class town where there's one giant employer. Everybody works either for it or for its suppliers or for something that only exists because it is there. My grandfather worked for the steel mill. My grandmother worked for the hospital that was only there because the steel mill drew in enough popp

where they needed a hospital. My mom also worked at that hospital, and then my dad worked at various vendors and suppliers that mostly dealt with the steel mill over the years. So I've lived with my mom and dad. They lived with dad's mom and dad. So I grew up in a house with my parents and my grandparents and my little brother and sister. Pretty crowded. New generation would come along, and then there'd be more people living in the house. When my son was born, I didn't have my own place yet. So he lived in the basement with me until he was about six months old. We were on- Bring a fourth generation in.

Why not? My wife and I were on waiting list to get an apartment. So we had four generations living in the house by the time we were able to move out. So it was a great way to grow up. It was always crowded. You were never alone. So the family's very close-knit. I graduated high school in the year 2000.

So we were like the millennial class that made a big deal out of it when we started kindergarten. And none of the kindergartners knew why, why there was this big party. we were like, man, it's cool. Maybe it'll actually be kind of cool because that's a party for us. Then we realized real quick that, no, they don't do that every day. I'm an old millennial now with gray hair. And my parents were stereotypical gen Xers. And, you know, of course, they had to work for a living. And my grandparents were still working when I was younger. So Sesame Street kind of raised me. I was the oldest of the kids. So I kind of helped look after the kids a little bit. and we were, until grandma and grandpa retired, we were kind of last key kids, like a lot of people

my age. Well, were you interested in when you were a kid? Oh, I was a big time nerd. Like, I enjoy sports, but I was never any good at sports. I'm like the stereotypical broadcaster or analyst who, like, loves everything about sports, but can barely throw a baseball from third base all the way to home plate. You get more into the statistics and stuff. Well, I loved all the stereotypical nerd things.

When Dragon Ball Z first came to the United States on Tsunami, I was in high school. And so that was huge for my friend group. I was like, oh, this anime thing. I wonder if this will ever catch on. Of course, it did. So that was huge. I always loved science fiction, stereotypical nerd stuff, things that are like, it's okay to like now, but made you sort of weird when we were younger.

The high school in Granite City was kind of a big school. So there was enough kids there to form a group of friends no matter what your interests were. I also went to a pretty big high school, and it was kind of, I feel like I ended up avoiding a lot of bullying. I probably would have gotten at a smaller high school, but there was like enough weird kids and just enough kids that you're, you know, you're a moving target, you know, like no one can really get yet. Yeah, I never had much of a problem with bullying. I was fortunate there because like, of all the nerdy kids, I was by far the largest. So even when I was, when I was younger, I wasn't super athletic, but I wasn't, I wasn't small. I was big. Even before I was overweight, I was about 5-10 and had a pretty large frame. So the bullies were like, well, there are smaller, scrawny kids to pick on.

And bullies are famously cowards, so that makes total sense. They don't want to pick on the kid who is as big and strong as they are. They want to pick on the small weaker kids. So my immediate group of friends, when we'd be together, everybody was safe because we were all together, and I was a little bit larger. But then, of course, a lot of people get bullied individually or in smaller groups. So you hate to see that sort of thing, but I personally didn't have to suffer much of it. So I was kind of fortunate there. I also have seen that you are interested in music.

I've seen you play the drums. Where did that come from? When did that come into your life? There was a church right around the corner from my house where I grew up. And my grandmother started going there when I was a little kid. And she always wanted me to go. So after like my mother would take me to Catholic church when I was really a little. But then like most good St. Louisans, she quit being Catholic after all. She became like a elapsed Catholic who didn't go to Mass and didn't make her kids go.

But then my grandmother started taking me to her church when I was 12 or 13. And they needed someone to play the drums. So I learned to play the drums then. And after I learned to play the drums, I wanted to learn to play other instruments. And I played the drums and the bass and the piano and a few other things. I'm not amazing in any of them, but I'm pretty good. I can have fun and play with any group that I feel like. That's actually my activity for this weekend is to restring my bass guitar.

But yeah, I still play whenever I can. My father plays guitar, and that's one of our things that we do together. Like a lot of young guys, especially in working class backgrounds, I didn't have a great relationship with my dad when I was young. Once you grow up and you have kids of your own, if you're in a situation like mine, you realize that your dad tried hard and he did the best he could. So we're very, you know, we're friends now.

We love to hang out. And that's one of the things we get to do together is play guitars. It's kind of weird. Like my wife and I, we had our, we got together when she was still in high school. I was a freshman in college and she was senior in high school. And we met at the bowling alley where we were both working. That's so wholesome.

Oh, yeah. It was wonderful. She's the best person I've ever met. You should be interviewing her instead. She's more interesting and not better looking and a better person than I am. She's a surrogate mom who had twins for strangers because she's such a wonderful and giving human being. I could go on and on about her. She's the best person I know. Yeah, we got together there. And when she got pregnant, we were already planning on getting married, but we hadn't told anybody. So then we started making plans to get married. And we didn't want to just rush and have the wedding before the baby came along. So we've got this great picture from our wedding with five generations of the family. My great-grandparents, a few of them were still living. My whole family still lives around here, especially since my grandfather passed away about nine years ago. We make it more of a point to get together while we're all still able to. I also love it. It's like you're a hobbies guy experience. A lot of my hobby stuff is behind me. I've got the guitars here. We've got the whiffle ball I was doing last weekend up on my top shelf back there, some model kits that's part of my nerd stuff. My favorite anime in high school,

was Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, so I started building Gunplah, building Gundam models. What are your favorite animas right now? Because I don't know what I'm talking about, but I know that a lot of my listeners do. Right now I'm in the middle of Mobile Suit Gundam Ironblooded Orphins. That's more of a well-known one. My favorite niche anime, that's probably not as popular, is Kenichi, the Mightiest Disciple. I love the main character. He always reminded me of me as a younger person, where the whole,

gag of the show is that he tries to become a martial artist, but he has no natural talent, but he works super, super hard. And I'm like, well, that's me when I try to do sports or try to do anything. I don't necessarily have a lot of natural talent, but I can hang out with the other kids because I worked at it really, really hard. Getting into the big viral moment for you in October 2016, what does your life look like and how does the possibility of even attending this debate? How does that come up? Well, life largely was the same except I was eight years younger and not that much in a big picture way it's change other than normal like growing up sort of thing. My back hurts a little bit more now than it used to. And my son is a grown up so we no longer have to like take him to

activities or anything. Now we're helping him with his job search. We had a job interview earlier today. The big picture thing is like a lot of people in their early 30s at the time. We had a place to live. We were fortunate enough that we were able to buy a house at like the bottom of the market. Housing was still pretty cheap after the 2008 crash. It's not like it is today where it's such a horrible struggle for people who are in the exact situation I was in then, would not be able to get a house now. So I feel super bad that those opportunities aren't there for them. We were fortunate and were able to do that. We still would have our occasional financial struggles, but I had a decent career that I was building and we were doing all right. And then I just

got a random call on a Sunday afternoon on my day off. I thought it was like a bill collector or something. So I was behind on my car payment because I'm not very good at handling money. And I'm like, oh, geez, I better answer the phone and, you know, either give them some money or make up some excuse. And it was the Gallup poll. They wanted to do a survey. I'm like, okay, well, I'm just going to sit in here watching Futurama. Sure. So I do their survey. And then at the end of it, they said, well, based on survey results, you would be a good fit to attend this debate. I'm like, oh, okay, sure. Was the takeaway from the survey just essentially, like, determining that you were a then-undecided voter? Was there anything outside of that? It wasn't really a survey so much as it was a screening

process. And it's a lot of questions, like, who are you going to vote for? How sure are you that you that you want to vote for that person? On a scale of one to 10, how likely are you to change your mind? To most people, this is where, like, a lot of the controversy would come in. People are Like, how could you be undecided between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton? One is so much obviously better than the other. I'm like, well, it's not so much that I couldn't decide which one I liked more. It was that I didn't like either of them. I had a very unfavorable opinion of both candidates.

And that's more how they defined undecided. Like, yeah, you seem to have kind of decided who you're going to vote for, but anything could come out and change your mind. And a lot of stuff did come out and change a lot of the people's minds that were on the the platform with me. When we went through that screening process, it was before the Access Hollywood tape came out. They grabbed the woman grabbing tape. Okay, yeah.

People were really asking, like, how could you possibly even consider voting for that guy? Like, well, a lot of the people up here, that had not happened yet. People did not know about that yet. So there was a bunch of people up there who had absolutely written Trump off at that point. But they had already just been committed.

But they had already been selected and gone through the, you know, secret service and everything. It's not like they can just pick people off the street that morning. How far ahead did you know you're going to attend before it actually happened? About two weeks. And the Access Hollywood tape only came out about three days before the debate. It was the hot thing. It's interesting the qualifications it took for you to be characterized as undecided. Because what you're describing now, I feel like as a way more at least commonly discussed feeling. Well, I don't like either of the candidates for,

different reasons to different degrees, but there's no candidate running that I feel like I can vote for with my whole heart because of all of these things. And I feel like that's just part of being a well-informed voter. It seems like at least in the gallop whole sense that undecided is this kind of weird nebulous term that is almost making it sound like you feel a way that isn't exactly accurate. It's making it seem like it's a 50-50 chance. Who knows what I'm going to do, you know? No, I think folks like in your generation and younger understand a lot better than people my age and older, this concept where you slap a label on something and that defines them. Like people who don't know them, they think that label is now their definition. So you slap one of the various labels that got slapped on me is undecided and like, well, that's just a word, you know, and what could that mean and what does that mean to many different people?

I think the word that the commission on debates would rather have used, and the one they did use and all their official stuff was uncommitted. Like, yeah, they kind of feel like they want to vote for this person over this person, but they could change their mind if something happened. Trump's famous mind was always like he could shoot a guy on Fifth Avenue and people would still vote for me. Well, that wasn't the folks up on the stage. If he had a shot somebody on Fifth Avenue, they wouldn't have voted for him anymore. And we'll be right back with Ken Bone. We all know, right? Genius is evenly distributed.

Opportunity is not. It's Black Business Month and Black Tech Green Money is tapping in. I'm Will Lucas spotlighting Black founders, investors, and innovators, building the future, one idea at a time. Let's talk legacy, tech, and generational wealth. I don't think any person of any gender, race, ethnicity should alter who they are, especially on an intellectual level or a talent level to make someone else feel comfortable just because they are the majority in this situation and they need employment. So for me, I'm always going to be honest in saying that we need to be unapologetically

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You get the call. You're offered the opportunity to go. Did you have any anxiety about participating? How are you feeling going into the day? What was it supposed to? to look like. I have no idea how these events are run. Well, the only thing that made me nervous was that I was running late because I'm constantly late to everything. But I don't get nervous about being on camera or being in front of people. I don't care. I'll walk out onto a stage and if you

want me to fill 10 minutes, I'll do it. Whatever. In front of 10,000 people, I don't care. Not because of anything special about me. It's just I don't happen to be afraid of that. Like, I really labored over what question I wanted to ask because you write your own questions. And nobody gets to know what they are. I always assume that it was just some dog and pony show where they picked a bunch of struggling actors and put them up on the stage. And it was, unless this is an elaborate prank played on me, it was totally legit. We were all randomly selected and we wrote our own questions and the candidates did not get to see the questions ahead of time. Even the moderators did not get to see the questions until that day. Every person that was up there, there were 40 of us, wrote our questions

and we each were supposed to write too and give them both of the moderators and the moderators would then look through them and a couple hours later they came back and said, okay, if we have time to call on you, we want you to ask this one, not this one. My backup question was about student loans because I at the time was still trying to pay off my student loans

and looking at a son who was going into high school who I would never be able to help go to school because I was still paying for me to go to school 15 years before. So I wanted to ask about that. And that wasn't really one of the hot issues of the time. And they didn't have time for it. So yeah, I wrote my question about energy policy because I work at a power plant. I work at a coal-fired power plant. And I know how much work goes in behind the scenes to try to be environmentally friendly with this like fuel that is not like if you just light coal on

fire, it's disgusting and dirty. A lot of work goes into cleaning up the emissions that come from this coal. And if I didn't think that we could do it responsibly, I wouldn't work there. But I wanted to know, like, as we transition to clean energy, like, if we could run 100% solar, somebody invents a better battery and all of a sudden we can just do that, that's great. But what happens to me and what happens to all my friends and what happens to our families? That was where I came up with that question. So I get to the debate venue, which was Washington University in St. Louis. The debate was at 7 p.m. We had to be there by 8 a.m. There's lots of orientation and instructions and makeup. So I was supposed to be working that day, but I had

taking the time up and I took the day off and then I was supposed to have the next day off and I did and then the next two night shifts after that I ended up calling in sick because I was too busy doing media we went through all the orientation there they showed us where we were going to be sitting you know there's folks who had never seen or touched the microphone before or who might be uncomfortable on camera or something so a lot of it was about getting you comfortable with where you're going to be looking seeing all the cameras and stuff ahead of time so you wouldn't be nervous. We met the moderators. So like Anderson Cooper came in. He's the nicest guy in the world, by the way. When you're born a big, you can pay other people to be mean for you. Very true.

He's an heir to the Vanderbilt fortune. He doesn't have to be mean by himself. He's got people for that. He came in. We met him the first time at about 10 in the morning. Gorgeous, perfect suit. So put together, not a hair out of place. And Martha Raditz, the other moderator, a wonderful journalist was there also. She just looked like a normal human being. But Anderson Cooper, looked like a caricature of a supermodel. He's just incredibly handsome. And then they said, all right, we've got to go to hair and makeup and

wardrobe. And Martha Radd's you know, she looked fine, but not ready to be on camera. Like, you know, nobody would be. Anderson Cooper looked like he could have just walked out and done the news. Like, I think he wakes up like that. He's, it's bizarre. After that night, I did his

show, I think, on Monday or Tuesday. After the segment was over, normally in between segments a producer will be talking in your ear telling you whether you know whether you can go or they want you to stay on for another segment or whatever he was talking to himself that's very unusual for the on-camera talent to be like talking to you themselves while they're trying to prep for the next segment he happened to be coming through st louis doing a live show he and andy cohen do a show they call ac square they tell stories and stuff because they're very good friends and he invited me to the show and like sent me tickets and everything, he was a joy. It was a lot of fun. That show was one of the most fun things we did. Sorry, I get on tangents all the time. But back to that day, we meet the moderators.

We give them our two questions. And then they say, okay, if we call on you, ask this one. And then they just kind of take all those questions and they put them in order. They're like, all right, these six people asked about foreign policy and these few people asked about taxes and whatever. And they'll kind of group them so they can guide the discussion by topics. and I was the only person who had asked about energy. So that's one of the reasons why they called on me.

Nobody else asked about energy or environmental policy at all. I figured I'd ask about it because it has a lot of personal impact for me and also a lot of impact for the regular voter. And then we get to time for the debate and they march us out on the stage. And it is so cold out there. They keep the whole area like 60 degrees. It's one of the reasons I wore the sweater. Like I wore the sweater because the suit I was going to wear.

I tore the seat out of the pants because I got too fat for it. But I switched quickly to the sweater knowing that they had told us how cold it was going to be. And they keep it so cold because President Nixon basically sweated through his suit when he was debating John F. Kennedy. I thought they weren't going to call on me. I ended up being the second to last person they called on. So you didn't know when the debate starts if you'll be called on or not. It's an in-the-moment thing. Okay.

There's 40 of us who had all turned in questions. They only had time to get to, I think, eight or nine of them. and you don't know what order they've put them in. You don't know if they're going to call on you or not. They just said, be ready. They call on me. I read the question. I mispronounce one of the words in my question.

Hillary Clinton got to answer first, and she said, blah, blah, something about Donald Trump buys steel from China. And then Donald Trump, something about how ISIS is bad. I'm like, okay, I know ISIS is bad, but that's not going to make or break my job at the power plant. So they did their, you know, politician non-ansors. And then the debate was over. after it was over, Hillary Clinton walked by real quick. She had to get to the, like, you know, war room or whatever to start doing the after shows and strategizing and whatever.

She stopped and shook my hand and talked to us for a few seconds and walked out. I didn't go over and talk to Donald Trump because, you know, I didn't want to. And then I heard from across the stage somebody yelling to me and it was President Bill Clinton. He wanted to talk to me. I talked to him for like five years. He remembered my name. At first when he was yelling to me, he was like, hey, the energy guy, come here. you had the question. And I walk over to him and he's like, your name's Ken, right? And he wanted to talk more in detail about the Clinton energy policy as they saw it. I was like, okay. So I was happy to talk to him about it. And then his security guy was like tugging on his jacket. Like, Mr. President, we got to go. So he leaves. And then I look around and there's not really anybody left on stage. So I kind of took a few more pictures with the disposable camera that they gave us. I didn't take that with me, by the way. People associate me with the disposable camera. We all had one. The commission.

gave them to us because we weren't allowed to have cameras or cell phones or anything. I'll take purchase of the camera equipment because I'm a nerd about AV stuff. And I was like, wow, that's a really big boom crane for this camera. And well, there's a big soundboard over there. Before we get into, like, whenever you're allowed to check your phone after this event, I am curious, what was your relationship with the internet like prior to this? I was mostly a lurker on it. Like, I had a Twitter account.

I had like two followers. One of them was my grandma. And I think the other one was also my grandma who might have forgot her password and then made a new account. And I was mostly just a lurker. I had an account and I only made, you know, sporadic comments. Some of them really stupid and, you know, regretful. But I didn't spend a whole lot of time online, but I was aware of the whole internet thing.

I wasn't like a terminally online person. We all know, right? Genius is evenly distributed. Opportunity is not. It's Black Business Month and Black Tech Green Money is tapping in. I'm Will Lucas spotlighting black founders, investors, and innovators, building the future, one idea at a time. Let's talk legacy, tech, and generational wealth. I don't think any person of any gender, race, ethnicity should alter who they are, especially on an intellectual level or a talent level to make someone else feel comfortable just because they are the majority. in this situation and they need employment.

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Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories. are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more, and found the shrimp to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner.

He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. My name is Ed. Everyone say hello Ed.

Hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer and my mom is a cousin. So, like, it's not like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different.

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Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life, impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets.

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Here's the rest of my interview with Ken Bone. The debate is over. You check your phone. Walk me through that moment of checking your phone after. Well, they told us before the debate. They're like, don't be surprised if there's reporters out there wanting to talk to you or take your picture. Don't be surprised if you're like caricatured on Saturday Night Live or something.

And it's just, it could happen. And I'm like, well, I'd kind of like to talk to a reporter. And then maybe my grandma could have something for her scrapbook if I get my picture in the paper. They didn't really think much of it. And then as I'm walking back to my car, there's no reporters. There's no photographers or anything. And I was almost a little disappointed. I'm like, oh, I get back to the car and open the glove compartment where I had my phone

locked up and power it back on. And my voicemail box was full. And I had like a couple hundred text messages. And my phone was already ringing as soon as it power. on. I'm like, what the heck's going on here? And the first call I answered was from a woman who had gone to high school with, who now lives down in Dallas. She's a, was a producer for like a local morning show on their, I think it was the NBC affiliate, like their morning news show. And she's like, can't remember me from high school? I'm like, that kind of, I guess.

Do you want to like do a phone interview for our show tomorrow? I'm like, oh, sure, okay. I'm not really sure how she got my number. I didn't even have a cell phone in high school. school because I'm old. I was like, yeah, sure, Katie, no problem. And then as soon as I hung up, it was ringing again. And it was Fox Sports. They were like, yeah, you want to be on our morning show tomorrow? And then my friend Ryan is calling me. He's like, dude, you're on every channel. I'm like, yeah, I was on the debate. I told you I was going to be. They're like, no, man, not just like in the background. They're talking about you. And I was like, why? Why are they talking about me? That's weird. And he's like, well, I don't know because you're wearing bright

red and you got a stupid name. I'm like, well, I already knew I had a stupid name. I thought he was messing with me, even with all the messages and stuff. It takes me, like, 45 minutes to get home. And sure enough, on TV is me, just like a close-up of my face on, like, CNN or something. I'm like, what the hell is this? And my wife says, again, it's been like this since the debate was over. What is your wife and son's reaction to all of this? It's weird for them because obviously they know me better than anybody else.

And they're seeing all these people on TV speculate about who I am and where I came from. And they're like, well, that's wrong. and that's wrong and that's wrong. And it was just sort of disbelief. And the whole time, we all just sort of thought like, well, they'll find something else to pay attention to in a day or two. You know, it actually took several weeks before they were ready to pay attention to something else. Your existence was politicized for a moment one, because it was in the context of politics. What was it like seeing yourself presented in this very, like, political way? I didn't see any coverage of myself for, like, days and days.

after except what people were directly like texting me about like my friends because it was too busy doing interviews and stuff uh it was really surreal like i did an interview with the new york times they published the interview online like a half an hour later five minutes after that i'm getting requests for comment on that interview from other media outlets and also from like my brother-in-law and he's like have you seen this i'm like no i don't have time to read any of that in fact I'm hanging up on you now because I'm supposed to be on this radio show in Fort Worth, right now. I gotta go. Was there any moment of like hesitation of like, do I want to do this? Was there any like calculus of I'll talk to, I'll do this? I don't know how I feel about this. It just sounds like it was happening so

fast. How did you know what to say yes or no to? I didn't say no to almost anybody. The only people I said no to were ones where literally like I have something booked at that same time already. sorry. I was not enough at the time to know that like this is going to go on for a few days and I'm not actually a big deal. People just want to pay attention me for right now. So I never got like an inflated sense of like, oh man, I must be so smart and so great and everybody loves me. So I think I was fortunate enough that I had that online exposure before. So I didn't buy into my own myth or whatever. Didn't let it change me as a person. At least I hope I didn't. I guess somebody could go through that kind of experience without being a little bit changed.

but I don't feel like I became too self-absorbed or anything because of it. It was just bizarre. I had stuff booked in 15-minute increments about 4 a.m. until 2 a.m. every day for three days until then I finally had to start telling people know so I could sleep. I'm curious to talk to you about just like how that degree of sudden attention and expectation and this projection of responsibility, like all of which did not exist 24 hours ago. what does that do to your like sense of mental well-being well i did a lot of therapy over the last couple of years because once you go back to like when you've had a stadium full of 20,000 people

chanting your name and lining up for two hours just to take a picture with you humans as social animals you get like endorphin rush from that you know you feel that's addictive uh it gave me a good insight into why some people who got like reality show fame or whatever will sell their soul for a little bit more attention. But from the outside, you look at it and you're like, how could you do that? That's disgusting. Why are these people debasing themselves like because it's addictive? I feel like I was very lucky that I didn't get so hooked on it that I couldn't let it go.

Because it eventually is no matter who you are, it's going away. But I think I recognized from early on that it wasn't because of any innate talent or anything. It was just like a perfect storm of like, I had a funny name, I was wearing a weird outfit. it. I'm not afraid to be on camera. I ended up being kind of good at the sort of banter. So I felt like that all came together, but it wasn't because I'm like an amazing media analyst or something like that. It was just a lot of factors that came together that made it. So I was, I don't know, I was almost purpose built to be the internet meme or something. But I was okay with it going away again. I wrote it out for a while because it was fun. Once it wasn't as fun anymore,

I started answering the phone less and less, especially since it's not really that lucrative. I did make some money on a, I did a few commercials and there were a few bigger things. I sold T-shirts. That's what I made the most money on. But I did as much as I could to give back also. I gave 10% of all the money I got to charity. And every place I would sign a contract with, I would make that company. I'd make them give money to charity also. So we raised tens of thousands of dollars for like local charities and things. Yeah, I'd like to think that most people are just doing the best they can. Like the hawk to a girl is the hot thing. of the moment as we're recording this.

And she's done a lot for like pet shelters and other charities and stuff. So I'm really happy for her. I haven't got a chance to talk to her. I've been looking for like her email address or something. So I could just like send her a note. But she was probably like 14 years old when I was a meme. So she might even know who I am. Sure.

I mean, everyone, everyone does. Like you had the full kind of arc where you had the original wave of attention, the appearances, the lot of requests. You had the moment of the Reddit post resurfacing and having to just navigate all of that in such a short period of time. When things are coming that fast and that intensely, how do you manage in the day-to-day sense? Well, everybody's like the hero of their own story, and it's no different with me. So when I started getting questions about like, why did you say this insensitive, terrible thing on Reddit? I'm like, well, that was a jerk thing to do.

I don't know what to tell you. And I think because I didn't try to go out of my way to justify it, that was big in people like being willing to forgive and move on. They're like, oh, you thought you were anonymous. You said something insensitive. You know, tried to play it off for cheap laughs or whatever at the time. But what I would always say to people is like, it wasn't a press release. I did not curate this for, you know, wide consumption.

I was talking to the three people that I was, you know, in a comment. thread with made a dumb joke that was that I feel bad about. But I believe in learning from your mistakes and moving on. My Reddit username is Stan Gibson 18. I still use the same username. I do not have an alt account. I think that alt accounts are for cowards, honestly. And I think that even more strongly now. If you look far enough back in my history, you can read the comments yourself. I have not deleted or edited a single one. Because even the ones that I'm not proud of. I feel like if you do not stick by your words and learn from them, even when they're wrong, then you fail as a person. That's something my grandfather taught me, because I made

that mistake. And I think that goes a lot farther than just pretending it was okay or pretending it didn't happen. When did it feel like things started to kind of feel less intense? It's less of a part of your daily life. Probably by about Thanksgiving. It started to tone down because of the nature of what I is famous for, you know, it's because of the election. Well, the election is obviously not over yet. The election wasn't until early November. And then, of course, Donald Trump wins and nobody saw that coming. I don't think Donald Trump saw that coming. The political climate is super fraught. And people are either looking for somebody to lash out at and blame, or they're looking for some kind of anchor of something that's supposed to be fun. That's one of the reasons why I got so

big is because everybody was so busy in this nasty election cycle with everything that's so awful. They're like, hey, this guy seems kind of fun. Let's talk about that for a while. And after the election was over, they're like, let's talk about fun guy a little bit for a while because, oh my God, this is bad. This is so weird. So that carried it a little farther, you know, started settling down where I was only doing a couple of things a week, you know, an interview here and there. I went to CPAC that year in 2017, which in February, the big conservative thing. I'm not a very conservative guy. I didn't go as a speaker or anything. There was a company that sells fundraising and campaign management software

that wanted me to be the spokesperson. So I went to CPAC and then I went to NetRutes Nation, which is sort of the sort of the liberal equivalent, except it's not nearly as much of a party atmosphere as CPAC. So we went to these big political conferences trying to sell the fundraising software. I mean, that was fun. I got to meet AOC before she got elected. We got a picture of me and AOC from before her primary, before anybody else knew her who she was. So I got it on the ground floor of that. So I did a few more events with them.

They were the ones who arranged for me to be on Bill Mar like the year after that. But it really slowed down a bunch. And then by the time we got to the pandemic, that stopped everybody's life completely in its tracks and never really picked up as much after that. Was there ever a point where you were able to make a full-time living? Did you want to make a full-time living of this? Or was it sort of like, well, we'll just sort of see what happens?

early on if I had gone and gotten like an agent who could help me navigate all that stuff I'm pretty confident that I could have made a full-time living being like one of those talking head contributors does segments you know a few times a week and then while you're doing that you write a book and then you plug your book when you're in the stuff yeah it's a whole ecosystem of people that do that and I'm pretty sure I could have done it and I could have done a good enough job where I could have kept it going but it also seemed kind of like a bummer And I have a decent career that I already liked that's like a sure thing that I'm really good at what I do. And it doesn't require me to be out of town all the time or be stressed out and do hair and makeup and stuff.

The media atmosphere moves so fast. If you don't jump on that immediately, it's done. If I wanted to write a book now, nobody's going to buy that book. I did have more staying power than most. I think that's attributable to me just being willing to do more appearances and being kind of okay on camera. People don't remember Chewbacabom as much because I don't think she wanted to do as many appearances as I did. People don't remember Harambe because he's dead. He doesn't do interviews anymore. Yeah, you don't grow without changing a little bit.

You know, it's been eight years since I was a meme. I'm not the same person I was eight years ago. My beliefs have grown and changed and evolved. I'm not to slap too many labels on it, but I think I'm a lot more progressive than I was before. Believe more in things like universal health care and things of that nature. and not because I'm like, I used to be a bad guy and I wanted grandma to die because she was broke. No, it's because I used to believe that it would have never be efficient enough to roll out wide scale. And the more I've read about it and the more I've talked to people about it and realized every other civilized nation in the world does it.

Why couldn't we do it then? My beliefs have grown and changed over time. But I also realized that there's a lot of people who think the way that I did eight or ten years ago, they're not evil. they came by those beliefs honestly. And most people, probably 90 plus percent of people, want everybody to have rights. They want everybody to have health care. They want everybody to have whatever. They don't agree on how we should get it. You both have a lot of criticism of media and have experienced and borne witness to American media in a way very few have. Has your view on media shifted in these last eight years?

Very much so. Media and politics also. Once you've peered behind the curtain, you can't unsee that stuff. We have so many politicians and media figures who could not chew bubble gum and walk at the same time. In general, they're good at one thing. Politicians are good at getting elected, and media figures are good at staying on television. And that is largely it. Very few of them actually have something to say. most of them are just good at drawing your attention for short periods to close out when you look back

on this time of this initial virality have your feelings changed towards it and you know as you like have processed that experience over the years how do you look back on it now the more distance i get from it the more i realize that it does not define me as a person and that was a lot of what i had to talk through in therapy of like i had these great emotional highs of everybody loves me without even knowing me. That's addictive. But I realize that I don't need that to define me as a person. I'm defined as a person by the relationships that I maintain and the internal work that I do on improving myself, also by smaller things like my career and my interests. And those things define me as a human being, not the way people chose to perceive me on television. If somehow a magic wand were to

excise that whole experience from my life, I realize that I could still be who I am. I could still be a good person. I could still be a worthwhile human being without any of that attention. And I think that having some distance from it and some years later has helped me gain perspective on that. If I had to do it all again, absolutely would. It's an amazing unique experience that almost nobody gets to have. And I was very fortunate that I was able to, you know, I'm not a saint. I've gained financially from it also, but I was able to help my community as well. So a lot of people benefited. So I think overall it was a great experience.

If I had to do it the same way, you know, and I didn't get to change anything, I would still do it. But I don't need it. I don't have to have had it to be satisfied with who I am. Wonderful. Thank you for being so open and so generous with your time and your experience. I really appreciate it. I really love, you know, interviews like this and programs like yours. because the long-form format where you can really get into a subject

is so much more beneficial and so much more fun to engage in than the eight-minute radio segments that I've done a million of. I hope so. Thank you. Thank you again to Ken Bone. You can follow him on Twitter for updates he shares as he sees fit. And you can also donate to his nonprofit of choice, the St. Patrick Center in St. Louis, at the link in the description. I'll be doing the same.

And I really appreciate that Ken made it a place. part of his mission to include the interest of his own community. I really hope this is something that characters of the day kind of put into practice when their time randomly comes. Oddly enough, Hawk to a girl, Haley Welch, is a pretty solid example of this. She's recently started in a nonprofit for stray animals in her area. But at the end of the day, there will never be another Ken Bone. But he is an important hallmark in Internet history.

He's a clear and early example of the milkshake. phenomenon, a crossover between the mainstream media and social media, and a person who was able to grow and change with the phenomenon that surrounded him. So, here we are again at the end of another fucked up American election cycle. Vote your conscience, vote down ballot in your community, and participate in mutual aid in your area. Vote blue no matter who is for losers and nimbies. People help people, period. And for your moment of fun this week, there are still a few weeks of

rancid SNL sketches to get through before Election Day. So here was Ken's Rancid S&L moment. Next week, more hot dogs. Bye. All right, and now, since everyone has been so good, it's time for a special treat.

That's right. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for the one, the only, Mr. Kenner. You all ready for this? Oh my god, he is so cute. I really needed that right now. No, wait. Ken, you're not going to turn out to be a weird little creep or anything, are you? Maybe.

God, we can't have anything nice. Oh, well. 16th Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and I-Hard workouts. It is written, hosted, and produced by me, Jamie Laughness. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichten and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad 13. Voice acting is from Grant Crater.

And pet shoutouts to our dog producer Anderson, my cats flea and Casper, and my pet rock bird who will outlive us all. Bye. It's Black Business Month, and Money and Wealth podcast with John Hope Bryant is tapping in. I'm breaking down how to build wealth, create opportunities, and move from surviving to thriving. It's time to talk about ownership, equity, and everything in between. Black and brown communities have historically been lasting life. Let me just say this.

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And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology's already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth?

Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast. podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Black Business Month and Black Tech Green Money is tapping in. I'm Will Lucas spotlighting black founders, investors, and innovators, building the future one idea at a time. Let's talk legacy, tech, and generational wealth.

I had the skill and I had the talent. I didn't have the opportunity. Yeah. We all know, right? Genius is evenly distributed. Opportunity is not. to hear this and more on the power of black innovation and ownership listen to black tech green money from the black effect podcast network on the eye heart radio app appell podcast or wherever you get your podcasts tune in to all the smoke podcast where matt and stack sit down with former first lady michelle obama folks find it hard to hate up close and when you get to know people and you're sitting in their kitchen tables and they're talking like we're talking you know you hear our story how we grew up how borg grew up and you get a chance for people to unpack and get beyond

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