WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1405 - Radhika Jones

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

Radhika Jones just celebrated her fifth year as Editor-in-Chief of Vanity Fair and, as far as Marc is concerned, she plays a major role on the front lines of the American culture war. Radhika tells Marc why she remains optimistic about our current cultural moment, why print is not yet dead, and how a magazine like Vanity Fair can modernize and evolve in order to better represent our current times. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's winter, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls? Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No. But moose head? Yes. Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too.

Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing.

With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative.

Lock the gates! All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fuck, Knicks? What the fuckadelics? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast, WTF. Welcome to it. We've been coming at you since 2009.

We've been putting it out twice a week since 2009. A new show every Monday and Thursday since 2009 and holding steady because of you guys. We are one of the OGs of this medium and grateful for your support and enjoyment of the content. Today, I'm going to talk to Radhika Jones. She is the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. Today, I'm going to talk to Radhika Jones. She is the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. She just celebrated five years at the helm of the magazine. I wanted to talk to her. It became an opportunity.

I enjoy that magazine. I think that magazine has a history of sort of engaging public intellectualism and embracing the arts of all kinds and, you know, showing diverse voices in all the arts and in scholarship and criticism. And I think that's an important publication in light of fascism, white supremacy and nationalism and also just straight up Christian fascism taking root in our country and normalizing. you know, operating, proud, glamorous public voice in the form of a publication that kind of stands in contrast to that as people kind of absorb and allow the worst of humanity to be normalized and have a voice. So that was sort of my incentive on that. But she turns out to be a great guest and fun to talk to. So that's going to happen for you today. So I haven't eaten meat since the colonoscopy. Some of you know this, that, you know, I checked in with you.

I had the colonoscopy and I thought like, well, this is it. Blank slate, tabula rosa, asshole. And so I'm just like, I'm putting, I'm only putting good stuff through. So I haven't eaten meat or dairy, uh, since Monday for a week and I'd eaten too much meat. I hit a wall with not much processed sugar either, but it's a weird, it's a hard, it's hard to adapt. I thought it would be just smooth and just a great thing to do. But like, I feel terrible. People bug me for years about, you know, vegetarianism, veganism. They're like, hey, you have animals, you have cats. You know, why do you eat meat?

It seems to be contradictory to your way of being. And I always thought like, well, I'm not going to eat my cats. But I get it. I understand. And I don't have a pet cow. I don't have a salmon run in some sort of circular tank around my house that I have named the salmon in. But I get it. And I know it's bad.

I was eating a lot of tomahawk steaks, and you can't really deny that that's a big chunk of flesh with bone on it comes from a thing that was alive and enjoying itself. But I have been doing it. I have been not. It's been a week of, and I have been not, I have, it's been a week of, and I gotta be honest with you,

it does not make me feel better. It makes me feel bloated. I feel like a fucking bag of beans because I've eaten like a bag of beans. Gassy, gross. I'm, you know, I've not,

I'm not used to eating carbs and I'm eating them. I have to start to, you know, figure out how to do this if I'm going to do it. Now, this is not some major lifestyle choice. It's just something I needed to do to, all right, I'll be honest with you. I've got a blood test coming up tomorrow and I wanted to cheat. I didn't want it to represent the way I eat normally.

So given the opportunity, given the fact that I could avoid a cleanse because I had the colonoscopy and just start with this vegan business, I did it just to see what my numbers are going to be like when I get the blood test. I'm going to fool them. I'm going to fool them.

That's the plan. We'll see how it goes. But I guess I just have to learn how to eat like this and believe that I'm getting the proper amount of protein relative to how much exercise I do and whatnot. But it's just making me feel bloated, and it's a bummer. And people are like, well, just eat fish or something. Like, you know, fish has gotten weird. It's hard to find fish that looks good because the planet is dying, but I'll probably, I'm not, look again, I'm not pontificating. I'm not being self-righteous.

This is just something I'm trying to do to see how it affects my health and blood levels. But I got to be honest with you, this vegan week, not great, not great. Do not feel better. I have energy-wise, I feel better. But physically, my body in terms of my body image and how I feel inside my body, not better. But maybe that'll change. Maybe I got to learn to eat. We'll see.

We'll see what happens. I can't recommend it right now. Though I do feel, I feel better than you for not eating meat. So I understand that part of it. I do understand that part of it. All right, so listen. Listen up. I wanted to tell everybody that I'm going to be in New York

promoting, doing some press for the HBO special, which is out on February 11th. I'm excited about it. I'm, I believe I'm doing the, uh, tonight show and I'm also doing Mark Maron, me in conversation with MTV news is Josh Horowitz.

This is a 92nd street Y event, and it's going to be at the Museum of Modern Art, and you can get tickets for it. This is on February 10th at 7.30 p.m. at MoMA. Me and Josh Horowitz in conversation. You can get tickets. There's a link at wtfpod.com slash tour. So come on out and come to the museum, man. I don't really know Josh, but he's excited. And, you know, I like to talk. And the picture they used on the website for the 92nd Street Y is a good picture. So I'm on board.

So there's that. And also, like, apparently the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences, or whatever the fuck it is, has decided to investigate Andrea Riceboro's grassroots campaign to get her the Oscar nomination. Because I guess it so threatens their system to where they're completely kind of bought out by corporate interests in the form of studios and millions of dollars put into months and months of advertising campaigns, publicity, uh, you know, screenings by large corporate entertainment entities. And Andrea, uh, was, uh, championed by her peers, uh, through a grassroots campaign, uh, which was pushed through by a few actors. And the Academy is, well, we got to take a look at this. You know, this is not the way it's supposed to work. Independent artists don't deserve the attention of the Academy unless we see how it works exactly.

So we're going to look into this. Nothing's going to happen because of it, but it was in earnest, the campaign, and it is not undeserving. But I'm glad the Academy, at the behest of special interests and corporate interests and just paranoia about how they look, are doing an investigation. Who gives a fuck? Anyway, speaking of Hollywood, the 29th annual Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair comes out in February. And I talked to the editor and chief of Vanity Fair, Radhika Jones, and you're going to hear it right now. You're going to hear it right now. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category.

And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die.

We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+.

18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. I gotta be honest with you. It's weird, but I think about Graydon Carter almost every day. Okay. Because he had this hairline that was ridiculous. And I panic that my hairline is heading that direction. Like where it just sort of goes away on top, but it's all along in the back.

And he's my only point of reference for that. So it's not in any intellectual way or any judgmental way. It's just like, fuck, I hope my hair isn't doing what Graydon Carter, his hair, did. I feel like your hair looks pretty good. Thank God. Podcast listeners don't have the benefit that I do of seeing your hair live and in person. Well, thank you. The hairline's holding up, but that's just one of my weird paranoias

and he's one of my weird fears and he's my point of reference. What are you doing in Los Angeles? Anything? I came here to sit in your garage. Really? No, come on. I'm doing a couple of other things.

Yeah? Like schmooze things? Yeah. No, mostly just checking in with my staff here, my colleagues. The forces on the ground. Yeah, the Bureau. And here in Los Angeles. The people getting things done. Yeah. What is the LA arm of Vanity Fair look like now? What do they do out here? They do all the things. We actually have editors out here.

We have writers, correspondents, some people from our creative team, so designers, people like that. It's great because obviously as Vanity Fair, we have a vested interest in a footprint in L.A. We throw a small party around the Oscars. But year long, we're covering the scene. I know. We have it, we throw a small party around the Oscars. Yeah. But, you know, year long, we're, we're covering the scene. Yeah. And I know I read it. And the last couple of covers have been very Hollywood oriented. Yes. Well, let's go back. So you've, you've been the editor for how long? Five years. And it's, it's interesting to me, because I was trying to, you know, kind of put stuff together here in terms of the role of the public intellectual in current culture. Yes.

And what it really means. How insulated is it? What really matters and to who seems to be questions that must be asked. questions that must be asked. I know that Colbert has you on his show, which I think in his mind is probably a throwback to another time where public intellectuals were part of pop culture and the discourse. They kind of drove it. I'm happy that you frame it that way because my worry is that there are barely any public intellectuals at all, or at least that nobody sees it that way. So I find it sort of encouraging that you perceive it that way. So I find it sort of encouraging that... That I perceive it?

That you perceive it that way, yeah. I think that's great. Because I do think, like, I feel very strongly that there is an intellectual underpinning to what we do at Vanity Fair, what other magazine editors do, and the landscape in which you can

kind of discuss those ideas has changed dramatically, obviously, since the days of three network news channels and, you know. And three network entertainment channels. Yeah. So all that stuff has changed. But I do still think that what, you know, the kind of coverage that we do, whatever platform it is, it's driven by ideas. And they are ideas about our culture and what makes us tick. And that's so important. But also progressive ideas. Yes. Because there is a sort of, I don't know if it's a resurgence, but maybe an insurgence of fascist intellectuals.

grifter intellect that kind of preys on the worst of mostly men and gears them in a direction towards, you know, really, I mean, straight up fascism. And that's a reality in this country now. And there are intellectuals that are given platforms that should remain in academia to argue their dumb points and be used as pawns for progressive ideas, not cultural deciders. So I think that the task is on you to fight that. And I don't, I mean, I'm not talking shit, am I? No, I mean, I agree with you. And as I say, it gives me a lot of energy to hear you talk about it in that way, because that is what we're trying to do. I mean, I think that, you know, we cover a broad range of subjects and we do crime and scandal and celebrity and politics and art and entertaining and also illuminating about the way that we live um and so when you talk about that sort of whole you know holding the torch

for progressive ideas it's less about strictly politically progressive ideas but more just about kind of like well how do we move forward as a culture that's it well I think that it seems to me that when, you know, you taking this job sort of kind of unhinged the kind of purview, is that the right word, of the magazine, which was limited, you know, to a very specific thing, to a time when there was three networks, to a time where the only, you know, real pop culture driver intellectually were white men. real pop culture driver intellectually were white men and the rest of it, even entertainment. So that's a huge shift in and of itself, right? I think so. And you were aware of that, obviously. Yes, I was aware. Well, where do you come from?

How do you mean? Like, where were you brought up? I was born in New York City. We lived there until I was three. Yeah. And then my family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. What? Why? Why? So what were your folks, what was their racket? My father was in the music business. I kind of knew this. I'll tell you anyway. Yes. Stop me if I'm wrong. Well, no, I want to hear it. We all want to hear it. He grew up in Boston, and he kind of came of age during the folk boom in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was an early member of the Club 47 and locally renowned for his interpretations of Woody Guthrie songs.

Interpretations? Did he have to translate the English to some, the sort of working? His versions, let's say. So he played? He played. So he was there? He played and sang. He was there at the original Club 47. Okay.

And he still has this beautiful Martin guitar that he played. Who was the gang around him then? So the gang around him, and he used to organize like the Hoot Nights. Yeah, right. And he was always a good organizer. So I will, I'll tell you, I'll give you an example. So, you know, on Bob Dylan's first album, when he sings, Baby, Let Me Follow You Down. Yeah.

And at the beginning, he says he. Harvard Yard. He learned this song from Rick Von Schmidt. Yeah. Rick Von Schmidt, Eric Von Schmidt was my uncle. He was married to my father's sister. Really? And my father introduced Bob Dylan to Eric Von Schmidt.

Uh-huh. So he was making those kinds of connections. And then Bob just sort of took Eric's personality, his drive shaft, and everything that made him himself and added it to the rest of the Dylan thing inside. No. Uncle Eric remained very much his own man. Oh, good. And was also a visual artist, actually. Oh, really?

It was such a cool time in the arts. Yeah. I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but it was like people were like painting and singing and composing and traveling, and just there was this kind of openness to it. And my father was a part of that. There was nothing in his, his father was an electrician.

There was nothing in his family that kind of. Well, I mean, I would imagine his generation was the first generation to sort of do that. Yes, yes, yes. They were all electricians or butchers or plumbers. So my dad, he loved music and he went to BU. I did too. He played ice hockey at BU. That's a classic folk singer pastime, ice hockey.

He was always a very calm skater. Okay. Unlike perhaps more successful, ultimately, ice hockey players. He was a very, very, he had a, like there was this sort of. Grace. Grace, very, he had a, like a, there was this sort of. Grace. Grace, yes, exactly. Anyway, after a while, he got out of the performing part. And he started doing more production and backstage work.

And he became a road manager. And he started road managing jazz musicians. Like who? He was Duke Ellington's road manager. Wow, with the whole band? With the whole band. That's a big job. That's a lot of oversized luggage, which is how you think about it when you're the road manager.

It's a lot of tickets. That's a big bus. Yeah. And an artist who doesn't really like to fly. So, you know, lots of challenges there. He took them to the former Soviet Union. Wow. He took them to Burma.

He took them to Ethiopia, all over the place. He was Thelonious Monk's road manager. Wow, that's got to be a lot of levels of management there. Yeah. You got to get the right teapot and hat going. You got to have a lot of patience. You got to have a lot of resilience. You have to do some interpreting.

And so he was a real problem solver and kind of a guide for people who were true genius artists. That's amazing. He was Sarah Vaughan's road manager for a little while. He was working for his whole career for a man called George Wein, who had started the Newport Folk Festival and the Newport Jazz Festival. Was he there at the beginning of that? My dad started volunteering a few years after the beginning. So he was,

he was one of the sort of original crew. That was sort of a, a, a decisive showcase. Yes. It was a new thing actually. It was, and one of the things that my dad did that I think is so fascinating is he went with this folklorist, a famous folklorist called Ralph Rensselaer, around the country for a couple of years, like seeking out, you know, indigenous artists, certain types of music. Did he find them? Shape note singers, you know, like gospel, like roots gospel music. His personal favorite type of music was always bluegrass, which I loved.

Oh, yeah? So he, anyway, so he, so you asked how I ended up in Cincinnati. So he was working for George Wein. He was working in the music business. There was stuff going on in Newport and in Europe. Of course, Europeans have always been big jazz fans. Thank God. The musicians, I don't know if they would have survived without Europe and Japan.

I know. But I was born in 1973. But in the early 70s, the festival in Newport, there were some riots and some disturbances. And town was very not enthused. Getting nervous. So they were kind of like, you know, not enthused. Getting nervous. So they were kind of like, okay, time to go. Yeah. And so my dad's boss started doing a lot of R&B and soul shows in the Midwest.

Oh, yeah. So my father became sort of his man in the Midwest. So we moved to Cincinnati. So I lived there until I was 12. So I'm kind of from the Midwest. Wow. Spaghetti and chili. We lived, yes, Skyland Chili. I will die on the Midwest. Wow. Spaghetti and chili. We lived, yes,

Skyland chili. I will die on this hill. I understand that it's not real chili. I get it. It's its own thing. And also, we live three blocks from Grater's, the best ice cream in the country. That is the best ice cream.

I remember when I started dating my husband, I told him, you know, this ice cream in Cincinnati is the best ice cream in the world. And he was like, that's ridiculous. It's just because you grew up there. And he tried it. And he was like, oh, no, this is actually the best ice cream. It's the best.

It's still good. Yeah. So he was really a road. He was a manager. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Until he had, until he and my mom had three kids under five. And then she was like, maybe you don't need to leave the house for six months at a time. With Thelonious Book.

Maybe that would be helpful to me. Yeah. And so he started, you know, he started doing more American stuff. Oh, okay. And he was managing these R&B and soul. It was like Kool and the Gang, sponsored by Kool Cigarettes. Oh, yeah. It was like that was the era.

Uh-huh. So my sister and brother and I would just be taken around to these shows. I mean, we would like fall asleep on, you know, big amp cases backstage and stuff. We had a very backstage life growing up, which was really wonderful. That's exciting. It was such a privilege. As a performer, that's really, that moment or that time backstage is really what show business is all about in a way. It is.

It's bizarre. Like every time I'm like, even on Colbert, like waiting to go on, you know, the show, like, you know, you see, I've been at NBC when they're walking horses through. Right. And you're like, oh my God, this is show business. Yes. What happens on stage, that's just the end of it. And it's all, it's very detail oriented.

It's very collaborative. It's full of personalities. There's a lot of temperament. You know, you've got to be ready for anything to happen. You have to, you can't stand on ceremony. You have to get someone something if they need it. If they need a towel, if they need, you know, a particular kind. Like I have so many arcane details because we used to work, you know, it was like we were all put to work, right? Yeah, you also learn about the egos. Well, you learn about the egos, and you get a sense of people from how they present. Sure. How do their people operate in advance of them? What are they like when you pick them up from the airport and that kind of thing? And a friend and I used to do hospitality, so we knew all the contract writers. Yeah. One thing I always loved about John Prine, for example.

Sweet guy. In addition to his music. Yeah. Is that he always requested the local paper in his rider. Because wherever he was, he kind of wanted to know the news and kind of get a sense of the community. And, I mean, it tells you a lot that there's not a local paper in a lot of places now. Anymore, yeah. The way that there used to be.

It was that kind of thing. You know, that you came to know, like, just from being around people like that makes so much that's a beautiful detail uh that i've never heard about prine i've interviewed prine and you know and people uh who love him you know like bonnie rate and jason isbel like everybody loves prime but that is such a specific and and completely makes sense right you know what i mean? That's exactly who that guy was. Yeah. But it's interesting that you're backstage, but you also get to witness, you know,

what it takes to manage egos. Like if they don't get, you know, their glass of tonic water or whatever, it could have profound implications on the evening's performance. Mm-hmm. That kind of stuff. Well, and you also come to appreciate troubleshooting because sometimes things just happen. And like, we'd be at Newport, you know, so the Newport festivals came back in the eighties. So every summer when I was growing up,

we would, um, you know, once I was a teenager, the festivals in Newport, we would go and work at the festivals and be there. It was a folk festival and a jazz festival. And you could see, you know, this is before cell phones and stuff right yeah and uh and the festivals are outdoors so it's rain or shine so you you you learn that like well if it rains it rains you get wet that's right but actually the festival is more memorable if it rains because like the the stalwarts stay and something magical happens right and and there's a sort of menace to all the electric equipment yeah well and and by the way obviously if there's a sort of menace to all the electric equipment. Yeah. Well, and by the way, obviously, if there's lightning, you shut it down. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, like, you could see the tour buses coming in over the Newport Bridge, which is a magnificent bridge. Yeah. And my father would be there with, you know, someone would be late. The plane would be late coming into the Providence Airport or something. It's like Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings are on the bus. Yeah. It's the bus coming. Can you see the bus?

And he'd be there with his binoculars looking. And it's, oh, there's the bus. And they come in and everything. And they're just like, whoop, they're on stage. And you're like, but if they're late, you shuffle people around and you maneuver. And you have to think on your feet and be quick. And I feel like all of that,

that was kind of what my father's life was like. Yeah, but on top of that, whatever you gained from him organizationally and minded in terms of how it wired you, was that what an amazing, expressive world to grow up in. Yes, because ultimately you're committed to art and artistic expression. Yes. Because ultimately you're committed to art and artistic expression.

And also my father, it's one of the most impressive things to me about him. He was so committed to discovery. He would sit in the car. People would send him demo tapes. He would sit in the car and he would listen to all the tapes. He was so excited that he might discover someone. Did he? He did. He was the first person to book Alison Krauss on a major stage when she was 15 years old at the Newport Folk Festival. And people like that. But it's so true what you say. I learned from him, first of all, the idea that you can use art, music in this case, but kind of language also, sound expression, performance to make a community.

And also, the way you put a festival together is you have headliners and then you have new people, people who are coming up in the world and people who are your discoveries and you want to put them in front of an audience. And I also used to work in the box office. So you'd be selling tickets and stuff. So you know, so people are calling and they're asking about the headliners and they're asking who's on this day and whatever. And ostensibly they're coming for the headliners.

That's what they're thinking. But the thing that would make for a great festival is when they left and they weren't talking about the headliner's the thing that really motivates you as an editor is, um, it's not just working with people who are great, great photographers, great writers, great reporters. We get to do all that at VF and I'm so happy about it,

but it's also being able to mix in the people who are new to the game, um, and give a new photographer their first shot at a cover or give a writer a big story and, you know, help them land it. Right, exactly. But also the subjects. And the subjects. Right, so there's discovery on two levels. Is that you have these, you know, practitioners of words and pictures.

Right. But they're covering things. And you're sort of like, oh my God, does anyone know about this? Right, right. And I think that my job as editor-in in chief and our job at Vanity Fair in general is to help people be ahead of the curve. You want people to read the magazine or read the website or watch our YouTube videos or whatever it is and say, oh, I hadn't, I hadn't heard of this or I didn't know this was coming. And then when it arrives, they're, they're in the know.

Yeah. And they feel prepared and they feel on top of things. Right. And that's like a very intangible thing that we can give people. And it's all relative to context now because there's no shortage of not knowing shit now. I mean, you're dealing with a media landscape that's daunting. I don't know what's happening. There's amazing things happening and people tell me about it. I'm like, is that new?

They're like, no, it's like four years old. I'm like, how did I miss that? You miss everything. You can miss a lot of things. So, so, so much of that hinges on you and the context of Vanity Fair is that like there, you know, people can discover things, but that you have to decide what is discoverable and how it fits, you know, the objectives or the objectives or the ideology of the magazine. Right. Right. So why do you end up here?

So you grew up in this amazing – what did your mom do? My mom was – she became sort of part of the family business. Music. Music. But she grew up in India. What part? She grew up in Mumbai. And she had moved to Paris in her early 20s because she wanted to study French. And she thought she would live in Paris for the rest of her life.

And she was there. She started working for Air India, which was literally a way to get to Paris. And she ended up working there. And she worked with VIPs. And this is in the late 60s. So this is the era of the Beatles' obsession with India. My mom was out there. She was extremely beautiful, and she was out there showing Jane Fonda how to wear a sari. You know, everyone was into India at the time.

Oh, wow, yeah. And she met my father because he was managing a band touring Europe in the summer, and they actually met over the counter. I think it was Cannonball Adderley. Okay. I think. Yeah.ball Adderley. Okay. I think. Yeah. I would have to check. Yeah.

So they, and they were going to live in Paris, and then my dad's boss was like, nope, you're coming back to the States. So my poor mother ended up raising three American children. In Cincinnati. In Cincinnati. There goes that Paris dream. Welcome to Cincinnati.

I like Cincinnati. I'm not, look, I've. It's an interesting town. You can say that about a lot of places. You could, you could. I mean, no, I don't mind Cincinnati. I like Cincinnati. I'm not. Look, I've. It's an interesting town. You can say that about a lot of places. You could. I mean, no, I don't mind Cincinnati. I find that when I travel now for performing that there's a lot of small cities that are kind of interesting that I don't. Like I went to Pittsburgh and I'm like, oh, my God.

Does anyone know about Pittsburgh? People do know. Jerry Springer was the mayor of Cincinnati when I was there. Oh, wow. Well, that was exciting, I guess. Colorful times. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I've always done okay in Cincinnati. I don't mind it. Columbus, Cleveland. I've been to them all. Something for everyone. Yeah. So why not, you didn't want to pursue music? Did you play?

No, I played piano, but only in the way that one is forced to learn piano. Now I would love to take piano lessons. I would love nothing more. When it's really hard. It's good. Do it now. When it's almost impossible. Well, my son is eight and he's taking piano and I'm kind of envious of his whole piano situation.

How's he doing? He's doing great. He's plugging away. Good. his whole piano situation. How's he doing? He's doing great. He's plugging away.

Good. And so I, no, I, I, we were all, all three, my, I have an older sister and a younger brother and we were all fairly bookish. So literature was my great love. Yeah. And I was always a big reader and I just. From when you were a kid? From when I was a kid, I remember my grandmother, my mother's mother, because it was more arduous to travel then.

So when my relatives would come from India, they would come and stay for a very long time. My grandmother would come and park for six months at our house. And she... Did she cook well? Yes, but also my mother was a great cook. Yeah? I don't know. I just always... I'm so rude. cook well? My, yes, but also my mother was a great cook. Yeah. And,

I don't know, I just always, I'm so rude. I always associate, like my love of Indian food is like big. And so I always associate just India to me

just means like, did she do the breads really good? Could she make paratha? Yeah. Well, you know, such,

my, again, I just say my poor mother because there we were growing up in Cincinnati, and when you're a kid, you just want to fit in. And I went through a phase where I insisted on having bologna sandwiches for lunch with mayonnaise on white bread. My mother, my poor mother, it was terrible. All I wanted was Lunchables. Remember those things? Yeah, no Paris, no Indian food.

No, no. It's a disaster. But anyway, my grandmother, I have these distinct memories of being very young, and my grandmother read Oliver Twist to us. And she read us The Merchant of Venice, which is a strange choice for children. The idea of someone claiming a pound of flesh got really locked in my head in this weird way. But I think I was, my imagination was very activated

by those stories. And the act of reading. And my grandmother in India had been a teacher of literature. And my aunt Helen, married to briefly to Eric Bonschmidt, was for a long time a professor of literature. And my aunt Helen, married briefly to Eric Bonschmidt, was for a long time a professor of literature. So I had big readers on both sides of the

family. I kind of absorbed that from them. So I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life. I mean, as I'm saying this, I'm also like, but when I was young, I thought I'd be a doctor. I was kind of a math and science kid. Really? Perhaps I was an all-rounder. Yeah, it seems like it. Maybe that's where we're headed with this. Yeah. So I didn't have a clear, I didn't have a very set career path. Sure. I just know what I liked to spend my time doing. Okay. And where does that take you? You, like in high school? I was kind of doing all of the stuff in high school. But you could do math and read.

Yes. Good for you. I had a fantastic math teacher. I hit the wall at algebra. I couldn't get past it. No, I was,

I like went all the way through calculus. Physics? All of it. I liked it. I could only handle geometry because there were pictures.

The rest of it was like, no, it's not going to work for me. I'm going to have to get by on my charm somehow. Because I got an English degree, and that was like 60% charm. That's important, though. Sure, absolutely. But you can't charm yourself through math.

No, powers of persuasion are less applicable when you're trying to just do math homework. Yes, I can see that. So you end up like what? Did you graduate? And what was your, when you get out of high school, where are you, what are you thinking? You didn't write, did you? I didn't really write. My sister was a writer and I had this idea that we had to pick a lane.

So I went to college, got an English degree. Where? I went to Harvard. Really? I did. No problem getting in there? No, I guess. I think you went to Harvard when it was still...

I have issue with, with, uh, newer Harvard graduates somehow. Like I, it seems to me that you would have went to Harvard with the right, uh, frame of mind. Like there seems to be, it seems to be sort of, uh, an ambition refining institution at this point. I can see that. Yeah. When I went, it was, um, there were a lot of eclectic people there. Right. Uh, sure. When I went, there were a lot of eclectic people there. Sure. And a lot of people who, and again, I was a sort of very well-rounded student. Yeah. But when I went to Harvard, I was amazed to meet so many people who were just absolutely expert level at this or that.

Yeah. And it was quite exciting, but it didn't feel hyper-professionalized or strategic. Right, right. And I think maybe that's what— It's just smart people of all kinds. I feel like that's changed about college in general in a way. Well, certainly about the Ivies because— Yeah. And the nature—I think that it seems that Harvard was always a place to groom the aristocracy internationally, you know, but it also was, you know, sort of a place where kind of renegade geniuses could form.

But it seems now that it really is to those who have the forethought, you know, and the intelligence to guarantee themselves a place in the world to use it that way, especially in entertainment. Right. Well, and that was not me. I didn't have a master plan, but I loved my time there, and I ended up doing a lot of theater work. Oh, yeah? Where at? Just black box theater, like student theater stuff.

Not hasty pudding or anything? No, no, nothing. But I was working. I lived in Adam's house, which at the time was kind of the artsy house, and I fell in with this group of really creative theater people. Actually, I worked on a production of Dreamgirls with Chyna Forbes, who is in the group called Pink Martini. I don't know if you've ever heard them. Yeah, they're great.

But I was kind of doing dad type stuff. I was like running lights and sound. And then I became a producer by the end of it. And so that was fun. That was my big extracurricular stuff. So, but what was your focus? Is it just, it's a basic curriculum. So you study English? I studied English. And then like after you graduate Harvard with your big English degree, here we go, life, what happens?

I moved abroad. I lived abroad for three years. Where? I lived in Taipei. Why'd you pick there? I taught English. I had a college boyfriend who had studied Chinese, and so he had moved to Taipei, and I didn't have anything pressing to do with my English degree. So I was there for about an academic year.

And then I moved to Moscow, Russia. And I... Because you broke up with the guy and you decided I need to punish myself? No, there's another layer, which is that the guy was Russian. Yeah. I had studied a little Russian and then my Russian got better. So you stayed with this guy for a while? On and off. Yeah. And you went to this guy for a while. On and off.

Yeah. And you went to Russia. I lived in Russia for two years. What did you do there? I worked at a newspaper called the Moscow Times. So you were teaching in Taipei? Mm-hmm. And then you go, okay, so you get a job in the newspaper.

So this is where it starts to come together. Mm-hmm. I got a job as a copy editor. But what's going on in Russia at the time? How's that? So it's 1995 in Russia. Yeah. And Boris, so the Soviet Union broke up in 91.

Right. And there was a lot of chaos. And Boris Yeltsin was running the country. But by the time I got there in 95, he was definitely, he was sort of, he was an alcoholic and he was kind of. Yeah. Clown? Yeah, a was sort of, he was an alcoholic and he was kind of. Yeah. Clown? Yeah, a little bit of a clown. And he kept kind of rotating people through his cabinet.

Like he'd have a protege or, you know, sort of, this guy's going to be the guy after me. Yeah. Wasn't that guy. And, you know, and there were also wars going on between Russia and Chechnya. So there was a lot of tension and it was deeply chaotic and actually reminds me a little bit of the period that we're in now, because there was also just economically, there was a lot of, there was a tremendous amount of change happening because once the Soviet Union broke up, the whole

underpinning of the economy changed. It wasn't a state-run economy anymore in the way that it had been. Part of the reason that the Moscow Times existed is that it was started in 1992 by a couple of Dutch guys because suddenly you needed to have business reporting in Russia. And before that, the state reported on business. The state was like, the economy is great. It's our five-year plan. So, so there was a lot of appetite for people to read the news, specifically to read business news, to read it in English, to learn English, to travel, to be exposed to different kinds of things. And so, so it was a very, very eventful time in Russia. And, and in a way it was the beginning of where Russia is now

because there were all these people grabbing for power, grabbing for a share of the oil and gas market and the nickel market and all these places. So that's when... So it's kind of like if you look back now, you can see the roots of this oligarchical system. The oligarchy, yeah. And then Yeltsin appoints Putin as his successor in the end.

I mean, I was gone by then. And he wrangles the oligarchs. Yeah, yeah. So it all started then. So when I was there, though, there was still, they had been through some hyperinflation. They had gotten a lot of bad advice about privatizing industries. So it wasn't like there was blanket optimism.

Yeah. But there was still some energy. People were opening restaurants. What was the art scene like? The art scene was really vibrant. I mean, Russians historically have always been deeply literate and cultured people. And it was also, I mean, one thing that I loved about it was that it was extremely affordable. Like you could go to the opera and sit in a great seat for something like $10. So you did it because it was there for you to experience. Well, if you think about the root of sort of modernist theater acting film, it's all Russian.

It all started there. I mean, wasn't Eisenstein Russian? The language of film was generated in Russia. The method is from Russia. And a lot of great literature. And so it was very vibrant. And also there were some terrific films coming out of Russia at that time. Like really grappling with the past.

And it was an interesting time to be there. So that's inspiring. Mm-hmm. So was that, do you think that broadens your mind around, I mean, coming from music or coming from where you were and then being at Harvard and seeing how a newspaper worked, work, but also kind of taking in, taking in like the power of creativity happening in a, in a country that was just starting to wrangle with that type of independent thought must've been like mind blowing. It was, I mean, there was this long history of the arts. Think about the Bolshoi Ballet, for example.

So it wasn't like that commitment to the arts was new, but it was, for me to experience it that way, it was a sort of a change in my perspective, I think. Just that it was really part of the fabric of life. I mean, partly it was also just the age that I was. Like, suddenly I'm an independent person. I'm away from my family. You know, I was sort of like able to experience the world without filters and it i think about it a lot vis-a-vis people who are young today because in the mid 90s i think email sort of started when i was at harvard like in the early 90s if you were

very you know maybe certain types of people had email addresses but it wasn't a regular way of communication i think that i first got an email address in russia mostly to communicate with my Maybe certain types of people had email addresses, but it wasn't a regular way of communication. I think that I first got an email address in Russia, mostly to communicate with my mother. But day to day, nobody knew what I was doing. And it was a very formative time for me, I think partly because I was in Russia and it was a very stimulating place to be, but also because I was truly making my own way. And I think about it in contrast to today, because these days days if you go somewhere, well, you have your phone. You're still in touch with your friends from high school. You can FaceTime people.

They can see where you are. They can see. It's terrible. Well, there are wonderful things about that. But I kind of think it's – I'm very grateful that I had this chance to be away because it just oriented my thinking differently. So I was immersed in that world, which was great. be a way because it just real free oriented my thinking differently yeah so i got so i was immersed in that world which was great but then the other thing i think that came out of there for me that applies to what i do now is that i was working at a newspaper and newspapers they're

like shows or whatever they're deeply communal every day you show up you have a part you know you're a part of this process yeah there's a deadline. We had to get the paper done by midnight. And then you go home and you're kind of wired and you have to kind of come down from it. And then you start it all over the next day. And news happens and it's exciting. And so I started to experience the adrenaline rush that you get from being part of something like that. Yeah. the adrenaline rush that you get from being part of something like that.

Yeah. I think it's very interesting what you said about the arts being dug into Russian culture, even when Russian culture was totally managed, right? And it becomes essential, like, you know, kind of countrywide. Yes. Which we don't have here. No, we have a very different system. Right. But it's interesting, though,

because people knew about it. It was a resource. The arts were a resource. And here we are with all this freedom, or however we're designed here, and that really isn't looked at the same way as a necessity. No, and in fact, I'm an amateur on this subject, but it is a little bit of a, it's an area of interest for me. I think it's fascinating that support of the arts in America historically is kind of tied up with the age of the robber barons.

Yeah, sure, the Carnegies. Yeah, the Carnegies, the Rockefellers. What we have in America is a system that relies on philanthropy and relies on people caring about the arts. On oligarchs that want to give money. Kind of, yes. It's like shrouded in the beauty of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and all the libraries across the country. And so we forget that that's where it came from. But if Andrew Carnegie had been a different kind of, if he had just decided to do something different with his money, if Rockefeller had, we wouldn't have these institutions.

And you have to keep cultivating in new generations the notion that this is a duty and responsibility. If you have a certain amount of money or prestige or power in America, you have to do it. And that is the trick. And I don't think it's obvious to everybody. It's not. It's obvious to like a small group of people. Right. And it's, you know, it's disheartening. I was just in, where was I? Like Houston. That place is just alive with art. I don't know, like there was some oil money somebody had and there's great museums. It's astounding in the middle of Texas.

Great museums. It's astounding in the middle of Texas. But I was also in, you know, when I did Pittsburgh, I played at the Carnegie Library. Right. Which is up on the hill. And it's this weird place, but apparently he built theaters everywhere. And they had, like, gyms and pools and lockers for the people that worked in the industry. And steel.

Yeah. Or you think about the WPA and you think about people. What an amazing thing. What an amazing thing. What an amazing thing. All those great frescoes and sculptures. Yeah, man. They're great ones at the Cincinnati airport. Really?

Yeah. I love that stuff. Yeah. But like alongside of that, like what stuck in my mind before this conversation was, you know, I dated a painter for years. And when I really saw how the art world worked at that level of fine art, it's disgusting. And, you know, it has something to do with what you're talking about, but it's a little lower level. I mean, people that have the kind of money to start foundations and make museums, you know, that I can sort of see and accept, and that's the way what we're talking about, that that needs to be maintained. But what artists who are weirdos, who live this alternate lifestyle because they have no choice because they've been chosen by a muse, have to pander to arms dealers to sell their fucking paintings.

It's wild. It's wild. That's a diplomatic word, but okay. I'm a middle child, Mark. Okay. Okay. And you also are the editor of Vanity Fair. You can't start throwing the arts under the bus in any way.

But, yeah. It feels unrooted in reality. Well, yeah, because, like, what does it mean then? Yeah. Like, you know, when, like, there was something, you know, I guess I'm a romantic when it comes to thinking about that stuff before I met her. But ultimately, the artist is just doing the art for themselves. It's got no higher social purpose other than they have to express themselves. And then to get the notoriety or the level of success or exposure that they need, they have to play this game and be song and dance people or at least of the right sort of moment to get pushed into the ether.

Although I think it can have a higher social purpose. Okay. I hope that's true and I believe it is. You would have to believe that to sort of believe what you set out to do. Yes. Yes. I am an optimist in that way. I don't think all of it has to, but I do think there are currents that sometimes we don't even recognize that can unite a moment.

But that's the most important thing that you're doing. And sometimes people aren't even conscious of it. Well, they don't know. They do not know. Novelist, artist, I mean, the last thing you want to do is ask a novelist what their work means. It's not their job to say it, but it can have meaning. Of course. People can, you know, it can be sort of a force in a different way. But I think what you're doing in the job and how this job has evolved and why you in particular are important is that what you're saying is true.

But what has not existed before is inclusion, right? So there are entire perspectives of different types of people, marginalized people, different ethnic groups that had no representation in this culture for years. And now all of a sudden, just the fact that they are represented is mind-blowing. And those stories and that expression and the history of that becomes like this entire whole new cultural history that's been just obfuscated or shut out. They're just overlooked. But overlooked with malice. Yes, or yes, out of negligence that is malevolent at worst. Right.

Maybe just unknowing at best. But I think of my father who's taking major black artists around the world. Sure. But even that jazz, it's still like it's one of those things where you've got to have, you've got to adapt, you've got to be a person that digs it. Yes, yes. You know, you're not going to make a jazz lover out of somebody who doesn't get it. Yeah, it's true. And it's a hell of a rabbit hole.

It's so interesting how jazz became something that was esoteric, that you had to kind of understand on an intellectual level. Later in the 50s. Late in the 50s, right, with bebop. It was popular. With bebop because you couldn't dance to it. You had to absorb it in a different way. Right, because some radical artists decide we've had enough of this big band shit. But in a way, it's like the history of the novel, which is sort of my hobby horse from

graduate school, is like it started out as this, you know, became this sort of mass genre, and only with modernism, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, people like that, does it become something that is difficult, that is purposefully difficult. I know. And shuts you out. I know. Well, yeah. Well, what do you make of that?

As a scholar. Can I be a diplomat again? Sure. No, I love those novels. I love being challenged as a reader, but also I think it's fascinating. It's a fascinating twist. It's a fascinating reaction to the novel as... Entertainment.

As entertainment and as something that, you know, the novel came of age also with a boom in mass literacy. I'm talking about the English novel. All of a sudden you had all these people who could read. Yeah. And whenever a lot of massive people get a lot of power suddenly or have something available to them, the people at the top start to panic. The elite, the gate.

Because they're like, well, all these people are going to read. What if they read the wrong thing? Yeah. What if they listen to the wrong podcast? Right. They're going to get some bad ideas. Yeah. Maybe they'll get some ideas about overthrowing us.

Right. That would not be good for us. Yeah. So there starts to be a lot of anxiety about policing what people read and things like that. And so there's tension around reading all of a sudden. There's tension around the novel. What year are we talking? I'm talking about the kind of Victorian novel,

like in the middle to late 19th century. We can't have them too educated. We just don't want people to be getting bad ideas from novels. Okay. Which is why if you think of all the novels at the time in which a woman commits adultery, guess what happens to her at the end of the book? Death. Yeah.

She cannot survive. Yeah. Because that would be bad. Right. That would be a bad lesson. Imagine if that were still the case. Yeah. Well, there's a contingent of people in this.

They're trying to make it the case. Well, that, which is interesting. So, so when the novel becomes, when, when novelists start to say, well, actually we're going to, you know, we're going to start to change things up a little bit. It's not like people weren't still writing novels that were very accessible. Of course they were, of course they still are. Yeah. But it's like an assertion that this form can also be challenging and revolutionary. Yes, that you can change the parameters of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or that poetry doesn't have to rhyme. I mean, I'm just...

Right, and also you can be... There's a level of cleverness that has to be applied to outsmart. And you have to learn how to read it. Yes. There's a bar. You have to learn how to read it. Yeah.

And whether they were articulating that directly it yes there's a bar you have to be you have to learn how to read it yeah uh and just the the and whether they were articulating that directly or just kind of enacting it in the kind of books that they wrote i just think it's sometimes it's just a perception in art but i think there are a lot of people who who think that they have to be taught how to look at a painting. Of course. It depends how deep you want to go. And it can keep people away because they feel like they're not getting it or they don't have the context or they don't. And so I... Or they just think it's bullshit.

Or they think it's bullshit, right? It's not for me. It's not my cup of tea. Or it doesn't mean anything anyway. And all of those reactions, it's not my cup of tea, or it doesn't mean anything anyway. And all of those reactions, it's not that they're not valid. I'm just saying this is a sort of area of interest for me in general,

how I think about the world and culture. To bridge that? To kind of, yeah, to knock that down a little bit. Well, that's interesting, because the evolution, what you're saying is that, you know, with modernism comes this, it creates a wall, not unlike philosophy.

You're not going to just jump into Kant and get it. You've got to be part of this unfolding, this history, this language. So now they start to codify music, literature, film even. And in its nature, it's exclusionary because it's designed as such.

Right, right. So now, and that's where you get a sort of kind of a hostile working class reaction. Yeah. Where it's sort of like it's all bullshit. Right. And when you really break that down, they're not wrong. But you have to find the redeeming quality yeah of this stuff and make it tangible yeah and and you also i think it also goes the other way in a way that i think is applicable to vanity fair which is that there's there are there are art forms or forms of

expression yeah that have more meaning than maybe we think. And so take the example of Vanity Fair, which is a magazine that usually has a celebrity on the cover. Now there's a certain type of person who will be like, well, that's not interesting to me. I'm not interested in celebrity. I think there's a lot that's interesting about celebrity. Believe me, it know, how do you present those kind of people and make sure that you're expressing the story of them, of their personality, of their particular type of power in a way that gets at the kind of ideas that underpin it. I think that that's the challenge of our culture right now. I don't ever want to dismiss our culture as shallow. I feel like there's always some idea to be had. That's me being a kind of academic, I guess.

But I think it's more interesting to look at the world that way. Well, no, I think I absolutely do. But I've grown to see both sides of this thing. But before we get into that, because I think that the struggle is more desperate for our side. for our side in that my fear is that all these things, the vulnerability of expression and the willingness to understand are at odds in a way, that there's a fear of people to sort of follow those creative muses that would create the type of stuff that is so enriching in a broad way. But there's also an aggressive resistance to it that just thinks it's useless.

Right. And want to homogenize culture into something, you know, Russian. Yeah. Russian. Yeah. Well, as you say this, I'm thinking about the fact that we have all of these paradoxes in our general culture right now. I mean, there are people who have been elected to government who resist the idea of governing. They don't want to govern.

What is that about? I don't know what happens with that. We're going to find out. This is the Congress that will tell us. Yes, I guess. We're about to figure that out. We're about to learn what a bunch of showboating weirdos who don't even know the job are going to do with the job. Right. The difference between mass appeal of the type of art that everyone can enjoy, which is not without incredible merit. Of course.

Versus these sort of more nuanced and smaller things, these fragile things, these black box theater businesses, this evolution of people finding their way in the arts. Where does that all stand? How do you nourish that? how do you nurture that stuff? I feel like this is the Oscar race conversation every year now. Is it? Isn't it? Kind of.

Well, there's this big, the very first time I came to Los Angeles was to interview Catherine Bigelow. I never came to LA as a child. My whole family- You were a reporter? I was, at the time, at this time, I was the arts editor at Time Magazine,

overseeing coverage of movies, music, books, TV. And it was the year that The Hurt Locker was up against Avatar. Yeah. Classic David and Goliath struggle for the Oscar. And I had met Catherine because our film critic at the time, Richard Corliss, was one of the first people to review The Hurt Locker. It had premiered, I think, at the Venice Film Festival like a full year before but it hadn't been distributed. And I remember he called it a near-perfect war film.

And Catherine had so appreciated that review and that support, and he introduced us at some event. And anyway, I ended up profiling her for the magazine, so I came out. It was the first time I ever came to L.A. Yeah. Because my whole family, my father's family, was mostly on the East Coast.

My mother's family was mostly in India or other places. When we traveled, it was mostly East Coast or Europe. So I remember leaving New York right before a big snowstorm and I got on the plane and I arrived in Los Angeles and it was sunny and I had a cappuccino by the pool and I was like, oh, I get this now.

Yeah, yeah. This is it. I get this. It was great. But it was the Hurt Locker and Avatar yeah yeah it was like

this sort of gem of a film around a difficult subject a deeply political subject

yeah and then it was Avatar you know pure entertainment pure entertainment but also cutting edge technology

at the time and box office. Yeah. And I feel like there's a version of that that happens a lot. Of course. And those are the two poles.

Of Hollywood. Those are the two poles. Of this. But not so much of, you know, painting or theater or books, really. No painting or theater or books, really.

I would say books, yes. But books is sort of known. There's James Patterson and then there's... I'm best friends with Sam Lipsight. I know the trip. You know what I mean? It's a rough road to be

a brilliant satirist or writer. Practically nobody can do it. Right. Not that they're not capable, but they can make it work. It's hard to get people to give a shit. It's hard to get, yes. And the numbers are so small, too. It's terrible.

Yeah. It's heartbreaking, but it's happening now because of the advent of technology that anyone can have. The number of movies that anyone can have like the number of movies that are heart-wrenching and deep and and interesting they just like you don't even know where they are yes they it but that's a whole other issue like so because then when we talk about oscars you know their relevancy becomes difficult for me to assess at this point yeah uh but but you're coming from a you know a history of a magazine that has been a tremendous Hollywood

ass kisser and kingmaker. So, like, how did you, you know, what were some of the decisions you made around, you know, around the way that the old Vanity Fair used to lionize people in power and, you know, and really be, suck-ups. So how have you shifted the perception of the magazine and the point of view of the magazine? Well, first of all, I would say that the phenomenon that you're talking about, that sense of being overwhelmed by the amount of cultural production, to me, is part of the reason for being for places like Vanity Fair.

Because there is still a function to be had. I feel like people overuse the word curate. But, you know, we are trying to winnow things out, not in a kind of classist or exclusionary way, but more just to guide and to be tastemakers because it's what we spend our time doing. We're devoted to it. Curation is all of it now. It's the only weapon against algorithm. Right, right. Human curation.

Yes. Yes. So I have a sense of purpose around that. And I have a sense of purpose around the magazine as a tastemaker. So, so when I was first talking to Connie and asked about the job, I was working at the New York times and what department I was in the books department. Are you friends with Lisa Lucas? I had gone back to my roots. I love Lisa Lucas. Yeah, she's great. Yeah, she's great. And so I was at the Times, and they published the Harvey Weinstein story when I was there.

So the Me Too movement starts getting rolling, and I'm having these conversations about Vanity Fair, and I'm kind of thinking about the magazine and everything. And it just started to feel to me like there's a—and this predates Vanity Fair, the whole founding of Hollywood. There's been a lot of deeply systemic sexism. Dirty, dirty place. Violence against women and also just a lot of power concentrated in the hands of very few people who then exercise a lot of leverage. The studio system. All of it. Yeah.

And it just felt like it felt like vanity fair we're we're good at nostalgia we do nostalgia yeah but i started to think about it in terms of well your nostalgia though has to be updated with the times like you can still look back but are you what time are you looking back to yeah and it felt to me as the me too movement is unspooling and more and more people are coming out and talking about what happened to them, Harvey, whatever, that to be nostalgic for some golden age of Hollywood was to really overlook my sense of purpose around modernizing the magazine and even modernizing the nostalgia in a way. Without being revisionist. No, without being revisionist. Framing it right.

Yeah. And also acknowledging that as generations pass, you know, the things in our living memory change. Pass, you know, the things in our living memory change. So one of the first, the very, very first public tragedy that I remember, well, now I can't remember which happened first, so I'm undercutting my own point here, but Reagan was shot when I was young and John Lennon was killed. And those were two of the, those are two of the things that I remember. Yeah. And I remember the Challenger, the shuttle explosion. That was a big, as a kid, that was a big deal. And then you grow older and you start to realize it's very obvious, but you start to realize that, oh, other people who are younger than me, they don't have these shared memories. They have different shared memories. And you start to realize that it becomes important as a cultural institution to tell some of those stories because you need to get them back into the public consciousness because they can disappear.

Sure. So all of this, to my point about nostalgia, it was like, you know, in a way, the operative nostalgia when I took the job felt like it was more about the 80s and 90s. And you could see it in the culture. You had shows like The Americans, which I loved. You had that HBO series on Chernobyl, which was amazing. And I read about Chernobyl in Time Magazine when I was a kid in my current events class. But people who are 20, it kind of went away. You move on to the next tragedy, right? You move on to the next disaster. I? You move on to the next disaster. I guess so.

But now, because of the pace of things, it could be day to day. It's day to day. So that's what's super interesting. So we have at our disposal a website, which we can publish, and social media feeds we can publish by the minute. But we also have a long lead magazine, which means that— Four to six months? But we also have a long lead magazine, which means that— Four to six months? Well, we're planning ahead depending on the degree of difficulty.

Are you executing an enormous photo shoot or what is it, or reporting a story? And in a way, the pace of the news cycle gives you an advantage because you can follow the news day to day, but you can also take six months and lean back and report out a story. And by the time we come out with it as a long form piece online and in print, half the time these stories are sort of like they've fallen by the wayside, but people are eager to get a holistic sense of what happened. I'm thinking about, for example, the college admissions scandal, the varsity blues thing. When it happened, it was just all over the place. And then the next thing happened, and particularly during the Trump presidency, it was like the next thing happens and you've moved on. So we're able to operate on both of those levels and it's super helpful. But so when I came to the job, I just, I felt like it was going to be

important for me to be in the present because things were changing rapidly and you have to acknowledge that and represent it. But also it felt to me that the job of a magazine is more to look forward than to look back. And then nostalgia's fun, but it's not. Yeah, it seems so. But it needs to speak to the moment.

It can't just be about the past. It has to be about the present, too. That's when it makes sense. Well, that's the trickiest part about all the horror is that, you know,

how do you separate the horror from the things that were actually beneficial? Right. That becomes the story. Can you carry both in your nostalgia? Right. And also in terms of honoring the memories of people of our generation

or the generation ahead of us or even the one before. I mean, it's tricky in the sense that, you know, we now have to make sure that people know the Holocaust was real. Yeah. So that still dealing with that whole other side of truly much more organized fascistic cultural thinking. Yeah. Right.

Because what happens in the present actually changes the past too, changes our perception of the past. I know. Yeah. And it drops off because there's so much. Right. If the singularity has happened, it's a daily brainwashing just because we can't, we don't have the capacity to carry it all. Yeah. But you have to focus. So, and I have to think, I try to think in the moment, but also I think we, all of us at VF, we're trying to think about, well, 25 years from now, 50 years from now, if people look back at the magazine as an artifact, let's say. Yeah. And they look at the covers and they look at the stories. Yeah. They're going to be like, oh, yeah, that was what that time was like.

Yeah. You're going to be like, oh, yeah, that was what that time was like. Yeah. In the way that when you look back at Tina Brown's Vanity Fair in the 80s, you're like, oh, yeah, the 80s. It was all like. Blow and dance. Yeah. And like vulgar.

Money. Glitzy and Donald Trump. Yeah. It becomes indicative of your era. And I feel like we're talking to ourselves in the present, but we also need to put a stake in the ground about kind of what is this moment? What are we living through? Yeah. And acknowledge that, you know, we are, unlike those other times, I think that there are,

you know, bubbles. There weren't bubbles then, really. I mean, you know, some, it seems that some, you know, some things were insulated. Right. But there really wasn't the fact of people living in organized propagandistic realities that, you know, that never meet. Yeah. So, but you have to take that in as part of the culture we live in.

Right. And we also want to represent that the culture is not monolithic anymore. Right. We also want to represent that the culture is not monolithic anymore. So we have the opportunity to put different kinds of people on our magazine covers if we want. Yeah. And show a culture. AOC was on the cover. AOC has been on our cover. And you didn't like Ta-Nehisi edit one?

Ta-Nehisi was a special guest editor. He's great. He was a brilliant editor. I knew he was a brilliant writer and thinker. Well, he's great because he's broad. People sort of hang this idea that he has to be the spokesperson of black America. But he likes comic books. He wants to write comic books.

Yes. And it was was for that reason really fun talking to him about the visuals of magazine making. It was great fun. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so we can extend invitations to people like that.

I asked Gloria Steinem to help us out with our November issue this year because I was so devastated by the Dobbs decision. Yeah. And I just wanted to talk to Gloria Steinem about things

and she very kindly signed on. And we talked a little bit about, you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. I mean, she knows how to wield this kind of fight. So it's at the magazine, we have this perch. We can bring people into the community to help us with our storytelling. And also we can be inclusive about the people we represent in the magazine. And that feels like progress to me. And it feels appropriate. And it's something that I didn't have growing up.

So I feel it personally. Right. And also we live in a country where there's active forces trying to sort of shamelessly deny that history. I mean, I keep coming back to that, but I have to imagine that in all this kind of optimistic talk, there is the idea that it has to be a bulwark against American fascism as it stands now. Yes.

I don't mean to make it too heavy. No, no, not at all. I was just going to say, I don't want you to think that I'm a naive optimist. We have, we did a really, we ran a piece that I was very proud of last year about the new right. movement uh by oh yeah i read that yeah by james pogue yeah yeah and uh and a lot of people read it and and i think it opened woke them up woke people up to the understanding which again it's not that people were unaware but just because trump is out of office doesn't mean that well yeah because i mean that these currents aren't still activated and even growing. Organized. And I think it's really, really important for us to stay on that beat. And you're going to keep seeing us covering that story in various forms

over the course of this year and the next because it does not get any less important. Because they want to hijack culture. That's part of it. Well, yeah, but that's sort to hijack culture. That's part of it. Well, yeah, but that's sort of the wheelhouse. Well, it connects with what we do, yes. Exactly, yeah. Yes, it's not unconnected, for sure.

Yeah, right, right. And I think, yes, I think we don't want to be pie in the sky about America. Well, no, I don't think you are, yeah. I mean, I think that the thing about Vanity Fair, the whole, it's in the title. It's like you have to poke at ideas and at people you have to provoke them a little bit or you're not doing your job. Yeah, I think it's great.

You feel good about it? I do. I do. It's been five years. I feel settled. And the magazine's doing well? Yes. And print is selling?

Print is doing weirdly well. Well, that's doing well? Yes. And print is selling? Print is doing weirdly well. Well, that's because it's pretty. It is. It's nice to have. Like when we started talking about having you as a guest, I didn't know that. Like I just started getting Vanity Fair. I'm like, why is this happening? And I think it was because, you know, I got put on a list or something.

But I'm like, I love Vanity Fair. Good. And Cream Magazine started doing quarterly issues again. I'm so thrilled about it. Yeah, I think that people, I think that there's so much that is not tactile in our world these days. It's exciting to have it again, yeah. And look, I read plenty of stuff on my phone and I listen to podcasts and I do all the things that one does. Yeah.

Get sucked into TikTok dances. Sure. that one does get sucked into TikTok dances. Sure. But not personally. I don't do the dances. But I think it is nice to sit sometimes with a magazine or with a – I mostly read – when I read books, I mostly read in print. Me too. Because I just enjoy –

I can't read on the – Turning a page. But images look a certain way. You know, one thing I like to say, it's a little hokey, but everyone talks about their devices and new technology and this and that. Well, print is also a technology. Sure. It was a powerful one. It was an extremely revolutionary technology.

For sure, yeah. And it has been incredibly resilient. And I think it's worth putting it in that context for people. You know, print is, when we think about stories now, one of the things that's really exciting to me is we now have a studio outfit, BF Studios. Because as you can imagine, a lot of the stories that we do, especially the scandal and the true crime stuff, there's a lot of appetite for those stories to become limited series, documentaries, scripted series etc and so we

now have an arm where we can really move those stories into that pipeline it's very exciting we have some projects that are coming out this year that will have vf but be our first official vf studios projects oh really yeah as tv shows as tv shows oh good and um and so we're always these days one of the great advantages of running a magazine in this day and age is that you have all of these things at your disposal. So when we think about stories, often we're thinking about the idea, but we're not thinking about it as a print story per se. We're thinking about, well, where is this going to land best yeah is this a eight episode podcast is it a series on instagram is it no is it a photo essay is it a video is it a series and you have all this is it is it a print issue that becomes a podcast

that becomes a series right which is which is a can it grow out of that yeah and so we get a lot of bites at the apple and we're also able to take different kinds of risks because we have grown our audience we have you know with people who know us through youtube with people who know us through our podcasts and all these so we can we can tailor our thinking and our ideas and our storytelling to all those places. Now, it's united by the voice of Vanity Fair. It's not like those things are disparate in terms of their voice or their attitude or maybe their worldview, but they can manifest differently according to the platform. And that is very liberating.

Well, that's interesting. And this all happened under your watch. I mean, yes, largely because that's— It just all happened coincidentally. The internet predated me, surely, but yes. No, but it's interesting because— But it's sort of been supercharged. Right. seem to be happening in terms of your time there is that the sort of the cultural decisiveness

around inclusion and broadening the voices, you know, kind of also at the same time, technologically, there's this broadening of possibilities. Right. You know, and you kind of wrangled all that. Yeah, yeah. Well, I was thinking about it in advance of this conversation, and I've worked at magazines now for more than 20 years.

A bunch of different kinds of places. I worked at, I mentioned Time. I used to work at the Paris Review, which is a small literary magazine. Sure. I worked at Art Forum for a long time. You did? Mm-hmm.

Oh, so you were an art critic kind of person? No, I was an editor. Right. I started at Artforum as a copy editor. And so I would read the magazine like eight times a month just copy editing it. So by the time I had done that for a year, I had a pretty firm grasp on the contemporary art scene. And they started giving me pieces to edit, which was super fun. So that's really where I learned to edit,

was at Artform, which is an interesting magazine because it's an industry magazine, and so there's a lot of writing in there that's quite academic and esoteric, but then there are also just reviews. I used to buy it to feel smart. I learned a lot of words

when I was copy editing card for him. I'm not going to lie. But anyway, I've worked at a bunch of different magazines. And there's something about this industry where it always happens when you get to the place and somehow they're like, oh, it was better back in the old days. In the old days at time, it was always like, oh, they used to have a bar cart. Yeah. Oh, they had, you could do this and that. In the old days, at time, it was always like, oh, they used to have a bar cart. Yeah, yeah. Oh, you could do this and that. And it's like, okay, I hear that.

But one of the things I was thinking about is that in the old days of magazines, when they were just these very steady generators of revenue, you know, tons of ads. You look back at magazines in the 80s, and the money was just pouring in. Well, there's a way in which they could become prisoners of their own success because it was just print.

The metrics were very simple, and particularly in the realm of celebrity, people knew what the sales were, the newsstand sales and the subscription, and you knew that if you put this movie star on your cover, you were going to sell a lot of magazines. And so every year that movie star would appear again on the cover, because why would you monkey with this formula that sold a lot of magazines? And so there was something about the limited nature of the platform in addition to the reliability of the business that discouraged people from taking risks.

There was no upside to taking a risk. Why? When you could just have the same, you know, you knew what this was. Whereas today, there's a lot of upside to trying new things. Sure. Right. Sure. Right. Exactly. Because you have a bunch of different platforms at your disposal. And also, you just never know what's going to happen. And it's not dictated.

It's not dictated. There's not like someone on high. Right. By ad sales either, really. No. And things land in really interesting ways in the culture now. And also, they're going to move through the culture differently. The whole concept of virality.

The idea, you know, when I was at Time, it was my editor always said, you have four seconds with a cover for people to kind of absorb it and get it on a newsstand. But of course, we don't think about seeing magazine covers on newsstands anymore. We think about seeing them on our phones. using covers on newsstands anymore. We think about seeing them on our phones. Sure. And so what's that spark of recognition like? And how do people share those visuals?

And how do they interact? You know what's interesting for me? It's not even covers. It's, you know, because I get, you know, the Apple News Feed. It's the Vanity Fair logo. Right, right. Which has a different kind of power now. That's right. For that reason.

which has a different kind of power that's right for that reason so so i feel this sense of liberation about kind of how we deploy our voice and our logo our brand i hate that word but you know sure and and it's it's quite it's very it's a different kind of cultural influence that I think is exciting. Yeah. And it's, and it's evolving. It has to evolve. If it doesn't evolve, it's like evolves daily.

Yeah. I mean, it has to like, you know, the, I would imagine not unlike, even though it's a monthly magazine and you're thinking, you know,

long and short and whatever, but like, I would imagine that it's not unlike that Russian newspaper where, you know, every day is just sort of like, here we go. For sure. And in that same way, you never get it exactly right. You don't have a perfect day. So you have to keep improving and changing. Is that you can just sort of like, just fix it.

Well, we try not to do that. We try to get it exactly right. But it's like teaching. In my graduate program, I taught. And you can have a great day as a teacher, but you know you can still get better. Yeah, of course. You can connect in a different way. Yeah.

And you're just kept animated by that possibility. Yeah. And also by the fact that, you know, if you're engaged and you have a curious mind, it's always going to be blown, you know, almost daily now just by content. And one of the privileges of my position is that our audience is that way. Yeah. Like we have a sophisticated and curious audience. They actually, they want to discover. Yeah. Their game. Yeah.

We have found this. That's great. Because I've taken risks. Yeah. And they've been welcomed, and that is really rewarding. Well, great. Good job. Nice talking to you.

Nice talking to you, too. Thank you, Mark. There you go. Great conversation. Radhika Jones, Vanity Fair's Hollywood issue for 2023 comes out in February. All right. Hang out a minute, you guys. Hang out. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. where I talked to an actual cannabis producer.

I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family.

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Speaking of Vanity Fair, it was right before COVID hit in 2020 that I went to the Vanity Fair Oscar party. I met Ronan Farrow there, and he came on the show a few days later, and we talked about a lot, actually. You know, Woody Allen was my hero. Yeah, I get it. And it took a long time to integrate the reality of what this was about for me as a guy who respected the guy. Yeah. Yeah. No, I completely get it.

And look, I come face to face with this a lot. His fans, there's a little niche of like Woody Allen super fans who literally just they live on the Internet and they just haze my sister all day. They're just set, you know the the worst misogynistic slurs you can imagine what does she not i hope she doesn't engage with i try to tell her to not look at that stuff you can't look at that i know you can't you're smart you're smart not to but it it is an interesting thing and i see it in various fan bases i see it in the michael jackson fan base there's almost a um like a flat earther uh. I mean, when you really have someone who you idolized and tied to your own identity in a very specific way, I understand it can become really painful to acknowledge the possibility that that person might be complicated and might have done bad things. And also that borders on sort of a belief system trip.

You know, like, you know, that you don't know that person really and your belief in them or your relationship with them is completely unreal. It's totally abstract. It's abstract, but like the human heart and mind needs to feel part of these people. They deify them.

It is exactly the same instinct that leads us to religion. Sure. And I get it. I'm sympathetic to it. But look, I'm actually... Yeah, but these are human people. They're human people.

And I think that I'm actually a great example of those tensions because, look, I, more than any superfan, would love to not buy my sister's allegations and have a much simpler relationship with this part of my history yeah um and you know tried to to shrug it off for for years and you did

yeah and and that so uh didn't want to never talked about it publicly uh but i mean with her tried to tried to kind of reduce it to i could joke here and there about he married my other sister but like not really touch the more serious criminal allegations. So was it because you had not, you know, connected with your empathy for your sister or? It was because it was easier to look the other way. And therefore I get the fans looking the other way. That's episode 1098 with Ronan Farrow. And it's available right now for free. To get all WTF episodes ad-free, sign up for WTF Plus by going to the link

in the episode description or clicking on the WTF Plus link at WTFpod.com. On Thursday, I talked to Dave Franco about the new film he directed and wrote with his wife, Alison Brie. My co-star, Alison Brie. Guitar time. Stratocaster time. Thank you. Thank you. BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES BOOMER LIVES Boomer lives. Monkey. Lafonda.

Yeah. Cat angels everywhere. Man.