WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 594 - Britt Daniel

Episode Date: April 15, 2015

Spoon frontman Britt Daniel tells Marc what it was like growing up in Texas as a sensitive kid who liked The Cure. Britt and Marc also trace the path of young heartbreak that preceded the formation of Spoon. Also, Jon Ronson returns to the garage to talk about his new book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed. 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.

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alcohol 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 all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuck sticks this is mark maron this is wtf welcome to the show got a packed show today uh brit daniel from the band spoon is going to be here in the latter part of the show i can say that because we've got a another meaty guest on the show as well uh the uh the uh the the amazing john ronson has written a book uh about shame so you've been publicly shamed it's out now we talked a bit about this book on episode 473 and he was in the middle of writing the book now i i think some of you by now have

probably realized that if i've had a guest on before who i enjoy and like which is most of my guests if they've got something that they uh you know want to get out in the world they they want a little help or they want to talk about it some more, I'll have them on for what we call shorties. That's what we call them behind your back. I call them a shorty interview. Though John and I did get into it a bit. We got into it a bit.

It's a heavy topic, the public shame business. Shame in general weighs heavy on all of us. Well, many of us. Some know it better than others. Some nourish it for no reason at all. If you're out there nourishing shame without any purpose, you should probably check yourself. It might be where you're most comfortable. And that's what keeps religions in business.

And that's what keeps religions in business and also psychiatrists and also the general capitalist model remains in business because of persistent, chronic and nourished shame. You need relief from that shit. Get something in you. Go buy something. Go talk to Jesus. Go get some pills. Do you really need it? Is the shame based in anything? Shame is not guilt. It's something deeper. It's something deeper. It's a point of view on who you are.

It's not related to action necessarily. And sometimes it's very old and very young and not so definable as to where it comes from. But it's paralyzing. Not like cancer is paralyzing, but it's sort of a soul cancer. Rambling on, tonight I'll be in Madison, Wisconsin. Might be a few tickets left for that. On Friday, April 17th, the Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall in Pittsburgh. I think there's a few tickets left for that. On Friday, April 17th, the Carnegie of Homestead

Music Hall in Pittsburgh. I think there's a few tickets left for that. Saturday, April 18th, the Royal Oak Music Theater in Royal Oak, Michigan, outside of Detroit there. Might be a few for that. Don't know. Toronto on Sunday, April 19th. First show is sold out. Second show, maybe a few tickets at the Bluma Appel Theater. You can go to WTFpod.com and get links to these things. That's what's happening this weekend. The next weekend we're doing Texas. So

that's the story. If you want to go see me, I think there's still some opportunity. Not a lot of tickets, you know, but there are some. So if you're in any of those places and you're just hearing about this shit, go do it. So last night I do this thing called baked comedy at the baked potato which is this classic little uh jazz rock uh you know uh music bar hole this box of a room that's magic it's a magic room i've been there before i've talked to you about this before

the show baked is basically it's a monthly show where comics can tell a story and also sing or play an instrument or whatever with a band that brendan small from metalocalypse fame that he's put together and they're amazing musicians they're just fucking awesome i put you know who was in the band last night uh mike caneli do you know who mike caneli is he's a fucking wizard he's one of them genius wizards of the guitar played with zappa towards the end steve vi uh other guys at noodle joe travers on drums who's a genius pete griffin on bass bass genius mike keneally on keyboards and guitar mike keneally, the wizard, the wizard. And I told the story about talking to Mick and Keith, and Dean Del Rey sang, and I played, and the fellas jammed. And these wizards, they come up to me, and they're like,

you sounded great. Mike Keneally, fucking high-level initiated guitar wizard um you know tells me i did great and i and i accept it and i felt like i did great but then i realized like you know it's interesting because this happened once before many years ago you know i'm an amateur guitar player but i play seriously and and i i don't grow so much you know skip my skill set, or I'm not practicing to become a noodle wizard, but, you know, I do play to sort of, you know, get my chops in order and express my feelings on the instrument. And then when somebody who is a guitar wizard says, you know,

you sounded great, part of me is like, I know he's not condescending, but see, the thing that I have that those guys will never have again is the limitations the limitation of what i know is that i'm an energetic you know i have a lot of emotion but i'm severely limited on the instrument you know in in relation to somebody who's a wizard so i've got to really work within those limits to push through. And if you do that, if you have limitations in whatever you do, but you are able to push everything you need to push through those limitations, you can express yourself thoroughly and simply and concisely in a way that wizards will never have again. Because wizards can do anything.

They can almost do it second nature. They can hear something and recreate it. And so the one thing that's gone forever is amateur passion. I got feels. And I got to get some out now. In the rawest form possible. Why hide the feels behind the noodle that's my that's my take on guitar oh don't laugh at yourself i love talking to john ronson i do

want to preface this that he brought his son over who's a fan of the show and and just a and the kid hadn't slept in about a day because they were traveling and uh he was all raw and cool and fun and he was just sitting there kind of laughing to himself and me and his dad were talking it was very adorable so that that was what was happening so here i'm going to talk a bit to john ronson about his new book so you've been publicly shamed What happened to you? Okay, so this is when I was first starting out in journalism. And I was working for this magazine that just closed down called Loaded. And they phoned me up and they said that you can be flown on Concorde to Prince's house in Minneapolis.

Do you want to do it? Yeah. So I said, yes, please. Okay. So I turned up at the airport and I said, hi, I'm here to fly on Concorde. And the woman said, are you the courier? And I said, no, I'm a passenger. And she turned to the woman next to her and said, find out if he's the courier.

So that was like a bad start. Yeah. What does that mean? I don't the courier. So that was like a bad start. Yeah. What does that mean? I don't know. Like, I didn't look like a passenger. I must be delivering something. Oh, really?

Yeah. Okay. And even when I said I was a passenger, she was still convinced I was delivering something. So then I got on the plane and I was seated next to Keith Richards. Come on. In first class? Well, it's all first class on Concord. It's all one class. Is it still around? No more, right? No, no. One crashed. That first class? Well, it's all first class on Concord. It's all one class.

Is it still around? No more, right? No, no. One crashed. That was the end of it. Yeah. And in fact, the story I'm about to tell will give an insight into why Concord is no longer operational. Okay.

So it's you and Keith. Me and Keith at the back and smoking. Yeah. This is when I still smoked. So I thought, oh shit, I'm going to spend the next you know three and a half hours looking straight ahead and not acknowledging the fact that i'm sitting next to keith richards no impossible right well i swear to god within a minute he's he pokes me in my ribs i can't remember like the first thing he said to me but within within about 10 seconds he said to me, I've done everything, man.

So we're talking. Yeah. And then Concord takes off and it reaches like Mac 2. Yeah. And everybody like applauds because that's when you hear it. Do you hear the sonic? Yeah. Yeah.

And it says at the front Mac 2. Yeah. And like this applause. And then it started to slow down. And, like, Concorde, I mean, I hadn't been on Concorde before, but I assumed that once it, like, reaches Mach 2, it doesn't just immediately slow down. But it did. Yeah.

And the captain came on the Tannoy and went, you may have noticed that we have slow hydraulic like that. Yeah. Like his, the tannoy wasn't working. Yeah. So like,

you know, Keith Richards seems fine. But then the guy in front of me, who was like the head of a radio station, Capital Radio, turned around and said, apparently the last time this happened, they gave everybody free vouchers

for Marks and Spencers which is like a kind of food store in England and then the woman on the next thing and by now the plane's juddering it's like juddering alarmingly and the woman next to me is going apparently we get vouchers

we get free vouchers like £500 vouchers and I'm thinking fuck we're going down you're not thinking about vouchers like 500 pound vouchers and i'm thinking fuck and like this we're going down yeah you're not thinking about vouchers yeah and i swear like this story i'm telling you i'm not this is no exaggeration so then the captain like tries to come on the tannoy again goes out i'm sorry apparently the tannoy is hydraulic fuel and uh so then the captain comes out of the cockpit and starts addressing people four by four. And Keith Richards goes,

so he's like way down the front of the plane, and Keith Richards goes, I don't care about this, but I'll tell you who is going to be pissed off. And I said, who? He said, Mick. He's down the front. And Mick Jagger like turns and waves at Keith.

Come on. I swear. I swear. he's down the front and so mick jagger like turns and waves at keith come on i swear i swear you don't uh and then uh and obviously i'm thinking like fuck if this plane goes down like for eternity it's going to be like mick jagger keith richards liam neeson and 97 others yeah you're not you didn't make top billing at all no fucking liam neeson was on the point yeah liam neeson too wow yeah so then the captain like finally he's like like addressing people four by four and he reaches us and like he decides to like i guess he has to look at somebody so he looks at me yeah and he says you may have noticed that the plane is like slowed down dramatically it's because we've lost our hydraulic fuel there's a leak and we've lost our hydraulic fuel we're going to turn back to to london we may or may not make it i swear um but just enjoy you know the food and at this point the guy in front of me turns around and goes the vouchers

mention the vouchers we he said we may or may not make we may look this is my memory of said we may or may not make it. We may. Look, this is my memory of it. We may or may not make it. That's my memory. And Keith just sat there. Yeah.

So I said to Keith, you know, you've said you've done everything. And he said, well, I've never flown over Greenland twice in one day. So that's my, yeah. He's clever, man. He's quick. I know, I know.

I noticed that too, just talking to him for 10 minutes. Yeah, yeah. They're both very witty, yeah. Hey, so thank you for having me back, Mark. Well, I mean, we had talked about this book when you were on the show before, and I'm happy you're in Los Angeles. This is the So You've Been Publicly Shamed book. Yeah.

And this is a book about shame in general, in a way. Yeah. Last time I came on the show, I was still writing it, and I hadn't told anybody what I was doing. And then you said, so what are you working on? And I said, I'm writing a book about public shame. And I immediately regretted saying it to you, because loose lips sink ships.

And I thought, fuck, I don't even know where it's going yet. Oh, so you didn't think you'd finish it, perhaps? Maybe not. Or maybe one of your bastard listeners would steal the idea and get the... Oh, yeah, steal the idea that you didn't explain at all. Yeah. Right.

So I was skirting around it, so I thought maybe it'd be nice now that the book's out. Well, now it's here, now it's in America. It took a little while to get it here because people have already gotten it in the UK, right? And I read the excerpted piece in the new yorker about the woman who what was her job what is she justine sacco she was a pr woman yeah uh she's like she's kind of like does she the thread no but it's a really remarkable and

difficult story yeah and and all the more reason, I love it. So difficult, it makes people uncomfortable. And for instance, I read something in the Washington Post that said, like, John Ronson's right to be writing a book about how we've gone, like, shaming crazy. But he shouldn't have, like, made Justine Sacco a hero. She's the wrong person. And that obviously made me, like, even more happy that I was making her a hero, because she's difficult

and she makes people feel uncomfortable. Right. So her story is that she's got 170 Twitter followers. Right. PR woman. Right. I mean, we went crazy. Twitter went like crazy that night.

It was like Lord of the Flies. So basically she's tweeting. She's at Heathrow. She's about to go to Cape Town. And she tweets, going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white. Right. So she's about to go to Cape Town and she tweets, going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white.

Right. So she's got no replies. Easily misunderstood joke. Yeah, it's definitely an easy to misunderstand, you know, one stripped of its nuance. What she was trying to do. I mean, you know what she was trying to do in that joke. What? She was trying to be like Randy Newman or South Park.

She was trying to, like, you know, mock white privilege in a self-reflexive way by doing an extreme... Without really realizing that text or Twitter has no... There's no way to define one's voice if it floats there without the identification of the individual behind it. Right. But she never thought about any of that because she never got any replies she only had 170 twitter followers so yeah so like you know obviously she felt that sad feeling that we all feel when the internet oh no one liked it yeah no one likes me no one's congratulated not only does no one like you but they're going to come raining terror upon you well she had no idea you know because she just she just like got on the plane, you know, got no replies, felt sad.

No one congratulated her for being funny. Turned off the phone, like, you know, stretched, fell asleep, woke up 10 hours later, turned on her phone. And straight away, there's a text from somebody she hasn't spoken to since high school that said, I am so sorry to see what's happening. That was what she woke up. That's what what's happening. That was what she woke up. That's what she landed to. That's what she landed to. And then another text from her best friend. You need to phone me now.

You are the worldwide number one trending topic on Twitter. And, you know, she realized what had happened. But I mean, it was unbelievable. So it starts with, like, the humanitarians, like, in the light of this terrible tweet, I am donating to aid to Africa. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then it's like, it gets a little bit darker.

Yeah. Like, let's get this cunt fired. Yeah. Everybody go report this cunt. Yeah. Then it gets darker still. Like, somebody HIV positive should rape this bitch and then we'll find out if her skin color protects her from AIDS. Which, by the way, nobody went after that person.

That's pretty gnarly. Yeah. It's like we can only handle destroying one person a night. Yeah. that's pretty gnarly yeah we can only it's like we can only handle destroying one person a night yeah so and then her employers tweeted um this is an outrageous insulting comment um employee currently unreachable on an international flight and that's when things went crazy because suddenly like a hundred thousand people or more millions of people everybody was on twitter that night this tweet overwhelmed their timeline i mean were you on Twitter that night. This tweet overwhelmed their timeline. I mean, were you on Twitter that night?

I don't remember it. Okay. Well, it certainly overwhelmed my timeline. And I thought, like everybody else thought that night, which is, you know, wow, somebody's fucked. And I got, like, excited. And then I thought, I'm not sure that was a racist tweet. I'm not sure that that was what was intended there.

But anybody who said that that night was like well you're just a privileged fucker too so shut up so everyone was scared couldn't chime in really well everyone was scared and you don't have the bandwidth

you don't have the space to sort of present that there's no time some people have experimented with long form narrative tweets you know patten's been doing a bit of that and and he you know and and i've done it in my past but to actually create a defense in the middle of a shit storm yeah on twitter it's it's not it's not practical because everything you say at that point is just more evidence for the prosecution sure and it'll get divided in in within people's timelines with other stuff and people have to put it together and if you don't have a real voice

that anyone necessarily cares about you're just going to be this fragmented uh narrative in the timeline yeah and then even even if um even if like justine did have a good defense she was asleep and oblivious. Oh, my God. It's just a nightmare. I mean, the mild shaming that I've gotten on Twitter, I can only imagine exponentially just devastating. Well, you know what happened next? I mean, so after that, I haven't even told you the worst of it yet.

So as soon as, like, we found out that she was, like, oblivious to her destruction, that became hilarious to us. That became like a great narrative arc. So it's like, oh my God, imagine what Justine Sack is going to be like when the plane lands and she turns on her phone. And then a hashtag started to trend worldwide. Hashtag, has Justine landed yet?

And people were tweeting, oh, I so want to go home, but everybody in this bar is so into hashtag, has Justine landed yet. You know, people were like gathered around smartphones. It was like the Truman Show. It was like the world's worst surprise party ever. But did she even get on Twitter when she landed? Well, finally, when she landed.

So everyone was like, Justine Sacco lands in like, because somebody linked to a flight tracker website. So everybody could watch in real time as she was getting closer. Like what was she going to do when she landed? Oh, shit. You know what? This isn't like crazy trolls. Everybody wants to regulate against trolls.

This wasn't trolls. This was us. This was nice people like us. Sure. seem to be empathetic uh towards people um dying of AIDS in Africa we created this incredibly unempathetic um this monster was there was the press already showing pictures of her places well somebody um somebody said come on twitter is anybody going to go to Cape Town airport to tweet her arrival I want pictures so somebody went to the airport to tweet her arrival and took pictures of her and like if you want to know what it looks like to have just found

out that hundreds of thousands of people have destroyed you you can see it she's just there at baggage claim wearing dark glasses looking utterly crushed and terrified and you talked to her yeah like so I was on this journey because I was really interested in the people being destroyed by us because I would notice that, you know, I was joining in on these things all the time.

And then, you know, if you'd asked me back then, oh, could that person you just destroyed, I mean, A, I probably wouldn't remember who they were or what it was that they did. But then if I did remember, I think, oh, I'm sure they're fine.

So I wanted to meet people to find out. And actually... Her life was destroyed. Our victims. And I'm talking about, you know... Don't rope me into your horrible behavior, John Ronson. You've done it a bit. I don't know if I have done it a bit.

Have I jumped on board? Yes. But I'm not... I think you've done it a bit. We've all done it a bit. But also, don't you think we are doing to people like justin sacker the thing that really we're most terrified might happen to us sure yeah and that's weird i mean i was really interested in that like why like we all walk around in life like permanently terrified of being shamed like that we've all got something

bubbling away within us that we're terrified would just destroy our reputation but that also implies to me and i and i was reading a little bit in that in the book about that group but see the fact that you say that we all walk around with these secrets implies that we are already ashamed so you know and i think that's a right observation that most people are walking around in some intensity of shame, personal shame. And the fear of being found out would be to shine a light on this horrible thing in themselves. But I think the shame already exists. Yeah. Oh, God, the shame does exist.

That group you mentioned, this is a group which tries to eradicate. Well, what happened to her, first of all? Okay, so Justine. Okay, so finally she landed. They took her photograph i mean obviously she lost her job straight away but you know after everybody else had just forgotten about it because it would been gone um within a few days by the way in november 2013 she was googled 40 times um between december the 20th and the end of december she was googled 1 million 220 000 times and um she was more like if you

typed justin into google that night you'd get justine sacco before you got justin bieber she was being searched for more often than justin bieber so now it's resided yeah and then she she vanished and everybody just moved on and in fact you ask him, I asked one of the guys who was like the lead shamer, like this guy, Sam Biddle, who works for like Valleywag and Gawker. And he was the person who first alerted, you know, a large number of people to the tweet. So one of Justine's 170 Twitter followers sent it to him

and he retweeted it to his 15,000 followers. And I asked him how it felt. And he said, it felt delicious. And then the conversation got onto how he thought she was now. And he said, I'm sure she's fine. And that's because we want to, that's that kind of glibness is exactly what all of us feel when we're in the midst of shaming somebody. We want to destroy somebody, but we don't feel bad about it. I don't know if I exactly feel that. I understand what you're saying. But I, you know, I always wonder. Do you know what I mean? I like how understand what you're saying, but I always wonder.

Do you know what I mean? Like, how are they now? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I certainly started to wonder that. So I went on this kind of journey around America, meeting our victims, meeting the people who had been destroyed by us. Like, all my life, like with the Minister of Goats and the psychopath test, like the crazy people who were doing the destroying were people a long way over there. Justine Sacco, she was destroyed by us so i went on this journey like trying to get into the homes of the people who had been destroyed meeting them in restaurants they looked like these kind of you know so i met

justine in a restaurant three weeks later and she was wearing the business clothes of her former life um it was like like the living dead it was like a kind of zombie film where they're wandering like these spectral figures really during the earth yeah she was crushed she said that she cried out her body weight in the first 24 hours and she'd wake up in the middle of the night forgetting who she was i mean this is like ptsd yeah um you know she forgot she she was scared that she was going to lose herself. So she lost her job. And she wasn't fine. And she wasn't fine for a year.

The only person who offered her a job was the owner of a yachting company in Florida who said, I'm completely on your side. And she thought, I don't know anything about yachts. So it's this guy. Somebody thinks white people can't get AIDS. Was he? She turned him down. She ended up going to Addis Ababa to work with a charity

helping reduce maternal mortality rates in Ethiopia, which she kind of loved, partly because I think there was no internet there. And I think she kind of daydreamed about maybe this is my new life. But of course, that wasn't a new life because she was a kind of New York City person. So she came back to a town where things still weren't okay for her. She couldn't date because you google everybody that you date and she was the aids tweet woman and um finally so i wrote about so i met her a couple of times yeah since my piece came out and people were like saying to her like my book um oh my god you know look at what we did to you actually that's not true nobody said that to her people said oh my god look at what those people did to you like they weren't the fuckers who were doing it in the first place not me i wasn't even

home that night right um but of course you know there's nothing more traumatizing as a human being you know when you meet these people like i did and what i love with the other people that you met oh other people a woman called lindsey stone what did she do she made a similar joke where on twitter on no on facebook where she had... She worked with adults with learning difficulties and she had this running joke where she would pose in front of a sign and do the opposite.

So she'd loiter in front of a no loitering sign. So she takes the people in her care to Arlington National Cemetery, sees the sign that says, keep off the grass, thinks, oh, will I stand on the grass? And thinks, no, no, that'll get me into trouble. Then she sees a sign that says, keep off the grass. Thinks, oh, well, I stand on the grass. And thinks, no, no, that'll get me into trouble. Then she sees a sign that says, silence and respect.

Inspiration strikes. She crouches in front of the sign, pretending to shout and flip the finger. So that goes around the world. You know, die, cunt, cut out our uterus. Let's rape this bitch. You know, disrespecting the military. She doesn't leave her home for a year and a half reads every tweet every tweet snakes its way into you know believes everything that people are saying about her even though she knows it's just a joke about a sign feels

completely worthless it's totally illiquid and what happened to her well after after i mean now like justine my book my book has kind of brought them back in. It's like the opposite to, there's nothing more traumatizing than being like cast out. And what happened? Who were some other people? There's a guy called, well, there's two people called Hank and Adria. This is a really dark story. So Hank is in the audience of a tech conference in Santa Clara and he's whispering some stupid beavers and butter joke

to the guy next to him, something about big dongles. You can imagine him doing big dongles. He half notices the woman in front take a photograph. He thinks she's taking a photograph of the crowd. So he leans forward, trying not to mess up her shot. Ten minutes later, a conference organiser comes up and says, can you come with me? So they're taken into a quiet room

and told there's been a complaint about sexual comments. And he's like, oh, I'm so sorry. He knew exactly what they meant and he apologised. And they said, oh, that's fine. And that was it. So they left the conference. On their way to the airport, they're kind of nerdy. so they the whole confrontation thing was like you know anxiety and she said to them on the way to the airport they decide to they suddenly think how did the woman in front

communicate her complaint to the conference organizers and the the nightmare was that it was it was in the form of a public tweet so they had a look and there was a photograph of the two of them. She'd taken a photograph of them and wrote, not cool jokes about big dongles right behind me. So the next day he was called into his office and fired. Hank is like heartbroken he's been fired. He posts a message on this website called Hacker News saying, you know, I'm really sorry that I upset this woman

and, you know, I take responsibility for that. But she turned around and took my photograph and sealed my fate. And I've got three kids and getting fired was terrifying. So every, like, men's right blogger and troll just turned on her. And it's like a man's out of a job because if some stupid comment was overheard by a woman with more power than sense let's crucify this cunt right cut out her uterus yeah so to this day like 18 months two years later she still hasn't got another job she had to leave

home she got fired she got fired because um some people from 4chan did a DDoS attack on her company's website, which is like some kind of malicious program. Yeah, where the website gets overwhelmed and can't function. So she got fired from her job. So it's like carnage. In that story, everybody thought they were punching up, right? Everybody thought they were like Rosa Parks fighting the good fight. But in fact, what happens? So she thinks that the guys are kind of emblematic of a male-dominated

tech industry so that's why she does it and then all these men are like you know this is feminism out of control so let's let's kill this cunt right everybody fucking thinks they're punching up and it's just carnage but also the the other thing is is like you know you know william burroughs once talked about a a nation of rats and that the idea that Big Brother is watching us is ridiculous because he doesn't have to. That like, you know, that if you have to walk through life nervous, that if you make a joke that may be, you know, just appropriate to the conversation you're having, but culturally inappropriate, it's your business. But there's absolutely no privacy anymore in any context. Yeah. That if there's somebody around with a phone, it's happened to me.

Like, you know, I'm just sitting there talking to somebody and I'll see a tweet like, Maren's right next to me at the thing. You know, and I'm like, why? Why? Yeah. Yeah. I had the other day actually in England. I was like, somebody came up to me and said, so what was it like going to Stanley Kubrick's house?

And I started telling him the story. And I looked down at his hand and he was recording it. He was taping it all with his with his phone yeah i mean i agree with you about the surveillance thing you know everyone's worried about the nsa spying on us yeah it's not the nsa it's a guy next to you yeah we're gonna get us yeah exactly we are gonna get sure we're volunteering yeah the information this is why i really wanted to write this book because i wanted people to feel like my book makes people panic when they read it and i want that because i want people to feel what it feels like to be destroyed by us.

This is what it feels like because we don't want to think about what it feels like. So that's why, you know, your heart pounds, I think, when you read my book for that reason. My heart pounds every time I tweet something or sometimes when I say something publicly. You know, I don't know what's going to, I mean, the type of vigilance you have to maintain. It's not even a matter of censorship. It's you probably aren't going to say something you wouldn't say normally. But but it's very easy to be taken out of context. So if you got like ideas and jokes and little comment and thoughts that you that you sort of dare not post anymore.

Well, I just check the tone. I, you know, I make sure that it it won't be misread i try to be aware of that yeah like i'm not you know my point of view is what it is and i tend to like lately i've gotten a little more uh sort of educated about what is and isn't offensive and made new decisions around words that that offend people and don't and have decided which ones I agree with and which ones I don't. But no, I'll generally just make sure that it's clear because what you're saying, it's a matter of clarity in the context of that platform.

Yeah. I mean, clarity helps, but I don't think clarity solves the problem i think the the problem is that we've we have created i mean the bullies have taken over the school and we've created this kind of world where it reminds me of the stars you know when they would ask starzy um they asked they got to start the stars the east german secret police got a psychologist to try and work out why they were just getting so many willing informants like the stasi pay was shit and the workload was massive because more and more like human behaviors were getting redefined as like enemy activities right in

you know the stasis east germany and the psychologist worked out that basically the reason why they got so many informants was because they asked them and they said yes and it's like a why and it was just this they said well it's just the desire to make sure that your neighbor is doing the right thing and when we look back on these times like the stasi or mccarthyism it's like we don't see those as the good guys yet that's that's the system that we're falling into. Right, but as you pointed out earlier, it's not about that. It's to deflect. It's to deflect the possibility

of you becoming a suspect. Of it happening to us, like the beast is sated, like if someone else is being strong. Yeah, because somebody HIV positive should rape this bitch and then we'll find out if her skin color protects her from AIDS.

Nobody went for him that night because everybody was just so ferocious. No, but even worse than that, you know, you look at McCarthy, you look at Roy Cohn and what, you know, Roy Cohn turned out to be, you know, a closeted homosexual, you know, who had his own axe to grind and his own self-hatred around that. And that, you know, that overcompensating was a complete deflection from his own shame. So it seems to me that you know hitler's willing executioners or or the good germans or these informers for for the stasi

yeah you know we're people that sort of like well if i get out ahead of this yeah then they're not going to find out this shit about me i mean there may be some people within that group who thought they were you know perfect citizens but still you know after a certain point and everyone's biggest fear is that you know you you're going to be you know corralled up with the rest of them that even no matter how you behave there's going to be a mistake or they're going to find that one thing so why not get ahead of it and throw the other guy under the bus yeah yeah you know when i was writing this book um I was talking to this guy and I told him one of these stories and he kind of shivered. And he said, it's about the terror, isn't it? And I said, the terror of what?

And he said, the terror of being found out. Yeah. And, you know, when the Justine Sackler story was my when my book was extracted in The New York Times and most people were like, oh, you very compassionate towards Justine and were glad I wrote it but then a few people were like so what racist is John Ronson going to put his cape on for next and so I didn't the only thing I wrote because you're right like anything you say when you're in the eye of a shaming is like evidence for the prosecution so the only thing I wrote was by the way this isn't a standalone article it's an extract extract from my book. So you've been publicly shamed. So then people were like, oh, now John Ronson saying it's an extract from a book. Like now? Yeah. It's a fucking extract from a book. And then somebody said, I didn't

reply at all to anybody else because I had to stay silent because you're profoundly undemocratic. So somebody wrote, why isn't John Ronson replying to any of us? And somebody else wrote, because John Ronson only replies to men. Well, see, that's the thing. It's like, I think the important thing that you're saying here, and that is different than what happened to Justine, is that, you know, you are now, you know, in this other position. But the important thing is somebody said, the one thing we all forget, it's one fucking asshole.

But, you know, and then maybe four other assholes get on board. Like, by the time they were coming at you it was not a million people no it was completely countable yeah and and if you were to really do the research probably you know five of them are the same fucking person over and over again yeah and that but see the the the mysterious sort of notion of the internet is that when you're sensitive and when you're involved in this if two people say shitty things the the internet's saying it yeah but you're not justine you know and and those people are going to hang that on you but because i was wondering about this recently is there were a

lot of people that were you know busting my balls early on when i got a tv show or when the podcast was starting off just sort of like you're you're not going to last you know you're just like louie you're ripping off louie or whatever know you just like louis you're ripping off louis or whatever their fucking criticism was they didn't like me so they were gonna hit all my insecurities like you're not that funny your podcast sucks not gonna last it's like i'd like to hear from them now i would like them i would like an opportunity to say i would you know if i was more obsessive and more crazy, I would go back through my tweets from five years ago and find those three or four fuckheads and go like, I think you were wrong. I just wanted to retweet this, you know, five years later.

And just to show you. But you know what you open yourself up to is like, you still suck. But it's true. So you, I mean, both of me, I'm with you. It's like a small handful of people, but it still snaked its way into us, and it still had an impact. I'm completely, I think it's destroying my brain, John. I think that Twitter is, whatever it's opening up to, whatever's opening up in the mind, whatever, because it does have the same compulsive feeling as an addiction, and I'm an addictive

person, so I know the feeling. So when you're locked in like that that and you're experiencing this rush of dopamine from both negative things and positive things, there's a speedball effect, but you feel it in your heart, you feel your gut sink, you feel your brain race. Anxiety. Oh, yeah, everything. And sometimes elation, but usually you're kind of moving through the elation. You're sort of like, yes, that is a good book.

Yes, I am. Oh, thank you. That's very nice's very nice you say oh i'm glad you liked it you suck and then boom your gut drops so now you got a bottom end to this elation you were just feeling from five other tweets and then you want to go at that guy to feel the the the excitement of kicking someone's ass and then if you and then if he comes back back at you and one-ups you then you're in a thing that's making you're going to strangle yourself. So the drama that you can experience inside yourself from just sitting with that platform, that media platform is is a little annihilating. And I have a concern over what it's doing to my brain in terms of, you know, diminishing my ability to process emotional interaction. Well, the other day I was giving a talk in England

and a woman came up to me in the signing queue and said she was a child therapist. And she said pretty much every child who comes to her now damaged is damaged as a result of something that happened on social media. What do you mean child? How old?

Oh, like children, teenagers. It's social media that is kind of damaging the children now. Because you can, again, because as an adult, it's the same idea that, you know,'s social media that is kind of damaging yeah the children now because you can again because as an adult it's the same idea that you know before you can really sit there and practically say this is nine people it's the internet yeah yeah exactly so for us it was nine people and it still snaked its way into us and so made us anxious so the people in my book it was like tens of thousands of people hundreds of thousands thousands of people. I mean, it's so profoundly agonising to be at the end of that. And yet if you ask us,

because the snowflake doesn't need to feel responsible for the avalanche, you ask us, we say, I'm sure she's fine, or are the sociopaths. So we dehumanise them. All of this is to make us feel better about our fear that we've just destroyed somebody. So we either just assume they're fine, or we give them a dehumanizing word because it's easier to to destroy somebody who's not quite human. So does it does it at least end with some laughs? The book?

Oh, the book's full of laughs. Mark, I go to porn shoots. OK. I went to a porn shoot in L.A. pretty close to where you're living now. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because I wanted to meet people who had found a way to eradicate shame. So I went to like a shame eradication workshop. I read a little of that.

Yeah, that was funny. My friend, can I tell you the story so we can end on a laugh maybe? Wait, the porn shoot, this was your concept of where shame is eradicated. Yeah. Well, actually, I met a porn guy who said to me, like a gay porn star called Kana Habib, who said that if you want to learn about unashamedness, you should go into the porn world. He said, you should Google me if you want to know more about me. So I Googled him.

I just saw loads of photographs of his anus. And then he hooked me up with this porn shoot. So I went to this porn shoot. A gay porn shoot? No, it was S&M. It's called Public Disgrace. OK. called Public Disgrace.

Okay. I feel really sorry for the subscribers to Public Disgrace because somewhere in a Public Disgrace porn shoot, like a woman's getting her genitals electrocuted.

Wow. Yeah. She's called Jodie Taylor. And then... I'm sure she'll appreciate that you gave her a name credit. Right.

Wouldn't want to let that slip by, Jim. No, no, no. She's a very... No, I know. She's a proud porn person. Yeah, no, no. So at home, somewhere, no. She's a very, she's a proud porn person. Yeah, no, no. So,

so at home, somewhere, there'll be people watching this who are getting off on her having her genitals electrocuted and then suddenly,

like, just as it's about to climax, a kind of tweedy, owl-like journalist with a notepad peers into shot. Do you?

Yeah, I do. I fucking do. I want to have, like, a closer look. So, so I'm ruining people's erotic ambience. Well, I do. I fucking do. I wanted to have like a closer look. So I'm ruining people's erotic ambience. Well, now they're going to know. They were probably

pretty focused before. Maybe you're just comic relief. Who's that fella? Maybe for some people. Well, this is, you know, I've only read parts of it

and I love it, but I love all your books. So it's called So You've Been Publicly Shamed. John Ronson, thanks for coming. Mark, thank you for having me back.

Always nice to see you. Smart guy, that John Ronson. I love talking to him. And he's a sweet guy. And he's a great guy. And we went into the house and we sat and we listened to Pink Floyd's Metal on my stereo. And I believe it affected him deeply

because he had forgotten about that record. And from what I understand, he continued to listen to it for days on end after that. Pink Floyd Metal. It's all there. They lay out the future on that record. All right, now I got this opportunity to talk to Britt Daniel.

And I got an opportunity to sort of jam a bunch of Spoon in my head. And they were a pretty beautiful band, pretty beautiful sound sound been around a long time we're huge for a while then we you know we had a nice chat man we you know it's he's a texan and for uh for dudes who end up playing in spoon might not be the easiest thing to grow up in Texas. So anyways, this is me and Britt Daniel from... It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth

at a special 5pm start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m.

in Rock City at torontorock.com. Calgary is a city built by innovators. Innovation is in the city's DNA. And it's with this pedigree that bright minds and future thinking problem solvers are tackling some of the world's greatest challenges

from right here in Calgary. From cleaner energy, safe and secure food, efficient movement of goods and people, and better health solutions, Thank you. spoon you come from texas all you're all from texas 100 texan no we're not all from texas but we've all but you are yeah yeah yeah what part Temple, Texas. I have no point. So that's an hour north of Austin. Well, what kind of, how many people in your family? Well, my folks split up when I was eight and they had two kids before they split up. And then my dad got remarried, had two more kids. So I kind of have four siblings.

But three from the original batch. Two from the original. Yeah. There's three from the original batch. Two from the original. Yeah, there's three from the original batch. Right. And you're the oldest one? Yeah. Yeah? How are your siblings doing?

Mostly good. Yeah? One of them just had a baby and lives right around here. Oh, really? Yeah. My sister, it blows my mind that she's the one that had the kid. Oh, really? Well, just because she's the youngest.

Right. I still think of her as very much my kid sister. How old are you? 43. Oh, wait. She's 25. Oh, wow. That is kind of young for this day and age.

At another time, that was right on the money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, I think my dad's happy to finally be a granddad. Yeah? Do you get along with him? Yeah.

Pretty good? Yeah. See, that's the jip of it all. It's difficult, but usually when they have a grandkid, then they turn into this person that you never knew before. Right. Where was that guy? Uh-huh.

You know what I mean? This sweetheart. Where was he? Right, right. What the hell? How was I denied that guy? Yeah, I think it's easier to be a grandparent, huh? Sure.

The affection without the discipline. Yeah, you can just go get a fix. You know, just get a little love fix and split. Yeah. What was your dad's business? He's a neurologist. My dad's a doctor, too. He was a surgeon, though.

What kind of surgeon? Orthopedic. Okay. Yeah, bone cutter. Yeah. The heavy duty stuff stuff is he still doing it no no they they ran him out of the business oh yeah yeah my dad's still doing it really he's 70 70 there's something good about well maybe maybe i can did you find yourself uh uh thinking you were ill a lot to get your dad's attention no did you do that yeah i did do that yeah i didn't realize it till later that's what was thinking you were ill a lot to get your dad's attention? No. Did you do that?

Yeah, I did do that. Yeah. I didn't realize it until later that's what was going on. What did I do for his attention? Well, he was out by eight, right? He was out of the house. Yeah, but, well,

he was out of the house, and that was not easy, but, you know, I would go see him on weekends, every other weekend. I can't imagine that. That's a rough gig. Yeah, and he lived in Dallas,

so that's like two and a half hours away. So it was a trek. It was a trek. and would you take the bus sometimes the bus but lots of times he would just come down and pick us all up on a friday and then drive back and drive all the way back yeah and you just stay there till sunday yeah he was good like that yeah he i mean he was dedicated he did his part of him that i mean once he did leave but then um but he was responsible. It wasn't like your dad left and it's like, we don't know where he is. Right. Right.

Absolutely. He's in Dallas. I know exactly where he is. Yeah. Well, that's good. Yeah. And what'd your mom do? She did public relations.

Oh, yeah? She is retired. Yeah. And she's around too? Yeah. So you got your whole family? Yeah. Now, I don't know what Temple's like, but-

I'll tell you if you want to know. I do want to know. I have a weird thing with Texas. I grew up in New Mexico, so we were neighbors, statewide. And I used to have this weird attitude. There was a sort of arrogance to Texans and sort of felt like they thought it was their own country and everything. But as I've gotten older, I've gotten a little softer about it and I appreciate it a little more.

Why? What was the deal? Was there a specific thing that New Mexicans didn't like about this? Well, southern New Mexico is like pretty Texan, really. I mean, it looks the same and there's a lot of ranches and stuff and, you know, there's people that do that kind of work. same and there's a lot of ranches and stuff and you know there's people that do that kind of work it was more it was real more focused around like we used to go skiing as a family and texans were always sort of like obnoxious and you know over prepared all right over over outfitted and couldn't ski and like they had this sort of like you know we're here and it's it's all ours you

know there's an attitude oh right right maybe they were whether were they wealthy texans sure yeah yeah my i have a really good friend who grew up in albuquerque and he told me that they used to play a song on the radio that was like texans uh what are they good for absolutely nothing like so there must be something to it yeah i talked to mike judge about it he felt the same way there was sort of like this weird uh he didn't grow up in texas no he grew up in uh albuquerque oh he did yeah pretty much i figured he would have been from texas no he moved to texas right later right for his uh wife's job he does it so well yeah he does he knows it yeah and he knows it from both sides he knows it as a as albuquerquean who resented them and he knows it as a texan right well he Well, he's sort of a, he's got a little shit kicker in him, kind of.

Yeah. But you seem like not quite the Texan. Yeah. Tell me about Temple. Temple was, you know, I didn't mind it when I was growing up there. I just thought that was, everything about it was normal. I guess I did mind getting picked on there were it was in temple that uh there were a big contingent of uh cowboys and and metalheads and um and i didn't really fit

in with i kind of got into the the metalheads scene right at the very end but at least it was i finally got accepted yeah um but yeah you know, it was very conservative, fairly reactionary. Yeah. What do you mean, like politically? Politically and just culturally. I mean, me and my group of friends, you know,

fancied ourselves sort of new wave. And if you looked at any degree new wave, you were going to get harassed, you know? So you were new wave and what does that mean at that point at that point well it doesn't it was hard to find out about new music you know um or our new wave music it wasn't coming in yeah well you were dependent on you know the books the bookstore in the mall would get the enemy you know yeah so we would read that and like spin magazine was still was great then yeah and uh you know 120 minutes on mtv and you know? Yeah. So we would read that and like spin magazine was still, was great then.

Yeah. And, uh, you know, 120 minutes on MTV and the, you know, if we could find out about it on one of those things, but the record store, no,

uh, there was actually a pretty good record store that I remember they had, they had a lot of four AD stuff. They had a lot of, um, cramps records. So it was, it was bizarre what,

what they stocked there because there wasn't really a market for it. So that Cramps Records Smell of Female sat there at the front of the stack for years. And I loved going by and looking at it because it just blew my mind. Smell of Female. Did you get it? No, I didn't get it. Why? I don't know.

Because I had other... Who were your bands when you were in high school? I had Cure 7 Inches to buy, Cure 12 Inches. Oh, your Cure guy. Yeah. Yeah, they would harass us in the hallways, and they would, you know, they would call you queer bitch. That was a big one.

Queer bitch? Queer bitch, yeah. Wow, not even. You ever heard that term? Never. Yeah. That's like a double whammy. And my friend Cody started appropriating the name himself, so like they would go, hey man, why do you dress like that?

And he'd say, because I'm a queer bitch. And he would like lick his hand and say, I got the AIDS. And they would kind of clear out, you know. I remember him specifically licking his hand and wiping it on some cowboy's truck. And he just flipped out. Where he thought he got the truck. I got the AIDS. You stay away.

And it worked. Yeah, it totally worked. Otherwise they'd be grabbing your crotch, which is strange. Really? Yeah. The cowboys wouldn't. The metalheads wouldn't do that. What was up with that?

I don't know. Maybe they had unresolved issues there. That was how they were going to handle it? I remember the center for the high school football team grabbing my friend's crotch and saying, let me feel your pussy. What? Isn't that weird that yeah it's fucking weird like what was the cowboy business in temple what were they

it was just a the style was there actually uh ranches was there cattle business or what i don't know i think they just um they just dress like that there might have been some of them that lived not in uh the city proper and lived out on ran. I don't know. But I think it mostly was just a cultural thing where country music was big. And so they would, you know. That's fucking menacing. That's weird. That's probably one of the weirder things. A very disturbing thing.

It was disturbing, yeah. Well, the fact that the defense was, you know, I got AIDS. And a cowboy freaked out because he touched his truck. Thought his truck was going to get AIDS. But the idea that they were actually sexually harassing you. Yeah, yeah. That doesn't quite add up, does it? It doesn't.

No. And at the time, I remember thinking, this is terrifying, but not really thinking about what that meant, you know? Oh, the terror? Well, not thinking about the fact that these are guys and they're totally homophobic and they're grabbing my friend's crotch, you know about uh oh the terror not thinking about the fact that these are guys and and they're totally homophobic and they're and they're grabbing my friend's crotch you know yeah it just didn't it didn't cross my mind till later like what what was really going on there just it was just some unresolved shit yeah wow it was just scary as all yeah i mean did was there fights? Yeah, there were fights. You got beat up?

I didn't get beat up too much, but you could count on, I got out of a lot of fights. I got pushed, you know, I got pushed a lot. Oh, that weird two-handed. Yeah, yeah. And then I'd be like, okay, see you later. I don't need to hang out at this party. Yeah, the jock shove. Yeah. The worst.

Right. Oh, that's sad, man. Yeah. Fuck those guys. Yeah, you don't see those people as much anymore i haven't been pushed in a long time no yeah well you know you found your world yeah yeah you don't have to go into that world was there ever a point where uh you know you were touring with spoon and you're like what are those guys doing here like i've talked to other bands you know especially ones

who have popular albums where there's that moment where you're like, this music's not for those guys. Bros. Yeah. I'm appreciative of anybody who comes to the show. Sure. Yeah, I guess there was a time when, around maybe Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, when we had this song called The Underdog that was in a bunch of movies and got played quite a bit on the radio.

And yeah, there were some dudes with baseball caps coming to our shows. Yeah, that's all right, right? They were very peaceful. Yeah, it's all right. You know, we judged. I mean, you know, there's a difference between judging some guy

because of how he dresses and having a cowboy grab your friend's crotch. Right, right. Well, what were you doing in high school? Were you playing in a band? Were you an art department guy? Were you a good student? Yeah, I played in um i had a cover band oh yeah that was and we started writing our own songs right at the end and then we all split up and went to college

but like senior year yeah what were you covering cure yeah the cure um all like led zeppelin the doors um what's your favorite zeppelin album uh probably now it's probably one i think back then it was three right yeah now it's one yeah because of the guitars i don't know just uh there's something about it that's just intense intense and hardcore yeah yeah and dark you know yeah what when you started writing originals what were they like were they like what you're writing now oh they were terrible it took me a while to get to get good that's why i'm always impressed with somebody like you know i i knew i know conor oberst fairly well that guy i just interviewed him oh you did when i first met him he was i think 15 and by the time he was 17 he was writing songs like with lyrics that you know just blew my mind well he's

sort of one of those guys that just see has this weird knack for it do you know what i mean yeah i went to see him with uh with prine with john prine they did a double bill here right and it was good because i like i wasn't like i missed i'm 51 so i kind of missed it i missed uh i missed him and it seemed like a lot of girls there's a lot of 15 year old girls 14 year old girls that loved him yeah and that was like it seemed like a lot of his audience but i went back and listened to a lot of stuff he does write really great songs but it's interesting yeah it's interesting as a person he's just a guy he is a dude and he's and people have this impression of him that he's um maybe a depressed guy but he's kind of the life of the party well you read it and you sort of like every time i

talk to somebody who who's like known as this like like he got a lot of attention for the songs and then you think like you must be some sort of wizard what's it where's the you know guide my life somehow what show me something inside of you and he's just sort of like i think he has a knack for it yeah you know so you got better at it i got a lot better. Were you a Dylan fan? Around 2002, I went through my first serious phase. I mean, I had a few records before then, but that's when I really got obsessed. Read some books. Right.

Usually I'm just a sound and sort of like soundscape and sort of emotion guy when it comes to music, but he's somebody that I can just listen to the lyrics and uh and be entertained and there's very few people like that connor is one of them maybe elvis costello yeah like beyond belief by elvis costello imperial bedroom yeah that's a great one is that yeah where'd that come from yeah and but it's like it's about phrase turning like because i have a hard time paying attention to words if they weren't if they really aren't right up front and like you know i can lock in but like it's almost like dylan's like a comedian like the way he tells you like it's almost like wow how did that happen right where do you get that he gets into character yeah yeah have you seen him lately uh it's been a few years it's weird he's just out there yeah he just going from town to town mumbling yeah well he

loves it it seems like he's always on the road and he must love it yeah it's just a decision he made this is how i'm gonna go yeah so when spoon what what would you think is the moment like what were you writing about at the beginning oh at the beginning i was uh just anything that would distance me from uh from revealing myself um oh really it was uh it was just a when we first started we just um we were trying to get gigs in bars on the weekend and uh and i'd been in a couple of very unsuccessful bands in austin yeah and my i was like i want to play on the weekend that's where people so you weren't in temple at that time no this this by then we're in austin yeah did you go to austin a lot in high school yeah we would go down there

to go see shows or go record shopping yeah what was it like because now like i have to assume that when you grew up in texas and that you know we're talking what 20 some odd years ago that it must have felt like your own place like it must have been like this groovy sort of like you know salvation but it must have felt uniquely texan in that you know like it was your place right because now austin seems to be everyone's place like austin is like austin yeah and it like was it more intimate did you feel like it did it yeah it was smaller for sure there was nothing downtown i remember i remember going down to liberty lunch which was like one of the only maybe the only venue downtown and just feeling

like it was a ghost town down there yeah um and now it's you know completely insane downtown nobody lived down there nobody after 5 p.m on weekdays nobody was there and south by southwest was probably not even happening yet was it it was tiny yeah it had just started it must be i can't imagine what that stuff was like then that when it actually i mean it's a pretty special place i've been there a lot but it must have been really special in some ways when you're in high school yeah well it was it was special to um yeah to be able to go down and and i felt like there were you know there were punk punks on the street and you know there was the austin chronicle you could pick up and the

i don't know it's just the whole thing felt like welcoming and uh more um i don't know accepting of yeah whatever I felt like. Right. You fit in. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I used to, when I worked there, I call it the hipster Alamo. Yeah.

Like, you know, it's just you guys, this is it. And we got to protect ourselves from the rest of the state. Yeah. Because I don't want, I mean, was there a lot of Bible belt, Bible thumping around when you grew up? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. There's a Jesus disposition in Texas

that is uniquely Texan. It's an aggressive Jesus position. Yeah, I went to what they call a Bible church every other weekend when I wasn't with my dad. Is that a born again? Yeah, I guess it's born again. It's non-denominational Protestant, so it's very politically conservative and heavy.

Heavy how? Well, there's a lot of talk about hell. Oh, really? Yeah. Is it a Bible? It's called the Bible Church? Bible Church, yeah. And that's a thing.

And this is your mom's thing? Yeah. And was she always in it? And that's a thing. And this is your mom's thing? Yeah. And was she always in it? She was, I guess we went to Methodist Church for a while, and then she did that, and then she kind of, that was the one that she-

Landed on? Yeah. And was it a new thing at the time? It was a new church, and it started out in like an office building, you know, where they were renting out the room, and then it grew to be a big thing, almost like a super church. It is now? Yeah. It's still there?

Well, yeah, it's still there. Does your mom still go? They move a few times. Yeah, yeah. She does? Every Sunday? I don't know about every Sunday. My stepdad likes, I don't know.

They probably don't want me talking about this. But they go to a couple different churches. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Well, it's interesting to me like despite whatever i may think about or whatever you know uh kind of prejudice i may have about about uh about that that type of christian it's just sort of like there is a community to it and and people seem to you know kind of it doesn't hurt most people's lives necessarily does it i don't think it hurts her life.

But when you were there as a kid, you could feel like, I don't know, man. A little bit. I wasn't really sure what was going on. Was there like one kind of charismatic leader guy? Yeah, the very charismatic guy, yeah. Is one guy? The preacher. Yeah?

Yeah. And he still is. Really? He's still very charismatic. Does he have a TV show? No, no. But he's still around? He's still very charismatic. Does he have a TV show? No, no. But he's still around? He's still around, yeah.

And it was a lot of talk of hell. Yeah, there was a bit of that, yeah. Yeah. So your dad was Catholic. Mm-hmm. So you went for sort of the hot-rodded Christianity and then back into the old school. Yeah, it was, yeah, so I was doing, I was getting, you know.

Getting it from both sides. Exactly, rightesus new jesus right yeah and did you believe um yeah i believed um but it was just um it was hard for me to relate to those people you know right because they were were they judgmental of you as well? I don't think that they were particularly judgmental of me. It was, you know, maybe it was just that I was a kid and I was being rebellious. I don't know. Yeah. But it didn't fit in there either.

No, not really. All right. So the big dream was to get to Austin. So now you're in Austin. And now you just want to play. Yeah. And you thought you're sticking with mostly covers initially no well once we got once i moved to austin yeah my bands were we play originals yeah what were the bands there was one called skellington yeah there was one

called the alien beats yeah and uh and then started spoon but you're never like a punk guy it was always kind of new wave and kind of... I liked some punk. I think I fancied myself punk when we started Spoon, yeah. Yeah? Oh, that late? Not as a kid, though? Yeah.

Yeah. No, I wasn't really... Yeah, and as a kid, no, it was more new wave, yeah. Because that's kind of like... I don't even know how to describe it. Because I was not a Cure guy, because sort of missed it just because of my age. But I get it. Because when I listen to that music, it's very defined.

I can hear it in your music too. It's not ethereal is not the word I want, but there's something kind of like heart heavy about it all. Right? Yeah. It's not even melodramatic. It's almost like, you know, it definitely is an environment. Right? Yeah. It's not even melodramatic. It's almost like, you know, it definitely is an environment. Right.

Right? It's got some melancholy to it. Melancholy. Yeah. That's it. Yay. Yeah. Is that what you're thinking?

That is what I'm thinking. All right, so you- And I think, yeah, we've got a bit of that sometimes. Well, yeah. I mean, it's- It comes natural to me for some reason you're heavy-hearted guy maybe what do you mean maybe we can't can identify that hmm okay yes I am I'm not pressing you hey but yeah you know I mean it's it's nice so because i think that like when you have that i have it too

but i can't really live in it but i can live in it when i like listen to your songs right i can live in it when i listen to music but what happens when you live in it um well there's like i don't know if it's a longing thing you know like where you you know where you're just sort of like is this really is this it you know and that's just like that's not where you're just sort of like, is this really, is this it? And that's just like, that's not where you want to live your life. Well, no, I mean, it's there. I mean, it's always there. You know, but like sometimes then you got to ask yourself like where I'm at now.

It's sort of like, all right, I feel that. But like I should be pretty good. Things are okay. Right. And yet there's this like weird kind of like primal yearning for like i don't know if it's relief like i imagine like when i get on stage and do stand-up or something and you connect i mean you can feel the relief and and in that moment you know life makes sense and and it's fulfilling but like when you're just sitting there like you know writing because i do writing that's not comedic and i imagine when you're sitting sitting there writing, because I do writing that's not comedic. And I imagine when you're sitting up there writing this last album, there's that moment

where the tone, I imagine the reason why you can't identify a theme until after it's done is because you're just writing what you're feeling. And that becomes this kind of amazing equation. So you make choices about what came out of you and something comes together and you can feel it come together. And that's the joy of creation. But you know, it's,

it's not like, I think that's how we resolve that feeling. Is that what you feel? Yeah. That that's one way that you can deal with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, I hear what you're saying. Like what, why, why should we live in that place when there's so many great things? But yeah, I think that the writing being lonely and writing can be, like why why should we live in that place when there's so many great things but yeah i think that the writing being lonely and writing uh can be it can kind of bring that out yeah yeah but sometimes i'm like i'm i'm lonely with people yeah i have that problem less but well it sounds

like when you grew up it was probably you know it was probably real i mean because you're surrounded by these you know metal monsters in cowboy hats. We had some friends. There were a good two dozen. Oh, so you had a fighting spirit. Yeah. It's us against them, and we're more fun. Yeah, the more that I found a few of them, the happier I was.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And eventually, I just said, I kind of do like heavy metal, and then the world became much easier. You went? You surrendered? I just like said, oh, I kind of do like heavy metal. And then the world became much easier, you know. You went, you're like, you surrendered? I didn't surrender as much as like I started to understand like, okay, Led Zeppelin is great. So was there that moment where you sort of like you connected with one of the metal guys and like, you know, he kind of pulled you over? I remember loaning a dollar to one of the metal guys that we would always be battling. Yeah.

And waiting for school to open. Yeah. We'd always be battling. He had this Bon Jovi light blue blue jean jacket. Right. He wouldn't call it a Bon Jovi jacket, would he? I don't know. Yeah.

I know what you mean. It had a Bon Jovi thing on the back. So they weren't that heavy metal. Yeah. They were just hard rock. I remember loaning him a dollar one time just out of the blue and then everything kind of changed everything changed because you're just kids yeah you know and then what he turns you on and lets up when he's hit no we never really became friends but but you know around the same time um yeah i kind of broadened my horizons and and yeah being able to like relate to something that that everybody else could could

get was it was into was that was a nice change you know like everybody loves led zeppelin right right it's a portal everybody loves acdc yeah acdc how great are they they're the best that's the guitar sound man that's in you man they i still listen to the first five or six like up and i'm i'm good up through Back in Black. Yeah. And then I kind of drift. Yeah, me too. But Powerage, that's one of the best fucking albums in the world.

Yeah, I love that one. See, that makes sense now. Now I understand your guitar sound. Okay. Because that's what I hear is that fucking Gibson tone. There's a lot of crunch to what you do. It's there. It's satisfying. Yeah, well, well thanks so you liked acdc that now we're on a whole different level right now everything's i really got into acdc in the last five years but like there was

a point yeah where everything i didn't have to just be new wave anymore and and the world opened up to me that's hilarious in the last five years you really the acdc kind of really hit you well i was talking about high school yeah but oh yeah and i got you know but i'm saying when i had like an obsessive period was the first time i had an obsessive period the acdc was in the last five years you go see him ever i've never seen him uh i saw him once when they were i think they opened for journey on their first tour oh wow and the fucked up thing is I was there to see Journey. So what record were they touring then? Well, Bond was alive. Oh, right.

And it was probably... Like Highway to Hell or... No, it was before that. I think it was before that. It was probably 77. I don't know when he died, but I know that at the time, a whole lot of Rosie, the live version had sort of like taken hold. But what about what did you have a girlfriend in high school?

Yeah, I had one. Yeah. Yeah. And that didn't end so well. It didn't? Yeah. Heartbreaker? Yeah.

She was two years older than me and went off to college before me and kind of it was brutal yeah it's horrible it was brutal well it was particularly brutal i just she didn't she just stopped speaking like i would never break up with someone that way we're just i'm gone and goodbye and there's no explanation you know i don't know if there's another way to do it yeah okay well that's that's well whatever happened then it was how old were you it was painful. How old were you? It was painful. 16. And you were with her for a while?

We were together for like nine months, which felt like, you know. But you were in. It was the first one. It was the first one that I really, really felt. Yeah. And it took the hit, huh? Yeah. Did you ever get back in touch with her?

Well, I saw her. Yeah, eventually she... Like, once I was in college, she came to Austin, and so I did... She became friends with my best friend, and I think she probably... Really?

Yeah. Yeah. Oh! That doesn't help. Yeah. How many years after? That was like five or six years after. Comes back into the world? just to sleep with your best

friend hey I'm not sure exactly okay all right wait are you still best friends with that guy yeah and you never asked him uh come on we've talked about it yeah all right all right you guys are okay we're very okay yeah yeah is he not in the band no no no he's just a dude he's a dude they've known since high school or what yeah right after high school really yeah right when i'm still your best friend yeah that's impressive man yeah all right so you're playing zeppelin songs then like spoon is not playing zeppelin songs spoon is its own thing yeah we did originals yeah wait like but the heartbreak did that inform the music probably i mean i remember some of those very first early songs that i was trying to write were you know i was trying to convey heartbreak um is that where the melancholy started or maybe

oh have you but is that the way you like when you and and a lady break up, then it's just, it's over, you don't talk anymore? No, no, no. I mean, it's just something I've learned. That that might be the, just peeling off the Band-Aid is the easiest way. Well, you know, because there's like, like I'm terrible at relationships. I, you know, I've been married twice, I have no kids, and like they're full of drama and you know like i'm like i think like it's weird that like you know so your folks broke up when you were eight and like it sounds like they were okay though parents wise but it just seems like you know when you're younger and unfortunately me now

like when i'm with somebody it's like that's that's it you know what i mean that's all that's all that's all of it and i can't like you know i i need to be intrinsically connected you know in in all ways right and you know it's intense yeah but but you know how can someone handle that you know like you know like after a while they're like i'm exhausted you know there's some of this you're gonna have to resolve. Right, right. But I've gotten better with that. This isn't about me. But I just found that if you're really done, as heartbreaking as it is, and I still have heartache over, you know, a lot of stuff.

My wife left me like that. Like, just sort of like, done. But she had to talk to me for a little while just to, you know, take my money. But we had no kids. Right. But i don't hear nothing from her really and it just hurts because there's part of you think like well we were so close why can't you know like because because you're you don't have your feelings are unresolved yeah so it's just going to be like weird yeah like it's probably better for for both of you because like what's it just gonna be weird right yeah well i'm close to a lot of my ex-girlfriends but um but yeah right when that in that phase where you're

where you're and i think there's got to be a couple years break or something you know at least wait a minute what i think i know one of your ex-girlfriends. Oh, yeah, I think you do. Yeah. Eleanor? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, we dated for like five years. I just realized that. Yeah, she's great, huh? She's great.

And the whole time we were dating, well, until the very end, she was not doing music. Eleanor Friedberger is who we're talking about. And her solo records, you're on the same label now. Or no, you're not on the same label. We were, yeah. Yeah. The last solo record was great. Yeah. Oh, that's so interesting. about and her solo records you're on the same label now uh or no you're not yeah the last solo record was great yeah oh that's so interesting now now i remembered that i'm glad i remembered that yeah you were for five years she wasn't and she wasn't doing music until at the very end she started fiery furnaces with her brother yeah oh so that was so you guys were kids. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah, she was 19. I was 23 when we started going out.

Did that one hurt? Yeah. And that was a drawn out one. That's a long time, five years. Yeah. Until she got her next boyfriend. And then we had some time apart at that point. Are you guys all right now?

Yeah, we're real fine. All right. So now we're dealing with Heartbreak Spoon. All right. So where'd you meet those guys? Jim, the drummer who's been in it the whole time with me, I met him in the band right before, the Alien Beats. Yeah.

And that was sort of like a rockabilly, we wanted to be country kind of thing. It was like a thing I wanted to do to just do for a while and get out of the... New wave? Pop. Yeah. So you did country.

Yeah. Well, a friend, a guy that DJed after me at the radio station just said one day, oh, I heard that Skellington broke up. Maybe we should start a country band. And I just said, okay, right. Yeah. I know a few country songs, but that doesn't,

no, that's not going to happen. And then I call him up a week later and said, maybe that is what I should do. Just something that's like, somebody else can be singing half the songs and i don't have to you know because it was heartbreaking being in the band before you know we just couldn't get anything going couldn't get any gigs and i was playing with a bunch of guys who didn't really want to do music full-time yeah and did you have any love for country yeah i was really into dwight yocum and like hank williams but it was a thin i didn't it wasn't a deep appreciation right you know no you didn't

go george jones didn't go merle not then yeah no george jones come on now anything uh no i bet i know i bet i think i have one of his records, but I can't remember. Just the voice. Hell of a singer. Hell of a singer. I'll put that in your head. Okay. Hell of a singer. And as he got older and weirder, it still held up. Held up.

Yeah. But did you find that it was ironic, given what you grew up in, that you were doing country? Yeah, that's a good point. It really was, it felt like a vacation for me, you know. Yeah. And it was a it felt like a vacation for me you know um and uh it was it was good and then once once we did that for a year then we split up and then i started a new band and jim was in that one and then we um started this band that was basically i don't know i mean it was very damaged by the pixies and some nir. Damaged? You mean? Yeah.

Well, influenced by. Too much. Yeah. Yeah, we ripped them off quite a bit. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of bands did. But yeah, eventually we found our own thing. And that became Spoon? Uh-huh.

Why that name? Well, it was the name of a can. You know that band Can? Yeah, I love them. Yeah, they have a great song called Spoon. And at that time of a can, you know, that band can. Yeah. I love them. Yeah. They have a great song called spoon. And at that time it was like, you know, all these one word bands were, were, were all the rage, like blur and right. Oasis.

Right. Like ride. And I wanted one of those. What was the journey of it? So you guys, well, we, we put out a couple records that were that were pretty ignored what what label was that first one was on matador that was a hot label yeah i remember those guys they're well they're yeah they're still doing great stuff and uh then electra was the second one and we were dropped but that's a big deal yeah so you did a matador record yeah they still

well they're in beggars they're in beggars Yeah. Yeah, but they still do a lot of good stuff. I get records from them. So you do a big label deal. It was like a big deal, right? Yeah, it was a big deal, yeah. And it was hard to leave Matador, but it just, like we had sold, I think, 1,500 copies of that record in the first year that it came out. And so everybody, even Matador, was like, yeah, sorry, this didn't go so well. out and so everybody even matador was like yeah sorry this was this didn't go so well um so yeah we put out a record on electra and that did not so well either and we got dropped and so so that

must have been horrible yeah yeah but it but in that like we had this an r guy who you know brought us over there from from um, um, from Matador. And he basically, once we signed the deal with him, I mean, he had been on us and so dedicated to signing the band and very, you know, all over us, you know, um, trying to show us, you know, uh, how serious he was about the band. And then once we signed, then he, you know, he didn't come to a single show. I couldn't get him on the phone and then he quit and we got dropped the week after he quit. And so we wrote these songs, um, with sort of loosely about him. His name was Lafitte, Ron Lafitte. And so we had a song called the agony of Lafitte. And we had a song called Lafitte,

don't fail me now. And this, this single that we put out was kind of the first thing that gave the press or whatever, anybody, a reason to sort of latch on. Like there was a story all of a sudden. Right. And that was on a series of sneaks? It ended up as being like a bonus track on a series of sneaks later. Yeah. And so there was like some good press behind it.

Like it had a little edge to it. Yeah, for the first time some people started taking notice. And then the next time we put out a record, things started happening. Was there a point where you got dropped from a lecture where you're like, fuck, we're fucked? Yes, yes. How long did that go on? For sure. A long time.

And I don't really know why we kept going, you know, other than the fact that I was writing songs and I was really turned on by new kinds of music and that I wasn't. So I just kept writing songs. I mean, it was really wasn it wasn't very planned out. But since I had songs and I had a band, so I was like, yeah, maybe we should play this song. But you felt like quitting? I thought that I was probably not going to be able to put out a record other than putting it out myself for a long time, if ever.

You like square one-ing in your head? Like, you know, now what? Yeah. And then, like, how'd you get hooked up with mac um he had come to one of our shows yeah um when uh like when we were on matador i think actually and so i knew that he was you know at least vaguely a fan and so i got once we got that third record done i i sent it over to him. How was that record?

Like, this was like a sink or swim record in a way, in your mind? Like, I mean, what did you do on that record? Were you like, if I'm going to, like, I imagine you're sort of like, well, this is it. My attitude was like, this is a kick. I can't believe we're actually getting to put out a record. Yeah.

I thought that it was over, you know? Yeah. And then somehow we got to put out a record, and then somehow it did, you know, ten times better than anything we'd ever put out before. Well, it seems like a pretty raw record somehow. I listened to it today, actually. I listened to Girls Can Tell today.

It seemed very personal. Was it? Yeah, yeah, it was. It was. It was the first time I wrote some fairly personal lyrics, vulnerable lyrics, vulnerable lyrics. And yeah, the whole thing started coming together. Were you aware of that when you were doing it? Yeah, I knew this is like, this is, yeah.

This is me. It was new musically and also new lyrically. So it just was totally new territory. And I still don't know why we kept playing a spoon you know i could have we could have started something else we could have it made it probably would have made a lot more sense like you're saying no one would have noticed at that point um yeah because we had zero success right and we were you know when you get dropped by a major label especially back then yeah i mean we we had left the indie and then we went and did the major label thing then we got dropped and you know i remember just you know it just it felt like seriously damaged goods you know right there's nothing that's ever going to happen with this band now right um but yeah we just kept doing it and and do you know why it's turned around why merge like maybe the

audience for that label was different yeah for sure i think that they they knew what they were doing they definitely knew what they were doing more than electra did and with indie music anyway yeah right yeah right with for they knew what to do with us right than electra did right and um yeah i think that the records changed and we had that story you know all this stuff and we got better you know my song started getting better and so everything just kind of started turning around so that must have been pretty gratifying to have put your like you know real guts on the line for that album and then it turned everything around must have been reaffirming like okay it was unbelievable yeah and what was it and then when did you just blow up completely it was well gradually we the next record kill the moonlight did maybe you know three times better than that one and then the next record kill the moonlight did maybe you know

three times better than that one and then the next record gimme fiction did two or three times better than that one and then god didn't did even better than that one that was a big one yeah that was like that it felt like in smaller steps actually which made me appreciate it well you earned it yeah yeah yeah it's sort of like you're being rewarded you know in in the right kind of pace yeah yeah you know what i mean it was it's a yeah it was a unique trajectory and and you did so you did like what you did five albums with merge five yeah you're right five and why uh why lomaista for the new one? Well, we kind of just felt like it was time to,

if we were going to try something else, that this was the record we should try something else on. Right. And we still got our catalog with Merge, and we just were on good terms. You're good with them. Yeah, they're fine. Yeah. I think they just reissued a bunch of the records, right? Or they never were out of print. I got the vinyl on them. Yeah, they're fine. Yeah. I think they just reissued a bunch of the records, right?

Or they never were out of print. I got the vinyl on them. Yeah, they did. Eventually, they have reissued the two records that came before their time. And how did you feel about going into this record? It seems like it was the longest time in between records. Did this feel like a comeback record? In a way, yeah.

Just simply because of how long we've been away. And that was because I went into divine fits. Yeah. You know, it's how'd that go for you? It was good. Yeah. It was a blast to be able to play in a band with different people and people

who like, word, you know, just have a totally different thing on stage. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And so how do you feel about spoon now? I feel good. I'm in it. You know? I'm really into it. Yeah? Yeah, it's going well. It's fun?

Yeah. You're having fun? It is fun. I love being on tour, actually. I like going away, too. Like if you stay in nice hotels, it's nice, right? Yeah. Well, often we got to sleep on the bus, but, you know. But it's a nice bus, right? Yeah.

Yeah. That's really good. Yeah. You'll be okay for a while. Yeah, I'll be all right. Oops, sorry. That's your call telling you to end the interview. Well, it was great talking to you, man.

Yeah, good to talk to you too. And I appreciate you coming. Thank you for having me. All right, that's it. That was good. I got them going, that Brit Daniel, that band Spoon. So that's the show. Go to WTFpod.com for all your WTF pod needs.

Go to WTFpod.com slash calendar to check out the dates for the city near you. And also happy birthday to John Montagna, who did our theme song. Other music on the show is by DJ Copley. So I got the Telecaster out. Because I played some Stones last night. As I told you. Boomer lives! Sloppy. Sloppy telly. It's a night for the whole family.

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