"Graydon Carter"

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Knock, knock.

No, I guess you can't say.

So I'll do, okay, I'll play both.

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Smartless.

Smartless, who?

It's it's an all-new smartless smart

smart

smart

less

i realize that i think that i i curse too much you do yeah what are you talking about there we go

wait really why do you say that i don't think you do.

Don't you think I do?

I feel like I do.

It just occurred to me that I feel like I curse too much.

And maybe

I think not enough.

Did you get that feeling because you were hanging out with your dad and you had to caught yourself a couple of times?

No, truly.

Like, where did this thought come from?

You know, you're old enough.

I just, I think I was,

I think I was talking about hockey with somebody the other day and I realized that every other, I think when I, especially when I talk about hockey, I'm like, these fucking guys and look at this fucking team and blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, wait, how often do I say?

And I saw this review of some gadget that somebody that they've just released, some AI gadget, that documents

words that you say throughout the course of a day or a week or a month, et cetera.

And this woman was talking about how much she had heard she was cursing.

And I was like, I wonder how much I cursed.

Really?

Yeah, a little bit.

It used to be my, if I got nervous, I used to swear a lot.

And like the very first first time I met Steven Spielberg in his office,

all I did, every other word was fuck.

What?

I was like, yeah, and his kids were playing video games.

They're like, oh, that's fucking cool.

How many, when did you fucking get that?

That's fucking amazing.

I couldn't stop saying it.

I remember

I once had a, the guy who wrote and directed, I think he wrote, but he definitely directed Napoleon Dynamite.

This guy Jared has.

He's a great director.

Great.

Yeah, amazing.

He's great.

And I got a meeting with him just after Napoleon Dynamite.

I was so excited.

And

just like I get lazy with cursing is just like sort of like a way to bond, you know?

Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, right.

And, and so I'm just like, every word is this and the fucking.

And I'm driving home and I call my agent.

I say, oh, the meeting went really, really well.

And, and, uh, and he goes, he goes, you know, I was going to say something.

I was wondering if it did, did, because I know you, your family lived in Salt Lake City for a few years.

And I was wondering if your family had any Mormonism in their background.

Did you guys talk about Mormon?

Because you know, he's a big, big Mormon.

Oh, I didn't know that.

And I'm like, oh, no, no, because then I started like, then I was flashing back to the meeting as I'm driving home, like, yeah, he didn't say anything that was off color.

And of course, I never heard from this guy again.

To this day and to this day, have you spoken to him?

To this day.

No, I've probably listened.

It's just deeply offensive to him.

That's so funny.

We got to get him on here and ask him about that.

Yeah.

I'm sure he didn't even notice.

I don't know.

That's funny.

I tell you what.

This is the segue, Sean.

This is so

smooth.

This segue.

And my guest, my guest, is, you know, we all like cool things and

we like being, feeling like that we're part of, you know, that we're up on culture, that we're up on what's going on in the world.

This is a guy who's been not only at the forefront, but I think I would dare to say been shaping it for many years.

He happens to be Jan Winner.

Oh.

He happens to be one of my home cases.

It's not Canada.

Jan Winner is not Canadian.

Are you sure?

I'm very sure that Jan Winner is not Canadian.

You didn't know him when he was in Canada, but he'd started a magazine in 1973 called the Canadian Review that was very popular.

He then moved to the States and he worked for Time magazine.

He worked for a bunch of other things, Life Magazine.

And then in 1986, he co-founded a very,

very popular and influential magazine known as Spy Magazine.

This is not Graydon Carter.

Left that in great shape.

He went on to become over 25 years the editor of Vanity Fair.

He's got a new book coming out called When the Going Was Good, Guys.

It's Graydon Carter.

Nice.

Good morning, sir.

I read the airmail

email this morning.

Bless you.

Yes.

Yeah.

You didn't mention airmail, Willie.

I know.

Well, I was about to get to airmail because you kept saying Graydon Carter, so I was trying to get through it.

You're an awesome guest.

I know.

Yeah.

Nice going, Will.

Welcome, Graydon.

And I mentioned all the various things that you did that you started.

You started as

a young writer, and you founded him.

How old were you when you founded the Canadian Review?

What was that in 1960?

I was 23.

Wow.

That takes a lot of, I was going to say guts, but it takes a lot of chutzpah to start a magazine when you're 23 years old.

Wow.

How do you even go?

How do you even

know where to start?

I actually didn't start it.

I bumped into a bunch of guys who were starting it in college, and they needed an art director.

And I said, well, I can draw.

And they said, well, one should be

the art director.

And then little magazines are just festering pits of bitterness and jealousy and envy.

And so one by one, they all left.

And then I became the editor.

And it wasn't as good as Will was pointing out.

And he was being very kind about it.

Nobody knew what they were doing.

And that was completely evident to readers and advertisers that we were completely incompetent.

But it did lead to a job at Time Magazine when Time Magazine was like probably one of the most important magazines on the planet.

Yeah.

And

what did you do there at Time?

I was a writer, but you know, it was in 1978.

The city was still teetering after bankruptcy and was was like dangerous and

there were burnt out cars everywhere, but rents were really cheap.

And I live in Greenwich Village.

My first apartment was about a block and a half away from here.

And it was $200 a month.

And it had high ceilings and a garden.

But then when I got to time,

they were restocking it with a bunch of young writers.

And there was people like Walter Isaacson, who became the great biographer.

There was Michigo Kakutani, who became the chief book book critic of the New York Times for 35 years.

Frank Rich, who became the theater critic of the New York Times, and then the producer of Succession.

Wow.

And Maureen Dowd, who was there.

Rick Stengler became the editor of Time.

My best friend, Jim Kelly, who became the editor of Time.

Anyway, it was just a

remarkable period, and we were all still keeping touch with each other.

Wow.

It was, yeah, it was very intimidating for me because I thought, wait a minute, are all Americans this smart?

And thankfully, they're not.

Well, that's true.

You're talking to three of them.

There you go.

Exactly.

Well, two and a half.

Two of us are smart-esteems.

And so you work at Time Magazine with all this great talent, and then you and Kurt Anderson

form Spy Magazine, which

Boy, I remember Spy Magazine and a lot of people do.

It was so,

it's been described as sort of like vicious and cruel, but also like really dead on.

And you sort of, somebody quoted something like,

you despised all the right people.

Well, you know, there was the time, all of a sudden, in the mid-1980s, New York had sort of come alive financially.

And, you know, investment banks had been sort of invented and meant there were investment bankers around.

And they already had a lot of money and they loved showing it off.

And accidentally, I think our timing was wonderful.

And we used to call it astringent rather than mean.

But, you know,

it did occupy a space of sort of,

I don't know what the term might be, sort of a healthy cynicism and

a, you know, like David Spade had, we've talked about it a few times on this show.

He had a segment on Saturday Night Live.

I think it was called The Hollywood Minute.

Where, you know, you'd kind of watch through your fingers, you know, sort of like you didn't want to see it or hear it, but it was always so accurate.

And

funny.

I don't know what point I'm making, but I just, I guess I want to say that there, I don't know if it's you.

Do you feel that's gone or no?

No, I don't.

I feel like there, there is a space somewhere for people having the balls to call out that which is kind of apparent to all of us, but yet only discussed in quiet circles with your closest friends.

Yet everybody says it.

You just don't say it in a big group.

You say it in small groups.

You're just calling out out accuracies on people's foibles.

And it is interesting and maybe healthy.

I guess this is the question.

What do you guys think?

Is it healthy to have mainstream media, to have a place in mainstream media for that type of release?

I mean, look at

people like John Oliver and Seth Myers and

their news elements, and they do it better almost than,

they do do it better than the evening news in a certain way.

You know, not everything is objective.

You know, if you're talking about the earth being round, you don't need somebody from the Flat Earth Society to come out and give the counter-argument.

Yeah, right.

But Jason, I think maybe, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but maybe you're talking about insults.

Well, yeah, but

that cynicism that exists in some corners of mainstream media,

like, I don't know if this is fair

because I'm not a student of all this, but I feel like Vulture on New York magazine, they sometimes, well, like, they even have like a a hot radar.

They've got a term for it.

And they just call out basically what everyone's talking about in sort of, I put in quotes, the cool circles.

And

I mention it only because it does seem to drive

some pop culture successes and create some pop culture failures when

it's discussed at sort of that, again, in quotes, that high level.

And then it sort of filters out into

less cynical parts of our country and our media.

It drives like what films get seen.

I mean, it's sort of the theory of like having critics.

You know, it's like one person says something is good and then that starts to disseminate and then it actually forms a wave of either success or failure for some things.

Right.

And I wonder if that is a healthy thing that we that we should have in media.

My guess would be yes, but it's it's hurtful.

But at the same time, you know, like everybody, excuse me, on the internet, everybody's a critic.

It's a sewer by and large.

But if you have people who have proper

opinions and they're within the realms of accuracy, it can make a good difference, I think.

And the internet, word of mouth is the most powerful tool in the world.

And the internet just lets it go exponentially rather than arithmetically.

Well,

the problem is, though,

with the internet and with social media, is that often some of these voices all come at the same volume and volume that they don't deserve.

And so things get lost in the shuffle a little bit.

Jason, I think you were referring to the approval matrix, right,

that they do.

And there was something about SPY that did that, which was

it just held things up to a light and sort of brought them into focus a little bit, things that

were...

I remember there was a piece you guys did.

You probably don't even remember this, but there was a piece you did.

You may have already left, but it was certainly

really tonally right in line with the kind of thing that you had set forth at SPY, which was they had a woman holding a pair of rollerblades over her shoulder, and they had her go to different

neighborhoods of the city to see what reactions she'd get in different reactions.

So they put her in the Upper West Side, Upper East Side, flat higher downtown, and what people would say to her.

at different street corners.

I mean,

guys, that's really funny.

Do you like to skate in the park?

And then the upper west side, the guy's like, hey, you look great.

Why don't you put those down?

Let's go get a drink.

And then in Flatiron, the guy's like, why won't you talk to me, bitch?

And Lower East side is get the fuck out of my face.

And that's the kind of thing that really

is.

I do think that that sort of thing is missing because everybody is so nervous

about offending the, and also everybody is so quick to be offended.

And this is going to get, I hope this will be a pull quote about me railing against people being offended.

But there is that, there was a notion back there

of like, I don't give a shit if you're offended.

Who cares?

You know, as long as I'm not hurting anybody or saying anything, it's completely,

you know, I'm offended.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's a healthy space for that, too, that I feel has been lacking in the last few years as we needed to make and are still working on this sort of correction for those that are that are marginalized.

But I think the consensus is starting to come out that maybe there was an over-correction and it's starting to come back to middle a little bit now.

And so there's a healthy level of, hey, listen, offending you is part of the joke or part of this thing.

And so

there's some casualties that are a part of that metric.

What do you think about that shift that's going on right now, Graydon?

Will and I would know this

better because we came from Canada, but

the pendulum in America swings in great arcs like this.

And in Britain, it swings like this, and in Canada, it swings like this.

So America goes way out.

I mean, in the 1960s, you know,

the free love movement was much further out in America than it was, in, say, in San Francisco, than it was in Toronto.

But then it swings right back.

So in the 1980s,

the investment banker ethos was much more pronounced in New York than it was in Vancouver, say.

So

America is the,

it just has larger swings, and so the extremes are greater.

And I think it is coming.

It will come.

It's a correction from the far left, and then it's went way too far to the far right, and it will settle somewhere in the middle.

You just hope that it does sooner rather than later.

I think it will.

And of course, nobody's advocating for the marginalization of people who are different at all.

And that's never been, you know, I think that anybody, you know, certainly all of us,

I assume none of us would ever advocate for that.

But I must say, as someone, it makes sense for someone who likes to comment on culture and whose writing and whose profession is informed by that.

Of course, moving to the States is a natural progression for you, right?

Because you've.

And you, yes.

And me as well, of course, yeah.

Because

there is that ceiling in Canada where you can only go so far, unfortunately.

It's a great place to be from.

It's a great place to live still.

I'm not suggesting anything otherwise.

Keep going.

Well, yeah, you got to put out the fire.

You're offending somebody here, yes.

I am definitely offending somebody.

How far have I dug down?

Can I even see the top of the hole?

You know,

I've told that story before, the difference between the Canadian lobster fishermen and the American lobster fishermen, right?

What is it?

They're walking on the road after their day of lobster fishing, and

the American lobster fisherman says to the Canadian, he says, I notice you don't have a top on your pot thereby.

Aren't you worried about your lobsters getting out?

And the Canadian says, no, these here are Canadian lobsters.

If one of them tries to get out, the other ones will pull them back down.

That's great.

That's great.

And

there's an element of truth to that.

But moving to the States

and starting Spy Magazine and then moving to Vanity Fair, which has an even greater audience and even sort of a broader demographic, if you will,

you must have been

very excited at the prospect of kind of opening up and a huge demo to what you wanted to say and what you thought was important to talk about.

Yeah, and talk about having a piece of media that

anoints

week to week or was it month to month?

Who is it?

You know, you and Lauren Michaels were basically had the two levers that existed on putting people on

by the way.

Two Canadians, here.

Putting people on top of the mountain

at your discretion, which was pretty incredible.

I didn't, it's funny, looking back, and I realize some of what you say

was evident to others.

It never was to me.

It was a matter of survival for the most part.

I wanted to, I had a lot of children, and I wanted to, I had to feed them and clothe them and educate them.

And so when I got to Venus, I was the least popular person to get there because we had spent five years at SPY making fun of the editor, of the house writing style, of many of the contributors.

So when I walked in, there was just, it was funereal, the whole mood of the place.

And

I didn't fire anybody for two years, but I eventually, there was all most of the people, some of the people were left over just to talk about my inadequacies as they went around to dinner parties in New York.

And so I, but I let everybody stay for two years.

I thought he'd give them a chance to come around my way of thinking.

And then I got rid of these three troublemakers in one week

after being there for two years.

And all of a sudden, it shifted, and I could bring my children into the office.

It wasn't as poisonous, and people started saying thank you, and please, and working together in a collegial way.

And

because I don't like office drama, I like people to work together.

I think you get something better out of it.

And then, so I sort of built it from there.

And I was fortunate to have one of the great owners, Cy Newhouse, who gave me the tools to succeed.

He gave me the budget so I could bring in the, I thought, it must have been the greatest stable of writers ever.

The first writer I brought in was Christopher Hitchens.

Wow.

Wow.

He's great.

Oh, he was heaven.

And then, you know, also

I had photographers like Annie Leibowitz and Helmut Newton and Bruce Weber.

So I was...

I was blessed by having these incredible colleagues, and I was so

appreciative of what they did.

Because

taking pictures and writing stories is a lot harder work than being an edit and editor.

You're just sort of a wage ape,

kind of like a cross between a chef and an air traffic controller

and a piece of mold just on your ceiling.

We don't really have a point, but other than

trying to assemble the thing each month.

And anyway, I was just, it was a great perch during one of the greatest periods.

But by the same token, token, it was a golden age of magazines.

But one of the reasons, anytime you have a golden age, it's a golden age because everybody is good.

So every other editor

was firing at all cylinders.

All magazines were good in the 1980s and 90s.

They were just, it was an extraordinary period.

And also, the magazine business attracted the best and the brightest then.

Right.

Right.

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And now back to the show.

What was your ethos then when you got there at Vanity Fair?

When you sat behind your desk for the first time in those first couple of years and going forward,

what was your objective?

Did you have an objective?

Like, this is what we, the kind of stuff that

I want to do.

Did you have something like that, a plan in mind in a way?

Nothing so formal, but

sort of an evolving thought that what I wanted to do is every month present the reader with something that is highly, highly compelling, that they'll read and have wonderful stories that could range 15 or 20,000 words, which is the fifth of the size of an average book.

And that they would come back the next month.

I used to write thank you notes to all my contributors every month.

Thank you notes to our advertisers who paid for the journalism they the advertising would came in at about a hundred thousand dollars a page and and that sort of you know paid for the heat and the light and and the electricity and

but then there was I I got other ideas that really changed the direction of the magazine from one from David Halberstam to create something called the new establishment which is the in the in the past you know the establishments were the head of you know General Tire and General Motors and a bunch of New York banks.

But

in the early, mid to mid-1990s, America became an entertainment

culture and economy.

And so what we shipped around the world weren't cars and tires and things like that.

It was intellectual property in terms of video games and movies and television shows and magazines and technology.

And so

we did a huge portfolio that Annie shot and it sort of showed the world that there was a new, because there was a new economy, there was a new establishment to that economy.

And then doing the Oscar party, which was

started off small and terrified that it'd be a failure,

and it just sort of grew each year.

It kind of rivals the Oscars itself in terms of its prestige.

As you're well aware, lots of people go will often just go to the party and not the Oscars themselves.

And a lot of people who are

big film stars, people, names that everybody, all of us know.

and and of course the three of us have have gone many times and and and enjoyed that and it it has become its own thing which is quite miraculous really if you think about it it's kind of in some ways dethroned the oscars on its at its own party in a way uh which you know you spoke some you mentioned something that's interesting the the idea that america's true expert is its culture and its obsession with celebrity uh peaked, you know, it reached a peak, a fever pitch, if you will, in the 90s,

as my father calls it, celebrity, in a way that I think that he does that just to demean the term itself.

And

he will claim that that's the actual way that you should pronounce it.

But he also says, tomato.

Here's my point.

It occurs to me, and I've long thought this, if we were really smart

about wanting to sort of peddle influence around the world in a way that America seems hell-bent on doing,

we would, and this would never go down with the people who, you know, know, with the military-industrial complex, which is, you know, a trillion-dollar, I think as of yesterday, a trillion-dollar a year business.

What we could do, and much more efficiently, is if we wanted to influence a certain country and its people, et cetera, all we need to do are, at the time, I used to say, drop our DVDs of our TV shows and dumb them down as much as we're dumbed down.

If we could pump in Netflix and Amazon Prime and Macs to all these countries for free, they would immediately lay down their weapons because they'd become just

as dumb as we are.

And just as...

Or as smart.

Sorry.

Or as smart.

Thank you for allowing me.

But do you know what I mean?

I mean,

that would seem to me to be

the answer to all of it, right?

Well, it's an element of soft power, and we've sort of given up all our soft power in the last three months.

Why don't we, we should be pumping them with TikTok and YouTube and paying for it and starlinking it into their country.

And believe me, they'll be like, hey, listen, we got to go, we're going to go and fight on the front line.

Like, hang on a second, I just got to watch this thing about a cat teaching itself to read.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

I mean, we do do that in a certain way.

I mean, America, if you look at the way most kids dress anywhere in the world, they're wearing, you know, American style trainers, blue jeans, t-shirts with something written on them and

plaid.

Everybody looks like they're in a writing room, no matter what country you're in.

They do.

And you see rallies, you see these people protesting, and they have effigies of the president and whatever, and they're wearing baseball caps backwards, and they're wearing a guest jean sweatshirt.

And you're like,

wait a second.

And the irony is completely lost on everybody.

That's our gift to the world.

Well, and sort of expanding on that, Graydon, do you have an opinion about what sort of

the current prognosis is for America being able to bear and withstand what some people are saying kind of the the hit that the American brand is is taking across the world like do you think after everything settles at whatever point that is that America will still hold

a respectable place in the world I think it'll all depend on the next sort of three or four years I think it's really tarnished and I you know I

we sort we're leaving for Europe on next weekend and for a spell and And we have these little pins made up.

We made up for our airmail shop over in Hudson Street here.

It's a great shop, by the way.

I was there two weeks ago.

It's fantastic.

And the little pins, they just say, I didn't vote for them.

And so when you're at a market in France or at a pub in England, people, it's just...

Because it'll be difficult.

It was difficult during the years of George Bush, George W.

Bush as well.

And it may take a generation for

the so-called American brand to correct.

Gray, and do you want me to send you over a couple of these Canada patches from your backpack?

They are useful to have.

They are really useful to have.

All of a sudden, everybody who travels is a Canadian.

You have Americans practicing their Canadian patois, you know,

because Canadians end every sentence with a question mark.

Like an American will say, I'm going to the store.

A Canadian will say, I'm going to the store?

As if like, can I get you something sort of thing?

Right.

Wait, Gray, as far as journalism goes and kind of to what Jason was saying about

Scott Galloway, you know Scott Galloway?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

We got to have him on the show.

He's brilliant.

I know.

Yeah.

He's he's great.

Very, very smart man.

And

I saw this clip either again on TikTok or Instagram or something.

And he said we could take over your house in two minutes.

Yeah.

You wouldn't get off the couch.

Yeah, exactly.

He said, nobody wants to read anymore.

That's okay.

Period.

And he goes,

everybody's getting their information from obviously TikTok or Instagram because nobody wants to sit down and read articles or magazines or books or anything.

And so, and that said, people know that people of influence know that.

So they'll just speak to these kids or these people about what it is they should know.

And that's how they get their information out.

Okay, well, a counterargument to that would be that the fact is the New York Times has never been more successful.

It's never been larger.

If you look at a magazine like, say, The Atlantic, The Atlantic is exponentially larger and more influential than it was, say, 15 years ago.

But that's a certain demographic, I think.

It is a certain demographic.

By the same token, most people watch TV with the,

even with most people watch TV with the

Chiron, you know, the whatever.

You professional show people call that.

Subtitles.

Subtitles.

And so

young people, I think it's harder and harder.

And I have a feeling that most of us, if we were growing up with TikTok and

that we would have read less than,

and, but it also, you know, most

I have five kids, and I know that some of them didn't read that much when they were in their teens, but they're all huge readers now.

They're all writers, and so they're all huge readers.

You just have to wait a bit, and they'll come around.

Sean and Jason, what are you guys waiting for?

I always say to these guys,

you know,

I've got a boring story I won't bore you with about why I'm not a great reader, but I will tell you that does it have to do with you don't know how to read is that

it's top to bottom left to right

that there's now you can every article online is now you can listen to it right that's what I'm saying if you and and it is something that's that's helped both of my girls

where you know they have these large reading assignments for school and now that all those books are are our audio books as well and so one of the teachers suggested and I thought it was a great idea get them the audio so they can listen to it as they read it.

And that's helpful.

And you get some momentum going, you get engaged in the story.

And now maybe you don't need that crutch for chapters five through 10.

You can actually just read the book.

And so

I do,

that's helpful.

That's somewhat of a phenomenon where, like you say, the New York Times, Graydon, I would imagine their online

business is larger than their print business.

I think it's nine-tenths of it, but still, they're reading it online.

But they're still reading it.

I will say that, though, and I do bang this drum quite often,

but there is a certain

reading, for me, reading at the end of the day, I find to be such an extreme luxury.

And it's very calming because we do live in a digital world.

I'm looking at my screen all day.

I'm looking at my computer, at my thing, whatever.

And to have that moment for 45 minutes every night to read, I do find that it is so calming in this sort of chaotic world in which we live, if nothing else, apart from the fact that it's interesting and you can be, you know, what are all the other great things about reading.

But in that way, and I would, especially as we get older,

I'm not speaking to you, Graydon, I'm speaking to Sean and Jason.

Because I am older.

You need to calm down.

You need to calm down, both of you.

Yeah, no, I read a lot.

I still read a lot online and stuff, but

what do you attribute, Graydon,

not the demise, but the way that magazines have not

you know, you say like the New York Times, for example, never been more profitable, yet it is now intense online now.

Why did the same not translate for the periodicals?

I mean, the the the financial crash of 2008 was a was an issue because the first thing that people could

that could take off their balance, off their their their their accounts were advertising because then you don't have to fire anybody.

So the advertising started disappearing.

And then even in New York City, there used to be a newsstand at every major intersection, sometimes one across the street from each other.

There was a newsstand in every office building.

Now when you see a newsstand on the street, it's often a

movie set thing because they're gone.

And in office buildings,

wherever there was a newsstand,

it's usually they're selling gum and flip-flops and lotto tickets.

So just the fact that you used to be able to see magazines everywhere you went.

You know, in Los Angeles, those things in Hollywood, but the long walls of magazines.

Oh, I love those.

Anyway, that's sort of, they're gone.

And I think a lot of magazines companies were late to

transfer the way a magazine looks to an electronic version.

And the thing about Airmail is Airmail was put together by magazine people, and we didn't have to work with a legacy brand and then transfer it to the internet or digital.

We started it from that.

And so I think that made a difference there.

And, you know, I read 20 magazines a month, but I read them all on my iPad.

Right.

Yeah, but before you go too far past airmail,

you know,

I just love what you, the, the,

it's so, and this is probably not the right term, but there's nothing intimidating about the way it comes at you at its, at its initial point in that it isn't, it's an email.

And there's just like, here's, here's, it's basically like looking at the table of contents.

Are you talking about the subscription to a Vanity Fair or Airman?

Oh, yes, yes.

Brayden's new thing is this thing called airmail.

So you get this email and here's like five stories.

that you can click on that then if you decide to click, then it expands into the story.

So there's just like, you don't have to buy a whole magazine or you don't have to go to a magazine's website or anything and like have to like deal with all the advertising and the big pictures and all that.

it's just here's some ideas some stories if it's interest to you click on it if not go to your go to the next email like so it's they're not it's not in your face the medicine goes down easy and they happen to be incredible stories so I don't know I just think you tacked

to to a to a format that uh speaks to the current uh readers appetite as far as you know the attention they have to get and there's a tonal shift too right JB I mean there's a tonal shift in it from Vanity Fair to airmail that's that's

there's no selling element to it that that that I think people have grown sort of an allergy to and you're just you're you're very current on that uh which is not surprising coming from somebody like well and we wanted to look beautiful because I think design means is everything these days and look at the amount of work that goes into an iPhone say so we you know I as I say I'd written thank you notes to all my advertisers at Vanity Fair and I so I wanted those advertisers and airmail I didn't want you know advertising for like I don't know, you know, Foot Fungus or, you know, Geico insurance ads.

I wanted, you know, much better to have Hermes and Dior, Sherelle Florence.

So

it, yeah, so

all the advertisers, once I got Hermes, all the other advertisers felt safe coming in.

But it's put up by people from Time Magazine when I worked there, Spy Magazine, and Vanity Fair.

That's the core group.

And then there's about eight young people who are in their mid-20s, and they form the core in the future.

Yeah.

Well, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention our mutual friend, the great Linda Wells, whom I adore.

Me too.

Yeah, whom I absolutely adore and have known for many years.

And she's a big part of Air Mail.

I'm not telling you.

I'm telling our listener, our single listener.

But I will say that,

you know, when you were at Vanity Fair,

there was a real balance between covering high society profiles, if you will, celebrity and investigative journalism.

I remember there's a great article that I've referenced many times and had people read, which was about the Saltad Brunei's brother

that you guys did about.

That story is an incredible story.

It still holds up.

It's incredible.

It's hilarious and it's right on point and it's scathing and yet very fair.

So you do that at Vanity Fair.

And then now that you're at Air Mail, how would you define,

what is your relationship?

Well, I was going to say, what's your relationship with celebrity culture?

Before I say that, what was,

because you were at the forefront of defining celebrity and covering celebrity culture back at Vanity Fair, and you still are at Air Mail in a way,

did you,

when you were in that position, what kind of incoming calls did you get from people, from publicists and celebrities themselves who wanted you to either amend something that you wrote about them?

And I know you already mentioned this about Mr.

Tish, but if someone's

got your call, did you ever get a call from that Donald Trump pseudonym?

John Barron.

John Barron?

No, but I got we'd get calls from Trump.

And

once they invented Twitter,

he went to town on me.

He would call me a sloppy.

I was a loser.

The Waverly Inn was a failing restaurant.

The Oscar Party was a hot.

The magazine was terrible.

But I would take any phone call.

But most of the

doing the covers was actually the least favorite part of the job.

But the fact is movie, you know, show people like you are more attractive than

the rest of us.

So having a very attractive person on the cover who happened to be talented was a great way of getting the attention of the reader so that they'd pick it up and they wouldn't be embarrassed putting it on their coffee table.

But once you got that, that was sort of like the wrapping and then the magazine itself was sort of the gift in the box.

But most of the calls, and we did get a lot of complaints, but they were routed through the office of the person who, of the people who booked the covers.

So I would get occasional complaints.

Most of the complaints often would come from staff members.

And I mean, once one, I remember Christopher Hitchens did a

pretty rough story on Mother Teresa.

And

he accused her of like cozying up to dictators and that sort of thing for money.

It came out of the blue and it was wild.

And Ronaldo Herrera, who's the husband of Carolina Herrera, who was on the staff, and he came,

a staunch Catholic, and he came into the office, stormed into the office, said, Grant, you've gone too far this time.

I said, What do you mean?

He said, Mother Tracy, I'm canceling my subscription.

I said, You can't cancel your subscription.

You get it for free.

But

at Spy Magazine, once we did a story on the

10 most litigious New Yorkers, and Gorbadal was on that list.

And we were listed in the phone book.

And he called me up and he said,

I really object to this.

I had never met him before.

I really object to this.

And if you don't take my name, if you don't correct that, I'll sue you.

And

I said,

wait a minute, if

we don't correct that, you're one of the most litigious New Yorkers, you're going to sue us.

He said, yes.

And I said, don't you get the irony?

And his thing that he just hung up.

That's so good.

We'll be right back.

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And back to the show.

Your new book,

Graydon, is When the Going Was Good, which is out now.

And

talk a little bit about that.

First of all, what a great title.

You're clearly not talking about yourself.

Because things continue to have a nice arc.

You're talking about a cultural shift, yeah.

Is that sort of talk a little bit about the book?

No,

I think that the, you know, if you look back and the

80s, the 90s, and the odds, with the, I mean, the 80s and 90s in particular, it was a great time in America.

It was very aspirational.

The middle class was doing well.

We still had two World Trade Center towers.

You could get on an airplane without stripping down.

There was no cell phones or social media.

And

it was just a much more natural organic time and one my wife and i happen to love watching uh frazier um before we go to bed because they're like perfectly written plays and there's no nobody has a cell phone um and um

there's just something uh you know i mean the same thing with will and grace or friends or um i'm trying to think what else seinfeld say and and um

It was just a great time.

And so the 80s, 90s, and odds, with the exception of, you know, obviously 9-11 and everything that came after that, were a great time for

television.

We're a great time for movies.

And I think television has overtaken movies now in terms of driving the culture.

Magazines do not drive the culture like they used to.

It's obviously the

things like Instagram and

television in a big way.

So do you think we'll ever get back to what you're describing?

No.

No.

Ever.

Or a version of it?

A version of it, perhaps.

I think young people will come to love magazines the way they love vinyl.

Yeah, but they'll be specialty magazines.

They won't have millions circulation and they will be largely

visual.

Like, you know, you go to like Casa magazines on 8th Avenue over here.

Yeah.

And there's a ton of these big, expensive, $20, perfect bound

thick paper magazines.

And

they get scooped up by young people, not by people over 30.

There's one of the, there's one of those great, there are about four, every corner from West Broadway to 6th Avenue, there are three or four bodegas on every corner.

There's that one at the corner of Sullivan and Prince that still has a really robust magazine section.

You know the one I'm talking about.

I know exactly where you're talking about.

I've been listening, I've been living half a block from it for the last

sort of six months, and it's been phenomenal.

And I've gone in there, I found myself going in there from time to time and perusing magazines again.

And I feel like I'm stepping back in time.

Yeah, I think

it'll come back, I think.

What do you think is the you know, we talk often about, and we've referenced it here today and the effect of social media has had uh on our culture which to me uh

on on uh

in large part i think has been a quite a negative effect uh

what do you think the future is for things like social media uh in going forward do you think there will be a a a a whiplash or a backlash rather and i was going to say i i think i'm hoping that because i wasn't asking i mean no no but i but i want

to say because no it was funny because you brought up social media because i i think we've so over shared our lives in such a massive way and billions of people now we know everything about everybody always that i think

if i'm guessing correctly we will go the opposite way in five ten twenty years whatever it is i don't know where people will be like wait i've we've all over shared i'm going to get off it i think it's cooler to hang out without it um

i think it was a long way away but i think that's what's going to happen great when you're 100 I think, yeah, I totally agree with Sean that it is.

Again, it's a correction.

And so the correction now you share everything, pictures of your children, picture of your children's birthday of them having cake on their nose and all the rest of it.

I have five kids.

None of them have a social media presence and no tattoos either.

So that's a major accomplishment.

But I don't have any social media presence.

And I think,

and I know this sounds strange for somebody who's just written a memoir, but I'm a very private person.

And I think a private life will have greater currency in maybe three to five years than it does now.

And it'll be considered much cooler than having a social for young people than having a social media

greater currency

and it gives you more cachet.

Much more cachet.

There's a mystery.

Right, right, right.

Well, it's so great.

And kind of on this, this sort of this cultural, you know, transition period we find ourselves in, hopefully,

and you being the head of

a major,

media effort.

Talk to us about your process with you and your team when you decide what stories it is you're going to go forward with there on Airmail.

Is there any

agenda, such a pejorative, but do you consider the effect and the move that you guys can make for people as you try to encourage them towards a better, healthier, you know, cultural position?

Or is it just stories of interest to you guys personally?

I mean,

I put the next issue together on a Sunday morning, and it's my favorite

process of the week.

But by and large, we look for stories that have not appeared in the American papers.

It's sort of intended as the

weekend edition of a non-existent international newspaper like the old International Herald Tribune.

And the fact is there's so much to celebrate about life.

It's not all about Donald Trump that we have, you know, it's hard to avoid Donald Trump.

I mean, it's certainly worth the effort to avoid him, but it's almost impossible.

And so he winds up in there.

But it was designed as a...

We started it during the first Trump administration.

I was living in France and it was designed as a sort of not the same, like every single newsletter you get in America is, you know, it's all basically Boston to Washington to sell a corridor news.

And we have very little of that.

There's enough of that to go around.

So ours is very international.

Stories have to be just interesting and things that

reflect changes in the culture, hopefully for the better, not always.

And just sort of spirited writing that could be funny, about informative.

And,

you know, some new fresh voices.

And it's just something that you can wake up Saturday morning and read it without completely hanging your head in despair over the news today.

I took the New York Times alerts off my phone.

Yeah.

Every 45 seconds is like the end of the world.

And it was just a lot of people.

I know, same here.

And I've been doing my best to try to avoid that.

Totally.

Same.

Do you've been a, for lack of a better word, a tastemaker

for decades.

It's just simply true.

What cultural trends

are there any that you now that you miss most or or and what do you think

or what cultural trends do you think are wildly overrated now?

Well, social media, as I think Sean points out, that it will have a swing back because the

not sharing everything will be a value in your, both in your life and your personality and your interactions with others.

I think kindness would make it be a wonderful addition back in the world because I think the sort of wanton cruelty you see coming out of Washington is a

it sort of reflects badly in us, even though most of us are not like that.

I don't think it's going to get better soon, but I think it will get better.

And I think so, too.

He's a very strange man.

I've known him for 40 years.

He's both loved me and hated me.

And he reads young,

you know, he reads like a young 78, whereas Biden read like an old 81.

I know.

You got to give him that credit.

It's hard not to.

I know.

Graydon,

at the great risk of offending you.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Oh, oh, boy.

Oh, no.

This is his favorite.

Can you please walk me through

the genesis of your incredible and impressive hair?

Oh, my God.

We'll take a good look at it because it's disappearing as we smooth.

No, no.

No, no.

What it is, is

it's one of my favorite things about you.

It always has been.

To the extent you're comfortable, can you please walk us through

how it started and what the process is to maintain?

Is there a pick involved?

Yeah, but you could put a baton in your hand.

You can conduct the New York City.

I just fucking love it so much.

No, I had this hair, it's the same hair I have on the cover of my book when I was 30.

And it's sort of good, you know, in the old days when I didn't have much money, you get it all cut off and you wait three months and it would grow back.

And now I get a cut every month or so.

And

it's just, but it's gone gray.

And if I'm out in Los Angeles and I go and there's a lot of people my age in the room I'm the only man with gray hair which I find really amazing how is that possible

it has something to do with the water out here

the styling of it is just I just love it because it's just a perfect juxtaposition between this incredible place of

oh influence and success and sophistication that you hold and it's sort of offset I mean it's it's like Einstein you know like Einstein was like the greatest brain ever, yet he had great hair.

He counterbalanced it with great hair.

Well, Pete Davidson once said, Pete Davidson told a friend of my daughter, he said, your dad, he looks like he, and with that hair, he looks like he should be on money.

Which I think is the highest compliment anybody's ever agency.

Well,

it sort of, you know,

there's a confidence to it, which is which is intoxicating.

I must admit that.

And that's code for what a fool who would do that.

No, not at all.

No, no, no, no, no.

Anybody who says, how brave of you to wear that or something like that?

No,

the opposite.

The opposite.

Well, Gray,

I'll leave you with this.

And again, we pointed out all the great things, Spy Magazine, Vanity Fair, Airmail, and now your book,

When the Going Was Good.

Afterly Inn.

And

the Waverly Inn, which is, sorry, the Waverly Inn, which is, I must admit, I haven't been to in a long time, but I love the Waverly Inn.

And you can make a reservation through my email.

Is that true?

Yeah, do all the seats.

I'll do the seating every night.

We'll treat you well.

No.

Fantastic.

Oh, my God.

What a dream.

I'm coming back.

I mean, don't put it on your website or anything like that.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Oh, believe me, I'm going to guard it with my left.

I will tell you, and this is probably won't be much of a compliment because I'm probably one in a long line, but I just finished doing this

show, and it's about an incredibly beautiful hip

restaurant on the Lower East Side

and called Black.

Shots of Inside of Waverly Inn was up on our production designer's

board.

And we basically modeled the aesthetic in there is just so incredibly beautiful.

And built down in Atlanta.

No, actually we shot it in New York.

We built an entire restaurant at Steiner.

Oh my God.

But that would be great to do.

Let's do something like now that we have Grid in here, let's do a thing where we get Thoreau banned from the Waverly Inn forever.

You know what I mean?

Don't let him know.

You don't see Justin Thoreau anymore.

Like, you just, you're always busy, you're full.

So, yeah, no, everybody.

No, the con ed is shut us down.

Yes.

But when we opened it, we wouldn't take reservations from the 203 area code because that's Greenwich, and that's where all the hedge fund guys were.

So they'd make a reservation.

We'd say, oh, sorry, shut, you know, Con Ed.

Listen, Graydon, you're speaking our language.

I have said many times: nobody is more responsible for the destruction of this planet than

sort of private equity guys.

100% bankers.

They have absolutely ruined Dandies.

Except for Dandy's, who is one of the all-time great guys everybody.

One of the all-time great guys.

Double deal.

But I want to ask you this.

As a sort of parting shot, if you will,

what would you like your God, this is a tough one to answer, I'm sure.

What would you like your legacy to be if you've even thought in those terms?

As a Canadian, you probably never have.

No, I mean, first of all, I'm really proud of being a Canadian, and especially now, I'm sure you feel the same way.

I like Mark Carney.

And I think that,

you know, you just want to leave

if you got to a beach and it's filled with candy wrappers, my inclination would be, and I'm sure, you know, for you guys as well, that to sort of clean up the candy wrappers and try to leave something in better shape than when you got there.

And in a large part, we do that through our children.

And so my kids, I'm very proud of them.

And

they're truly good humans

and funny and well-read, and

that's your legacy, because they're going to go on after

you're turned to dust and all the rest of it.

And leave a modest

body of sort of decent work behind you.

What a great answer.

Well, listen, Graydon, thank you so much for joining us.

It's such an honor.

I mean, I really honestly don't know.

The honor is ours.

Yeah, we've been such fans, and we've spoken about you before.

The three of us have, and we've been just a fan of everything you've done from Spylight

to Vanity Fair to Airmail.

And now your book, When the Going Was Good, is out now for all our listeners.

All our listener.

All our listeners.

Tell him to get there quickly then.

Or her or her.

Or them.

Or them.

I encourage him or her or them or whoever it is to go out and get it today.

Graydon, we wish you nothing but continued success, and thank you so much.

Thank you, pleasure.

Thank you so much, guys.

Yeah, nice to meet you, Graydon.

Yeah.

Okay.

Pleasure.

Thank you.

Cheers.

Bye.

Bye, buddy.

Nice guest, Willie.

That is now, you know, again, every time we have somebody that is not one of these big fancy A-list celebs whom we love,

it is, I just love talking to

other folks.

Well,

I mean, think about it.

And it is true, not only, and Jay, you said it, I said it, John, you said a version of it that he was a tastemaker, if only because

he was on the front lines of reporting what was happening culturally, whether it was a film or television or art or media, et cetera.

And

because of that position, he ends up, in a lot of ways, steering culture because of what he decides to report on.

And Lauren Michaels is still doing it.

Like, who's hosting Saturday Night Live and who's the musical guest?

We'll tell you who's the top of the zeitgeist.

He and Lauren are still doing it.

And again, I should be pointing out that these are Canadians, and I think that there's something to that.

Well, Canadians, we just inhabit

just a slightly higher place in the space.

You're breaking up a little bit.

Are you going over Canadians?

I'm losing you.

No, I've got full bars.

Shut off this mic.

You turn off this mic.

Well, you know what?

There is this, and I've spoken about this before.

As Canadians, we grew up, we are so culturally close and geographically close.

So we are kind of observers of American culture in that way and very close.

And so we do.

Wait, what do you think that is now, though?

If it's not Vanity Fair, maybe it still is Vanity Fair that is the quote tastemaker.

Like, where do people look?

Because it seems so fragmented now.

Yeah.

Well, you know what?

It's much more.

I think that it's been divided into these different pieces.

Vanity Fair was much more of a catch-all back at the time.

Right, right.

That inhabited a big space.

I don't know if there's anything that inherently...

Unless it's this airmail, which I didn't, I didn't.

I think a lot of podcasts do.

Oh, yeah, that's it.

Maybe Smartless, maybe the Smartless podcast.

You know, I haven't heard that, but I did hear about it, and I hear it's not great.

The Smartless, one of the things

that's very overrated, and these guys swear too much, they interrupt people, but you know what?

They do have really down pat bye!

Reference our own bi as the bi.

Bye.

You mean how they say goodbye?

Bye, meta.

They go, bye, meta much, meta much.

Smart

Less.

Smart

Less.

Smartless is 100% organic and artisanally handcrafted by Bennett Barbaco, Michael Grant Terry, and Rob Armjarf.

Smart Less

From the creator of Bo Jack Horseman comes a new comedy that blends humor and heartbreak.

Long story short, it's all about family and all of the ups and downs that come with it.

It brings the same sharp, heartfelt storytelling that will hit a little too close to home.

If you've ever had a family or tried to escape one, this show,

it's for you.

Watch Long Story Short, August 22nd, only on Netflix.

Introducing Searchlight Pictures' new movie, The Roses, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Coleman.

Perfect couple, Ivy and Theo Rose have it all.

But when Theo's career comes crashing down, just as Ivy's fame starts to skyrocket, a tinderbox of fierce competition and growing resentment threatens to destroy everything they've built if they don't destroy each other first.

Directed by Jay Roach of Meet the Parents, written by Tony McNamara of Poor Things, and also starring Andy Sandberg, Allison Jani, Shuti Gatwa, and Kate McKinnon.

All's fair when love is war.

The Roses in theaters everywhere, August 29th.

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