What Future with Joshua TopolskyThe What Future team takes the opportunity to grill Josh after our guest cancelled at the last minute. Just how did he become the man he is today? Tune in to hear the pivotal moments of Josh's career on an episode some are calling "inspiring," while others say, "invasive." Discussed: V Rave, truancy, Palm Pilots, Vox
Hey, and welcome to What Future.
I'm your host, Josh Wittapolski, and I would love to tell you that today on the show, we have a great guest.
I would love to say that.
I would love nothing more than to tell you that we had a great guest that's coming on and we're going to have such an interesting conversation about the media world because it's in tatters, it's been shattered, it is, it is scattered into the wind. Tucker Carlson gone, Don Lemon out, BuzzFeed closed, BuzzFeed News rather but unfortunately our guests couldn't make it. Who who I was going to talk to you about all that. I want to believe somebody really tragic came up, though I think it was just a just a tight booking situation and we couldn't make it work. But I mean, I don't want something tragic to have happened to the guests, obviously, just like a tragic event that prevented them from arriving at the studio in time or whatever. That's anyhow, let's not dwell on it. So we're gonna have to wing it. We're gonna have to do an episode where I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do it. Like, you know, the thing is, I don't have much to say, and I don't have a lot to talk about. I don't have very many opinions or positions on the day's news or what's happening in the world. So I think it'll be difficult, but I think it's possible. And and my producer, Lyra, who's here, I think, has agreed to help to jump in if if I'm drowning, has agreed to not jumping because that'd be a mistake, then we both be drowning in the water. But maybe has agreed to get a stick.
Like a branch throw a life.
I'm imagining you get like a dead like a tree has lost a large branch, and I'm drowning, and you're like, then you get the branch and you stick it out into the water, is my In my view, I guess that's more of a quicksand thing though really like seems like actually jumping in and saving me from drowning would be the right thing to do. So thanks for nothing, so Lyra Smith is here, and then Jenna. I don't know if Jenna's going to make it appearance. Jenna who's our supervising producer, Jenna Cagile. Now, Jenna doesn't like to I don't think she wants to be on air. I think I don't know she's got something to hide. We don't know that. We don't know the extent of it. But I don't know if she'll make an appearance or not. But at any rate, so we're going to try to get through. You have a lot to talk about. Why are you laughing, Lyra? You don't like am I putting on this pause.
I can't see Jenna's face, so I don't know what she's thinking when you say.
That she's happy. Actually she liked it. That's interesting. She's enjoying. And then I have stuff to hide. I have stuff.
Because you do have stuff to hide. I know you had a troubled, very troubled teenage experience. I know you were kind of a bad kid.
Well, Josh, it's funny that you say that, because that is what I wanted to ask you about.
Oh okay, great.
I said I had a question for Josh, non topical. It couldn't be less topical, actually, But then you made a reference to teenage years.
I don't like. I do not like where this is going at all.
You're the youngest person that I know of who dropped out of school, and I know a lot of people who dropped out of school.
What does that mean when you mean I'm my current age is the young No?
No, no, I mean you anybody you dropped out freshman year of high.
School something like that. Yeah, that's right. That sounds right to my ninth grade? Is that freshman year?
How? Yeah? I want to know this story. I feel like it's it's it's an important piece of the puzzle of who who Josh Chapolski is.
Are you familiar with the government program known as mk Ultra?
I am, Well, that's nothing to do with that, but it's a cool it's a cool thing that the government did really interesting experiments. So, uh, well, my brother and I had very troubled a school career. To be honest with you, My school problems began in I don't know, third grade or something, second grade, third grade because my brother decided one day that he didn't want to go to school. My brother Eric, and I don't know if I'm exposing him, you know his narrative, but I'm going to talk about it because anyhow, So I was his little brother. You know, I was a little kid at the time. Maybe he was in I don't know, fifth grade, sixth grade, I'm not really sure. Whatever, whatever the distance was there, and he was like, I'm not going to school and was like very militant about it. And my parents, you know, I don't think my parents were well equipped for certain aspects of parenting, and I think that they didn't quite know how to counter this. Eric and I were very strong willed, strong willed children. I think we were like, we don't want to go to school, and they were like, uh, okay, maybe like for a little bit, but then you're gonna have to go back. And then over time that just became a bigger and bigger problem. And so I was in and out of a bunch of different schools. I mean, I had more time in than Eric did, I think. To be honest with you, but you know, one of the things about when you start to miss a lot of school when you're young is, uh, you know, the feeling of having missed and not being a part of all of it, and and feeling like bad about like not knowing people and not knowing what's going on, and like you've been out and it's gonna be weird and you get back like that kind of I think builds up over time. And nobody in my family came up with a great solution. This is the probably the most I've ever talked about, like the actual like familial situation that was going on. By the way, nobody really had a solution. We went to therapists, We had all kinds of There was like, you know, intervention from you know, people associated with like the Department of Education or whatever, you know, like people like you can't just not let your kids go to school. My mother's a school teacher, by the way, which is in another fascinating aspect of the story. She's retired now obviously, And uh yeah, you know, I don't know. I was also like a crazy night owl. Like personally, I think Eric slept pretty normally, but I didn't, so I would just stay up all night, like fucking around on my computer. I started like using the Internet when I was twelve, And this is in I don't know a year, was nineteen eighty nine or something like, with the internet barely existed nineteen ninety, like there was like a local service provider anyhow. The second I started meeting people on the Internet. I was like, who needs reality? I have like all these friends in Perth, Australia who are up in the middle of the night on the Internet.
So you know, that.
Became like kind of my whole world. That became my whole life is like talking to people on hanging out with people on the internet. And then school was like this afterthought. Yeah, by the time I hit ninth grade, it was kind of like a it was a non starter.
It wasn't going well and.
It's ninth grade. Is that the earliest that a person can remove from public.
I don't know, Actually, I don't think the situation was like totally. I don't know what the like legal situation was, like, I mean, my parents didn't go to jail or something. You know, we weren't taken away from them, and perhaps that's white privilege. I don't know, Like, you know, maybe I experienced like a you know, they were like, hey, we're working on it, and everybody was like okay, fine. In other situations that might not have been the case. And I think about it from time to time. It is like, you know, a strange thing besides not learning certain things at a certain period in time, like it's like, school's good. Like I have a daughter who's in school, and like, I see the result of the school and I'm like, that's great. She's really learning important stuff. That's super good. But beyond that, I think my ability to socialize with other people and my level of I don't know about level of maturity, but just my aptitude for socializing was adversely affected, I would say, by not being in school a lot at a young age. And so I think I became a naturally, very somewhat antisocial person. Though I think a lot of people would claim I'm not antisocial. I seem like I'm not antisocial, but I think most of my socializing is a defense mechanism anyhow.
So that's my story. I don't know if that's helpful to you at all, but it is.
And then by nineteen right, we're like a working producer.
Correct.
Oh, around the same time I started fucking with the internet. My brother was a guitar player. He was taking like guitar lessons. At some point he got a synthesizer and a drum machine. I can't remember why, but he was not interested in them and he sort of discarded them. And I was like, oh, what are these what are these electronic devices and let me check those out? Because I was just a very Like all my life, I was just a very I'm trying to think of the best way to describe this. Oh, it was always very interested in like how things worked, and like electronic things, and like like I also a fairly weird kid, I guess, like I used to go and radio shacks don't exist anymore, but one of my favorite things to do when I was like a little kid, like six, my parents would take me to radio shack, and radio shacks sold all of these like parts, like these little motors and like switches and buzzers, and you could like basically connect them if you could figure it out, you could make them do dumb things like you could make the motor go and a light go off and a sound go off. They weren't kids, they were literally just like the parts. And I used to love to like get the parts and like put them together and make weird little like gadgets or contraptions or whatever, you know. So whatever that thing was was just a continuous part of my personality. So when I got ahold of the synthesizer and drum machine, I started making like weird computer music, like you know what you see these people they're like it's like, there's a great documentary about this guy. It's called in the Realms of the Unreal, I believe is the name of it. It's narrated by Dakota Fanning. It's super weird. Actually, it's about this guy whose name is I want to say Henry Darger, but he like you know, made paintings for fifty years and wrote like a fifteen thousand page like novel, like he's out of his mind. But like anyhow, I was like that like for music, Like I didn't really listen to music, didn't really like wasn't that interested in it, Like my touchsdoones for like music. When I was younger, I was like, I like the pet Shop Boys and the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack, so like the real like wide range of the spectrum of musical interest there. Anyhow, So I took the keyboard and the drum machine. I started fucking around with them. Then eventually because of the Internet, So when I was on the Internet at like fifteen or sixteen or whatever, aim did not exist. The Internet that I used was like a command line to like things. You could visit on the Internet, and there were things you could do like once you were online. One of them was a thing called telnet, which was like a Unix function which dials into like a server that somebody hosts. And there was a thing called v Rave, which was a virtual rave, which was like ravers would go into this like chat room. Basically they would tell net to a chat room and then you would talk to people. It's like just pure text and emojis, but not emojis like you know, like emoticons, like you know, like shit like that. It was like super duper like basic. Anyhow, so I met people and I ended up somehow in v Rave talking to people, and then I was like, oh, there's these things like I'm up all night. There's these things where people go out and listen to like insane electronic music all night long, and and so I started doing that when I was like sixteen or seventeen, and a bunch of people in Australia were actually ravers as well. And then I started making music like that was you know, like techno music and trans.
And stuff like that.
And then and then yeah, I think I was nineteen when I released my first record. I would go to Raves and I was sober. I was like the only sober person and for a long time, and people would be like what do you want. I'm like, I'm not, this is just my personality and.
Uh and so like I did a lot of.
Like observing at raves, you know. I was like a lot of like just kind of like what's going on here. The first thing I did when I started going to raves was I thought like, oh, somebody should do like weird, Like there could be like cool weird visuals, and so of course my gadget brain was like what if I bought like twenty old TVs and I like set them up in like a grid and then got like live video mixing software on my computer and like did weird live psychedelic video mixing along to the music? So immediately I met some people who were throwing raised and I was like, Hey, have you guys ever thought about.
You know, having a weird visual thing here? And they were like, sure, do that.
And then I did that for a while, which was sort of my entry point to like making music and deejaying.
So were you like working like a part time job during this?
I had some odd jobs. I worked at a bank doing data entry for a little while, which I found to be extremely, extremely boring. I worked for a very short period of time. I worked at a place called Mailboxes et cetera, which is a it's like a shipping store, and there was a very old woman who ran it, who was like the meanest person I've ever met in my entire life, and she hated hated my guts and thought I was I was terrible at my job, which is probably true. I worked one day at a Blockbuster. That was maybe my first job was I worked one day at a Blockbuster. I thought working at Alockbuster would be awesome until I got there and realized what working into Blockbuster was like. And I was like, actually, this is not good and I don't want to be here.
What was it like, because it still seems awesome to me.
No, I was just like depressing, and there was like a lot of dumb work, like like rewinding videotapes, like like finding tapes that weren't rewound and rewinding them, and like getting mismatch tapes and boxes, and you know, like checking people out who.
Were in a bad mood or whatever. It didn't want to be nice to you.
I was just you know, like any retail jobs just monotonous bullshit where you get treated like crap by the customers. So I had some jobs like that. I've worked for a brief period of time as eighteen as a graphic designer at some graphic design firm in Pittsburgh, and that didn't work out because I didn't want to. I didn't want to do design for other people, like they're like, design this thing, and I was like, this is stupid and I hate it. I want to do my own thing. Of course, this is like the story of my life.
Did you find it hard that you to get a job because you didn't have like a ged or like.
No, never, I didn't find it hard to get a job.
Actually, weirdly enough, I'm not even sure how I got a lot of these jobs that the design one.
I remember.
I think I a friend of mine worked at this place. They did like real stuff like for ads, and like they were an actual business, like in an office building, and and I think I either I went in there like one day they would like needed some help with something, or I don't even remember it. Maybe I like I got out of remember, but they saw some of my design. They were like this is really good, Like, do you want to work here? And I was like, because I had been doing like rave flyers and stuff like on the side, anything related to computers I was doing, except coding, which would have been the best thing to learn, which I never did.
If I was smart, I.
Would have learned to code, like like a lot of people of that generation. But I was like, everything you could do creative with a computer I was interested in. But if it had anything to do with like numbers or math or like frankly, just learning something that didn't come naturally to me, I was like, no, thank you.
So then when did you move to New York?
You know, if we're doing like my life story. So I started making music and djaying, but like I thought, everything I.
Made was terrible.
And and I met this DJ guy named Duran who was a pretty popular DJ from the West Coast. Duran Chambers is his name. He co ran a record label on the West Coast called Rampant Records, and he knew this guy at a label called Fragrant Records. These were, like, you know, fairly well known, like trance or techno labels. Any I gave him one of my tapes and I was apparently he told me the story many many years later, maybe months later. I can't remember how long the delay was, but I gave him a tape and I was like, I think we were at a party in Detroit. By the way, this is the kind of thing like on a regular basis, I would be in like Detroit or Baltimore or like Cleveland or wherever, like just traveling to go to a rave or DJing or just hanging out. And I gave him a tape. We were in like Detroit. Detroit raves were interesting too, because it was like when Detroit was like really like fairly like it was pretty could be pretty scary, like just like it was pretty run down, and I mean still is to some extent. But I just remember being there. I think one of the parties we were at, they were like, oh, yeah, we have snipers on the roof to make sure Nobe tries to steal like get out of here with like our money. I was like, that seems like a bad scene. It's like a bad vibe for the for the rave.
But anyhow, also, don't really trust the snipers.
Yeah, I don't know, It's like maybe it was just a story that they were telling everybody, but at any rate. I think I gave him a tape in Detroit and I was like, this is apparently. I was like, this is terrible and not really finished, and like it's not good. You shouldn't listen to it. But here's some songs I've been working on. And he was like, I put it on a shelf. I was like, the guy said this was terrible and I'm not listening to it. So for many months, I guess didn't listen to it, and then turned out he liked it. And that's how I started. So it was very random, like I wasn't like trying that hard anyhow. So then I put out a record on Fragrant or Rampant. Maybe I did a remix for them. I think I was like nineteen years old something like that, probably eighteen nineteen, somewhere in that range.
Can I just ask like, if you're nineteen and then all this stuff was happening, did you feel lucky? Like, what's the feeling?
I felt nothing?
I felt what's the feeling? The feeling was like no, no, no, no, no, I mean people do who when you're doing that? You're not like, Wow, I'm so lucky. You're just kind of like I want to do this thing and now oh I can do it, and you're like, oh, well, no, what else I could do like that? At least that's for me. I was like, Oh, I'm doing a thing now, like that's cool, Like let me do more of that or let me try some other thing or whatever, you know. For me, it was just like a rolling, like creative rolling, like what what am I interested in doing? What's like satisfying to me creatively? And then actually the thing about the demo tape was I knew people who were like really aggressively like mailing tapes out and like promoting themselves, and like I do not have like the promotion gene like I think you guys even experience this now where I'm like even a little cagey about like putting a clip from the show on like Instagram or I'm not like I'm like, ah, is that great? Like do I want to put It's kind of like I don't really love like self promotion, so I was like actually not working very hard at promoting myself, which is why like it seemed like a weird fluke that anybody even ever listened to the tape.
So before I moved to New York.
I moved to Philadelphia, but this was like many years after, And in fact, somebody just said me an interview that I did in the year two thousand in a magazine. They sent me a picture of the of the interview because they had clipped it. And first off, I come off like a complete asshole in the interview, like I sound like the biggest asshole in the world, like just a total jerk, and like with a bad sense of humor. I mean, maybe the writer wanted it to be that way, but I'm like, oh yeah, this, God, I sound so annoying. Also, I shit on Pittsburgh in the interview. I say that people can't read there because I had just moved to Philadelphia, and I make some I think I was trying to be funny, like in a way that does not translate in print. And I think, of course, now I have to say what it was like twenty yeah, something like that. They were like, how's Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, And I was like, well, at least people can read here, And I think, like the joke was. It wasn't like I didn't think people in Pittsburgh couldn't read. It was just like a funny thing to say, because like they're pretty much the same. They're pretty similar, you know, in a lot of ways. I remember people being mad about that in Pittsburgh, but I didn't care because I was on my way to the big time, to the big city. I moved to Philadelphia for a couple of years because a bunch of my friends had moved there, and I found Philadelphia to be Uh.
Maybe I've talked about this with you before.
I don't know if I have Lyra or Jenna, but you know, I'm not a spiritual person. I'm not a big religious person or believer in things like luck or Jinx's or you know what, you know, cosmic phenomena that can't be explained.
But I do think it's.
Possible that Philadelphia is a locus of evil on the planet. It's kind of like the Bermuda Triangle, like just a spot on the planet where dark, very dark situations occur. I had a very bad time in Philadelphia. I understand now, like it's like kind of everybody's like loves Philadelphia and apparently it's great. I have no ill will towards the city, but there was a period where I was like I got to get the fuck out of Philadelphia. Anyhow, my brother moved to New York because he had moved to Philadelphia too after I had, and then he moved to New York. And then I came to visit him and we went to a restaurant which is still in business called Diner.
You know, diner, Lyra, Where is it in New York.
It's in Williamsburg.
It's on oh, the one, right off the first stop on the L.
Yeah, yeah, diner.
Yeah. I had my first date across the street from it with Nick Turner.
There you go.
So I came to visit Eric and he's like, you gotta go to diner. They have a great burger and I'm like, okay, because it's very this is Williamsburg in the two thousand.
I don't what's two thousand and two.
It's like very recently post nine to eleven, and so New York's weird, very interesting vibe in New York, very weird.
Interesting.
Like for me, it was like, oh, like I want to be here. This is this is where it all happens. This is the terrorists are going to strike. They're going to strike here, So this is where to be.
Did you meet Laura in New York.
No, but hold on a second. I went to diner.
And the thing with diner is that every waitress who worked there, at least from what I could tell, was like unbelievably flirty. And of course I had some horrible relationship in Philadelphia and had been like broken up with and felt really bad.
And I was like flirted with heavily by the waitress. And I think just not for.
Any other reason other than it, would you know, guarantee a good tip from the you know, four dumb dudes who were at the table or whatever. And I was like, oh my god, I gotta move to New York. It's all happening here, Like beautiful, cosmopolitan ladies are flirting with me at the restaurant.
You know, the burger is great. Like literally it was like that.
It was like something as simple as like WHOA, this feels better. You asked me a question. What was the question?
Did you meet Laura in New York? No?
I met Laura.
I mean, there's a fast forward here to this story. But my brother and I ended up having a studio music studio in New York, and we had a band, but we also were producing different bands like Chick Chick Chick we made a record with and some other bands.
And I saw them, Oh really, yeah, they're great.
We made a record called Mythtakes with them, which I believe todate is their highest reviewed record on Pitchfork. So that's all my doing, undoubtedly. But anyhow, but so we were doing that for a while and then a friend of ours brought He was like, my friend has a band and they want to make a record. Can I bring them to the studio? And they came up from Pittsburgh and it was is this guy, John de Zubin's band and John is Laura's brother, And we produced their record and then we went back to Pittsburgh. This is the summer of two thousand, I want to say four or five, for they had a record release party for their record that we produced, and that is like technically where Laura and I met, though she claims there was an earlier encounter at our friend's house where we were on his porch and she was having a cigarette and I told her that smoking was really bad for you and she should quick because she's going to get cancer, which like absolutely sounds like my move, so like Byboove would have been to just say whatever was on my mind, usually something negative to whoever, especially if it was a cute girl. Edihow, so, you know, nagging, very good flirt technique. I think we all know very.
Much you were the original.
But uh yeah, that's that's a long time ago to now.
So then did she move to New York?
Yes, well we started dating.
We started a long distance love affair, and then I was like, why don't you come visit me? And oh, I should mention like her boyfriend at the time was the drummer in John's band, so who was also named Josh and was also like a tall guy with a beard. So I'm not going to read too much into it. But you know, let's just say I've spent some time in therapy discuss it. No, I haven't, but tough guys don't go to therapy. Tough guys like myself. Laura and I actually began a relationship on MySpace. To be honest with you, like if I can date the whole thing for a second. We sent a lot of messages to each other on MySpace and then I was like, you should come visit, you know, come to New York for a weekend or something. And then she came to New York and we had a great time, and she went back and I was like, look, there's no way I'm going to be successful in a long distance relationship.
You should just move here and live with me. And that's what we did. That's what we did.
Wow.
And one year later we were engaged and one year later we were married.
Wow.
We got married at the Carnegie Museum of History or whatever in Pittsburgh.
Well, actually, I didn't want to.
Ever have a wedding, and then Laura told me that you could rent the museum and that there was a possibility of doing getting married in like the dinosaur.
Whatever, but it was under construction.
We got married in the whole of North American Wildlife, and we had our reception in the Hall of Architecture, which was like all of these recreations of giant famous pieces of like you know, like Roman columns and things like that. Anyhow, it's fun. That was a fun time. It was a fun time. It was also a time when like we were like, how are we going to pay for this? Because we paid for it ourselves and it was like, I don't know, it was like several thousand dollars, but like it was not like it, Like now it seems like wow, like that should not as stressed as hot as much.
As it did.
But it was like a lot of money at the time. Like now that I'm like grown up, I'm like, oh, it's not that bad. But like at the time, I was like, what are we doing?
Well? You didn't have the comparison to like the thirty thousand, forty thousand dollars weddings as like the norm.
No, I didn't have any comparison because I'd never spent a second thinking about weddings at all, except that I didn't want one.
I didn't want to have one.
It's kind of like how I thought about poodles, Like I thought poodles came with that hair dial like I thought when I was a kid, did I already talk about this? We had We got a poodle when I was a kid. His name was Fletch. My mother had had poodles when she was growing up. We wanted a dog really badly, so we went shopping for dogs, and but like before we went, I was like, I don't want a poodle because I thought poodles came with those I thought they were like genetically had those ball like haircuts, you know, like I didn't realize that that was It's so funny the way kids minds worked.
But I didn't realize that that was like a choice.
And then we started like looking at dogs, and I like, you know, we eventually found like some dogs and we were like, we really love them, and we were playing with them, and I was like, is this a poodle, because like I kind of had like a feelid.
Then of course I.
Realized that the poodles don't have tom don't have to have that haircut. But also we realized that poodles are very ill tempered dogs. And and Fletch was very, very cruel, but every member of the family. No, he was fine, very smart. He figured how to open his crate from the inside. He could open his cage and get out. He set off our motion alarm all the time. It's fun stuff.
We've digressed.
So then when did you get into journalism.
It's funny you.
Should ask that my brother and I were running the studio. We were producing bands, and then uh, this website and gadget had a call for which I read all the time. You know, I was like a nerd, so I was reading all like the tech blogs and stuff like that, and they had an open call for writers, like every once in a while they'd be like, you know, hey, we're looking for writers. Are you do you want to freelance for us? Like do you want to write blog posts? And I was like that would be fun, maybe I could do that, And you know, I sent like a submission like I'm like, hey.
I'd like to write for you.
Here's like whatever they asked for example, posts or something, and then like pretty quickly like ended up like doing that and then so at night.
Like it in writing things as you were going or.
You know, I'd written a couple I'd written a couple of reviews, like for like magazines, like very basic stuff, you know, mixed mag or somebody would be like, hey, do you want to do like a guest review of like a.
Record or something.
I'm like sure, And it would be like, you know, a very small but like not like on a regular basis, like I did like two of them or three of them or something.
No, I hadn't been writing at all.
I had, so then I had to write stuff in order to do this, like to send in samples, you had to like write news. Yeah.
I think it was like do a writing sample or like do you know it was like pick a story and write a blog post about it or something. I remember at the time, I was like really into palm devices. Do you remember palm pilots.
Well, they had phones, right, they'd like and there was like a leak of like.
There was some new Palm phone and I remember like I found it on some weird forum and I like brought it to the people at you know, I brought to like the editor, and I think they were like impressed that I had gone like and gone with splunking for like this you know, leaked photo or something and anyhow, So, yeah, so I started working there like part time, just like you know, writing blog posts.
You know. I was edited and worked with like the people who would.
Work there for a while and and then like so so by day I was producing music and by night I was you know writing, Like there was a pretty good period of time.
This is in like the.
Heyday of like original blogging, where I would write like ten blog posts a day and I was paid eleven dollars a post. Like, so I was like, this is pretty good money if I can write like ten of these, you know, and they're like, yeah, you know.
Three to five hundred word like very bloggy.
Just it was just fucking very random, like about tech stuff by gadgets and whatever. Anyhow, So I did that for a while and then and then they were like, this is you're doing great. Do you want to work here full time? And I thought, like I did? I mean I did because I liked it a lot, and also like the music business sucks, like it sucks like being a producer unless you are this is of course a different era, but like I wasn't doing okay, but it's just a tough racket. You got to chase people down for money, and unless you're having like huge success, you know, it's very tough, very tough to make a living at it.
So I was like, yeah, I'll do that full time. And then a year later I was the editor in chief. Wow, a lot of my stories are like a lot of my stories shill learn.
Why do you think this is? Like I'm hearing this and I'm thinking, do you not watch TV?
What do you mean? Like I mean not really, no, I don't. I mean not a lot, but.
Like it feels like you've spent a lot of time filling your days with like actual productive activity without thinking of it as being productive.
No, right, just no, all my activities were purely pleasurable for me. You know, I've basically tried to gravitate towards things that I found enjoyable to do and interesting, like creatively and intellectually.
So no, I mean I didn't think. I don't I'm not a.
Big planner or like a big like let me step back and admire the view of what is going on. It's more like, you know, I'm just doing just moving forward towards the thing, whatever that thing is.
And but you've been.
Able to be successful in all the things, which is like impressive, like the stuff that you're interested in, you find like very quick success.
Yeah, well I think I just I'm very tall, So I think people are just intimidated. I just show up and they're like, just don't mess this guy's big, who knows what he's gonna do.
No, I don't know.
It is interesting like like when I joined when I joined NGADGA full time, I got very immersed in doing it, and I became very quickly like very good at I think what I was doing. And then you know, began like leveled up a bit, like became an editor of other people like pretty quickly. And then what happened was like about a year or a year and a half something like something like a year a year and a half after I joined full time, the editor who was there was leaving to go do something new, and there was this like kind of weird like nobody seemed to know what was going to happen because he had been there for like a really long time, guy named Ryan Block, and you know, because it was owned by AOL and AOL sucked and they always manage things badly and to like extinction, and there was a feeling of like who's going to take over now or who's going to run this that can like carry the baton or whatever. And I was like, hey, like I think I'd be good at this. And I talked to like other people there and I was like, hey, would you guys be if I was like put myself forward to like do this, would you be into it? And people are like yes? And then it was so it was kind of like we sort of came up with a plan like as a as a group, and I mean it was my somewhat my plan, I guess, but you know, it just felt like there was a vacuum there and we should be mindful of like filling it the right way or whatever.
And that was that, Like it is odd. I don't know.
I think it's probably a lot of this has to do with I just like probably to in some ways negative way. But I'm very blunt. I've been very blunt and very straightforward with people about like what I want or like what I would like to do, and if not straightforward with them like verbally, just like straightforward about like what it is I am doing and enjoy doing. I don't have a lot of friends, but like I became very close with the people that I work with, Like I've always been very close to the people that I work with, and and I like value those relationships and like this is a weird especially as a boss to be like, because I am a boss of people and have been for a while, but like to be like, well, I think of those people as my friends because at the end of the day, like I'm like a manager and they are people who work at a company. But I also feel like just surrounding yourself with good people and getting to work with them is is really important. So I haven't I didn't invest a lot of time in like I don't know what other other people do.
I don't know, socializing or.
Going out and enjoying life, watching movies, Like I've done some of that obviously, but I've spent a lot of time like doing the work the thing that I'm working at, because the thing that I'm working at is usually like the fun thing and the good thing, and I get to hang out with cool people and do it with people that are interesting and you know, fun to talk to and work with and create with.
So and then what year is that that you're editor in chief of in Gadget.
Two thousand and eight nine? Maybe?
So, then when does box happen?
Well?
Okay, So there was a guy named Marty Mo who worked at AOL who was like in charge of the media brands there. And Marty is this guy he had like a really big vision for a really bold media brand, like if we like expand these franchises that we have, like end Gadget was one of our brands, and there were some other things, you know, when AOL News was sort of like a still a thing and kind of taking more of a shape. This is before hoftingon post or any of that. Because I remember AOL bought Hofftington Post, so Marty and I became buddies like after I you know, started running end Gadget, and we sort of like were like, Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could expand this, Like wouldn't be cool if we could like make this bigger and more bold and try some new things and like do more video and do this, you know, like basically the verge. Like we were like, it'd be cool if that, but that didn't exist right, Like we didn't have budget, we couldn't hire people, we didn't have like any ability to like make really interesting choices about like the product and things like that. So we took it to the to the people who ran AOL, where like would you be open to investing money? Like this thing's all was really successful, and we were like, would you be a into investing like a little bit more money in it so we could.
Make it like a huge like a huge business.
And they were like no, like we're not going to invest in fact, we're probly going to do some layoff soon or whatever, you know, And so we were like fuck this, like fuck that, like we should go just do it. Like we were talking on the phone one night. I think I said something like, God, I wish we could just like take n gadget like out of the company and just run it on its own. And then we were like, oh, wait, like maybe we can like or maybe we can just like see if other people would want to do that, and maybe there's somewhere to like build something new, or maybe we could build something from scratch or whatever, and that like kind of snowballed into we met Marty knew this guy named Jim Bankoff. Jim Bankoff was running a website called ESB Nation, which was a network of fan run sports blogs and it had grown to like a pretty big size, but it was like all sports focus. And we met with him and they had a really cool CMS, which is the content management system. They had a really cool like technology that they were building to like publish like on the Internet. And I thought that was really interesting, and we had a lot of very similar ideas about like the future of media on the Internet, and you know, if we could bring the right people over and build something, like could we build something together? And that's that's how Vox started, really, and they had this like sports focused thing and we brought in not everybody but a lot of people from Engadget, but then from other places as well, and we started building you know, the verge, which would become like the first that was like the first, like vox brand. So that's how that started. I mean it's obviously there's a lot of complicated pieces of that.
But yeah, this is not topical.
But this is I said it wasn't topical.
This is interesting interesting. I don't usually talk just about myself. Of course, I love doing it. It's great, very enjoyable to me to just talk about how cool I am and all the great stuff I've done.
Well, I've been wanting to piece these bits together.
Does it make Is it making any sense?
Yeah, it's making a lot of sense.
I've had people come up to me and be like, you know when we've done events and stuff and say like how do I how would I do what you've done? Or like what like do you have any advice? And I'm kind of like, actually, like I would only have the shittiest advice that I would never give anybody, Like definitely wouldn't tell anybody to do what I did, Like, yeah, drop out, don't go to any school. Just drop out of school as soon as you can and fuck around with whatever you enjoy and he'll probably get successful doing it or whatever, you know. But like it is like a very strange thing. By the way, I think I should clarify here because I said it before. My mother is a school teacher. My father sold snack foods. That was his main job. He literally had a van that he would drive around. He like distributed snack foods to like local delis and like corner stores. Like I would not say it was a large business. Think he made less money than my mother, who was a school teacher. So like very aggressively middle class parents, like aggressively middle class existence.
You know.
It's like Tucker Carlton, for instance, heir to the I believe, like the Swanson Chicken fortune or something right, Like Tucker Carlson could do whatever he wanted and never worry.
About the consequence.
It's like like Spike Jones, very talented guy, but also like I'm pretty sureless like the heir to like the Spiegel fortune, and like remember the Spiegel catalog. I don't know if you do, but anyhow, I'm pretty sure that's his family. By the way, I'm not saying I'm Tucker Carlson or Spike Jones level. They are just the first two that popped into my mind. Nobody in my family was a journalist. Nobody in my family made music except for my brother, but he made like indie rock and he still makes music. But it wasn't like there was some thing like this is the family business or like you're rich, so don't worry.
And it doesn't even have to be that. It's just having this the money right, right, you don't have to want to do the exact same thing that your parents did to get a leg up if you have.
Right, No, no, no, I mean yeah, we didn't have. In fact, like my parents talk to me all the time. They tell us all the time about how we were we like put them in debt and you know, like they had to support us for longer because we didn't have like you know, we didn't go to college and we didn't have I was like, well, we didn't go to college, Like so that saved you some money, right, like for sure, like you know, but like they are like, oh, we have so much debt because of you too, which is like actually very rude because like I didn't tell them to be parents, Like that's not my fault, Like I wasn't in sharp. They're like all the time, they're like, oh you were, say you were impossible, and I'm like, I was nine, Like I wasn't in charge. I don't know why you let me make decisions. Like Laura and I have talked about this. She was the first person who was like, you know, it's pretty weird actually how your parents like blame you for like not going to school when like, for sure, like that was their job to deal with, like they needed to deal with that, you know, And I see it now like Zeldason days is like I don't want to go, and I'm like I.
Get it, I get it, but you're fucking going.
You're going to school, Like it sucks sometimes to get up and go, but you just got to do it. Like I definitely see very clearly, like the things that you're supposed to do that are hard as a parent or whatever.
Not to say I'm a good parent or perfect parent rather, but anyhow, fucking so. Yeah, So I didn't come from money and I have a silver spoon in my mouth. I'm not saying I was like we were broke or anything. We weren't.
People are way worse off than my parents were. You know, and I can't look at it and not go I'm like a tall white guy, a natural fit in a lot of environments for like who's the boss supposed to be? Right, like just in the modern era where we are all hopefully I was trying to think more about shit like that. It of course is like a factor, but it never occurred to me at the time. I wasn't like, wow, I should because because the thing is like I usually end up in rooms with people who are way better on paper than I am, like most of the rooms I end up in to this day. And this is interesting but also like very weird for me, as like people who are really well educated and do come from money and have had like all of the advantages and and I don't begrudge that or anything. It's just it's very weird to me because I don't feel like those. I'm not part of that club.
Like I'm not.
I didn't go to a good school, I don't have a great network, you know, my family doesn't have money. And there was definitely no guarantee or not even close to it.
There was.
Actually all of the guarantees based on my schooling and stuff were sort of like you're going to fail in like a hundred different ways in life and be like really fucked up because of it. And so I think about that, you know, quite a bit, especially when I'm like talking to people about things that I feel like I.
Shouldn't know about, you know.
I mean, I'm not like gonna say I have imposter syndrome or whatever, like, because I know I'm an impostor.
I don't. It's not a syndrome. It's real.
But you know, but rooms like now, sometimes I'm like looking at spreadsheets of insane like I'm looking like a P and L and I'm like, why do I even know what a P and L is? Like I'm a fucking high school dropout.
Anyhow.
Just goes to show, you know, if you follow your passions and you work hard enough, amazing things can occur.
I disagree with that just because you and I have like such It's so interesting to hear you say this because you and I have very similar My mom.
Was a teacher, my dad was a chid Gee. Guy, I'm sharing about myself.
Okay, yeah, right, that's right.
I love the mystery of Jenna and here we go.
We were like very middle class and I also went into juggle.
But I was not tall and I'm not a man.
Yeah, and I am nowhere. You're as successful as.
You are, Jenna. That is the only quality that I have. That was it just my tallness and being a man. And no, I mean, look, that's what I'm saying, is it's a I don't want to say its a fluke.
I don't think it's a fluke. I don't think it's luck.
Although if I believed in luck, I might say, Wow, I've been really lucky.
I don't think it's luck either. But it almost sounds to me And I'm only just hearing all this stuff for the first time. You're just telling me this for the first time.
What's your review? We've never talked about this at all before.
And I'm like absolutely looking at it through the lens of me and having like, I mean, my major disability in life, or my major adversity in life is insane neuroticism and anxiety. And it almost sounds like the lack of concern for what could go wrong, Yes, five years down the line, ten years, what am I going to be doing in twenty years? The lack of like fear of that and like concern it sounds like helped you focus on what you really wanted to get good at and that and you got good at it.
You know, no, but you're right.
But here's the interesting thing, the flip side of that, and this is like to my detriment, the thing with me is I have two qualities that that I believe, like to your point that the thing you're talking about can be amazing and helpful, but are also like wildly destructive. One is like any problem at all, think of anything, doesn't matter if it's small, like this door knob is broken, or let's start a media business and raise ten million dollars, like I'll go, why, well, like why couldn't I? Like why couldn't I? I have a tendency to go. I would describe it as like I would say optimism, but it's probably not that it's something else where. I'll just my thinking is in any situation like, well, why couldn't it work? I think a lot of people, or it is a very natural thing to go like here are all the ways it And by the way, I actually can be very negative about stuff. I can actually be very critical of things. But like when it comes to like a thing I want to do, or think I can do. My immediate thought is like, well why can I or why shouldn't I be able to, which is like obviously built up over years of like not just because I've done it, but it is just my mode. It is like if it's broken, why can't it be fixed? Like if it isn't done, why couldn't I do it? If it's like, why couldn't it be me? And this is I'm not saying it's to sound like a jerk or egotistical or whatever. And I'm not saying it's even a great quality because it means that sometimes I do things that are like really don't end up that great and little things in big things, you know, like the other day I installed a microwave, but I had never done that before, and like, you know, there was a period during it and I'm still like every day I'm like, well, it's still hanging there, like it's still on the wall, like, but there was a period in the middle of it where I was like I'm in over my head, like I don't actually know how to finish this thing, And then even bigger things like where I'm like fuck this, I'm quitting this job and I'll go start my own thing, and like, who cares?
Who cares how well I'm being paid? Who cares that?
Like I would be on Easy Street for the rest of my life if I just stayed here and said, Okay, whatever you guys want to do what, I'm fine with. But instead I'm like, fuck this, I'm gonna build my own thing, or I'm gonna make my own way, or I'm gonna do it the way I want to do it, and that can be you know, that can have like real world consequences. And then I'm like, you know, I'm just very impulsive, Like I'm just very prone to just do a thing, not just even the processing of like why not.
I think these things are positives. They could go bad, and I'm sure they have at different points, but overall, it sounds like it sounds like a good way to think about things that you want to do.
I did an interview with Kasey Nystad, who we should have on the show. I had him on my own podcast, and he's also a high school dropout. We're I think we're about the same age or very close in age. He's one of the few people I've met who's had a very similar life experience to my and where I mean. I think he's way way more successful than I am. But I haven't met that many people who are like nothing should have worked out, really, but like somehow I just like forced it to work.
I don't know. That's why, Like I have no good.
Advice to give anybody, because none haven't made any sense, and yet here we.
Are it made perfect sense. And I do think there is good advice. You don't have to like form the words.
Yeah, okay, that's interesting. I'll be able to listen back to.
This and be like, wait, by example, Yeah, I'm.
Leading by example. What is the example? I don't know. Just fucking do it. Just go for it. Just do it is my thing.
Okay, my motto which I invented, you came up with that, I came up with, just do it. If you've heard it anywhere else, that's mine and they owe me money. We didn't even talk about my man Tucker Carlson, you know, and my boy.
Don, Like I was going to tell you. In a meeting yesterday, I asked if anybody had any leads on people who would be good to talk about Tucker Carlson, And I said Tucker Max Carlson. Because my something some wires wrong.
That's a brain.
And I had been talking about Tucker Max earlier that day.
The best thing I saw about the whole thing. Now, I mean, we're not we can't get into it. But Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon were both fired on the same day, and somebody tweeted like they're doing a podcast and it like, honestly would be an amazing, amazing podcast that I would love to listen to.
I mean, maybe not love to listen to.
I mean, fuck Tucker Carlson to hell, is my stat my stance on Tucker Carlson. So yeah, anyhow, maybe he'll go back to the chicken ranch or farm or whatever whatever they have the chickens.
Like the factory.
I guess maybe he'll go back to wherever they make Animal X for swans and animal X.
We talked about animal AX, right. No, oh, it's my favorite urban legend, Jenna. Have we talked about animal X?
No? This way I heard the story is you remember when Kentucky Fried Chicken changed their name officially to KFC.
Yeah.
The the urban legend was they had to change their name so it didn't the word chicken because they use animal which is known as animal X. That is like a headless chicken with six wings. That that's how they produce all of their chicken in like some labs somewhere where they've got there's like that grown non chicken things and they're not legally allowed to call them chicken anyhow, great fucking story. No, it's a great it's a great story. Whatever brain came up with that particular urban legend is just an absolute fucking narrative.
Genius.
Yeah, it sounds like a great movie. And fried chicken is my favorite food in the world, number one with a bullet. And I would eat animal X.
You know, I try not to eat animals, but chicken is really good. I mean, I hate to hate to say it, I just do. I do think chicken tastes really good. I'm sorry, what, Jenna, why are you? What is going on?
Like chicken?
You don't like chicken? Are you vegetarian?
I beef outing anything else? And I only do it because I need protein.
You're like sick, you're sick from that you have chicken. You should not look into how they produce like it's not great, man, it's not a lot better.
It's all bad. It's all about.
Well that is the show for this week. I guess, like what happened is is Lyrah quizmy on my career. Now everybody knows everything. Now I can't write my book.
I think this was a great pitch for your book.
I actually had an agent at one point. He was like, you should write a This sounds really egotistical. She was like, you should write like an autobiography, like your life's interesting. I'm like, I don't know, like is it like I was like, I'm not sure there's that much there. But then I have thought about it. Maybe someday I'll write a book.
I don't know.
You know who ghost writes memoirs?
Who?
Tucker Max?
Tucker Maxwell, I will not be.
Working very successful. He did, Tiffany hattishes, he does all the celebrity members.
Maybe I should talk to Tucker Max.
Should talk to Tucker Max.
I forget his claim to fame. He's like a misogynist or I hope they serve beer in hell. Oh right, right.
He was like I'm a bad guy. Me and my bros Are bad or something. It was like that kind of book, right.
Yeah, And I ate that ship really love. I thought he was the funniest guy on the planet.
Is he like a pooah guy?
Is he like a no, No, he's like I mean, he's just a nact. I mean, he's just you know whatever. He's a conventionally handsome, rat bro looking guy, Like he didn't have any pua element to him. He just was like, they come to me thing.
I've always wondered what it'd be like to be very handsome. That would be very cool. I think I.
Disagree with the handsome assessment of this guy.
Really, I think conventionally no, No, We've had this conversation before. There are like people who think Adam Driver is handsome, But in the real world, if you met Adam Driver, most people, if Adam Driver was an Adam Driver, most people would be like, that guy is a weird creep. I do not think he's handsome, Whereas like most people would look like Chris Hemsworth and be like, oh, yeah, that dude's a hunk.
So anyhow, you know, your talent and personality or that's right, that's right, incredibly huge factors attractiveness.
My factor has been just being able to talk people to death, just so just wear them down, tell them that.
They're gonna die for the answers, and they're like, well, I only have six months to live. I should see what happened.
Might as well just hang out with this guy right here anyhow. Okay, So we'll be back next week with more what future, and maybe maybe our guests won't cancel on us and we won't have to do yet another episode where I tell my life story, though there's a lot I think there are a lot of tales.
I like the idea of doing it, doing your same life story every week, but you just are forced to get more and more in depth, more just.
More detail on specific moments, just like meetings that I had with people, or phone calls that I our long phone calls. Well, anyhow, So that's that's it, and we'll be back next weekend as always. I guess I suppose I wish you and your family the very best, but I don't know you or your family. So is it worth it? Are you worth it? Think about that? Stew on that until the next episode, Even under the w
