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law. ["Abracadabra"]

0:49

["Abracadabra"] Wow,

0:51

it's busy in here. I

0:54

find myself at CVS all the time,

0:56

looking for toothpaste, aspirin, scotch tape, who

0:58

knows. I wander back and forth in

1:00

the aisles trying to find what I'm

1:02

looking for, or someone who can point

1:04

me in the right direction. Excuse me,

1:08

do you know where the magazines are? Oh, right in this

1:10

corner. Okay, well, thank you very much. I

1:12

don't know if you've looked at the magazines available

1:15

in a CVS or a Walgreens or a Rite

1:17

Aid or a supermarket lately. Years

1:19

ago, they were full of monthly

1:21

and weekly news, fashion food and

1:23

celebrity magazines. And of course, tabloids.

1:26

As a little kid, I loved reading headlines

1:28

about aliens and ghosts and tawdry celebrity scandals

1:30

while I was helping my parents at the

1:32

checkout line. But

1:35

the magazines available at CVS don't

1:37

look anything like this anymore. So

1:39

I'm looking at a story of

1:41

Jesus, the essential

1:43

tax guide, Lucille Ball, her life,

1:45

love and legacy, the history

1:47

of the occult. Sure, there's

1:50

a handful of familiar titles, a

1:52

Vogue, a Vanity Fair, but mostly

1:54

there are dozens and dozens of

1:57

one-off publications, each devoted to

1:59

a single. topic. Taylor, the

2:01

music and the magic, a Walter

2:03

Pate memorial, the Kennedy assassination six

2:06

years later, the story of Ellis

2:08

Island, ultimate guide to Pokemon

2:10

100% unofficial. I

2:13

first noticed this phenomenon a few months

2:15

ago. I was wandering the aisles when

2:18

my eye caught on what I thought

2:20

was the monthly women's magazine Red Book.

2:22

But when I looked more closely I

2:24

realized it was actually Redford,

2:26

as in Robert

2:28

Redford, the now retired 87

2:31

year old movie star of

2:33

such films as The Sting, All

2:36

the President's Men, and Butch Cassidy and

2:38

The Sundance Kid. Don't tell me how to

2:40

rob a bank. I know how to rob

2:42

a bank. I'm a journalist. I've worked

2:44

at print magazines. I thought I knew

2:46

the gist of how they worked. But

2:49

staring at Robert Redford's floppy blonde

2:51

hair on this cover was like looking at

2:53

a picture you've walked by a million times

2:56

after it's been moved. Suddenly

2:58

you really notice it. And

3:01

I had questions. Like

3:03

who's making a publication devoted solely

3:05

to Robert Redford in 2024? Who's

3:07

making all these

3:11

other one-offs too? Who's

3:13

writing, publishing, and reading them?

3:17

Need a bag? No, I'm good. And

3:19

most of all, why are

3:21

there so many of them? I

3:23

mean, aren't magazines dying? How

3:25

often do people buy magazines

3:28

anymore? Not a

3:30

lot. Not a lot. This

3:40

is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. Magazines

3:42

have fallen on hard times, and nowhere

3:45

is that more true than at the

3:47

checkout line and on newsstands, where

3:50

revenue has plummeted by billions of

3:52

dollars. And yet there is something

3:55

growing there. They're called

3:57

single-issue publications or book-a-zines.

4:00

And last year, over 1,200 different bookazines

4:02

went on sale across the country. Maybe

4:05

you've bought one of them. Maybe you would

4:07

never buy one of them. Maybe you've

4:09

never even noticed them. But

4:11

the innocuous-looking bookazine is either a

4:14

way forward for the magazine or

4:16

a last gasp for a format

4:19

trying to survive on the very

4:21

racks that used to be its

4:23

natural habitat and might not

4:26

be for much longer. So

4:28

today on Dakota Ring, with some help

4:30

from Robert Redford, can

4:33

the bookazine save magazines?

4:53

Apple Card is the perfect cashback rewards credit

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Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City

5:19

Branch. Subject to credit approval.

5:22

Terms apply. In

5:26

the 1970s thriller Three Days of

5:28

the Condor, Robert Redford plays

5:31

a CIA employee whose job is

5:33

to comb through magazines every day

5:36

looking for clues. I look

5:38

for leaks. I look for new ideas. We

5:40

read everything that's published in the world. Now

5:43

I don't have a CIA operative who looks like Robert

5:46

Redford to help me with this particular

5:48

mystery. But I did have

5:50

Redford, the magazine, with his name in

5:52

big white font on the cover and

5:54

him staring right out at me, his

5:57

gaze intense. And so

5:59

I started trying to. to piece together what's going

6:01

on with bookazines by combing through

6:03

it. There's

6:07

actually no advertisements. Not

6:11

interrupted at all. It's just like endless articles

6:13

and pictures about him. A lot, a lot

6:16

of pictures. There's full pages

6:18

of Redford in a bathrobe, his blonde chest

6:20

hair exposed, Redford as a

6:22

child, Redford on a horse,

6:25

Redford giving his co-star Meryl

6:27

Streep a piggyback ride, Redford

6:29

shirtless and his jeans slung

6:31

low. Like Rillow? Every

6:34

single picture comes with a caption that

6:36

contains a quote or concrete detail. Although

6:39

1972 comedy The Hot

6:41

Rock was a box office bust,

6:43

it did inspire indie rock band

6:45

Slater Kinney to name their 1998 album in honor of it.

6:50

The care put into these captions tips you

6:52

off that Redford magazine is not just a

6:54

copy and paste job or created by

6:56

chat GPT. In fact,

6:58

the whole thing was written by

7:00

a very real person who's listed

7:02

on the last page three times

7:05

as a managing editor, research

7:07

editor and writer. Her

7:09

name is Kara Donnelly. My

7:12

professional resume is I

7:15

think a textbook example of what's happened

7:17

to journalism. I bank accounts as

7:19

well. Kara has been among

7:21

other things, a movie critic, a city

7:23

hall reporter and an executive editor at

7:25

TV Guide. So she spent the

7:27

biggest chunk of her career in the 1990s

7:30

at the Weekly Magazine People. In

7:38

those days, people was kind of

7:40

like the magazine of records for

7:42

culture. And you would know

7:44

from one day to the next, maybe today

7:46

I'm going to watch Jackie Collins make meatloaf,

7:48

which is a thing I actually did. There's

7:52

an earthquake somewhere. You got to

7:54

get to Haiti or spend

7:57

a night on a mountain top with John Bon

7:59

Jovi. Pick it up. When

8:03

Cara was there, People's readership was close to

8:05

40 million and some of its

8:07

best selling issues could move nearly

8:09

three million copies. And

8:11

it wasn't just people. Time,

8:13

Newsweek, TV Guide were all

8:15

riding high. Seven thousand magazines

8:18

were available on newsstands, breaking

8:20

news and brimming with commentary,

8:23

flush with advertising dollars and

8:25

readers and full of authority.

8:27

It was a great time to be in

8:29

that business. And I did not regret all

8:31

the money I spent getting a master's degree

8:34

in magazine journalism. But

8:36

then the magazine industry started changing

8:38

fast. Weeklies that

8:40

had thrived for decades by bringing

8:42

people the news first couldn't compete

8:44

with the immediacy of the Internet

8:46

and then smartphones. Advertising

8:49

dollars disappeared and revenue tumbled,

8:51

leading to mass layoffs and

8:54

consolidation. By the 2010s, Cara

8:56

found herself freelancing.

8:58

She took writing assignments and worked

9:00

on Queen Latifah's talk show. But

9:03

as the decade passed, money started

9:05

getting tight. One day,

9:07

working on a freelance article, she found

9:09

herself in Dwayne, the Rock Johnson's trailer,

9:12

looking at a very fancy bottle of booze.

9:15

He said it was like a six thousand dollar

9:17

bottle of tequila. I went, OK,

9:20

when I paid this last bill today,

9:22

I have eighty dollars in my account.

9:25

And now I'm sitting here with a

9:27

guy who thinks nothing of a six

9:29

thousand dollar bottle of tequila. And

9:33

that's what actually hit me. I've

9:36

got to do something to get some money. The

9:39

thing Cara was by far the most

9:41

qualified to do was make magazines,

9:44

which was also what she liked

9:46

doing. But traditional magazine

9:48

jobs had dried up, even

9:51

so she emailed everyone she could looking

9:53

for any kind of editorial work at

9:55

all. And I think it was within

9:57

about Two weeks after that, when.?

9:59

I got the call from a friend

10:01

of a friend about Page one: Do

10:04

the Swede. Between

10:06

Magazine wasn't High Times or any

10:08

other regularly published magazine. it was

10:10

a standalone single issue devoted entirely

10:12

to marijuana which is being legalized

10:14

in a number of states. Have

10:16

exactly the type of book as

10:18

the and I Saw on the

10:20

Rocks and Cvs and Camera and

10:22

her bank account. Jumped at the

10:25

chance to work on that. I

10:27

did one and that sold apparently

10:29

pretty well. I did another one

10:31

that sold. I did feel I

10:33

use bad a separate magazines on

10:35

know We'd and Cbd which was

10:37

great cause I have never used

10:40

drugs the my life. Butera

10:42

did have experience with with these one

10:44

off publications the that's moving around in

10:47

some form for decades. She is to

10:49

help make some back when she. Worked

10:51

At People. We started doing

10:53

what we called Sips special

10:55

Interest Publications which were like

10:57

single issues that were devoted

10:59

to a topic. As a

11:01

celebrity passed away, you would

11:03

do a whole issue about

11:05

the of their life and

11:07

career. But. Back at people

11:09

in the nineteen nineties, Sips were

11:11

an ad on a sideshow to

11:13

the weekly magazine which was selling

11:16

millions of copies. Now, many of

11:18

these book as he and are

11:20

not affiliated with any regular weekly

11:22

at all. They're either completely standalone

11:24

publications or the use the branding

11:26

of a magazine like Entertainment Weekly

11:28

that's no longer published in Prince.

11:30

In any event, Terre Haute a

11:32

new source of income. And. She

11:34

didn't with the weed book as. Eons to

11:36

did ones about Star Wars Star

11:39

Trek. Financial planning. You. Name

11:41

it is me having. Decades.

11:43

Of training to just.

11:46

Try. To find a balance between what

11:48

people need to go on the topic

11:50

with a pseudo the topic and just

11:52

what will be fun. I guy have

11:54

bosses who will weigh in by his

11:56

color. Fun for some a you say

11:59

here we're doing one hundred pages or

12:01

Robert Redford go find our we want

12:03

to tell a story. Slick.

12:05

A lot of these projects. Redford started with a

12:07

call from an old colleague someone else

12:10

I do from previous jobs who knew

12:12

I had gone on bugs of these

12:14

codes as I know what we ought

12:16

to valves for. We take it real

12:18

jobs. The colleague was working

12:20

for one of the smaller editorial

12:22

content companies that over see the

12:25

creation of each both as the

12:27

before turning them over to a

12:29

publisher. These companies are themselves founded

12:31

in run by former high level

12:33

magazine editors and designers who have

12:35

changed jobs as the industry has

12:37

disintegrated. They have a core of

12:40

full time employees who they hire.

12:42

A freelance team to actually

12:44

execute these publications. That

12:46

team typically include the freelance Archer actor,

12:48

a freelance copy editor, as well as

12:50

someone like Car Us who wrote the

12:53

entire Redford Book Asean with just the

12:55

help of her son. They're all paid

12:57

out of a lump sum the doesn't

12:59

get bigger. As. Are more people working on

13:01

the book? Disease. That lump is

13:04

typically between seventeen and thirty

13:06

thousand dollars. That's. How much

13:08

as group of freelancers makes all

13:10

together. Who. Doesn't come out to that much

13:12

money for any one of them. The

13:15

the New World is you don't get

13:17

paid nearly as much as your deadlines

13:19

are much faster. It's. It actually takes

13:21

about six weeks for a book. Is the into

13:23

come together though in the case of a celebrity

13:25

deaths that can pump one out in. Just

13:27

a few days. But we're at

13:29

the way for interviews Like it's

13:32

is totally doable. It's is doing

13:34

research and attributing everything that you

13:36

fine but there. There's no like

13:39

interviews like a traditional magazine. So

13:41

it's not the same as or old

13:43

jet setting job at People A Carol

13:45

likes to work. She also considers herself

13:48

fortunate she now works in Tv as

13:50

a senior. Producer on the Kelly

13:52

Clarkson shell so. She can take a

13:54

book, is engage whenever she need some extra money.

13:57

Or. Just because he wants to. because I feel

13:59

like they. hours between midnight and six are

14:01

just wasted on sleep, then I'll come home

14:03

and work on one of these magazines. But

14:07

book scenes remain a lifeline for

14:09

many middle aged magazine professionals who

14:11

know what they're doing and want

14:13

to keep doing it, even if

14:15

they're now doing it on tighter

14:18

deadlines with less resources and without

14:20

health insurance. At least,

14:22

they're a relatively reliable source of

14:24

work and income. Because

14:26

someone is commissioning lots and lots of money.

14:31

And that's who I wanted to talk to next. Someone

14:34

who could tell me why

14:37

there are so many

14:40

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all States and situations. If

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you can quote any line from all the

17:21

president's men, the movie about the journalists who

17:23

broke the Watergate scandal, I bet

17:25

it's this one. I

17:30

can't tell you that. Just

17:32

follow the money. That's

17:36

the mysterious informant known as deep

17:38

throat telling the journalist Bob Woodward

17:40

played by Robert Redford, how to

17:42

proceed with his investigation. And

17:45

in a much lower sake circumstances, I

17:47

decided to heed this advice and

17:50

follow the money too, because

17:52

the money is the most

17:54

confounding thing about book scenes.

17:57

Specifically what's confounding is how.

18:00

they're making any. As

18:02

you've probably heard, things are not going

18:04

well for print magazines. Newsweek

18:06

has announced it's scrapping its print

18:08

publication off to 80 years. National

18:10

Geographic will stop selling its regular

18:12

printed issues on newsstands in the

18:15

U.S. And the owners

18:17

of Entertainment Weekly in style, Eating Well,

18:19

Health, Parents and People and Español announced

18:21

they are ending the print versions of

18:23

the magazines. Redbook, the magazine

18:26

I'd confuse Redford with, also stopped

18:28

printing in 2019, and there are

18:31

many other examples besides.

18:34

Basically, newsstands are a

18:36

disaster. Except, somehow,

18:39

for bookazines. So

18:42

like Robert Redford and all the

18:44

president's men, I decided to chase

18:47

the cash. And to do it, I

18:49

went back to what I had. Redford,

18:52

the magazine. On the last

18:54

page is the name of its publisher, A360

18:58

Media. A360 is owned

19:00

by a hedge fund, and it turns out it's

19:02

one of only a handful of

19:04

companies driving the entire bookazine

19:06

industry. You may

19:09

have heard of it by its old name.

19:11

A360 used to be called AMI, when it

19:13

was the publisher of the National Inquirer

19:15

and other supermarket tabloids. What intimate

19:18

Dolly Parton secrets are revealed in

19:20

this exclusive inside story, Inquiring Mind

19:24

But the National Inquirer notoriously went from

19:26

breaking stories to being the story in

19:28

2018. The

19:30

Associated Press reporting the National Inquirer kept

19:33

damaging stories about President Trump, along with

19:35

details about hush money payments, locked

19:37

away in a safe. As

19:40

the dust settled from the series of catch

19:42

and kill scandals, AMI changed its name to

19:46

A360 and eventually sold off the Inquirer.

19:48

A360 still publishes

19:50

some weekly titles, like OSS Weekly

19:53

and Women's World. But in recent

19:55

years, it has stormed into bookazines

19:57

or SIPs. came

20:00

to A360. We were publishing

20:02

about 200 SIPs a year.

20:06

Last year, we topped out at a little over

20:08

500. Eric Zegda

20:10

is executive vice president of consumer revenue

20:12

and marketing at A360. His name

20:15

is right there on the last page

20:17

of Redford. And I wanted him

20:20

to help me understand how SIPs

20:22

can work financially when traditional

20:24

magazines can't. And

20:26

he told me they're apples and

20:29

oranges. SIPs is

20:31

a completely different ballgame. What's very

20:33

unique and different about book scenes

20:35

is they are basically a

20:38

single revenue stream. Eric

20:40

explained that traditionally, magazines

20:43

have had three revenue

20:45

streams, advertising, subscribers and

20:47

retail sales. But

20:50

book scenes make all of their

20:52

money from that last stream.

20:54

They make all their money in

20:57

stores by appealing directly to

20:59

consumers. So they're less

21:01

like GQ and more like gum

21:03

or chocolate bars or soda or

21:05

whatever else you see for sale

21:07

on the checkout line. But

21:09

even there, right in

21:12

potential consumers' eyeline, they

21:15

don't sell that many copies.

21:18

They are lower-circ, meaning the

21:20

magazines with subscriptions are in

21:22

the 1 million plus circulation

21:24

range. Special interest publications

21:26

are selling more like anywhere from

21:29

25 to 100,000

21:31

copies an issue. So

21:33

book scenes have one revenue stream,

21:35

and they don't sell that much,

21:38

which does not sound that promising.

21:41

Certainly, it would be disastrous for

21:44

a traditional magazine. But

21:46

remember, that's not what book scenes are.

21:49

They are a different kind of

21:51

product with a different business strategy,

21:53

and they are made to extract

21:56

value from troubled newsstands in

21:58

a number of ways. First

22:01

off, bookazines are cheap to make.

22:03

As you heard earlier, their content

22:05

is outsourced to smaller editorial companies

22:07

who turn them around fast. That

22:10

content is also reusable. A celebration

22:13

of Robert Redford can be reprinted

22:15

to say a commemorative issue

22:17

when he dies. Secondly, bookazines

22:19

stay on newsstands for a long

22:22

time, 90 days, longer

22:24

than a monthly or a weekly. It

22:26

gives them a bigger window in which to

22:28

find a prospective buyer. Third,

22:30

they're pricey. They can run from $12.99 up to

22:32

$18.99. That's

22:35

pretty much the price of a book. So

22:37

how does a publisher like A360 get

22:40

people to pay that much? It's

22:42

because this is 100% focused

22:46

on a topic that they are extremely

22:48

passionate about. Bookazines

22:50

look old-fashioned, but they are animated

22:53

by the same impulse that drives

22:55

so much contemporary pop culture. Intense

22:59

niche interest. Consumers

23:02

are now saying, well, if I'm interested in the royals,

23:04

I want a book that's 100% about

23:07

the royals. So Eric Zegda's

23:09

company, A360, turns out deep

23:11

dives into specific topics that

23:13

have the feel of a

23:15

magazine, but the narrow focus

23:17

of a subreddit. You know,

23:20

there are niche fans, whether

23:22

they're into manga or anime,

23:24

and they found a community

23:26

in chat rooms or whatnot.

23:29

And that's what a bookazine tries to do,

23:31

is tap into that fandom and

23:34

create a product for these consumers.

23:37

Fans come in all ages, and that's

23:39

the insight here. For older,

23:41

less online readers, bookazines can

23:43

function like an internet deep

23:45

dive without the internet. They're

23:48

for people who don't want to go into a Reddit

23:50

thread to learn about CBD or want

23:52

to ogle octogenarian movie stars who

23:54

don't have robust fan sites. We

23:57

do and have a lot of success with

23:59

our bookazines. tap into that, you know, whether it's

24:01

like the Robert Redford or the

24:03

Harrison Ford. But then

24:05

there is tapping into pop culture

24:07

and what's hot right now. So

24:09

like last year, our year was

24:12

made because of the

24:14

Taylor Swift phenomenon. A360

24:16

sold $12 million worth

24:19

of Taylor titles last year,

24:21

including a crafting guide, trying

24:24

to reach young people who want a keepsake,

24:26

a status object, a

24:29

magazine about their idol. Oh

24:31

my God. Now when I tell you

24:33

I'm so excited, I feel like I

24:36

feel like I'm a teenager again. The

24:39

strategy doesn't just work with Swifties. This

24:41

is a TikTok from a fan going

24:43

through a bookazine about the K-pop band

24:45

Stray Kids. Oh my gosh. Here's

24:48

like the content and it's

24:50

like, you can go there. I'm

24:52

so excited. I'm sorry.

24:55

So

24:58

to recap, bookazines are cheap

25:01

to produce, expensive to buy. They

25:03

target a passionate audience and

25:05

stay on high visibility racks

25:07

for a long time. But

25:10

there's one more thing. Remember,

25:12

magazine sales overall are

25:14

still falling. So

25:17

newsstand sales overall are

25:19

still contracting. And

25:21

so bookazine publishers need other advantages

25:23

to make everything work. Follow

25:26

the money. Just follow

25:28

the money. A360

25:31

has one particular advantage and it

25:33

has to do with the magazine

25:35

supply chain. 30

25:39

years ago, there were scores

25:41

of thriving magazine publishers, four

25:43

national distributors, and

25:45

over 350 wholesalers, getting

25:48

magazines to tens of thousands

25:50

of stores. Today, there

25:52

is only one national magazine

25:55

distributor in the country, and

25:57

that's for all nationally distributed

25:59

magazines. not just bookisines. There's

26:02

also one national magazine wholesaler that

26:04

controls about 90% of the market.

26:08

And both of these are owned

26:11

by the same hedge fund that

26:13

owns A360. That

26:16

fund also owns one of the

26:18

largest magazine printers in the country

26:21

and the company that places

26:23

magazines into checkout racks. So

26:26

for every bookisine published, that's

26:28

a lot of different pieces

26:30

of the revenue going back

26:32

to a single entity. A360's

26:35

group, it turns out, is

26:37

just about a vertically integrated

26:40

monopoly, the 800 pound gorilla

26:42

of the magazine retail space,

26:45

which is one way to help make the math

26:47

work. The money's the key to whatever this

26:49

is. A360

26:51

is only one publisher though. And

26:53

other bookisine publishers are making it

26:55

work too. They use

26:58

many of the same strategies and

27:00

some different ones as well, like

27:02

leveraging famous legacy magazine brand names

27:04

and repurposing their old content. Whatever

27:06

the strategy, altogether, they've been enough

27:09

for bookisines to come to dominate

27:11

the CVS checkout line. There

27:13

is a seminal point in 2019 where

27:17

the SIP segments surpassed weeklies and they

27:20

have not looked back since. And

27:22

so the SIPs now

27:24

represent over 50% of magazine

27:26

sales and

27:29

are by far the largest category now. So

27:34

I'd followed the money far enough to understand how

27:36

this works for the publisher, but I

27:38

had a question left. As

27:40

weekly magazines are replaced by bookisines

27:42

on the checkout racks, what

27:45

does it mean for readers? Apple

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29:40

I want to cop to the fact that from

29:42

the moment I first laid eyes on Redford, the

29:45

magazine, I've been a little

29:47

skeptical of book scenes as

29:49

a reader, but yes, also

29:51

as a journalist as

29:53

book scenes announced right there in their goofy name.

29:56

They are not quite magazines. They're

29:59

the size of the book. magazines, they fit in

30:01

the same racks as magazines, they employ

30:03

some people who used to work at

30:05

magazines, and they do some

30:08

of the fun stuff magazines do.

30:11

But they do none of the more imperative, original,

30:13

challenging, culture setting, far

30:16

reaching, expensive things magazines

30:18

do either. And I wasn't

30:20

the only person to be suspicious

30:22

of them. I was a little skeptical. I

30:24

didn't expect much. Eric Radvan is

30:27

a writer and comic book creator who

30:29

knows the value of a traditional magazine.

30:31

I grew up in like a magazine

30:33

heavy household. So we got like Time

30:35

and Newsweek and TV Guide. And it

30:37

was just like part of the fabric

30:39

of life, right? Was like these piles

30:41

of magazines all over the place. And

30:44

that went away when like, like, kind of

30:46

like the newsstand started to shrink. And what

30:48

was left wasn't like super appealing, you know,

30:50

it was like celebrity

30:52

magazines and, you know, crossword

30:54

puzzles. But during the pandemic, when

30:56

he was at Walmart buying supplies for

30:58

his new baby, something at the checkout

31:01

line caught his eye. Star

31:03

Wars book is in it was

31:05

sort of like, you know, impulse buy, like hey,

31:08

why not? I kind of got like some sticker

31:10

shock. I was like, Oh, wow, this is $13. But he bought it

31:13

anyway. And many more soon followed. And then

31:16

as I started to grab them, I was

31:18

like, Oh, wow, these are actually pretty great.

31:20

I was just really impressed with like how

31:22

much research and thought and care there was

31:24

put into this thing that like, was on

31:26

the shelf at CVS. He loves

31:29

them, loves how it feels to slow

31:31

down, shut out the noise and dive

31:33

into a subject. It's also a very

31:36

human experience or much more healthy human

31:38

experience. So just kind of like allow

31:40

yourself the time and space to explore

31:44

a topic in more than like, five

31:46

nanoseconds. You've got once

31:49

about Indiana Jones, David Bowie, the

31:51

Legend of Zelda, the Beatles and

31:53

Superman. I have an extra bounce in my step

31:55

when I'm in the Super Walmart and I need

31:58

to get diapers and wipes. I

32:00

see that checkout lane and my eyes

32:02

are like scanning a mile a minute

32:04

looking for like what's new. My

32:06

son who's four really enjoys like scanning

32:08

the items and like I get this

32:10

cool commentary of like here's another one

32:12

of Papa's magazines that he needs to

32:14

get. He keeps them all

32:16

in an IKEA cube in his office, even

32:19

the ones he thinks are mediocre. They're not all

32:21

created equal so some of them are like these

32:23

like you can tell just like a pretty obvious

32:26

like copy and paste job of like old material

32:28

from like Entertainment Weekly in 1993 or something right?

32:31

But then some of them are actually like really really good. I

32:34

think what jumped out to me was like this

32:36

thing that we don't really get so much of

32:38

in the internet age. The real feeling of like

32:41

an editorial I don't know filament

32:43

going on there where there was like yeah

32:45

somebody actually like thought about this and put

32:47

this together. And he's

32:49

right there are real people

32:51

throwing themselves creatively into some

32:53

book scenes. People like

32:56

Kara Danley. Well that's the

32:58

joy of doing these. I

33:00

mean these magazines at

33:02

least everyone I've been a part of

33:05

are actually fun. They're good reads. And

33:07

she has fun making them. Probably the biggest

33:10

testament to her enjoyment is that she keeps

33:12

doing them even though she has

33:14

a lot going on. We

33:17

share a lot of stories on this show

33:19

some more personal than others. Today's episode

33:21

was made possible because of my next

33:23

guest. She is one of our

33:25

producers and has been since season one. Please

33:28

welcome Kara Danley everybody. This

33:30

is from the Kelly Clarkson show where Kara

33:33

works. On this episode Kara

33:35

stepped in front of the camera for once

33:38

because she had her own story to tell. So

33:40

you you always knew right? Yeah

33:43

I mean from the time you're conscious when I was

33:45

seven I had this dream recurring dream

33:47

that Tabitha from Bewitched would come over

33:50

to our house and she would ask

33:52

me if I wanted to play. I

33:54

would say sure. She would say drink this first. I would

33:56

drink it. Then I was a girl and we'd go play.

34:00

In 1963, Kara came out as

34:02

transgender. After that episode,

34:04

there were probably half a dozen, you

34:07

know, burly teamstidutes who didn't

34:09

want to do it in public, but like they

34:11

would catch me, you know, wherever and go, hey,

34:13

I'm sorry to bother you. I just, I,

34:16

when you do that episode, it just, it changed

34:18

my mind about a lot of things and it

34:20

made me cry. And so

34:22

I am on this sort of mission

34:24

now to be America's

34:27

friendly neighborhood trans person. And

34:30

yet Kara still finds time to make

34:32

book of eons because she

34:34

loves the work and she loves it

34:37

even though it doesn't involve in-depth reporting

34:39

and it doesn't pay nearly as much

34:41

and it's not unearthing new information like

34:43

at her old job. Would

34:46

I like those days back? Yeah. Is

34:48

there anything I can do? Will they ever come back? No.

34:51

The plus with everything now is at least

34:54

it's a facsimile of what I used to do, what

34:56

a lot of us used to do and

34:59

it's still a chance to have fun. Working

35:03

on this piece, I started imagining designing

35:06

a CVS from scratch. There

35:08

are a lot of things one might change, but

35:11

I was thinking about magazines. If

35:14

you were starting over completely right

35:16

now, would you set aside a space

35:18

for them or would you put something

35:20

else up at the front? More chocolate,

35:23

more soda, more chopstick.

35:25

I know the absence of magazines would bum

35:28

me out. I love magazines. Way before I

35:30

worked at one, I read them. I poured

35:32

over the articles and the pictures. I thrilled

35:34

to pick one out before getting on an

35:36

airplane. I was delighted by them. I learned

35:38

stuff from them I never would have found

35:41

out about all by myself. As

35:43

you can tell, I feel nostalgic

35:45

about magazines. You can even

35:48

say I miss the way they

35:50

were, which happens to be the

35:52

name of a nostalgic romance co-starring

35:55

Barbra Streisand and you

35:57

guessed it, Robert Renford. It

36:00

was never uncomplicated. It

36:03

was lovely. Which... Yeah.

36:07

It was love. When

36:15

nostalgia can't bring magazines back, bookisines

36:18

are imperfect and compromised,

36:21

who knows how long they'll be successful,

36:24

or how long they'll be written by human

36:26

beings. But for now, they

36:28

have something that a lot of

36:30

magazines don't. The

36:33

undeniable virtue of still

36:35

being here. Can

36:37

it be enough to

36:40

be close to your

36:42

beautiful name? Oh,

36:44

hate times bring red This

36:55

is Dakota Ring. I'm Willa Paskin.

36:57

If you have any cultural mysteries

36:59

you want us to decode, please

37:01

email us at DakotaRhing at slate.com.

37:04

This episode was written by me. It

37:06

was edited by Evan Chung and produced

37:08

by Max Friedman. We produced Dakota Ring

37:11

with Katie Shepherd. Derek John is

37:13

executive producer. Mary Jacob is senior

37:15

technical director. I'd like

37:17

to thank Bob Dare, Cynthia Wang, Todd

37:19

Lundgren, Lisa Chambers, Lisa Gorin,

37:22

Kit Taylor, Joe Berger, Samir

37:24

Husni, Michael Rothfeld, Margot Souska,

37:26

and Diego Romero. If

37:28

you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our

37:30

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37:32

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37:34

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