The Death of Peak TV | Chris Vognar | YDC Ep 207

Nobody would have thought that I would be the one.
Ryder?
Sports talk?
Baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball.
Oh, it's a big mic.
Oh, OK.
All right, yeah.
OK, now I get it.
We're going to have a lightning strike, boys.
What happened over there, Grego?
We had a little lightning strike right outside the window.
All right, all right.
Here's a tip for all these Americano League teams.
Don't do it.
You said tip.
Yeah, tail fair.
The peak.
Keep jamming.
Take a colon.
Nothing but a big Gen X jerk off site.
This is a little lighter?
What?
I don't know if somebody would hear that.
Bullshit.
I'm back.
I'm anxious.
Hello, everyone.
One and all.
It is another day.
It's another round of your dark companion.
And we are here inside the nurturing biosphere of the mothership.
Once again, Shupy is here.
Ashley is here.
Becca is wandering around out there somewhere.
I am here.
And I think we have a reasonable presentation cooked up for you today.
This episode number 207 on the 25th of March.
If you're keeping score at home or even if you're by yourself.
Today, very, very pleased to have this fellow on because he's a guy that I got to know some,
but not terribly well while he was here, but I always admired his work.
And his work has carried him a long way.
He is joining us.
I presume from somewhere up in the Northeast today, unless I miss my guess.
He is Chris Wagner, the noted writer who applied his craft with a number of outposts here and now does so at the Boston Globe.
Hello, Chris.
Where are you?
Hello, gentleman of Dallas.
I'm well.
I'm honored to be here with you guys.
Well, it's good to see you.
Good to talk to you.
Check it out.
Some of your work up there at the Globe.
And man, killing it.
You're making us proud.
Appreciate that.
Are you do that?
I assume you actually subscribe.
If you're, if you're able to get through the paywall.
Yeah, I do, I do subscribe.
I'll get that with you here in just a little bit because I do want to talk to you about that because I'm actually kind of a Boston Globe groupie when it comes right down to it.
And I mean, I frequently find stuff in there that I bring here and talk about here on the podcast and I even on the radio.
I did that.
I've been this way for years.
Anyway, enough about me.
Let's talk about you.
I assume you are in Boston today.
I am.
I'm actually at the office as I as I speak.
Wow.
A Boston building right behind me.
Wow.
You are actually inside the chamber.
Man.
This is impressive.
I want to talk to you a little bit about your background because while you were here, we knew each other, you know, but I don't know you all that well.
Were you from Dallas originally or are we?
No, I grew up in the Bay Area.
Born and raised in Berkeley, which is about people don't know.
It's about 20 minutes from San Francisco.
First 25 years of my life, born and raised and educated.
And I moved to Dallas in 96 and May of 96 for my after the job at the morning news.
Where did you go to school at?
I went to Berkeley.
Yeah, right.
I went to community college first because I buy more or less slipped through high school.
Across across the street across the street at the park getting stoned through most of high school.
But yeah, community college kind of saved my ass and I transferred transferred on to Cal.
Yeah, that's what story.
When you were here, I read anything I could that had your byline on it.
But what was some of the stuff that you worked on that you were particularly fond of or had fun with or enjoyed or proud of or whatever.
They gave me so many opportunities there, especially early on.
I mean, I was 25 when I got to Dallas.
They threw me right into movie coverage pretty early on.
I mean, I was part time when I got there.
But they got me in the building and started using me right off.
So I wrote about whatever, whatever they gave me, man.
I was just like, yes, I want to work.
Yeah, I would, I would like a career.
Thank you very much.
So, you know, I got to go to the Oscars a bunch.
I got a Sundance a bunch.
I used to review all kinds of crazy.
I used to be reviewed concerts that other people didn't really want to go to such as Kid Rock and Lick biscuit at Bronco Bowl.
That was that was fun.
Stuff stuff of that.
Yeah, it was nuts.
I was like, what is going on here?
This is the apocalypse is near.
So yeah, they gave me every opportunity to do just about about everything.
You sound like you're pretty fond of your experience and memories there.
Yeah, I mean, you know, until they laid me off, it was great.
Yeah, there is that minor detail.
But yeah, I mean, I was there for more than 20 years.
I was there for 23 years.
You had to swim through Houston somewhere along the line too, didn't you?
Yeah, just I was in Houston right before I came to Boston.
Mostly freelancing there.
I loved Houston too, actually, but really fun city.
You know, I read the globe quite often, as I said.
And people who know this ask me why?
What draws you to the globe?
And I really don't know what to tell them except that it up there, it just means more.
It seems like the whole newspaper thing means more up there.
It's it's just like a there's something about the culture up there.
That makes the newspaper game a bigger part of it than it is in most places.
Fair to say.
Yeah, I think that's a really good way to put it actually.
I've never felt more read before.
People really seem to be connected to the paper.
In a way that you know, I say paper, but you know, the online presence, of course, as well.
It seems to have.
It seems to have a really important place in the community.
And it's a really interesting community.
People read here a lot.
And yeah, if you got something wrong, they're going to let you know about it too.
So yeah, it's it's a really.
You are you've probably been reading.
It sounds like you've been reading the globe regularly longer than I have.
But it's it's a pretty special place.
I could I could tell that immediately.
I think I can tell that even before I got here because I went after the job.
I went after the job really hard.
I could tell it was something that I really, really wanted to do.
What do you think it is about that part of the world that.
That makes the newspaper such a special part of the fabric of the place.
It's a great question.
I mean, people.
There's a real tie to the community.
And like I said, people, people here read.
Just in general.
There's a lot of bookstores.
Of course, there's.
There's a lot of universities everywhere.
You can't walk a few blocks without it in another university or college.
People, you know, but there's there's something.
Very passionate and local about this place.
And that extends even to coverage of say movies or television.
They want.
They want their people to be talking to them about.
About what they're watching.
They don't just want.
They want to have a relationship of some kind.
With with with the writers.
I mean, you can't.
You can't ask for more than that, really, as a journalist.
It's pretty amazing.
Would you say the community up there is insular?
Or are they welcoming to outsiders?
Or what's your experience there?
Been like.
Outside.
I think it's a little bit of both.
I've been.
Very much welcomed.
At the paper.
I live in Cambridge, which is, which is an extremely, you know,
I grew up in Berkeley.
I'm kind of like I'm back.
So yeah, I find Cambridge quite welcoming.
And I can also be insular.
You know, I a friend of mine who's from here.
Who I got to know and Houston a little bit because he's actually.
But he was at university.
Houston and his family here.
So he kind of goes back and forth.
He told me something like some people in Boston will like.
Your neighbor might like snarl at you.
And then in the next breath, like, offer to, to.
Basically dig your porch up from the snow to shovel the snow off your porch.
So it's a little bit of both.
It's interesting.
There's definitely a lot of pride.
I mean, this place has been around forever.
Boston.
Yes, it has.
It's an old, old city.
It's as old as the country older than the country.
And people go back a long, long, long, long way here.
That I think they also take some pride in.
Newcomers coming in and enjoying it.
If that makes sense.
Is the weather been a big adjustment for you?
Oh, yeah, it's been horrible.
I mean, the winter is.
I was.
I got here and I was like, OK, this is Boston.
I'd lived here for a year before I should say back in the 2000s.
But it was a long time ago.
So I got here and I was like, OK, this is winter.
This is, OK, this is Boston.
And I'm like, this is really, really brutal.
And then people started telling me, yeah, this is the worst winter we've had.
In many, many years.
It's been an adjustment.
There's no doubt about that.
It is messed with my head.
A little bit.
You get into it though.
I mean, summer, summer's in Texas messed with my head too.
So, you know, it's.
Yeah, I guess one thing or another, you know, wherever you go,
you can't have it all.
We're in California.
We are getting a preview of that Texas summer now.
Hit.
I mean, you know,
we are getting a preview of that Texas summer now hit 90 a few days ago.
I think we're about to again.
It is on its way.
It's happening.
But we're going to get into we're going to have a 70 degree day next week,
which is I will probably be dancing in the street.
Would that happens?
Nice.
Boy, we would be destined to street with a 70 degree day too.
No, but you know how that goes.
You've been here.
Let me ask you, how do people in your world in the newspaper world get around?
Do you do you have an agent who finds you gigs?
Or is it every man for himself or just a networking thing?
Or how does that work in your world?
I'm sure there are people much bigger than me who have agents,
but they're probably doing a lot more than the newspaper.
Those are some of the most exciting books and doing other media.
I have talked to agents about book ideas, which I have not.
I've not written a book.
It's yes, networking.
Social media really helps.
I'm not on Twitter anymore.
I couldn't.
I just couldn't do any more.
It drove me.
But I certainly met people there.
people that I used to work with or for even.
The person who told me about this job
was actually my old boss and Dallas, who I have stayed
friends with because he's a great guy.
He's a new, he's in New York now.
He's like, hey, check this out.
You must you should apply for this.
Yeah, but you're right, I probably should.
And then you meet people, it's funny when I started
freelancing after I was at the DMN.
I didn't realize how many people I had met over the years
and how many people I knew who could help me out.
That was a really interesting discovery.
In a way, it could be a small world.
And obviously it's a world that has had
its struggles of late.
And I think that has kind of built some camaraderie among us
who are still trying to make it here.
Yeah, yeah.
So what appealed to you more?
Just getting to the globe in general
or getting to the globe and covering
the TV pop culture beat the way you do.
But both, I mean, I would say probably
getting to the globe in general first.
I could tell there are a lot of really talented people here.
I really, it's funny, I joke that I've spent
the 55 years of my life very slowly moving from the West
coast to the east coast.
Don't fart here.
Texas.
So no, no, I'm here.
I really dig the east coast.
I love cities like a walk.
I sold my car before I moved here, which felt really good.
I may get another one at some point, but not right now.
And then they have, they really care about the arts here.
So I've, and I've written about a lot of different,
about film, about television, music, theater, books,
all those things.
And I saw the department and the kind of work
they were doing as well.
Yeah.
And I was like, yeah, I want to be.
I would really like to be a part of that.
And like I said, I've been freelancing for five or six years.
And I was ready to come in out of the cold as well.
Health insurance is a really nice thing.
Yeah, it seems like freelancing, I guess, for some,
if you've been in a job in a long, for a long time,
and kind of had it with it, freelancing sounds like a nice idea.
But I guess it's all a double-edged sword at the end of the day.
Yeah, I mean, I enjoyed parts of freelancing, certainly.
But I also, I missed having a shingle.
I missed having a team to play with on a regular basis.
I missed being in a newsroom.
And I feel like I'm in a really one of the best
in the world right now.
So it's pretty great.
Would you say TV is particularly
at a high tide place right now?
I mean, do you notice any kind of trends
in the way things are working in TV these days?
That's a good question.
I've heard a lot of people say that the era
of peak TV is over.
I think you can make an argument for that.
I mean, the era of the sopranos and madmen and breaking bad,
et cetera.
I mean, that's kind of a golden age now.
I think I guess the way I looked at it is there's less grace TV,
but I think there's more good TV
than there has ever been, because there's so much.
And I do a lot of cherry picking,
because I can't watch everything.
You can't even try to watch everything.
There's always something interesting on.
There's always several interesting things on.
Doesn't mean they're all great.
And there's still a lot of crap as well.
But I mean, streaming has obviously blown everything up.
It's more complicated.
You have to figure out what's showing where and when.
And readers want to know that as well.
Sometimes I want to know that.
Yeah.
I don't look it up.
But I'm getting a big kick out of what I'm doing now.
That's funny.
I read about TV full-time and like 98, 99.
Much, much different period when I was at the DMN.
Yeah.
I filled in for the great man.
Even Dosa is still a dear friend.
He went off on a fellowship for a year.
I tried to fill his shoes.
And just a different universe now.
Nothing similar about it now.
Well, for the record, I thought you did an admirable job
of filling many Mendoza's shoes.
That's where I first became the guy with your work.
That's that was a long time ago.
Yeah, it was another, it's another century.
Yeah.
There's a whole other lifetime ago just about.
At least the sun does the VHS.
I remember getting the VHS tapes of the upcoming
Friends episodes.
So I'd be like, oh, wow, this is pretty cool.
Is there anything out there that you think might spawn
some knockoff shows as has been the case over the years?
Is there anything there that's that strong
and got that kind of those kinds of sea legs
to where you can see a knockoff show?
Like a line?
You mean like a spinoff, like the streaming stuff?
Tell me a good question.
So much of the stuff seems unique.
I mean, you can't imagine like a soprano's spinoff.
I don't like it's they did that movie,
which was kind of a spinoff with Chattoni as child.
Many saints of new work, I actually kind of liked.
I don't know.
That's a really good question.
You have stumped me.
Mike, right?
We'll see if I can, we'll see if I can think of anything
about this but it's time we're done though.
Well, all right.
Here's something a little bit more generic
and a little easier for you.
What are you watching now?
The July.
I can do that.
I just finished writing about a new show called Beat.
One on Prime Video about a British Pakistani actor.
Riz Ahmed, he's a really good actor.
He was a night crawler with Jake Yillinol.
He was in the night of, he wondered Emmy
for the night of, actually.
He was nominated.
He did a movie called Sound of Metal
where he played a heavy metal drummer
who's going deaf.
Great actor.
This is kind of a dark comedy in which he plays
a British Pakistani actor who gets an audition
to be the next James Bond and his entire life
falls apart for various reasons.
It's, that's really good.
I enjoyed that quite a bit.
I like DTF St. Louis.
I'm not done with it yet,
but I'm pretty much down with whatever Jason Bateman's
going to do like his sensibility.
It's also dark as hell.
Very hard to classify.
What else?
I'm sure there's more.
I'm looking forward to the new season
of your friends and neighbors, the John Ham show.
I got a kick out of the first season.
Guys, Steve Guy stealing from all of his, you know, ham.
Steve is stealing from his rich suburban neighbors.
And friends breaking into their houses.
Good John Ham, and once again, Ham series.
A lot of good sports documentaries
last few months that I've tried to, as you guys know,
I am a, I'm not a sports journalist,
but I'm a pretty passionate sports fan.
And I great sports department here, as you know.
Yes, you do.
And they've been very nice about sports editors.
Super cool.
And I'm just like, hey, can I write about this?
It's like, yeah, good.
Well, a lot of them know they got a big fan down here in Dallas.
I will do that.
I'll read their stuff.
I'll read the folks.
It's not any for sure.
I love the notes columns.
Good folks.
Two of the first people who reached out to me
when I got the job were Dan Shaughnessy and Bob Ryan.
They're just like emailed me out of the blue.
They're like, wow, really Boston.
No, no, no, no, come out.
That's great.
That's great.
I had lunch with both of them.
And they were just like super nice guys.
I was like sitting there going,
I'm having lunch with Bob Ryan.
What's it going on?
So yeah, it's, it's, it's, um,
it's a kind of place it is though.
People like want to be ambassadors for fairly.
Here comes this new guy.
Kind of high profile job.
Let's, let's say hi.
That's a good situation to be in.
It really is.
They really is.
All right, let me ask you about something
that I've been watching here lately.
Because honestly, I don't know quite what to make of this,
but I'm, it's one of those things where now I'm in too deep.
So I've got to stay with it to the end,
but I don't know quite what to make of it and quite what to think
about what I'm watching.
What do you think about industry?
Yeah, that's one that I really need to dig deeper into.
It is much, it is much beloved people think it's one of the best.
Is it really?
Yeah, it really is.
At least among my, my peers,
it's considered one of the best things out there.
I need to take the dive.
I have, it's, it's a, it's an unfortunate blind spot for me.
It is so much TV, but that's one that I really have no excuse to not be,
to not at least be checking out more thoroughly.
I've seen it, but I have, I have no profound thoughts on it,
but I can tell you it's very, very highly regarded.
Is there like a trend among TV shows that drives you crazy
or that you find particularly deplorable?
I think a lot of series and seasons are too long.
I read about this actually, I think there's a lot of bloat.
I think sometimes it seems like they're making series to
shock up minutes and episodes and keep the payroll going.
Because this is a business that gets paid by the episode.
So yeah, I think I love, I love me a good 30 minute.
I love a good brisk season of 30 minute episodes.
The last, the most recent Game of Thrones spinoff,
a night of the Seven Kingdoms.
Really good, 30 minute episodes.
Pretty funny.
Good characters, just boom, boom, boom.
Let's tell a good story and not try to cram 10 hours of mythology
into, you know, one season.
So yeah, some recommend that actually.
They said that you don't really need to know the Game of Thrones story
or anything like that to get into it, which is not a bad jumping off point.
No, that is, that is absolutely correct.
So, I mean, I really love a good, thoughtful epic drama as well.
I mean, secession was, was amazing.
But yeah, I really, I've come to really value economy,
especially now that I'm watching so much.
Yeah, okay.
I have 12 hours here to watch.
I can get to be, it can get to be a lot.
I think there's a lot of like, there seems to be a lot of like slick,
sexy, somewhat funny, lurid crime series that just keep coming.
And a lot of them aren't very good.
Some of them are, I mentioned DTF, St. Louis, that's a good one.
Yeah.
But there's a, there's a real glut of those.
And I think there's, I think that's a well that's being gone to a little too
frequently.
Now, they seem to all be imitating each other.
All right, this is very broad.
This is all encompassing.
Just give me your thoughts on this.
How has streaming impacted all this?
It's changed.
I mean, I, I hardly know where to go for the shows.
I might want to watch anymore.
Yeah.
And I realized that, you know, that's, that's just going to be the way it is
with all these streaming networks.
But in your view, how has that impacted things?
I'm curious.
I mean, do you watch any network shows these days?
Not many.
I mean, yeah, I want to do it before I go to sleep every night.
Because I count what's timeless.
It's a classic.
Yeah, I can't, every once in a while, I'll review a network show just because
I'm like, I should probably write about a network show.
Occasionally, they're okay.
Usually they're, they're about, they're just behind the times.
I think a lot of the time people, and I guess that's one of the reasons
why I mean, I'm selfish, you know, not, I'm biased regarding this,
but I think that's a place where a TV critic can come in handy.
This would be like kind of almost like a traffic cop.
You're like, here's where this is, here's where that is.
Yeah, you know, these guys are showing this.
These guys are going away.
You know, I, I tried, there's so much on Netflix that I kind of like consciously.
I'm like, okay, I can't just write about everything.
Netflix, I have to write about some other stuff.
I mean, Apple, Apple makes them really good stuff.
And it's not that they're hemorrhaging money, but they can afford to take some risks
because they're out, they get deep pockets.
So it's a completely different ball game.
And of course, there aren't, there aren't the content restrictions.
Yeah, right.
And it's funny.
I was, I watched the SNL UK the first episode of the British Saturday Night Live.
And you can swear on the new, on the SNL UK, I was like,
did they just drop enough foam?
I was like, yes, they did.
It's cool.
Yeah.
Cost of chupy likes cussing.
So if that's the right, I love cussing, so yeah, that's a big difference as well.
Yeah, I like it because we can do it here.
Yeah, exactly.
You have to run restricted by the rest.
If you want to, yeah, there you go.
Yeah, if you ever want to drop an F bomb on the, on the air, here's your chance.
I think you just did.
Appreciate it.
Appreciate it.
Yeah.
All right, this is a great Chris Wagner with us.
He plied his craft here at the Dallas Morning News and other outposts for many years now.
He is with the Boston Globe.
He is the TV and pop culture critic up there.
You can stand down for just a second because we got a little business to attend to here.
And those of you out there who watch YDC know that they can mean one thing and one thing
only.
That being that it's time for the dreaded and feared mid show read OMG.
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Excellent.
Back to the show.
Yes.
Back to the great Chris Wagner.
Let's see.
These days, I remember back in the day, Ed Bark and others would tell me about people
who were offered up to him for interview subjects.
Did they still do that for for you guys?
Yeah, sometimes.
I'd like to do more of that.
I really enjoy doing interviews.
So you know, you don't always get the same amount of time that you might have gotten.
Back in the day, you know, back when Ed had the great, and I love the Ed dearly.
He's a hero of mine and a good friend.
He's an awesome guy.
He's the best.
And he was really in a, he was about as good a TV critic as there could be as well.
Got that guy worked so freaking hard.
It's kind of scary at times.
So yeah, we get the, we get the occasional interviews.
They don't, they don't do the, I went out to, there's a, do this thing called the TV press
tour.
Yes.
And I got to go out there with Ed a couple of times and he introduced me to everybody
and treated me like I belonged even when I really did not.
They don't do that anymore.
They might again someday, but that doesn't, that no longer exists because it was too
expensive to, to, to put on on a regular basis.
Do they have any biggest place or nothing really the same now?
Yeah, if they do, I'd like to know about it, not that I, not that I know of.
When I was freelancing for the times a bunch, the New York Times during my, my freelance
period and got some good interviews there on the freelance because, you know, they tend
to be first in the line for these things.
Yeah.
And so that was, you know, that still happens, that just doesn't happen quite as much.
I'd like to find a way to, I did the occasional music story and that's, those are fun and
I can find ways to talk to people that I admire, like jazz musicians who I look up to,
that kind of thing.
Yeah.
Authors.
So yeah, I mean, short answer, that was the short answer along the, the short answer
is yes, but usually don't, you're not going to get the same 30 minutes to an hour usually
that you might once have, have gotten with a big name.
So the short answer is yes, but it's not like it used to be kind of like so many things.
Yeah, like so many things for sure.
I mean, I remember back when I was in Dallas, I got, I was supposed to interview, they were
like, hey, do you want to interview Clinton, Clint Eastwood?
I was like, yeah, of course, that'd be great.
I was expecting the publicist to like call and give me like my 15 minutes or something
and then, but that one day the phone rang and it's like, hey, it's Clinton.
So I, I got talking for like 45 minutes or an hour, I mean, that's, that's a pretty exceptional
rare experience.
And I just obviously still remember it, I remember many telling me that Letterman just called
him out of the blue once to tell him that he liked a story he wrote.
Wow.
That kind of stuff does not happen very much anymore.
Yeah.
What do you remember most about your time here?
And what were some of the things you did that you were particularly proud of?
I remember, you know, it was home, it became home and I had never stepped foot in Texas
before I moved there and started at the paper.
I made a lot of great friends.
I made bad, I made some, you know, I partied too much, certainly.
I definitely remember that, I remember some of that, not all of it.
You remember the rest of us there?
Yeah, I'm sure.
And I remember what a, I remember how exciting it was to be in that newsroom back when it
was huge and robust and just bursting with talent and vision to be in there.
In my 20s and 30s was was a something that can't be replicated.
That's what everybody says.
That's what everybody, everybody I've ever known, who is a part of that scene says that
if you were a part of Dallas Morning News in those days, there was nothing like it.
It was very exciting.
It was family too.
And I still have great friends who I came up with, you know, who looked after me during those years.
Dallas, Dallas was a very, I still have a lot of affection for Dallas.
I've been back a few times.
I still have friends there.
You know, at a certain point, a certain point of place just becomes home.
Yeah.
And that's what Dallas was home for many, many years and I was quite happy there.
Very, I always tell people, people would ask me what's Dallas like and it's very livable.
That's how I felt.
Yeah.
That's going to put it for what you get.
It's at least I mean, I've been lived there since everything's less livable since COVID.
But, you know, I always felt like you could get a lot there for, for your buck in pretty much every sense.
So yeah, Dallas, Dallas treated me very, very well.
And I, and I, I mean, I listened to you guys like pretty much from the day I got there in 96.
I could like tell you the ticket line up from 96, 97, I mean, I appreciate that.
I remember Corby and Chris Arnold, I remember Rocco Fendola, I remember Big Nick Hunter.
You guys, of course.
You got it down, you got it down.
I've ever, man, he was like, they got some new guy named Bob Sturm.
He's like, he's kind of boring.
This is before he got down.
I love Bob.
Yeah.
But yeah, I made up his, we were, so what we listened to, man, that's what we, it's, every day in the car.
That's what, that's what was on.
You think there's something else in the game for you beyond the globe?
Anything out there that, that you would like to do that, maybe is down the road or, or when you look down the road, what do you see?
I want to write a book at some point, but I don't, I need to figure out what that might look like.
I've, I've, I've kind of had some
some sensitive discussions and thoughts and jottings in that direction, but you got to really, really want to do that if you're going to do it, especially if you're working full time.
Man, that seems like such a project under any conditions, and I can't imagine trying to do that and do a, you know, a full time job.
I can't either at the same time.
That's why I haven't done it.
But yeah, now I'm here, right?
I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm really, you know, not just to give the bulldoorm sound bite routine.
I'm, I am very, very happy with where I am.
I feel like I've landed in it really.
I remember you told me on Facebook, I think it's something like, you know, you, I feel like you've landed in the perfect place for you.
Yeah, yeah, and I think, and I think you're right.
I mean, you know, life always changes, but I'm just really thrilled and I feel very lucky to have gotten here.
I got to tell you, when I found out that you'd wound up at the globe, I was very, very excited because now I've actually knew somebody up there, you know.
And like I say, I'm a, I'm a groupie, man, I love that paper.
It's just a whole different thing.
And this is no knock on anybody who's ever been in the newspaper game here for sure.
But up there, it's just a whole different thing.
Like I said earlier, it just, it just means more.
It just, it's, it's just different.
It's hard to explain.
And I know I'm not making sense, but you are, you get, you get the idea.
Yeah, it's also fun.
It's, I feel like it's kind of a right a, a writer's newspaper.
Yeah, and that's, and there's nothing more exciting than that for a newspaper journalist. They actually, they want you to have some voice, especially in the kind of work that I'm doing.
I remember they told me that was like, we want you to write with voice.
That sounds fun to me.
Yeah, that's good.
Yeah.
Well, you got anybody you need to send a shout out down here too?
Oh, man, everybody in Manny, my buddy Thor, Christian Sims, still, still doing his thing hammered away.
You know, you guys, of course, but I don't need to give you my shout out because I'm talking to you right now.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I, like I said, I do, I, I listen to you guys a lot back in the day.
I know you did.
It's nice to be joined.
I got to say part of me was like, well, I haven't they asked me to be on the show yet.
So now you have.
Oh, you before the show, you've been on the list for a while, just hasn't happened yet.
But yeah, we knew that you would get on at some point because you're too awesome.
I'm glad I could, I'm glad I could make the grade.
Yeah, you're too awesome.
And I'm just too big of a fan.
I've always admired your work and, and then you just keep doing what you're doing up there, man.
Keep it one hundred.
Yeah, you see, I'm glad you guys are doing this.
I subscribe.
Yeah, it's nice.
It's nice to see you guys in this incarnation.
Well, we're giving it hell, man.
It's crowded house out there, but we're giving it hell.
Thanks for doing this, man.
It's really been nice talking to you, Chris.
Thanks, guys.
Really appreciate it.
All right.
Here he is, the great Chris Wagner of the Boston Globe with us today here on little YDC.
All right.
That we got anything else here?
Shoot me.
Yeah.
All right.
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Tell everybody about us.
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Like us.
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Tell your friends to do the same.
And we will keep this thing going just like it is.
Thanks to everybody who's been a part today.
As always, love you guys.
I'm Mike.
Bye.
Bye.
All right.
I don't think I can solve it.
All right.
I don't think I can solve it.
Your dark companion is a stolen water media presentation.
Thank you very much.