a wall street journal article about st. louis about ts eliot the great poet but chuck berry is also a poet. i was just a little throwaway cultural. peace nothing that spectacular except joe edwards read it in and he ran runs a restaurant called blueberry hill near washington university and he showed it to chuck berry and chuck thought my description of him was really spot on he's from saint louis. he lived in st. louis there and then chuck berry loved the magic bus. he said i would have stayed in school if somebody would have let me get out of the prison like. school room and actually go and see and do things so he just took to the concept and i got out of nowhere. i always remember the day and my mailbox came a package and he sent me his autobiography and a guitar pick and a note that said if you ever come to saint louis with your magic bus dinner on chuck berry. so we went through st. louis and i got joe edwards the guy who set these up and we met at blueberry hill and chuck and his wife and daughter ingrid. we all had a meal we had a great time and then we would go went down into the basement and we played music with them. he played guitar one of my students played drums a little and he was had our driver saying he set my class up as a band while he played and we had a blast. in angered was daughter is beautiful and has this incredible voice and personality. and so then it just became a mainstay and not only that i the you know, the i would come back to saint louis and we'd have dinner quite a bit and joe edwards and i would go out with chuck and and so i found out that brian they were two people that there's charles berry and chuck. in that i was getting charles, who was this unbelievable gentleman, and chuck was the one who yell at you didn't pay me. i want my money in a you know, you know, and i was getting this sort of fatherly gentleman really remarkably. kind and you know, he called me professor and we would talk and talk about things and you very smart. he's in college. no he's but he had that kind of feral like he'd say things that would make your you know hair up because he was he see what was around them and i went then one day we i went and he invited me to us recording studio. and we ate at wendy's and he wears a sailor's cap, and we were at wendy's and so i sat in while he recorded all the songs and mixed them of his last album. he only had one engineer and he would play the instruments and and i watched him record some of these songs this little studio like this we hung out a two days while he was doing it in st. louis. he was recording. it was his last album chuck. yeah and call chuck and i wrote the liner notes to chuck. he called me before he released it and just asked if i we got a thing if i would do him and i said, yeah, would you think of the song darling? i like it. i like the whole last time i didn't take see that's where i think something's gone. i like i like the album chuck he is a song big boys on it. that's really great. the guitar is great didn't make much of a dent in our culture. it's like a different era. he's like a relic but i thought the cd was tremendous and so yeah, i'm sad that he passed but i like that he stayed in saint louis. and he was a cardinals fanatic baseball fanatic and joe edwards helped him build a statue or get a statue. so beautiful statue of chuck berry now in st. louis and the city's honored him really. well, they play his songs at ball games and the they were very proud that he never left a lot of stars leave chuck stayed. he's you know, that's home and he stayed his whole life there. how is he able to pull off showing up in city without a band? and go with a local group. yeah, how did it how did he do that? oh hubris. you know, he was i'm you know, chuck. do you everybody knows chuck berry songs plug it in go it was you know, young people would get all nervous because he's like, let's go tune it you know and in and out pay me performance go pay performance go, um, part it in advance. oh, yeah. yeah. he did not trust. you know, he had a lot of run-ins with the irs and all like some of those i really nelson and others and so he liked his cash up front and you know, he would he performed all over the place, but he was a remarkable american figure and i've been pleased to see him being noticed in a sorts of art museums and things i recently saw display of them. i mean chuck berry was this really standard of what rock as a culture of phenomenon was great artist. load him in other words who who found him to be kind of the father of anything, you know? oh chess records up in chicago started noticing it and but but then his records got hot in england and so obviously the beatles start with chuck berry fanatics in the rolling stones. they were really just ripping off chuck berry songs chuck and jimmy johnson, who's you know those guys where they you know, they the, you know, they were the but they gave birth to rock and roll as an art form. not as a pop, you know, it's serious guitar playing and to be able to carry the guitar tune it play electric guitar like he does while singing, you know was quite remarkable. i've seen a lot of performers he was as good as any performer and you always thought he was sometimes to only giving you half his game. but when he wanted to be he could be you know in that world. i mean he was the great and in fact, i talked to bob dylan about him and that talked about you bob said, yeah, that's there's two people that mattered chuck berry and myself. involved chuck berry and of course little richard who's gone and back then and i asked dylan, so i did the new bob wouldn't do a major interview once he got the nobel prize and he wouldn't do it. and and i did the new york times i did the interview of him for the new york times the first one after he won the nobel except for being on his own website, but for the for the outsider writing and interviewed him a lot the times only ran part of that particular interview, but little richard had just died. so we talked quite a bit about little richard. what other music person, have you met that you always remember. well, those are the two big ones, you know when i was young. i met dizzy gillespie and i when i did the semester in europe, and i went to a jack rodney scott so jazz club, and i got there very early and somebody let me in beforehand and sitting in a back area by himself was diseikal espy and i got to talk to disney gillespie for a while. and that was a real tree. he was so nice to meet too. i'm friends with wynton marsalis of jazz at lincoln center good friends with winton. we have a mutual couple of mutual friends, and we we talked a fair amount went in and i were grappling with writing a book together on some of you interviewed albert murray. african-american writer former guy, yeah, we're gonna do a book called blues america, but we keep back burnering it, but, you know winton what he's done at jazz at lincoln center. it's just phenomenal to give new york a premier jazz showcase of the talent that comes through there of young jazz players, you know getting to know winton would be high on my list. i mean i deal with different i'm friends with the guy in austin named tom russell, no reasons of folks singer and write songs, and i really think he's underrated and it's not just me top and who wrote half of elton john songs called them recently most underappreciated american singer-songwriter and so, you know i get to know i like musicians. i like talking to them and knowing them a guy named joe ely who's a friend of mine and down in austin and and there many others. i knew cherry jeff walker with just down the road from me. just passed. i know don henley pretty well of the eagles. we did an invent for him up at walden's pond with thoreau with david mccullough and ken burns in henley is trying to save cato lake in texas on the louisiana border. this is near karmic where a ladybird johnson was from but it's looks like louisiana, but it's it's in texas beautiful by you. stunning cypress trees and he works very hard to preserve that lake. he has his home there and this isolated part of the world. so i admire him for that. he picks one area that he loves and he tries to do something to protect it. go back to the beginning of the jack kerouac connection. um i just read on the road and then followed it up with subterraneans in the dharma bombs and visions of cody and start with on the road. what is obvious? it was great because it he wrote it in a with a kind of jazz rhythm and what a kind of spontaneity of prose there's a thought that spot, you know, i don't always agree with this. but again, i like people that i don't always have to agree with you and carowak used to say first thoughts best thought that the human minds first thoughts probably the true or more accurate one, then we start self-editing. so the first thoughts the most interesting best thought and so he let that go with on the road where it was a traditional. road journey, you know, it's like huck finn and and huckleberry finn and jim going down the river. i mean, is there two guys gi bill after world war two looking for his buddies father. left him in their traveling kind of aimlessly around america looking for the dad and the writing descriptions of places like, you know the mountains by at el paso and the texas or his talking about montana and actually writes about medora north dakota in the book and he writes about places and he makes going on the road fun. i believe that the great american one of the great american traditions is the road trip. take getting your car and going and seeing america. it's a it's it's just special. we're an automobile society and the road trip is kind of right of passage. when did he write on the road which started writing it in the 1940s late 40s early 50s, but it didn't come out until 57. so what it bottled up was that feeling after world war two of we the war is over. let's go. fun, i mean you might find an on the road written after covid finally gone and i'm young person might write about the liberation of covid gone, and and he he was from lowell, massachusetts. he played football at columbia got hurt and that was considered a masterpiece on the road still is we, you know the new york times gave it this giant rave review and he continued writing and died in 19169 of alcohol, alcoholism. he died in florida living with his mother very sad last year's of kerouac key. he was like meteor who flashed in the sky and then faded away. where is the original copy? original on the road is owned by jimmer. say the owner of the indianapolis colts. and irse call me. and and asked if i would go with him to buy that on the road scroll at auction in new york. sotheby's had it up and i said jim i got to teach i can't and you know, he said look you got to come because i just want to kara wax scholar with me and and i said i can he said dougie? i understand we're not going to bid. i'm going to buy. like i'll pay 10 million dollars for it if i have to i'm bought you so you're not going to an auction where oh, maybe we're going to get it. and it's starting to intriguing me more and more and so he sent the colts playing to pick me up and it flew me to new york and stayed at the waldorf and had dinner with them and his family is is children and and we then went to the auction. i sat by him and he paid i think it was like 2.2 million or something for it. he would have gone all the way up. he was going to get it because he was influenced by it and it's called the scroll it was written on japanese sort of rolling paper. so what carowak did and set up? ripping off one sheet at a time typing you could keep typing. it was just you know a big so the whole book is like a role, you know, the original one and it needed curated from you know, like any document does i suppose but her says provided great job of curating it and he gives it on loan to new york public library where kerouac's papers are or to a university kerouac in 20, march of 2022 would have been as a hundredth birthday. so i need to call her say and get him to do some public thing with that scroll. what is your relationship to the carolak name now? do you edit anything for him on a regular basis? no, i've got i was a while ago, you know, i did edit a book called windblown world of beyond the road journals and then the library of america, which is my favorite. thing in the world the arts and culture the black dust jacket volumes where they bring great writing back and beautiful use of paper and cover and bookmark and and it's almost like the highest honor a writer could have to be in the library of america. honestly. it's a private institution. it's it's run as like a nonprofit out of new york city and you know vonnegut like when he made the library of america, that means your reputation sort of set forever albert murray got his essays into that karawak. i did the the road novels that jack kerouac for the library of america is the editor for that project for them. i wrote a cover story on kerouac for the atlantic monthly so i used to be more engaged but right now i'm three kids in high school and i'm focusing on the book of the moment. so some of that stuff's my back pages, i there are i love right now and i read more than i read people we're talking about because they they were influencing me when i was younger, but subsequently, i've every year i've kind of go through a fad of a different writer, but then i just start reading everything of them i can what do you know about carol act that would help us better why we should read him. he was an original too. he didn't follow any i mean he followed thomas wolfe's trail a little bit, but he tried to celebrate america trying to get to the just i mean the most moving writings of i can feel i mean he would say things like in the 50s america, you know where thou goest in your green automobile at night. and their time she drive in america at night and you see all these cars and headlights going all these different directions and you know, i think about wherever we never know where everybody's headed as they're crossing us, you know, let me read you i've got some some quotes from him just interpreting them for us. this is a brief one. the only truth is music. well, there's a lot vonnegut felt that way too vonnegut once did a writers workshop class brian at the iowa. that's like the number one creative writing. he was snowing he came in and i i'm gonna say it wrong, but he brought a cassette pushed. bach recording or something and then just said this is and then like walked out with the music on like you but you'll never be able to achieve this. i mean there's a feeling that some of that classical music might be the greatest -- and jazz like duke ellington might be the greatest arts contribution of all, you know music is i mean what would life be without music? look how much music you have in your daily life? all the time all the time this quote the best teacher is experience and not through someone's distorted point of view that comes from on the road. yeah. that's the key. i just think you'd go go there people that do things and do it, you know if you're gonna have an idea go for if you have a dream go for it experience things. don't just talk about it go do it and that's where i think that differentiates people in life people that are be, you know, i'm not very keen on the slacker. model of just you know, i read what recently rose kennedy the mother of john f. kennedy used to say, you know. every hour has to be purposeful make your life purposeful like do something quote great this from jack heroin. great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion. yeah, you got to go your own route got cut your own way and be innovative. take your own vision. it's not for everybody. but if you want to really be a pioneer you have to be an innovator if you're gonna try to come make, you know, you don't need to give it a shot. give something new a shot take, you know risk. risk, you've got to take some risk and you know, so like i mentioned either my son johnny says he wants to be a general manager of an nba team. well, he's a young kid. he's watching nba basketball and he thinks that would be great. but i mean he can't do that if he has the dream and the guts and the fight and the moxie i still believe in america you can you can do things, but you got to work harder than bull let you let on there was a story somewhere that you were recruited possibly to write the third volume of winston churchill for william manchester when he died. um i there no i never could do i wouldn't have done that but there was there was a trolling about i love william manchester's writing though. he's just remarkable and it is you know there used to be a man named gordon prang who wrote on pearl harbor all these incredible books and at the end had to have help. finishing some of those but i'm not the right person on winston churchill even though i love them. i really focus all my books have been about americans. and you never thought about you know, paul reed ended up doing that book matter of fact, you know, he sat in that chair would you ever let anybody do that for you if you had a book halfway done? yeah, i never say no because i don't know the deprivations or as kerouac said all we know for sure or all we know for sure are the fort lauren of growing old. i don't know what i'll feel like at 85, but i suppose if i had a half a book finished and suddenly was in chemo treatments and couldn't might ask somebody. can you help me, you know want to be a partner plausible robert carroll says, he never let that happen. carol can't do that. he's got too much of distinction on what he does? i think that would be hard to do with him. but with somebody like myself it would be doable. do you have things that you will not do i'll give you an example. shelby foot wouldn't sign books. some people won't shake hands. you know, you know my only fear now is i you don't want to i get mixed up with now with covid not shaking hands, but even before that in the south. you know, i live in austin when you meet people you give them a half a hug oftentimes and then up north. that's that's taboo. they're different little cultural morays like that. but first i'm concerned i'll sign any book or do a photo of somebody comes i try to be as kind as i can if somebody's purchasing a book of mine. i don't really think i have i just won't do a lot of you know, i for example there's where i kind of drawn lines the bill maher has to show one. i was booked for the nixon tapes and i supposed to fly from new york to california, and i said great. i'm going to do bill promotion of a book. and then i found out the eve before i wasn't really talking about my book. i would be stuck on a panel with like four people not saying a about my book, but they would show the picture of it up and i just canceled and i don't think they were used to people not doing the show. i've never done bill mark. i didn't i didn't like that. you know, i felt i was getting booked to do a talk about a book. i work really hard on this. why can't i talk about it? i don't want to play. you know, it's my my movie not yours, but also i mar was starting to put people of religion in mock religion, and i don't do that. i don't make fun of people that are catholic or muslim or buddhist or you know, whatever the hindu i mean what it's people's own business their religion and i judge people out there and how they treat me did a whole documentary on religion. yeah what i wasn't very keen on it. i'm one very keen on putting down of of people's sense of faith because there were all we're all you know aren't such limited time here and if people find a lifeline of that brings them happiness and joy, so be it but i'm not keen on get mocking somebody's religion. what's the story of you going to cuba? i went to cuba i was with cbs one of the things i was historian for cbs for quite a while. i did the inaugurals with you know, i bob schieffer and katie couric, and you know, i written up writing the book on walter cronkite. so i represented cbs and christopher hitchens was writing for vanity fair. and the actor sean penn was writing for the nation. and this all started on hitchens and i who were friends we were with sean one night, and he was saying that he can get us an interview with you chavez and fidel castro. and we said great do it. you know and unfortunately the next morning. i'm afraid sean probably had a thing. i've got now a guy i got i got to live up to my word but hitchens in particularly was pushing shawn on it like well you said you know that we could do it and sean delivered we went in to venezuela and sean liked you go chavez. hitchens load them i didn't know enough about him and i i leaned towards not trusting him, but i was willing to kind of see my gut on him. and he went well, i mean, he was very funny chavez the biggest thing i learned from him. once that revolution they had there the red was from the cincinnati reds baseball team because the you know these baseball players from venezuela, you know miguel cabrera and they're on and on it's a big deal baseball venezuela and the reds are where the team because a shortstop for the cincinnati reds dave conception on grew up near chavez, and i was waiting to give him a chance until i started interviewing him and he fell into full board conspiracy mode. he said that the united states never went walked on the moon which as you know, i'm a big neil armstrong space guy i was aghast and then he started intimating that 9/11 was a conspiracy and that point i realized that i understood quickly why we weren't in good relationships with this government. he was he was prismatic but really dislike the united states and wasn't you know, how did you and sean penn and christopher hitchens get to cuba? we then flew on a plane from cuba cuban plane to go meet fidel and raul supposedly to interview them. and when we got there we everything went okay. we landed we got on it to a quarters. us but we met fidel castro's son. and sean had brought a lot of baseballs to give out and we had a nice meal and we went to the restaurants. everything was good, but then we kept not getting our interview not getting her interview with fidel castro and cbs news told me that they really just wanted a photo if i could get a photo of him because there had not been seen a photograph of him for a long time. they said if if you can get one photo and boot it to us in new york that you'd be we consider this successful venture and suddenly there's a knock on the doors and i like a little swat team came and took sean away and they wouldn't let hitchens and i see castro did john pensee? yes, they had a long evening together and we were they black bald hitchens tonight. they didn't like something in her, you know, they thought we were too too. ra-rah american or something? i don't know why but you know at that point i was ready to get home and the thing with you go chavez was interesting. i got to see venezuela and i got to see some of ivana and i was ready to go home and hitchens was livid. he was i know the walls are listening to me, you know, you know just announcing the castro regime pacing about he was reading a henry james book. so i i finally just said look you got to come down. let's just let's take a walk the follow us so we went in we went and took it a walk and he calm down a little bit. but i mean he had steamed coming out of him because he had spent a lot of time setting up for the big interview. and at that point he he wanted he thought sean shouldn't have gone that we were three musketeers that you stick with us and and i kept saying maybe they'll come back for us. you know, maybe somebody will come and it didn't happen and so i was just like, you know, it was a good try and hitchens was. angry at shawn forgoing and i remember flying home like they wouldn't talk and it was so it was it was it was grim. how did you get back to the state? we commercial flew out of havana some to miami on some flight and then, you know, we flew originally out of houston. there was a non-stop. i think there still is houston to caracas, even though we have no embassy in venezuela the oil industry still has a non-stop flight into venezuela and incidentally sean and hitchens be a great friends. they're really good. they more than patched up their difference because in the end shout it is best to try to do live up to what he said he could do and it you can't predict somebody like fidel castro, but i was interested the castro his friendship with gabriel garcia marquez the great novelist in marquez used to keep a light on at night to let fidel know. he was up and they used to talk and brainstorm and all of this and and though the raul was available down there, but it wasn't the same. i'm teach cold war history sort of actually seen caster get to ask him a couple questions would have been of but alasa didn't happen. my memory of fidel castro and american media. is that the media in this country? salivated over the opportunity to talk to him almost left us with the impression that cuba is a really sharp wonderful place. why did they do that? there's no evidence that you can see today that that would be the way to live. i think castro became a folk hero with che guevara there in the early 60s hollywood adopt him. it got caught up with the you know, it's a period when there was mouths red books were being handed on at berkeley and there were, you know, black panthers that were talking about fidel castro and i think that he lives so many lives like the cia tried to kill castro and he survived and that we go through president after the other but he's he was like eisenhower through obama or something, you know, it's like they never leave so it's always better just left. yeah, the products laugh. so there's this sort of you know presence of somebody like that, but i i found it repressive in cuba. everything is antiquated and quasi broken down. but if havana is a beautiful city because it's in disrepair. so you're kind of going back in time when you're there and that part of it was really interesting. you know, i was interested where theodore roosevelt's you know, famous, you know campaign and you know, he's they liked him in cuba about theater roosevelt because he was part of the cuban revolution the liberation from spain and then the bay of pigs they celebrate there. so it was very interesting educational journey for me. that's why i didn't care when way or another but yes, you're right. he was like, you know in the world of journalism like that. let's call the 60 minutes world. it's they always want to interview who they can't you know, who's hard to get to if you can get castro. it's big big catch. i mean i the pope or putin right now would be big to get if you could really have a real. interview with them, but they're hard to get to. you interviewed neil armstrong for how many hours we did a day and eight hour day and nasa regular work day and nasa and i've talked to you about before but it was george abbey former former head of the of the space center down there helped me set it up and it was an honor. just getting to talk to armstrong because growing up in ohio. he grew up down the road and wapakoneta, ohio, and i was in perrysburg and i just was amazed at that generation of pilots and korean war aces. i mean in korea brian, we didn't really have any missiles. so the war was one on the by these aviators and the warren armstrong by some people's viewers the greatest military aviator of that that era and just was the right guy to pick to be the first person on the moon and he turned 70 and felt he owed a oral history for his birthday to nasa. he did not want to do it. this was not a labor of love. it was a labor of obligation and there thought was that i would be good and i'm younger and you know, it's where the tapes um now they're in nasa. they may be online. i have them i you know, they they were tape recorded by nasa of you know people so i just sound like we are in somebody was running the machine and no we'd have a brown box lunch a little bit. my only i had an autograph of his a book for me which went against protocol but i couldn't resist. and i'm glad i did but he couldn't have been nicer and you know, but i was always a big fan of john glenn and neil armstrong. i kind of about what's ohio proud? of the growing up. what did he tell you that you didn't know before the interview a lot of things and by the way, did you write this? you write it somewhere. did it. did you publish an article to major cover story for american history magazine, and i did a long article for newsweek and i part put some of it into my book called american moonshot john f kennedy in the great space race. i still have more i wanted to i toyed with the idea of writing a biography of armstrong but a man named james hansen a professor at auburn. did such a good book called first man that i i reviewed hanson's biography of armstrong for the new york times and when i read it i thought i can't do that. he already did it and i mean it was really good biography and he seemed to understand aviation history, but more importantly the the engineering that went to go to the moon better than i ever could but i've lectured on him too at purdue. i talked about any alarm strong and i spoke down and huntsville alabama on behalf of manassas one of the great thrills when my book american moonshot came out was nasa didn't they don't know what to do in a new book comes out, you know, because it could be pronassa antinases their government agency. so they didn't do anything when my book first came out, but after somebody got around it and sought for a while they liked it and so they got books for all their employees and i got to go and give a talk and nasa to all the current nasa employees down in houston at the johnson. center massive auditorium of all the nasa people. i was so intimidated. these are the real people that are going to you know, and i'm over here telling my space stories and went great it went it was since they were so generous and i signed books for everybody and they had bought and just a boatloads of books to give employees as their souvenir of the 50th of going to the moon. was there anything special about neil armstrong? um it gets back to our early conversational work ethic. i mean he knew he loved aviation. i loved history. he went to purdue to pursue an education. i went to ohio state and georgetown and then one worked for him any time he could be around an airplane. armstrong was in he loved flight and and he also had an extraordinary cool temperament unflappable. you could not get him to you know, either they thought of him panicking in space was zero. he had that something about him a steely cruel disposition which made him the perfect. you know first astronaut. yes, great sense of humor if you got to him a little bit in but his big thing i picked up from which he talks a lot about as engineering. he felt that the engineers or most underwritten about an american history that we don't do biographies of great engineers. we don't celebrate them in that really in his mind 20th century america was built by amazing engineering very interesting point and i've had william ruckle's house first head of the environmental protection agency tell me that in a similar vein the one thing all historians are missing is the history of sewage treatment. he said we we take it for granted this system we have in our country. that's quite remarkable for processing all but nobody it's like find go find book on it and and so, you know in both of their i i remember those things i once knew a professor at hofstra robert sobel who died of brain cancer, but he had told me that somebody should write a history of cement. and at first you laugh about it, but you do a little digging and you see how cement changed things so there's a lot about history that were we you know, we tend to gravitate towards biography or these political history, but there are other ways to approach studying things. what did neil armstrong? what was his relationship with buzz aldrin? they had a i would not call it a good relationship. i think they what they were professional with each other. what's the camera story? well, they cameras that you know buzz aldrin wanted to be the first person on the moon. and so did others but neil got cherry picked to be the first for a lot of reasons, but mainly be that he not active military. the nixon did not want to seem to be militarizing the moon. and they wanted somebody who was had a military background but was an active that tick buzz alder and off. on buzz had to be number two, but he got some revenge by being the having neil take the photos of him. so all the photos we see of the first man on the moon or really pictures of neil armstrong's taking a buzz aldrin. they kept their disagreements from public theater it never got out of hand, but you talked to enough nasa veterans of that era and you know, there wasn't a great natural friendship between the two but neil armstrong's cameron didn't work. yeah again armstrong's camera then didn't work. and so the pictures were he ended up using buzz aldrons. yeah cameron to take all the pictures. you got it. only one that few times i've ever heard you irritated in an interview. it was one you did and i can't remember who it was with pushing you. to agree that the boomer generation was the generation that caused all the trouble in this country. and you weren't buying it. yeah, i think you know i never i loved the greatest generation of tom brokaw, but i look at every generation in america as being great in its own way that boomer generation did a lot. i mean they the civil rights alone, you know in in opening up the american narrative in the 1960s and 70s to the point now that we have national monuments in the national park service for cesar chavez in the farm workers or stonewall for lgbtq people or buffalo soldiers or harriet tubman and that movement of the 60s of opening up america doing away with jim crow and starting to rethink about medicaid and medicare and and public health just remarkable achievements. i don't like it when one generation puts down another generation. i think there's a feeling the baby boomers blew it. um, but the baby boomers did a lot right and and i don't have genera. i don't have generational animosity from one generation or another. do you well, let me rephrase that. what is your attitude about always being positive? i try to be positive. i don't know if that comes out. i always try to be very positive. i think that i comes out of just realizing how short time is in that you don't i always find brian that when you're we die you don't want to have any enemies and you don't want to be angry if you want to lift your life where you're not filled with resentment, you know, and so you got to learn to forgive and let go and i do that a lot and i find people get motivated more by being more optimistic than pessimistic. i'm not cynical i have worries about american society right now more than ever. i never thought i would have this much worry about our country. but i stay optimistic. i mean you don't have hope. then what are what do you have? i mean that's what keeps us going is just hope that we can make a difference in our daily lives and hope that we can help people. hope that we are time here. are alive was beneficial to other people. hope that you're a good father and you know, that's all we have. we haven't talked yet about dear friend from woody creek the louisville. born hunter thompson why does he matter and i mean i was never a hundred thompson reader. i did read one of his books. i think the las vegas or the what the campaign book of 72, but he always looked weird. was he weird up close? he would love you calling him weird. he loved the word weird. actually, he honestly liked the word. it was spelled the way it was spelled. hunter was gifted writer his mother grew up in louisville and his hano father and the mother had to raise boys. boys. she was a librarian. so he got a lot of books hunter was succeedingly real well read but his mother was an alcoholic. and so he sort of being raised by a mother as a librarian so she he would have to sit in the library for hours while she worked. it's like babysitter. he got into trouble when he's young joined the air force got an honorable discharge and then started his career as a journalist. he would wrote all over he went all over south america and wrote articles. he wrote for the new york times magazine, but hunter captured, california. in the 60s he got out to big sur. early you know like 1962 right when the california of the you know, 60s and 70s was exploding it became the new cultural center of america, california and he started being able to write on unusual dynamics out in california and most famously he wrote. well, he wrote about north beach in san francisco the where all the bohemians and beatniks so to speak or and he wrote then on the hell's angels motorcycle gang and that book if you really want to read about, you know, oath keepers and who joins you know this sort of qanon or what who joins these sort of extreme right groups just retails angels. um usually hard luck white families and hunters book the angels most came from like, oklahoma through the dust bowl out to california broken families, you know looking to find a way to bond. and they form a motorcycle club and then they're they're kind of a menace on the loose out there in california and it became the media picked up on it and it became a national phenomenon and hunter wrote the book about hell's angels, which is very social. he's really writing about who are these people in america in its classic and then he wrote other ones, but he wrote a lot about the brown power movement. we're talking a lot about black power in america coast black lives matters, but brown power movement ruben salazar in los angeles was murdered and oscar acosta was a big lawyer. then of course cesar chavez and/or huerta and the agricultural fights in connor was covering all that in california and then on a lark he got an assignment from sports illustrated to write about the mint 500. i think it was the motorcycle race in, california. and he wrote about it, but they went into his weird narrative called fear and loathing in las vegas. we're under use las vegas says them a metaphor for america where we're all taking in by air condition and all the shrimp. you can eat and the bling in the blame, you know, everything that they guess is and he wrote a sort of satire about it and most of it's about the death of the 60s that the 60s is over that all of that hope and love and understanding of the early 60s by 71b was charles manson and bad lsd and you know woodstock gone awry and altamont, so it's actually in a book that shows the end. it's like the wave of the 60s and then the crash of all of that idealism. and it holds up too. it's the best book of that period got rave reviews the new york times and then the campaign trail 72 book hunter had the realization that the media were the stars. he would see john chancellor going was more famous than you know, birch bayer frank church or somebody that tv it had a being impact on how campaigns are covered and he wrote it behind the scenes instead of trying to get the big interview with the you know, the stars he would write what's it like to be with the people partying in the hotel before the convention and and it there were considered gonzo journalism or part of new journalism tom wolfe. did it was friend of hunters. they did that. he did the right stuff and electric kool-aid acid test wolff and joan didion who also went on california. it was who invented that the word gonzo journalism. well the term gonzo comes from a a booker a james booker a new orleans musician who didn't had a hit song called gonzo. oh new orleans style that hunter heard but the term gonzo journalism as a phrase a guy named bill cardoza of the boston globe new hunter east carey real to real of god, so and somehow that word came up in cardoza said that's portuguese or something for you know, they got in any way. he got applied to hunters type of writing which is now that we're guns is just ubiquitous. i mean, just people think of it as something gone. awry. like january, you know, it's january 6th riot, but it's also is like a gonzo event like you can't even imagine how all these pieces something like that. how do you get an you know in a and so he was he documented all of that pretty well, so i think those were the three books. i mean he did collected but letters called the great shark hunt william f buckley reviewed it for the cover of the new york times. and so when i came of age brian when i'm at ohio state in nice fall of 1978, that's when hunter was at the top of his form. so he was popular. did you reading then? oh, we all read them in college. he was like what people would read hemingway at different generation that generation was reading hunter because we're at we missed all of the 60s and early 70s. we were now in the late 70s. so hunter was the kind of documentarian of all of that. he was so my friend for example dressed like hunter for halloween and and you know, he was part of that era. that's when he was at the height of his powers. how did you become the literary executor? he just that he would i gave him advice a lot about his archive. how did you get there though in the first place started with the magic bus. he was good friends with doors kern's goodwin hunter and -- good one and the and also with arthur celestinter jr. some with some of the kennedy kids, but any rate when i was doing this magic bus doris would do a lecture for my students in new york at a like an arts club. and the you know in her and a few other people just kept saying if you're going out west, you know, and i thought that'd be great to see hunter and we did we visited him and we just stayed in touch and then i helped him with his letters. and then he just i think was this i was a solid sounding board for him. he'd call he talk a friend. and towards the end of his life. he came to see me in new orleans and he was very different. you know you deal with an alcoholic, you know, you're dealing or somebody has drug issues. they're erratic and you but there are times when they're not you know, it's just, you know, you don't know what you're getting and with that kind of substance abuse and he was very melancholy. he came to see me in new orleans and it was like a painful melancholy where i went to a restaurant to eat with them and he would say things like these are my last oysters. deployment last oysters, you know, and i mentioned to him. i said hunter you're sounding and he suddenly he said you know, i got to talk to him about suicide because he was that depressed and i said oh hunter you can't he got mad at me. he said, you know, no terry you don't talk, you know, but it's now an option. he had a hip surgery that went terribly and he had other health ailments and i guess we was telling me as suicide was like in my playing --. how old was he in 67 that that was my 10th card. i never took it. seriously. i thought you know people think about and never do and suddenly it was emerging towards the top of his deck as options and it's an option with that said i never believed he would do that. i just didn't he i thought he had too much of a self-agrandizing self to do that. but so i was surprised to get a phone call. i was at rather for be hazes home in the and fremont when i got phone call that he had committed suicide and then i got a follow-up call that he had me as literary executor in his will. he never told me that before except you know, he mentioned it like in maybe you know if you will make sure you help he would always tell me make sure my papers don't stay in my basement it floods. what does it mean to be a literary executor? um what it means is i try to help his reputation in history and literature. it's i've had to deal with his son juan thompson and anita thompson. i know them both exceedingly. well, it's very minimal job, but i'll get letters from somebody working on a phd about him. a lot of people are doing graduate work on honor. did he make money in his life blue would he had hard he was really a free. he's loved by freelance journalists. there are a lot of freelance people. we always think about who's the star at the washington post, but there's a colonies of freelance writers and they love hunter. he's the triumph the free lancer. well the problem with that freelance thing. you don't get insurance. you don't get benefits. you don't you're you're going from peace to peace and it's a it makes some sense in your 20s 30s and 40s, but you're in in your 60s and is hard it's like a musician that doesn't have health care or whatever. and so he always had money struggles, but he had a beautiful place called owl farm in woody creek where he lived out in aspen and he had legions of friends. i mean his funeral brian was something like you've never seen this giant fist in the air. and all the people john kerry was there in george mcgovern and gary hart and you know, everybody came for the firing of hunter's ashes over the rocky mountains. they fire the ashes. um, they got a people that did the pyro text for pirates of the caribbean and then you had to have a code because you're not a lot of putting anything permanent too high in aspen so they had to build this entire contraption and take it down. it caused something like two and a half million dollars. and paid for um, johnny depp the actor and he paid the bulk of it and the came and went it was just like an event and it was like the end of that era for the sort of 60s 70s people. it was like it's over with that. how did he die gunshot wound to the through the mouth? quote from hunter thompson. graffiti is beautiful like a can't even read it. ah like no this is important to read it. graffiti is beautiful like a brick in the face of a cop. well, that's i don't like that line, but i complete i don't even know where it's from, but i believe that that would be something that's the anarchist. that's the anarchistic part of him the the brutal reality of politics would be probably intolerable without drugs. yes. i think that's a but you have to realize these this is a lot of satire going on. i mean, he's he's hunters playing paul bunyan of exaggeration of the american you know, i mean, it's a how do i put it if ernest hemingway? you watching on ken burns. is this hemingway went to africa to go hunt hunter would invent. i'm going to africa with the submachine with three semi-automatic weapons and a he take this laura and then just draw it out to this whole other level. last quote from him was as for the lsd, i highly recommend it. we had a fine wild weekend and no trouble at all. that's hunter now here. here's a question, but about you about john kerry about george mcgovern about all these people. why are you supporting a guy that talks about a brick in the face of a cob or why are you supporting a guy that would shoot? a gun through a book for one of your students. it seems to me that he represents no matter how much you enjoy the satire. violence, you know, i mean, well it's respect to spare question. well the most popular comic strip of urine our age is doomsbury by trudeau that's based on hunter. there was a comedic comedic element to him. i mean he was he's considered tom wolfe. who's the conservative reagan american spectator guy tom wolfe called him the finest actress america produced of the 20th century meaning, you know, it's it's hard reading but he's in those isolated out, you know sound different but is is he had a talent at writing and when you write you recognize the talent there is a book by what's do, you know remember the one the shrunk book they used to oh they make used to make everybody read to learn how to write. it's i'm sorry. i can't remember. the zinzer i think in trump. anyway, it's the book on how to write. one of their people in there beyond henry james and shakespeare is hunter thompson how to take a situation and break it down as a writer with humor. he was that skilled at the -- that craft. so you don't have to buy it. there was no real philosophy, but you can see the structural work that he doesn't covering things. so he's kind of blowing things up. he's looking at political campaigns and singers got to be another way to cover these and so he does it as the outsider, you know the outside or looking in and part of the brick thing. fitzgerald, you know used to talk about the i'm always putting my face in the rich people's my nose in the window of the rich people's jewelry store candy store and i can't afford it. but i'm looking in the window hunter answered to fitzgerald has got a brick and break the window. so it's kind of like he's holding on all these traditions so when he wrote an article on politics, it would be called the scum, also rises. about politics mocking hemingways the sun also rises saying in politics a lot of the bad people do come to the top and you know, he would use that kind of language like that. so he's an american original a saddress, but it's a lifestyle proponent or a following his political philosophy there really wasn't one. i mean he was like dave chappelle the comedian or something just out there chris rock, you know, he's in tha vice president kamala harris. what in the world has happened to johnny depp? i don't