May 4, 2023 • 28 mins
As a last Hail Mary to save Viva, Bob and Kathy hire a young, up-and-coming fashion director — none other than a fresh-faced, pre-Vogue Anna Wintour. But will she be enough to save the floundering publication?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, but there's one that I really loved, and let
me just see if I can find it quickly.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
In April of twenty twenty two, I met photographer Jean
Polluso at her downtown Manhattan studio.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
You wouldn't think, I mean, it wasn't. Oh, this is
Anna's favorite though, that's the one she liked.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
That's her looking through the work she did with Anna
Wintour in the seventies.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Anna was on this shoot and she was up at
four on those days, and she would have everything lined
up and everything was perfect no matter where we went.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Jeane was one of the few female fashion photographers working
in the nineteen seventies and side note, Jean's in her
eighties now still working as a photographer and still cool
as hell. Back in the day, she was one of
Anna's go to photographers for whatever fashion spread she was
working on at the time. Because of this, Jeane got
a rare glimpse of one of the most famous women
(00:54):
in fashion history before she was well, the most famous
woman in fashion history.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Come to breakfast, and she looked incredible the whole time.
I was taken back because I can't work looking nice.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Jean pulls up a few images from the shoot that
she and Anna did together in Puerto Rico back in
nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
This is Puerto Rico, and we've just run out of ideas.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
On this particular shoot. Jean and Anna are struggling. None
of the locations they'd originally scouted are working, and Anna
doesn't like their model, and they don't know what to shoot.
It's a bad day. They risk leaving this expensive trip
with nothing usable until Jean has an idea.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I said, look at we're running out of things here.
Let's go to the other end of the island. I hear,
it's kind of interesting there.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
She and Anna pull up to a fire station on
the other side of the island. Outside there's a bunch
of guys standing around watching a literal cock fight. Jean's thrilled, Well,
maybe we could just get the fighting cocks in there
and the you know. Jean and Anna lee over setting
up the shot, and their work pays off. Gene shows
me photo after photo of this scene. The model is
(02:07):
a blank look, which is maybe why Anna wasn't really
into her. But because she's surrounded by these fighting birds,
the blankness, it works. The shoot's smart tongue in cheek,
high fashion, gorgeous. It's honestly one of Viva Magazine's more
striking photo spreads, which isn't surprising considering that most of
(02:28):
Anna Wintor's shoots were stunning during her tenure as fashion
editor of the magazine. Anna comes to Viva during a
tumultuous time. Its identity crisis is hitting a breaking point
and its readership numbers are in free fall, and in
a scramble to try to keep the lights on, Bob
Guccioni and Kathy Keaton are throwing anything they can against
(02:48):
the wall to see if it will stick, and Anna
Wintour she's one of Bob and Kathy's final hail Mary's.
But was Anna enough to save Viva? And was she
even up for the task? Back in Puerto Rico, it
was hard for Jane to tell.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
What Anna would do. Is you know, I'd totally finally
get the things set up. Polaroid was right start shooting,
and all of a sudden she would just disappear. She'd
just walk away. Now, you could say that was trust,
or you could say that was boredom. I didn't know
which it was.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I'm Jennifer Romalini and this is Stiffed. Episode seven, Win
Tour of Their Discontent, Act one, cock Fight, seventy three
(03:50):
things that turn a man on, celebrity food fetishes, fifty
ways to meet rich men, An astrological guide to get
giving you never ever have to break a nail again. No,
those are not headlines from an old Cosmo magazine you
found in your dentist's office. They're from Viva in nineteen
(04:12):
seventy six. By this time, Viva looks nothing like the smart,
progressive feminist porn magazine it was under editors like Betty
Jane and Patty Bosworth and Annie Gottlieb. Instead of being
a magazine with dix, it's now all about how to
catch one. The stories are heavily gendered, now more about
money and class, how to marry a rich guy, even
(04:34):
a story about how to buy a mink coat. Like
the decade when it was published, Viva's gone from being
an early seventies magazine about sexual pleasure to a late
seventies magazine about the pleasures of capitalism. Ironically, though Viva's
capital is actually withering. The magazine is understaffed, and it's
(04:56):
starved for resources too. Here's editor Robin will lane.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
You know, it looked like we were a glossy magazine,
but I was basically given an inventory of articles that
had been assigned and purchased by my predecessors, and we
had like almost no budget for new articles, so we
had to take those articles and make something of them.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
And to make things worse, Bob's up to his old
tricks again, filling Viva's pages with his Penhouse photography leftovers
and hiring more and more male writers, like Henry Miller,
who writes an essay in Viva about hating the women's
liberation movement and how it's quote harmful for women to
become immersed in politics. For a man who is known
(05:41):
for betting on himself and winning, Bob's hitting a period
of well, not quite winning anymore, especially with his non
Penhouse projects.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Bob had wanted to start a magazine called Brava, which
was going to be more porn they would never use
that word, but more risque than Penthouse, and the atmosphere
was changing.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
These trends don't please some members of the feminist community,
who charge the pornography, which shows women and postures of
sexual subjugation, can lead its consumers to commit violent acts
against unwilling women and children.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
The atmosphere is that the anti porn movement is coming
after Bob in a bigger and bigger way. We're talking
court cases. The heat is on, and it's a climate
that makes Bob feel like a new, more explicit version
of Penthouse might not be the best idea.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
So he didn't think he could launch Bravo at that point.
But he had already hired an editor, a guy named
Ernie Baxter.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
So now Ernie, this brand new, expensive male editor, doesn't
have anything to edit, so they think, what the hell,
let's just give him Viva. When this man, who had
never edited a women's magazine before, starts his job at Viva,
he does what many bosses do when they start a
new gig. He calls a meeting and.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
He gathers his all female team editorial team together, and
he says, you know, I know I'm probably an unusual
choice for this, you know, after all, you know I
want I only know what it's like to fuck and
not to be fucked.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Classy, right, And for Robin, who'd worked for Bob and
Cathy since her teens, since Viva started, this is it
the final misogyny straw and I resigned.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
I resigned, and Kathy made a huge play to keep
me and I wouldn't and that was really hard.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
And not too long after Robin resigns, this guy ends
up getting fired anyway, which is all indicative of a
much bigger structural issue at VIVA that's been there the
whole time. Here's Viva and Penthouse editor Peter Block.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
One of the problems was that and Kathy would just
switch editors to you often.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
With each new executive editor or managing editor, no matter
the title, they're always the second in command under Kathy's
top spot on the masthead. With each of these new
editors comes as shift in Beav's tone. Sometimes you have
a feminist. Sometimes, like with the Henry Miller essay, it's
decidedly not. Sometimes it's a gussied up feminized Penthouse. Sometimes
(08:26):
it's inexplicably a magazine dedicated to paranormal events. It's identity whiplash.
The magazine sorely needs an anchor, someone with vision. Her
name is Anna Annah Winter rules the three hundred billions.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
She has had the guts and the intelligence.
Speaker 6 (08:43):
She is the most famous fashion journalist in the world.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Now you most likely know Anna Wintour from her thirty
five years and counting as editor in chief of Vogue.
But in nineteen seventy six, Anna Wintour's not a fashion
icon yet. True, she's already got her signature Bob, and
she's even wearing dark sunglasses often inside. But when Anna
first comes in for an interview at Viva, she's mostly
(09:13):
just a twenty seven year old UK transplant, an out
of work junior magazine person looking for her second US job.
Speaker 7 (09:21):
She had just been fired from Harper's Bazaar and that
was the first staff job she got after moving to
New York from London in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
That's Anna Wintour's biographer, Amy o'dill amy's book, Anna came
out in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 7 (09:41):
And landing at Harper's Bazar. You know, she was very driven,
even at that point in her twenties, to be editor
in chief of Vogue, and I'm sure she thought that,
you know, she was at Harper's Bazar, that was Vogue's
number one competitor, and that would springboard her and it didn't.
It really ended in disaster.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
The disaster was that Harper's bizarre thought Anna didn't understand
how to appeal to an American audience, and they fired
her for it. So, with a bit of stain on
her resume and something to prove, Anna goes job hunting Viva,
which is still understaffed after cleaning house with the penis
fiasco and with the swift firing of Ernie, happened to
(10:21):
be looking for a new fashion and beauty editor. Anna
applies and she impresses Bob and Kathy right from the start.
They scoop her up. Here's Bob Guccioni Junior.
Speaker 8 (10:32):
She was very young and the impression of her was
very bright, and she's in England to that kind of
English luster to her, and you know, charming and you know,
witty and acerbic and expensive taste. You know, everybody did
think highly of her.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Now, Anna Wintour politely declined to be interviewed for this podcast.
She wasn't interested in discussing her two years work at Viva,
which was frankly not a surprise. Here's Amy.
Speaker 7 (11:04):
Anna never talks about her time at Viva. People speculate
that she's ashamed of the connection to a magazine that
published male nudity that was a competitor to Playgirl to.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Be fair, it is a little odd to imagine Anna
win Tour, the fashion titan we all know today, mixing
it up with sleazy pornographers. But whether she likes to
acknowledge it or not, Viva is inarguably Anna Wintour's breakout job.
Speaker 7 (11:33):
I think it's such an important job for her, and
it's almost sad that she doesn't talk about it, because
this is when you can see her style start to
come out. And I think that the early early Viva is.
If you look at her fashion spreads, they definitely resemble
some of the things that we're accustoms seeing in Vogue magazine.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Anna's taste is already unimpeachable. She has an eye for
young design talent, and she knows how to tell stories
through fashion to really sell the clothes. And even though
she's not famous yet, when she's brought in to head
up Vivis fashion and beauty section, there's a buzz about
her as soon as she arrives. Here's Penthouse pr director
(12:15):
Leslie j.
Speaker 6 (12:16):
I was there when Anna Winsor started working there and
it was a big deal, and then she came. She
always had a fresh bouquet of flowers deliver it. To
her every single day. She looked like a ragamuffin. I
mean that she turns into Vogue is amazing. She wore
(12:39):
outlandish clothes that but I would never wear any of them.
But she was the fashion director, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
But what Leslie j thought of as ragamuffin is what
others might describe as edgy. Anna is sophisticated, well bred.
She's the daughter of the famous British newspaper editor Charles Windtour.
She's got her finger on the pulse of fashion, and
she's fancier than anyone who's worked at Penhouse or Viva
up to this point. Here's editor Pat Lindon.
Speaker 9 (13:10):
She took the concord home to London every single weekend.
She would you know, leave, arrive at work with her
shopping bag, if her undies or whatever she needed, and
then she would come back Monday morning.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
After Anna Wintour is brought in, Bob and Kathy quickly
expand Viva's fashion section from four pages a month to
a full sixteen. It's a big bet on her talent
and a last ditch ploy to turn Viva into a
women's magazine that attracts big money women's fashion ads. Anna's
given creative autonomy and free rein to do what she
(13:44):
wants with her pages. That free rain, it costs money.
Speaker 8 (13:48):
You know.
Speaker 7 (13:48):
She came from fashion magazines, and at a fashion magazine,
it's it's customary to pay a messenger to pick up
a dress from a designer and bring it to your office.
While that diva's not a fashion magazine, Kathy Keaton was
not a you know, she didn't have that much experience.
I don't know how many years of experience she had
in magazines when Anna came on. Was it a few?
(14:09):
So she had a few years of experience, you know,
just being parachuted into this role as publisher, So she
didn't know how things operated, really, and Anna ran things
at Viva the way that a fashion magazine would run them,
and that was alien to them.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Now, Bob and Kathy weren't in the fashion industry. They
were barely real publishing people, so they had no idea
of the funding Anna felt was necessary to do her job,
funding which was larger than anyone expected.
Speaker 7 (14:38):
You know, this is the thing that Anna came up
against early in her career, again and again, wanting to
do the thing that she wanted to do, and not
trying to adapt to concerns like budgets. She didn't work
that way. She was very single minded in what she
wanted to do.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
And what did Anna want to do well, from the
looks of her first few Viva issues, she wants to
was sablish herself as a real player on the global
fashion scene, and she wants to do it fast. To
that end, Anna's first Viva fashion shoots are lavish, strategic,
and tightly curated to compete with more established fashion titles.
(15:14):
She insists on shooting on location everywhere from Tokyo to
Saint Croix, and she often chooses women of color to model,
some of the first to appear in Viva, which was
more in line with an international audience, and she styles
them in designers never seen in the magazine before, mixing
old school French luxury brands like YSL with cutting edge
(15:35):
up and comers like Issimayaki. But mostly, and perhaps this
was a response to getting fired from Harper's Bazaar for
not understanding American taste. At Viva, Anna uses the most
American of American designers. There's never an issue without pieces
from say Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein. It's the Anna
(15:55):
Wintour taste. You know, if you've ever paged through Vogue,
it's classics with the twist. Whereas Viva's photography had once
been a weird, wild romp under Anna, it's more self serious.
Here's fashion historian Laura Helmes.
Speaker 10 (16:10):
She brought some forward thinking sort of fashion knowledge there.
But Anna was coming from a sort of traditional publishing
background and a traditional fashion background, and so brought more
of that into the fashion editorials, where there's less fantasy,
there's less dreaminess.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Still, Anna's success within Viva's fashion pages is evident right away,
and the rest of the industry, including executives at Conde Nast,
publisher of Vogue, start taking notice. Here's Viva editor Pat.
Speaker 11 (16:42):
Her breakout place was, I think Viva. That's where she
got the attention that put her into the running for
the big time.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
As for Anna herself, whether she's on location in Marrakesh
or back in her Manhattan Viva office, she often displays
the same kind of over it all removed had with Jeanne,
a smidge of early Devilwaar's Prada peeking through. She just
wasn't one to play nice with others from the start.
Young Anna has a few unmistakable Anna Winter of today quirks.
Speaker 11 (17:13):
I was technically her boss because I was the articles editor.
She did not invite any kind of conversation. She did
not invite camaraderie.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Paths often tasked with editing the words that go with
Anna's fashion spreads.
Speaker 11 (17:26):
We'd pass each other in the hallway and she'd kind
of look down at the floor and get that sort
of a little half smile on her face to acknowledge
that I was there, but she was not going to
say anything to me. And that was kind of it
with her.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And when Anna did deigne to engage with her coworkers,
she could be just odd. The Viva and Penthouse gangs
all hang out after work at a Manhattan restaurant and
bar called PJ. Clarks.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
She would sit there with us when we were all
getting all drinking, and she'd be with her shades and
peeling little sugar cubes. We'd be hanging out there and
some of the minions from Panna House in Viva would
come down with le act. He's sitting like correcting things,
and it's like, how can you even see anything?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Despite these anti social foibles, Anna's creative vision is unyielding.
With the addition of her fashion pages, Viva feels fresh
and exciting again. It's a reset, But could this reset
be enough to propel Viva to a legitimate women's magazine
success or was it just too little, too late? Act
(18:35):
two Last Rabbit in the Hat By nineteen seventy eight,
two years after doing away with the Dicks and after
two years investing in Anna Wintour's fashion vision, Bob and
Cathy decide to invest in Viva's editorial again. They give
Jinny Kopecky, a smart twenty seven year old editor from
(18:56):
Ladies Home Journal, the chance to build a real magazine
around Anna's pages. Jinny didn't want to be interviewed live
for this podcast, but she did email with me, saying, quote,
I remember that time very fondly. I loved being at
Viva while it lasted. It was a great, great time
to be a young, single female editor, writer, journalist in
(19:18):
New York City, maybe the best ever. The staff loves
Ginny and they respect her too well.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
Jinny was a very, very principled and very good editor.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Even with the challenges. Jinny's super into her new job,
and she makes quick work of bringing Viva's original smart
feminist vision of course, sans dick picks and erotica back
to life, and by the middle of nineteen seventy eight,
with Ginny and Anna working their magic, Viva's actually looking
kind of great again. There are stories about the epidemic
(19:53):
of domestic violence, multipart packages on abortion, an insightful profile
of Earth. A kit magazine, just like at the beginning,
is once again staffed with smart editors who have a
mission and believe in it. They're trying to turn Viva around,
pull off a new trick, the last rabbit in this magazine.
Hat and editor Ginny's enthusiasm for this new Viva is contagious.
(20:18):
Here's Viva editor pat again.
Speaker 11 (20:21):
We're bringing Viva on this new track. Now, Viva is
now going to be a terrific magazine. It's going to
be a feminist magazine. It's going to be exciting, it's
going to be better than Miss, it's going to be
different from Cosmo.
Speaker 12 (20:32):
What Ginny and I were saying was like an eschore,
like a feminist esquire. We wanted to have offer a
place where good feminist writers could could publish their stuff
get paid.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Well, that's Viva, editor of Valmonroe. She and Pat are
now working with Ginny to make this vision come to life,
and they're having a good time doing it.
Speaker 11 (20:53):
And I remember seeing friends. We went to a restaurant,
fear Ellos or something, and we went. As I was
walking through the restaurant, I saw friends, and how are you?
I said, Oh God, I'm just so happy. I just
love this job. I've never loved a job more.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Thanks in part to Anna Wintor's fashion pages bringing in
some clout and at least a few ads, Kathy and
Bob are willing to spend on Viva again, and editors
like Pat and Val can afford to bring on whatever
writers they want. It's an editor's dream. But there remains
one problem at Viva, and it's a big one. It's
(21:30):
the problem Viva's had since the start. It's Bob Guccioni.
Of course, specifically, it's Bob up to his old tricks,
flexing creative dominance and trying to reuse his penthouse pets
photoshoots for Viva's covers.
Speaker 12 (21:44):
We did what we could for eight months, like you know,
we were offering decent money and good ideas and telling people,
you know, ignore the cover.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
But the covers turn out to be not so easy
to ignore, and with this strong willed new team in place,
Bob's running into resistance, and so is Kathy, who's often
tasked with carrying water for Bob and delivering his orders.
Anna is the first to speak out.
Speaker 7 (22:13):
They would hear Anna and Kathy Keaton fighting over models,
and then they would hear Anna stomping out.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Now, even from the beginning, Viva's cover models rarely made
much sense. Sometimes they were celebrities like Bianca Jagger or
Shelley Duval, sometimes penhouse pets, sometimes just a man's bare ass.
But when Anna is at Viva, the covers are mostly
her models and her styling, not elaborate Vogue like cover shoots,
but at least their outtakes from her fashion spreads. They
(22:41):
represent her ideas. Anna's not interested in Bob and Kathy
denigrating her extremely specific creative vision with these corny ass
porn covers and the tasteless penhouse pet covers aren't just
affecting Anna, Ginny and Val are getting drawn into the
battle too.
Speaker 12 (22:57):
And then one day Bob wanted to put some like
half naked more naked woman on the cover in Pearls
and bosoms or something.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
And for many of the female editors, this is somehow
a bosom too far. It's so obvious the picture is
sloppy penthouse seconds.
Speaker 11 (23:14):
It's that kind of hither look in the eyes that
betrays that it's it's not for women. That's not a
woman's magazine face. That's a man. That's a girly magazine's face.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
But Bob's insistent and Kathy's not stopping him.
Speaker 11 (23:29):
And I remember Kathy defending it, saying it's a beautiful cover.
It's a beautiful cover.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
And remember we're in the late seventies now things are changing.
This isn't vow or Ginny or Pat's first job, and
they're confident enough to know it won't be their last.
They believe in themselves and their talent, their integrity and vision,
so they stand their ground, or at least some of
them do.
Speaker 11 (23:52):
Ginny and Valid they were furious, just furious.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It's true. Vowel talks with Ginny and they come to a.
Speaker 12 (23:59):
Decision, and I said, that's it. We're done.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Bob and Kathy don't try to talk them out of it.
In fact, Val experienced the opposite. She's basically frog marched out.
Speaker 12 (24:09):
Suddenly there was a bodyguard at my desk and we
were escorted out of the building.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Even in the midst of all this drama, Pat is
still holding out hope.
Speaker 11 (24:17):
I said that I was not going to join them,
and I told them. You know, they were surprised because
I had been so involved in the in the Newsweek thing.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Remember Pat had been through some serious shit already at Newsweek.
She was part of the sexual discrimination lawsuit in nineteen seventy.
Plus she actually really loves her job at Viva, so
she goes against Ginny and bell.
Speaker 11 (24:42):
I remember that they were very angry at me, that
they wanted nothing to do with me. Basically after I
said that I was not going to join them.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Pat just really wants Viva to finally work. It's so
close to working. Viva's her dream job, and like many
people in toxic workplaces, she's cling to a fantasy of
how it could be rather than what it is.
Speaker 11 (25:03):
A magazine that's trying to get on its feet and
trying to change and trying to go in a new direction.
And you know, we'll we can work on that.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
So Pat sticks it out. Buzzom covers porn King at
All as Viva enters yet another round of editor musical chairs.
Speaker 11 (25:21):
The next thing I can remember is that Helen Irwin
was brought in as the new editor.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Helen Irwin becomes at least the sixth editor in just
five years to hold this second in command position at Viva.
She's another impulsive Bob and Kathy decision, another potential quick fix.
Speaker 11 (25:38):
She depended a lot on me on my judgment, and
I think it was really the two.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Of us until one afternoon a few weeks later, Helen
takes Pat to lunch.
Speaker 11 (25:49):
And then I sat down at the table and Helen said, Pat,
I have to tell you something, and I you know,
she was lovely about it, and she said, but they're
closing Viva.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Pat stunned.
Speaker 11 (26:01):
There was no inkling at all, and there probably should
have been.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Later that week it's official.
Speaker 11 (26:07):
The night that they that they closed Viva, we were
all there late.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Pat and Anna Wintour are two of the last Viva
women standing. On this Friday night, the night they're told
Viva Magazine is finally over.
Speaker 11 (26:21):
We stayed late. We all got drunk and we went
down to Anna's office and she was sobbing. She was sobbing.
I was very surprised to see that. I guess she thought,
you know, here was my great chance and I had
this great thing that it's all gone.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
The editors, crying, Anna and all walked to Kathy's.
Speaker 11 (26:45):
Office and then we went down and we saw Kathy
who was sitting in her office and you know, saying, oh, Kathy,
and she held out her arm her hand, took my
hand and some of the others and gave them a squeeze,
and she didn't even look.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Up before they leave for good. The editors are looking
for some kind of answers, some closure from Kathy.
Speaker 11 (27:07):
She just but she you know, she smiled in sympathy.
She didn't say anything. Nobody was accusing her of anything.
It was just, you know, we wanted to see what
her reaction would be, and it was that she was
very sad. But you know, that's life kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
But they're not getting closure from Kathy or anyone because
understanding the end of Viva and what it all means,
that's what It's more complicated than the kind of clear
cut answer the editors want. But a half century later,
I think we've gotten pretty close to pinning it down.
(27:46):
Stiff is an original podcast from iHeartMedia and Crooked Media.
It's produced by Crooked Media. It's hosted and written by
me Jennifer Ramalini and produced by Megan Donnas. Sydney Rapp
is our associate producer, Story editing by Mary Knopf, music
sound design and engineering by Hannes Brown. Our fact checker
(28:08):
is Julia Paskin. Additional production support from Nafila Cato and
Inez Maza from Crooked Media. Our executive producers are Sarah Geismer,
Katy Long, and Mary Knoff, with special thanks to Alison
Falsetta and Lyra Smith from iHeartMedia. Our executive producers are
Beth Anne Macaluso and Julia Weaver.
Oh, but there's one that I really loved, and let
me just see if I can find it quickly.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
In April of twenty twenty two, I met photographer Jean
Polluso at her downtown Manhattan studio.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
You wouldn't think, I mean, it wasn't. Oh, this is
Anna's favorite though, that's the one she liked.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
That's her looking through the work she did with Anna
Wintour in the seventies.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Anna was on this shoot and she was up at
four on those days, and she would have everything lined
up and everything was perfect no matter where we went.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Jeane was one of the few female fashion photographers working
in the nineteen seventies and side note, Jean's in her
eighties now still working as a photographer and still cool
as hell. Back in the day, she was one of
Anna's go to photographers for whatever fashion spread she was
working on at the time. Because of this, Jeane got
a rare glimpse of one of the most famous women
(00:54):
in fashion history before she was well, the most famous
woman in fashion history.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Come to breakfast, and she looked incredible the whole time.
I was taken back because I can't work looking nice.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Jean pulls up a few images from the shoot that
she and Anna did together in Puerto Rico back in
nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
This is Puerto Rico, and we've just run out of ideas.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
On this particular shoot. Jean and Anna are struggling. None
of the locations they'd originally scouted are working, and Anna
doesn't like their model, and they don't know what to shoot.
It's a bad day. They risk leaving this expensive trip
with nothing usable until Jean has an idea.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I said, look at we're running out of things here.
Let's go to the other end of the island. I hear,
it's kind of interesting there.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
She and Anna pull up to a fire station on
the other side of the island. Outside there's a bunch
of guys standing around watching a literal cock fight. Jean's thrilled, Well,
maybe we could just get the fighting cocks in there
and the you know. Jean and Anna lee over setting
up the shot, and their work pays off. Gene shows
me photo after photo of this scene. The model is
(02:07):
a blank look, which is maybe why Anna wasn't really
into her. But because she's surrounded by these fighting birds,
the blankness, it works. The shoot's smart tongue in cheek,
high fashion, gorgeous. It's honestly one of Viva Magazine's more
striking photo spreads, which isn't surprising considering that most of
(02:28):
Anna Wintor's shoots were stunning during her tenure as fashion
editor of the magazine. Anna comes to Viva during a
tumultuous time. Its identity crisis is hitting a breaking point
and its readership numbers are in free fall, and in
a scramble to try to keep the lights on, Bob
Guccioni and Kathy Keaton are throwing anything they can against
(02:48):
the wall to see if it will stick, and Anna
Wintour she's one of Bob and Kathy's final hail Mary's.
But was Anna enough to save Viva? And was she
even up for the task? Back in Puerto Rico, it
was hard for Jane to tell.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
What Anna would do. Is you know, I'd totally finally
get the things set up. Polaroid was right start shooting,
and all of a sudden she would just disappear. She'd
just walk away. Now, you could say that was trust,
or you could say that was boredom. I didn't know
which it was.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I'm Jennifer Romalini and this is Stiffed. Episode seven, Win
Tour of Their Discontent, Act one, cock Fight, seventy three
(03:50):
things that turn a man on, celebrity food fetishes, fifty
ways to meet rich men, An astrological guide to get
giving you never ever have to break a nail again. No,
those are not headlines from an old Cosmo magazine you
found in your dentist's office. They're from Viva in nineteen
(04:12):
seventy six. By this time, Viva looks nothing like the smart,
progressive feminist porn magazine it was under editors like Betty
Jane and Patty Bosworth and Annie Gottlieb. Instead of being
a magazine with dix, it's now all about how to
catch one. The stories are heavily gendered, now more about
money and class, how to marry a rich guy, even
(04:34):
a story about how to buy a mink coat. Like
the decade when it was published, Viva's gone from being
an early seventies magazine about sexual pleasure to a late
seventies magazine about the pleasures of capitalism. Ironically, though Viva's
capital is actually withering. The magazine is understaffed, and it's
(04:56):
starved for resources too. Here's editor Robin will lane.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
You know, it looked like we were a glossy magazine,
but I was basically given an inventory of articles that
had been assigned and purchased by my predecessors, and we
had like almost no budget for new articles, so we
had to take those articles and make something of them.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
And to make things worse, Bob's up to his old
tricks again, filling Viva's pages with his Penhouse photography leftovers
and hiring more and more male writers, like Henry Miller,
who writes an essay in Viva about hating the women's
liberation movement and how it's quote harmful for women to
become immersed in politics. For a man who is known
(05:41):
for betting on himself and winning, Bob's hitting a period
of well, not quite winning anymore, especially with his non
Penhouse projects.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Bob had wanted to start a magazine called Brava, which
was going to be more porn they would never use
that word, but more risque than Penthouse, and the atmosphere
was changing.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
These trends don't please some members of the feminist community,
who charge the pornography, which shows women and postures of
sexual subjugation, can lead its consumers to commit violent acts
against unwilling women and children.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
The atmosphere is that the anti porn movement is coming
after Bob in a bigger and bigger way. We're talking
court cases. The heat is on, and it's a climate
that makes Bob feel like a new, more explicit version
of Penthouse might not be the best idea.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
So he didn't think he could launch Bravo at that point.
But he had already hired an editor, a guy named
Ernie Baxter.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
So now Ernie, this brand new, expensive male editor, doesn't
have anything to edit, so they think, what the hell,
let's just give him Viva. When this man, who had
never edited a women's magazine before, starts his job at Viva,
he does what many bosses do when they start a
new gig. He calls a meeting and.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
He gathers his all female team editorial team together, and
he says, you know, I know I'm probably an unusual
choice for this, you know, after all, you know I
want I only know what it's like to fuck and
not to be fucked.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Classy, right, And for Robin, who'd worked for Bob and
Cathy since her teens, since Viva started, this is it
the final misogyny straw and I resigned.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
I resigned, and Kathy made a huge play to keep
me and I wouldn't and that was really hard.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
And not too long after Robin resigns, this guy ends
up getting fired anyway, which is all indicative of a
much bigger structural issue at VIVA that's been there the
whole time. Here's Viva and Penthouse editor Peter Block.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
One of the problems was that and Kathy would just
switch editors to you often.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
With each new executive editor or managing editor, no matter
the title, they're always the second in command under Kathy's
top spot on the masthead. With each of these new
editors comes as shift in Beav's tone. Sometimes you have
a feminist. Sometimes, like with the Henry Miller essay, it's
decidedly not. Sometimes it's a gussied up feminized Penthouse. Sometimes
(08:26):
it's inexplicably a magazine dedicated to paranormal events. It's identity whiplash.
The magazine sorely needs an anchor, someone with vision. Her
name is Anna Annah Winter rules the three hundred billions.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
She has had the guts and the intelligence.
Speaker 6 (08:43):
She is the most famous fashion journalist in the world.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Now you most likely know Anna Wintour from her thirty
five years and counting as editor in chief of Vogue.
But in nineteen seventy six, Anna Wintour's not a fashion
icon yet. True, she's already got her signature Bob, and
she's even wearing dark sunglasses often inside. But when Anna
first comes in for an interview at Viva, she's mostly
(09:13):
just a twenty seven year old UK transplant, an out
of work junior magazine person looking for her second US job.
Speaker 7 (09:21):
She had just been fired from Harper's Bazaar and that
was the first staff job she got after moving to
New York from London in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
That's Anna Wintour's biographer, Amy o'dill amy's book, Anna came
out in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 7 (09:41):
And landing at Harper's Bazar. You know, she was very driven,
even at that point in her twenties, to be editor
in chief of Vogue, and I'm sure she thought that,
you know, she was at Harper's Bazar, that was Vogue's
number one competitor, and that would springboard her and it didn't.
It really ended in disaster.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
The disaster was that Harper's bizarre thought Anna didn't understand
how to appeal to an American audience, and they fired
her for it. So, with a bit of stain on
her resume and something to prove, Anna goes job hunting Viva,
which is still understaffed after cleaning house with the penis
fiasco and with the swift firing of Ernie, happened to
(10:21):
be looking for a new fashion and beauty editor. Anna
applies and she impresses Bob and Kathy right from the start.
They scoop her up. Here's Bob Guccioni Junior.
Speaker 8 (10:32):
She was very young and the impression of her was
very bright, and she's in England to that kind of
English luster to her, and you know, charming and you know,
witty and acerbic and expensive taste. You know, everybody did
think highly of her.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Now, Anna Wintour politely declined to be interviewed for this podcast.
She wasn't interested in discussing her two years work at Viva,
which was frankly not a surprise. Here's Amy.
Speaker 7 (11:04):
Anna never talks about her time at Viva. People speculate
that she's ashamed of the connection to a magazine that
published male nudity that was a competitor to Playgirl to.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Be fair, it is a little odd to imagine Anna
win Tour, the fashion titan we all know today, mixing
it up with sleazy pornographers. But whether she likes to
acknowledge it or not, Viva is inarguably Anna Wintour's breakout job.
Speaker 7 (11:33):
I think it's such an important job for her, and
it's almost sad that she doesn't talk about it, because
this is when you can see her style start to
come out. And I think that the early early Viva is.
If you look at her fashion spreads, they definitely resemble
some of the things that we're accustoms seeing in Vogue magazine.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Anna's taste is already unimpeachable. She has an eye for
young design talent, and she knows how to tell stories
through fashion to really sell the clothes. And even though
she's not famous yet, when she's brought in to head
up Vivis fashion and beauty section, there's a buzz about
her as soon as she arrives. Here's Penthouse pr director
(12:15):
Leslie j.
Speaker 6 (12:16):
I was there when Anna Winsor started working there and
it was a big deal, and then she came. She
always had a fresh bouquet of flowers deliver it. To
her every single day. She looked like a ragamuffin. I
mean that she turns into Vogue is amazing. She wore
(12:39):
outlandish clothes that but I would never wear any of them.
But she was the fashion director, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
But what Leslie j thought of as ragamuffin is what
others might describe as edgy. Anna is sophisticated, well bred.
She's the daughter of the famous British newspaper editor Charles Windtour.
She's got her finger on the pulse of fashion, and
she's fancier than anyone who's worked at Penhouse or Viva
up to this point. Here's editor Pat Lindon.
Speaker 9 (13:10):
She took the concord home to London every single weekend.
She would you know, leave, arrive at work with her
shopping bag, if her undies or whatever she needed, and
then she would come back Monday morning.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
After Anna Wintour is brought in, Bob and Kathy quickly
expand Viva's fashion section from four pages a month to
a full sixteen. It's a big bet on her talent
and a last ditch ploy to turn Viva into a
women's magazine that attracts big money women's fashion ads. Anna's
given creative autonomy and free rein to do what she
(13:44):
wants with her pages. That free rain, it costs money.
Speaker 8 (13:48):
You know.
Speaker 7 (13:48):
She came from fashion magazines, and at a fashion magazine,
it's it's customary to pay a messenger to pick up
a dress from a designer and bring it to your office.
While that diva's not a fashion magazine, Kathy Keaton was
not a you know, she didn't have that much experience.
I don't know how many years of experience she had
in magazines when Anna came on. Was it a few?
(14:09):
So she had a few years of experience, you know,
just being parachuted into this role as publisher, So she
didn't know how things operated, really, and Anna ran things
at Viva the way that a fashion magazine would run them,
and that was alien to them.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Now, Bob and Kathy weren't in the fashion industry. They
were barely real publishing people, so they had no idea
of the funding Anna felt was necessary to do her job,
funding which was larger than anyone expected.
Speaker 7 (14:38):
You know, this is the thing that Anna came up
against early in her career, again and again, wanting to
do the thing that she wanted to do, and not
trying to adapt to concerns like budgets. She didn't work
that way. She was very single minded in what she
wanted to do.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
And what did Anna want to do well, from the
looks of her first few Viva issues, she wants to
was sablish herself as a real player on the global
fashion scene, and she wants to do it fast. To
that end, Anna's first Viva fashion shoots are lavish, strategic,
and tightly curated to compete with more established fashion titles.
(15:14):
She insists on shooting on location everywhere from Tokyo to
Saint Croix, and she often chooses women of color to model,
some of the first to appear in Viva, which was
more in line with an international audience, and she styles
them in designers never seen in the magazine before, mixing
old school French luxury brands like YSL with cutting edge
(15:35):
up and comers like Issimayaki. But mostly, and perhaps this
was a response to getting fired from Harper's Bazaar for
not understanding American taste. At Viva, Anna uses the most
American of American designers. There's never an issue without pieces
from say Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein. It's the Anna
(15:55):
Wintour taste. You know, if you've ever paged through Vogue,
it's classics with the twist. Whereas Viva's photography had once
been a weird, wild romp under Anna, it's more self serious.
Here's fashion historian Laura Helmes.
Speaker 10 (16:10):
She brought some forward thinking sort of fashion knowledge there.
But Anna was coming from a sort of traditional publishing
background and a traditional fashion background, and so brought more
of that into the fashion editorials, where there's less fantasy,
there's less dreaminess.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Still, Anna's success within Viva's fashion pages is evident right away,
and the rest of the industry, including executives at Conde Nast,
publisher of Vogue, start taking notice. Here's Viva editor Pat.
Speaker 11 (16:42):
Her breakout place was, I think Viva. That's where she
got the attention that put her into the running for
the big time.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
As for Anna herself, whether she's on location in Marrakesh
or back in her Manhattan Viva office, she often displays
the same kind of over it all removed had with Jeanne,
a smidge of early Devilwaar's Prada peeking through. She just
wasn't one to play nice with others from the start.
Young Anna has a few unmistakable Anna Winter of today quirks.
Speaker 11 (17:13):
I was technically her boss because I was the articles editor.
She did not invite any kind of conversation. She did
not invite camaraderie.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Paths often tasked with editing the words that go with
Anna's fashion spreads.
Speaker 11 (17:26):
We'd pass each other in the hallway and she'd kind
of look down at the floor and get that sort
of a little half smile on her face to acknowledge
that I was there, but she was not going to
say anything to me. And that was kind of it
with her.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And when Anna did deigne to engage with her coworkers,
she could be just odd. The Viva and Penthouse gangs
all hang out after work at a Manhattan restaurant and
bar called PJ. Clarks.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
She would sit there with us when we were all
getting all drinking, and she'd be with her shades and
peeling little sugar cubes. We'd be hanging out there and
some of the minions from Panna House in Viva would
come down with le act. He's sitting like correcting things,
and it's like, how can you even see anything?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Despite these anti social foibles, Anna's creative vision is unyielding.
With the addition of her fashion pages, Viva feels fresh
and exciting again. It's a reset, But could this reset
be enough to propel Viva to a legitimate women's magazine
success or was it just too little, too late? Act
(18:35):
two Last Rabbit in the Hat By nineteen seventy eight,
two years after doing away with the Dicks and after
two years investing in Anna Wintour's fashion vision, Bob and
Cathy decide to invest in Viva's editorial again. They give
Jinny Kopecky, a smart twenty seven year old editor from
(18:56):
Ladies Home Journal, the chance to build a real magazine
around Anna's pages. Jinny didn't want to be interviewed live
for this podcast, but she did email with me, saying, quote,
I remember that time very fondly. I loved being at
Viva while it lasted. It was a great, great time
to be a young, single female editor, writer, journalist in
(19:18):
New York City, maybe the best ever. The staff loves
Ginny and they respect her too well.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
Jinny was a very, very principled and very good editor.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Even with the challenges. Jinny's super into her new job,
and she makes quick work of bringing Viva's original smart
feminist vision of course, sans dick picks and erotica back
to life, and by the middle of nineteen seventy eight,
with Ginny and Anna working their magic, Viva's actually looking
kind of great again. There are stories about the epidemic
(19:53):
of domestic violence, multipart packages on abortion, an insightful profile
of Earth. A kit magazine, just like at the beginning,
is once again staffed with smart editors who have a
mission and believe in it. They're trying to turn Viva around,
pull off a new trick, the last rabbit in this magazine.
Hat and editor Ginny's enthusiasm for this new Viva is contagious.
(20:18):
Here's Viva editor pat again.
Speaker 11 (20:21):
We're bringing Viva on this new track. Now, Viva is
now going to be a terrific magazine. It's going to
be a feminist magazine. It's going to be exciting, it's
going to be better than Miss, it's going to be
different from Cosmo.
Speaker 12 (20:32):
What Ginny and I were saying was like an eschore,
like a feminist esquire. We wanted to have offer a
place where good feminist writers could could publish their stuff
get paid.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Well, that's Viva, editor of Valmonroe. She and Pat are
now working with Ginny to make this vision come to life,
and they're having a good time doing it.
Speaker 11 (20:53):
And I remember seeing friends. We went to a restaurant,
fear Ellos or something, and we went. As I was
walking through the restaurant, I saw friends, and how are you?
I said, Oh God, I'm just so happy. I just
love this job. I've never loved a job more.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Thanks in part to Anna Wintor's fashion pages bringing in
some clout and at least a few ads, Kathy and
Bob are willing to spend on Viva again, and editors
like Pat and Val can afford to bring on whatever
writers they want. It's an editor's dream. But there remains
one problem at Viva, and it's a big one. It's
(21:30):
the problem Viva's had since the start. It's Bob Guccioni.
Of course, specifically, it's Bob up to his old tricks,
flexing creative dominance and trying to reuse his penthouse pets
photoshoots for Viva's covers.
Speaker 12 (21:44):
We did what we could for eight months, like you know,
we were offering decent money and good ideas and telling people,
you know, ignore the cover.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
But the covers turn out to be not so easy
to ignore, and with this strong willed new team in place,
Bob's running into resistance, and so is Kathy, who's often
tasked with carrying water for Bob and delivering his orders.
Anna is the first to speak out.
Speaker 7 (22:13):
They would hear Anna and Kathy Keaton fighting over models,
and then they would hear Anna stomping out.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Now, even from the beginning, Viva's cover models rarely made
much sense. Sometimes they were celebrities like Bianca Jagger or
Shelley Duval, sometimes penhouse pets, sometimes just a man's bare ass.
But when Anna is at Viva, the covers are mostly
her models and her styling, not elaborate Vogue like cover shoots,
but at least their outtakes from her fashion spreads. They
(22:41):
represent her ideas. Anna's not interested in Bob and Kathy
denigrating her extremely specific creative vision with these corny ass
porn covers and the tasteless penhouse pet covers aren't just
affecting Anna, Ginny and Val are getting drawn into the
battle too.
Speaker 12 (22:57):
And then one day Bob wanted to put some like
half naked more naked woman on the cover in Pearls
and bosoms or something.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
And for many of the female editors, this is somehow
a bosom too far. It's so obvious the picture is
sloppy penthouse seconds.
Speaker 11 (23:14):
It's that kind of hither look in the eyes that
betrays that it's it's not for women. That's not a
woman's magazine face. That's a man. That's a girly magazine's face.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
But Bob's insistent and Kathy's not stopping him.
Speaker 11 (23:29):
And I remember Kathy defending it, saying it's a beautiful cover.
It's a beautiful cover.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
And remember we're in the late seventies now things are changing.
This isn't vow or Ginny or Pat's first job, and
they're confident enough to know it won't be their last.
They believe in themselves and their talent, their integrity and vision,
so they stand their ground, or at least some of
them do.
Speaker 11 (23:52):
Ginny and Valid they were furious, just furious.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It's true. Vowel talks with Ginny and they come to a.
Speaker 12 (23:59):
Decision, and I said, that's it. We're done.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Bob and Kathy don't try to talk them out of it.
In fact, Val experienced the opposite. She's basically frog marched out.
Speaker 12 (24:09):
Suddenly there was a bodyguard at my desk and we
were escorted out of the building.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Even in the midst of all this drama, Pat is
still holding out hope.
Speaker 11 (24:17):
I said that I was not going to join them,
and I told them. You know, they were surprised because
I had been so involved in the in the Newsweek thing.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Remember Pat had been through some serious shit already at Newsweek.
She was part of the sexual discrimination lawsuit in nineteen seventy.
Plus she actually really loves her job at Viva, so
she goes against Ginny and bell.
Speaker 11 (24:42):
I remember that they were very angry at me, that
they wanted nothing to do with me. Basically after I
said that I was not going to join them.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Pat just really wants Viva to finally work. It's so
close to working. Viva's her dream job, and like many
people in toxic workplaces, she's cling to a fantasy of
how it could be rather than what it is.
Speaker 11 (25:03):
A magazine that's trying to get on its feet and
trying to change and trying to go in a new direction.
And you know, we'll we can work on that.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
So Pat sticks it out. Buzzom covers porn King at
All as Viva enters yet another round of editor musical chairs.
Speaker 11 (25:21):
The next thing I can remember is that Helen Irwin
was brought in as the new editor.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Helen Irwin becomes at least the sixth editor in just
five years to hold this second in command position at Viva.
She's another impulsive Bob and Kathy decision, another potential quick fix.
Speaker 11 (25:38):
She depended a lot on me on my judgment, and
I think it was really the two.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Of us until one afternoon a few weeks later, Helen
takes Pat to lunch.
Speaker 11 (25:49):
And then I sat down at the table and Helen said, Pat,
I have to tell you something, and I you know,
she was lovely about it, and she said, but they're
closing Viva.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Pat stunned.
Speaker 11 (26:01):
There was no inkling at all, and there probably should
have been.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Later that week it's official.
Speaker 11 (26:07):
The night that they that they closed Viva, we were
all there late.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Pat and Anna Wintour are two of the last Viva
women standing. On this Friday night, the night they're told
Viva Magazine is finally over.
Speaker 11 (26:21):
We stayed late. We all got drunk and we went
down to Anna's office and she was sobbing. She was sobbing.
I was very surprised to see that. I guess she thought,
you know, here was my great chance and I had
this great thing that it's all gone.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
The editors, crying, Anna and all walked to Kathy's.
Speaker 11 (26:45):
Office and then we went down and we saw Kathy
who was sitting in her office and you know, saying, oh, Kathy,
and she held out her arm her hand, took my
hand and some of the others and gave them a squeeze,
and she didn't even look.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Up before they leave for good. The editors are looking
for some kind of answers, some closure from Kathy.
Speaker 11 (27:07):
She just but she you know, she smiled in sympathy.
She didn't say anything. Nobody was accusing her of anything.
It was just, you know, we wanted to see what
her reaction would be, and it was that she was
very sad. But you know, that's life kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
But they're not getting closure from Kathy or anyone because
understanding the end of Viva and what it all means,
that's what It's more complicated than the kind of clear
cut answer the editors want. But a half century later,
I think we've gotten pretty close to pinning it down.
(27:46):
Stiff is an original podcast from iHeartMedia and Crooked Media.
It's produced by Crooked Media. It's hosted and written by
me Jennifer Ramalini and produced by Megan Donnas. Sydney Rapp
is our associate producer, Story editing by Mary Knopf, music
sound design and engineering by Hannes Brown. Our fact checker
(28:08):
is Julia Paskin. Additional production support from Nafila Cato and
Inez Maza from Crooked Media. Our executive producers are Sarah Geismer,
Katy Long, and Mary Knoff, with special thanks to Alison
Falsetta and Lyra Smith from iHeartMedia. Our executive producers are
Beth Anne Macaluso and Julia Weaver.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com