October 9, 2025 • 7 mins
"Are we losing our ability to form our own opinions—or are we just outsourcing our taste to strangers online?" In this thought-provoking and laugh-packed episode of The Ben and Skin Show, the crew—Jeff “Skin” Wade, Kevin “KT” Turner, and Krystina Ray (with Ben Rogers out sick but expected back Friday)—dive headfirst into the culture of reviews, reactions, and how they shape our experiences before we even have them. The conversation kicks off with a viral clip from Cooper Raiff, Skin’s nephew and rising Hollywood filmmaker, who shares his hot take on why reviews should only be read after you’ve experienced something. His argument? Reviews are killing originality and turning us into carbon copies of each other.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Benan Skin show nine sep point one, The Eagle, a
Bendless show. He's under the weather, but we're pretty confident
he'll be back tomorrow for a big Friday show. And
tomorrow as well as later today, we'll be giving away
nine inch Nails tickets.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
We'll be listening for that.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Also, want to let you know this Saturday, October the eleventh,
the Levy Event Plaza on Los Colleen's Boulevard in Irving,
Texas is going to host a great event that you
can be a part of.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
iHeart is going to be out there.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
There's going to be an iHeart team for the American
Cancer Society making Strides against Breast Cancer. If you want
to know more about it, how you can help out,
how you can help the cause, go to makingstrideswalk dot org,
Forward slash North Texas. All right later in the show
at the bottom of the hour. I'm very interested in
this because I grew up in the era of magazines,
(00:46):
loved magazines, loved going with Mama to the grocery store
and just spending the whole time at the magazine aisle
picking up every magazine looking at it. My old people,
my age that love rock music, they bought Hit, Parader
or Circus or any of those rock magazines where you'd
have all the guitar gods in it. Rolling Stone, later
there was Spin. Anyways, love all those old magazines. We
(01:08):
have the top twenty five greatest magazine covers of old time.
We'll get into that later, but right now it's time
for this.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Skin track, another edition of things track. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Have you guys ever seen subway takes on Instagram or TikTok.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
No, I'll tell you yesterday. All right, it's a dude.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You know, everyone's just looking for quick content in a
weird place, like I bet tomorrow we end up talking
about Luca going on that wing thing.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
What's that called hot Ones?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah? Hot Ones is huge though, I mean one's is
yet deal? Yeah, no, it's it's it's a huge deal.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
And then there's one that I really like where there's
a guy and he goes and plays music for famous
people like David Byrne or you know, I saw him
do one with Saint Vincent Annie from Dallas and it's
like playing songs do you know the artists and talk
about it.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
So I love the those you know, short form content things. Well,
there's one called Subway Takes, and it's a dude interviewing
famous people on a subway. Well, I got sent one
yesterday and it's my nephew, Cooper Raife, who is a
filmmaker and actor and director in Hollywood. He's had a
couple pretty big things Happy. He's got a new series
(02:19):
getting ready to come out, Alan Harper, so he's going
to start doing the promo stuff. So I guess his
pr person booked him on Subway Takes. I have no idea,
but it showed up. It's pretty short. I want to
play it and then I want to talk about this idea.
Go ahead and play this KT So.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
What's your take.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
You should only read reviews after you have experienced the thing. Disagree,
But the way that you're going through life is because
of Karen's Yelp reviews.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
What if I want to go check out a film,
uh huh and the.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Reviews are poor, Yeah, and I'm like, I'm gonna watch
it at home.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
So it's capitalism telling you where to put your money
and attention, and then the cream rises to the top.
And what I think is that because of that, everyone
who's making something is making something that is going to
get a good review, because that's the only way the
thing will be seen. But if we start telling people,
you're only allowed to read this review after you have
had your own locket. Yeah, like, watch a trailer, watch
(03:13):
an interview, look at pictures of the restaurant, read the
back of the book. But I don't think that you
should be reading about someone's experience with the thing that
you're about to experience, because it forms your experience in
a way that we're all gonna be the same person
as the last time a review made you decide not
to do something. When's the last time a review tainted
(03:34):
my experience?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Every single time?
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Sure, And I think it's led to you look at
the comments to decide how you feel about something, and
that's terrible. Some things, like art, maybe I can agree with,
Like maybe don't read the Some people don't even watch
the trailer.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I actually don't watch the trailer of them. I wish
that there was less of it, Like I wish.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
My friends would tell me less about their experiences of
things that they know that I'm about to experience, because
it just I don't I don't know who I am.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Afterwards, my boy wants to go monk mode.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I think reviews should be like support groups, Like you
experienced something and then all that movie was so bad.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I want to commiserate. Oh, I want to connect with others. Yes,
I also thought it was bad.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Yes, or learn about other people who actually loved it,
because you know what you felt and then maybe you
weren't thinking about it in this critical way. And then
you go and say like, here's what I thought about
this thing.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
What'd you think about this? And then you go to
the sport.
Speaker 5 (04:23):
Yeah it's called credit by the way.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, I agree one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
So I didn't want you to say a single word
about one battle after another.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
I felt like I did a good job of refraining,
even though I was dying to talk about I know,
did I give away too much?
Speaker 4 (04:38):
No?
Speaker 3 (04:39):
But you sent a Sean Penn thing that I clicked on.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Oh you did was interview.
Speaker 5 (04:43):
I thought you guys both did a good job of
not saying because when I when I went to go
see it, I told you guys, I had no idea
what I was getting into. I knew you liked it though,
which probably swayed my opinion a little bit.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
But for sure, and look, it's a hard movie. To
just put it like, here's what it. You know, Yeah,
it's hard to take a whole time.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I tried to describing it to my dad the other
night and as like, oh, Daddy's gotta see it.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Man.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Cooper's right, though. I can't tell you how many times
it's happened to me.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
You hear something about an album and you go and
you listen to it, and you might like it because
someone else said it was good, and that should never happen.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
You should make these decisions on your own. You're a
real human in this world. Use yourself. How do you feel?
Speaker 1 (05:23):
I really like, I really like figuring out things on
my own, and especially like you know, there's a lot
of chatter with content about quote unquote easter eggs.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
How did you see this Easter egg?
Speaker 1 (05:35):
It's like, yeah, I would have loved to have figured
that out on my own, Yeah, instead of having you.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Tell me about the Easter egg?
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Right. And I feel that way with you know, music,
and now once someone has seen it, I love talking
about it with them or once they've heard it, how
do you okay? What about I mean, my wife lives
in the reviews. I don't know that we've ever gone
to a restaurant. Did she didn't go read reviews first.
(06:01):
I'll know we've ever stayed in a hotel that she
didn't go read reviews first. Maybe I feel a little
bit different about that than I do.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I absolutely do. Yeah, a little more money being spent there.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Right, But if it comes to a record or a
book or a movie or a show or whatever, I
want to experience that on my own and then talk
about it with people who have already seen.
Speaker 5 (06:19):
But also so restaurant things. I mean, I agree, I
always look at the reviews first, but you could have
a completely different waiting staff on duty that day. Yeah,
someone could be having a really bad day. Something could
have happened to them. They could I mean, they shouldn't
treat anyone differently. They might treat someone differently than someone else.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
You know, that's a whole side plot.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
I don't want to give anything away, But in the Bear,
they're waiting for a big restaurant review, right, and you know,
and they're like, well, we don't want to treat them different,
you know, And there's that whole thing going on.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
That's also a thing in Black Rabbit.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I went to a place Sunday night and just because
the aura I was giving off made me think they
were giving me a little extra special treatment, like this
guy might have the power to make us a four
or four point five on open table.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
Dude.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
So a restaurant said, when you book a restaurant, I
always say it's your anniversary.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Oh yeah, they'll they'll roll it out.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
And you just went to a restaurant that replaced a
restaurant called Homewood, And Homewood was started by this guy
that had a restaurant called FT thirty three that me
and my wife used to love and used to go to,
you know, all the time. And I remember, you may
remember this, you may not. I had an experience at
Homewood that we talked about on the radio when we
were on one oh five to three and people from
(07:29):
the radio from the restaurant were listening and they hit
us up, and yeah it was it was pretty cool.
But yeah, I just I agree with that whole idea
of try not to live your life in the review
section or the comments section, all right. Been in Skin
Show ninety some point one, The Eagle coming up next,
the twenty five greatest magazine covers of all time?
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Have you seen these images? We'll get into it with you,
Benan Skin show nine sep point one, The Eagle, a
Bendless show. He's under the weather, but we're pretty confident
he'll be back tomorrow for a big Friday show. And
tomorrow as well as later today, we'll be giving away
nine inch Nails tickets.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
We'll be listening for that.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Also, want to let you know this Saturday, October the eleventh,
the Levy Event Plaza on Los Colleen's Boulevard in Irving,
Texas is going to host a great event that you
can be a part of.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
iHeart is going to be out there.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
There's going to be an iHeart team for the American
Cancer Society making Strides against Breast Cancer. If you want
to know more about it, how you can help out,
how you can help the cause, go to makingstrideswalk dot org,
Forward slash North Texas. All right later in the show
at the bottom of the hour. I'm very interested in
this because I grew up in the era of magazines,
(00:46):
loved magazines, loved going with Mama to the grocery store
and just spending the whole time at the magazine aisle
picking up every magazine looking at it. My old people,
my age that love rock music, they bought Hit, Parader
or Circus or any of those rock magazines where you'd
have all the guitar gods in it. Rolling Stone, later
there was Spin. Anyways, love all those old magazines. We
(01:08):
have the top twenty five greatest magazine covers of old time.
We'll get into that later, but right now it's time
for this.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Skin track, another edition of things track. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Have you guys ever seen subway takes on Instagram or TikTok.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
No, I'll tell you yesterday. All right, it's a dude.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You know, everyone's just looking for quick content in a
weird place, like I bet tomorrow we end up talking
about Luca going on that wing thing.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
What's that called hot Ones?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah? Hot Ones is huge though, I mean one's is
yet deal? Yeah, no, it's it's it's a huge deal.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
And then there's one that I really like where there's
a guy and he goes and plays music for famous
people like David Byrne or you know, I saw him
do one with Saint Vincent Annie from Dallas and it's
like playing songs do you know the artists and talk
about it.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
So I love the those you know, short form content things. Well,
there's one called Subway Takes, and it's a dude interviewing
famous people on a subway. Well, I got sent one
yesterday and it's my nephew, Cooper Raife, who is a
filmmaker and actor and director in Hollywood. He's had a
couple pretty big things Happy. He's got a new series
(02:19):
getting ready to come out, Alan Harper, so he's going
to start doing the promo stuff. So I guess his
pr person booked him on Subway Takes. I have no idea,
but it showed up. It's pretty short. I want to
play it and then I want to talk about this idea.
Go ahead and play this KT So.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
What's your take.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
You should only read reviews after you have experienced the thing. Disagree,
But the way that you're going through life is because
of Karen's Yelp reviews.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
What if I want to go check out a film,
uh huh and the.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Reviews are poor, Yeah, and I'm like, I'm gonna watch
it at home.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
So it's capitalism telling you where to put your money
and attention, and then the cream rises to the top.
And what I think is that because of that, everyone
who's making something is making something that is going to
get a good review, because that's the only way the
thing will be seen. But if we start telling people,
you're only allowed to read this review after you have
had your own locket. Yeah, like, watch a trailer, watch
(03:13):
an interview, look at pictures of the restaurant, read the
back of the book. But I don't think that you
should be reading about someone's experience with the thing that
you're about to experience, because it forms your experience in
a way that we're all gonna be the same person
as the last time a review made you decide not
to do something. When's the last time a review tainted
(03:34):
my experience?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Every single time?
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Sure, And I think it's led to you look at
the comments to decide how you feel about something, and
that's terrible. Some things, like art, maybe I can agree with,
Like maybe don't read the Some people don't even watch
the trailer.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I actually don't watch the trailer of them. I wish
that there was less of it, Like I wish.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
My friends would tell me less about their experiences of
things that they know that I'm about to experience, because
it just I don't I don't know who I am.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Afterwards, my boy wants to go monk mode.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I think reviews should be like support groups, Like you
experienced something and then all that movie was so bad.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I want to commiserate. Oh, I want to connect with others. Yes,
I also thought it was bad.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Yes, or learn about other people who actually loved it,
because you know what you felt and then maybe you
weren't thinking about it in this critical way. And then
you go and say like, here's what I thought about
this thing.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
What'd you think about this? And then you go to
the sport.
Speaker 5 (04:23):
Yeah it's called credit by the way.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, I agree one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
So I didn't want you to say a single word
about one battle after another.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
I felt like I did a good job of refraining,
even though I was dying to talk about I know,
did I give away too much?
Speaker 4 (04:38):
No?
Speaker 3 (04:39):
But you sent a Sean Penn thing that I clicked on.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Oh you did was interview.
Speaker 5 (04:43):
I thought you guys both did a good job of
not saying because when I when I went to go
see it, I told you guys, I had no idea
what I was getting into. I knew you liked it though,
which probably swayed my opinion a little bit.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
But for sure, and look, it's a hard movie. To
just put it like, here's what it. You know, Yeah,
it's hard to take a whole time.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I tried to describing it to my dad the other
night and as like, oh, Daddy's gotta see it.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Man.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Cooper's right, though. I can't tell you how many times
it's happened to me.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
You hear something about an album and you go and
you listen to it, and you might like it because
someone else said it was good, and that should never happen.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
You should make these decisions on your own. You're a
real human in this world. Use yourself. How do you feel?
Speaker 1 (05:23):
I really like, I really like figuring out things on
my own, and especially like you know, there's a lot
of chatter with content about quote unquote easter eggs.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
How did you see this Easter egg?
Speaker 1 (05:35):
It's like, yeah, I would have loved to have figured
that out on my own, Yeah, instead of having you.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Tell me about the Easter egg?
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Right. And I feel that way with you know, music,
and now once someone has seen it, I love talking
about it with them or once they've heard it, how
do you okay? What about I mean, my wife lives
in the reviews. I don't know that we've ever gone
to a restaurant. Did she didn't go read reviews first.
(06:01):
I'll know we've ever stayed in a hotel that she
didn't go read reviews first. Maybe I feel a little
bit different about that than I do.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I absolutely do. Yeah, a little more money being spent there.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Right, But if it comes to a record or a
book or a movie or a show or whatever, I
want to experience that on my own and then talk
about it with people who have already seen.
Speaker 5 (06:19):
But also so restaurant things. I mean, I agree, I
always look at the reviews first, but you could have
a completely different waiting staff on duty that day. Yeah,
someone could be having a really bad day. Something could
have happened to them. They could I mean, they shouldn't
treat anyone differently. They might treat someone differently than someone else.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
You know, that's a whole side plot.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
I don't want to give anything away, But in the Bear,
they're waiting for a big restaurant review, right, and you know,
and they're like, well, we don't want to treat them different,
you know, And there's that whole thing going on.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
That's also a thing in Black Rabbit.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I went to a place Sunday night and just because
the aura I was giving off made me think they
were giving me a little extra special treatment, like this
guy might have the power to make us a four
or four point five on open table.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
Dude.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
So a restaurant said, when you book a restaurant, I
always say it's your anniversary.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Oh yeah, they'll they'll roll it out.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
And you just went to a restaurant that replaced a
restaurant called Homewood, And Homewood was started by this guy
that had a restaurant called FT thirty three that me
and my wife used to love and used to go to,
you know, all the time. And I remember, you may
remember this, you may not. I had an experience at
Homewood that we talked about on the radio when we
were on one oh five to three and people from
(07:29):
the radio from the restaurant were listening and they hit
us up, and yeah it was it was pretty cool.
But yeah, I just I agree with that whole idea
of try not to live your life in the review
section or the comments section, all right. Been in Skin
Show ninety some point one, The Eagle coming up next,
the twenty five greatest magazine covers of all time?
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Have you seen these images? We'll get into it with you,
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