October 10, 2025 • 10 mins
Dr. Bob Thompson has the latest entertainment including Bob Ross's paintings going for as much as $250k!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Legacy Retirement Group dot com phone line.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Doctor Bob Thompson, professor of pop Culture in Syracuse University.
I think you're warmer in Syracuse than we are in
Columbus this morning.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
I just checked. It's forty three degrees where you are.
We're at forty this morning, Bob.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Oh wow, Yeah, we had up in the Daturondecks. It
was freezing. We had not frost warnings, but freeze warnings. Wow.
I had the heater on in my car yesterday.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
We were talking about that earlier, the heated seats and
you know, the first world problems. I never thought I'd
need a heated steering wheel on my truck. But man,
don't take that away from me. I love that thing.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
But yet three days ago or four days ago, I
had to crank.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Up the ac again, so it was eighty all over
the place, right, all right, This is going to trigger
some people, Bob. Every time I say the words Taylor
and Swift, people get a reaction of some sort.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
But she, boy, she is. She took over late night
TV this week.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
She did on what was it Monday? She was on
fallon the entire thing. So Vound does his monologue, but
then she's on for the whole episode that on Tuesday.
She did the same over on seth Meyer's whole episode
start to finish, and then tonight Friday, there's going to
be a special episode of The Tonight Show where they
(01:19):
play all the stuff from the Taylor Swift thing on
Monday that they didn't get to play, so the bonus
DVD extras, whatever you want to call it. It is fascinating, However,
that Kimmel not a peep from Taylor Swift. I don't
know whether that was conscious, because he's of course in
the center of the controversy from the last week or two,
(01:43):
and Colbert is on vacation or he's not on this week,
so that one didn't have to be addressed. So the
two big controversial ones, she didn't appear on one because
it wasn't done, but the other I don't know. The
big mystery of why Taylor Swift didn't go on Kimmel.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I wonder whose decision was that.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I haven't seen anything reported.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I did see Kimmel though, offered President Trump a spot
on his show that he would love to have him
as a guest. I mean, Kimmel's a lot of things.
I don't think he's stupid because he knows that would
be a ratings bonanza of Trump were to be on
his show.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Oh that would remember when Mike Lindell he had.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
On That's right, my pillow.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Who agreed to do this segment from inside a clomp sheet.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I forgot about that.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
I s Kimmel is deaf. He reminds me so much
of what Letterman was doing back in the early eighties.
Just that that kind of crazy nonsense that it makes
no sense, but it's funny, I suppose for that for
that reason.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Hey, this is interesting. People may not have yet heard
of Tilly Norwood. Tilly Norwood is an AI actress that
is kind of making people in Hollywood a little bit nervous.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah, I mean, this is we we've all heard about
and we've all seen examples of how good AI is getting.
But this is a UK company and they put out
a little promotional thing. It's only several minutes long, but
they've got her laughing and crying and doing all this stuff,
and they've compared her to Scarlett Joe Anson or Natalie Portman.
(03:16):
And then they've some agents, some agencies are saying that
they're competing to represent her. So this has gotten of
course the actors' guilds and Hollywood in general the completely
up up in arms. But you know, the more I
see this stuff, and I've said this before, this kind
(03:37):
of thing makes me incredibly nervous. I don't like it.
I think it's really creepy. However, this idea that I
think the writer or the actors gills and stuff saying
you know, she's got no emotions, this will never be
when you think about it, what it's plagiarism because it
feeds on all these other things. But you know, the
way we do things. My teaching is dependent upon great
(04:00):
teachers I've had that I emulate. My writing is dependent.
I mean, I don't plagiarize exact words, but I've influenced
by writers I've liked. I'm sure what you do on
the radio is influenced by people that you listen to
when you were kids. So in many ways AI learn
stuff the same way we do. It just puts it
(04:21):
into circuits opposed to we put it into chemistry. And
it's as much as I hate this stuff, I think
we need to come to grips with the fact that
it's pretty soon going to be good enough that it
produces what it does in much the same way we
produce what we do. And I'm not sure what the
ultimate implications of that. I'm sure they're not going to
(04:44):
be good, but they're going to happen.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Well, it's the whole concept that there's no new ideas
out there, it's just you know, different ideas going through
different filters and different inspirations. Is kind of what you
were getting at there. And I would like it towards
like animation of some sort.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
That's a very good comparison.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, And I can't help but think about, you know,
going back to the mid eighties, remember Max Headroom. I
mean he was that kind of very early computer generated
It was the kind of the staticky, glitchy TV presenter.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Just he was what he was on coke commercials. He
started out on a Cinemax talk show, wasn't it, Yes,
appropriately enough Cinemax Max Headroom, and then he had an
ABC series.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
It was. He was big in the middle eighties.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah, should drag some of those out and show to
my students. I'm glad you brought him up.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, that's that was you know, early AI and I
forget the guy that played him the voice.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
That's why Matt Frewer, that's it.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Max Headroom. Uh yeah, so Tillie Norwood is an AI actor.
Is something you should we should watch out for. Speaking
with doctor Bob Thompson pop Culture at Syracuse University, and
I'm glad that you've got Bob Ross on the list
The The Joy of Painting Bob Ross, and he had
a bunch of his paintings go up for auction.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Yeah, so Bob Ross has been has been gone for
thirty years. He died in nineteen ninety five. He was
only fifty two. Lymphoma I thing, but before that he'd
been on PBS for a dozen years on that show
The Joy of Painting, which was the most unlikely hit
you could imagine. It was this guy that talked like
(06:17):
he was about to fall asleep or trying to put.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
A baby to sleep.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
But he did these paintings, and your producer and I
were talking about this before. They were kind of miraculous.
He'd make a few little DIBs and dabs, and suddenly
he would make two colors look like a pine tree
or a right or a squirrel or something. In what
my Campetti said was it was like a magic a
miraculous all of a sudden, how did it do that
(06:43):
kind of thing? And I so agree that was exactly
my feeling. Anyway, he became more famous after his death,
I think than he was before. I think people started
posting episodes, they did memes of him. He's still on
PBS stations. You can still find stuff on YouTube. So
now PTS has lost all its federal funding. The Bob
(07:04):
Ross Estate has taken thirty of his the paintings that
were actually made on the show. None of these have
ever been up for available or even seen before except
on the TV show. Thirty of them out of a
warehouse of a thousand, and they're putting them up for auction,
and it's going to go to American Public Television, which
(07:24):
will distribute it to needy public TV stations. But some
of his paintings before have gone for One went for
one hundred and fifteen thousand not long ago, another for
about ninety six. And with all the big deal made
of this, and the fact that these were paintings painted
on the show, thirty of them could generate a substantial
(07:45):
amount of money.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
A little dab of cobalt blue and we'll use brush to.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Take what is a happy little cloud.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Happy little cloud on the fan brush with a coalbalt blue,
and he was very relaxing and it's funny. And the
only reason that these paintings are going for so much
money is because they're Bob Ross and he painted them
on TV. Because he technically a competent and skilled painter.
But if you're an art critic, he would probably say,
(08:16):
you know, he lacked a groundbreaking artistic value. There was
not anything really innovative about what he did. His paintings
were to be honest, and I'll probably get some grief
for this.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
They were average.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
No, you're absolutely right. From the standpoint of an art critic,
people like Bob Ross were looked down upon. It was
called motel room painting and all that. And I do
I was an art history major. I do appreciate the
Black squares and the Jackson Pollock poor paintings and all that.
I understand the intellectual movements there and everything, but a
(08:51):
lot of people just want a painting that they think
is pretty and that there is no critic or intellectual
anything that's a that's a matter of an individual taste.
And there are a lot more people out there who
think the paintings of Bob Ross are pretty and they
would like to have in their living room than the
(09:13):
paintings of Picasso. And I think that's what I think
Bob Ross really captured. There's another and I'm forgetting forgetting
his name, but there's this other spectacularly popular painting who
intellectuals look down upon because you're right, they're not doing
anything innovative or new or anything like that. But in
(09:35):
the end, for most people, a painting is supposed to
be something that gives them pleasure. And some of the
greatest paintings that I really admire in the history of
art history, you would never want to have to wake
up every morning and look at I mean, beauty.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Is in the eye of the beholder, is really what
it comes down to you, And put it this way,
I would love to have a Bob Ross painting in
my house simply because it's a Bob Ross painting, not
because it's an amazing piece of art.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
I wouldn't mind having a Bob Russ come over for lunch, right, right,
On the Legacy Retirement Group dot com phone line.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Doctor Bob Thompson, professor of pop Culture in Syracuse University.
I think you're warmer in Syracuse than we are in
Columbus this morning.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
I just checked. It's forty three degrees where you are.
We're at forty this morning, Bob.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Oh wow, Yeah, we had up in the Daturondecks. It
was freezing. We had not frost warnings, but freeze warnings. Wow.
I had the heater on in my car yesterday.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
We were talking about that earlier, the heated seats and
you know, the first world problems. I never thought I'd
need a heated steering wheel on my truck. But man,
don't take that away from me. I love that thing.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
But yet three days ago or four days ago, I
had to crank.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Up the ac again, so it was eighty all over
the place, right, all right, This is going to trigger
some people, Bob. Every time I say the words Taylor
and Swift, people get a reaction of some sort.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
But she, boy, she is. She took over late night
TV this week.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
She did on what was it Monday? She was on
fallon the entire thing. So Vound does his monologue, but
then she's on for the whole episode that on Tuesday.
She did the same over on seth Meyer's whole episode
start to finish, and then tonight Friday, there's going to
be a special episode of The Tonight Show where they
(01:19):
play all the stuff from the Taylor Swift thing on
Monday that they didn't get to play, so the bonus
DVD extras, whatever you want to call it. It is fascinating, However,
that Kimmel not a peep from Taylor Swift. I don't
know whether that was conscious, because he's of course in
the center of the controversy from the last week or two,
(01:43):
and Colbert is on vacation or he's not on this week,
so that one didn't have to be addressed. So the
two big controversial ones, she didn't appear on one because
it wasn't done, but the other I don't know. The
big mystery of why Taylor Swift didn't go on Kimmel.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I wonder whose decision was that.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I haven't seen anything reported.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I did see Kimmel though, offered President Trump a spot
on his show that he would love to have him
as a guest. I mean, Kimmel's a lot of things.
I don't think he's stupid because he knows that would
be a ratings bonanza of Trump were to be on
his show.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Oh that would remember when Mike Lindell he had.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
On That's right, my pillow.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Who agreed to do this segment from inside a clomp sheet.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I forgot about that.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
I s Kimmel is deaf. He reminds me so much
of what Letterman was doing back in the early eighties.
Just that that kind of crazy nonsense that it makes
no sense, but it's funny, I suppose for that for
that reason.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Hey, this is interesting. People may not have yet heard
of Tilly Norwood. Tilly Norwood is an AI actress that
is kind of making people in Hollywood a little bit nervous.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah, I mean, this is we we've all heard about
and we've all seen examples of how good AI is getting.
But this is a UK company and they put out
a little promotional thing. It's only several minutes long, but
they've got her laughing and crying and doing all this stuff,
and they've compared her to Scarlett Joe Anson or Natalie Portman.
(03:16):
And then they've some agents, some agencies are saying that
they're competing to represent her. So this has gotten of
course the actors' guilds and Hollywood in general the completely
up up in arms. But you know, the more I
see this stuff, and I've said this before, this kind
(03:37):
of thing makes me incredibly nervous. I don't like it.
I think it's really creepy. However, this idea that I
think the writer or the actors gills and stuff saying
you know, she's got no emotions, this will never be
when you think about it, what it's plagiarism because it
feeds on all these other things. But you know, the
way we do things. My teaching is dependent upon great
(04:00):
teachers I've had that I emulate. My writing is dependent.
I mean, I don't plagiarize exact words, but I've influenced
by writers I've liked. I'm sure what you do on
the radio is influenced by people that you listen to
when you were kids. So in many ways AI learn
stuff the same way we do. It just puts it
(04:21):
into circuits opposed to we put it into chemistry. And
it's as much as I hate this stuff, I think
we need to come to grips with the fact that
it's pretty soon going to be good enough that it
produces what it does in much the same way we
produce what we do. And I'm not sure what the
ultimate implications of that. I'm sure they're not going to
(04:44):
be good, but they're going to happen.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Well, it's the whole concept that there's no new ideas
out there, it's just you know, different ideas going through
different filters and different inspirations. Is kind of what you
were getting at there. And I would like it towards
like animation of some sort.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
That's a very good comparison.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, And I can't help but think about, you know,
going back to the mid eighties, remember Max Headroom. I
mean he was that kind of very early computer generated
It was the kind of the staticky, glitchy TV presenter.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Just he was what he was on coke commercials. He
started out on a Cinemax talk show, wasn't it, Yes,
appropriately enough Cinemax Max Headroom, and then he had an
ABC series.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
It was. He was big in the middle eighties.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah, should drag some of those out and show to
my students. I'm glad you brought him up.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, that's that was you know, early AI and I
forget the guy that played him the voice.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
That's why Matt Frewer, that's it.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Max Headroom. Uh yeah, so Tillie Norwood is an AI actor.
Is something you should we should watch out for. Speaking
with doctor Bob Thompson pop Culture at Syracuse University, and
I'm glad that you've got Bob Ross on the list
The The Joy of Painting Bob Ross, and he had
a bunch of his paintings go up for auction.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Yeah, so Bob Ross has been has been gone for
thirty years. He died in nineteen ninety five. He was
only fifty two. Lymphoma I thing, but before that he'd
been on PBS for a dozen years on that show
The Joy of Painting, which was the most unlikely hit
you could imagine. It was this guy that talked like
(06:17):
he was about to fall asleep or trying to put.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
A baby to sleep.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
But he did these paintings, and your producer and I
were talking about this before. They were kind of miraculous.
He'd make a few little DIBs and dabs, and suddenly
he would make two colors look like a pine tree
or a right or a squirrel or something. In what
my Campetti said was it was like a magic a
miraculous all of a sudden, how did it do that
(06:43):
kind of thing? And I so agree that was exactly
my feeling. Anyway, he became more famous after his death,
I think than he was before. I think people started
posting episodes, they did memes of him. He's still on
PBS stations. You can still find stuff on YouTube. So
now PTS has lost all its federal funding. The Bob
(07:04):
Ross Estate has taken thirty of his the paintings that
were actually made on the show. None of these have
ever been up for available or even seen before except
on the TV show. Thirty of them out of a
warehouse of a thousand, and they're putting them up for auction,
and it's going to go to American Public Television, which
(07:24):
will distribute it to needy public TV stations. But some
of his paintings before have gone for One went for
one hundred and fifteen thousand not long ago, another for
about ninety six. And with all the big deal made
of this, and the fact that these were paintings painted
on the show, thirty of them could generate a substantial
(07:45):
amount of money.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
A little dab of cobalt blue and we'll use brush to.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Take what is a happy little cloud.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Happy little cloud on the fan brush with a coalbalt blue,
and he was very relaxing and it's funny. And the
only reason that these paintings are going for so much
money is because they're Bob Ross and he painted them
on TV. Because he technically a competent and skilled painter.
But if you're an art critic, he would probably say,
(08:16):
you know, he lacked a groundbreaking artistic value. There was
not anything really innovative about what he did. His paintings
were to be honest, and I'll probably get some grief
for this.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
They were average.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
No, you're absolutely right. From the standpoint of an art critic,
people like Bob Ross were looked down upon. It was
called motel room painting and all that. And I do
I was an art history major. I do appreciate the
Black squares and the Jackson Pollock poor paintings and all that.
I understand the intellectual movements there and everything, but a
(08:51):
lot of people just want a painting that they think
is pretty and that there is no critic or intellectual
anything that's a that's a matter of an individual taste.
And there are a lot more people out there who
think the paintings of Bob Ross are pretty and they
would like to have in their living room than the
(09:13):
paintings of Picasso. And I think that's what I think
Bob Ross really captured. There's another and I'm forgetting forgetting
his name, but there's this other spectacularly popular painting who
intellectuals look down upon because you're right, they're not doing
anything innovative or new or anything like that. But in
(09:35):
the end, for most people, a painting is supposed to
be something that gives them pleasure. And some of the
greatest paintings that I really admire in the history of
art history, you would never want to have to wake
up every morning and look at I mean, beauty.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Is in the eye of the beholder, is really what
it comes down to you, And put it this way,
I would love to have a Bob Ross painting in
my house simply because it's a Bob Ross painting, not
because it's an amazing piece of art.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
I wouldn't mind having a Bob Russ come over for lunch, right, right,
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