HiT 305: How The King of All Media Dethroned Himself

In this revealing episode of The Hollywood in Toto Podcast, we uncover the ugly truth behind Howard Stern's career crisis — a stunning fall from grace for the self-proclaimed "King of All Media." Once a fearless voice of shock jock radio, Stern is now teetering on the edge of being canceled, abandoned by the very culture he once mocked. So what went wrong? Why did Stern lose his mojo, his edge, and his legacy? We break down the critical missteps that led to his decline — and how he could’ve taken a very different path.

Then, we dive into bold, biting satire with author Scott Johnston, whose new novel "The Sandersons Fail Manhattan" takes no prisoners. This hilarious, fearless book skewers woke culture, identity politics, and the absurdity of Big Apple liberalism. Johnston reveals what inspired this scathing story, how his own experiences shape his writing, and what hot-button issues he’s planning to tackle next. 🔥 If you care about free speech, cancel culture, and the future of comedy and culture, don’t miss this must-hear episode.

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"The Sandersons Fail Manhattan" - https://www.amazon.com/Sandersons-Fail-Manhattan-Novel/dp/1250384788?ref_=ast_author_dp

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Read: "Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul" https://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Bombs-Hollywood-Woke-Lost/dp/1637580991

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week on the Hollywood and Total Podcast. Well, Howard
Stern hasn't been canceled yet, but here's what the meat
is getting wrong about the story and how Howard is
only himself to blame for the predicament he's in right now.
And we talked to author Scott Johnson about his new book,
The Sanderson's Failed Manhattan. If you're sick of New York stories,
if you're sick of that identity politics mindset, oh this

(00:23):
is the book for you.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to the Hollywood and Total Podcast. Entertainment, news and reviews,
without doubt, woke Hollywood, narrative, free speech, free expression. Now
that's entertainment.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
And here's your host.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Oh lord, winning film critic Christian Toto.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Robin Quiver's made fun of my name once, and I
couldn't have been happier. This is back in the mid nineties,
I was working for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review and a
semi regular humor column in the publication. Now, I would
riff on different things in the culture. Once in a while,
I'd actually pay homage to people in my life, including
a dear friend who had committed suicide. It just was

(01:12):
a forum for me to kind of just weigh in
on almost anything I wanted. It was I had a
lot of freedom, and it was great fun. And then
one week I thought, you know what, I should defend
my king, the king of all media, Howard Stern. I
was a loyal listener back in the day, listened every
single day, even collected cassette tapes up the best of
the best of Howard Stern. And at the time, the

(01:34):
media really hated him, loathed him, couldn't wait for him
to get.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Off the air.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
You disgust me. But I was different. I was like
one of many many fans who just loved the work
he did. It was irreverent, it was crazy, it was unpredictable,
it was raw, it was honest and of course often
very funny. Not for everyone's taste, but I was aokay
with it, and I wasn't alone. So wrote the column

(01:59):
and then day I clipped it out of the newspaper,
I know, talking old school stuff, but this was back
in the nineties and sent it to his team, so hey,
never know, maybe he'll see it, get a chuckle out
of it. Well, apparently he did receive it, and maybe
he did get a chuckle out of it. But more importantly,
he read it on the air.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Can you believe it?

Speaker 1 (02:17):
My god, Toto, Toto, Hovan Quiver said, calling out my
name and making fun of me. With a name like Toto,
you get a lot of that. And of course Howard
rushed to my defense. Oh no, back off. He's trying
to defend us, and I was. I defended him, and
he read the whole thing on the air, at least
most of it. It was surreal, to say the very least.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Is this really happening?

Speaker 1 (02:42):
That was then the mid nineties. Loverm or hate him.
Howard Stern ruled terrestrial radio today, Well not at all
on terrestrial He's on serious ExM. But this Howard Stern
that you can listen to now is nowhere near to
Howard Stern that I grew up listening to, not even close.
This guy's awoke, and he's soft, and he barely works.

(03:05):
He works three days a week on a good week.
On a bad week, he's on vacation, or he's taking
the summer off. You know how some teachers take some
parts of the summer off, and God bless him for that. Well,
he takes the whole summer off. Good gig if you
can get it right, need a vacation. Clearly, the fire
is gone. It's just not there anymore. He just isn't

(03:28):
who he used to be. I remember back in the
day he'd make fun of Donaimus, who is his older rival.
And of course he would make fun of don Imus
and say, oh, he's past his prime. He's become a
shell of his old self. Well, Howard, had he seen
a mirror lately, because that's exactly what you've become, and
it's sad. Maybe the worst part came during the pandemic.
He became obsessed with it. He couldn't get the virus,

(03:51):
no way, no how, even though yes, he was in
his late sixties, but he was in good shape, he
was thin. I'm sure he was pretty nhealthy. He probably
would have just shrugged it off like most people of
his age and of his health situation. Oh no, he
was obsessed with it and he hunkered down. He was
basically a hermit for years, and he would do his
show from his different estates and he still does that

(04:13):
to this day and away, you know, COVID broke Howard Stern.
How long with Donald Trump? But let's not even get
into that. The bottom line is that Howard Stern changed. Now, listen,
you can't throw boloney slices as strippers your entire life.
You get older, you get wiser, you can't do the
same shtick that you did in your thirties and forties.
So I was okay with him changing, But when he

(04:35):
treated in his old values for these new superficial values,
that's where I had a problem. I don't even recognize you.
I mean, this guy was mister Free's speech in the nineties,
and now he couldn't say a peep about cancel culture,
about other things going on society, about sensitivity readers. He
bragged about being woke, He actually bragged about it. That

(04:56):
is not Howard Stern, not the one I knew for
years and years, not the one that I defended. So
now his future is in jeopardy. Now the media keeps saying, oh,
he's canceled, he's done, he's over. Oh no, he's not.
On multiple levels, his contract with Serious XM does end
at the end of December. Now what happens next, Well,
Serious XM has been giving him gargantuan contracts, but he

(05:20):
just isn't worth it anymore. They don't reveal the numbers
about how many people listen per day. The New York
Post has had some I don't know if it's official.
They are embarrassingly low. This is not the king of
all media I grew up with. So there's that. And
of course he doesn't have the cloud he once did,
so he may not be able to accept a contract
that isn't equal to what he signed in the past.

(05:43):
We don't know what the future hold for Howard. He
could go solo like Tucker Carlson Well plush aside Tucker
Carlson's his own transformation for another day but happened to him.
Or he could try podcasting on for size. The future
is his in a sense, but moment has passed. He
has passed. No matter what he does. He missed his window.

(06:07):
He had the chance, like some of the other greats,
to go out on his own terms, to write his
own finale. You know, you think about Seinfeld, the great sitcom. Well,
that show didn't go on and on and then we
got bored with it. The ratings drooped and Jerry and
company said, ah, we're done. No, they went out on
their own terms at the height of the show. You
know John Hughes, the great director, he started to lose

(06:29):
his fastball, and he stopped making films before his death.
I think on some level he sensed he just didn't
have that spark anymore, and instead of making more movies
and collecting paychecks and kind of resting on his laurels,
he said, you know what, I'm out, or the great
Barry Sanders detroit lyons great. He stepped aside at thirty

(06:49):
one years old. He hadn't declined, at least from a
physical point of view, but he was done. He wanted
to go out on his terms. Howard could have done that,
but he missed his window. He should have done it
years ago. He is no longer Howard Stern in any
recognizable form, and it's sad.

Speaker 3 (07:07):
You know.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
He actually dubbed himself the King of all Media and
it stuck. Well, this king deserved better, he really did.
I got an email a few years ago for a
book called Campus Land. I hadn't heard of the book.

(07:30):
I hadn't heard of the author, Scott Johnson, but something
about it seemed interesting. It was a book poking fun
at college campuses about what's going on in your universities
across the country. How could I not read it? And
it was good. It was very good and funny and insightful.
I thought it's about time someone wrote a book like this.
We need it now. Scott Johnson is back with a

(07:53):
new book, and it's just as vital, just as necessary,
and just as funny. It's called The Sand Since Failed Manhattan.
It's a story about a family, a very well to
do family in New York, and the patriarch is on
the cusp of greatness. He could be one of the
power players in the city, the kind of position he
always dreamed about. But there's one problem. He's got to

(08:13):
kind of solve one little puzzle piece in his life
and then everything's going to fall into place. And it's
not that easy. Now, this is the kind of story
I want to give anything away because there's so many
fun surprises here. But it does poke fun at New
York City, the hard left, and of course identity politics
gone awry. It's very of the moment, and maybe in
the twenty years we'll look back at it with a

(08:34):
different lens. But right now it's laugh out loud funny,
it's smart, it's satirical. It's what we need. So I'm
so glad to have Scott on the show to talk
about the book, what inspired him, but other stories he
may have up his sleeve, and how close the book's
story came to reality spoiler alert, Pretty darn close. Must

(08:55):
be great when you're reading the headlines and think, oh,
there's my next chapter of my books. Kind of how
Scott did it? So I hope you'll enjoy this conversation
with Scott Johnston, the author of the Sanderson's Failed Manhattan
in your favorite bookstore right now? Good stuff, funny material,
and boy, why aren't more people writting this kind of satire?
Well someone did, and God bless him for that. Well, Scott,

(09:18):
thanks for joining the show. You know, as the author
of Campus Land, this is perfect material for you. But
let's just get the origin story out of the way.
I can't even imagine how many real life stories impacted
this novel. But you tell me you're how this all
came about and why you thought it was such a
perfect novel for our times, because I think it is.

Speaker 3 (09:41):
You're talking about Sanders's now, Yeah, yeah, so Sanderson's. I
was actually working on a novel about the art world,
which can never be satirized enough. But I was I
was having trouble coming up having trouble coming up with
how it ends. So it's sitting on my shelf, and

(10:03):
I was beginning. You know, this was now the summer
of George Floyd and the BLM riots, and in New
York City, I noticed that fall when the private schools
all came back into session, they had been radicalized over
the summer. I mean, crazy stuff, the full critical race

(10:28):
theory implementation, George Floyd worship, giving kids time off to
go protest, abandoning the search for truth, and you know,
sort of the foundational tenants of Western civilization for a
social justice agenda, and dividing the kids into oppressors and oppressed.

(10:49):
And you know, I'm sure you know the whole routine.
But what struck me, you know, I began to blog
about it. I have a blog called the Naked Dollar.
And one one insider at one school sent me a
bunch of documents about what was going on. It was
the Dalton School, very well known school in New York,

(11:12):
and there were eight pages of demands from the faculty
and administrators and they were insane demands, getting rid of
AP classes because the BIPOC students weren't qualifying for them
in equal numbers. Re routing fifty percent of the donations
to the school to the New York City Public school system.

(11:33):
You know, there's eight pages of this stuff. So I
wrote about that. The blog went berserk. That piece and
subsequent pieces had about a million hits over a few weeks,
and then the Wall Street Journal asked me to do
ant bed about it, which I did, and then the
Dalton headmaster got fired. But everyone else started writing me
about their schools, like, please write about us, because we're

(11:55):
going insane too and we don't know what to do
about it. And I did, and I then had a
habit of at the end of each piece, I'd list
the board members of those schools and as if to say,
you know, if you want to point a finger, pointed here,
these are the people allowing this radicalization to take place.

(12:17):
And they are not radicals themselves, but they're letting it happen.
They're like, you know, sheep. The amount of moral cowardice
going on was remarkable because all because you know, they
were afraid that, you know, little Brittany still hadn't gotten
into Georgetown. So I was really struck by this. And

(12:40):
then I was in a situation. It was a meeting
where a woman was being considered for something. I can't
be too detailed about it, but she actually was ahead
of one of the boards of the schools that I'd
written about. By the way, three of the schools took
the names of their board members off their websites after
I wrote.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Courage, just dan't rather would say.

Speaker 3 (13:02):
And everyone just loved this woman. And I said, well,
you know, I don't know her, but you know, what's
happening at her school gives me serious pause. And I
think two or three people all at once said, oh, oh,
she's perfectly lovely. And I'm sure she is right. I'm
sure there's a very successful woman, and I'm sure she
makes the finest of dinner party companions. And I was

(13:26):
struck by that phrase lovely. And then I realized I
got obsessed with this idea of the lovely people, the
people allowing this radicalization to happen just because they're going
along with the flow. Yeah, And that was the working
title of the book, All the Lovely People. I realized
there was a novel in this, an Upper east Side fable,

(13:48):
kind of son of Bonfire the Vanities in a way,
and Saint Martins Press didn't like the title All the
Lovely People, which I still love, but they didn't take
that sold books. So the title of the book became
The Sanderson's Failed Manhattan. You're supposed to wonder who these
Sandersons are and why they're failing and so anyway, that

(14:11):
was the inputus for the book, and then it kind
of wrote itself and I had fun with the.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
It sounds like the people writing you, these missives, wrote
the book themselves. That downplays your creative expertise obviously.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yeah. Well, you know, actually.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
I grew up in New York. I left in my
mid twenties. Haven't been back, you know, in any sort
of significant capacity. But can you just share your New
York roots because they're so integral to the story. I'm
just kind of curious about your background from that perspective.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
I grew up on the Upper East Side. I went
to the Buckley School, which is an old boys school
and pretty well known, and then I went off to
boarding school, as most of the kids did, and after
that Yale and lived in New York City until well

(15:05):
really until I start having children. Then we moved to
the New York suburbs and now we're out of New
York altogether because it's just an untenable place to live
where we live in Charlesville, Virginia.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Gotcha, gotcha. I was just curious. It really does feel
like this is something you really know instinctively. But you know,
what's happening in New York City that you share in
the book and all the escapades and all the social complications.
It's not isolated to New York City, obviously. Can you
talk about that a little bit?

Speaker 3 (15:35):
Why?

Speaker 1 (15:36):
You know, often we focus on we hyper focus on
New York City. I get it's great city, it's you know,
I get all the reasons. I'm from there, But it's
not a vacuum. It's it's sort of maybe the the
arbiter what's going to be happening elsewhere?

Speaker 3 (15:53):
Well, it tends to spread, And I ended up writing
about schools outside of New York City too, and log
it's all over. I mean the generally speaking, the further
south you go, the more or the less the impact
of what is in our schools. But that doesn't mean
they're completely immune. I mean there's some schools in Atlanta,

(16:15):
for instance, have completely gone to the dark side. And
that's pretty far south. On the on the college level,
the further south you go, the safer you are. I
had just graduated from s m U and that was
every bit the college experience that you and I probably
had years ago. There was zero politics involved in the

(16:36):
entire thing. I went to graduation, there was no politics
at that. It was great. The further north you go,
the less it is like that. The Northeast is hopeless.
You can't go anywhere there. But New York is still
It's still a fascinating place because it's intertwined with the
money culture and the there are all these new culture

(17:00):
rules with the DEI struggle sessions and the privileged walks
and other crazy things that make it make for make
the upper crust, and all these new rules are make
a very awkward pair. Yeah, and that's what's fun to
write about.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, I mean, that's the intertwining nature of all this.
And why it's so much cowardice is because if you
step the wrong way, you say the wrong thing, your
financial structure comes crumbling down. And people don't want that
by any means, and even if they they may recover,
they don't want to go through that process. And I
understand it, but it also is cowardly. Uh, you mentioned

(17:42):
that all the feedback you got from the initial initial
blog posts and how you kind of get people writing
into you and sharing these things as you're writing the novel,
did you turn on the news or look at your
smartphone and think, oh, my gosh, this is going in
the story. I mean imagine there was sort of maybe
was an ongoing potential, uh flock of inspiration for your book.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
Oh sure, So if you're write social satire, you have
your hair to the ground. You know, it might just
be for a clever phrase. Like the other day I
heard someone describe someone else as emotionally incontinent. That's really good.
I'm going to use that. But there was, you know,
there was a subplot in Sanderson's where Will Sanderson, the

(18:28):
patriarch of the Sanderson family. He's about to ascend the
corporate mount the executive committee committee at Bedrock Capital, but
he's got one thing he's been tasked to do. First.
They've gotten this giant request for a proposal from Calper's,
the biggest pension fund in the world, and they've never

(18:49):
been able to crack that nut. And one of the
questions on the RFP is as they are called, is
and this is typical of RFPs. Now, how many lgbt
EQ plus board members do you have here at Bedrock
Capital and plus plus counts two plus big category. And

(19:13):
they have one board member that they're pretty sure is
one of those letters, but he's never talked about it.
So Will Sanders And is tasked with with going and
because he went to andover and Yale with this particular
board member, he's tasked with going and confirming that he's
one of the letters so they can check that box

(19:36):
on the RFP. And it leads to a whole comical subplot.
And so that's a story that is absolutely true and
was told to me by a friend of mine who
is the CEO of a big money management company. This
precisely happened to them. He had an old friend on
the board who he was pretty sure was gay, but
the friend chose not to talk about it. So what

(20:00):
are the ethics involved in a situation like that?

Speaker 1 (20:03):
Yeah, amazing. You know, the key to satire is it
has to ring true. It can be fantastical, it can
kind of press the boundaries a bit, but if the
core of it isn't true, and it doesn't, it just
doesn't hold together. And obviously this so much of what
you're doing here does.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Is there?

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Describe maybe the push and pull of that process where
you want to kind of get satirical and sometimes you
have to exaggerate for comic effect, but you got to
kind of keep the roots of the story true. Just
tell me your process or is the world today so
so crazy that you don't even need to even think

(20:45):
about that as a as a mathematical equation.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
Well, the challenge is satirizing things that are self satirical.
And where I sometimes get criticism with my two novels
is they some a few people think the centers over
the top, And what they don't understand is that most
of the stuff is one hundred percent pulled from reality,
and some of it I had to dial back from

(21:08):
reality because I would even believe it in a satire.
And I'll give you a very I'll give you a
very precise example in campus Land. The villainous in campus
Land was the head of DEI at a IVY League
like college located in Havenport, Connecticut. You could draw your
own conclusions.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
And she.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
Want I had to decide how many reports, how many
people were in her department, how many reports did she have?
And I thought, well, look, I started with twenty, and
then I went on the Harbor and the l websites
to actually find out the real number of DEI people,
and it was not there. Couldn't find out the information,
and I thought, you know, this is satire. I'll make
it thirty. Only when the book came out did I

(21:54):
find out that the correct number EL was one hundred
and fifty. Now, if I'd put one hundred and fifty
in my book, people would have said, come on, that's ridiculous.
You're way over the top. So people don't understand unless
they're really paying attention, just how crazy you observed. Some
things have a come in our culture.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
That's fascinating. You know, this is an interesting moment in
the culture. Because I'm mostly a movie person. I do
books now, and then obviously when I saw you had
a new book out, I jumped on it. But there's
two movies that are coming out either now or very
soon that really kind of poke the bear when we
talk about Woke. One is Eddington from ari Aster, and

(22:37):
it really is explosive at times. This is said in
May twenty twenty about BLM about protests about mask mandates,
and it's uncomfortable at times when you think about the
humor involved. And there's a new movie called Ick it's
a horror comedy, and that too, really kind of pokes
the bear. Now, you've been doing this for a while,
but you've been doing it in a way outside the mainstream.

(23:00):
You're not like a you know, you're not like Stephen King,
do you do you get the sense that maybe things
are changing, that maybe it's starting to be okay to
do the kind of work you do. When the satire you.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
Do, they're they're out flogging campus Lane right now with
the streamers. So it may still get made into a
oh wow, the streaming series. You know, it's Hollywood, So
I'm not going to get excited till yeah. But and
I have reasonable hopes that book number two will get
optioned anyway. I think, well, you had the sp Awards

(23:36):
the other night. I forget who the comedian was who
did the interesting Yeah. He started out by saying, so
Megan Rappino couldn't make it tonight. Nice? He was great,
And you know, so you're definitely people are dipping their

(23:56):
toes back into the waters comedically otherwise, and so there
definitely has been a bit of a swing back. We
have a long way to go. I mean, this is
the three or four years ago. I would get asked,
you know, isn't this just a pendulum and won't to
swing back? And I said, well, my standard answer was
sometimes pendulums are wrecking balls, and this one is looking

(24:18):
like a wrecking ball to me, will destroy everything before
I can swing back. And maybe and Trump gets a
lot of credit for this. Maybe we've been saved just
at the edge of the precipice and it's swung back
just a little, which is very encouraging to me. I
haven't heard of those two movies, but I will check

(24:39):
them out. I would also point out a movie called
American Fiction. Yes, yes, absolutely hysterical and brilliant, I thought,
and deserve more recognition than the God.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
I agree.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
Well, you know it's interesting. This is sort of a
lofty question, but what kind of a role does humor
playing this? So you mentioned American Fiction, which was celebrated,
didn't get as much mainstream distribution as you'd like. But
when you have that in Eddington, the work you're doing,
I mean, if you know, the late night shows won't

(25:14):
cover this kind of topic, but other people will, and
you know, one of the reasons why I think rebel
comedians have had a moment right now is because they're
telling the jokes that are out there need to be
shared but aren't being shared. I mean, can humor you know,
make a dent in the pop culture.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
Well, it has to, you know. Famously, it was a
Brander Breitbart who said that politics is downstream from culture. Yeah,
and where the left has been incredibly effective is, you know,
really the culmination of the long March through the institutions,
which was concept that came from an Italian Marxist name

(25:54):
Antonio Gramscie in the nineteen twenties. And the reason the
whole concept came to be was because the communists in
the twenties were really upset that the proletariat around the
world were upholding their end of the bargain. They weren't
rising up and seizing the means of production. They had
no interest. So Communist revolutions became really about elites but grabs.

(26:16):
She came up with this idea that well, really we
need to play a longer inside game now, and we
need to take over the institutions, and the ones they want,
the ones they keyed on were the ones that had
maximum cultural leverage. So what does that mean. That means entertainment,
that means education, that means media. Those really those three things,
and they were incredibly effective at taking over those three

(26:40):
areas of our society, and from those platforms they they
really gained almost full control by twenty twenty. You know,
Elon kind of saved us by buying Twitter. Yeah, I agree,
But a comedian who made conservative joke books as recently

(27:01):
as a couple of years ago, like pre Elon was
in danger of being deplatformed, and getting deplatformed was the
death of your career because you had no way to
get your voice out. And now there are ways to
get your vo which seems incredible in the age of
the Internet, like you can get your voice out. Well, no,
you can if you're not on one of the big platforms. No.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
I have talked to comedians who had their work censored
or canceled or diminished, and often it wasn't outrageous or
bold or vulgar. It just was it was funny. So yeah,
I agree.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
Someone just wrote a some A friend of mine just
texted me he tried to leave a review of Sanderson's
on Amazon, and his review was dinged for hate speech,
and he's like, I didn't write there's only no hate speech.
And he couldn't even figure out what what he put
in there that was hate speech. But he says he
tried to rewrite it and submitted it again. But oh

(27:56):
my gosh, Oh you know, I did want interject before
I forget that anyone your listeners who are listening to
Sanderson's Audible has screwed up massively. And the novel cuts
off with twenty percent to go, and the moderator cuts
in and says, we hope you've enjoyed this presentation that
you think that it's over. Oh my gosh, it sucks

(28:20):
this story has ended there. It's really frustrating. Audible is
known about this for a week, Audible as Amazon, and
they've done absolutely nothing about it. And I'm sort of
pulling my hair out. Although I did have one woman
come up to me last night and say she thought
the ending was brilliant and she.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Little no country for old men, ask where the ending
is so obscure that maybe it's a genius in some way. Well,
you know, when you get the final word on that win,
it's fix. Definitely share with me. I will spread the
word on social media that it's been updated. But for now,
we'll give the official plug at the end of our conversation.
But maybe check out the uh you know, a different

(29:03):
version of a more more finished version before before at
this moment. But you know, it's so interesting that you're
doing what you're doing now. You know, you're you're not
a twenty something coming at these kind of topics. You've
lived a life and you're kind of a late bloomer.
As far as not being a novelist is concerned, I
talk a little bit about that. I mean, part of

(29:24):
me always is amazed by people in their twenties who
write these rich, vibrant novels, full of life and wisdom.
I'm thinking, Gosh, when I was in my twenties, I
couldn't do anything. But you came at this a little
bit later in life. I imagine it's extra sweet, extra interesting.
You feel like you're maybe a better armed kind of
tackle the world. What's your take on it, Well.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
It's kind of fun to have a complete reinvention. H
and I never it never occurred to me to be
a novelist, honestly, until like various events just forced my hand.
I had to write. Campus Land novels were something that
someone else wrote, and they seemed like hopelessly complex endeavors.

(30:08):
I mean, you have to have a plot. You have
to have subplots. They have to weave together and resolve
with each other at the end. You have to have characters,
and the main characters have to have backstories. There have
to be plot twists. And you know, just describing me
right now makes my head hurt, and honestly, I had

(30:28):
no idea that part of me also wanted to solve
the mystery of how it was done, because I always
if you read a great novel, you think you know,
sometimes you were left wondering how did that even come
to be? So I wanted to solve that mystery for myself,
and I like to think I did, although after I
wrote the first one it almost felt like the mystery

(30:50):
was slipping away from me again, so I wanted to
prove I could do it again.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Well, it's funny when I read something like what you wrote.
I dabbled in fiction when I was in my twenties
in college, and I kind of give up on it.
Part of the reason why is I would read like
an Updyke or a von again think I can't do
anything like that, And I got that sensation from your books,
like this is great, but I couldn't do this. I'm
glad I'm reading it and not writing it. So just
a quick testament to your work. Do have you mentioned

(31:16):
that art novel you were kind of fiddling with. Is
that something you could revisit? It seems a little bit
more evergreen perhaps. I mean, I'm hoping that this story,
since failed Manhattan, isn't every green, that we've going to
look back in this with a laugh one day. But
what's on your plate next?

Speaker 3 (31:34):
We've got two half written novels. The art novel, which
is kind of a comedic novel where the mob somehow
gets tied up with the world of contemporary art. They
sort of like what they see. They're like, well, why
are we in on this racket? I mean, that's great.
You're trying to make money in all these hard, illegal ways,
and these guys are doing stuff that it seems like

(31:56):
it should be illegal, but it's not, so we want
in on this. That's sort of the setup. Yeah, and
then I'm also working on my heart's kind of in
this other one though, a road novel. I've always loved
the road. You know, road trips, you know the wacky
things you see out there in America. And so I'm

(32:16):
sending a couple of brothers who don't like each other,
forcing them to go out on They're forced by circumstances
of the father's death and the father's will. They have
to go out on the road and solve some mysteries
and some kind of poking of that one. Yeah, we'll see.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
Gotcha had one last question? Would you kind of tipped off?
In the last part of your answer, you said you
thought it was a puzzle that you were curious to solve.
You never thought of yourself as a novelist, but here
you are with two very good novels under your belt.
Was there a moment, a switch being thrown, a moment
you thought, know what, I can do this?

Speaker 3 (32:54):
Like what?

Speaker 1 (32:55):
And I say that in part because I want the answer.
I'm curious, but also there may be a lot of
other people out there who maybe have a great novel
in them too, and they maybe they just need the key.
What was the moment where you thought, hey, yeah, I'm
going to do this, or maybe I can do this.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
Well, don't think you have to figure out a whole
novel in advance. It's kind of like great music too.
I'm a big music like classic I'm a classic rock guy.
So you know, you hear one of those incredible old
songs and you wonder, like, how did that come to be? Well, yeah,
if you watch the Beatles documentary get Back, there's a
they're all at one point sitting around there noodling on

(33:31):
their instruments and Paul McCartney is playing as Hoffner bass
like a rhythm guitar, and he's just sort of mumbling
and astray, you know, playing notes, and all of a
sudden you hear the song get Back kind of come
into life, like and initially it's just a couple of
chords and some mumble sounds and like, wait, let's get back.

(33:53):
I think I reckon so these things. I'll start with
a little kernel. And when I started writing camp saying,
I thought I could like lay it all out on
file cards chapter one, chapter two, chapter three. I got
to about the third file card and I was I
can't do this, and that's not the best way to
write a novel. So you if you know, you get

(34:15):
it started and things will develop for you. Things come.
You'll plot twist might occur to you, and and then
you've got you can go back and seat it. Characters
you sort of grow with them, and you learn their
voices as you write them. And part of it is
just sort of sitting down and writing and seeing what happens.

(34:37):
And and so I'm not trying to make it sound easy,
but part of it's just showing up.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Well, I mean, I think you're also saying that it
seems too daunting to have the entire thing mapped out,
but if you kind of attack it piece by piece,
that your imagination takes over and it kind of grows
in the whole creative process blossoms from there, which is
sound easier than and having those note cards in front
of you.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
Exactly, gotcha.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
Well, I hope people do check out the new book,
The Sanderson's Failed Manhattan, available now on Amazon or your
favorite bookseller. But just a quick warning again that audible
version has a bit of a hiccup in there, so
maybe hold enough initially, maybe try the other versions because
you want to read the story. It's very funny. I
was telling you off air via email. I was waiting
for my kids hockey game to finish, and I was laughing,

(35:28):
laughing in the middle of the hockey waiting area and
people they probably thinking what is he doing over there?
But I was reading and laughing at your book. Very
funny stuff, and even not the laugh out loud stuff,
just the humor throughout is precise and darn near necessary.
So I do hope people check it out. It's got
to hope we talk again about your next project. And
congratulations and I'm glad this second career is blossoming like

(35:50):
it is.

Speaker 3 (35:50):
Keep on going. Thanks so much.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
Your character actor of the week is James hung. Before
we sign off, I want to mention a few items. One,
I hope you'll check out Short on Hollywood. It is
my ongoing series. You can find it on my YouTube channel,
and I do post on Instagram, on Facebook and also
on Twitter from time to time. But it's a under
a minute look at the latest headlines with a particular

(36:15):
snarky point of view. Sydney Sweeney's American Eater jeans add
as slammed as Nazi propaganda by the left. From the
River to the Sea. Hitler jeans will be free. They
cry it too, and yes it's right leaning. It's often silly,
certainly fact based, and it's something I don't really see
out there in the mainstream, and that's why I created it.
So I make it at least once a week. I'm

(36:35):
trying to go for two. We'll have to see if
I can get my production schedule up to speed. But
for now, I work with my son, who is the
video editor, making it all look interesting, making those sound
effects pop off the screen. Kind of fun to work
with your son on a project like this. But do
check it out. It is short on Hollywood and the
best way to find it is on the Hollywood in
Toto YouTube page. And also do check out Hollywood intoto

(36:59):
dot com. It's my web site. We operated seven days
a week with all the news and reviews you could
possibly want. Like this show from a right of center perspective.
We don't own the libs. We don't make fun of
the libs, well, maybe a little. We certainly don't hurl
personal attacks on the libs. We just tell it like
it is from a right of center perspective, because look around,

(37:19):
very few people are doing just that, especially not Variety
or the High Reporter or Deadline or the Rap or
the New York Times. You get the drift. Well again,
thank you to Radio America for having me as part
of their great podcast lineup, and I hope everyone has
a wonderful week. Doctors Orders