Taped Over Interview: Matt Frederick

has been involved since the very beginning. Fun fact, he also married Victoria and I, and though we've had an uncountable number of conversations about all things ephemeral, we never had occasion to record it before. For the last episode of the season, Matt turned up this old family tape, a cassette his grandfather recorded in the nineteen nineties. Of older family recordings dating back as far as nineteen fifty one, it is incredibly rare to have home recorded audio from

that long ago. Recording was on a dicta belt, one of many intermediary technologies between the invention of the wax cylinder and the proliferation of real to real tape. It reminds me of a fruit roll up bright red blue or purple, translucent final plastic sleeves, like a cover for a cylinder recorder. If they sound strange, perhaps they are. I'll post a video on our Facebook page. We and Matt's grandfather alternatively refer to these source recordings as Dicta

belts and as tapes. If you haven't already, go listen to the season one finale taped over. We play some extended selections from this tape and a lot more. Here's my interview with Matt, starting with the sound check. All right, this is Mike's check on Alice, roll some tape. That's the tape. Check and check Matt's Mike cardboard box ahead checking mic some old dick to belt in it. They had been increased and badly neglected. And I've tried to

rig up the machine. I tested everything happen you know, you set to your perfect put you on that one. No, no, no, this is perfect. Cross the adjustice slightly. Do whatever you want. Man, Okay, this is okay, this is two We can at least this sort of see each other. And this is good. Things in the way good yeah, Mike, check, Mike check, Mike check this is Matt talking, Yeah, it feels good. Fifty nine. Oh, I gotta plug this in here, Watch out, dude, d hight. I can make the sound effects for you.

Here you go. I like that. I'll just open the episode like this. Or getting ready to move to sell the house and cleaning out a closet, we found the cardboard box that had some old dick to belts in it. They had been creased, and for the first minute they neglected. And I've tried to rig up a machine to the cassette recorder to see if we could pick up some of it. As near as your mother and I can tell, she's usually accurate on as the historian of our family.

This first bit was probably recorded in nineteen fifty one, sometime during the middle or late fifty one, and it

was I had brought the machine home. I remember to try to record joyce first words, and I made a considerable effort to get her to do that, And the longer I tried, the more she just batted the microphone around, and I kept using all kinds of baby talk and tricks to get her to do something, and resulted only in making her take the following first recorded protest and then you know, I think that the next thing is comes pretty clear that would you just describe that just

described that this tape, that tape as set that he's making right now? What what is this? This is an old tan tape cassette that my mother found and it was apparently just a recording that my grandfather, I know him as Papa. His name is James Phillips. He uh, he was recording this after he found some old tapes.

Well in this case, it was a real to reel that he wanted to find a way to transfer over onto cassette tape for posterity, I'm assuming and you can you can hear him so um, it's almost coldly narrating in a way. It has a lot to do with the nature of my grandfather. He was very philosophical, analytical man, and he's just narrating to anyone else listening. This is the process that he's taking. This is what you will be listening to. And this is why I performed these tasks.

You can clean a lot about my grandfather just by hearing that one phrase. It I took considerable effort to do so. Uh. And when he's just when he's speaking about his you know, one year old baby, my mother and you know, attempting to get her to to say her first words. Um. It's so fascinating to me because it really does speak to him and his his character. Um, the type of person he was, just by listening to

this tape after all of these years. You know, my mother was born on Christmas nineteen fifty Christmas Day nineteen fifty, and every year they would call to to the moment, to the minute that my mother was born. Every year they would call and I wish her a happy birthday. My mother was very, very important to them. What minute? What time is? It is the time of her birth. It's in the evening. I don't know exactly what it is. I just know for a fact that was just a

thing that would occur. Um, guy, I want to say, is around six pm. I don't know if that's correct or not. No, I'm just just curious. Do you think your mom would know? If you asked us, she would know exactly. Oh, my mom would definitely know because it has been drilled into her head by my grandfather, my grandmother. Um, both of whom my grandmother and my grandfather have passed. Since my grandfather Papa worked in the juvenile. I guess it's justice system that I don't know exactly the terminology

for it. But he was a psychologist and he worked at UM at a place where children would go that was essentially a prison right. And when he's performing these interviews, a lot of times he was recording them as technology became available, and you know, around this time it must have been, gosh, the late forties, very beginning of nineteen fifty, he had access to some kind of recording. He says, dicked about and he says nifty one according to your grandma,

because she's the family historian. Well, I mean, my I know, so the facts here are the fact my my mother was born Christmas nineteen fifty. If she's making those sounds like that is a baby sound. As a father, I know exactly how old of a child that is. I mean, it really is between zero and I want to say six seven months like maximum. Um that that's that's that is the sound of a baby that you're hearing. So

it must be in nineteen um. Just the fact that he had access to this hardware, to this new technology that he was going to bring home, you know, and try and get the first words from my mother. I can totally understand that we live in an age now.

I have a three year old son, and I know early on when he was beginning to vocalize, my wife and I had our phones out all the time, attempting to capture this moment, this the first word or the first words or phrase or something to where this baby is um not just this babbling little being, but this thing that's attempting to communicate with us with the words that we use. It's a magical moment that you want to capture. And that's exactly what my grandfather was attempting

to do, just with this older technology. So he can't just sit there and roll tape for hours and hours or days or days the way we can with our digital technology now. He had to very purposefully go to attempt to get those first words out of her, almost like in this weird way, almost this interrogation or this uh I I experimentation or something to where Okay, we're going to make this occur now, and it doesn't go well, No,

it does not go well. The best thing about this tape is just hearing my grandfather then in the nineteen nineties or whenever that was, perhaps when he's recording the cassette of him narrating what was occurring in nineteen because the frustration that he has and thinking about it, in the disbelief that anyone ever would be interested in listening to this. There's a part where he's literally he says that he's erasing the old tape. It is still going on,

So we will continue to erase. As a matter of fact, I think I'll begin at the beginning and erase all of this. Yeah, now that I don't really get. I don't know why he would do that. It feels like for me, knowing knowing Jim or Papa, he would want to preserve that recording in some way as a standalone and then as a secondary thing, makes something that would be presentable to someone else, rather than having to sit through the entire tape of my mother crying for an hour.

And so that's the cassette tape, that's the nineties tape. I don't know why he says he's erasing the dickt about recording on tape. I don't. I don't know why he would be doing that, honestly, I don't. But it could also be him, you know, he's the kind of person that simultaneously wants so badly to hold on to the the real world artifacts of his experience and his life, but also to to shed himself of a lot of that. UM. He was very much I would use the word obsessed,

but I don't think that's correct. He was UM tremendously fascinated with his own mortality and with the mortality of um of others around him, and he his bookshelf was filled with philosophical musings on whatever afterlife could be or reincarnation um on, you know, heaven and hell and all of these things. UM. I sometimes wonder if keeping those artifacts while he's alive, to have those memories feel real, to have something tangible to asp on too, even if

it is just a cassette tape. But he can hold that cassette tape in his hand and remember, oh, this is this is my daughter's you know, first recording. Also, you do interact with it sensorally, you know, Yeah, fib rates your ear drums too, Yeah, And he can really experience it again if he wants to. But at the same time, he's making a recording where he's essentially criticizing his own efforts, is doing an edit on himself. Yeah, in time like that, and now we're listening to it again.

The first time I ever heard it was when my mom found it because you were making ephemeral Yeah, and I forgot about that. I'm just kidding, no, no, but I think this is worth exploring. And perhaps it doesn't even go into the podcast, but because you were making this show, I asked my mother to see if there's anything in storage somewhere that has an old recording that we could find, and in particular of my grandfather, because he liked to make recordings like that of just his thoughts. Um,

I have. I had countless recordings of his thoughts when I was in college, just fascinating stuff. Felt like I was listening to a guru of sorts or a teacher or something, just listening to his his philosophical musings. Uh. I very much loved it. I got to bring it into a studio here and record it just to see if there was anything usable and I got to hear

it for the first time. And he's been gone since, and um, it was very much an emotional experience for me two to listen to his voice again because I hadn't done it in a long time. And then also hearing my mother as a baby, knowing the joy of being a father, and knowing the feeling that my grandfather was having in that moment in nineteen fifty one when he's making that initial recording. Um, that really struck home. And I mean that pulses through the three layers of recording,

four if you want to count this one. Yeah, right, that whatever that spark is right, Like, I wonder if there's something special about getting the first words versus getting the second words, and there really isn't. There really isn't. It's just I think that's more societal, right, that baby's

first words or something that benchmark. Yeah, but it's written down in places you know, they're they're manufactured books that come out where you're supposed to put in things like the first words, and there's no section for the second

or fifth word. Now, I can't speak to exactly what was happening or why that my grandfather came upon this dickta belt this real essentially of the recording, but I do know, and he says it in the tape that the family is preparing to move and he just happened to stumble upon it, basically, And I can only assume you know when you're moving, think about how hectic that situation is, trying to get all of your worldly possessions into boxes, organizing things, getting it out of the door.

I guarantee you that while they were planning to move, my grandfather stumbled upon this, and then late one night, he got out of his cassette player, he got out some old hardware that he had laying around somewhere and just began listening. And as soon as he stumbled upon it, he felt like he needed to to have it to uh, to share with, probably probably my mother as well as her brother, who was also named Jim. I think I think that's probably what happened, and I can't it's so funny.

I can't tell you where they were moving or or like, I don't know exactly those facts. I believe it's when they were moving to their condo in Florida, but um, perhaps that's not true. That's where I remember them moving up. The only place, the only place I ever remember them living is a condo in Clearwater, Florida. Where were they? Where were they before that they were in I think I think I know there was some time in Ohio for sure. I can't remember if they were actually in

New York or not. Um, and this is just problems with my family not having a very good history. There's gray spots and everybody's yeah, there's some there's some punks of tawny, I believe time, but I don't know exactly when that was. And so then he's he's got the you know, I'm just I'm picturing it, you know, house having boxes in the near the closet late at night.

He's got rio to real on one side, and it's got tape deck on the other, plugged in and a microphone plugged in so he can narrate and play a little tape narrate basically djayang. Yeah, he is, he is, it's it's um. And I I know it was at night too, because that's generally when he would be really active with his writing, when he was like journaling or taking notes with something. Uh. And so yeah, I mean the tape plays that we really don't need to narrate because he he uh, he does all of them. He

did all the work for us kind of um. But so the rest, so the tape that he's digitizing has other stuff on it. It's been taped over and you you can hear at one point my mother and my uncle a little bit older, and they're singing songs in a non exactly sequential order or not exactly. Um, what's what I'm looking for? When something goes in and a not exactly chrono logical order, they grow up. Yeah it's

the tape. Yeah, um, it's it's fascinating to your mom, like as a let me, let me play a little bit of this, ahm Casand she's singing here a good day. Did you can hear it? She's a really good singer because kids don't sing like you know, perfect even though her vocal cords can't I'm start I'm talking over it. But even though her vocal cords can't quite do it like you can tell it, she's a singer. She sounds

so much like my sister. When my sister was doing no fright mostra al Havend and your wife, I don't think I know the tune in dude of my sister has a three year old dog her it sounds like her too. It's it's so odd. Oh come and then you know uh uh they're also I mean your Grandfa's like leading them in song all the time. But so I mean because of the magic of time travel, which is you know, memory, and you know we have physical

tape that will do that work for us. Uh, you know shortly after she's singing is awful talking to teenager? Is that hurricane O singing in French been cau regarded institution. She has lost in the talk and the ads and the features. Thank you ps in Jim's day like kids baseball,

I was just slash by five before. But is that Jim, Jim, this is no those choice told me that she stole cars more I think it was, and that she was driving it and a police after she had a driving life, and of course she said no because she fell into her team and when she said she had to go. And today my father, Mr. Sell said that from the drawing, I don't know whether it's her or not, but it sure seems I could go into the top a lot

of other steps and maybe they're true. Thank you for all courthouse not to stay and I didn't know anything, and I'm just losing my dad and we got a staining. Sheman, He said, Jim, I think that was going to cut in on this last part of this tape to explain that somehow, some way in doing these dicta belts, they

got all messed up. We have Jim at a much earlier age finishing off the tape with joy, and he, of course, in the first part of the tape is ninety three, was singing songs and you can tell the difference. How the chronologically they got so screwed up. I don't know, but I think it's funny like that he is frustrated by it, almost like it's an amazing fun He's like, why are they out of order? I mean, I'm curious too this little bit right here. I'm gonna just play

just a couple of seconds on the end there. I think that that long tape gets cut in several times. It's been fascinating happens here that I don't know what ever crack the mystery of it, but maybe you're true. Thank you court not to stay so I didn't let anything that. I'm just being my dad and Dick Camy machine. And that's how many times do you hear? I hear like four times that those are four different recordings right there.

I think you're absolutely right, because I know I heard Jim earlier, but then I heard my mom immediately after I heard him, and then it came back to jim He's saying he's visiting my dad at the courthouse. That hits home right for me, because I mean the tape that I used in the first episode that my oldest tape is is me and my Dad's office. Oh yeah, I'm gonna play you just this. This is what I think is maybe it's this is one of the most amazing tapes I've I've ever gotten to listen to, but this,

this is probably my favorite part. We've got it going out. We've got to see Mommy by Daddy, Bye, Jimmy, by everybody. I'm just listening to this take someday with this. It's a very hip talk problem and I'm so sorry to do well she knew so, I mean, besides that they're doing skits, besides the fact that just like all of your family is just like brilliant and really talented and multi lingual, and and they all like get it that

this is they're part of this time travel continue. Um, I don't know if they get it, but they at least knew that somebody later on will listen to it. I'd have to assume that my mom in that moment, is just thinking about heard her father listening to it later, or maybe somebody from the office listening to it. Um. I I mean, perhaps perhaps they knew. But it's it's really it's crazy how it resonates, like whether they knew

or not. For For me, it's just saying those words into a recording in the nineteen sixties, Uh, saying, whoever is going to be listening to this, and now you and I in sitting in a room commenting on it. Uh. And then people on their phones walking around with their headphones in listening to that. Um, damn. And who knows if it would be the end. I mean, this tape or maybe this episode that we're working on gets mixed into something later the extraterrestrials use it as some form

of research. Fire everybody. I haven't even asked any of the questions yet. Um, your grandfather calls your grandmother the family historian at some point, do you think that he was the family documentarian? Perhaps? I mean in a a in a way, my grandfather was so concerned with what comes next, for his life, for his children, for his grandchildren, for myself and my sister Kim. He was very concerned

about protecting. He was concerned about um, the the the worry that he had for the next thing, whatever comes next, And a lot of times, you know, for him, it was the worst case scenario. Let's prepare for that. Let's make sure if the worst case scenario occurs, we're gonna we're gonna be okay, We'll be able to handle that. Then anything that happens that's more positive than worst case scenario. It's just it's icing on our our life cake whenever

that is. That's a weird phrase, but um, for him, documenting these kinds of moments so that he can look back and have almost this almost a legacy, just a personal collection of legacy that would get passed down in some way. I think it was very important to him. So yeah, I would say my grandmother was more of the I can recall what occurred in any given moment. I will tell you exactly what happened when she was amazing at that. She can tell you, oh, no, that

was that was seven. I remember we were, we were here and we did this. Does Diana do that? Does she remember the things that you forget? She has such better recall for when things occurred, you know, we were

discussing our first date. We've we've been together. We're gonna be married for ten years this year, and we've been together since two thousand two, and I was trying to recall our first date and she rattled it, and she just rattled it right off, and I was like, oh, that's not the way I remembered it, honestly, because I think maybe we have a tendency to do that. I replaced our first official date with one that I found

either more exciting and more enjoyable or more interesting. I've then took that bookmark and then shifted it over a little bit in my mind. And I wonder how often we do that. They say that as soon as something happens, I mean because I mean the moment when when is now it's gone. Uh, you have the memory of it, but then your next memory of a memory of that memory, and it just give and so it's just and so if if if bad data gets in there, you know, it can be replicated over and over take over like

a virus. As well intentioned as it maybe it's one of the I think it's one of the reasons that having scratched the old tape can have such a profound impact because it just cuts through that even and maybe even especially when it's sort of can be ambiguous, like why is there why are the edges of this thing blurry? Like I can't tell how many times times that record button just got hit? It's sort of it raises all those questions. It's sort of calls, yeah, calls to attention.

How bad are human memory is? Yeah? Yeah? Mine? In particular? Um, is I count on you'd remember so many things for me? Mad Well, that's why. Why do you think I take such copious notes so I can look at it and go, Okay, that's what was said. Um, do you think that you to some extent had the torch pass? Do you do you feel like you've followed in some way in your grandfather's footsteps? It was certainly that thought or in motivation was was placed on me a lot, and I think

I took it to heart quite a bit. My I was my grandfather. Papa always would call me his one and only, so my one and only because I was his only grandson, and uh, there was a pressure I felt from that, But also at the same time, there was a a pride in wanting to to do right by him. To always wanting to um. He had this virtuous quality to him in in a way that I

don't experience in a lot of other people. Not that not to say other people aren't virtuous, but it it's almost so deeply ingrained in him that I looked I looked to him on a pillar in a way. And I know he wasn't a perfect man, but at the same time, something about being so thoughtful and reflective was

was very appealing to me. And that in combination with being called his one and only, like this person who's I'm going to inherit his earth that he's essentially created around him, even this small space where he existed in his family and all these people he's influenced and affected. I was going to be the lineage to that, or I was going to be the next essentially um. And I took that to heart for certain, and I feel I feel that now heavily. But some of that knows

you well. I think some of the those profound qualities that you've found in him, I find in you. Uh. But see, I also cannot accept a statement such as that, right I feel my dad told me my family we do not have tapes. No one really taped my um. There's a story my dad tells, I think in this interview that I got with him, that my grandma or my great grandma I think would point OU eight elementary camera out the window on trips and so she filmed

you know the interstate. Yeah, yeah, I still do that sometimes. Yeah, I mean everyone knows that video. There's a little bit at odds and ends of silent films and stuff, but there's really not like Victorious family has everything on tape. We have like I have that old little tape there. There's no videos until I got a camera when I was thirteen and I started making sort of like skits and things. But my dad called me the family history or the family documentarian, and I'm like, I don't know, Hey,

I don't know if it's true. And be that feels like a burden, like I feel like i've I haven't. I haven't like handled that responsibility. Well like I didn't. I didn't do a good job documenting the things that happened. I just made things. I know what you mean. Do you have a video degree? I cannot, So you have a video degree. As soon as soon as I got my video degree, I felt and I know This is much later in life, but I felt this pressure from my family is like, well, you're gonna be the one.

He was like taking movie quality images of everything we're going to be doing for the next you know, and for as long as we all live. UM and I have I have not been doing at because in a way, it's this separation of what you do for work, for an occupation or something like that, and then the quiet um moments you have with your family or you know, on vacation or doing something that doesn't require it doesn't require it to be observed to be enjoyed, if that

makes sense. Does it require it to be observed to enjoy it? And there's no. He doesn't require someone to make a Facebook post. I I don't want anyone to instagram it. I don't want to see anyone live tweeting UM hanging out of the park with my family or going to a family reunion. I don't care about that. I want to be there with those people in those moments. But at the same time, if we don't record it in any way, then it is gone. And those those

two ideas exists always together at the same time. I mean the question, I think that's at the heart of it that I've been considering and have no answer to, is how how do you choose when to hit record? Because like, I get this feeling that, oh, that thing just passed me by. I wish I had that, And then I get this other feeling like I've got my

phone out and I'm recording my cat. Well that's never a bad idea, But I've got my phone out and I'm recording something, and I'm like, I wish I was just interacting with this moment and living in it, but I turned my phone off and I'm worried that I'm missing it. Yeah, and I don't think, you know, the phone makes the phone adds an element to that, But

I don't think that it's it's new to that. I do think technology has made that has amplified that problem or that dilemma, I should say, certainly when it's also a I think there's a factor there with the sharing, the social media sharing kind of thing. So it's it's no longer to document it, it's to share that this is an experience you've had or are having in this moment. And in in a way I'm uncomfortable with that for some reason, it does sort of pack it, but you

know it feels more you factored too. I think like your grandfather's trying to manufacture an encounter with your mother and it goes totally wrong because you can't you know, you can't tell the baby to say it's first words. It's just like now. I also, I find it uncanny how similar that tape is, that section of the tape to the first tape that's in the show that show Uncle Jack your Shoes tape that the whole thing started from. Can you say something, Hi, Ryan, Say Hi, Hi, you

want a coke shoose shooth shooth dude. I remember listening to that. I'd never heard that clip before, that, that piece of archival tape um until you made the demo and then you shared the demo out with me and I listened to it. I can remember the exact moment. I was in my kitchen and my wife wanted me to come and watch TV show with her in our live room. We have this tiny little house. It's like

right around the corner. But I started listening to it just with my phone speaker, and he was you know, it opens with that piece of tape, and I could not turn I told him I'm sorry, I can't. I told my wife, I'm sorry, I can't come and watch whatever this thing is right now. I need to listen to this because it was so intriguing to me hearing the moment, that fourth dimensional moment with those people in

that in that I'm assuming living room. I've always thought kitchen, perhaps kitchen again, when I think about my house, it's literally kitchen, living room. It's all just one tiny little thing, and then like a couple of bedrooms over here. So I just imagined the living space right in like a nineteen fifties home or maybe maybe well I'm just imagining the home was probably m so just in my mind,

I've created this picture of that moment and mhm. And a lot of it is manufacturing memories of my current you know, living space, like I'm how I'm describing it, memories of being a kid in the small house where I grew up with my family, um, the little condo that my grandparents owned. It's all these kind of things amalgamated into one. And I'm imagining that moment with the windows from my parents house and the couch from my grandparents condo. I don't know, it's just strange how our

our minds do that. Um And at the same time, that was a real moment, however brief it was for those people and we we get to experience it now. Yeah, we all know who Gail is now. It's so, you know, because shoes Victoria will walk around saying things that Gail said. What's the one that she likes to say? I mean, my favorite is and it's beautiful. I was the one of Victoria likes to say, and Lynn Fichet doesn't. It's

nothing should just say. I'll just try to put like to find a point on it, because this is an unanswerable question. But like when you so when you're thinking about do I hit record or do I not? You know, you're at the beach with your son or whatever, you're on this vacation, this amazing thing is happening that he's just you know, existing, and this moment is just passing. How do you It doesn't have to be that instance, But is there any sort of rubric you can use

for when to record and when not to record? For me, it's good to I think about it this way. My wife and I are a team, and in my family, it's my wife, myself, and my son. And if I know my wife is they're enjoying a moment with my son that she's she's so present with him that the thought of getting her camera out or any kind of recording device and hitting record is nowhere near where her mind is. But I'm, you know, a bit of a third party to what's occurring. That's when I will record,

and my wife will do that too. My wife is much more thoughtful about it because she knows the rest of our family wants to also see these moments, so she will much more often record and remove herself from the situation a little bit to do that. Um. Quite frankly, I should be doing that more often so that she can have more of those moments. But I know she gets those, uh in her daily life because she's a she stays at home with him. So I just want to say that that's the burden of being the family

documentary and that you're feeling right. Yes, you're absolutely right, because if you're the person recording it, then you are somewhat absent, or at least there's a percentage of you that it has to be absent. And the guilt that you feel when you're not doing at yeah, because other people want to know and see. It's It's tough, man. I think we just have to wait for the old black mirror technology where our eyes are the cameras and uh, everything gets recorded in our hard drive up there. I

haven't written down here. Have you ever wished that everything would be recorded? If even if it was just an ephemeral wish, you just we're like, ah, I wish that you know, you you're playing the drums and you just played it perfect, and then you try to record it in the second time, just didn't have the thing. Oh so many times that has occurred. Um, I'd have to say no, because I think if we if that technology existed where every moment got recorded in perpetuity, you would

lose the magic of it, of the moment. We'd never be able to watch at all. Well, you'd never be able to watch it all. But if you wanted to, you could go back and relive, relive anything, however many times you wanted always. And then if you if you imagine some one doing that a point of consciousness, a human, a single person living in a world where they're just reliving all of the memories, then where are they existing in the actual timeline, you know, the cusp of time?

Where where where are they there? I'll tell you what. Being at an editor, you can feel like that sometimes because you get lost, because editing is screws time up and screws your brain up. Like I'm sitting here having a conversation with you, and I'm trying not to think about how I'm going to edit this later. I know I can't see I can then see it, and I'm I'm trying very hard to help you have these moments where you can cut in yeah, no, and I can see you doing that too. Um, So what the heck

do we do with that? I don't know. I don't know. Oh Lord, I just I think maybe I just have one more question here. Um, it's kind of specific to you. You have been recorded lot? Yes, Yes, I have been recorded a lot. Um. Do you have any idea how many times have you been recorded? Oh? Let's let's see if I can guestimate. So there have been about three hundred and seventy episodes of stuff they don't want you to know. And that's anywhere between half an hour or

two an hour. Um, I've recorded drums. I don't even know how many times, only only professionally, maybe a hundred or so times, or something like at a live gig or in a recording studio or something. Um, oh, why all the videos that we used to make on the other podcasts and stuff, hundreds of times. And then if you can imagine just all the family videos and everything acting. I used to act all the time, and that would get recorded. Oh god, yeah, I exist out there. Nobody

knows my name though, so that's the good thing. Say a number, I think I number at this guy. It would be let's just say around a thousand, probably true moments where I knew I was being recorded and I was actively participating. Okay, how about times that the record button the record button was depressed, that's a weird way. How about times that the recorded button was hit. Yeah, and any time for anything in any medium, Yeah, you recorded. That's tens of thousands, easily, it could be more. Yeah.

Maybe I don't know. I have no I my brain can't really figure that out. And it simply is because of the recording that we're focusing on today. My grandfather made recordings like that all the time with with If he was hanging out with my sister or I, we would just sit with him, and he would just want us to talk so that he could because we would be in Georgia most likely where he's coming up to

visit us. Then he would retreat with his wife back down to Clearwater, Florida, and wouldn't see us until maybe next year or you know, eight months from then. And we were very important to him. He he and my grandmother, Grannian Papa, they let us know how important we were

to them every in every interaction. And I know for a fact from talking to my my grandmother that he would sit in his office and listen to those tapes of my sister and I just talking about nothing, just talking, you know, playing we're playing with my grandfather and he would just sit and listen and he would experience just to be with us. Do you think that there's something about the actual physical like the fact that it's on

tape versus versus you know, at digital recording. Do you think there's something about the physical media inherently or do you think that it's just because we kind of grew up on the cusp of when analog was we're what five years apart, you're like maybe five years older than name yet and I'm nine yeah's six years. When we were kids, ever, you know, it was still VHS and stuff, but digital was coming digital. And then by the time you and I were in film school, it was digital, yes, exactly,

and now it's all very digital. I think it all has to do with having a physical interaction. There is if you imagine that moment where you're going to the closet like my grandfather did, and you you open, you physically opened the closet. You smell, you know, maybe the clothes that have been there for a while, the boxes that are maybe a little bit dusty. You reach up and you pull out an old shoe box or something that has cassettes lined up in it, and you open

that box and you pull out a cassette tape. In their sensory input with all of this, then you take it over you you hear the you hit the eject button on your cassette player and you hear it open. You slide that cassette and you make sure it's you know, perfectly in there and adjusted the correct way. You close it. You hear that you hit that play button, and it's a physical it's a mechanism that you hit and then this voice comes through of someone that you love. I mean,

that's a magical thing. Um and I I don't know if it's just because of when we grew up and what we experienced and living through that. But it's not the same as moving your mouths over your track pad over and clicking on a file or just hitting space bar. But I'll tell you what, it makes it a whole lot easier. It certainly when you get a show that's, you know, a hundred and fifty or two ques An episode.

If I had to pull those all from down the off the shell off and get forty fives and tapes and reel to reels and line it up recording in real time. I have wire recording in there. I got wax cylinders. If that stuff hadn't all then digitized, this wouldn't be possible at all. You're absolutely correct. You're absolutely correct. But I think what I'm speaking to is the reason that cassettes. You'll you can find cassette tapes again. Now

bands are putting out their music on cassette tapes. Final records. We have a new person who's working at our office named Seth. He runs a record company where he specifically will take your music and make a vinyl record out of it. That's what he does, right. Yeah, and it's there's a resurgence of it because you get to have, in my opinion, because you get to have that interaction. I think you're right. I mean, it's endlessly fascinating. It's

one of the tenants of this show. It's one of the things that Sarah Wasserman, like, her whole sort of careers built on it. Yeah, and she can talk to it brilliantly. Yeah. I started just you know, blink my eyes and stare into the into the distance. But you made a show about it. And honestly, how often do we think about this stuff when we're when we're living our busy lives. You know, even I probably don't think about it near as much as I could, as much

as I interact with that. It's like you're busy and you're doing things. You know. I'll tell you this how it's the reason why this show resonates with me so much is because of the philosophical nature of it. It's it's pondering ourselves and our experience and why it's important and how we record things and why things matter. That's really what this big for me. That's what the show is.

And the tape that we're using just as an example in this episode is it's the same thing for me because it's what my grandfather was, It's who he was. He he embodied that spirit of uh, pondering, questioning, wondering, and he wanted to know what was going to happen to him. His biggest question was what happens to me when I'm gone? But you know, we still have him and he's still here. Isn't that spine shilling? It's cool, It's amazing. I think it's a great place to wrap

unless you feel like we didn't anything. I think we went. I think we moved, you know, briskly, I'll break the corporate cords and cleaning on a closet, we found some old dick to belt. Just in case you haven't heard it yet, This interview, as well as interviews with my wife, father, and best friend, were used in the Ephemeral season finale, taped over. The full first season of Ephemeral is available now wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more at Ephemeral

dot show. I've tried to rig up a machine to see if we could pick up This is an odd tape for the problem is thirty one years of magnetic decoration. I have no idea what it's gonna look like. These your role. These are about five different tapes. You are s twice together. Here they're a kid. The images were jumping, the sound got worked. I don't know whether it gets her. It sure seems I could. She was afraid she would forget what it sounded like forty years shorty one years later.

I can't understand why I recorded so much of it. Disbelief that anyone ever would be interested in listening to this. How nice it is for us to be in the here playing with this machine, like years of recording over the same tape. Yeah, I don't think there's any audio really, so I don't think there's much