I just love that your memory of this is us locking eyes across a crowded realm, but it really is like a romantic moment.
I'm Jessica Bennett and I'm Susie Bennacaram, and this is in retrospect, where each week we delve into cultural moments that shaped us.
And that we just can't stop thinking about today. We thought we'd take some time to introduce ourselves. I think it would be fun to introduce each other, so let's try it.
Yeah.
Actually, that's a good idea because I feel like it's easier to brag on behalf of someone else than it is to brag about yourself. And you have a really impressive bier.
Well same.
I think that's really fun to look at friends bios because I'm always like, Wow, you're so much more impressive than even I think you are.
So I'll do yours first.
Okay, So Jessica Bennett started her career at Newsweek. I mean you started your career a little bit before that, but that's where you had your first big writing job and was a culture writer there for a.
Long time, and then went and ran content for.
Tumblr for a short period of time when Tumblr was like really hot.
Before, I guess I mean Tumbler's sort of back now, right, But it was like Tumblr was trying to do journalism for a hot second and it was the cool, hot place to be and everyone was there, and then it became just porne And now maybe it's kind of back in retro, and I.
Think it's like a retro thing now. But I remember being very impressed when you got that job.
It was a job and it was a job that had never existed before, and.
I was like, oh, of course, just got that job. She's so cool.
And then you went to the New York Times, and I think a thing most people know about you is that you were the first gender editor ever at the Times, which is very impressive. And then I think they don't have the gender editor well anymore.
Right, there's no longer a gender editor, which.
Is I think is interesting.
I mean, I think it shows sort of the evolution of thinking around gender, so an interesting in the word and also the idea that lots of things in gender coverage it shouldn't be this like isolated silo.
But yes, it was still.
Really important when you got that job, and I remember feeling like it was a really important step and now you're a columnist for the New York Times.
I think one thing that's important about.
Your career, at least I think so, is that you started a genre that's now very prevalent, but that at the time was a relatively new way to think about the world, which is that you did the first big interview with Monica Lewinsky sort of reframing her and thinking about what it meant that we thought of her in a certain way, and that you've done that a lot in your career, that you're sort of able to take something that everyone takes, this common wisdom and turn it
on its head and really explore it in a more meaningful way.
I really admire that. Yeah.
I've always joked that at a certain point I became the scorned woman beat.
Yeah.
Yeah, so rehabilitating scorned women, which is now kind of everywhere everywhere.
Now it's like a cottage industry. I feel like there's like a whole industry of people just trying to.
Find people in fact that maybe don't deserve to be some.
People who don't deserve it.
But also, I think what's important about the way you did it, and I will die on this hill, is that a lot of these women have not participated in the retelling of their own stories, and in some ways that is really complicated because we're trying to say that the media exploited Brittany, but then at the same time, a new batch of people are choosing to sort of mine Britney's story without her consent or participation, and so
it's a little bit of a complicated dynamic. And I think what's really important about your work is that you've always sort of involved the women at the center of the stories and given them an opportunity to tell their version.
They were instrumental to the pieces.
Yes, and I think that's really important and also just very journalistic. I really admire that you're a very solid journalist, which thanks.
What say about everyone.
And I think it's important to note that you wrote a great book call Feminist Fight Club, about an actual feminist fight club you were in, So I'll let you describe that, so I don't butcher it.
But that book was amazing and was a bestseller.
And then you wrote another book with The Times right called This Is eighteen.
Yeah, the photography book where we documented the lives of eighteen year old girls around the world.
Oh, amazing, I think I saw the New York Times piece, but he didn't read.
Fine. It was a piece that then turned into an international photography exhibit and then ultimately became a book with interviews with the girls.
Oh amazing. Now I feel like I should pick that up.
But I have two copies of Feminist Fight Club.
I would like to add and send it to like everyone I know. So it's a great book. And if you have.
Not seen it, or you have a daughter or a niece or someone in your family who you think is coming into their own I think it's like a great book to give someone. Please try and figure out how to operate in the world.
And in the working world, in the working world.
Specifically, and that's my little industry.
That was great, I feel how to do I don't know that you even, Oh, I guess the only thing you missed is that. But I now teach journalism at NYU oh right to graduate students a class called reporting the Zeitgeist, which is very fun because I learned as much about the Zeitgeist from my students as I think they learn about reporting it from me.
Yes, And actually I just think it's like a fun topic. I also taught like two classes at some point, and it was really fun to teach.
I think eventually I want to do that again.
Yet it pays nothing. It pays necessarily fun. You have to really be at a stage in your life. I remember, because they paid nothing. I took on two classes at once. You know, I had taught like el SAT when I was much younger, but real school. Yes, it was when I finished my fellowship at Harvard and they asked.
Us if we wanted to teach at the Extension School, and I did.
Let's go into your bi I feel like I don't want to start your buy with Harvard because it sounds so snotty.
And that's also it's like a very small.
Let's like put that on pause. We'll come back to it. Okay, So, Susie, you and I met about a decade ago, and we'll get to our whole meeting story.
I'll meet you.
Yes, be cute. But you were a really seasoned producer. You began your career at World News Tonight, you had produced for Diane Sawyer, and then you actually went on to become a media executive. Like maybe that's it feels like a weird term, but whenever I'm describing you, to friends. I'm like, yeah, my friend's uzy is run like every news.
I mean, that is not true.
But I had a lot what someone once described as two of the most notorious asylums in media.
Oh that's great. Gizmoto Media Group Vice.
Yeah, so Gizmoto Media Group is all the former Gawker sites. When Gawker went bankrupt, Univision bought all the sites, but Gocker. So so okay, like Jezebel, Gizmoto, yeah, dead Spin, Kataku okay.
Jalopnick, the Root. I don't want to forget one s winter.
So I did that, and then I did run the newsroom advice for one year.
But you actually my first job in.
Journalism well not fun fact fun fac Well, that's so, my first job in journals was actually at NBC. I went to journalism school to change careers. I had been in management consultant, that's right, and then I was like, I need to do something meaningful with my life, and I went to journalism school for a year and I got hired into this diversity program at NBC and they
would rotate you through all the shows. So I worked at the Today Show and I worked at Nightly News and at the end of the year, it was really low pay.
It was like even back then, it was so low.
It was like thirty thousand dollars, which I just remember going into credit card got that year. Yeah, And when the year was over, they offered me a job at the Today Show, but it was like four thirty five thousand dollars something like.
I was just like, that's untenable for me.
And somehow I got connected to someone who was starting a new show called a Wife Swap, and I worked as an associate producer on the first year of Wife Wop.
Yes, it's great, you really there's a lot of high low in your bio.
Yes, there's a lot of high low.
And you know, it's funny because sometimes in my career there have been points in my career where people have told me not to talk about the low, like where people have been like, maybe I don't want to tell people about why Swap. And I've always rejected that because I think it's part of what makes me an interesting producer and an interesting journalist is that I really embrace a lot of variable yes projects.
Yes, And I actually think that's one of the subjects that we bond over, like that's a lot of what we're trying to do here, which we'll talk a little bit more about, but it's looking at some elements of quote unquote low culture in a smart way, in a meaningful way. Okay, let's not forget the documentary that you produced and directed about Donald Trump and the political press called Enemies of the People.
Yeah.
So I did this fellowship at Harvard, which all my friends are gonna die that. That's how we started this conversation because they just love to give me a shit about this, like they're like, oh, is this your.
Harvard magazine, and like where is your Harvard Mud.
They just think it's so funny because I'm not actually the kind of person you would associate with that.
I went to Barnard, right, I.
Went to Barnard undergrad.
I went to Columbia for grad school, where like a Barnard Columbia family fear and through which I guess is also obnoxious. I mean come from a family like we were an immigrant family, so those things were so important to my family, you know, immigrants from Iran, immigrants from Iran.
I'm Iranian.
So I did this fellowship and then I came back to New York and I had my first executive job or management job is probably more correct. And I was working at this small place and it was like the Vanity Project for like a very nice, rich Israeli millionaire. I mean, I'm sure some people don't think he's very nice, because I don't know how you become a millionaire by being very nice. But who you know had just started
this project and was paying us pretty good money. And we had a lot of really cool people who were working with us, people I still keep in touch with and who've had amazing careers.
That shop was called evocative. It no longer exists.
Right, Remember that I wasn't I a consultant there? For like one second, I think you were. Yeah, I don't know that.
You actually introduced me to the person who hired me there.
I'm actually consulted on I think, but yeah, or received a patient anyway.
But so that was winding down.
It became clear that he was, oh, wait, you can't make any money in media, and I was I could have told you that.
But thank you for keeping me employed for a few years.
And I had a friend who was running the Schwarenstein Center at Harvard, and I just love how many times.
I've had just in that way expect I got Media.
And Politics policy center that they have, and he approached me and asked if I was interested in doing a project, And initially I pitched an oral history, like a written oral history, because we had been covering the Trump campaign kind of tangentially, like we were really focused on technology in that newsroom, so we weren't like a general politics shop,
and we didn't send someone out to cover it. And I just watched all these people I knew making really hard decisions about how to cover that campaign, and I just did not think I would necessarily have done a better job, Like it just seems so hard to cover that campaign and know how to do it because Trump just changed the playbook so much and people were constantly playing catch up.
And I was just curious.
It was in twenty seventeen, and I was genuinely curious to just interview all these people I knew about.
What it felt like to be in the eye of that storm.
Because so many things happened every day during the Trump presidency that it was easy to forget what had happened the week before. And so this friend of mine came back to me and said, what if we made a film, and so that's how the documentary happened. It was like very lucky, to be honest, Like, I feel really lucky to have had that opportunity and people can still watch
it so enemies of the people on YouTube. And I think what's sort of interesting about it is I did talk to people like Jeff Sucker and Jake Tapper and also like Maggie hammermarn and like lots of people who were covering it at the time for newspapers and for TV. And I think the thing that's interesting is now we're getting to another election and it feels like people are just making the same mistakes again, and that has been
really hard to watch. I have to say, people who were in the movie have said things where I'm like, but you you're doing that or just doing the same thing.
It's very hard to watch. And so I feel like maybe it didn't make as big a dent as I hoped it would, all.
Right, so maybe you need a part two, or maybe we need to repromote it a little bit and get people to watch it.
Yeah, let's talk about.
How we met. So I was at Newsweek and that was my first real job out of college. I'd done, like as you did back then, a bunch of bunch of paid internships. I was working in a bar to actually pay my rent. And then I finally got hired at Newsweek, and I spent a number of years there, and then at a certain point Newsweek, which then was like still a real magazine and very important, respected magazine. It had one time been my dream job. It got
put up for sale. It was put up for sale by the Washington Post company, which owned it, and it was sold to a ninety year old man named Sidney Harmon for one dollar plus debt, and then he died, and so it was like, do we have jobs? Do we not have jobs? And then Tina Brown came forward and was going to edit the magazine, and Tina Brown was running The Daily Beast. Had you worked at the Daily Beast at that point?
No, So what happened was I interviewed at the Daily Beast. Huh? And then I turned and noticed at ABC News, which is where I was at.
Huh.
And by the time I started my job like a month later.
The okay, and so it was always referred to as like this marriage of brands and all of the new zeok reporters who had to add Daily Beast into their email addresses. So like I was Jessica dot Bennett at Newsweek dot com and then suddenly I was Jessica du Benett at Newsweek Dailybeast dot com. Try spelling that out to someone who needs to email you. They're like, what in the hell is this? We were like, we hate this.
Yeah, it was definitely like not a happy marriage.
It was not a happy marriage. But in my recollection, I don't know. It was like a couple of weeks after this merger occurred, we were now all in the same office and Tina Brown was putting on her Women in the World conference, which was this big event, live journalism event. It was at Lincoln Center, I think.
No, So the year we did it, okay, eventually it would be at Lincoln Center, but the year we did it, it was at like some hotel in Midtown called like the Millennium.
Oh that's right, okay, like across from like a barbecue blaze and well, so I specifically remember being in like some sad, small hotel room where all the producers were and it was absolute chaos. Someone was crying, there were
papers being thrown, someone had dropped out. I was being asked to produce a live journalism thing like I didn't know anything about production at that point, and you were in there, and at one point we didn't know each other, and we just looked at each other and we're like, what the fuck? Like, this is this as crazy as it SAMs.
I just loved that your memory of this is us locking eyes across a crowded room.
It really is like a romantic moment.
Yes, And then I think we, well, you might remember it differently, but then in my recollection we left this room, we're like, do you want to get coffee? Can we talk about how insane same this is?
So the slight difference, I think that is kind of how I remember it, although I don't have quite as romantic a moment. But what I remember is that I started and literally I had to go to the newsweek offices, which I had.
Never seen for my first day, to get my paperwork.
And on my way up to get my paperwork, I was like in an elevator with two people who had just been laid off.
From the tech too. It was very intense.
And I get there and this guy introduces himself to me, who would be Ramane Situto, one of our close friends who is now the editor in chief of Variety, but at that time was your work husband and a writer and news Week, and he was like, are you Irunian? And we bonded over that, okay, and then he was like, oh, are you going to women in the world. You have to find Jess. She'll make everything better. And I was like, okay, And so I do know that at some point we
met and I was like, oh, your Jess. So like I was looking for you, but I don't think you were looking for.
My Yeah, but I didn't know I was.
You didn't know, You didn't know, but you were. Wow, this is so embarrassing for us. It's like, get a room.
But also I do remember getting there and being like everyone is like crying and screaming.
It was a very like very crazy atmosphere.
Yes, things being thrown, yeah, really really wild.
For some reason, that conference just made everybody craze.
It was like a pressure cooker and all around it people were being laid off. The magazine was it was like, are we going to even print anymore? What is going on?
What is my job?
When I started there, I hit kind of the tail end of it in that you know, we were still in the old building. It had this beautiful view of Central Park. I had my own office when I got a promotion. It had a view of the park. We had town car rides home if you stayed past I think seven pm. On Thursday nights, there was this like beautiful catered dinner that would be up on the eighteenth floor are with a view of the city. And it was like wine and ship whatever, drinks and like whatever.
I did not get any of it.
That got cut very quickly, but for a moment it was really crazy.
Yeah. And also like at magazines, the editors used to have their own standing like town car that we take them to and from their jobs. And in TV it was the same way, like the hosts and the executives all have cars waiting outside.
Like now they don't do it that way.
But totally, and I feel that that was the only office I will ever have, only private office I will ever ever have, as I like sadly work from my bed.
Yeah, I mean even when I like ran things, I didn't have my own office. That's just not the world we live in anymore. So let's talk a little bit about what we're both doing so we do live we do live in now.
We're kind of where we are.
So, yeah, what are we doing now? I mean we both work from home. I have a dog, and I'm sort of torn as we've discussed between my former ambitious self and wanting to be a answer and do different things, and this podcast is part of that. I'm just like kind of chill. Yeah.
So it's interesting because I always think of you as more ambitious than I am.
I don't think that was.
Funny because you were like an executive, like an actual executive.
I know, I know, it's a really weird thing writer, I know, but like I feel like you have like ambitious goals and like things you want to do, and I feel like I kind of just rode this wave, you know, like I never had a plan. I just went from thing to thing and hoped for the best and sometimes it was the best and sometimes it was.
The very worst. But I definitely feel like I have shifted and changed a lot.
I mean, I think a lot of people say that about the pandemic, and I think the pandemic was part of it, but you know, I think also running newsrooms in this media environment is really heartbreaking.
Yeah, you know, it's like, your.
Job is to cut.
Yeah, your job is to cut.
And I've had to do layoffs almost every year of my career for the last like I don't know, five or six years, maybe longer. So it is hard to imagine having the heart for that anymore, which is why I'm doing other things. I work with the Media, which is also the executive producer of this show, which is a company started by Cindy Levy, who is a former editor of Glamour, and it's a gender equity media organization.
I'm an editor at large there and I'm doing this.
Podcast and I love this because I feel like I'm actually doing something creative, Like I'm actually trying to make something and it's new and it's challenging and it's hard, which I like.
But you're in it.
I mean, I think we've talked about this before, but after being an editor for a number of years, I was just like, I don't want to be in management like that. It's not my skill set. That's not what I want to do. I have a lot of problems with my own and solving other people's problems is like not a thing that I love or But okay, so this of course led us both do this podcast. Let's
talk about the podcast. I recall that I was in Palm Springs on vacation with a couple of friends, and we were in a marijuana shop, as you do, and I as one would be in as one would be, although now in New York also but not as good, not true, and not at that time, and my friend Susie called and I was in the checkout line, and you were like, Hey, I've been talking about this idea, and you know, you've done all of these stories about taking characters in the present and looking at the way
that we talked about them and framed them in the past, and I was thinking it could be really interesting to look at specific pop culture moments from the past, and what if we called it in retrospect? And I said, Oh, my god, that's the perfect name for this thing that I've been kind of trying to articulate and have been
swirling around and have been really interested in. And I had just been in the car with this friend that I was in Palm Springs with where a song came on the radio and she said, Oh, my god, do you know this song? And I was like, no, I don't know what this is and she's like, this is the like disco song that was playing in the background when Luke raped Laura on General Hospital.
Oh my God.
And you when you called me were like I was talking to Cindy about it, and we thought that Luke and Laura on General Hospital who ultimately get married, But what most people forget is that actually he originally raped her. That's how the relationship began. Could be an interesting first episode, and so it was sort of like all of these things came together, you know, the weed shot, my gummies, you on the phone, Luke and Laura, the disco trup.
It's like another moment of fate that brought us exactly. Yeah.
I think the thing is is that I really wanted to do this with you because I felt like you bring something that I just do not bring to this, which is like a much more intellectual point of view, to be honest, Like, you know me, I like love Bravo and The Real Housewives, and I watch Hallmark movies.
Still tell anyone, I have like a very.
Low sensibility, and also, you know, I like some other things, but I'm definitely not as deeply embedded in sort of
the intellectual space that we are going to occupy. And I also feel like, you know, there was this thing that we really both embraced about it, which is it's not just important to look at what happened to these women, although that's really important, but it's also important to sort of turn that lens around and be like, what did we learn as girls and women growing up and seeming me, yeah, consuming these things, seeing what happened to people, and kind
of what messages it told us about how we were supposed to operate in the world and what it meant if we struggled in any of these various ways, and like what that said about us. So I really love that we're getting to do this together. It really sounds so cheesy, but it's true. And it's really hard for me to say nice things, so just like, don't expect this a lot, but which.
Is one of the things I love. I mean, I think one of the reasons we are friends and this works for us is that we're both pretty blunt, like we say it how it is. I grew up in Seattle, which is like the most passive, aggressive place imaginable, Like you can't even honk it someone without it being seen as like a major affront. So it feels so refreshed
by people who will just state the thing. And I think we both want to do that like that, while at the same time wanting to leave some room for great area and not just take all of these moments and pop culture things and subjects that happened in the past and proclaim them quote unquote problematic and thus forward nobody shall enjoy them ever. Again, like, it's not that simple. It's not.
And I think also I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed. Yeah, and I don't think that's a bad thing, you know, Like, I'm sure there are some messages I internalized that well, I know there are some messages I internalized that I shouldn't have. But on the other hand, like I was an immigrant girl from Iran. I came to this country when I was four. It's a lot of how I learned when it meant
to be an American. Like if I had not had that, I would have been even more confused than I already was. Like we went from Iran to Paris and then to this very suburban town in California, in the East Bay of San Francisco, and I definitely was not the norm, you know.
So that's like how I.
Kind of learned about the world around me. So it's complicated our relationship with these things, Like you can love something like Bravo but also understand the ways that it's not always been great and maybe it's not great. Although I will die on the hill that I think Bravo is a woman's workplace drama and that we should.
Respect it as such.
Okay, well we should unpack that, shall that eventually, and I think that's really what we want to do here.
Every week we will take a cultural moment, whether it's a news headline that we remember from the time, or an episode of Dawson's Creed which I grew up on, or some word that was catapulted into the zeitgeist, and we will unravel what was happening at the time, the cultural context, and how we interpreted it and internalized it, and what repercussions or impact that has, if any, on where we are today.
So we would love it if you went on this journey with us.
Susie, You're so cheesy, but I agree.
This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Is there a cultural moment you can't stop thinking about and want us to explore in a future episode. Email us at in Retropod at gmail dot com, or find us on Instagram at in retropod.
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram, which we may or may not delete.
You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books Feminist Fight Club and This Is Eighteen.
In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media. Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attia is our researcher and associate producer.
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norbel. Our artwork is from Pentagram. Additional editing help from Mary Doo and Mike Coscarelli. Sound correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith. We are your hosts Susie Bannecarum.
And Jessica Bennett. We're also executive producers for even more check out in retropod dot com. See you next week.