How Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Swift and Other Celebs Try Too Hard To Be Cool and The MTV Revolution

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Nerve with Maureen Callahan

Episode: "How Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Swift and Other Celebs Try Too Hard To Be Cool and The MTV Revolution"

Date: December 3, 2025
Host: Maureen Callahan
Guests: Tom Freston (former MTV CEO), Elle Hunt (Guardian writer)

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Overview

In this sharp, smart, and entertaining episode, Maureen Callahan examines the concept of "cool"—who has it, who desperately chases it, and why it's so elusive—through the lens of celebrity culture and media history. The show features a deep-dive interview with Tom Freston, the MTV exec responsible for some of pop culture’s most iconic moments, and a hilarious, insightful conversation with journalist Elle Hunt about a global academic study on what actually makes people cool. Maureen also reads audience feedback and riffs on everything from Van Halen to Taylor Swift to Timothée Chalamet's try-hard Ping Pong movie campaign.

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Main Segments & Key Insights

1. The Rise and Fall of MTV with Tom Freston

[06:25–38:13]

The Legacy of MTV

• Maureen brings on Tom Freston, the co-founder and former CEO of MTV (and Viacom), to discuss his new memoir "Unplugged: Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu."
• Tom Freston on the Death of MTV's Cool Factor:
  “It like stumbled on the Internet. ... MTV was one of the networks that had, you know, sustained some of the most damage as its viewers were like, we were like the canary in the coal mine.” (07:32)
• MTV's transition from the epicenter of youth culture and music to reality TV filler is tied directly to the rise of the internet (“YouTube made the inherent problem for MTV’s original format... which was a linear television network... on demand is cooler than what you were doing, even though what you were doing for a long time was kind of cool and fun.” [36:14])

Iconic Moments

• The “Lost Weekend with Van Halen” Contest:
  Maureen and Tom relive the story of one of MTV’s earliest and wildest sweepstakes—a nerdy suburban kid plunged into rock debauchery, with little people as security guards backstage.
  • “You could never do this today. ... David Lee Roth would be cancelled for making fun of little people. ... That was giving the average suburban kid a real backstage pass.” – Maureen (12:48)

MTV Unplugged

• Nirvana's legendary unplugged show: Kurt Cobain thought he’d bombed due to the subdued audience, not realizing the performance’s cultural impact.

  • “To us, this was the way they wanted to express themselves... No one was going to stand up and say, 'Oh no, we’re not going to air that because it doesn’t meet our standards.'” – Tom (16:00)

• Tom’s favorite: LL Cool J’s Unplugged, “...it was a fusion of rock and hip hop and it was so electrifying. Everybody in the studio is punching the air. ... Mama gonna knock you out.” (17:01)

• Why Unplugged died: Corporate shift, music people left, budgets dried up—“They kind of walked away from music to the point where... they even took music off the bottom of the logo. They didn’t want anything to do with it.” (18:32)

MTV News

• Tom describes the birth of MTV News:
  “We could be a bigger place... if we were about some of the things, what the music was about, like fashion, news, sports... News was a key thing. ... We hired Kurt Loder and put in place a real news operation. ... We became a go-to place for news about popular culture.” (20:22)

Presidential Moments & Corporate Scandal

• Bill Clinton’s “boxers or briefs” exchange with the MTV audience, showing MTV's cultural reach.

  • “Mr. President, the world's dying to know, is it boxers or briefs?” – Classic clip [24:25]
  • “He had an hour of substantive conversations... But that’s the thing that the media seized on.” – Tom (24:28)

• Wild tales from MTV/Viacom’s corporate heyday, from record execs sending strippers to the office to Tom touring Bangkok sex clubs with Sumner Redstone.

  • “If a Page Six had gotten a hold of this ... what would have happened to Sumner? ... I don't know... it was at a different era.” (27:28)

The Loss of MTV’s Cool

• Maureen asks when MTV truly lost its cool:
  “Unless you’re like James Dean or Jimi Hendrix and you die really young, you’re always cool... I think when MTV began to lose its mojo was really with the birth of YouTube... The gatekeeper status that you had, the control over your audience, has disappeared...” – Tom (35:27)

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2. What Is “Cool,” Anyway? With Elle Hunt

[51:04–79:04]

The Academic Study of Cool

• Maureen introduces Elle Hunt, Guardian columnist, who explored a rigorous, multi-country academic study dissecting the meaning of “cool.”
• Study looked at over 10 countries and dozens of cultural perspectives; found remarkable agreement about key traits:
  • “The attributes [for cool] were extroverted, open, hedonistic, adventurous, autonomous, and powerful.” – Elle Hunt (56:37)

Key Insights and Disagreements

• “Trying to be cool will only make you further uncool. Cool people don’t seem to express emotion.” – Elle quoting the study, but Maureen disagrees:

  • “I think you have to be an original.” – Maureen (59:12)

• Elle raises the rarely acknowledged role of physical attractiveness: “Being physically attractive really helps [with] being cool... If you’re not either of those things, it’s an extra disadvantage you’ve got to overcome.” (61:02)

• The paradox: True cool is about authenticity, not effort.

  • “You need some mystique to be cool... Kate Moss learned very early on and has largely stuck to [that].” – Maureen (66:43)

Cool vs. Try-Hard & Case Studies

• Maureen and Elle dissect modern celebrities’ attempts and failures at cool:

  • Taylor Swift: “She cares way too much what others think... and she does try to be all things to all people and she's swatty.” – Maureen (63:28)

  • Adam Levine: “He just reeks profoundly of uncool... That stink is still on him.” – Maureen (64:53)

  • Timothée Chalamet: Maureen roast his high-strung, try-hard Hollywood marketing meeting: “This is the opposite of cool. ... Timothy Chalamet, there’s bigger stuff going on than your little stupid ping pong movie.” (70:12)

  • The Royals, Harry & Meghan:
    “Whenever you start a company based on yourself... you think you’re cool, which automatically makes you uncool.” – Maureen (71:19)
    “They are two of the most profoundly uncool people on the world stage.” – Maureen (73:22)

A Memorable Quote

• “Cool people don’t give a shit what you think about them, including whether you think they’re cool or not.” – Maureen (75:22)

Cool Is Un-definable But Recognizable

• “We can only measure if people are perceived as cool. Cool is not a static or definable... quality. ... That’s what makes people want to chase it or possess it—because you can’t really ever buy it.” – Elle (74:32)

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3. Audience Feedback Highlights

[41:21–48:42]

• Maureen reads and responds to humorous listener emails about A-Rod being “as fake as they come” [41:21], smoking in movies, and why Michelle Obama’s hair excuses for not swimming are “offensive” and “dangerous.”
• Zings Cheryl Hines for “dating Bobby while he was still married to Mary ... so fuck off. Okay? All the way off.” (47:34)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On the MTV Awards’ fall:
  “It didn’t really land in the culture the way, I mean, it used to... You had to watch it live. You never knew what was going to happen.” – Maureen (08:31)
• On the death of creativity in legacy media:
  “Where the focus is not so much on creativity, but on cost cutting, data, and a lot of things that, you know, we didn’t have to deal with too severely when the business was ascendant.” – Tom Freston (34:04)
• On the myth of “cool people are always good”:
  “I don’t think the two have anything to do with each other.” – Maureen (54:50)
• On Taylor Swift:
  “She cares way too much what other people think and she does try to be all things to all people.” – Maureen (63:28)
• On the modern impossibility of celebrity cool:
  “It’s much harder in some ways to be cool in this time because celebrities... are expected to be so visible on social media... It’s very hard to retain that sense of mystery.” – Elle (65:48)
• On “coolness” as a paradox:
  “You know it when you see it, but it’s very hard to actually define or imitate.” – Elle (73:22)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 06:25 – Tom Freston joins to discuss MTV’s history and influence
• 10:17 – “Lost Weekend with Van Halen” story
• 14:05 – Nirvana’s Unplugged taping and cultural impact
• 20:15 – The invention and legacy of MTV News
• 24:25 – The Bill Clinton “boxers or briefs” moment
• 27:28 – Scandalous corporate tales, including Bangkok sex clubs
• 35:27 – When MTV finally lost “cool” (YouTube effect)
• 51:04 – Elle Hunt on the science of cool, “Can I Learn To Be Cool?”
• 56:37 – Cool’s six core attributes (from the global study)
• 63:28 – Taylor Swift & Adam Levine dissected
• 70:12 – Timothée Chalamet’s “cringe” marketing Zoom
• 73:19 – Meghan & Harry: Why “trying to be cool” fails

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Tone and Language

• Maureen’s tone is witty, bracingly honest, and occasionally acerbic.
• The show is irreverent, skeptical, and direct (“...so fuck off. Okay? All the way off.”).
• Guests match Maureen's intellectual and humorous vibe, leaning conversational and sharp.
• Heavy mix of personal anecdote, cultural critique, and pop psychological analysis.

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Takeaways

• MTV’s “cool” was built on risk-taking, music culture, and breaking rules—a magic lost to corporatization, the digital revolution, and safe, sanitized reality TV.
• Cool can't be bought, manufactured, or studied into existence; authentic originality, autonomy, and a dash of rebellion are universally recognized components.
• Celebrities who try the hardest to appear cool (Taylor Swift, Timothée Chalamet, Adam Levine, Meghan Markle) are often the ones who miss the mark, underlining the paradox of cool: it’s only yours if you don’t declare it.
• Even as “cool” is picked apart by academics and culture writers, its very essence remains elusive, contextual, and eternally subjective.

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Suggested Listening

If you want a crash course in pop culture’s shifting sense of “cool”—with plenty of sharp jokes and insider storytelling—this is a must-listen.

Transcript

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[Tom Freston]

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[Maureen Callahan]

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[Maureen Callahan]

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[Tom Freston]

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[Tom Freston]

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[Elle Hunt]

Wow.

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[Maureen Callahan]

Hello and welcome to the Nerve at Night. I am your host Maureen Callahan. We have an incredible show for you today. We've got two really intriguing, fascinating guests. We are going to be talking first to Tom Freston, who ran MTV for years when MTV really mattered and dominated the conversation. He was like the big, big guy there when I worked there, which was around 89 to like 92, 93.

So I'm really, really fascinated to talk to him about his new memoir. It's called Unplugged Adventures from MTV to Timbuk. And in honor of Tom, I'm wearing my 1984 Van Halen tour T shirt. My favorite Van Halen of all, with like the smoking baby. Because we're going to talk about one of MTV's earliest fan contest which, which was called Winna. It was called Lost Weekend with Van Halen. And this was when David Lee Roth was in Van Halen and they were touring with like little people as like their security guards. It was like Van Halen at its at their peak. And and so the guy who won the contest was like this really nerdy guy from like, like a really small town. And like he couldn't believe like he was back. Like the cameras were following this whole weekend. He couldn't believe he was backstage like a big Van Halen arena show and he had his friend with him and it was so cute because like he, he looked a little scared and he should have been. And they, the band got this kid. So I mean he was like legal, I'm sure, but they got him. So like by the end of the end of the show, they're taking him backstage they're like, in the bowels of the. Of the arena and, like, this kid is, like, zonking himself into, like, concrete walls and, like, David Lee Ross trying to, like, keep him upright while, like, he's trying to usher in the, like, the. The little guys who are in, like, the. Their karate, like, outfits with, like, you know, I forget what they're called. Kimono, like, whatever it's called. I'm sorry, I'm forgetting what it's called. And they have, like, these sunglasses on and these, like, headbands. Like, they look like mini, like, karate again. You couldn't get away with it today. It's like this close to Spinal Tap adjacent. You know what I mean? It really. It's like to die. So, anyway, we've got a lot to talk to Tom about, and then we're going to get into your feedback. It's amazing. Your feedback is so good. And then I read this piece in the Guardian and I shot it over to producer Marlena, and I was like, can we please book this woman, this journalist named EL Hunt, who. Who read a study which I then quickly downloaded. There was you guys. An academic study, I kid you not, written by three. It was. It's three different academics at three different universities, all investigating the question, what makes people cool? And can people learn how to be cool? Like, if you're uncool, can you get cool? And is there, like, a formula you can study? You know? And so she wrote this piece for the Guardian called, like, can I learn to be cool? And it was so funny and clever. And so she's going to join and we're going to talk about cool people throughout, like, you know, modern culture, modern Western culture, and, like, the old, like, the people who've kept cool forever and people who, like celebrities who. Who are really famous, people who, like, you can tell, like, are really deeply uncool but are, like, desperate for all of us to think they're cool. It's going to be such a fun conversation. I loved it. I love. I. It's going to be great. You're going to love it. And then.

We'Ve got. We've got teases to some more interesting stuff coming up at the Nerve. Are you ready? Are you ready? Let's go.

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Joining us here at the Nerve is Tom Freston. Tom is the co founder of mtv. He ran it when it mattered. He is also the former CEO of Viacom where he oversaw Paramount Pictures as well as Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and more. He currently serves as board chair of the One Campus campaign and anti poverty advocacy organization focusing on Africa. He is a board member for many other projects including Imagine Entertainment. Tom, welcome to the Nerve.

[Tom Freston]

Hey Maureen, how you doing?

[Maureen Callahan]

I'm good. How are you doing? Where are you coming to us from?

[Tom Freston]

I'm in New York City.

[Maureen Callahan]

Wonderful. Congratulations on the book. I have my copy here, all marked up. Incredibly readable. What a life, what a life you have had. I want to start with like the big question and I don't know how much of a bite sized answer you can give, but I'm gonna ask for one. MTV once not only dominated the culture, drove it, defined it. What happened?

[Tom Freston]

It like stumbled on the Internet. What happened? I mean, that was one of the main reasons when the Internet came along and you know, in the early 2000s and had some distribution, it was, and it was easy to watch videos on the Internet. It was more difficult, it was easier for someone if they wanted to see say a nirvana clip to get it on any number of other sources on demand on the Internet, then wait for it to come around on a linear TV channel that MTV was at that point and still is. So that was a big, that blew a big hole in the business model. And you know, as the digital world gradually kind of decimated the legacy media companies, MTV was one of the networks that had, you know, sustained some of the most damage as its viewers were like, we were like the canary in the coal Mine, we tried to compensate for that. And I left the company before that really became a full blown issue. But MTV doesn't even play music anymore.

[Maureen Callahan]

I know, I know. You know, they just aired the awards on CBS and it was almost like it. Even though, you know, under Ellison they're trying to make it like event tv. It didn't really land in the culture the way, I mean it used to, it used to be the biggest, one of the biggest award shows going. It was must see tv. You had to watch it live. You never knew what was going to happen.

[Tom Freston]

That was, that was it. It was our biggest franchise. I mean it was very profitable. It was fun. Everybody from all corners of the culture would kind of come and show up and you didn't know what was going to happen. But you know, in the, in the, in the ensuing years, Look, I left 20 years ago and they have not put any equity or muscle or money into it. All the people who were there, who were, you know, music fanatics kind of left the building and they were replaced by more traditional, I'd say, you know, Hollywood type producers. And it's been a repository for like B level reality shows.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, when I was lucky enough to work there, it really was, it still had that rock and roll feeling. It wasn't totally corporatized yet, it was heading that way, but everything was shot at that little studio over on 10th Avenue, National. And it was very, it just, it was, it was a. Everybody who worked there loved music, loved rock and roll, like lived and breathed it and you could see it reflected in the programming. I want to start with you with one of, I think one of the most brilliant things a very young MTV ever did. You could never do it today because has demystified so much of this stuff. It was a competition for an MTV viewer to win a. Lost again. This is back when rock and roll was dangerous. When rock stars were dangerous. LOST Weekend with Van Halen get ready.

[Tom Freston]

For the MTV Lost Weekend with Van Halen. Do you have the guts to enter this contest? Destination unknown. You'll have no idea where you are. You'll have no idea where you're going.

[Maureen Callahan]

And when you, you look at this kid who won, I mean this kid looks like a runt of the litter, deer in the headlights, like can't believe he's going to be partying with David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen and is frankly a little afraid. Here he comes backstage, he's so drunk, he's like falling into the wall. And David Lee Roth is ushering him through. And wait till you see who he calls upon to get in the front of the frame. You could never do this today. Here we go.

They're backstage after the show.

[Tom Freston]

Here we go. Here we go. Back up. Back out of the background, please. Watch out.

[Maureen Callahan]

He's calling for the little guys.

Little men in, like, karate. They're like karate guys in sunglasses.

Okay, that's great. That's great. And on the back of the kimonos, it says Van Halen Security. Their security was little people. Tom, that. That promotional competition really kind of put MTV in a different sphere in the pop culture, I think.

[Tom Freston]

Well, we did a lot of those. We called them image contests. And that was, you know, people actually had to send in an entry. I mean, we had an office that would just be stuffed with, you know, million postcards that we put in duffel bags. And to pick the winner, someone had to kind of crawl in and pull one out. But at the end of that promotion, which was one of our most. And we thought, you know, any radio station could give away tickets or, you know, tour jackets, but let's give away some fantasy prize that, you know, everyone wants to go backstage and hang out with a band. Everyone wants to fly in a private jet. So we would do that type of thing, and they would get an amazing amount of press for us and, you know, kind of bolster our image as some, you know, big to do, even though we. We were still these little squirts. But at the end of that contest, they put a big pie in his face on stage. And the woman who was working with us, Donna Alda, she was standing next to the guy's friend who came with him. And after he. Now he's drunk and God knows what else, and he's covered with frosting. He says he's doing pretty good for a guy with a steel plate in his head.

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, my God. I mean, that anecdote is in the book. I know, but, like, you could never do that today. You would be. The legalities alone, the potential lawsuits you would open yourself up to. David Lee Roth would be canceled for making fun of little people. You know, the idea that. But that, too, is like, you know, that was giving the average suburban kid a real backstage pass. Like, here's what goes on. Here's what it's like to be backstage at a huge rock and roll arena show.

[Tom Freston]

What years were you at MTV?

[Maureen Callahan]

I was there, like, 89 to 92, maybe 93.

[Tom Freston]

Those are good years.

[Maureen Callahan]

Great years. Great years.

[Tom Freston]

You're in our large alumni association among the large alumni.

[Maureen Callahan]

And, yeah, I left right when.

TRL was kind of aborting. It was like the boy bands were kind of moving in and Kurt had died. I want to talk to you about. We're going to play this little clip. I think this is Amy Finnerty, who was a big deal at MTV for a while, talking about the filming of Nirvana Unplugged, which was probably, I think, the biggest Unplugged ever done. And Kurt thinking he really had.

Delivered a terrible performance and that he had just lost the audience. Here we go. After the show, Kurt was in kind of a weird mood. So I asked him, what's up? He was like, I think it was bad. I think that the show was really bad. I don't think I was very good. And I said, I think that you're wrong. I think that it was stunning. And he said, people weren't clapping very much. I think that they were really just so taken by what was going on, and they were so taken by the performance that they weren't.

They weren't going to clap like that. I also said, I think that people were sort of stunned kind of to be that close to the band, because in the general venues, people weren't able to be that close to the band. And it was such an intimate setting. Tom, were you there for that performance? That was the performance everybody wanted to be at mtv.

Yeah. So you weren't there three or four.

[Tom Freston]

Months afterwards he died.

[Maureen Callahan]

Three or four months after he died. Now, what was the conversation up in the. In the C Suites when you guys got the footage of that Unplugged? Because Nirvana really swerved there. That was unlike anything they'd ever done.

[Tom Freston]

And.

[Maureen Callahan]

And it turned out to be, again, I think, the greatest Unplugged ever. Was there trepidation at all among some executives about how this would play?

[Tom Freston]

No. Why would there have been?

[Maureen Callahan]

Just because it was so. It was somber, it was subdued, it was melancholic. It felt strangely, a bit adult, you know, And. And there was a lot of. You could feel the sadness around Kurt in that performance.

[Tom Freston]

Yeah. I don't think anyone ever thought that where that sadness was going to ultimately lead.

[Maureen Callahan]

I don't think so either.

[Tom Freston]

I mean, this was. To us, this was the way they wanted to express themselves in their Unplugged, which was, you know, an unelectrified, stripped down version. And no one was going to stand up and say, oh, no, we're not going to air that because it doesn't meet our standards. This is what.

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, I don't Think. No, no, no. I don't think they would have not aired it. I just meant was there any. Was there an executive who was like, what are. Like, this is like New Coke vs Original Coke. What are they doing?

[Tom Freston]

You know, they might have been. I wasn't aware of it, but someone must have. Everyone someone must have had that opinion because it was notable.

[Maureen Callahan]

It was notable.

[Tom Freston]

I don't know, you know, I mean, he was kind of in a slowed down groove.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yeah, yeah. And then when I think about the other Unplugs, that just really kind of reshaped the way you would ever perceive an artist. I think LL Cool J's really helped with his career resurgence.

[Tom Freston]

That was my favorite Unplugged of all.

[Maureen Callahan]

Was it?

[Tom Freston]

Yes.

[Maureen Callahan]

Tell me why.

[Tom Freston]

Well, it was just so. It was like a fusion of rock and hip hop and it was so electrifying. Everybody was just like, everybody in the studios is punching the air. I mean, that was LL Cool J in a way, like people had never seen him before.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yes.

[Tom Freston]

And it did sort of reinvent his. His sort of image and, you know, mama gonna knock you out. Yeah, it was great.

[Maureen Callahan]

It was incredible. He went from sort of being like a bit of a. Of a punchline in the hip hop community to like a real, real respected, like, elder statesman who knew what he was doing. Jay Z's Unplugged. Same for me. Like, really, I. I was already a fan, but just in terms of the musicality of it and the risks that he took. Tom, what happened to Unplugged? Why did that franchise sort of fizzle away and. And die?

[Tom Freston]

I don't know. You know, they all died and fizzled away. I mean, I would have cond. There's so many bands today, you'd want to do an unream. Why don't have one with Sabrina Carpenter? All kinds of people, but they don't. They didn't want to put any money into mtv, as you said, all the music people who really gave the place its soul and its vibe had left or gotten fired, and there was no one there advocating for, let's do some great music program. Yeah, let's do the Video Music Awards. And that rolls around once a year. But that was about it. We would be. They would be playing reality shows. They didn't see the value in it. There's still, I don't know how many Unplugged episodes, but there's loads of them in the library and they're all, you know, R.E.M. there's so many great ones. Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney. I go back to the rock pantheon, people, they all did americlapton.

But you know, they kind of walked away from music to the point where, as I said, they even took music off the bottom of the logo. They didn't want anything to do with it.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yes, you're so. Yeah, I didn't even notice that. But you're so right. And now it's. It's like the legacy what MTV rot. You know, we get like American Idol and the Voice and, and like primetime entertainments that just feel like the opposite of really like there very little danger left in popular music today. I think very few performers who feel dangerous.

[Tom Freston]

Yeah, I think that's an understatement. It's all, you know, it's gone from artists who would write their own songs to sort of concoctions that are handed down by writers. It's more like some of the music from the 50s and the early 60s before the Beatles came around, you know, it was all manufactured pop music. I mean, there's exceptions, of course, and there is a lot of good music around, around the edges. But for most of the mainstream pop, I don't know, I don't, I don't know that has lasting value. It's a little out of my range right now, but I don't see, I don't see any danger, that's for sure. Although I did see Eminem just put out a pretty cool clip, sort of an anti Trump thing that had a bit of anger in it. And I've been wondering where, where are all the artists in this era right now, you know, talking about politics or anything.

[Maureen Callahan]

It's so true. It's so true. I want to talk to you a bit about some of the original programming MTV developed that was really brilliant. First, the 1987 founding of MTV News.

Talk to me a bit about how that took shape and what it was conceptualized as well.

[Tom Freston]

We figured like by 86, 87 now the bloom was a little bit off the rose for just running music videos back to back in, in hours. And we kind of went away and came back and said, you know, we could be a bigger place, we could have a stronger footing if we were about some of the things, what the music was about, like fashion, news, sports, in a way.

Film. And what if we devoted like 10% of our music hours? There's 168 hours a week to doing these things. It would make us a bigger place and it would allow us to coast a little better in those periods when the vitality of the music business Wasn't so strong. And news was a key thing. I mean we knew we did news in the very beginning, but it wasn't really substantial. I mean it wasn't until he like then the era you got there. We got. We hired Kurt Loder. We hired. It wasn't just VJ throwing out tour dates for, you know, David Bowie or something. We hired Kurt Loder and put in place a real news operation. And they were fantastic. We, we put this thing together. Besides the regular hourly updates, there was the Week in Rock.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yes, the Week in Rock.

[Tom Freston]

Used to watch. I couldn't wait to see it every week because it really telescoped down what was going on. And we'd aired a few times during the week. So, so news. We became a go to place for news about popular culture. And that was the start of it. And we were. Everyone was really proud of.

[Maureen Callahan]

Was incredible. It was so incredible. And you know, that was the place.

[Tom Freston]

You went for 25 years of MTV News has been sitting somewhere in a closet that, you know, you could, you could find a lot of good things in there.

[Maureen Callahan]

What do you think is going to happen with all that stuff? Tom, I heard you talking a little bit about, you know, sort of reviving it as kind of a YouTube entity. What do you think they're going to do with this Paramount Skydance merger and all of these gems sitting in a library somewhere?

[Tom Freston]

You know, I think there's an opportunity for it to be reimagined and get some music people in there, give it a little bit of money, put the music television, sew that back on the bottom of the logo. So many people today are sort of anesthetized with all this algorithm like music where you're in a lane and you kind of stay in a lane because it's comfortable for you. One of the things about MTV and his prime was music from a lot of different genres across the pop and rock spectrum. And there may be. And there's no music conversation anymore. There's no news. I mean there's nothing. There's no place for real fans of music to get together. So maybe there's a more curated type of things with some personalities that allow people to get access to things on demand that can be done. And I mean, let's say take 20, 20, 30 year olds and put them in a room with somebody brilliant and see what they can come up with. As for ideas for this to reimagine it because it has a library right now, I think the average age is. You're gonna laugh, 57, 54 of an MTV viewer. Yes.

[Maureen Callahan]

And they're watching basically versions of Road Rules.

[Tom Freston]

Yeah.

[Maureen Callahan]

The challenge ridiculousness, which was just shows I've really never, never seen. I also wanted to talk to you about again, one of the major cultural moments. It cannot be overstated how much MTV really drove the national conversation in so many ways. Bill Clinton running for President, early 90s, the 92 election, and MTV gets involved with choose or Lose, Rock the Vote. He comes back to MTV a few years later and answers this question, which went down as one of the. Before there were. There were memes. This was a meme in the 90s, this question. We're going to take a look. Mr. President, the world's dying to know, is it boxers or briefs?

[Tom Freston]

Usually brief.

I can't believe she did that.

Yeah, I remember that. It was interesting. I mean, he had an hour of substantive conversations about, you know, student loans and things like that. But that's the thing that the media seized on, you know, and, you know, it was meant as fun and, you know, sort of harmless, but. Yeah.

[Maureen Callahan]

An American president had never been asked a question like that before in a forum like that before. And. And he answered it like a good sport. He didn't say, how dare you? That's below the dignity of the office. I mean, you know, okay, I gotta ask you about this. There's this passage in your book. I'm reading it, and I'm like, my jaw's on the floor. Now. You are an adventurer. It's. The stories are legion. In your book Unplugged, you write about taking Sumner Redstone on a tour of sex clubs in Thailand. And you write, if there were to be a greatest hits reel of Sumner Redstone images inside my head, this one would be front and center. Here he was like a deer in the headlights, mouth slightly agape, moving slowly into the crowd for an even better look. The rest of the crowd couldn't care less about the acrobats fucking on a running motorcycle just over their head. Finally, he leaned their heads. He leaned into me and said with great enthusiasm, quote, I've never seen anyone fucking before. Oh, God. Was the man happy. His smile was wide. He was filled with joy. And you ask, haven't you been to an orgy or anything?

[Tom Freston]

I was kidding with him. Yeah. But that's what he said to me. He had never any. I. I think I said the end of that chapter. I said, maybe this launched him into a life of commercial sex. That's how he, you know, I don't know. This was the first time but he made it sound like that he had never seen anybody having sex before. And, you know, the commercial said, it's not really my thing, going to sex clubs in Bangkok.

[Maureen Callahan]

Really, Tom, because you went to, like, three and, like, three pages, there's, like. There's a place called Supergirls that you went to.

[Tom Freston]

Well, I had to do it. Some advance work, because I didn't. I got some people to kind of show me around. He wanted to see. I didn't know my way around, so I did got it. Find a couple places that would be okay for him. I wanted to take him over on a business trip, which we did do some of, but he was really. He wanted to go to Bangkok. Of all the place. I said, we go to Singapore, we can go to Shanghai, we can go to Taipei. But he wanted to go to Bangkok. I said, we don't really do any business in Thailand right now, but he wanted to go. And, you know, this was one of the major reasons. He had never really been to Asia before. And I really. I wanted him to see the optimism there because we were rolling out in Asia in a big way, and I want him to get excited about our business. And this was, like, something he wanted to do. And he did a lot of that, you know, in his later years. Well, after I left him.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. Like, at that time, if this story, if, like, a Page Six had gotten a hold of this, I mean, what would have happened to Sumner as, like, the owner of Viacom? Anything?

[Tom Freston]

I don't know. You know, it was also, like. It was at a different era. I don't know what would have happened. That was like, in the mid-90s.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yeah.

[Tom Freston]

I don't know. I mean, you know.

As it was.

[Maureen Callahan]

The world was scandalized to learn he was living with two women. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

[Tom Freston]

I mean, people would go to strip clubs and so forth, and. But, I mean, he was summoned to Redstone. I don't know if he would have. I don't. I don't really. I can't answer that. I don't know.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you also write about. In the early, early days of mtv, this was long before I ever got there, but there were, like, record label executives who were sending, like, strippers up over to the office. And, like, you know, it was sort of. It was just like a wild rock and roll party all the time. Like, drugs in the office, people, you know, having sex on other people's desks, you know, superiors, having sex with underlings. All the things it feels Like a kind of. You write about it in a kind of almost Mad Men kind of way. Like a bygone era that. Never to be seen again.

[Tom Freston]

Yeah, I mean, it wasn't that crazy all the time. There were instances where things happened. I mean, I mean, maybe in all those years, two strippers got sent over for somebody's birthday party. So, you know, and it's not like they got completely naked or anything. I wasn't even there to see it.

And then there was a rumor about somebody having sex with somebody in. In his office. But the guy who they were talking about never let on that that was true. So it was sort of myth that led. A myth that floated through the office, you know, like, oh, it's so wild that people are doing this, and who knows if it was true or untrue. But, you know, it was. It was a rock and roll time. It was a different era, and.

People really worked hard. That was the main thing I remember.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yeah, they did. Towards the end of your tenure, you write about getting in a fight with Sumner Redstone over his desire to fire Tom Cruise from the Mission Impossible franchise. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because that just sounds like what a mistake that would have been. What was animating Sumner in his desire to fire Tom Cruise?

[Tom Freston]

Well, this was Mission Impossible 3 came out, the third franchise which was well reviewed. Better reviewed than, you know, this one before it. It's a good movie, but it had, you know, the box office was less than the one before it, and it wasn't that much as it was still bringing in a couple hundred million dollars. And Sumner's wife had complained that maybe the reason is, is that Tom Cruise's views. I mean, he went on Oprah's couch and jumped up and down and he attacked the shields. Because what he did on the Today show and.

[Maureen Callahan]

Right.

[Tom Freston]

Scientology beliefs were affecting his visibility or viability as a movie star.

[Maureen Callahan]

Right.

[Tom Freston]

Sumner, you know, he was hoping this thing was going to be a big hit and move the stock price. It didn't happen. So he called over a Wall Street Journal. You know, we weren't doing anything about it in his mind. I mean, Tom Cruise was the biggest defender of our company, and he was the biggest franchise in the whole library at Paramount. He said he was going to fire Tom Cruise not from the movie, which was May. He's going to fire him from Viacom. I pointed out to him that Tom Cruise didn't really work for Viacom, so that really wasn't going to work. You can't fire a guy who doesn't work for you. You could say you don't want him in any further movies, but none of that ever happened. They made up at the end of the day, but it was just a crazy. And I had no idea this was coming. Brad Gray, who ran the studio, had no idea it was coming. He just went out on his lawn in Beverly park and made this announcement. And, you know, I thought it was an insult to Tom Cruise and it was unnecessary. And it wasn't the way you want people to think that a certain studio or company is going to treat their biggest movie stars.

[Maureen Callahan]

Exactly. Now towards. When your time at MTV came to an end, you had no shortage of heavy hitters calling you. You had Bono calling you to say, hey, why don't you come run one for me? You had Oprah Winfrey looking to you to head up, own her, then network. What was your headspace like at that time? I can only. I can't imagine actually how discombobulating and unmooring it must be to have had such a big job for so long and be driving the culture and then suddenly not be doing it anymore.

[Tom Freston]

Well, it wasn't like totally unexpected. I didn't think it was going to happen that soon. I mean, he had fired both of my predecessors in the CEO job, so I knew when I took the job I'd be fired sooner or later. It just happened a little sooner than I thought. And yeah, I was depressed and it was a shock to me. I should have been more aware. Your radar kind of dims a bit. And while I thought we were doing okay, we're on the cusp of trying to reinvent ourselves for the digital age. This was now 2006.

And unlike I wasn't that my identity was never that tied up in my job. I loved that job. It was all the things I loved in one place. And I thought, I've had other failures in my life. And I came to think that, you know, I'll do something else. It'll be another chapter. I kind of did it. I proved myself. Maybe I had nothing left to prove there. I'll miss all those people. I love the people there. And, you know, other things happened, but I didn't want to be. I felt I didn't want to take a job as a CEO of another company. There was this pride of authorship with TV networks. I mean, we built it from the ground up. I was very emotionally attached to it. I didn't want to be grafted on top of a company like, say, Yahoo. I mean, I didn't really have any connection to it. So I thought maybe in this stage of my life, this chapter, I'd work with people that I liked on projects that I liked and believed in and maybe I could do some good, give back a little bit. I'd have been very fortunate. I mean, at that point in time I was 60, so I was ready for a turn of the screw. And as it turns out, it was probably a good time to leave because that was sort of peak of the television revolution. The digital revolution was really supplanting it. And we would watch now for the last 20 years, the gradual decimation of the legacy media companies, you know.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yeah.

[Tom Freston]

More than others. So where, where the focus is not so much on creativity, but on cost cutting, you know, data and a lot of things that, you know, we didn't have to deal with too severely when. When the business was ascendant.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yeah. And you know, the other thing that is sort of killing legacy media though is because in the digital lane, anybody can. I mean, yours truly is an example. I can just get on a camera and have a microphone and for next to nothing talk to a group of people and there you go. And I don't have to run my editorial decision making process through layers and layers of corporate executives who may or may not take issue for ad reasons or otherwise. But my last question to you, Tom, is you write in the book about this is something that fascinates me. You know, having this very acute awareness that the thing that differentiated MTV was its coolness. And that coolness was going to be in finite supply and that at some point it was going to become too big of an entity to maintain cool and it would have to pivot in some way. When would you pinpoint like the moment that MTV lost its cool?

[Tom Freston]

Well, I don't think while I was there that ever totally lost at school. And we knew that, you know, unless you're like James Dean or Jimi Hendrix and you die really young, you're always cool if you want to stay cool, which is sort of an inferior descriptor of things. You had to sort of reinvent yourself. We prided ourselves. We got to reinvent ourselves every four or five years because there's a group of people who were watching us who would be passing through and soon they wouldn't be watching MTV anymore anyway. And that this new group had different likes and interests and we had to better cater to them and know what was in their world. So we tried at that. We failed at things. We were successful. I think when MTV began to lose its mojo was really with the birth of YouTube.

That was a short form thing. And it wasn't just that because we were sort of the king of short form media. MTV and VH1 and CMT, we were sort of the. But it was also the beginning of a new era, a new paradigm where people like yourself, I mean on YouTube people could upload video, anybody, they could comment on it, they could share it. And it kind of meant that the gatekeeper status that you had the control over your audience has disappeared. You're now going to be attacked by thousands of little things coming at you and that are available on demand that people are more interested in. And it's cooler than what you were doing, even though what you were doing for a long time was, was kind of cool and fun and it had to do with music. And you know, you could always kind of stay a bit cool by always having the new crop of music. So it was really YouTube and the Internet made the inherent problem for MTV's original, you know, kind of format, which was a linear television network that was available on cable or satellite, that you really had no control over yourself. You couldn't like or comment. You know, we had trl but you know, that was like just like a top 40 call in show. It was nothing like what you have now. You know, all these people watching you now can directly be in touch with you and can share you with their friends and you know, it's a whole much more ambitious and you know, sort of operation.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yeah, it's just been fascinating speaking to you. Tom. Congratulations on your book and for really, you know, capturing a really particular special time in the culture and beyond. It's a. It's a personal memoir, it's a business book and it's a cultural document as well. It is Unplugged by Tom Fruston. Thank you so much for coming on the Nerve.

[Tom Freston]

Thank you. Nice to see you.

[Maureen Callahan]

Nice to see you.

[Tom Freston]

Okay, bye. Bye.

[Maureen Callahan]

Bye. And that's it. That's. We are going to.

Take a quick break and then we are going to be back with your feedback and a conversation with. I was so excited to. To get this writer on the Nerve to talk about. She wrote a piece for the Guardian off of a recent academic study that I kid you not, seeks to identify and define what is cool and then how non cool people can get cool if they can. And she took this on as a personal challenge and wrote a super funny essay about trying to become cool for the Guardian. So that will be a little bit later on the Nerve See you back here in a minute.

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[Elle Hunt]

Go ahead.

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[Maureen Callahan]

Welcome back. Now before we get into your emails, I just want to say that I got a ton of response from you guys regarding Brief Encounter. Some of you were shocked. I had never seen it before. Listen, we all have gaps, okay? But the point is I saw it and I loved it. And it's one of those films I know I'm going to watch and re re watch. And I love oh by the way, Michael C. My pal Michael C. My email Pal over in the UK emailed me and he was like, I can't believe you've never seen that movie because he and I have been talking about Noel Coward. But I love that. We all love old movies. I just love it. Okay, so anyway, here we go. Your emails. A rod to the conversation. Bill and I. Bill from Brooklyn and I had taken that guy down. Okay. Hi Maureen, I am so happy that you are exposing Alex Rodriguez. I will not use your name as asked. I live in a small town in Minnesota. Each year the community raises funds for youth area sports by holding a dinner and auction with a celebrity guest. This year's celebrity being Alex Rodriguez. At the meet and greet, he was completely aloof. He walked around and just smiled as his handler introduced him to everyone. He did not shake hands with anyone, all of whom were big donors. Just kept them folded the entire time in front of him and half smiled. The only pleasant person was one of his female staff members who would say thank you to everyone after he walked by. I am sure she was embarrassed by his behavior. The man treated everyone like they were low class and he couldn't wait to get out of town fast enough. This guy is as fake as they come, but will use his poor fatherless upbringing. I love it. A savage troublemaker when he needs to score points with the crowd. Meanwhile he can't even bring himself to converse or shake hands with anyone who be lower than he is or who he thinks. You know what I'm saying? Troublemaker. Happy to see this one go to the wood chipper. You and me both. Dear Maureen, I'm obsessed with your pearl rings. Where can I buy my own? This big chunky one I think is Kenneth J. Lane. I wrote about it on the substack. You guys should definitely subscribe. Go to ebay. You'll find a bunch. Okay. Hi Ms. Morine. I am a black woman who digs your show. Subject Header Michelle O's lame excuse not to swim. This troublemaker. I am offended that Michelle Obama uses her hair drama as an excuse not to swim. I was taught to swim by Navy SEAL guys and Coast Guard. Coast guard women. In 1980, I became a swim instructor slash lifeguard for 44 years. I specialize in. Oh, this is so fascinating. I guess she teaches water traumatized children and adults. This troublemaker says, rightly, swimming is a life skill. Drowning doesn't give a shit what your hair issues are. Michelle. Oh, concern for hair has disproportionately drowned many black girls and women. I know from spending hours she knows she's saying I know this from spending hours rescuing non swimmers trying to keep their hair dry. Dear Maureen, sorry I got a little out of control there. This is a three pronged from troublemaker. Victoria, tell troublemakers not to buy Michelle's books. How dare she talk down to white people. What about black women wearing blonde hair? Isn't that racist? Good question. Number two, as a film critic, let me tell you that smoking is back. You are so right. Troublemaker Leo, Julia, etc. Et cetera. Every major movie has stars smoking. You know who smoked to in the Materialists. Overrated. Dakota Johnson smoked without any commentary. I don't, I don't like it. And I will tell you something. I smoked for years and I loved smoking so much I thought I would never be able to quit. And I was able to quit and I'm so glad I did. And you know my worst stress dreams ever are like I'm having a nightmare. I know it's a nightmare because like I've had like one cigarette and then in the dream I hate myself and I'm like why would I do that to myself ever, ever, ever? Anyway, you're so right, Victoria. And number three, Christie starring Sydney Sweeney is a fabulous film. Sweeney refuses to keep doing rom coms and is doing character acting now, not a movie star performance. The problem is I think she's right about this. The studio did absolutely no publicity. It flew by high. Maureen, Oprah is coming down to my neck of the woods. New Zealand. Hi, Paul from New Zealand. You want to be our boots on the ground and go to this. Get in touch for a sit down interview and to.

I love you troublemakers and to tell everyone how to live their lives. Who better? Who better? Apparently the subject is quote, the power of authenticity rolling around with our platonic friend Gail, you know what's up and quote, the necessity of resilience. Perhaps not surprisingly, at up to $400 plus per ticket. The great unwashed aren't exactly queuing up. Originally they had Oprah at a 10,000 seat stadium. Now it's been moved to a much cozier 2000 seat hall. It seems as you've said for some time, her stock is falling. Love your show. Mike from New Zealand. No relation to Paul, I think. Paul, you're famous. You're famous. The nerve is right on the money. We're right on the, on the, on the bone marrow and we're moving that needle. So troublemakers, keep it up. Okay? And finally this from a troublemaker whose email is Laurel K. Kinderforrescue.org. i think it's Cheryl Hines or one of her minions. Please double check your facts. Spelled F A X. This is terrible. You're already out.

[Tom Freston]

You're already.

[Maureen Callahan]

You're already sentenced to the wood chipper for this grammar. Regarding Cheryl Hines, you mentioned that she was dating Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. While he was married. I believe she dated him after the wife had passed. Ah, no, listen. Someone who literally wrote the effing book and had it legaled eight ways to Sunday, let me tell you, sister, AKA Cheryl, we all know you were dating Bobby while he was still married to Mary and she was out of her mind with grief and sorrow and he was squeezing her for everything. And draw. And you are out there in those mean streets of Westchester tweeting about how much Mary's kids loved you. So fuck off. Okay? All the way off. Keep writing me if you like. I got nothing but time to talk to the likes of you. Okay?

Other than that, email. All the other stuff was great, great, great, great. Keep it coming. Keep it coming. Email [e-mail] or DM me on Instagram at maureen callahanriter or henerveshow. Okay. Up next.

Can you be cool? Can you learn how to become cool? We're going to explore this. I love this question. I love this question. We will be back in a minute.

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[Elle Hunt]

Go ahead.

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[Maureen Callahan]

I've been so looking forward to this segment. I've wanted to talk to this writer since I read her incredibly funny, witty piece in the Guardian called Can I Learn to be Cool? Her name is Elle Hunt and she has written for the observer, the New York Times, gq, Vogue. Her work focuses on the intersection of psychology and culture. She writes a monthly column for the Guardian called why Am I Like this? This person feels so nerve. Right? So Elle recently wrote this piece in the Guardian off of a study. And we're going to show the study and get into the study that was conducted by no less than three academics at three different universities.

The subject of said study is Cool people.

Cool people. And the study is basically an attempt to break apart what makes somebody cool and whether cool is universally understood as the same thing across all cultures. And.

The chances that a deeply uncool person could maybe increase their cool factor even by a few margins. Welcome Elle from London. I understand you're joining us from London.

[Elle Hunt]

Yes, that's right. Thank you for having me.

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, we're so thrilled to be talking to you. Now, I have to ask you first about the headline of this very funny piece, Can I learn to be cool Even though I am garrulous. We know what that means. Very outgoing. Swatty. I don't know what swatty is. And wear no show socks, which I think are cool. I think no show socks are cool. But Elle, what's swatty? What does it mean?

[Elle Hunt]

I guess hard for me to think about what it be in Americanism, but it's someone who tries hard at school. Nerdy, but a little bit like a nerd.

[Maureen Callahan]

Like, okay, like you're bookwormy. You're not. Okay.

[Elle Hunt]

Yeah, no, you're right. That's not a great headline by my editors there.

[Maureen Callahan]

Well, so did you read the entire study? The 22 page study called Cool People?

[Elle Hunt]

Yeah, I took a lot of notes.

[Maureen Callahan]

So I'm gonna just read for the, for the audience the, the preamble to the study, which is a very, very, very serious study. I can. Al. Did you by any chance find out how much money they spent on this thing?

[Elle Hunt]

I don't know. I think their interest is purely academic.

[Maureen Callahan]

Right. But I mean, they did conduct like what sounds like anthropological research. They looked at Australia, Chile, China, mainland and Hong Kong, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Spain, South Africa. It goes on and on and on. America, of course, I think, birthplace of cool, if you ask me. Okay, this is what they say. What does it mean to be a cool person? Is being cool the same thing as being good? We'll get to that in one second. Do the attributes of cool people vary across cultures? We answer these questions by investigating. Okay, what did you make for me? I'm just going to start with what I found very strange and I'm going to venture a guess that the authors of this study are not cool people because they are hung up. This occurs in many, many passages of this 22 page study. They keep fixating on whether being cool is the same as being good. And I don't think the two have anything to do with each other.

[Elle Hunt]

I think that's an interesting point you've picked up there where my impression of why they had that in was to see if that they could highlight anything more specifically about what it is to be cool by comparing it with good. So I don't think that they necessarily thought that they were the same, but more in terms of looking at one favorable impression versus another.

[Maureen Callahan]

What do you think they mean by good? Do you think they mean like a fundamentally decent person or do you think they mean like good as in smart together?

I don't understand how good folds because I think if you ask most people, they'd be like, no, cool people are kind of dangerous and unpredictable and you don't really know where they're coming from. That's what makes them cool.

[Elle Hunt]

I reckon my sense again of it was that I suppose colloquially we have a very bad understanding of what cool is. That's what their sort of aim with the study was to kind of, can we put some parameters around it and actually drill down into it? But colloquially, I think a lot of people might use cool just to mean something they like, something they think is good. And I got the impression that they were trying to kind of like, if we can say what good people are like, then we can maybe say how cool people are different to them. But yeah, you're Right. Like that kind of tripped me up a little bit. Although it was interesting to see how the, you know, your impression is correct, there was no overlap between those two. Like, descriptive characteristics, like the traits that people eventually landed on to describe cool and good were not the same.

[Maureen Callahan]

So for your own experiment to see if you could become, quote, unquote, quote cool, will you tell our audience how you began this undertaking?

[Elle Hunt]

So I had read this study when it came out earlier in the year, and I found what the researchers also found very interesting was that although it was an enormous study, taking in lots of different countries, lots of people, lots of different cultures, the attributes that they all agreed upon that made someone come across as cool with the same and those attributes were extroverted, open, hedonistic, adventurous, autonomous and powerful. And I think what made everyone so excited about these findings, because they got a lot of press at the time, was that, you know, if it is as simple as just those six things, can you become more cool by becoming more open or, you know, being more extroverted? And so I wanted to try this out in my life because I, with a sort of generous view, I score about half of them where I'm not very hedonistic, I'm not very adventurous, and I don't really have any power beyond like occasional little articles on lifestyle topics. So I called up that author of the study and asked him about both the kind of to drill into those different traits and what they actually mean, and then also what he thought about whether someone could improve upon them. And going down that route was really interesting in terms of, yes, it does seem that people are lying on the idea that cool people to come across as cool because obviously we never really know, right? And we have different opinions that people who seem cool have those six traits. But you also need to have something extra and they also seem need to seem authentic to you, but you also can't be seen to be trying too hard. So it was really quite like, it's like a logic puzzle to be working out. And I, although I don't think I ended up becoming more cool, I did find it interesting.

[Maureen Callahan]

So I would like to go through some figures with you since they now the authors of this study, and I actually don't think they're wrong. They attribute the birth of cool, the word, the definition, the embodiment thereof, first emerged, they say, in African American and bohemian subcultures and collides with the rise of the 1960s counterculture. I would put it back as early as the 1920s. And I would put it Back to Prohibition speakeasies, gangsters, musicians, you know, the likes of Billie Holiday and then Miles Davis and then in the 60s, someone like Muhammad Ali. Now, all of those people have different talents and different.

Messaging, but they all were. I think. I think these guys missed something. Number one, I think you have to be an original.

[Elle Hunt]

Yeah.

[Maureen Callahan]

Right. And number two, so they wrote. They wrote this, and this is so. Excuse me. It's so funny to me in trying to diagram cool, by the way, they have like a whole. Oh, yeah, table. A chart. Hilarious. They wrote something I marked about. Where is it? Well, basically, like as you said, number one, trying to be cool will only make you further uncool. Cool people don't seem to express emotion. I disagree with that. What, besides autonomy is distinctly cool?

They don't. Oh, poised under pressure, rebellion, self confidence, spontaneity, hedonism, status, irony.

We expected that most of the attributes that differentiate cool from not cool people would also differentiate good from not good people. There it is again. Okay, so I'm going to start with someone in your. I think was the emblem of Cool Britannia and has maintained her cool for decades. Kate Moss.

[Elle Hunt]

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

[Maureen Callahan]

So, Elle, what do you think makes Kate, like, quintessentially forever cool?

[Elle Hunt]

Well, I suppose there's an element. One of the things, as you say, is like kind of seeming to be sort of on the fringe of society, whether that's explicitly countercultural or just, you know, kind of on the edge, happy, doing their own thing, an original kind of themselves. And I think Kate Moss is that she has a very indifferent kind of.

Attitude. Hedonism, I would say she's high on, despite being someone who's obviously got a big premium placed on her image. But then the other thing that I think the big failing of this study is, and I did sort of raise this with the researchers, is that being physically attractive really helps. Being with cool and a favorable impression, it's much easier to be perceived as cool, I think, if you are. Are physically beautiful and young and those. If you're not either of those things, it's an extra disadvantage you've got to overcome.

[Maureen Callahan]

Well, I would say. I think there are definite examples of people who maintain their cool into their more mature eras. And I'll say, number one, Marianne Faithful.

[Elle Hunt]

Well, once you have it, I don't think you lose it, but it's whether you're afforded it in the start, in the starting place.

[Maureen Callahan]

Right. Like Keith Richards. Still cool.

[Elle Hunt]

Yeah. One of the professors I interviewed, he said that if you've been cool for 10 years. You never lose it. That was one of his theories.

[Maureen Callahan]

The, the, the. One of the authors of the study. That was one of his theories.

[Elle Hunt]

Not the study. One of my other interviews in the, in the piece, but yeah.

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, and what was this person? An expert in? What were their credentials to talk about?

[Elle Hunt]

Professor of English at Tulane University and the right. Author of a book called the Origins of Cool and Post War America. And his name is Joel Dynastein and he's been teaching a course on the history of. For several years. I think 20 years.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yeah. Wow. So, yeah. And then you also referenced the Onion headline that said consumers spend $14 Trillion annually quote trying to look cool. Which is, which is really funny. It is a thing that people. So I want to look at some people in the culture who I think embody deeply uncool but try to emanate cool. Number one. This is going to be controversial and that's why I'm bringing her up. Taylor Swift. I've never seen a pop star of this magnitude completely unable to dance. Look at this, look at that. She is like gyrating in like a one legged sequined snake suit. I mean, she's hopeless. She's hopeless on stage. She has, I think, something, I think what stops her, number one, she cares way too much what other people think. And she does kind of try to be all things to all people and she's swatty.

[Elle Hunt]

I'd say she is swatty in the English. In the English sense of like really kind of trying to be the best and trying a bit hard. I also think she sort of turned her back on cool, though, in a way where it's like she wants, she wants to be relatable. And that's how she's gotten so big where. Whereas if you compare her with someone like Charlie xcx, she's sort of gotten bigger, but nowhere near as big as Taylor Swift by kind of giving the impression of that she doesn't care about success and has indeed been kind of slogging away for a really long time with less success.

[Maureen Callahan]

So superior songwriter, I would say.

[Elle Hunt]

Charlie, I'm not going to be. I'm not going to be commenting on that.

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, okay. Okay. Now here's a guy I'm kind of morbidly fascinated with his attempts. Attempts to be cool. And you can tell he was a nerd in high school and that stink is still on him. Adam Levine of Maroon 5, who then pivoted to being a judge on the Voice and he thought that getting like his arms, like just a sleeves of Tattoos and like buzzing his hair and getting on a motorbike would make him cool. And he just reeks profoundly of uncool.

[Elle Hunt]

Little bit of the try hard, isn't it? And I think it's a lot of the try hard, the posturing with the tattoos and the motorbike. It's like if you need to lean on those props, it's not very original and it maybe even is kind of counterproductive by pointing that or suggesting you feel a kind of insecurity. That is not cool.

[Maureen Callahan]

Right. Whereas if you look at, I think the guys he's trying to kind of emulate with this stuff are the Steve McQueen's, the Paul Newmans, the guys who really were into James Dean, you know, racing real sports cars. But it was, it seemed a very natural outgrowth of their, of their true interests, of who they really were. These were guys who, whether or not they did seemed, seemed to know who they were. I get from Adam Levine, I don't think he knows who he is, and I think you need that to be cool.

[Elle Hunt]

Also, I remember some difficulties with his relationships that blew up and kind of scandal that suggests that maybe he doesn't know who he is either. But I think it also raises a point where it's much harder in some ways to be cool in this time because celebrities or people of public profile are expected to be so visible on social media. And part of the reason we have this image of James Dean, Paul Newman being so cool is that the images that we saw of them were confined and limited and approved. And we didn't see their text messages and we didn't see them go live on Instagram to promote their latest kind of offering. And I think that's something which was quite interesting to get to the end of my reporting with. It's like we expect so much of our public figures, and it's very hard to retain that sense of mystery while also being visible and popular enough for us to know about them. Yes.

[Maureen Callahan]

I think you also, you need some mystique to be cool. And this is what Kate Moss learned very early on and has largely stuck to. You rarely see her give an interview. And even at the height of the Cocaine Kate scandal, which was like shocking a supermodel going out with a rock star caught doing cocaine in the recording studio.

[Elle Hunt]

Wow.

[Maureen Callahan]

You know, so she never, she never apologized. You know, in America, her equivalent would have gone and sat down with like, Oprah or somebody and wept and been like, I don't know what came over me. Please forgive me. And cocaine and gate cocaine. Kate was like, fuck that. Like, I'll go to rehab, but that's as far as I'm doing anything to get my. My sponsorships back. Her endorsement deals, whatever. Okay. I want to go to this guy. This guy. I. I actually feel bad for the generation that got saddled with this dude who they're trying to shove down their throats as a sex symbol as an alpha male. This guy is almost 30 years old. He looks like he's 14. Timothy Chalamet. Oh, my God. Is that your cat?

[Elle Hunt]

Yeah. Very sorry.

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, this is adorable. I love it. Okay, cat, I see this.

[Elle Hunt]

Yeah.

[Maureen Callahan]

Did you say your cat's cool, or is your cat a little. A little too eager for the limelight over there? Exactly.

[Elle Hunt]

I think she's too eager for affection and needy. But yeah.

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, you have a needy cat. That's. That's unusual. Uncool. Definitely uncool. Okay, so Timothee Chalamet has a new movie coming out. Okay. And they're trying to make this movie feel gritty and very underworldy. He plays a guy who wants to be a ping pong champion. Good luck with it. And I don't know how this got out, but he was having a Zoom meeting with a 24 marketing executive about how to make his ping pong movie, Marty supreme, become the movie to beat this year at the box office and the Oscars. We're going to take a look, and then, Ellie, you tell me what you think of this. Here we go. I think Heaven knows what I think sweat.

When I think Good Time, which obviously came out after Robert Pattinson.

When I think uncut gems, adam sandler, tiff standing ovation.

And then when I think Marty supreme. What happened at the New York Film Festival, Right? We can't let this movie down. Like, we have to be intentional, relentless, aggressive.

[Tom Freston]

I'm thinking big.

[Maureen Callahan]

You know what I mean? This has got to be, like, one the of the most important things that happens on planet Earth this year. Okay. By the way, if you are only listening, you have got to go look at this. El's mat. She's, like, laughing out loud. She can't believe it either. You're looking at, like, a Brady box square of, like, you know, there's like, eight other people in this meeting. And Timothy Chalamet with his shaved head and his wife beater shirt, he's going, show up. We got to make this movie. And they're just staring at this kid like, I can't believe I gotta deal with this. What is this?

[Elle Hunt]

Elle, thank you for Bringing that to my attention. I've never heard of that and I've never seen it, but it's amazing. My favorite bit is how the camera will cut to random people in the zoom and they're just completely impervious. Like their faces are completely blank. And there are these long pauses he gives, like, for impact as amazing.

[Maureen Callahan]

And he's like, we got to make sure. So this is the opposite of cool, by the way. Because you just put something out there, people respond or they don't, but you let it go out into the world. World. He's like, we gotta make Marty supreme. The biggest happening on planet Earth. I'm sorry. Timothy Chalamet. Like, there's an asteroid buzzing by Earth right now that half of astronomers think is alien spacecraft. There's bigger stuff going on than your little stupid ping pong movie.

[Elle Hunt]

I guess in his defense. Minor defense. This kind of echoes the point I was just making about how hard it is to have this mystique. Because in theory, ideally, we should never have seen a marketing movie. But that is exactly right. And that that's the kind of video that completely decimate anyone's kind of cool image or impression. You know, like it's part of this receipts culture. Where in my article, the professor, of course, said that his younger students often name Chet Timothy Chalamet as a cool person.

[Maureen Callahan]

They're wrong.

[Elle Hunt]

Well, yeah. I mean, seen that cover by Annie Leibovitz. And then also having seen that video, I think someone would be justified in coming away with a different impression of.

[Maureen Callahan]

I mean, honestly, Elle. I think the minute he began dating Kylie Jenner, he lost aspirations. Let's talk about two people very close. I'm sorry to bring these two up to the Brits, Harry and Megan. Now, I think Megan desperately wants to be seen as cool. I think whenever you start, like a company based on yourself, like, don't you want to dress like me and cook like me and look like me and live like me? Then I think you. You think you're cool, which automatically makes you uncool. What are your thoughts on Meghan?

[Elle Hunt]

I would say neither of them are cool.

[Maureen Callahan]

Harry used to be considered cool, right? When he had the veneer of the palace. No.

[Elle Hunt]

Maybe. But I think maybe this is more. I think in America, it's easier for Americans to see the royal family as celebrities and think about whether they're cool or not. But I think in England, it's. They're in their own separate category. They are not beholden to these particular kind of things. He was cool for a Royal in terms of that he sees to party and kind of, you know, go the tabloids and kind of risk missteps. But even that it was still like they're a fundamentally different group of people.

[Maureen Callahan]

I'll take that, I would say for us Americans only. As he stood in opposition to the dutiful honor bound William, who really can't afford to put his foot wrong, Harry was sort of posited as like the rapscallion, the rascal, the kind of bad boy, the cheeky guy, you know, and, and same here.

[Elle Hunt]

But William was, you know, for a. The heart throb and neither cool. Yeah. And it's only in relative to their family. What they're either rapscallions or heart.

[Maureen Callahan]

True enough.

[Elle Hunt]

It's like the best of the bunch, you know.

[Maureen Callahan]

True enough. Yeah. No, but to your point, now that the veneer has been completely dismantled and they've shoved themselves in front of our faces via social media and all manner of interviews and memoirs and whining and moaning and whinging, they are two of the most profoundly uncool people on the world stage.

[Elle Hunt]

Yeah, I think a lot of people would agree with you. And there is that element of caring what people think and also chasing success, visibility, acclaim that immediately turns people off. And interestingly, I'd say we have quite a sort of intuitive sentence for it. Like it's. If you meet someone who's trying hard or not quite being themselves, you do feel it, even if you can't tell who authentically they actually are. And that's part of the problem with cool is where you know it when you see it, but it's very hard to actually define or imitate.

[Maureen Callahan]

That's what makes cool cool. It's like. So they, they write about this in the, this is in the very beginning of the, of the study. Although researchers do not agree about how to define cool, they do agree that coolness is in the eye of the beholder.

We therefore operationally define coolness. This is so funny. Operationally define coolness as whether or not a person is subjectively perceived to be cool by an observer. To me this sounds like the Supreme Court's definition of porn. You know it when you see is that.

[Elle Hunt]

Yeah. And I think it's this kind of perception thing is important where it's like we can actually only measure if people are perceived as cool. Cool is not a static or definable or more replicable quality. We can only measure to understand it. Its reflection as decided upon by other people. And that's one of the Things that makes it so interesting. And I think what makes people want to chase it or possess it, because you can't really ever buy it. You can try and people will tell you you can, but you kind of have to have something in you that it's meeting, you know.

[Maureen Callahan]

I agree. And to that point, the other conclusion they did draw, I mean, they did draw some decent conclusions. But again, I don't think you need to spend years and research across cultures and countries to come to this.

[Elle Hunt]

I love it.

[Maureen Callahan]

It's so funny the. That the other thing that really, truly does define cool is cool. People don't give a shit what you think about them, including whether you think they're cool or not.

[Elle Hunt]

And that comes under the autonomy. But I would say I was interested in. Interested in.

The people who are cool and are very autonomous. People often give the impression of not giving a. About what you think about them, but they actually kind of do, you know, like they're actually making quite calculated judgments, just not appearing to. And the way that this came up is that.

I think for a start, you have to have a level of care about your personal appearance. And I think that is at least kind of, you know, it's not coming at what caring about what other people think of you from a kind of like, anxious or kind of earnest way. But I think you do have to have an awareness of how you come across and how you're going to be presented and kind of keep some control over that image. And that's why I think my big thing with not being cool is that I do speak without thinking quite freely. A prattle army.

[Maureen Callahan]

I wear jeans. Oh, hey, join the club.

[Elle Hunt]

All the time.

[Maureen Callahan]

Same thing all the time.

[Elle Hunt]

And I would say that my impression of cool people I've met are actually choosing their words quite carefully or choosing their audience quite carefully. So I think there is a little bit. It's not that they don't give a shit about what people think. They're choosing their audiences in context quite carefully, I think.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yes. And to your point about looks, you know, this is a thing. This is. I know the Brits have a fascination with this too, as do we in America. For women, the idea of sort of French girl cool, French girl chic goes to that notion that they always. The most stylish French women look as though they rolled out of bed, threw something on, ran their fingers through their hair and walked out the door. But really a lot. It takes a lot of work to look like. You did not put a lot of work into how you look.

[Elle Hunt]

That's kind of a very good analogy in terms of, like, if you really didn't care about what people thought, you probably would be wearing, like I am right now, leggings underneath the table and still my gym gear. But does maybe that makes me more cool because I authentically don't care? I don't know.

[Maureen Callahan]

It does. I think, Elle, you might be cooler than you even think. I think you should do a follow up for the Guardian. Have a reassessment.

[Elle Hunt]

I think they've read enough. I think the Guardian readers have read enough words about my anxieties about being cool. But the cool professor did send me a very nice note after the article was published saying that he thought I was cool.

[Maureen Callahan]

That's so lovely.

[Elle Hunt]

That's so the certified cool by the cool professor, you know.

[Maureen Callahan]

But again, if you're a professor of cool, I would say take it with a grain of salt. Maybe just a little.

[Elle Hunt]

I think many people in and particularly the media, journalism, academia industries, can we. We can safely say we're just not cool. Do you know what I mean?

[Maureen Callahan]

It's very true. There are a lot of people in the media who are distinctly uncool, for sure.

[Elle Hunt]

Nerdy. Nerdy people who also have a desire to be seen, which I think generally rules us out of contention.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yeah, 100. 100. And like bookwormy and, you know, can be as introverted as you can.

[Elle Hunt]

You printed out the study? You printed out the study? You've read it? I did.

[Maureen Callahan]

I am a nerd. I printed out the study and I have. I have like post its everywhere and I looked at the table and. Yeah, there you go. Well, Elle, thank you so much for coming on to deconstruct what is cool and who is cool and who is not. And anyone who hasn't read Elle's piece in the Guardian, go do it. She's a fantastic writer. Check her out. Thank you again for coming on the Nerve.

[Elle Hunt]

It's very fun. Thank you. I think you're cool.

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, thanks. Likewise. I think you're cool too. That does it. That does it, my friends, for this edition of the Nerve at night. We will be back, however, on Friday with a full Nerve again, if you haven't already, go check out and subscribe to our new [e-mail] plus if you're doing a little stockings, you know, if only. Oh, my God, I would love. I would love for some troublemaker to like. We should do like a stocking for Meghan Markle and just like fill it with Nerve Merch Merch and like send it to the Sussexes office. We really should. Anyway, if you want to get your Nerve merch, it's [e-mail] Also, the nerve is now available on Megan's podcast playlist every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 9am Eastern on the Sirius XM channel 111 the Megan Kelly Shout. We will see you back here on Friday for a full episode of the Nerve where you will never guess what we're about to say next.

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