Episode 110 features NJ Sullivan a co-founder of Lantern Audio Works, creator of audio dramas and the written arts, who is here to discuss a lot of things related to life and the art of creation.
Throughout the conversation, we discuss:
- Lantern Audio Works
- Writing
- Person v Persona
- Authenticity
- Reading
- Building Community
- Sound
- Stories
- Good Ideas
- Ingenuity, Time, and Money
- Editing
- And much more
Mentioned and Helpful Links from This Episode
Lantern Audio Works on Bandcamp
NJ Sullivan Amazon Author Page
–End Transmission–
–Begin Transcription–
00:00:00:05 – 00:00:24:12
Agent Palmer
Previously on Agent palmer.com A promise playlist. Wired highlights an industry that failed John Belushi, which continues today. And just remember. Ed and I talk more sports than we talk Star Trek. This is The Palmer Files episode 110 featuring NJ Sullivan, a co-founder of Lantern Audio Works, creator of audio dramas. In the written arts who is here to discuss a lot of things related to life and the art of creation.
00:00:24:14 – 00:00:57:22
Agent Palmer
Are you ready? Let’s do the show.
00:00:57:27 – 00:01:20:52
Agent Palmer
Hello, and welcome to the Palmer Files. I’m your host, Jason Stershic. Also known as Agent Palmer. And on this 110th episode is NJ Sullivan, the creative director and co-founder of Lantern Audio Works. During this episode, you will hear us discuss how the stories that become books and audio dramas come to be created by NJ, as well as processes we both share in our creation, ideation and editing.
00:01:20:56 – 00:01:46:06
Agent Palmer
We talk about realistic expectations, building community, being supportive, early influences, not having a destination, being sound engineers at a formative age, learning to edit physical books and well, all of that, plus a whole lot more is coming your way. But first, remember that if you want to discuss this episode as you listen or afterwards, you can find all related contact information for myself and NJ Sullivan in the show notes.
00:01:46:11 – 00:02:07:35
Agent Palmer
There you can find more information about my guest MJ Sullivan’s work at Lantern Audio works.com. Don’t forget you can see all of my writings and rantings on Agent palmer.com. And of course email can be sent to the Palmer files at gmail.com. So without further ado, let’s get into it.
00:02:07:40 – 00:02:19:06
Agent Palmer
MJ, you and I meet at a party and I ask you what you do. And after the panic goes away.
00:02:19:10 – 00:02:20:07
NJ Sullivan
Well.
00:02:20:11 – 00:02:22:34
Agent Palmer
What’s your answer?
00:02:22:39 – 00:02:33:53
NJ Sullivan
I am NJ Sullivan. I am creative director and co-founder of Lantern Audio Works. I write and produce audio dramas, and I am also a four time bestselling author.
00:02:33:57 – 00:03:10:37
Agent Palmer
Okay. And I know you as a vlogger who is willing to put that stuff on the internet and on YouTube. Because I, I, I and there’s a part of me that envies you a bit in that because while we all have these platforms and you’ve got podcasts and writing and outlets and stuff, and I have this podcast and writing it outlets and stuff, you are personal in those vlogs in a way that that’s the stuff I write down, and it’s one of the few things I write down that I don’t share with everybody else.
00:03:10:41 – 00:03:29:06
NJ Sullivan
Well, there’s a philosophy behind that for the vlogs. It’s kind of a twofold thing. One is those are kind of therapy for me, okay. They’re kind of like things I need to say out loud in a lot of ways. And, you know, some of the vlogs aren’t that some of the vlogs are. This is a topic that’s interesting to me.
00:03:29:11 – 00:03:52:38
NJ Sullivan
This is the random shit that came out of my brain this morning. And I want somebody other than my wife to have to listen to it. Okay. But also the other side of the philosophy is I made a rule years ago when I started doing YouTube and streaming on Twitch and stuff like that, that I would not be a persona, okay, that I wouldn’t be a brand, that I’m a person.
00:03:52:43 – 00:04:11:37
NJ Sullivan
And even if that means saying this is a really hard day, and these are the reasons I know I’m going to get through it. But today is not easy. I’m tired, I’m sore, and I’m stressed out. And I’d rather have people see that than, you know, Instagram influencer. Influencer. You’re to do what you told life is so great.
00:04:11:46 – 00:04:29:26
NJ Sullivan
Look at my look at my vacation on the Riviera. That’s a that’s a green screen. You know, like, I’m not that kind of person. I never have been. I’ve always been. I’ve come to be, I will say very honest about the fact that I’m not always okay.
00:04:29:31 – 00:04:54:15
Agent Palmer
I know I, I, I appreciate the authenticity in a way that I look, I think we all know when we’re being lied to, even if that lie is just like, this is shiny and it’s really not. But I think that over the last, maybe decade, like, because I and I know there’s people that think it’s pandemic related, but I don’t find this to be true.
00:04:54:16 – 00:05:20:59
Agent Palmer
I think that the rise of alternative media, in terms of influencers and YouTubers and people that can create content as a brand or an individual, they all get to make that conscious. And you and I are in that same, but we get to make that conscious decision. Am I going and look, I’m I’m Agent Palmer because it’s a great brand.
00:05:21:04 – 00:05:22:16
NJ Sullivan
It is an awesome brand.
00:05:22:17 – 00:05:30:26
Agent Palmer
You will never be able to tell the difference between the two of between the brand and me, because I didn’t, because there is no persona there.
00:05:30:41 – 00:05:32:47
NJ Sullivan
It’s just. It’s almost more of a DBA.
00:05:32:52 – 00:06:10:29
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Pretty much. That’s basically the way I’ve been. But we we made you and I both came to make those decisions. Yeah. And I think at least for me as a viewer, I like seeing authenticity because it makes me feel like I’m not alone in choosing to be real. And the other part about it is, I like to consider myself a creative person, and I like to write, and I like to do this, and I I’m going to keep talking about video on this podcast until eventually I do start creating actual videos.
00:06:10:43 – 00:06:38:36
Agent Palmer
But the point is, I’m a creative. What I am not is very creative. And in that I mean, I couldn’t do this if Agent Palmer was a persona that’s too much. You remember? I don’t know, like like, oh, I like peanut butter. But Agent Palmer doesn’t like that. I cannot tell you can’t act. Yeah, I can’t act. And you’d have to write the script for that persona.
00:06:38:36 – 00:06:48:31
Agent Palmer
And that’s an I. I look at people where I can kind of tell that that’s what’s going on. I’m just like, I don’t know how you do it. And I’m. Yeah.
00:06:48:31 – 00:07:19:37
NJ Sullivan
And there’s always like an uncanny valley thing about them too. Yeah. And part of it for me, I think, you know, not having that persona and, you know, when the vlogs are one thing, but if I’m doing a live stream or something like that, I do perform somewhat because those things are meant to entertain. I put on a show and I have a background from my youth, and when I say youth, I mean pre-teen in music, okay?
00:07:19:37 – 00:07:49:56
NJ Sullivan
And I’ve played in bands and I’ve played on stage. I was a punk musician and I absolutely had a persona, you know, I wasn’t a different person than I am now, and I was probably a little bit more hyperactive back then. But on stage, you know, I have sitting around here somewhere, I think it’s on a shelf. I have the sure SM 58 I used on stage, and I’ve recorded a lot of my shows that way as well, and it has a dent in it because I bounced it off a dude’s head in the middle of a show.
00:07:50:01 – 00:08:13:17
NJ Sullivan
You know, that is not my personality. I’m not a violent person. I’m not aggressive. I’m not loud. Which sorry for your editing, but, you know, I’m relatively quiet, spoken and soft spoken. You know, I have my moments. Everybody does. But I put on that performance and then I realized I was going to have to put on that performance forever.
00:08:13:21 – 00:08:21:29
NJ Sullivan
Like you’re never offstage. Yeah, you are never off stage. And I think that’s what kills people. Yeah.
00:08:21:34 – 00:08:47:16
Agent Palmer
I when I get in front of this microphone, I talk with a little more projection. Yeah. It’s the only thing that changes like everything else is. If you and I were in a coffee shop right now, this would still be the, you know, this would still be the conversation. And I it it’s just the projection that changes because I know I’m being recorded, but it doesn’t influence anything else.
00:08:47:21 – 00:09:17:10
Agent Palmer
And I think that there’s a part of me that I like. Look, there is a generation of us who are I’m 40, like, you know, I have 44. I have no problem acknowledging that. But there’s a generation of us who, before it was cool, watched the reruns of Looney Tunes where bugs would break the fourth wall. And so we’ve seen that since we were three.
00:09:17:10 – 00:09:43:16
Agent Palmer
Right. And I think that that breaking of the fourth wall is something that you just come to eventually expect is always going to happen at some point. And yeah. And so I you know, it’s the example I always give. But like my partner Stephanie and I started watching Minecraft videos, kind of during the height of the, the pandemic when they kind of took off in a way.
00:09:43:16 – 00:09:55:12
Agent Palmer
And it, it kind of burnt out a lot of those creators. And they went away. Yeah. When they came back a lot of them were honest about why they had left. And that big.
00:09:55:12 – 00:09:56:54
NJ Sullivan
Break, they dropped the act.
00:09:56:56 – 00:10:24:54
Agent Palmer
That breaking of the wall. I felt. So look, here’s here’s this, the big secret for Agent Palmer. I just paced myself in such a way that one blog a week is fairly easy for me to pull off and work ahead. And yeah, two podcasts a month every other week is fairly easy to work ahead. When I hit the wall, I usually have a cash.
00:10:24:59 – 00:10:26:47
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, you’ve got a few. You got a few in the pot.
00:10:26:56 – 00:10:37:31
Agent Palmer
If nothing else, I almost always have a month to work with so I can go through three weeks of just crap and not have it impact the schedule.
00:10:37:36 – 00:10:38:18
NJ Sullivan
Yeah.
00:10:38:23 – 00:10:44:19
Agent Palmer
It all it does is, you know, make it so I don’t have as much to lay on, so to speak, but.
00:10:44:19 – 00:10:46:00
NJ Sullivan
Right. You have to build it back up.
00:10:46:00 – 00:11:16:06
Agent Palmer
I like hearing I have problems. This is not easy because I feel like it’s a disservice to viewers and listeners and readers everywhere because there’s a chance, look, it’s not ego when I say this, but there’s a chance that every podcast blog post, book streamer, YouTuber, movie, video, anyone even the worst one you could possibly think of is somebody’s inspiration for the next.
00:11:16:11 – 00:11:17:34
Agent Palmer
For theirs.
00:11:17:39 – 00:11:19:42
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, for the next thing that comes. If, you know.
00:11:19:45 – 00:11:40:05
Agent Palmer
If you’re putting on a face that like, oh, you could just keep putting out every episode all the time and it’s never there’s never a cloudy day like that. Will when they get to their first cloudy day, if they’ve never heard that person talk about that, that’s horrible.
00:11:40:16 – 00:12:02:58
NJ Sullivan
It’s and what you’re saying is reminding me of one of my favorite YouTubers. He’s a younger guy than our season is in his early mid 30s. Jacksepticeye. Okay. He’s an Irish YouTuber and started out as a as straight up. Oh, well, that’s why you’re only video games, okay. And he was working 14 or 15 hours a day on them.
00:12:03:03 – 00:12:04:46
NJ Sullivan
And this is while he was in college.
00:12:04:51 – 00:12:08:01
Agent Palmer
So there’s still a course load and classes.
00:12:08:01 – 00:12:30:59
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, exactly. And he was releasing two videos a day, seven days a week for five years. Jeez, five years straight and he got to the point where and obviously, you know, he became hugely successful. This is his full time career and has been for over a decade. And he finally got to the point where he realized, this is going to kill me.
00:12:30:59 – 00:12:53:07
NJ Sullivan
I need to take a break. And he and he had a character, you know, that he played well, not really a character. It was more like another side of his personality that was on camera, but it was the only side of his personality for the most part, that was on camera. Yeah, with very few breaks in it. And he finally came out and said, I need to take time off.
00:12:53:11 – 00:13:12:23
NJ Sullivan
I need to stop. And there was, you know, he, you know, real loud, yelling, gravelly voice. And he just kind of dropped that. And he was like, listen, guys, I need at least three months away from this. I can’t do this anymore. This is going to kill me. I do not feel well. My mental health is suffering. My physical health is suffering.
00:13:12:28 – 00:13:37:26
NJ Sullivan
I appreciate everything I’ve gotten. I appreciate all of you. But I need to stop. And seeing somebody who I had seen for those five years released two videos a day, every day. The sun is shining all the time, like you said. Yeah, just completely drop. Drop the, image and, you know, piece to camera to straight up. I cannot do this anymore.
00:13:37:31 – 00:14:08:42
NJ Sullivan
I don’t know when I’m coming back. I don’t know what the channel will be when I come back, but I need to be okay. And I’m just now learning that. And, you know, it was kind of an inspiration to me to see that, to see that somebody who had built an entire career on being. This allowed boisterous, aggressive, sweary Irishman, well, not really aggressive, but like, you know, loud and kind of, all over the place, you know, he came back and people said, hey, look, he’s back.
00:14:08:46 – 00:14:27:45
NJ Sullivan
And it just went like no time had passed. And he came back a little bit more subdued. He came back and he started doing other things and video games. He stopped doing two videos a day and people were like, you know, I wish you’d go back to the way you were. But that was like 2% of his total audience.
00:14:27:50 – 00:14:30:18
NJ Sullivan
Everybody else was like, we are glad you’re okay.
00:14:30:23 – 00:14:31:16
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
00:14:31:20 – 00:14:57:37
NJ Sullivan
You know, and you know that. And a few other YouTubers that I watch who have done very similar things. It’s if you build a good community, you don’t have to have an always on. You don’t have to wear a mask. You you draw people around you who appreciate you as the person you are, which can get dangerous because that leads into parasocial relationships.
00:14:57:37 – 00:15:00:05
NJ Sullivan
And, you know, there’s there’s a dark side to that.
00:15:00:12 – 00:15:33:00
Agent Palmer
Yeah, but I will say that the other side to that is, there is a, a parallel for what you create and who you are, not necessarily lining up, even if you don’t. Oh, you just no matter how authentic you are, you say this one thing because and I can’t stress this enough. Mainly because I am a fan of others, you know, as are you.
00:15:33:05 – 00:15:33:33
NJ Sullivan
Of course.
00:15:33:33 – 00:15:39:46
Agent Palmer
We all know other things better than we know ourselves. And so.
00:15:39:51 – 00:15:42:35
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, for me, it’s the works of, Arthur Conan Doyle.
00:15:42:40 – 00:16:16:12
Agent Palmer
Yeah. For me, right now, it’s any number of authors whom I’ve just read a lot of. But it’s like I know their work probably better than they do. And I’m sure people that listen to this show know some things I’ve said that I won’t remember it. I look, my blog comes out for once a week. Okay? Now, granted, it’s been over a decade now, so it adds up, but there have been times when people were like, this is a great line.
00:16:16:12 – 00:16:18:06
Agent Palmer
And I was like, who wrote it?
00:16:18:15 – 00:16:20:33
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, it’s about to say that. Awesome. Who wrote.
00:16:20:33 – 00:16:36:38
Agent Palmer
It? Yeah. And it’s like you did like I don’t. Oh wow. Okay. All right. That you know. And so there is that part of it where it’s like, okay, we aren’t necessarily our, art.
00:16:36:42 – 00:16:50:35
NJ Sullivan
No, I mean, and we, we should be in our art, you know, we need to be in our creations. Otherwise, you know, the robots win. But, we can talk about that topic if you.
00:16:50:35 – 00:16:52:34
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I think. Yeah. No, let’s.
00:16:52:39 – 00:16:56:31
NJ Sullivan
Let’s let’s let’s pull the pin on that hand grenade while we’re tap dancing. Yeah.
00:16:56:33 – 00:16:58:52
Agent Palmer
Mine. Yeah.
00:16:58:57 – 00:17:17:45
NJ Sullivan
But we should be in it. But we’re not the only ones in it. Yeah, like it’s hilarious to me. I. I don’t know if hilarious is the right word, but, I was interviewing a horror author.
00:17:17:49 – 00:17:19:22
Agent Palmer
Okay?
00:17:19:27 – 00:17:28:42
NJ Sullivan
And I was telling her about an experimental audio drama I had done called footsteps, which is in, full immersive surround sound.
00:17:28:53 – 00:17:29:33
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:17:29:38 – 00:17:43:49
NJ Sullivan
Which is why it was experimental. I was actually just playing with it, and it was actually an adaptation of a story I wrote for the sixth grade Halloween Horror storytelling contest, where I won honorable mention.
00:17:43:54 – 00:17:55:12
NJ Sullivan
And I was so angry because two cheerleaders and a football player got the top three spots. But anyway, that’s neither here nor there. I don’t carry baggage. What?
00:17:55:17 – 00:18:05:39
Agent Palmer
None of us do know. I still have the poem framed. That got me, that changed my life in high school. But let’s, you know, we all have those things.
00:18:05:39 – 00:18:27:39
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, yeah. And, so I was telling her about this and kind of because it’s surround sound, you’re. The story is that you’re sitting there in the brain of a hitman who’s waiting for his target to get home. And he’s sitting in the guys study in the dark, and you hear the clock ticking and you hear the front door open as this guy is gone.
00:18:27:41 – 00:18:48:53
NJ Sullivan
This guy’s giving a monologue about who this guy he’s about to kill is, and you hear the door open and you hear the door close, and you hear the guy come up the stairs, and you hear the guy walk toward the door to the room you’re in, and you hear him open the door, and then you hear a gunshot, and you hear a body hit the floor.
00:18:48:58 – 00:19:12:50
NJ Sullivan
And the hitman says, everybody makes mistakes. And in the time, like, well, that’s all happening. The clock is ticking in the background. Yeah, the grandfather clock. And after the door to the study opens, the clock slows down. It goes from. Two.
00:19:12:55 – 00:19:13:09
Agent Palmer
Like.
00:19:13:09 – 00:19:34:46
NJ Sullivan
Yeah. Because time slows down in that moment. Yeah. I’ve had a gun in my face. Trust me, time slows down. And I was telling her about it just because we were kind of talking about how audio can be used so effectively for horror because it’s so visceral. Yeah. Like we are attuned to sound.
00:19:34:51 – 00:19:39:28
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Even if you’re not, like, looking at the screen, you can hear the footsteps.
00:19:39:33 – 00:20:00:47
NJ Sullivan
Exactly. Yeah. And there’s nothing scarier in the world to me than utter darkness, because in utter darkness I can hear everything and nothing can distract me from it. But I told her about it and she goes, that’s a horror story. You know that, right? I was like, I’m not a horror writer. What are you talking about? She goes, you should be.
00:20:00:52 – 00:20:13:44
NJ Sullivan
That’s a horror story. That is terrifying. I was like, oh, maybe I’ll try it. And every once in a while she messages me and asks me if I’ve started working on that horror series yet. I was like, not yet, well, I sabbatical.
00:20:13:48 – 00:20:29:28
Agent Palmer
So I want to go back for a moment because you said you wrote this the beginning to this in the sixth grade. So, yeah, and obviously we’ve we’ve kind of glossed over it, but you’ve been creating basically ever since. Was that.
00:20:29:33 – 00:20:29:58
NJ Sullivan
Since.
00:20:29:58 – 00:20:59:04
Agent Palmer
Before? Okay. So was that what you want? Like, did you want to be a writer producer, creative artist? You know, I want to I want to be as general as possible because I think we all choose different mediums. Right. And and kind of. Yeah. Ebb and flow. I mean, I have a musical background too, that we could probably do in a completely separate episode on, but like, the point is, like, I have been in that world as well.
00:20:59:16 – 00:21:19:16
Agent Palmer
And right now writing and I guess talking is my field, you know. So. Right. But was that but but I never I will give you time to answer this question by telling you I never had, a destination. In fact, I still don’t.
00:21:19:21 – 00:21:20:31
NJ Sullivan
I didn’t either.
00:21:20:33 – 00:21:21:22
Agent Palmer
Okay?
00:21:21:27 – 00:21:29:04
NJ Sullivan
I knew I had a talent, and I’ve always been.
00:21:29:09 – 00:21:33:47
NJ Sullivan
Basically, I’ve always been obsessed with two things stories and sound.
00:21:33:51 – 00:21:35:08
Agent Palmer
They go well together.
00:21:35:12 – 00:22:02:27
NJ Sullivan
And come to find out, as an adult, there’s an absolutely solid reason for that. Because I am a adult diagnosed autistic. So, sensory inputs have always been something that has been a big thing for me. And having a background in music, I’ve always been very interested in sound, and how it sound travels and the effect it has on people and stories and the effect they have on people.
00:22:02:27 – 00:22:26:31
NJ Sullivan
It was kind of a way of looking back on it for me to understand how other people thought, because it didn’t make any sense to me. Okay. And, you know, I was a very early, I almost said early adopter. That’s not the right phrase. I learned to read and write very, very young. I was maybe three years old.
00:22:26:45 – 00:22:27:33
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:22:27:37 – 00:22:43:29
NJ Sullivan
And by the time I was in the fifth, the fifth or sixth grade, I had a college level reading proficiency. So I don’t know, you know, that’s not me bragging. It’s just how I was. I was that kid.
00:22:43:34 – 00:23:03:54
Agent Palmer
But you were you also. I mean, I guess the question would be, were you using it as well, right? Like, I mean, I sixth grade, sixth grade is the first grade. I’m reading, talking by myself, which I don’t know if that counts, because it feels like that’s a lot of people’s gateways.
00:23:03:59 – 00:23:32:41
NJ Sullivan
For me, oddly enough, I started out with I started out in maybe the fourth grade, like, seriously reading, like seeking out books, okay. Rather than just, you know, reading the stuff for school and, you know, the little kids books. And it started out with Arthur or with Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe. Okay. Which led to my lifelong fascination with a the Victorian era and B mysteries.
00:23:32:43 – 00:23:33:01
NJ Sullivan
Yeah.
00:23:33:16 – 00:23:35:09
Agent Palmer
And yeah, that would do that.
00:23:35:14 – 00:23:37:06
NJ Sullivan
And that type of language.
00:23:37:11 – 00:23:38:06
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
00:23:38:10 – 00:23:49:06
NJ Sullivan
And I’m a big proponent of getting rid of minimalism, because those are the stories I grew up on, that kind of more expansive language.
00:23:49:10 – 00:24:16:27
Agent Palmer
I, I think that there I and I, this is one of those things where memory is, horrible and a beautiful thing to waste, because I would love to have an example of this for you. But all I hear when you say that is that minimalism, in my opinion, is great only when it’s in its place. Which means, you know, the idea of one character.
00:24:16:27 – 00:24:51:58
Agent Palmer
As an example, ex posing a ton of verbage to an entire room, to which the answer is from another character? Yes, right. I love the juxtaposition of this guy said a thousand words. This guy said one and still somehow they’re equal. But the the idea that minimalism for minimalism sake, like you and I, are going to have a conversation, a back and forth where it’s just grunts and like, you know, and we’re going back to your language.
00:24:51:58 – 00:24:54:47
Agent Palmer
That’s where I have a problem with minimalism.
00:24:54:52 – 00:25:23:48
NJ Sullivan
For me. I’ll answer your original question and then we can continue. Yes. Well, I’ll finish answering it. I always loved stories and I always loved audio dramas. We had them on. We had a vinyl record of a full, full cast production of an adaptation of the book adaptation of Star Wars.
00:25:23:53 – 00:25:24:57
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:25:25:02 – 00:25:45:10
NJ Sullivan
I said, that’s a long way to go to say we had Star Wars on vinyl. Yeah, but with all the sound effects and stuff. And my parents would always quote The Shadow and The Lone Ranger, and we’d listen to them when they were available. And The War of the worlds played every Halloween on our local one of our local radio stations, and I was fascinated by that.
00:25:45:15 – 00:26:12:12
NJ Sullivan
Like all of that audio, all of the potential of that. But when I was a kid that wasn’t available, you couldn’t do that, not at home. You needed to be the BBC to pull that stuff off. Yeah. And so I wrote books because I loved telling stories and I wrote stories. And at one point I was in high school ish.
00:26:12:17 – 00:26:38:32
NJ Sullivan
I had gone from hand writing stories, you know, short stories, thousand words, 2000 words, 5000 words to writing, getting home from school, doing my homework, going upstairs, getting on the computer and being on the computer, writing until 3:00 in the morning. So what, ten hours? Yeah, 12 hours. To the point where I actually gave myself a stigmatism in both my eyes from staring into a CRT computer screen.
00:26:38:34 – 00:26:41:36
Agent Palmer
Do you do you still have that writing?
00:26:41:41 – 00:26:47:26
NJ Sullivan
Oh, maybe a little bit of it. Okay. Maybe a little bit of it.
00:26:47:37 – 00:27:12:31
Agent Palmer
I mean, I, I only ask because I’ve been trying to clean out the clutter of my house, and so I’ve been scanning a lot of old documents that were like, oh, this is, this is just some random short story from, like eighth grade me. Right? Like so. And I don’t know what I’ll do with it. I don’t need a physical copy, but just that I have a digital copy.
00:27:12:31 – 00:27:24:48
Agent Palmer
It exists. Good. It exists. And and look, the the the angsty teenage years notebooks are still on a shelf, right? Like, haven’t gotten rid of them. I also haven’t cracked the like I also have.
00:27:25:01 – 00:27:26:33
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, you’re not tutting. You don’t even want to.
00:27:26:33 – 00:27:27:19
Agent Palmer
Look, I don’t.
00:27:27:28 – 00:27:27:51
NJ Sullivan
I don’t.
00:27:27:53 – 00:27:54:36
Agent Palmer
Know, there’s a part of me I don’t know if I want to look or not, but like, I understand where you’re coming from with all these outside influences. The one that I didn’t realize was an influence until my senior year in college when I when it came time to choose a project to graduate with, I chose a one hour radio drama.
00:27:54:41 – 00:28:01:22
Agent Palmer
Oh, this is 2003 when I made the decision podcasting exists but not read.
00:28:01:22 – 00:28:03:12
NJ Sullivan
It only existed for like a year at that.
00:28:03:12 – 00:28:30:37
Agent Palmer
And I don’t even know about it at that point. So yeah, I needed to come up with an influence because I had a it was one of those when we talk about not having a destination, it was one of those, I have this text that is that could be the basis for an audio thing because I don’t want to just turn it in as text and so I can use this as the basis.
00:28:30:50 – 00:28:45:06
Agent Palmer
And so I needed to come up with sources because that’s or or and cite references and, and all that good stuff. And so the one that came to mind, which honestly existed beforehand was Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion.
00:28:45:11 – 00:28:48:18
NJ Sullivan
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I listened to it all the time growing up.
00:28:48:18 – 00:28:57:54
Agent Palmer
Which my parents, that was a road trip staple. Basically, say you’re going to be in a car for more than a few hours. Let’s throw on the tapes right. And I that and.
00:28:57:54 – 00:28:58:55
NJ Sullivan
Paul Harvey.
00:28:59:00 – 00:29:01:28
Agent Palmer
I didn’t we didn’t Paul Harvey though.
00:29:01:33 – 00:29:05:50
NJ Sullivan
Paul Harvey was on the radio where I grew up, am radio and so and.
00:29:05:50 – 00:29:32:22
Agent Palmer
So in hindsight, it all makes sense. And now I’m here on the microphone doing that. But like and I’ve since kind of revisited a bunch of that stuff and it all makes sense to me how I hear things and like when I’m behind the scenes of even nonfiction, like how I put stories together, like, it all kind of makes sense now.
00:29:32:34 – 00:29:48:39
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, it’s kind of like, I mean, you also have a musical background. It’s it’s an ear you developed. Yeah. And that kind of informed your as your instincts developed, it kind of funneled into this almost like a worldview.
00:29:48:43 – 00:30:12:37
Agent Palmer
Yeah. It’s like it’s kind of like this is how you this is how it all makes sense. And look, I understand that it makes sense to me. And some people will like it and some people will hate it, but like, it is that kind of like, well, if you do these things for long enough, like if you listen to this stuff for long, if you play a guitar, even if you don’t have any lessons, eventually you will get good enough to play something.
00:30:12:42 – 00:30:46:17
Agent Palmer
Some people are going to like that. Some people art right? Like that. Just yeah, it’s just the way the world works. But like, I, I’ve dabbled in all of these other kinds of projects and it’s just as a consumer of media, I feel like it always is something that you’re just learning from. And like, I have friends that are that are like, I want to write a book, or I’m thinking about writing a book and this, that and the other thing and, you know, look, I’m a creative person.
00:30:46:21 – 00:31:09:52
Agent Palmer
I, I’m surrounded by people that are three kinds of people, really, those that have no interest in creating anything, those that are actually creatives and those that have very little interest but don’t realize they want to create something and are like, yeah, I have ideas, but did. And so I’m always that guy that’s like, I read this book.
00:31:09:57 – 00:31:41:46
Agent Palmer
I think if you read this book, you’ll come out with a new format with which to maybe tell your story or. Yeah, you know, this is the most recent example is a friend of mine is a mommy blogger, and I it just occurred to me, like I read Danny Trejo’s book, Trejo Taco Trejo’s Tacos a while ago, but like, he was on my shelf and I was like, she needs to look at this book because he’s telling his life story and throwing.
00:31:41:46 – 00:31:43:18
NJ Sullivan
In his life story, too.
00:31:43:25 – 00:31:46:20
Agent Palmer
But he’s also and throwing in recipes. So it’s a.
00:31:46:20 – 00:31:47:08
NJ Sullivan
Cookbook.
00:31:47:08 – 00:32:11:41
Agent Palmer
Slash memoir. And I was like, this might be the best format for you, and I’m always doing this. This is my current place in a world where I am just freelancing for my life, underemployed, but telling any creative I could possibly run into. Like, I think I know how you can do that, I think.
00:32:11:46 – 00:32:39:03
NJ Sullivan
And it’s interesting that you say that because that actually sparked something in my head. Whenever I’m talking to people who are either just starting out or the same level as me, sometimes, you know, more advanced or more experienced, they’ll say, oh, I have this idea. And I was kind of thinking of doing it this way, and I’ll immediately have 10 or 15 things that, well, you know, these are branches of that tree that you could go down and you’ve got all these.
00:32:39:03 – 00:33:08:40
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, all this potential in that. And I’ve started to realize that the reason I think that way is because when I was young and recording music, because, you know, all my recording knowledge comes from using borrowed equipment in somebody’s basement that kind of borrowed that. You wear gloves just in case somebody wants it back. Okay. In a lot of cases, not all the time, but it happened and recording for other people because I had really good ears.
00:33:08:45 – 00:33:09:21
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:33:09:26 – 00:33:13:57
NJ Sullivan
You know, being the sound engineer, even though I had no training in it, I was like 17 or 18 years old.
00:33:14:03 – 00:33:21:18
Agent Palmer
I was just the I was at that time, I was the one who bought the porta studio. Right.
00:33:21:18 – 00:33:23:54
NJ Sullivan
So I’ve got one. I might I’ve got one to my left.
00:33:23:56 – 00:33:40:40
Agent Palmer
It was in, you know, it was in my house. Did I? I learned how to be an engineer, like a sound engineer, basically. But you, you know. Yeah. Bye. By and you have look when, when it all starts, if you’re the guy sitting there.
00:33:40:45 – 00:33:42:48
NJ Sullivan
That’s you’re the one who pushes the button. Yeah.
00:33:42:53 – 00:33:56:48
Agent Palmer
That like and if I was like, if it wasn’t mine or if you weren’t sitting in that spot, somebody else would have done it. But for some reason, that was the place we were put. And now this is where we are. Oh.
00:33:56:52 – 00:34:18:37
NJ Sullivan
And I think that kind of like ability to come up with all those different ideas and push things and other people’s ideas in different directions. Yeah, comes from the level of problem solving you have to do when you’re recording in somebody’s mom’s basement and the amp is making too much noise, or how do I get rid of the sound of somebody walking around upstairs?
00:34:18:42 – 00:34:26:36
NJ Sullivan
How do I how do I kill the echo on this mic? And having no training and just having to figure it out?
00:34:26:36 – 00:34:53:33
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I mean, my favorite for all of those is I have three RadioShack mics, one good mic with an XLR cable. Good. It’s just an any mic with an XLR cable at that point because the RadioShack ones were, quarter inch. Yeah, yeah. And it was like, okay, how do I record drums? Like it’s, you know, it’s just like, okay.
00:34:53:33 – 00:35:16:29
Agent Palmer
I mean, like, I have more than enough mics. But what do I do? And it’s just like, okay, time to just you’re gonna figure it out, right? And luckily, in those days, we were using cassette tapes and they were a dime a dozen. And it was like, all right, well, if this doesn’t work, I can either erase it or I can just go to the next one.
00:35:16:29 – 00:35:35:31
Agent Palmer
And it was just like, how do you do this? Because, yeah, it was in a house and it wasn’t a residential. So you’re not recording past eight, maybe nine, if you’re lucky on a weekend. Yeah. And it’s like you, you, you know, there was always somebody who was like, why don’t we go into the garage? It’s like, no, because the acoustics are better in the basement.
00:35:35:36 – 00:35:36:09
Agent Palmer
And it’s.
00:35:36:10 – 00:35:38:23
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, concrete walls, man. How do you.
00:35:38:32 – 00:35:59:37
Agent Palmer
How do you figure this out? And, you know, we had two mikes dance. So now it’s not just about how are we making it? It’s like, okay, but we’re not going to waste a mike stand on the bass drum. So we’ll put it in between two books and try and get it at the right height. Oh man. There’s an that was for the days.
00:35:59:42 – 00:36:24:20
Agent Palmer
There’s an amount of that kind of like just early on problem solving that I now when I get into any situation, I’m thinking of all the alternatives and yeah, I, I, I would I had a career, a professional career in nonprofit marketing, which was a great extension from all that because it’s like, how can I do this with no money?
00:36:24:20 – 00:36:39:58
NJ Sullivan
Which he’s just reminded me of a quote that what you just said, it reminded me of a quote. And because I’m, I’m a, I’m a quality stickler, like, on myself, I don’t hold other people to the same standard. I hold myself to.
00:36:40:00 – 00:36:41:05
Agent Palmer
None of us do.
00:36:41:10 – 00:37:19:18
NJ Sullivan
But I, I want my raw mic sound to be perfect, because the more perfect that that sound is, my voice or whoever’s voice going into that sound, the more I can do with it later. Yep. If I need to add a room reverb or, you know, an echo effect or bounce it around in the stereo space, it’s easier to do with a completely clean signal and I’ve met people, and I’m not naming names here because I am not that guy.
00:37:19:23 – 00:37:47:05
NJ Sullivan
I throw no one under the bus by myself. But I’ve met people who are professionals who have full studios with Dolby Atmos built in. And you know this in $10,000 per episode, budgets for audio dramas and they’re still saying good enough. And when you listen to it, you can hear it. Yeah. And my wife and I are big fans of a guy named Watsky.
00:37:47:10 – 00:38:13:22
NJ Sullivan
I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, I haven’t. He’s a rapper out of LA and he is a nerdy white boy. Okay. And is a lot of his stuff is actually pretty inspirational. It’s kind of like, I won’t say nerdy white boy. I’ll say suburban white boy, okay? And because he doesn’t do a lot of like, nerd rap stuff, like he’s not a nerdcore guy or anything like that, but he talks about stuff that is the kind of stuff I grew up with.
00:38:13:27 – 00:38:40:14
NJ Sullivan
And even though he’s probably 15 years younger than me, but, got it. And that’s a weird feeling. But he has a line. He has a song called Cardboard Castles and it’s about, you know, holding on to the dream. I’m in my room building cardboard castles and the first two lines of the song are because if we don’t do it, who will?
00:38:40:27 – 00:39:11:07
NJ Sullivan
I do things on a shoestring that you couldn’t do for a cool Mil? Yeah. And whenever I start getting down about the fact that, you know, I record in a closet. You know, I up until very recently, I recorded everything on that 30 year old. Sure. I’m 58 mic, not a studio mic, a stage mic and an old stage mic that has never had the diaphragm replace like the paint is cracking on it.
00:39:11:07 – 00:39:39:37
NJ Sullivan
And if you’ve ever held an S, I’m 58. It ain’t painted. It’s powder coated. Yeah, this mike has been held so much and has had so much like hand acid on it that the powder code is actually bubbling. Now. Like if you ever take the cover off that type of mic like an SM 58, that dynamic stage mike type mic inside the windscreen, there’s a chunk of foam that’s shaped to it, and it acts as a little bit of a windbreak and like a, a pop guard.
00:39:39:37 – 00:40:01:33
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, I when my wife started doing her podcast, I bought her an SM 58. Not to use necessarily, but because I think every vocal some performer I talk for a living, should have an SM 58. It’s like a rite of passage to me because I grew up in the stage world. When you had your own mic, you were big time.
00:40:01:33 – 00:40:25:17
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, and so I bought her one, and I was kind of looking at the differences how like dirty mine was, and I didn’t realize it. And, you know, the fact that the grille itself is darker because of oxidation. And I was like, I wonder if they’re different on the inside. And I took the two. I took the two, windscreens off and the foam in hers is white, brand new.
00:40:25:17 – 00:40:44:25
NJ Sullivan
It’s white. Did you even Michael? Oh, no, there was foam. Okay. It looked like I’m trying to think of the grossest way I can describe this. Oh, wow. What? What is a good name for this color? Nicotine stain. Brown.
00:40:44:30 – 00:40:45:50
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:40:45:54 – 00:41:11:07
NJ Sullivan
Not even yellow. Yeah, Brown. Because I used to be a smoker, and I would smoke on stage and I would smoke when I was recording, as you couldn’t tell by my voice. I used to be a smoker. I also used to be a tenor, but, And I was just looking, and I was like, Holy crap. But anyway, getting back to my actual point, I didn’t warn you about the rabbit trails.
00:41:11:12 – 00:41:37:31
Agent Palmer
No. That’s that that’s what these that’s what these. That’s what natural conversation is. Right. Like. And. Yeah, I’m all right with it. I did want to say though, like there is, a point of pride on an independent level that allows people like us to do a little bit more with a lot less, and I. I don’t want to.
00:41:37:31 – 00:41:38:07
NJ Sullivan
You’re absolutely.
00:41:38:07 – 00:41:43:36
Agent Palmer
Right. I don’t want to call people that get the contract and have the money lazy. But I do.
00:41:43:50 – 00:41:44:52
NJ Sullivan
Wish I did.
00:41:44:57 – 00:41:45:48
Agent Palmer
But but I.
00:41:45:53 – 00:41:46:46
NJ Sullivan
Wish I had that.
00:41:46:52 – 00:42:22:52
Agent Palmer
I mean, I do wish I had that stuff, but I also think there is a there is an assumption and and, and and so it’s kind of the great equalizer of like, oh because early on I spent a lot of time making sure this sounded as professional as possible, despite the fact that early on I was a mediocre host at best because I was like, I don’t know what I’m doing, but like, I wanted it to sound good despite all of that.
00:42:23:06 – 00:42:45:40
Agent Palmer
And, you know, the the compliments I would get were the only compliments, I think, that mattered at that time. And probably now, which is people would listen for five minutes. No, you know, the friends of a friends and the colleagues, they never listen for more than five minutes. But they would always say, it sounds so professional. Gee, thanks.
00:42:45:40 – 00:43:07:49
Agent Palmer
That’s great. For one, Mike, in an office that I’m lucky enough in my house to have carpet on the floor instead of hardwood, so it balances everything out. And like I, you know, I was using different software at the time. And so like, it’s kind of like, what can you do with how little and how can you make it sound?
00:43:07:49 – 00:43:37:10
NJ Sullivan
And it’s not it’s not even I think we’re kind of on the same page. It’s not even like I am going to limit what I can use. It’s this is what is available to me. And now it’s time to start thinking, yeah, yeah. Because like, I do a show called brimstone, the first season of it’s out. And on that show for the first season, it started out as an experiment just to see if I could do it.
00:43:37:15 – 00:44:04:21
NJ Sullivan
And it’s a good way to start. The first episode is like 2.5 minutes long, and I don’t think any of them anyone’s in the first season hit ten minutes, but I recorded that through the SM 58 and they’re it’s multiple characters, a narrator, a main character, and I did every single voice because I didn’t realize you could hire voice actors.
00:44:04:26 – 00:44:09:37
Agent Palmer
I mean, in the podcasting world, you can just ask other people. I mean, exactly, there’s also that too.
00:44:09:37 – 00:44:17:28
NJ Sullivan
Now, now, now I’m part of a group on Facebook where I told people, hey, I might have this thing coming up and they’re like, hey, let me know. I’ll do it for free. And these are people.
00:44:17:28 – 00:44:18:06
Agent Palmer
Who’ve worked for.
00:44:18:06 – 00:44:42:55
NJ Sullivan
The BBC. Yeah. And they’re like, If I’ve got nothing in my schedule that week, man, I’ll take it for the credit. Like, where did you where were you two years ago? Oh, right. I wasn’t on Facebook. Yeah, because I’m too cool for that. And it’s like I look at it kind of as a budget. If you have a lot of money, you don’t need a lot of time or a lot of thought.
00:44:43:00 – 00:44:55:18
NJ Sullivan
If you have a lot of time, you don’t need a lot of thought or a lot of money. If you have a lot of thought, you don’t need a lot of time or money.
00:44:55:23 – 00:44:57:05
Agent Palmer
I will stop you. It’s it’s.
00:44:57:05 – 00:44:57:59
NJ Sullivan
Good to have all.
00:44:57:59 – 00:45:06:55
Agent Palmer
Three. I was gonna say you’re wrong. That’s not why I was gonna say. I was gonna say I will stop you. Because when I have a lot of thoughts, I need more time.
00:45:07:00 – 00:45:08:27
NJ Sullivan
Like the okay, in just.
00:45:08:27 – 00:45:17:43
Agent Palmer
Everything is a better way. I always have that. What about this? What about that? And for me.
00:45:17:48 – 00:45:21:11
NJ Sullivan
Thought is the wrong word. Let me. Let me correct myself. Ingenuity.
00:45:21:11 – 00:45:46:12
Agent Palmer
And. Well, that’s the thing, right? And the thought that goes, here’s it. Well. And for, for especially independence where there is no budget and, and time is still finite in a way. Right. It’s a problem where you sit down and you go, I have three ways to do this. I can only invest in one. See, sometimes we get lucky and we can invest in all three.
00:45:46:12 – 00:45:53:51
Agent Palmer
But like in my experience, you get to you really get to do one and then hopefully it works out. And if not, you go the other way.
00:45:53:58 – 00:46:22:46
NJ Sullivan
See, for me, I think of what do I want to achieve? Okay. Like say creating solely creating a sound effect. Now I prefer to use sound effects that I created. Okay. It it fixes a lot of problems, especially with rights issues and all that stuff. And also I enjoy the process of doing Foley. It’s fun and it’s like making music in a weird way, like making a Tom waits album.
00:46:23:01 – 00:46:27:16
Agent Palmer
Yeah. I mean, and yeah, there’s there’s no I yeah, I have no.
00:46:27:21 – 00:46:47:45
NJ Sullivan
And but you know, say I want the specific sound and I can hear it in my head. Well, how do I make that sound. What will make that sound or what will get me close. And I can’t go out and rent a Foley booth. I have a budget of $0. I go back to the way they did things for the first Star Wars.
00:46:47:49 – 00:47:09:22
NJ Sullivan
They needed a sound for the blaster. So what did they do? They went out to a tower, held a mic up to one of the guy wires and smacked it with a hammer. Yeah, and that’s the sound of a blast. Or run it through a filter or two. Well, they knew what sound they wanted. Then they found the thing that made that sound or got them close enough that they could work it.
00:47:09:24 – 00:47:35:59
Agent Palmer
Yeah. This it’s this is why I haven’t really done anything other than what I’ll call talkies as far as podcasting. And look, it’s not like I don’t have AI ideas. I just I think that there’s a part of my brain as a creative that shuts off some of those ideas from really forming, because I’m not there yet, you know what I mean?
00:47:35:59 – 00:47:57:54
Agent Palmer
Like, I like I think my brain goes, that’s a good idea and immediately tries to self-correct and goes, that could be a short story, because I don’t have any of the other what I’ll call environmental factors in order to make it anything other than me just saying the story, which is not necessarily what I want the end product to be.
00:47:57:59 – 00:48:15:17
Agent Palmer
And so I’m still trying to write everything down because eventually I can revisit some of this stuff, and I’m trying to organize so that it’s even possible to revisit some of this stuff, which I think is probably the biggest problem for all creatives is like, even if you write everything down, you have to be able to find it later.
00:48:15:22 – 00:48:18:18
NJ Sullivan
Nope. I actually barely ever write anything down anymore.
00:48:18:18 – 00:48:19:09
Agent Palmer
Oh, really?
00:48:19:14 – 00:48:28:42
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, I write nearly nothing down. So because for Christmas last year, my wife bought me a dictaphone.
00:48:28:57 – 00:48:31:02
Agent Palmer
Okay, but that’s kind of the same.
00:48:31:11 – 00:48:31:49
NJ Sullivan
I know I’m.
00:48:31:49 – 00:48:40:43
Agent Palmer
Still saving the ideas. I guess saving the ideas, because that’s. But but here’s the question. That’s that to me, that feels worse for organization.
00:48:40:49 – 00:48:46:27
NJ Sullivan
Well, I put it into Dragon, Naturally Speaking, which I bought when I had more money. Okay.
00:48:46:27 – 00:48:47:13
Agent Palmer
Because that is a.
00:48:47:13 – 00:48:48:40
NJ Sullivan
Super expensive program.
00:48:48:40 – 00:48:50:07
Agent Palmer
So that’ll turn it to texts.
00:48:50:08 – 00:49:05:03
NJ Sullivan
Turn it into a text. All right. And that way I can save it. I can even print them out. But it means there’s two reasons for it. One is, I think, best when I’m walking, okay? I’m one of those annoying people who paces when they talk on the phone.
00:49:05:14 – 00:49:22:47
Agent Palmer
Okay, well, I’m like, I’m annoying. I didn’t know that was annoying, but I will all I like. I can’t sit still when if I’m really talking and we get in a great conversation, like outside of this podcast where I’m constrained by a microphone and the same headphones, I would if this was a phone call.
00:49:22:52 – 00:49:25:55
NJ Sullivan
I think we’d both be walking back and forth in the offices.
00:49:26:02 – 00:49:34:15
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Oh, all over my house. Not even my art, you know, like, and if it was not dark outside, I’d probably be pacing around the neighborhood, too.
00:49:34:20 – 00:49:46:52
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, I, I do the same thing. And for me having the dictaphone. Okay. Which I named Ollie because I name everything because I’m that guy too. It’s an Olympus. So I named it Ollie.
00:49:46:57 – 00:49:48:46
Agent Palmer
That works.
00:49:48:51 – 00:49:53:16
NJ Sullivan
It means if I’m walking around, I don’t have to stop. Pull out a notebook.
00:49:53:20 – 00:49:54:24
Agent Palmer
Okay?
00:49:54:29 – 00:50:11:44
NJ Sullivan
It also means, I have pretty bad hands. They don’t look it, but I have arthritis. And basically every knuckle in both of my hands because of a misspent youth. So I can only type for about 15 or 20 minutes, so. And then that’s it. Most likely for.
00:50:11:44 – 00:50:16:41
Agent Palmer
The day is writing the same way. Basically like actually write it. Okay.
00:50:16:55 – 00:50:21:56
NJ Sullivan
Yeah. Well, writing is a little bit easier because it the hand position is more natural.
00:50:21:56 – 00:50:22:45
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:50:22:50 – 00:50:28:10
NJ Sullivan
But even that I can’t do for super long and not at any great speed.
00:50:28:12 – 00:50:48:33
Agent Palmer
Yeah. You basically saved yourself from doing what I had to do about three months ago was the last time this really happened. I was in the middle of a run and I had an idea, but I didn’t want to stop my run because, like, I’m try, I try to be pretty good with that kind of stuff. So for a mile and a half, on my way back home.
00:50:48:45 – 00:50:49:30
NJ Sullivan
You were saying it.
00:50:49:30 – 00:51:08:09
Agent Palmer
I was that thing in my head over and over again. And when I finally finished, did I get a bottle of water like I should have? No, no, you pulled out great. Well, I pulled out my phone and I just started typing it in because while that’s like my least favorite way of putting things down, I was like, I need to stop repeating this.
00:51:08:09 – 00:51:18:01
Agent Palmer
Like it’s a mantra because it’s, you know, it’s just a good idea, not a lifestyle choice. So like, let’s just get this out and move on.
00:51:18:06 – 00:51:28:19
NJ Sullivan
And yeah, yeah, it’s it’s a great thing because I don’t I used to carry I still use notebooks a whole lot because I’m a plotter.
00:51:28:31 – 00:51:29:16
Agent Palmer
Okay. Yeah.
00:51:29:16 – 00:51:54:00
NJ Sullivan
And I will use I will handwrite plots. To me that makes more sense. I have I’ve been told that other people do this. Apparently David Lynch does this. I found out recently, which made me feel very special. David Lynch stole my idea ten years before I was born. I guess, but I write out my plot, and then I take, like, eat.
00:51:54:00 – 00:51:59:55
NJ Sullivan
You know, I make a detailed plot, and I take each part of that plot and make scenes.
00:52:00:00 – 00:52:00:47
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:52:00:52 – 00:52:15:38
NJ Sullivan
Scene one, scene to scene three. Scene four, etc. and I write them all on four by five note cards with every detail. In some cases, including what people, you know, actual lines of dialog that I definitely want in there. And those note cards are the story Bible.
00:52:15:40 – 00:52:27:15
Agent Palmer
Yeah. This is this has been my the bane of my existence because I don’t quite do it that way. But I am a guy who used to print out stuff.
00:52:27:19 – 00:52:27:59
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, put.
00:52:27:59 – 00:52:44:30
Agent Palmer
It on the bed, move it around and you print out like for me, you know, and I haven’t done any big projects like this in a while, but it’s basically like I am printing out maybe a paragraph on each eight and a half by 11 sheet, which some people are gonna be like, that’s a waste of paper, but it’s not.
00:52:44:30 – 00:52:50:19
Agent Palmer
It’s so I can write what I’m thinking while I’m rearranging it on the bed.
00:52:50:24 – 00:52:51:38
NJ Sullivan
You can make notes on the paper.
00:52:51:38 – 00:53:01:53
Agent Palmer
Yeah. And so it’s kind of like, that’s just the gist of this piece here. Let’s move it around. There is no digital equivalent. Really. No.
00:53:01:53 – 00:53:02:58
NJ Sullivan
And that bugs me.
00:53:02:59 – 00:53:03:52
Agent Palmer
00:53:03:57 – 00:53:08:48
NJ Sullivan
I’ve looked for digital no card things that would go on my computer that I could move around and there.
00:53:08:48 – 00:53:09:48
Agent Palmer
And I know there’s.
00:53:09:48 – 00:53:10:16
NJ Sullivan
Some.
00:53:10:16 – 00:53:14:36
Agent Palmer
Somebodies out there yelling like, oh, you should use Trello. It’s not.
00:53:14:37 – 00:53:15:17
NJ Sullivan
Reforge.
00:53:15:20 – 00:53:33:24
Agent Palmer
It’s this is another one. None of these things are the equipment. Like, it’s kind of the same as saying like a Kindle and a book. Yeah, they’re the same, but they’re not. A Kindle will never truly replace, book. Like, it’s just not. And so there’s that.
00:53:33:24 – 00:53:35:35
NJ Sullivan
I have a Kindle. I’ve never read anything on it.
00:53:35:39 – 00:54:00:43
Agent Palmer
Yeah. I mean, I’ve read stuff on it, but I just, I there’s something about the tactile nature and especially as creatives, whether it is for a book or a blog post or a podcast, even just having hold the hold, holding on to the script, I’m holding up my notes right now because I still take notes, right? Like there’s a there’s something tactile that is important to the creative process.
00:54:00:48 – 00:54:27:48
NJ Sullivan
I mean, my note cards and my notebooks. Yeah. You know, they’re they are essential for my, my mental health. And the thing is using the dictation thing, another thing, just to get back. But you’re absolutely right about the tactile thing. Yeah. It’s it is. And there’s like, I don’t know, I’ll finish my thought. And then I have another thought that kind of bounces off what you were just saying about books.
00:54:27:48 – 00:54:57:52
NJ Sullivan
Yeah. Using dictation because I have hand pain. And when I was, when I was typing, at one point, I set myself a goal of writing. This is back 2018, 2017, 2018. Yep. I was not in a good place in my life at all and didn’t realize I wasn’t. Oh, and didn’t realize that I have a weird kind of self-destructive edge to me.
00:54:57:57 – 00:55:27:28
NJ Sullivan
A need to push when I’m in bad spaces like that and the way I decided to push was I set myself a goal of conceptualizing, writing, editing, and publishing a novelette a week. So that’s about 12 to 15,000 words. Yeah. Every week. And this is before I started using dictation, and I pulled it off for six weeks. So I don’t know, I can’t do math roughly.
00:55:27:28 – 00:55:53:17
NJ Sullivan
It’s a roughly 15,000 words, six stories, 15 times, six, 15 times. It was. Anyway, it’s a lot. Yeah, it’s a lot. And that’s when my hands started to hurt. Now using dictation to write, which I do almost exclusively at this point. Not only can I write literally anywhere I am, if I don’t, if I don’t care if people think I look insane talking into my hand.
00:55:53:22 – 00:55:56:31
Agent Palmer
No, no different than anybody talking on earbuds. You can’t see.
00:55:56:31 – 00:56:22:16
NJ Sullivan
So I live in Denver. I’m the least insane looking person walking down the street most of the time. But you know, not only can I write anywhere without having to pull out a laptop or a notebook or any of that, I can also speak at generally, on average, about 120 words a minute. At my fastest. I could type 75.
00:56:22:21 – 00:56:28:51
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, 120 words a minute for for ten minutes straight is a short story.
00:56:29:06 – 00:56:30:29
Agent Palmer
Yep.
00:56:30:34 – 00:56:53:17
NJ Sullivan
Now round that up to 20 minutes because you’re going to have starts and stops and you have to breathe and things like that. Unimportant stuff like breathing. Yeah, yeah. And you get, you could write a short story in 20 minutes. Technically. Yeah. And obviously there’s going to be a lot of editing because, you know, dictation software is not perfect.
00:56:53:17 – 00:56:53:42
Agent Palmer
No it’s.
00:56:53:42 – 00:57:14:05
NJ Sullivan
Not. It gets fairly close, especially especially something like Dragon that it trains on the way. You talk, it gets fairly close. But when you’re writing something that has a lot of odd names, something like fantasy or science fiction, you know, there’s a lot of replace all wait wait.
00:57:14:05 – 00:57:19:15
Agent Palmer
Wait wait wait, what’s this chapstick in here I didn’t see yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:57:19:19 – 00:57:22:47
NJ Sullivan
Or if you’re like me. And when you screw up, you swear.
00:57:22:52 – 00:57:23:32
Agent Palmer
Oh.
00:57:23:36 – 00:57:23:53
NJ Sullivan
Yeah.
00:57:23:54 – 00:57:26:22
Agent Palmer
Yeah. That you you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t believe.
00:57:26:22 – 00:57:44:48
NJ Sullivan
You wouldn’t believe. How many fucks I’ve had to remove from a Trent from documents. Fuck. And what’s funny is because I have a Buffalo accent, especially when I’m speaking fast, it’s not. Okay. I asked you before we started. How much? How much should I swear? And I’m like, I’m going to try and keep it to a minimum.
00:57:44:48 – 00:57:58:16
NJ Sullivan
And now I’m actually doing a dissertation on the word fuck. Yeah. But because of the way I talk, it comes out as fuck, which often gets split into fuckin,
00:57:58:21 – 00:57:59:40
Agent Palmer
Okay, or,
00:57:59:45 – 00:58:03:04
NJ Sullivan
Or foreskin for space.
00:58:03:08 – 00:58:05:41
Agent Palmer
Makes it even worse, because that means that you have to go.
00:58:05:41 – 00:58:06:23
NJ Sullivan
Digging through it.
00:58:06:23 – 00:58:07:42
Agent Palmer
The place. Yeah.
00:58:07:47 – 00:58:28:43
NJ Sullivan
All right. I’m trying to figure out how to do phrase searches, to make that easier, but, you know, being able to do to work that fast. And, yes, there is a lot of editing involved. And I was kind of like, well, is that cheating? Is it this is it that. And then I found out that Brandon Sanderson has written damn near every one of his books that way.
00:58:28:48 – 00:58:29:07
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
00:58:29:16 – 00:58:46:04
NJ Sullivan
He goes on hikes and tells a story into a dictaphone or his phone, and that’s how he writes massive tomes in such a short period of time. And they’re not bad books. It’s not like the quality goes down.
00:58:46:09 – 00:58:53:01
Agent Palmer
Everybody should learn to edit, though, which is a whole different editing is. Yeah, that’s that’s a different that’s a different episode. But like.
00:58:53:15 – 00:59:00:30
NJ Sullivan
It’s a it’s a skill set entirely, of its own. Yeah. That’s it’s like it’s like the difference between being a musician and being a sound engineer.
00:59:00:37 – 00:59:05:43
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Really. I mean, record producer. Yeah. So. So what were you going to say about books, though?
00:59:05:43 – 00:59:31:28
NJ Sullivan
What was I going to say about. Oh, right. Yeah, I’ve noticed that. And maybe I’m just noticing it because, of social media and my involvement in it these days, which is both a boon and a bane of my existence, but also, I have noticed that there’s almost a fetishization of the physical book.
00:59:31:33 – 00:59:40:19
Agent Palmer
Like, yeah, but for all the wrong reasons. Like you’ve noticed it, but you’ve noticed it because there’s a lot of people who like to.
00:59:40:23 – 00:59:43:02
NJ Sullivan
Make buying books their personality online.
00:59:43:02 – 00:59:53:12
Agent Palmer
Well, it’s also, it’s the people that buy vinyl without actually owning a record player. Like, that’s the same kind of person.
00:59:53:17 – 00:59:55:59
NJ Sullivan
Look, it’s book collecting, not.
00:59:56:13 – 00:59:57:27
Agent Palmer
Book reading, book.
00:59:57:27 – 01:00:20:27
NJ Sullivan
Reading. And, you know, it’s fine. I, I have a an admittedly small collection of antique books. I appreciate them for what they are, for the craftsmanship that went into them. I have an early, early 20th century 1909 ish edition of the Collected Works of Sherlock Holmes that my wife had me.
01:00:20:29 – 01:00:24:31
Agent Palmer
But you’re a fan, and you’ve read them like, you know, they’re forms, though.
01:00:24:36 – 01:00:24:52
NJ Sullivan
Yeah.
01:00:24:52 – 01:00:28:48
Agent Palmer
So there’s a difference as opposed to just.
01:00:28:53 – 01:00:29:58
NJ Sullivan
Owning them to own them.
01:00:29:58 – 01:00:30:40
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
01:00:30:44 – 01:00:50:33
NJ Sullivan
And I will never and this is a very me very pragmatic thing. And it’s fine if people live their lives other ways than me, I don’t care. But I personally have never understood the I need to keep every book I’ve ever read mentality like I’m.
01:00:50:33 – 01:00:58:14
Agent Palmer
Working through it right now. I’m trying to get rid of some because it’s like you only there’s a finite amount of space. Well.
01:00:58:19 – 01:01:07:38
NJ Sullivan
I’ve often wondered if to a degree, some of it is a form of hoarding. And I’m not calling you a hoarder.
01:01:07:38 – 01:01:27:34
Agent Palmer
By the way. No, no, no. But I so for me, I, I want to downsize. But it’s also about finite space. I can’t physically put any more bookcases in my house. In order to read more books, I need to have a home for them. And I don’t want to see. You need to get rid of some at some point.
01:01:27:39 – 01:01:30:43
Agent Palmer
At some point it becomes a zero sum game. And you.
01:01:30:43 – 01:01:31:34
NJ Sullivan
Have. Yes it does.
01:01:31:34 – 01:01:49:30
Agent Palmer
These are all the books you have, and if you want to get more, you have to get rid of some. But for me, it’s just kind of like, it took me a while to get here, but like, I don’t reread a lot of stuff. So it’s like, what if most people don’t? Time to go, right? Yeah. It’s just.
01:01:49:30 – 01:02:13:45
Agent Palmer
All right. That’s fair. I, I also think it’s like, why am I holding on to this? But yeah, I, I think that there is a valid point. Plus, like, I have a friend who’s been on this show who’s a book collector that doesn’t really collect books, he collects rare books and signatures, but for the most part, when he reads a book, he hands, he only has he.
01:02:13:45 – 01:02:14:28
NJ Sullivan
Passes it on.
01:02:14:28 – 01:02:22:46
Agent Palmer
He only has his collectibles, basically everything else. He’ll read and pass it on and there’s a point like.
01:02:22:46 – 01:02:25:24
NJ Sullivan
That’s a that’s almost like an antique collector.
01:02:25:24 – 01:02:26:11
Agent Palmer
Yeah, but there’s.
01:02:26:11 – 01:02:27:57
NJ Sullivan
A part of me it’s kind of a different mindset.
01:02:28:06 – 01:02:34:36
Agent Palmer
That you should always pass it on there. That’s. Yeah. You know.
01:02:34:42 – 01:03:03:02
NJ Sullivan
Like I seen people and not people I know, but people I’ve seen online who have storage units, oh, full of books that they read once, but they can’t bring themselves to get rid of. And I’m sitting here going and also, weirdly, I’m a huge advocate. I mean, obviously I’m hopefully obviously I am a huge advocate for the democratization of knowledge.
01:03:03:07 – 01:03:06:30
Agent Palmer
I think that, yeah, that.
01:03:06:35 – 01:03:22:00
NJ Sullivan
I don’t believe in banning books. I don’t believe in banning art of any kind. Do I believe in restrictions? Yes. I should not have been allowed to watch Nightmare on Elm Street when I was seven years old. You know.
01:03:22:05 – 01:03:23:30
Agent Palmer
Everybody’s got that one.
01:03:23:35 – 01:03:47:22
NJ Sullivan
Everybody’s got that one. Freddy Krueger was that one for me, man. And I think I was about seven when that came out, but I was I was like elementary school age. But, you know, I’m a firm believer in that. I am also a firm believer that if you’re not using it, somebody else could. When I moved out of I lived in Louisiana for ten years.
01:03:47:22 – 01:04:13:44
NJ Sullivan
I moved to Denver from there. When I moved, I donated 12 Rubbermaid moving tubs of books to local school and local schools and libraries. Didn’t sell a damn. One of them. I think I gave away 5000 books and kept like 200. And most of those I’ve given away now to in.
01:04:13:50 – 01:04:29:22
Agent Palmer
In a word, would you say you are at any point sad that you don’t have or not? I’m not not. This is not an individual question. This is just a general like, are you sad you don’t have those 5000 books right now?
01:04:29:27 – 01:04:44:35
NJ Sullivan
No, not not even a little bit. Yeah. That’s the because other people have them. Did I enjoy all of them? Most likely. But you know what? I can go to the damn library and enjoy them again. Yeah, yeah. And I’m supporting, you know, the library.
01:04:44:50 – 01:04:45:28
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
01:04:45:33 – 01:04:50:28
NJ Sullivan
I love libraries. One of the podcasts we recently paused.
01:04:50:33 – 01:04:51:31
Agent Palmer
Punks in the library.
01:04:51:31 – 01:05:08:13
NJ Sullivan
Punks in the library. Yeah, yeah, because that’s what we are. We’re we’re the weirdos who are a little too loud and dress kind of funny and maybe swear too much. But we’re also in the library, so.
01:05:08:18 – 01:05:13:06
NJ Sullivan
You.
01:05:13:11 – 01:05:38:34
Agent Palmer
Sometimes a conversation on this podcast is just so full and rich of topics and tangents that it’s hard to form some sort of cohesive thought process to end the show. That’s good. These are the kinds of conversations I want to have more of. We spoke about ourselves and our journeys, where we come from and what we’ve done and how we’ve arrived through things and all with a certain bent towards creative pursuits.
01:05:38:46 – 01:06:06:59
Agent Palmer
The common factor being that creative pursuits are rarely easy, but they do end up being extremely fulfilling. So perhaps that’s just how the old cliche is meant to be. And let us not forget the most important thing about this conversation. It made a connection between myself and N.J. One that between creatives is important because while we’re all individuals, we’re also all uniquely different, which enables us to better help each other.
01:06:07:04 – 01:06:27:43
Agent Palmer
It’s a unique paradigm I’m happy to exist in with my fellow creatives. Thanks for listening to The Palmer Files episode 110. And now for the official business. The Palmer Files releases every two weeks on Tuesdays. If you’re still listening, I encourage you to join the discussion. You can find all related ways to contact myself and my guest NJ Sullivan in the show notes.
01:06:27:57 – 01:06:59:33
Agent Palmer
There you can find links to my guest NJ Sullivan’s work at Lantern Audio works.com, which is the home for all Lantern Audio Works productions. The music for this episode was provided by Henno Heitur. Email can be sent to this show at The Palmer Files at gmail.com. And remember, you’re home for all things. Agent Palmer is Agent palmer.com.
01:06:59:38 – 01:07:34:01
Agent Palmer
She.
01:07:34:06 – 01:07:36:58
Agent Palmer
All right. Now, do you have one final question for me?
01:07:37:07 – 01:07:56:17
NJ Sullivan
I absolutely do. And I’m going to drop into this voice for it so that your listeners can hear what I sound like. If you had the opportunity to have dinner with one rock singer specifically singer, living or dead, who would you choose?
01:07:56:22 – 01:08:15:59
Agent Palmer
I’m immediately torn. I’m not torn, I was, I stuffed, so the thought process is I’m immediately torn between the two big ones. For me early on, which would have been Steven Tyler and Axl Rose.
01:08:16:03 – 01:08:16:27
NJ Sullivan
Okay.
01:08:16:36 – 01:08:27:43
Agent Palmer
However, then I had an epiphany in the middle of thinking about choosing between those two, and I went, wait a minute, Bob Dylan could still be considered a rock singer.
01:08:27:57 – 01:08:29:58
NJ Sullivan
Oh, absolutely. So I want to go.
01:08:30:05 – 01:08:32:34
Agent Palmer
With Bob Dylan. Find it.
01:08:32:40 – 01:08:37:28
NJ Sullivan
Nice. That is good. That is honestly a good answer. I think it’s better than mine.
01:08:37:33 – 01:09:08:09
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I, I’ve been, So I don’t know what I’m going to do with this, but I have been listening through all of Taylor Swift’s discography because I didn’t I know, I know the media personality, but I never listen to her music. And occasionally, as I’ve been listening to albums and making notes because I’m, I’ll do something with this experiment.
01:09:08:14 – 01:09:11:25
NJ Sullivan
We’re creators. We always end up with more information and something we can use.
01:09:11:25 – 01:09:51:05
Agent Palmer
So yeah, I don’t know what’s going to come of it. And right now I’m just texting back and forth with a friend of mine who’s a swiftie. But, and I’m not even into, like, the I just finished as we record this, I just finished, I think, 1989. Okay, it was the last hour, but. So I have a few more albums to go before I even get to the Taylor’s versions of things and stuff like I get right, I get that, but I’ve also decided that because I was so excited about angry the New Stone single, and because I’ve been listening to a lot of like Dylan Radio on Spotify, I’ve decided I’m going to
01:09:51:05 – 01:10:11:05
Agent Palmer
also go back and listen to some discographies of the Stones and Dylan, because there’s there’s some hidden gems in the logs that I don’t really like, I know, but I don’t really know. And the other thing, and I think this is the most important part when I listen to a Taylor Swift album, because I’ve never heard it before.
01:10:11:10 – 01:10:50:10
Agent Palmer
That’s what I’m doing, right? Right. I’m sitting down with headphones, earbuds, whatever, and I’m listening to an album and maybe I’ll take notes. I’m not also doing this. Also doing I’m sitting down and I’m listening, and I want to do the same thing with Dylan and the stones, which, by the way, will take me along. I’m not doing this every day, like just whatever, but like, I just feel like there’s a lot there or, and I’m always this sucker for, like, well, there’s got to be something that’s not popular that I’ll like.
01:10:50:15 – 01:10:55:41
Agent Palmer
And yeah, yeah, I, you know, there’s a part of me that just. I still miss the album.
01:10:55:46 – 01:10:58:17
NJ Sullivan
The album I, I yeah.
01:10:58:17 – 01:11:00:07
Agent Palmer
And so it’s not even for.
01:11:00:10 – 01:11:08:00
NJ Sullivan
Like the one of the last generations who had that as the main source and the actual, the actual A-side, B-side.
01:11:08:05 – 01:11:32:17
Agent Palmer
And even even CDs, because early on at best, you would get a three disc changer, right? But it was 30s between songs if you shuffled between discs. So it’s just like hit play. That’s fine. And we were the last generation that had it fairly easy where it was like, I’ll borrow that CD from Steve and put it on my mix tape.
01:11:32:22 – 01:11:41:38
Agent Palmer
And so you could kind of make mix tapes a little bit. But pre Napster like that was what you did. Like, does anybody have this album because I want this song on this day. Yeah.
01:11:41:39 – 01:11:45:56
NJ Sullivan
Or you listen to the radio and waited for it to come on and recorded it on the tape.
01:11:45:56 – 01:12:09:07
Agent Palmer
But, but in the circle I was in, I always knew somebody had on. And look, we were also the give Columbia House a bad thing and get ten CDs for a penny and then have it not lapse or whatever. Yeah, yeah. It’s yeah, yeah. Okay. The things we, we like, we, we whatever. But the point is, I think it’s Bob Dylan.
01:12:09:12 – 01:12:50:46
Agent Palmer
I am okay not even asking a question. I’m cool just eating with him and listening to him tell, you know, I, I know we recently lost, as we record this Robbie Robertson. So, like the band. Yeah. Which is huge in my kind of, musical background. Like, that’s just to hear stories. And since Dylan’s still alive and to know the other thing is, I love the idea that Dylan was projected as an inspiration for a generation, despite the fact that that’s not what he aspired to.
01:12:50:51 – 01:12:52:03
NJ Sullivan
Which makes you care about it.
01:12:52:16 – 01:12:52:46
Agent Palmer
Which makes.
01:12:52:46 – 01:12:53:44
NJ Sullivan
Him because wasn’t interested.
01:12:53:44 – 01:13:01:55
Agent Palmer
No, he wasn’t, which makes him very different from all of the people now who are aspiring to that to some degree.
01:13:01:55 – 01:13:02:20
NJ Sullivan
Yeah.
01:13:02:23 – 01:13:14:39
Agent Palmer
And so just the man’s got stories for days. He put out like, what, two years ago he put out a 20 minute single. Right. Which is basically just him telling stories.
01:13:14:44 – 01:13:20:24
NJ Sullivan
And the thing is, because he’s Bob Dylan, he can say, fuck you and put out a 20 minute single. Yeah, yeah.
01:13:20:33 – 01:13:22:40
Agent Palmer
So I’m. Yeah, yeah, it’s.
01:13:22:44 – 01:13:26:23
NJ Sullivan
Dude has a has a Nobel Prize. Yeah. It’s like.
01:13:26:27 – 01:13:30:13
Agent Palmer
I, I don’t think, I don’t think there’s anybody else really.
01:13:30:17 – 01:13:35:53
NJ Sullivan
That’s, it’s interesting that that’s an honestly a really good choice and probably way better than mine.
01:13:35:57 – 01:13:37:15
Agent Palmer
Who would you who’s yours?
01:13:37:20 – 01:13:38:49
NJ Sullivan
Prince.
01:13:38:54 – 01:13:39:51
Agent Palmer
I mean that’s pretty good though.
01:13:39:51 – 01:13:51:39
NJ Sullivan
To incredible songwriter from everything I understand. Just as weird as he seemed, but also a nice guy. Yeah. And one of the best modern guitar players ever.
01:13:51:44 – 01:13:55:39
Agent Palmer
And you know what? Surprisingly humble about the guitar skill.
01:13:55:41 – 01:13:56:48
NJ Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:13:56:49 – 01:14:08:34
Agent Palmer
Not. Look, he wasn’t really a humble guy necessarily when it came to guitar. He was amazing. And he never was like, look at me. I’m better than Eddie. Like, that’s just not.
01:14:08:39 – 01:14:33:08
NJ Sullivan
It wasn’t how he rolled. Yeah. And if you ever get the chance, look up. I don’t know what it’s from, but it’s while My Guitar Gently weeps and it’s Steve Winwood, Tom petty, a few other musicians. And then I’ve heard this Prince comes on for the solo. Yeah, I’ve played that solo when I need to be inspired.
01:14:33:08 – 01:14:42:38
NJ Sullivan
That you don’t have to, like, fit into the mold to to have the have the style. Oh, Prince walks out there.
01:14:42:46 – 01:14:48:30
Agent Palmer
Thinking about Tom petty still sticking with the one, but, now I’m thinking about Tom petty.
01:14:48:34 – 01:15:05:30
NJ Sullivan
Well, you could always ask Bob Dylan about Tom petty. It’s not like it didn’t work together. You know? And we wouldn’t have to resurrect, Bob Dylan. That’s still around. Yeah, and you could drink his whiskey. Yeah, he’s got his own label, Heaven’s Door Whiskey.
–End Transcription–
This transcription was processed by PalmerTech 3.1 and may contain errors for HUMINT (human intelligence).