This week on the Talking Headways podcast we're hitting 500 episodes!
To celebrate we have a bit of a look back in time with former Streetsblog US Editor Tanya Snyder on the origins of the show.
We then chat with Ken Napzok and Joseph Scrimshaw of my favorite podcast about a galaxy far, far away, ForceCenter. But we don't talk about Star Wars — we talk about Los Angeles and their feelings towards the place they call home.
Scroll down below the audio player for an edited excerpt of our conversation, or click here for an unedited, AI-generated transcript of the entire conversation.
And find Joseph and Ken at their respective websites.
Jeff Wood: My wife and I took the bus from Silver Lake to Santa Monica when we were down there in 2019. And, and that was — that was a trip, I must say. Quite a distance between the two. It brings up this new work environment that you all are in the — are we in the pandemic still, post-pandemic, whatever it may be. It’s changed a lot of things. You all have a situation where you’re talking to each other frequently during the week and recording shows and stuff.
I’m wondering how this kind of new work environment has been treating you? I know that it’s impacted a lot of folks and a lot of downtowns, for example, around the country where people aren’t coming back to work as much. And so there’s not as much business and things like that.
Ken Napzok: Man, so overall, I love it. You just touched on a truth of, like, I don’t want to celebrate it too much because, you know, it has changed a lot of things. I don’t want to say destroyed, but like you’re talking about, it’s one thing to not go into the office, but around the office is the diner that no longer has its customer base or the buses or whatever, you know, that part’s changed.
I understand that, but yeah, I’ve liked it. It opened up for us the possibility to do more work. It wasn’t a long trek for me to get to Joseph’s place, but you know, I’m bringing — at the time we had more gear... bigger gear, older gear, you know, bigger bags, uh, parking can sometimes be a struggle, sometimes not.
[Remote work] just added a little extra that you didn’t even think about. We didn’t question it. We record digitally and, I think just even on a smaller level, Joseph, Jennifer and I have a good rhythm where we we don’t necessarily always need to be in the room, so we know how to do it.
It just opened up a lot of possibilities. I work for a company that’s based out of Vegas right now on a YouTube channel, like — that kind of stuff didn’t exist, wouldn’t have existed, so I appreciate that. But just yesterday at the time of this recording, I went into an office studio for the company Fandom, went to do a live show that they were doing, and it was fun.
I was like, this is cute. I get to drive, I get to park and get my parking validated, and I get to get checked in. I kind of miss that, but only, you know, a one shot for me.
Joseph Scrimshaw: Yeah, I mean, the are obviously the ups and downs that Ken is talking about of, you know, losing some businesses, you know, anchor businesses not functioning and then hurting, you know, legacy businesses that the community might care about more like an old diner rather than what will happen to that. office building.
But being able to record the podcast is great because it means that we can put more time into the podcast because we aren’t spending it in transit. When I drove to Ken’s and we recorded at Ken’s, it took me maybe 20 minutes to drive back and forth. But you stop everything you’re doing.
You get ready. I’m out anyway, so I stop at Target and the amount of time that it eats up is significant. I know I’ve talked to a lot of people who really mourn the amount of time that they had back during the lockdown portion of the pandemic. For me, on the other side of it, it can get dangerously convenient where I have almost too much control over my world where I control exactly who I speak to, you know, I can kind of always have my armor on because everything is so controlled and I have been needing not just for my health, well for my physical health and for my mental health to just go like, I have to go for a walk and like Ken was saying, I don’t need to make a best friend, right?
But if I just walk 15 minutes to Amoeba and see who else is looking at the Frank Sinatra records today, having a quick chat about, you know, a weird Dracula DVD I bought with the person working there, that is so great for my physical health and mental health and just, like, needed. Because I think that’s the danger of us being able to all work like this now is that we get a little too isolated and don’t really realize the creep of it happening to us and how it’s affecting us.
Ken Napzok: Is it that Vonnegut meme that goes around of him needing to order an envelope and his wife says you could just go online and he’s like, no, that the purpose of life is to go putz around? That one resonates with me. I love that stuff.
You know, I’m a shy kid at heart, but mu partner, my fiancé, is out of town for a long stretch and I’m home with my little scared chihuahua and I’m, like, coming up with excuses not to leave the house and now I feel isolated. I feel disconnected so I might just you know, run down to a 7-Eleven and talk to the guy Jimmy there for five seconds. I just need some banter. I think we as humans do need that — I think that’s a great point that Joseph said, that even in a big large town like this when we all had the excuses and reasons to stay inside and stay inside forever, it can get to you if you’re not careful.
Jeff Wood: It’s interesting. You mentioned that they guy that started Zappos, Tony Hsieh, who unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago, he actually, started working and putting together a part of Las Vegas, downtown Las Vegas, not actually The Strip, where he had this metric that he used to measure collisions — the amount of times people interacted with each other. I think that that’s kind of what you’re talking about — this collision metric where you want to not necessarily make best friends with people, but you want to have these interactions, what people call "weak ties." Not necessarily strong ties, but they’re weak ties because people are part of the community and you run into them and then you create the community that exists in your area.
Ken Napzok: Yeah. I love that. I love that. I’d like to look up more of that stuff. Yeah. It’s like, I know my coffee guy is also a sound guy for live bands and I know when he’s got gigs and he knows what I’m doing. Like we’re never going to hang out. I think I kind of remember his name, but that’s part of life. That’s part of the community. Like you said.
