Marlboro Man

Um, he said that, he said that one of the ads he had to do was, um, it was for Scholl, the insoles, and in the ad he's walking down the street, then he puts on a comfortable pair of insoles, and he starts galloping like a horse down the street, and he said he had to look very doofusy for that.

So I said to him, "Like 50 years ago, you had the Marlboro Man being stoical and masculine on a horse, and now you have to be the horse?"

Mm.

And so that's, like, the arc of where we've gone.

That's your problem." He says, "This is what we need to, to, to, to get to where I want." And he said in terms of justifying it to Philip Morris, he said you almost sort of threw a number on the wall and saw if it st- stuck because he had no way of m- way of measuring it.

And he said, "We did sort of measure, um, how effective w- our marketing campaigns were, and Formula One came out top just ahead of the, the Marlboro Man," the, you know, I don't know if you remember, there was a Marlboro Man advert with a, the big hat.

Um, he said, "So they were happy, but yeah, the, the numbers just went stratospherically bigger for year on year, um, through the '80s." And the other teams w- just couldn't keep up with that, and that's...

I think Senna had seen that scale change when he, when he went to have a look around.

And this guy, who I've not seen before, I don't know, uh, who he is, but this is, uh, Breland Holleyhand right here.

Oh, he looks like a real masculine guy, doesn't he? [laughs] No Marlboro Man, uh, is gonna be holding a seminar there at the GOP because they're all about guarding their pedophiles, aren't they? Mike Johnson and the rest of them.

Yeah, and then Steve Scalise goes on.

He says, uh, "And be careful about this, Steve.

And he said in terms of justifying it to Philip Morris, he said he almost sort of threw a number on the wall and saw if it stuck because he had no way of measuring it.

And he said we did sort of measure how effective our marketing campaigns were and Formula One came out top just ahead of the Marlboro Man.

I don't know if you remember.

There was a Marlboro Man advert with the big hat.

he said so they were happy but yeah the numbers just went stratospherically bigger for year on year through the 80s and the other teams just couldn't keep up with that and that's I think Senna had seen that scale change when he went to have a look around he probably already sensed it and that was obviously going to be the place to be

yeah again a driver with a keen intelligence who's not willing to wait around music That brings us on now to the moment where we press fast forward and look back with the benefit of hindsight and try and put into context some of the ways that what happened then shaped today and the storylines that we still talk about.

It is, uh...

Man, I'll tell you how we met, and we're gonna talk about a whole bunch of crazy shit.

It's Aaron Rayteare.

Yeah, man.

Okay.

Because it raises the question, like, how does it affect country music? And so my...

I texted you, and I'm like, "Man, have you been writing and being like, 'Man, we probably shouldn't write about whiskey right now ''cause not a lot of people are drinking?'" So tell me about that.

I think...

You know, that was a quote from, um, a journalist, Peggy Orenstein is her name, and she, um, she did these interviews with young men and young women, like high school and college age, and she was just trying to get a pulse on, "Hey, what's the current zeitgeist of sexuality? How are young, young adults talking about sexuality, young people?" Um, and, um, her conclusion was, gosh, it feels like for men, we're growing in our ability to talk about, like, the emotional life of a man or the spiritual life of a man, right? Like, now we have a more full picture of masculinity.

We don't, we're not all trying to be the Marlboro Man anymore, right?

[laughs]

Like, we actually believe...