Episode 127 - Dusty Wright on Universal Vibrations, the Future of Webcasts and Smart Culture

Transcript

Susan Bratton: Welcome to Dishy Mix. I’m your host, Susan Bratton, and on today’s show you’re going to get to meet Dusty Wright. This is a man whose life purpose is sharing smart culture with the world, and today we’re going to share some smart culture with you. Dusty’s the cofounder of a website called Culture Catch and he hosts a celebrity interview show called The Dusty Wright Show; so we’re going to do some celebrity gossip today. He’s also the former editor in chief of Cream Magazine and Prince’s NPG Magazines, so his roots are in the literary. He’s a writer of music, fiction and screenplays, and he started it all out on the dark side as an agent at William Morris. He’s interviewed some amazing people most recently, including Alan Ball. One of my favorite movies ever was American Beauty; he’s a writer and director of that, Six Feet Under, and the newest sensation True Blood. He’s interviewed David Lynch and Wynton Marsalis and Laura Dern and Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo – I was singing Divo just in my head the other day – Janice Ian, Les Paul, amazing people, and he does it in such a beautiful way. So on this show we’re going to talk about everything from podcasting and webcasting to movie stars and celebrities. Lets get Dusty on the show. Welcome Dusty.

Dusty Wright: Welcome.

Susan Bratton: Wait, I have to welcome you…

Dusty Wright: Wait, you’re interviewing me…

Susan Bratton: Right. You’re the guest. How’s it feel?

Dusty Wright: Am I going to interview you Susan, because I’m the one always doing the interviewing?

Susan Bratton: No. Today you’re getting interviewed, and you’re going to just sit back and relax and love it Dusty.

Dusty Wright: Alright.

Susan Bratton: So…

Dusty Wright: If it kicks it, don’t, you know, I’m sorry.

Susan Bratton: I’ll do my best.

Dusty Wright: Alright.

Susan Bratton: So you’re one of the coolest people that I personally know. Not only are you a handsome gorgeous guy and a snappy, snappy dresser, but you know everybody and you’ve just got this amazingly wide approach to the world of music and fashion and books and movies and everything. I think that all came from so much of the editorial work you did, but what is it… If you had to say when you bring smart culture to the world, what is your genre or niche?

Dusty Wright: Well I’d have to say it’s just intellectual curiosity when it’s pertaining to the arts. And there’s so much… And by the way, thank you for that tremendous build-up. My head is now finally getting back to the size (unintelligible).

Susan Bratton: My pleasure.

Dusty Wright: I think the thing with culture and what, I like the term ‘smart culture’, which I think is a good word – it shouldn’t be a word that excludes anyone from participating… You know, marketers are always looking for clever slogans and everything, like we have a smart president in the White House, why can’t we ingest smart culture? And it’s all out there Susan. I mean it’s, obviously we have a lot more digital noise because of the web and its reach and the number of bloggers that exist and the number of, you know, trashy thoughts. But I think we’ve lost focus in some way, and TV is partially to blame. We’ve gone into this reality mode, hyper reality mode where your next door neighbor is a celebrity – or a celebutard, as someone once coined. And I’d rather tell the story about when heralded individuals in all genres of the arts - music, theatre, dance, literature and music – who don’t get the press they deserve, who do it purely for the love of the craft and sharing their stories and their passion with the world. And that’s how I approach who I’d like to have on the show and who I think my listeners would like to listen to and share their stories.

Susan Bratton: When I consume Culture Catch, when I go to your website, a lot of times I’m reading the articles you’re posting or I’m watching the Dusty Wright Show. But you also do some podcasts as well, don’t you?

Dusty Wright: Correct.

Susan Bratton: So how do you decide? What’s your schedule like for creating all this content? And do you write everything yourself? Are you really the…

Dusty Wright: We have 15 writers that live all over the world that write… you know, we have the five verticals that I mentioned – theatre, art, literature, music and film – so I give them free reign. I think they kind of know me. My managing editor worked with me at Cream and at Prince’s New Power Generation. He understands what I’m looking for. There’s very little editorial input from me as to what a writer can cover on our site. You know, I think the two word answers edgy or NPR, that’s are style, you know, and NPR’s pretty edgy. But, you know, we’d like to be all inclusive in a wider demographic base, so an undiscovered artist or filmmaker, we’re just as happy to report about a movie they’ve released or a piece of music or dance piece that they’re currently promoting as a bigger known celebrity. I really think at the end of the day, I don’t know, it’s serendipitous often. You know, I get 70 emails a day from publicists pitching me everything, from the innain to the very fascinating. And I don’t know, I just think it’s, wow, that’s, it has to peak my interest first I guess for whether or not I’m going to take the time and the effort into producing an audio and/or video podcast.

Susan Bratton: A lot of my listeners describe themselves as coolness wannabes, rather than people who are super hip and into the arts or theatre or music scene because I think a lot of people who are Dishy Mix listeners are, like, deep diving into the wonderful wooly world of web analytics or, you know, internet marketing. Like, we’re so in our advertising stuff a lot of times that we don’t pull our heads up and say, “Hey, what’s really interesting and cool that we should have our eye on right now?” Could you give us just a couple of minutes of some of the things that you think we should check out – great new music, new theatre – whatever it might be that you’ve had on the site recently?

Dusty Wright: Well, you know, that’s so… First of all, that’s a great question. It’s incredibly subjective, as you know.

Susan Bratton: That’s okay. You’re our filter. I mean we’re relying on you.

Dusty Wright: And that’s true and thank you for that. And, you know, the thing that… one of the things I’m very proud about our site is we cover a lot of jazz, and that’s, this has been my most recent rant – and I’ll get into some of the pieces we’ve done. Jazz is a music art form indigenous to America. And yet my friends, who are serious jazz musicians who’ve released 30, 40, 50 albums, can barely make a living. And I think that’s a tragedy. That’s extremely upsetting to me as a cultural enthusiast, as a fellow musician. It’s, why have we lost site of jazz as a viable form of entertainment. You can make the same argument for classical music, even though, you know, the argument may be, “Well that was music my grandparents listened to” or, you know, or that edict. But, you know, yet just the other day I was offered a screener, an advanced screener of a new jazz documentary called The Jazz Baroness by Hannah Rothschild of the famous Rothschild clan. And, you know, I kept putting off watching it, and I knew within 30 seconds that I wanted to interview this director because the scope and vision of this documentary was so riveting that I’ve got to share this information and her quest and her desire to share the story about her great aunt, Nica Rothschild, and Nica’s attempt to help jazz in the 50s was (unintelligible). She was a patron of the arts like none other. You know, HBO was wise enough to buy this documentary, so I think in the next couple of weeks your listeners will be able to watch it on HBO. So that’s just one new jag that I’m really champing on the site. The other thing is just theatre in general. I think we live in a bubble in New York City. You know, we’re used to being bombarded by culture and, you know, there is the hipster scene in New York; you know, if it’s not edgy it’s not cool. There’s a lot of really terrific traditional Broadway theatre that doesn’t get covered. You know, recently there was a revival of Bye, Bye Birdie with Gina Gershon, who I love; you know, I love all the things she’s done, most recently was her memorable performance on Curb Your Enthusiasm with Larry David. And now she’s in this new revival of Bye, Bye Birdie. Now it didn’t get tremendous reviews from us and from my theatre critic, but I still think it’s important that we share that information with readers. John Stamos is the other lead. You know, the original was Dick Van Dyke and Tina Rivera. So, you know, that was probably our parents generation or maybe for some even their grandparents generation. But the point is there’s a great theatre that even though it may have been mainstream in its day it’s still vital today in the revival sense. I mean Hair is another one that, you know, they’ve dusted off with the Chuli oil containers and Hair has made a huge comeback and won a number of Tony Awards. I saw this crazy musical last week, which started as a bar conversation – I love this story – and then became the hit phenomena Rock of Ages, taking heavy metal hair ballads and songs from the 80s from Bon Jovi and White Snake and Def Leopard and turned it into this jukebox musical that is such a hoot. And I’m a culture snob, I’d be the first to admit. I went in there with very little expectations, but by the end, you know, we had our fake lighters going, they were serving beer in the aisles, and you were singing along with these songs. It had this Rocky Horror kind of camp vibe going with, you know, all these great jukebox anthems.

Susan Bratton: It’s kind of like Mama Mia reviving Abba.

Dusty Wright: Absolutely.

Susan Bratton: Yeah. And it’s like super feel good.

Dusty Wright: Yeah, even campier. So, you know, you walked out and you go, “Well that was a, you know”… look, you’re spending a lot of money for Broadway tickets so you damn well better get your entertainment value out of it. Now that brings me to another point about smart culture; you don’t have to spend a lot of money to drink from that well. You don’t have to go to Broadway, you can go off, off Broadway. You can, you can snorkel around MySpace and find really compelling music that might have, you know, 250,000 listens. And you know, we point a lot of our viewers and users into those worlds as well. I have a writer manchestering with Rob Cochran, who is always champing, you know, these forgotten pop stars or these new up and coming acts that typically might not get the recognition outside of these large metropolitan areas.

Susan Bratton: Every year you do your favorite music of the year and you have a list that we can click through and go to Amazon and download or buy that are your favorite songs or favorite albums. Are you going to do that again for….

Dusty Wright: Oh yeah, I always do…

Susan Bratton: 2009-2010.

Dusty Wright: I’ve actually expanded into music – I mean into theatre and film and art and…

Susan Bratton: Great!

Dusty Wright: and other areas, but yeah, I really enjoy that. I’ve actually started doing it every quarter because people, there’s so much content that I love that I want to share more and more of it. So I’m actually just about do, and I was thinking about it the other day, what do I need to put in place for my holiday picks, you know, because people like to share music during the holidays.

Susan Bratton: Absolutely.

Dusty Wright: But there’s a lot of great music out there right now.

Susan Bratton: One of the things you can do if you want to get Dusty’s 2009 wrap up of his best music ever or his holidays, you can just sign up for the Culture Catch email at culturecatch.com, and you always send that out in email, I know, and I look for that.

Dusty Wright: Yeah.

Susan Bratton: So you’ve done a lot of amazing Dusty Wright Show interviews – I named a few of them earlier. But rather than one of the most popular shows, what are some of the moments in interviews – ‘cause I really think about you as being a masterful interviewer. You have a way, you have a depth of knowledge to draw from and this kind of easygoing persona that beautifully blend to get the best out of your guest. So for you what were some of the most personally wonderful interview moments?

Dusty Wright: Well it’s funny you should mention Alan Ball because I’m a very big fan as well of his work and, you know, towards the end of our interview he said, “This is one of the best interviews I’ve ever done.” Now for anyone who does interviews or anyone who is, you know, in this profession, that’s the highest compliment you can receive. And I think because I like my interview style to be more conversational, you know, I don’t really stick to a script per se, I have a blueprint of questions I’d like to ask a guest – and if I don’t get to them that’s alright because often times I’ve found if I can get them to smile right out of the gate, you know, if I ask them something that maybe catches them off guard or is a pat on the back that they don’t necessarily receive, that gets us into a whole different mode of relaxation for them that’ll forge me a much more conversational interview. And that’s really what I’m after. I’m after the same kind of conversation that you and I are having Susan; you know, just very really relaxed, from point A to point Z, there’s no linear fashion to it. You know, because if you’re a good listener then that’s the biggest quality and I think my greatest asset as an interviewee, interviewer, is being a good listener, they’re going to tell you where they want to go for the next question. So be a very good listener, don’t step on them. Don’t step on them to interject your point or ask them, you know, this difficult question that has them mawing it over, you know, in their head and they’re thinking, “Oh god, I can’t wait ‘til this is over.”

Susan Bratton: Is this how you’re trying to intimidate me so that I don’t ask you any more questions and you just get to talk on my whole show?

Dusty Wright: Yeah, exactly. You wanted me to be….

Susan Bratton: Too bad. I’m going to ask you questions. So you never really answered my original question, you did a total reframe there, which was that I asked you for maybe one or two moments where you had a really satisfying interview personally – you learned something or you were able to, you know, reveal something that…

Dusty Wright: I did. I said it about Alan Ball.

Susan Bratton: But it was about Alan telling you that you asked him a great question, right? That it was…

Dusty Wright: Well the whole interview.

Susan Bratton: The whole interview was great?

Dusty Wright: Yeah, the whole interview was fascinating…

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Dusty Wright: I mean just the process, we discussed music. I’ll tell you, my favorite interview of all times never made it to tape. How’s that?

Susan Bratton: Why’s that?

Dusty Wright: (unintelligible), the great producer. He’s done everyone from Bob Dylan to Emmylou Harris to obviously all the U2 records – just the most fascinating individual I’ve ever met, the most satisfying interview I’ve ever conducted. He was so incredibly gracious. And there was a technical glitch because I didn’t have my audio guy with me that day – I just had a camera guy who said, “Oh yeah, the audio’s fine”, and I didn’t, I foolishly didn’t check it, and he’s being videotaped. So I have a great videotape interview with no audio, with in unusable audio track.

Susan Bratton: Breaks your heart.

Dusty Wright: But the interesting thing about Lanois is, you know, I’ve always been a big fan of his production style, and often times when you’re producing music or you hire a producer to produce your music they do a certain style over your music; you know, they are very good at pulling performances. I mean think George Martin and what he did for the Beetles. Lanois has done the same thing for U2 and two of the greatest Dylan records produced by Lanois, the modern era Bob Dylan. So Lanoise was so completely giving about these little anecdotal stories about working with these icons, these music icons. And then, you know, just throwing these offhanded comments about he likes to watch birds when he’s not doing music….

Susan Bratton: That’s, well that’s what I like. I like the fact that I know you’d like to be a dolphin if you’re reincarnated or whatever it might be. I love to know those little things that, like, you told me that the book that you recommend most often to friends is Messiah. And I had to go look it up ‘cause I’ve never, I don’t think I’ve ever read any Gore Vidal and I certainly have never heard of Messiah. And when we, we’re going to go to a break and when we come back I want you to tell us why that’s the book you recommend. I also want, I want to give you.

Dusty Wright: Currently I should say. I mean…

Susan Bratton: Currently.

Dusty Wright: It may change next week ‘cause I’m also reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

Susan Bratton: Well there you go. A classic.

Dusty Wright: I would be 99 percent of the audience has never read it.

Susan Bratton: Oh, I’m sure we haven’t; we just know of it. It’s one of those books you never have to read ‘cause someone told you the plot and then you think you know it kind of thing, but there’s the savoring, there’s all that savoring part of things, right?

Dusty Wright: Right.

Susan Bratton: So lets go to a break ‘cause we want to thank our sponsors, and I know I want to talk to you about sponsorships and what’s the world of webcast sponsorship like now and I want to talk about some new cutting edge video styles with you ‘cause you’re doing a lot of experimentation in that. So we’re going to talk a little bit more about video and video production as well. So lets go to a break and when we come back we’ll get to know Dusty Wright of Culture Catch and The Dusty Wright Show. Hang on and we’ll be right back.

Susan Bratton: We’re back. We’re back with Dusty Wright. He is the founder of Culture Catch, the Smart Culture website, and the celebrity interview show called The Dusty Wright Show. And so Dusty we were talking a little bit before we left about your current favorite book, and I do want you to tell us what it is about Messiah by Gore Vidal that is the thing that gets you to actually want to tell other people about it?

Dusty Wright: Well I think with any great piece of fiction, the story’s got to be compelling. You know, The Road is a fantastic book and the proof is in the pudding because the movie’s coming out any day now, by Cormac McCarthy, and you know, all of the hub about the book, you know, being the Book of the Month on Oprah, you know, that’s all well and good, but this book Messiah by Gore Vidal is every bit as challenging and interesting as The Road, and even though when the book was released in the early 50s, it was released as a science fiction satire, but it was so incredibly priechant that when I interviewed Gore, I said, “You know Gore, this book is intriguing. It reminds me of Scientology in some fashion and form.” He says, “Well you know my boy, L Ron Hubbard and I shared the same publisher back in the day.” I said, “Oh, well that’s an interesting comment.” Not that the, not that I know anything about Scientology and I don’t think the book is a mirror of that discipline. But the story itself is so compelling, it’s a cautionary tale about how people have used religion through the ages to control the masses, and this is a retelling, and, you know, the main protagonist in the book is a guy named John Cave, AKA J.C….

Susan Bratton: Jesus Christ, right?

Dusty Wright: Jesus Christ…

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm.

Dusty Wright: You know, and there’s all these wonderful insights into religion and how people use it for a crutch, a cross, a rally, and it’s not using it in anything that’s derogatory to any other religion. It’s just stating this group of spin doctors create a new religion that overtakes all the other religions, it becomes the new thing. And I think when Gore wrote it he was looking at TV evangelism in the 50s as kind of this new platform to promote these icons, and this was his way of subtly saying – or not so subtly – say, “Hey, wait a minute, we need to step back and examine this.”

Susan Bratton: I’m going to read it. It’s going to be added to my list. Who know when I’ll get to it, but I’m intrigued.

Dusty Wright: I must say with Gore, you know, Gore is a very, very smart writer…

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Dusty Wright: It’s like watching a Tom Stoppard play - you really have to be on your toes. So it’s may, it’s, I’ve had other friends read it and say, “Gosh, you know, it was hard getting into it.” But once you get into the cadence of the language – and I think to me that’s a very good writer, getting into the cadence of the character and the language and the voice of the narrator of the book – once you get into it you just rip through it.

Susan Bratton: It’s funny too because I’ve been reading Henry Miller’s The Colossus of Maroussi because I had the CMO of Scots Miracle Grow on the show and she said she wanted to do grease like Henry Miller. And I thought, “I want to do grease like Henry Miller. What’s that like?” And I’ve been reading that book. I pick it up, I put it down – you know, I’m always reading so many things. Whatever my mood is, whatever kind of, you know, book do I want in this moment that I have this precious moment that I have to read, and I’ll tell you that it’s almost, reading Henry Miller is it fills my mind with a painterly light. More than the words themselves, it’s like a screen that shoots images into your brain. I’ve never experienced writing like that, even other Henry Miller. So I’d like to… a hard read is okay. Black Swan, too hard a read for me because it’s about economics, but his way of writing is unbelievable, so I love to get my hands on those books where once you settle into their rhythm it’s like a whole new language.

Dusty Wright: Well, you know, if you want the most difficult of reads…

Susan Bratton: I don’t.

Dusty Wright: The House Of Leaves, which is a big cult classic, which is, you know, this story within a story within a story. But, you know…

Susan Bratton: That’s like Lost. I can barely keep up.

Dusty Wright: It’s almost as tough as Ulysses by Joyce. And that’s why I chose a more gentler Irish writer and Oscar Wilde with Picture of Dorian Gray. You know, I always, I make it a point – and I like having this covered on our site – I’m always trying to read a classic every quarter. This summer I read Frankenstein for the first time by Mary Shelly, the unabridged version. And I was completely blown away by how inventive and beautiful the language was and, you know, the back story of how she even got to write Frankenstein is wonderful. So I would encourage people, don’t be afraid to pick up these classics. They’re classics for a reason, and they inspired other popular culture for a reason.

Susan Bratton: I absolutely have to live to be 120 because there’s too much that I still want to do.

Dusty Wright: And that’s the problem with today, and that’s why I built a website. It’s like there’s so much digital noise out there…

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm.

Dusty Wright: Where do you go if you have a finite amount of time, in the morning, just take a quick peruse of things that might intrigue you…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Dusty Wright: And I think, you know, hopefully we provide that service…

Susan Bratton: You really do. Every time I come to Culture Catch I just feel like, “Oh, this is the really, really good interesting stuff going on in the world”, and you’re right, you are a repository for it unlike any other. Now I want to go back to talking about the Dusty Wright show, switch gears a little bit. You know, we took a break to thank our sponsors. My show is sponsored and I am so appreciative of the companies that want to reach my listeners. And I know that The Dusty Wright Show and Culture Catch relies quite a bit on sponsorships and events. So my question is if I could wave my magic wand right now what’s the one thing you’d have me change about this world of webcasting that could increase your success with the endeavor?

Dusty Wright: Well I think the biggest thing – and we’ve discussed this privately Susan – is for the advertisers to appreciate the narrowcast efforts of folks like ourselves and what we’re doing and how they can use this smartly because our demographics are perfect for product placement and in a very seamless advertorial fashion. You know, we talked about MommyCasts and how they had their deal with Pixie. You know, it’s almost like you have a focus group right at your beck and call. If you know that your market is smart culture or the enthusiasts of smart culture fit your psychograph, why wouldn’t you want to advertise in that world? Why wouldn’t you want to brand your message with that concept? You know, that symbiotic relationship between content and brand. In the old days of radio and television it was there, and I’m just saying lets just go back to the way things used to be before there was too much advertisement. You could have, you could have Panasonic sponsor The Dusty Wright Show, and you’d be safe to assume that our users are probably going to buy your product – or Samsung or another consumer electronic brand. Or you might say Lexus because hey, what a great place to listen to our audio podcasts than in your 5.1 surround sound automobile if you’re driving to work in San Francisco or Los Angeles or London.

Susan Bratton: Nice. I appreciate that. Well I will get that wand out and we will see what we can do. We might have to ride around on it like a damn broomstick…

Dusty Wright: Well….

Susan Bratton: but we’ll do something with it.

Dusty Wright: That’s been my jag for four years; I’ve been pontificating far and wide on that point and I’m starting to see some acceptance of that. And I know that, you know, I have a year of a couple of CEO’s from some mid level sized companies who I think are starting to appreciate that. I always go back to that one example, when I say Mutual of Omaha, if you’re of a certain age you’ll say, “Wild Kingdom.”

Susan Bratton: Yeah, of course.

Dusty Wright: And, you know, that proves that it works because you still associate Mutual of Omaha with Wild Kingdom.

Susan Bratton: That was such a great show.

Dusty Wright: Yes.

Susan Bratton: So before we have to wrap up I really want to understand your thinking about online video. You know, you do The Dusty Wright Show, you’ve got a great new intro – I love the new intro – and you do a lot of things. I mean when you interviewed Sarah Beck of Pink Nasty down in Austin, you shot the whole thing in Sepia…

Dusty Wright: Yeah.

Susan Bratton: It looked like Sepia or something…

Dusty Wright: Right.

Susan Bratton: You are, you play a lot with your video.

Dusty Wright: Right.

Susan Bratton: I’m not sure what the hell you did with Mark Mothersbaugh and, you know, that one, I….

Dusty Wright: Well that was a happy action that had to be kind of covered up. That was our first video, so that’s how the tinting was born in that, and I’ve shared story to MEB and Mac World, where there was an issue with focus. I was the only one doing the interview, so I had the camera set up ‘cause I had no cameraman that day and I inadvertently didn’t do a manual focus on us, so the camera keeps trying to focus on Mark and then me and then Mark and then me and then him and then me. And so we had to treat it with this effect, you know, this Devo effect. But early on when we were doing the videos I was trying to match the mood with the interview style. I’ve tempered that somewhat, although a new show that I’m developing called One Takes, where there’s just a six camera on the performance and you’re really framing the performance of the artist, we’re toying with that black and white. I’m a big fan of black and white.

Susan Bratton: As am I.

Dusty Wright: You know, HD is terrific, but I don’t need to see every pore in someone’s face, nor do I think that individual would like to share it with everyone.

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm.

Dusty Wright: So, you know, there’s a great way of grabbing content and just toying with it because again, you know, we’re webcasting here, which is also a mobilecast app; we can expand that a little bit. You know, we can have some fun with it.

Susan Bratton: So what do you think are some of the up and coming video styles for episodic web content, both things you might be doing as well as things you see on other webcasts that you think feel very contemporary?

Dusty Wright: Well, you know, I think YouTube has given birth to this whole iChat video camera mentality where you just, you know, if your content is very clever - and I’m talking about the Gal community channel on YouTube – you know, it’s just a fixed camera which is her iChat camera in her bedroom in Australia, but the content is so damn compelling you don’t care. So, you know, we have this whole low-fi, low-tech thing, but what I caution is we have this convergence that is here now with HD and the web, you know, everything is to one, to three screens – your mobile screen, your laptop or desktop screen and then your TV flat screen. It behooves you to videotape everything in the highest resolution and at the best audio quality you can, and then you can dumb it down, then you can play with it and you can decide as a, as someone who is producing your show, what your show, you’d like it to be, how it’s represented. So to answer your original question, I don’t think there is any one style. I think there are a lot of different styles, just like there are a lot of different styles of music. I think what people are doing is experimenting with it. You know, TV still has a kind of, you know, CBS has a kind of look and ABC has a kind of look and HBO has a kind of look. But these new digital effects and digital cameras, everyone looks the same as HD, this hyper reality thing.

Susan Bratton: I know that you want corporations, I know you want Panasonic, Samsung and Lexus to sponsor The Dusty Wright Show and I’m going to help you with that. What if a corporation wants to be part of this YouTube sensation? What kinds of things have you seen work well for corporate video that people actually want to watch?

Dusty Wright: You know, I think the most interesting advertorials with corporations are the rabbit hole, “I fell in the rabbit hole” videos. They lead you on a journey, they lead you into the Alice in the looking glass, there’s a looking glass down the rabbit hole, you know. They lead you from point A to point Z, and they tell an anecdotal story that it might utilize the brand in some compelling way. And so you, you know, you smirk at the end of it. You remember the Durex rubber balloon commercial?

Susan Bratton: No.

Dusty Wright: You know, I’m sure a few of your listeners have seen it – and you can Google it, it’s hilarious. It’s, they took Durex condoms, they blew them up and made them into these rubber dogs, you know, balloon dogs having sex and it’s hilarious. It’s really, you know, I mean what a great… But I’m sure it was done in Europe, you know. We’re too decent and provincial here in America to have that much fun in the advertising world.

Susan Bratton: I think Durex was also a sponsor of a number of podcasts really early on. So maybe they’re just a really…

Dusty Wright: That would make sense because…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Dusty Wright: I think those are kinds of things you need to do. If you’re going to do just a pre role, you know, I’ve always been of the opinion – and we practice it here – that we’ll create an, you know, a public radio or a public TV style, “Today’s podcast is brought to you by our friends at…”, you know, that kind of thing. But I would love to have brand integration with our content in a very clever way. Now I have certain clients who say, “Look, you use our equipment” or, you know, “You dress in our clothes and that’s good enough for us.” Or, you know, “You feature our guitars on your website, that’s great”, that’s product placement. You don’t have to hit the user over the head with it. And I think that’s very smart too. If I have, you know, a very famous musician playing a Gibson guitar, that might get somebody to go out and buy that guitar. And, you know, the movie industry has been doing that for years Susan.

Susan Bratton: Absolutely, integration. I think it’s a good start.

Dusty Wright: Brand integration.

Susan Bratton: It is. So I have a funny one. You told me something and I made a mental note and I didn’t understand it. I asked you if you hadn’t done all of these great things that you had done – and I actually want to, I want to talk to you about what it was like to be an agent – but if you had…

Dusty Wright: (Unintelligible).

Susan Bratton: I do. I want to hear it. But if you hadn’t done that you told me that one of the things you’d like to be is a physic remote viewer. We’re you saying psychic?

Dusty Wright: Psychic remote viewer.

Susan Bratton: A psychic remote viewer. What is that?

Dusty Wright: Well, now you’re getting into a whole ‘nother realm of my character. You know, I’m a big UFO aficianado, I’ve done extensive research, you know, I’ve practiced Tai Chi and martial arts for many years so there’s a lot of meditation technique. And in, just coincidentally there happens to be this new George Clooney movie out about this very thing, about remote viewing…

Susan Bratton: But what is remote viewing?

Dusty Wright: Remote viewing is being in a meditative state that affords you an astral view of another remote location. So we had trained the CIA or one of the NSA or one component of our government, we trained a group of psychic warriors that would go into transcendental states and they were snooping around the Kremlin, and vice versa, the Kremlin was snooping around, you know, the White House and the Pentagon. You know, the thing is if you’re in the black hole of your meditative state you’re afforded the opportunity to remote view locations outside of your body, so you have to learn how to get outside of your body and then control and manipulate where you project astrally into the plane. So, you know, some of these guys and some of the books I’ve read it says, “Oh yeah, you know, we’d be in crew chefs office and I could see where the red phone was – and these are techniques that you’d have to be trained to do. You just can’t randomly do it. You know, there is a training method that is involved with it.

Susan Bratton: And have you tried this.

Dusty Wright: I have to a minor extent, and believe me it’s something like anything else, it requires 10,000 hours of practice.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Dusty Wright: ‘Cause if you’ve ever done any kind of meditation- and I’ve talked to David Lynch on this point, ‘cause he’s big with his…

Susan Bratton: Right, he’s the TM guy, right?

Dusty Wright: He is…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Dusty Wright: He has his own foundation…

Susan Bratton: Yes.

Dusty Wright: and, you know, David really appreciates what TM can do to curve a lot of illicit behavior and insanity in our world, but in just Taoist meditation, you know, to get to a state where there’s nothing in the mind but, you know, the black hole, you have to empty the mind, and you have to practice doing that, you know. There’s counting techniques that then afford you breathing techniques that then afford you to feel the breath throughout the body and then ultimately no thought patterns. So I’m very fascinated by that. Allegedly when you’re in this state you can meet all kinds of wonderful beings in other plants or other dimensions.

Susan Bratton: Yeah, I like the concept of dimensionality in general, whether it’s tapping into your own intuition or in taking journeys – meditative, psychadelic, whatever they might be. Actually I was just at the Rubin Museum in New York last week and I ran into Daniel Pinchbeck…

Dusty Wright: Mm hmm.

Susan Bratton: And I’ve never met him in person, but I’ve kind of followed him and I read his book, Breaking Through The Head, I think it’s called?

Dusty Wright: Mm hmm.

Susan Bratton: And it’s his whole, it’s like a travel journey… he traveled all over the world and did and had different psychadelic experiences…

Dusty Wright: Right.

Susan Bratton: So he went to Africa and did Ubagan and went to Peru and did Iwaska and all of these different things, and it was his story, it was not only a travel journal, but it was all about the travel in his mind through these entheogenic plants that connected him into this different dimension. And I thought that was fascinating too.

Dusty Wright: Well it is, you know, and you look at medicine men through the ages, you know, early man tapped into these abilities, these psychic abilities, and somewhere along the way we got very rigid and we were afraid of them or ignorant or too intelligent, whatever it may be, but the things is when you’re in a meditative state, if you start your day meditating, it affords you the clarity through the day and just a natural energy, ‘cause you’re tapping into the energy that is flowing through all of us. It’s not rocket science here guys. You know, we are atoms spinning, you know. We are sound waves. So if you learn how to manipulate that field or how to tap into that field there’s a lot that you can do from healing to, you know, healing yourself emotionally. And I’ve been in, I’ve been in some of our advanced martial arts classes where we’re doing standing meditation and people start weeping because they’ve unlocked memories and repression from the way they’ve held their body in a locked way for 20 or 30 years, suddenly it becomes uncorked and unlocked and those emotions are overwhelming.

Susan Bratton: I have a whole bunch of theories about unlocking emotion at a cellular level, which we don’t have time to go into today, but you and I have time to go into in our future.

Dusty Wright: Absolutely.

Susan Bratton: And I, yesterday morning after I dropped my daughter off from school, I drove just past my house to the Open Space Preserve, and I parked my car there and I sat on the fence and I looked out, as I was finishing up my latte I looked out onto the open space, onto the wide view, and I just thought about what I wanted to accomplish and where I was going and what my priorities were. It was a great way to start my day. I’ve been reading another book by Robert K. Cooper – I just got an introduction to him and I’m hoping I can have him on Dishy Mix. What he does is study the intersection of brain science and personal accomplishment…

Dusty Wright: Right.

Susan Bratton: And essentially, like meditation, he teaches us how to overcome our monkey brain that wants to just do email or the same safe thing we’ve always done, the same we’ve always done just to keep ourselves from danger and prevents us from getting out and kicking the ass we want to kick to do the things we want to do to get the things we want to have in those experiences. And he’s terrific. I’m  halfway through his book. I can’t remember the name of it. Here’s one of the problems with the Kindle: when you buy a book on the Kindle and you download it, you don’t have the cover. Every time you start to read you read from wherever you left off and you’re not touching it, and there’s something so somatic and visual about having a book cover, and I’m always bad at remembering the names of books anyway; it’s twice as bad if you have a Kindle ‘cause you never see the cover or the name of the book.

Dusty Wright: That’s why I don’t have one. That’s why bookshelves, there’s far too many books.

Susan Bratton: I have so many books, but…

Dusty Wright: I mean I appreciate, you know, not destroying the earth to create books that we don’t need…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Dusty Wright: But, you know, there’s, I’m reading simultaneous to the three other books that I’m reading…

Susan Bratton: Right. We all relate.

Dusty Wright: John Mac was a Pulitzer Prize winning Harvard psychiatrist who started studying the abduction phenomena, the UFO abduction phenomena, and he was a complete skeptic going into this. And he interviewed over four or five hundred casestudies of individuals who claimed that they had these extraordinary experiences. And the last book he wrote he started weaving into the interview techniques and the stories, the Shaman from, you know, the Amazon Delta and from Africa and from the Native Americans, and what he found were so many patterns that were similar and so many shared stories with just average individuals with their abduction stories. So again, you get into, you know, you get beyond three dimensions that exist in our plane of reality, and there’s a whole spectrum of not just influence but of universal vibrations. One of the really interesting things is the Shamans talk about tapping into the star people. And, you know, these things are documented through the course of history in petroglyphs and hieroglyphs from (unintelligible) to the Roman Empire. You know, just different cultures use different things to label them, you know – chariots of fire or ghosts or gremlins or whatever it may be.

Susan Bratton: Hey Dusty, we could keep going but we’ve got to stop and let our friends, our dear friends who listened to us have a good time together today get back to their lives. Maybe they’ll look out over the horizon or do some transcendental meditation today, what do you think?

Dusty Wright: Well I think the, you know, (unintelligible) said, which I think holds true is, you know, just get into nature a little bit every single day and you’ll be surprised by how you revitalize. You know, don’t dry one day, walk to work, ride your bicycle. Just enjoy nature. You know, we don’t need to live in these medically sealed homes that have sealed out the environment.

Susan Bratton: Yeah. Oh, I love the introduction to the theme song to Weeds where they, every week they have, every episode they have a different artist sing it. You know that one, “Little boxes, little boxes.”

Dusty Wright: Exactly.

Susan Bratton: I love that.

Dusty Wright: Get out of your little box…

Susan Bratton: Exactly.

Dusty Wright: and go breathe some fresh air.

Susan Bratton: Exactly. Dusty, such a pleasure to spend time with you. Thanks for being my coolest, coolest interview ever. And…

Dusty Wright: You’re kind darling.

Susan Bratton: No I’m not. It’s the truth. So I encourage you to go watch The Dusty Wright Show. Get some coolness in your life. Go check out Culture Catch…

Dusty Wright: Go have some fun.

Susan Bratton: Sign up for the…

Dusty Wright: Forward it to everyone.

Susan Bratton: Exactly, forward it to a friend. That’s what we’re all about, right. That’s great. Alright, this is your host Susan Bratton. You’ve gotten to meet Dusty Wright from Culture Catch. I hope you have a great day and I’ll see you next week. Bye-bye.