Jim Conrad: Hi, I'm Jim Conrad, AKA Cono, and this is Conovison.
Conovison is about storytelling.
We all have stories to tell.
We tell each other our stories because that's how we interpret reality.
Make sense of the world around us.
Make sense of our environment.
And every story has to have a start, an inception, a birth.
So to kick things off, how about our story?
The story of us?
So in the beginning, maybe even long before that, but about 4
billion years ago, give or take, earth was a lifeless place.
Nothing struggled, thought, or wanted.
Then very, very slowly that changed.
Seawater leached chemicals from rocks, near thermal vents.
Those chemicals jostled and combined.
Some hit upon the trick of making copies of themselves.
That in turn made more copies.
The replicating chains were caught in oily bubbles, which protected
them and made replication easier.
Eventually, they began to venture out into the open sea.
A new level of order had been achieved on Earth.
Life had begun.
Then the Tree of Life grew and once again, very, very slowly, its
branches stretching toward complexity.
Organisms developed systems, subsystems, and sub-subsystems
layered in ever deepening regression.
They used these systems to anticipate their future and to change it.
When they looked within, some found that they had cells.
Constellations of memories, ideas and purposes that emerged
from the systems inside them.
They experienced being alive.
And had thoughts about that experience.
They developed language and used it to know themselves.
Then they began to ask how?
How?
How had they been made?
This to a first approximation is the secular story of our creation.
It has no single author.
It's been written collaboratively by scientists over the past
few centuries, but now in the age of artificial intelligence,
possibly, the next question is why.
Here's a story about dude philosophy.
The wisdom of the surfer is often understood to be a kind of anti-wisdom,
a rejection of the idea that life's deepest truths must be elusive or
hard won, or even especially deep.
Jeff Spicoli: A surfing's not a sport.
It's a way of life.
No hobby.
It's a way of looking at that wave and saying, Hey bud, let's party.
Jim Conrad: Thus speak Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
This is surfing as the unexamined life, the renunciation of philosophy.
An opposing school of thought holds that surfers do discover deep
truths, presumably by virtue of their spending a lot of time in the ocean.
We are all equal before a wave.
This somewhat immersive aphorism from big wave surfing god Laird Hamilton
is illustrative of the genre, an earnest maxim of kinship and humility.
It is also, as anyone who has ever watched Hamilton surf
could attest, simply not true.
This is surfing is pseudo philosophy.
The problem in both cases is a category error.
We're not drawn to surfers because of what they say.
We are drawn to surfers because of what they do.
It's not their insights that interest us, it's their knowhow.
If there is wisdom to be gleaned from the surfer, that's
where we're going to find it.
In the characteristic competencies that constitute his form of life.
Reading waves, riding waves, weighing the duties of work against
the capricious call of the sea.
What a proper philosophy of surfing requires, in other words, is a thinker
good enough at surfing to possess all that practical knowledge, but also good enough
at philosophy to make explicit what theory of the world, if any, it amounts to.
Enter Aaron James.
He is a professor of philosophy at the University of California
Irvine and an accomplished surfer.
His book, Surfing With Sartre, aims to articulate the distinctive philosophical
value of the surfer way of being.
His conclusion is bold.
What the surfer knows, in knowing how to ride a wave, bears on questions for the
ages about freedom, control, happiness, society, our relation to nature, the value
of work, and the very meaning of life.
Professor James is aware that his enterprise will strike some as a
comically grandiose rationalization for his favorite pastime and the somewhat
obligatory ambition of his argument.
Can you imagine writing a book that says, surfing explains just
two of the questions for the ages.
No.
Means some chapters are more compelling than others, but it is as
genuinely a philosophical book about surfing as you're ever gonna get.
Savvy philosophers distill their core insight as a short phrase.
For Adam Smith, it was invisible hand.
For David Hume, confined generosity.
For John Rawls, veil of ignorance.
In James' book, the fundamental idea is adaptive attunement.
This is what he takes to be the essence of surfing.
For someone to be surfing, three conditions must be met.
He must be attuned to a shifting phenomenon outside
of himself, like a wave.
He must be adjusting himself in response to it, adapting, so as to be
carried along by its propulsive forces.
And he must be doing so intentionally and for its own sake.
That is because negotiating the world in this manner strikes
him as intrinsically valuable.
You are surfing if, and only if, you are adaptively attuned.
By defining surfing in this formal and abstract way, James frees himself to
talk not just about surfing waves, but also about surfing in an extended sense.
For example, surfing through a cocktail party conversation or
down a busy Manhattan sidewalk.
Surfers surf when they're in the water, but in other aspects of
their lives too, as can we all, and, well, we should, James contends.
He presents adaptive attunement as a fruitful way to understand how
much of the world works, as well as a winning strategy for life.
Take the question of free will.
There is a curious passage in Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness
in which Sartre discusses human freedom by likening it to skiing.
Sartre's was a radical conception of freedom, according to which human
beings in an almost godlike way could fashion themselves unencumbered
by the constraints of the world.
In searching for a metaphor for this, Sartre considered
but rejected ice skating.
The skater's path was too dependent on the hard resistance of the ice,
and eventually hit upon skiing.
Snow was soft, so the skier imposed his will more easily.
It left behind a less defined trace.
Sartre conceded that a better metaphor would be some form of sliding on water.
The vanishing trace of the rider's path would suggest an even greater
degree of autonomy from the world.
But evidently he wasn't familiar with surfing.
Professor James regrets that Sartre did not get to think about surfing.
If he had, he might have been led to a different, and as James sees it,
more convincing theory of freedom.
Sartre was an incompatibilist about free will.
He considered freedom to be at odds with the deterministic universe
implied by our best physics.
In what sense are you free if you could not have acted otherwise?
But James is a compatibilist.
He thinks there is a meaningful sense of freedom consistent with
being trapped by the laws of nature.
Indeed, he thinks the surfer derived notion of adaptive
attunement captures that sense.
As the surfer knows, freedom is not a matter of imposing your
will, Sartre like on the world.
That's a surefire way to wipe out,
freedom, rather is a matter of trying ascending your will.
And accepting the exchange or two-way relationship between what you intend
to do and what you are constrained to do by the forces around you.
You take what the wave gives you.
In the deterministic universe, freedom is the sensation known to the adaptively
attuned of efficacy without control.
The surfer is right.
Sartre is wrong.
Given that Professor James's principle area of academic expertise is political
philosophy, it's not surprising that his chapters in the book on society
and work are particularly strong.
Surfers may want to flip straight to his argument for the necessity of a
more leisurely, surfer friendly style of capitalism, in which some people work
less and surf more in the interest of offsetting carbon emissions, of course.
But hey, why stop at reforming capitalism.
To those people who spend their workday sitting at desks in front
of computers, furtively checking webcam footage of their local breaks,
I say, surfers of the world unite.
We have nothing to lose but our jobs.
A review of the book, Surfing with Sartre: An Aquatic Inquiry into a Life
of Meaning, by Aaron James, written by James Ryerson of the New York Times.
And now a story from a guy who grew up in Surf City, US of A. Ladies
and gentlemen, please welcome the one, the only, Jesse Dylan.
Can you hear me, Jesse?
Jesse Dylan: I can hear you and myself.
Jim Conrad: It's the Conovison podcast.
I am Jim Conrad, AKA Cono with Jesse Dylan.
Hi Jesse.
Jesse Dylan: I forgot to ask, is it scale, or scale and a half, or double
scale, or do we not do that anymore?
What am I getting paid for this?
Jim Conrad: Oh no, it's uh, cyber currency.
It's the cyber scale.
Yeah, but okay.
But we gotta start somewhere.
Let's start the story with your dad.
He was born in Edmonton.
Jesse Dylan: My dad was born in Edmonton and he started his radio career at
CKUA and one day they brought this guy in, good looking guy, and I think
they were both about 19 years old.
And he said, this is gonna be your sports guy.
And it was Robert Goulet.
Jim Conrad: The, the famous.
Jesse Dylan: The crooner.
Jim Conrad: Robert Goulet, who we know kind of, but crooner.
But he was a Broadway star.
Jesse Dylan: Yes.
Yeah.
He was a Broadway star.
Vegas star.
Jim Conrad: But from Edmonton?
Jesse Dylan: No, he's an American.
I can't remember where.
Minnesota, something like that.
But I guess his family moved to Edmonton when he was a young lad, and when he was
19 he had this huge baritone voice, right?
So they, uh, my dad and him became fast friends.
They had a lot of fun.
Jim Conrad: In Edmonton.
Jesse Dylan: In Edmonton.
And years later, my dad's career took him to Montreal, CFCF TV and radio.
We also had a, um, a puppet show back in the day.
You like puppets?
Jim Conrad: I like puppets.
High heels and hand puppets.
Jesse Dylan: So I remember, we couldn't find dates, but we had puppets on a
camping trip, but we won't go there.
So from, uh, from Montreal to Vancouver.
CKWX back in the, uh, early days, and then we moved to Toronto.
Jim Conrad: So in between all of this, you were born in which city?
Jesse Dylan: Montreal.
And then we lived in Vancouver, West Vancouver when I was a young
boy, and then suddenly we're in Toronto and my dad's doing mornings
with Keith Rich, Woodman and Rich.
My dad's name Steve Woodman.
And so Woodman and Rich on CKY, big morning show in Toronto
back in the early sixties.
Kind of a funny story.
Jim Conrad: I'll be the judge of that.
Jesse Dylan: The president of programming for NBC radio out of New York City
was flying through bad weather.
They had to land in Toronto and I guess he spent the night before they could fly, he
was flying from like Alaska to New York.
And then the next morning he's turning on the radio on the way to the airport
and he's listening to Woodman and Rich.
He gets to New York.
Phones up Steve Woodman, my dad, and says, Hey man, how would you
and your partner like to come and do national radio out of New York on NBC?
Jim Conrad: Luck.
Jesse Dylan: Luck, right?
So they did, and we, so we had an estate in New Jersey.
My dad was doing TV and radio in New York City at 30 Rock.
He and Robert Goulet and all their pals, Jimmy Dean, Chuck McCann.
My dad and Goulet had a penthouse in Manhattan.
Although he lived with his family, us, in New Jersey.
It was Rat Pack, right.
Sixties.
So these guys would be out partying, having a ball, uh, doing their thing.
Goulet was on cam a lot at the time with Richard Burton.
And my dad was TV, radio, NBC.
Jim Conrad: Wow.
How old were you when you were living in New Jersey on the estate?
Did you get to see the penthouse?
Jesse Dylan: No, no.
That was the poon palace.
I wasn't poon.
I would've been if Diddy had been there.
But I'm, I missed that charade.
Jim Conrad: Uh, you grew up then in, in and around New Jersey and New York.
And then when did you leave?
Jesse Dylan: Nine.
About nine years old we moved to Malibu, California.
Jim Conrad: Right.
And your dad did radio in LA.
Jesse Dylan: He did, uh, the morning show at KDAY, which was a
legendary station back in the day.
And he did a television show and a teen show.
So the show he was doing in New York was very much like what Dick Clark was
doing with Bandstand in Philadelphia only they were doing it in New York.
Never became quite as famous as Dick's.
Jim Conrad: So Malibu, California.
Mbu, And this is now, you're nine, 10 years old, landing in Surf City.
Jesse Dylan: Zuma Beach.
We lived just above Zuma Beach.
And we had horses.
A lot of people don't know that.
You know, they see the fires and they think everybody is a Hollywood
legend living on the ocean.
But Malibu had ranch country, wineries, horses, agriculture.
So we were part of the, the horse group and the beach group and the surfing group.
Was a junior lifeguard there for three or four years.
Jim Conrad: And then what phase of your development did
you decide, enough of this.
I want to get out of here, or do I wanna stay here?
What do I wanna do?
Jesse Dylan: Where?
In Malibu?
Jim Conrad: Yeah.
Jesse Dylan: Oh, well, we moved back as a family.
Jim Conrad: Oh, okay.
So you came back.
Jesse Dylan: 1970 we moved back to Canada.
My dad again was at CKWX in 1970.
I think from 70 to 74.
Jim Conrad: Yeah.
I wanna talk about, because there obviously there was
something that happened.
He, he worked very hard and was very successful in LA and in Hollywood.
And then something happened that caused you all or him to
decide to move back to Canada.
What was that?
Jesse Dylan: Well, I was 16 at the time.
My brother was, uh, 18.
My older brother, come from a family of seven.
There was some concern that we were coming up for the draft in Vietnam.
So that's what my parents say.
It was probably the, you know, tax evasion.
Jim Conrad: You're 17, 18, 19 years old.
Jesse Dylan: 1974.
It was a brand new high school in Tsawwassen where we lived.
South Delta Senior Secondary.
They were looking for a president, brand new school.
I knew no one, we just moved from Fort Langley to there.
Good move, by the way.
Fort Langley was rough in the seventies, man, I'm telling you.
You're not from around here, are you?
No.
When we parachuted in from Malibu, California to Fort Langley in 1970.
I don't know why my dad thought it'd,
Jim Conrad: Well, that's, it was still 1954 there.
Jesse Dylan: Yeah, it was American graffiti basically.
It was white T-shirts, tight jeans, cowboy boots.
Farm boys.
And all of them were tough.
Every single one of them.
Took my licks.
Eventually, you know, took a few, got a couple in, and
eventually we all became friends.
The first guy I met in that school at Fort Langley looked like the wicked
witch from the original Wizard of Oz.
Jim Conrad: Was
he green?
Jesse Dylan: Pretty close.
Had a, the large witch nose, beady eyes, And a white t-shirt.
Cigarettes rolled up.
And he came up to me in the hallway, first day at school and he said, uh,
lovingly of course, you wait till, he grabbed me by the throat, put me
against the lockers and said, just wait till lunch you long-haired cocksucker.
And as I said, I wasn't disappointed.
He made, he made good on that promise.
Him and his buddies, him and his buddies.
Jim Conrad: Didn't kill ya.
Didn't maim you.
Jesse Dylan: Nope.
But like, it wasn't a welcome basket and say, welcome to our neighborhood.
Jim Conrad: Well that was, well that was how, that's how they did it.
That, that was, he was the welcome wagon.
Strange Fort Langley welcome wagon.
Jesse Dylan: Yeah.
It was.
And it, it actually got worse on the bus.
It was bad enough at lunchtime, but fun on the bus after school that day was worse.
Jim Conrad: Oh.
But so you got outta there to Tsawwassen, which was in the mid seventies.
Jesse Dylan: Um, 1974.
Jim Conrad: A bit of an isolated community wasn't it, out there?
Jesse Dylan: It was a nice community.
Nice.
No greasers.
Jim Conrad: Tunnel town.
And then you went to BCIT?
Jesse Dylan: I did.
I was doing the, um, as I, I, I ran for student council president.
I won.
And for two years as student council president at South Delta Senior Secondary
I got to read the PA announcements.
Turned it into a little mini radio show.
I think all of us did that.
All of us started in high school.
So I was kind of never really with it, or maybe out of it, while my
dad was in the business, certainly out of it in Malibu in the sixties.
I can promise you that.
Uh, we were all out of it in California in the sixties.
Jim Conrad: Did you drop acid?
Jesse Dylan: Oh, yeah.
Jim Conrad: Uh, in Malibu with the Beach Boys, with Brian Wilson.
Jesse Dylan: I didn't drop with Brian Wilson, but pretty well everyone else.
I had done a Tony the Tiger Sugar Frosted Flake commercial.
And we had seven kids and we, Dorothy Day Otis Agency.
I remember that.
And we all had an agent.
My mother or father would schlep us around.
My parents would whore us out for the lowest common denominator.
And so I got a, uh, sugar Frosted Flake commercial, Tony the Tiger.
So I'm this like teenage guy, 13 years old, right?
And I got the commercial.
And back in the day the residuals were fucking massive.
In the US they went on forever, right?
It was a national Tony the Tiger sugar Frosted Flake commercial.
I'm dancing with this chick to some fucking hip music, right?
This is the commercial.
And I hadn't, there was a pan of her eating her breakfast,
which was sugar Frosted Flakes.
Jim Conrad: And then you get up and dance.
Jesse Dylan: And we get up and dance, but I hadn't eaten my sugar Frosted Flakes.
So I run out of energy.
And when the tiger says, go, go, go, as Tony the Tiger, I faint and pass out.
And then it pans to me eating sugar Frosted Flakes.
And now you're back.
I get my energy,
right?
So the residual started pouring in.
And uh, my parents took the money, of course, we had seven kids.
Jim Conrad: Not as much as Tony the Tiger, but, yeah.
Jesse Dylan: Yeah.
They, they had mouths to feed, but, but checks.
Jim Conrad: So they got, they got the, they took the checks.
Jesse Dylan: Yeah, they took the checks, as they should.
Jim Conrad: Which is kind of a, yeah.
Uh, I mean, that's kind of a Hollywood tradition.
Jesse Dylan: But, but I gotta check one day.
I found it hadn't been open yet.
$235. 1968, 69. I take the check, I go to the Bank of America.
I don't have a bank account.
I don't even know what a bank account is, but I'm gonna cash this check.
I cashed the check.
They gave me the money.
I went down to the beach and I think I bought a hundred hits
of yellow uh, orange sunshine.
Jim Conrad: Orange sunshine.
Well, of course it's California.
Jesse Dylan: Lemme think what I got for it.
I think it was like 235 bucks.
I think at the time it was two bucks a hit.
Sound about right?
So when you asked about LSD, that was a bad night.
Jim Conrad: Oh, not a good, not a good trip.
Jesse Dylan: No.
I shared a lot of it with friends, but I did way too much.
Jim Conrad: Oh.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Jesse Dylan: So that was the beginning of a,
Jim Conrad: Not microdosing.
What, whatever the opposite of that is.
Jesse Dylan: Yeah, yeah.
But you asked if I did acid.
That wasn't the only time, but that was one of the more prolific nights.
That did not end well.
That night ended badly.
Jim Conrad: Did you have an epiphany?
No, but the neighbors did.
Jesse Dylan: They found me in their car, which they had packed up the night before
for their summer vacation, torn to pieces.
You know, I'm gonna be honest with you.
10 hits of Orange Sunshine is one too many.
Jim Conrad: Oh, that's funny.
That's a great story.
I love it.
Okay.
Now we're back from Fort Langley to Tsawwassen and now you're going to BCIT.
Jesse Dylan: Yeah, two years, PA Announcements.
Counselor said, would you consider going to BCIT?
I said, sure.
You know, if I was gonna be a lawyer.
Weirdly enough, a lot of lawyers wanted to be broadcasters and a lot
of broadcasters wanted to be lawyers.
Like it must have something to do with performing in front of a group, right?
Jim Conrad: Yeah.
Maybe we're all just dicks.
Jesse Dylan: There we go.
I said, sure, yeah, I'll, I'll go for an interview at BCIT and I went for an
interview at BCIT, Sandy Sanderson, Doug Short, all these legendary broadcasters.
I had a little interview and they said, well, if you're, if
you're bound to be even half as good as your father, you're in.
So BCIT two years.
I was working full-time in my second year at BCIT, but I didn't want to quit.
And then I got placed in Victoria.
Jim Conrad: CJVI.
Jesse Dylan: Yeah.
CJVI.
And you were at CFAX.
Jim Conrad: And I think the ships just passed in the night.
'Cause I think you left and I got there probably March 1st, 79.
Jesse Dylan: I left around the same time to come to LG73.
Jim Conrad: I saw you at the airport.
I flew from Medicine Hat where it was minus 30 to Calgary where it was the same.
And then, uh, met a friend of mine in the parking lot.
We didn't do acid, but we did pretty much everything else.
Got on the plane and now I am leaving to go to Victoria
to this new job in Victoria.
I get there.
Paul Tividar, he was the program director of CFAX, picked me up in his ragtop
MG and we're cruising down from the airport, right, down the Pat Bay Highway.
You come over that rise just before Elk Lake.
Jesse Dylan: Oh yeah.
Beautiful spot.
Jim Conrad: And you see the Victoria in the foreground.
Juan de Fuca Strait, the ocean for a prairie kid, you know,
and then the Olympic Mountains.
And the radio station was on the top floor of, uh,
Jesse Dylan: The Douglas Hotel.
Jim Conrad: Yeah.
No, View Street.
Jesse Dylan: Okay.
Yeah.
The basement was CKDA.
Yeah.
Jim Conrad: That was in the basement.
Jesse Dylan: See, um, yeah.
Radio hell.
Das Boot we call it.
Jim Conrad: But CKDA was the cool station.
'Cause they was played rock.
Jesse Dylan: It was, it was the LG73 or C fund of Victoria.
Jim Conrad: Definitely.
Jesse Dylan: CFAX was the NW.
CJVI was the CGOR wannabe, you know, we wanted to be CFAX, so we had Joe
Ewood, Ed Mackenzie, all those guys.
Me, I did the midday show, nine till noon.
It was a request.
It was country.
So I saw, I started in country.
It was horrible.
I mean CJVI was fun.
It was really fun.
I started on the All night show.
I lasted there about three months.
And then Bob Morris, at CKDA, made me an an offer to come and work in top 40.
And my buddy there, Richard Saxton, Richard was there and I
was really looking forward to it.
And then CJVI made me a better offer.
They wanted to keep me and this was cool 'cause I was only supposed to do a
practicum and I was now working full time.
Jim Conrad: Yeah, you're 20 years old.
Jesse Dylan: Yeah.
Well if that, and I've got a job offer from Bob Morris at CKDA
to go work at the cool station.
But Harry Boone, the program director at CJVI, gave me more money, moved
me off the all night show, gave me my own show Monday through Friday,
night till noon, the request show.
Jim Conrad: But it was country and western requests.
Jesse Dylan: But when you start, when you start radio back in the
days, uh, you and I are are both old enough to remember block formatting.
So you would play some shit from the CBC.
You would have some bad religious motherfucker that you had to play
'cause they would buy an hour of time.
Jim Conrad: Bernice Gerard.
Jesse Dylan: Oh no.
I had Garner Ted Armstrong, so I'd have to play him in the middle
of the night off reel to reel.
And then I had comedy hour and that's where I discovered George Carlin.
George Carlin: Politicians are put there to give you the idea
that you have freedom of choice.
You don't.
You have no choice.
You have owners.
They own you.
They own everything.
They own all the important land.
They own and control the corporations.
They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress,
the state houses, the city halls.
They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies,
so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear.
They got you by the balls.
Jesse Dylan: Oh, it's still very relevant.
More so now than ever.
Jim Conrad: So Carlin and comedy, but Victoria was too small for Jesse Dylan,
and you had to come to the Big Smoke LG73.
Jesse Dylan: I stayed there a year.
And then Roy Hennessy, who was programming CFOX took me with him to CHED in
Edmonton and that was, uh, fun because CHED in the day had like a 53 share of
market, not my favorite place to live.
I mean that in the nicest, kindest way.
You know, if God was gonna give Canada an enema or if he was playing golf,
Jim Conrad: I thought it's, it's Moose Jaw.
Jesse Dylan: If he had to shit in a bush playing golf, Edmonton.
Jim Conrad: Dear diary, everything is going to be okay.
And if it isn't, we'll fix it in post.
Jesse Dylan: So, um, how do I put this?
As delicately as I can.
We fucked off as quickly as we could from Edmonton.
Jim Conrad: Yes.
Yeah.
Luckily the airport is on, on your way outta town, which is really good.
Like way outta town.
Jesse Dylan: Yeah.
The two best things to come out of Edmonton, Highway South and the airport.
Jim Conrad: Yeah.
It leads Canada in squirrel suicides.
Jesse Dylan: Yogurt, more culture than the entire city.
Uh, I was there when the whole city was drunk.
Drunk all the time.
All the time.
Jim Conrad: Well, what else do you do in it?
Jesse Dylan: Because 630CHED, 53 share.
They had so much contra at bars we had to go out and drink and eat.
We had to go out and try and use the contra.
'Cause it drove them nuts.
They were losing the contra battle.
So anyway.
Jim Conrad: Edmonton back to Vancouver.
Jesse Dylan: Uh uh, was out here on holidays, CGOR was
gonna take a run at CKNW.
They were looking for a guy that sounded like Rick Honey to do the afternoon show.
They offered it to me, gave me a lot more money.
I took it.
I moved to, uh, the coast, CGOR.
They weren't successful going up against CKNW.
They tried, but they had, you know, Frosty in the morning who'd been there forever.
You know, CGOR brought in some heavies.
Man, they had Jack Webster.
Jim Conrad: It's because of CJOR that made NW that much more better.
That, that much more better.
That much better.
Jesse Dylan: I'll count you in.
We're gonna do that again.
3, 2, 1.
Jim Conrad: It was because of CJOR, uh, and what they
were trying to do, which was.
Jesse Dylan: I'm sorry.
No, we're gonna, we're gonna do that again.
I'm gonna count you in and, and this time we'll put a little music behind it.
Softer read.
Come closer to the mic.
Okay.
This is for Dania Down Quilts.
I want you to tell the CJOR story, but as if you're seducing somebody to get on
a Dania Down Quilt and it's nighttime.
In 3 2 1.
Jim Conrad: CJOR because of their competitiveness made NW better.
Jesse Dylan: Would it be untoward to whack off to your voice.
Jim Conrad: When traffic's slow, I do.
Jesse Dylan: Jim and I have faces for radio.
We digress though.
Lovely Family story going.
Jim Conrad: There's, there were some legends around OR,
and that includes Pat Burns.
Jesse Dylan: Oh, fuck.
I can't tell that story.
You know what, that's the only radio story.
Jim Conrad: Okay.
Can you tell that story in a way that you're not telling the story?
Jesse Dylan: Okay.
So CJOR.
I'm their version of Rick Honey.
God rest his soul.
So anyway, good afternoon.
And my name at the time was Steve Woodman Jr.
Jim Conrad: Nice.
Nice tribute.
Jesse Dylan: Thank you.
So when my father passed away, not only did I steal everything that he
previously owned, but I, I took the name.
Jim Conrad: Pat Burns and you're, uh, doing a crossover.
It's the end of your show, Pat's show's about to begin, and you're doing a
two mic crossover with Pat Burns.
Jesse Dylan: Yeah.
And a crossover for the uninitiated is when I'm finishing a show and the next
guy coming on and you do this thing.
so it's like 5:55.
I'm Steve Woodman.
CJOR in Vancouver.
Some fucking advertising genius came up with that, CJOR.
We, the one, So, CJOR, oh are we the one.
How fucking genius is that?
Every time I said it, I wanna stab myself in the, the needle.
I'm doing the crossover.
It's 5:55.
I'm Steve Woodman.
CJOR.
Oh, are we the one.
Hey Pat, what's on the show tonight?
I'm just coming off of like Barry Manalow, right?
Pat Burns comes in, he's got a styrofoam cup.
He's about four and a half feet tall, greasy, dandruff ridden
hair, came out of a little room.
I think it was a closet that they had turned into the Pat Burns office.
And the reason they gave him his own office is 'cause he drinks.
All day and all night.
So anyway, what's on the show Pat?
He's got the Vancouver Province or the Vancouver Sun, I can't remember which, and
the headline said, racism, parenthetically below, tearing this province apart.
So Pat comes in.
I said, Hey Pat, what's on the show today?
Well, Steve, after the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, headline's
in the Province newspaper.
You know how he talk, right?
Pat Burns.
I'm Pat Burns.
Steve, headlines in the province today, racism is tearing
this, this province apart.
I'm all for getting racism outta the province.
And he's on and off the mic, right?
I'm all for getting racism out of the province, but before we do that, we
gotta get the and the, and the, and the, and he just kept going on and on.
Dude, I'm telling you, I can't say those, I can't say those words today.
But he did and, and it must have been like 20 of them, 20 slangs for,
fuck, it must have been every nation.
Jim Conrad: Racial epithets.
Jesse Dylan: Oh, it's horrible.
And, and he's, and then he ends it by saying, we gotta get racism outta here.
But we can't until we get those people the fuck out of this province.
I'm Pat Burns.
I'll see you in 35 minutes.
How old am I?
22, 24? I don't, 23?
I haven't been in the business that long full time.
It's kind of my first major market.
Sure there was Edmonton, but that's a mistake.
And now I'm in Vancouver and I sat there with my mouth open
thinking there goes my career.
I'm done.
This is 1980.
The news guys didn't say rape.
Jim, we didn't say rape on the air.
This guy just went through every fucking horrible, as you say, racial
epithet, I would've said another word.
And so I, I, I don't know.
It, it felt like an eternity.
And, and finally the next thing you heard on CJOR was, here's the Eagles.
I'm Steve Woodman.
Film at 11.
And you know what?
Not a single fucking complaint.
Not management, not program director, not a call.
And we had listeners.
Jim Conrad: Did anybody mention it?
Jesse Dylan: No.
No one.
And that was the weirdest thing, right?
It's like,
Jim Conrad: The silence is another story, isn't it?
Jesse Dylan: Yeah.
We had listeners at the time.
Yeah, we had listeners, CJOR had lots of listeners.
After CJOR, they decided to, uh, fuck, I don't know.
I think they went news, I think they went news 24/7.
They were like NW two for a little while, and then they decided to go news.
They offered me a position to do news.
Can you imagine me doing news?
Jim Conrad: Well, maybe, Les Nessman.
Jesse Dylan: Yeah, now it wouldn't work for me.
Les Nessman and more music on CJOR.
Oh, are we the one.
Uh, it's funny, we only have white people listening to us now after that last
break, but we've lost 75% of our audience.
Thank you, Pat.
Bye-bye.
You've cleansed the cube Pat.
Well done.
One fell swoop gone.
Why did we go from a seven share to a 0.5 share?
Two words.
That motherfucker,
he's in the styrofoam office drinking.
It's him.
I had an offer to go to Kelowna or Toronto, CFTR.
And Toronto was a big top 40 station.
Jim Conrad: Kelowna is a step down.
Toronto was a, is a step up.
Jesse Dylan: Oh God bless you, Jim.
Everybody listening in Kelowna right now.
They think they've landed and gone to heaven and now you,
Jim Conrad: Compared to Toronto, of course.
Jesse Dylan: Hey, where do you look?
Jim Conrad: People in Kelowna would agree with that.
Jesse Dylan: I, I'm Anthony Von Mandel.
I, I own Mission Hills.
Did you know that you're living in a step down.
You stupid fuck.
What were you thinking?
You rich, billionaire bastards are all the same.
I had an offer to go to Toronto.
I was gonna take it.
It was uh, CFTR.
So CFTR and CHUM were the LG and CFUN in the big smoke.
I was gonna take it.
Then he called me back to say, I'm really sorry.
Our swing guy, which we were gonna give to you, has decided to stay and, or the
all night guy we're moving up to swing.
So now we've only got the all night show.
And Sandy Sanderson, president of program for Rogers and he said, uh,
you know, you're better than that.
I can't put you on the all night show.
So I took the gig in Kelowna, but to pay me enough to make a
living, I was the morning man.
I got a small salary for that.
I was the promotion director.
I never did anything for them in that regard.
But I got a small salary for that and I was the music director and
I got a small salary for that.
So I got three salaries and I did the morning show in Kelowna for almost four
years at, uh, FM 104.7, which is out.
Jim Conrad: All right.
So you paid your dues, uh, doing everything at a radio station?
Okay.
Not a step down.
I take that back.
Jesse Dylan: In terms of market size, you are correct from Vancouver to
Kelowna is not up, and that's what I did.
Jim Conrad: Of course you did.
Yeah.
And then what happened?
Jesse Dylan: We're going to Calgary.
Do you know why we're gonna Calgary?
Jim Conrad: Why we're gonna Calgary?
Jesse Dylan: Because we can't go anywhere else in Alberta.
God shit all over the bushes and the people in Edmonton.
So that leaves Calgary.
So I went to Calgary.
I was in the CFCN building that housed CFCN TV.
Did some of that by the way.
It was fun.
Jim Conrad: Right.
What year?
Jesse Dylan: Oh, this was, uh, 84.
So I left Kelowna, got an offer.
Dave Charles, you know the name?
Jim Conrad: Heard it.
Jesse Dylan: They were looking for a morning guy to sign
on this new radio station.
He said, Steve Woodman's doing, you know, mornings in Kelowna.
He's what you want.
They hired me.
I went to Calgary.
It was really fun.
Calgary was really fun for two years.
Yeah, it really was.
And I was on the ski team.
Jim Conrad: Got a cowboy hat.
Jesse Dylan: Yep.
Cowboy hat.
I was,
Lake Louise.
Sunshine, uh, panorama, kimberly, all that stuff.
Jim Conrad: Perfect.
Yeah.
What a gig.
Jesse Dylan: But you know, the funny thing is we, I get in the van, it's
like nine o'clock in the morning, we're off to Lake Louise for an outing
with the radio stations and, uh, they got beers, coolers, and beers.
And they say, you want a roadie?
Okay.
So we're drinking beer.
Roadies.
In Alberta back in the days you drank, and it's, I know it's horrible.
Right?
And I'm not recommending this at all for anyone.
I'm with MAAD.
I'm with everybody on this, right?
You do not drink and drive.
But in 1984 in Calgary, I got in a, in a vehicle with the ski team.
Nice young men and women.
Clean cut, well-spoken fit, and they said, Hey, road pops.
Jim Conrad: Yeah.
So, uh, but you get there, you ski.
Have fun.
Two years in Calgary.
Any great stories from Calgary?
Jesse Dylan: There's a, there's some, there's some stories from Calgary.
You want, you don't wanna hear one.
Okay.
I'll tell you, I'll tell you a story.
I won't mention names.
The program director and I, we're friends when I was doing the morning show.
Steve Woodman on AM 106.
That was the new station.
We did really well by the way.
And I was doing the morning show and I had a good team
around me and I was the anchor.
And then program director at the time and his wife and my wife
thought it'd be fun to be friends.
So we partied together.
We'd go to his house.
He'd come to our house.
We're a pretty good pals.
And so, um, one day my buddies says, wouldn't it be fun to
do a two man morning show?
The program director says that?
On paper it's a conflict of interest.
'Cause this is the guy that's supposed to be telling me how to
sound and what's funny and what's not.
Jim Conrad: But he wants to be on the air with you.
Jesse Dylan: Now he wants to be on the air with me.
So we do a two man show.
It's now somebody and Steve where it was the Steve Show.
Now it's somebody and Steve.
It was fun, right?
We get along.
We had a good time.
I thought the show was really fun.
He and I had similar senses of humor, twisted, and then Dave Charles comes
to town and he told Vince Dimaggio and some of the other people that would
listen that the show's gone downhill since it's been a two-man show.
Get that motherfucker off the air back in programming full
time and let Steve do his thing.
So they did that?
They pulled so and so off the air and suddenly everything that we were doing
one week that was funny and great and cool is now not funny, not great.
It's shit.
And the bitterness I suppose, that he must have had was,
Jim Conrad: But it was the consultant, it was Darth Vader coming in.
Jesse Dylan: It doesn't matter.
Somehow that happened.
He made it horrible for me.
It's, and I, I was, I was enjoying Calgary a lot till then.
So I phoned Gary Slate who was the program director, Q107 Toronto.
I said, I'd like to come and work for you.
He said, are you any good?
I said, yeah, I'm really good.
He said, can you overnight me a tape?
And uh, a couple of days later, he called me and said, I'd
like to fly you out to Toronto.
Gave me the gig, said, You have to change your name.
I said, what's wrong with Steve Woodman?
He said, it's a nowhere not happening name.
He said, the creative director, Dave Barker will meet you tomorrow
and you'll pick a new name.
I'm thinking, what's wrong with Steve Woodman?
I ripped it off from my dad.
So Dave Barker, the creative director, super nice guy, but
crazier than a shithouse rat.
Jim Conrad: So this was your name change was a meeting.
Jesse Dylan: No, it was a vision from Jesus.
Yeah, it was a meeting.
Fuck.
I'm trying to work with you.
So Dave Barker, the creative director.
I just wanted to reiterate this 'cause I don't think you heard it.
Nice guy, but crazier than a shit house rat.
My hope is he hears this someday.
Okay.
Here's a list of 12 first names, Jesse or Steve, whatever my name was.
Here's a list of 12 last names.
By the way, I've been, I've been Jesse Dylan longer in my
life than I was Steve Woodman.
Jim Conrad: So you're Steve Woodman.
You get first names and last names on a list.
Jesse Dylan: And the lists are McLovesit.
Mudcat.
Derringer.
And I hated them all with the exception of the first list.
Which had the names Jesse and Dylan.
And I thought, well, I like Jesse and I like Dylan.
Jim Conrad: Jesse James.
Jesse Dylan: Oh, strong.
Yeah.
Dylan.
Good names Dylan Rock.
Dylan Thomas the poet.
Bob Dylan.
Yeah.
So I said, Hey, uh, can I have two first names?
What are you thinking?
Well, I was thinking either Dylan Jesse or Jesse Dylan.
Yeah.
I like Jesse Dylan has a nice iambic pentameter to it.
Go with Jesse Dylan.
So September 6th, 1986 I became Jesse Dylan.
And the news guy at Q107 was Gene Vilitus.
And he was doing news and he was very straight.
And they thought that Jesse and Gene would work out.
First 10 weeks on the air was horrible.
Absolutely fucking horrible.
Well, first of all, Gene has a head the size of a cement mixer.
He's Lithuanian.
Jim Conrad: I've been sitting next to Gene and his head, it's huge, many, many times.
Jesse Dylan: And he's got this very stoic, pierced lip thing going
on where he almost never smiles.
And also the other thing was they called me Huey Lewis, hip to be square.
'Cause even though I did acid and all that stuff, when I was young,
I got myself in shape when we moved to Kelowna, I lost the weight.
I started running, doing triathlons, marathons, and now I'm at Q107,
which is the hippest place, right?
There's a lot of cocaine going on and a lot of rock bands, you know, Rush.
We all wanted to be.
Everybody's living the rock and roll lifestyle.
Everyone except me.
I'm, I'm kind of straight.
Jim Conrad: Well, to do a morning show as well, right?
Jesse Dylan: Yeah, yeah.
Jim Conrad: You need stamina and you need to be able to get up early.
Jesse Dylan: So my nickname was Huey Lewis, hip to be square.
Thank you.
Thank you for drawing that up.
I should have, I'm remiss in not doing that.
I'll punish myself tonight when I'm in the tub with Mr. Bubbles.
Thank you.
A little lower, Bob.
Jim Conrad: Don't try.
Don't, don't go too low.
If you try to go too low and it's not natural, Jess, your
testicle can actually explode.
Jesse Dylan: Thank you.
My wife has seen that happen.
So anyway, I'm, I'm on the air 10 weeks Q107, 10 weeks.
Jesse and Gene was horrible.
It was my dream gig of being in the biggest smoke in the country.
And being the quarterback for the radio station, the morning guy was failing.
Failing worse than, oh are we the one.
Gary Slate pulls me in the office about 10 weeks in.
I know he's gonna fire me.
And you know what?
I deserved it.
It was horrible.
It was bad.
Even by my standards.
I'm sure there was some modicum of professionalism 'cause I
had a nice voice and I knew the format and I played the music.
We got the weather in the news on time, but there was no entertainment.
So I got, I went into his office and then he said, what happened to the
guy on the air check that I hired?
Where's that guy?
I said, dude, I don't blame you.
I, I don't know.
We're not gelling.
There's something, you know, I look at this guy and it looks like he
hates me and he's reading the fucking newspaper while I'm trying to do a
bit, and the show's going nowhere and the plane is in a death spiral.
And honestly, Gary, I don't know how to pull it out.
So if you're firing me, I get it.
I'm not firing you.
He said, when was the last time, if ever, that you and Gene went out
and got high or stoned or drunk?
And I said, well, we haven't yet, other than the initial party that you threw in
this office for all the jocks to meet me.
He pulled out a wad of hundreds and he gave me some of them, which
was a lot of money in those days.
I didn't have a wad of hundreds.
And he said, take Gene out tonight and get fucked up, get to know each other.
And he said, that's an order.
And if you don't do that, I'm gonna fire you.
So I phoned Gene, I said, Hey, we're going out tonight.
I can't, you know, Kathleen.
I said, yeah, you're coming with me.
I just left Gary Slate's office.
He gave me a bunch of a hundred dollars bills.
And he said, you and I are going out tonight to get fucked up.
And if we don't, we're both fired tomorrow morning.
Where do you wanna meet?
It became a regular occurrence.
We got drunk out of our fucking skulls, and then some, and I think we were
still hammered the next day on the air.
I spent everything he gave me, and it was a lot of money back in the day.
Right?
The next show was one of the best shows I've ever done in my life.
I correct myself, one of the best shows we've ever done in our life.
Jesse and Gene were born at 10 weeks and one day in, and then
we took the market by storm.
The station's highest quarter hours were about 70,000.
Within six months, we were now at 140,000 quarter hours.
A neck and neck with Roger, Rick, and Marilyn at CHUM Stations.
You know, two, we were like 12 and a half share.
I think at the time each SharePoint in Toronto was worth 2 million.
So the morning shows building around 25 million a year.
We were the talk of the town.
Jim Conrad: Tell me the story about being, you had a bit about wrecking weddings and
then you got sued by the Catholic church.
Jesse Dylan: Our most popular feature was called Wreck a Wedding Wednesday.
Let's say it together, Jim.
Wreck a Wedding Wednesday.
Wreck a Wedding Wednesday was our most popular feature.
We would get faxes, phone calls, stacks of faxes, hundreds of them.
We can only do one or two a week.
We did 'em on Wednesday, so at 7:15 and 8:15, we played a
Wreck a Wedding Wednesday call.
Somebody would be getting married.
We'd call to say that the bridal gown burnt, the holiday's
been canceled, whatever.
Right?
And they would have these amazing things for us.
So we used to pretend to be Catholic priests.
Not all the time, but every now and then.
Phone would ring.
You'd hear someone answer.
Hello.
And we'd say, hello.
Is that Sandra?
Yeah.
Hi, it's Father Giuseppe and Father Gino calling from the Archdiocese of Toronto.
Yes my child and then we go into it.
Right?
Have you been taking your Catholicism classes?
And we know that they hadn't been because the people that were setting
them up, they were loved ones, say they're skipping Catholicism classes.
Jim Conrad: And that's with the Catholic church.
If you're wanted to be married in the Catholic church, you
had to take wedding classes.
Jesse Dylan: A wedding course.
Marriage classes.
That's right.
Jim Conrad: So you're impersonating the priests.
Jesse Dylan: Yes, we did a full prank.
Yeah, we did these bits that were great, that were funny.
Yeah, people loved them.
We impersonate Catholic priests, so
Jim Conrad: They got a bit too popular and it became, it got on the radar.
Jesse Dylan: We did one one morning, the guy's name was Pinot and Gene saying stuff
like, we can't, Sandra, we can't, wed you, if you've seen Pinot's wino, have you?
You know, of course we knew they were sleeping together.
Right?
So anyway, okay.
So, uh, somebody at the Archdiocese of Toronto thought this wasn't funny.
Thought we were making fun of Catholicism, the Catholic church, priests, and they,
yeah, they didn't dig it, so they sued the radio station and it was a big lawsuit.
You haven't been sued until you're sued by the Catholic church.
So the station capitulated, they said, whatever you want, we'll hang these guys.
We'll, we'll strip off their skin.
We'll, whatever, whatever you need to do.
Jim Conrad: Burned at the stake at Young and Bluer.
Jesse Dylan: And they said, okay, we want a 60 second apology.
Every morning right at 7:15, the time of the incident for a month.
And the radio, and we want Jesse and Gene to do it.
And the radio station said, sure, but, but you don't want Jesse and Gene to do it.
We've got a much, 'cause they knew what would happen, right?
Yeah.
We turned it into a fucking live copy.
Yeah.
Are you kidding?
We recently, we were, can you imagine?
Oh hey, we were making fun of the Catholic church.
Oh, come on.
So they got Earl Mann, Earl the Pearl.
Earl had almost as nice a voice as yours.
And he was the voice of the NFL.
He was huge.
Like you.
Every, every time you turn on the radio or television, you'd hear Earl.
So they got Earl to do it.
And it was a lovely voiceover.
Nice little music in the background.
Very, very, innocuous, apologetic.
And it was like, you know, recently on the radio show with Jesse and
Gene, messers Jesse Dylan and Eugene Vilitus, used his full name, Eugene
Vilitus, were pretending to be and purporting to be Catholic priests.
Well, not only is that against the law, it's against the principles of
the Archdiocese and it went on and on.
Right.
And it basically self aggrandized the church, the priest, the Cardinal,
everybody else, the bishops.
And it made Jesse and Jean look like bad.
So that went really well for the first week.
And then tragically, regrettably, and ironically, the touring version of Jesus
Christ Superstar, the musical was in town, appearing at the Royal Thompson Hall in
Toronto, and they were up from New York.
And it was a, yeah, a big production, right?
Jesus Christ Superstar.
And they were advertising on the radio station, but the voice that
they used to voice Jesus Christ Superstar, was not Jim Conrad.
It was not Earl Mann.
It was not Lauren Green, it was the guy that does the monster truck pull,
monster truck pull wristband policy.
They ah, you know, screaming like that, right?
So the ad comes on and goes, big music, big rock music go, Jesus Christ Superstar.
It was meaner than that.
It was like Jesus Christ, right?
Slow.
And I can't even say it right.
It was the guy that,
Jim Conrad: Can I try do it?
Jesus Christ Superstar.
Jesse Dylan: Yeah.
Now we got it.
Do the Jesus Christ again, but just a little bit angrier.
Jim Conrad: Jesus Christ.
Jesse Dylan: Now, well, as soon as I heard that, oh, here's an idea.
It went off in my head.
I, I saw the whole thing flash in front of my eyes.
So I got Tony the cheap voice guy who was our producer and did great voices.
I said, Tony, lift those words.
Jesus Christ.
He said, are you gonna do what I think, he said, don't do it.
You're gonna get fired.
Fuck you.
You work for me.
You're doing it.
So, uh, he lifted Jesus Christ, put thunder and lightning behind it.
And so the very next day, here's what you hear.
Recently, you did the Jesus Christ.
Okay?
Okay.
Recently on the Jesse and Jean Show, messers Jesse Dylan and Eugene Vilitus
were purporting to be Catholic priests.
Jim Conrad: Jesus christ.
Jesse Dylan: 60 seconds of that.
And then toward the end it was nothing but do Jesus Christ,
over and over again on the fade.
Okay?
Jim Conrad: Jesus christ.
Jesus Christ.
Jesse Dylan: Yeah.
Lawsuit was back on after the show.
They were listening every day for the ad. That didn't go over well.
No.
Clever.
And brilliant.
But it didn't go over well.
I'll quickly end.
I got off the air, 30 years, nine o'clock in the morning.
No one to play with.
Gene and I would go into a studio, we'd prerecord some, some shit.
Uh, and then all day long.
And throughout the day, someone would call and say, Hey, Madonna's in town.
I know where she's staying.
You wanna try and get her guest?
Lionel Alzado NFL, you know?
Triumph is on tour.
Yeah.
Have him as a guest.
8:15, 7:15. So all day you long, you're doing this rolling show prep.
Then the next day you show up, you've got a fucking game plan like an NFL game.
But you might change it, you might throw it all out if something happens.
Jim Conrad: Call an audible.
Yeah, life was good.
Uh, and, and in between all day long having almost nothing to do, four
fifths of five eighths a fuck all, I became a member of the National
Canadian Triathlon Team, competed in 55 events worldwide with the team.
And my second hobby I was negotiating deals for Jesse and Gene.
We did record deals, we did these deals, and I liked the art of
negotiation and eventually that led me to building companies.
And today I've built eight companies.
I sold a couple.
One exploded brilliantly.
And, um.
I've taken five companies public.
Jesse Dylan: What you've learned over all of those years in broadcasting to be able
to get into that boardroom and present and develop a relationship immediately
with whoever you're talking to.
How much is story and the power of storytelling a part of that?
Every success that I've ever had in my life, every success that I will
ever have in my life is because of the ability to tell a story.
Whether I'm telling it or somebody on my team is telling it.
It won't be an AI chatbot telling it because the AI chatbot doesn't have
this emotional human connection.
It's close, but when you're telling a story and you're communicating
at an effective level, that is a difference between success and failure.
Jim Conrad: Beautiful.
Oh,
how I love a great story, and I also love playing Yuck Monkey to the
Irreverent Snake Charmer, Jesse Dylan.
What a marvelous storyteller.
That's episode one of the Conovison podcast.
Thank you for listening, and thank you for actually getting to the end.
To hear this on episode one, we rode the giant existential wave
with JP Sartre and Aaron James.
And I know after hearing the secular story of creation from a profile in the
New Yorker magazine from March 27th, 2017, called a Science of the Soul.
A Philosopher's Quest to understand the making of the mind, by Joshua Rothman.
I don't think life here on earth will ever be the same, do you?
So stay by the stream for episode two featuring a story about stories, a
fractured fairytale, and the inimitable, and I mean that sincerely, Bill Reiter aKA
DJ ZigZag, the original groove and blue.
And remember, we are all stories to be told.
I'm Jim Conrad, AKA Cono, and the story of how I got that nickname will
be an entire episode in and of itself.
And this has been Conovison..