October 8, 2024 • 45 mins
Ken Bone reflects on the eight-year anniversary of his overnight viral success, how becoming a main character changed his life, and how his moment moved his politics forward.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cold Zone Media. Hey, it's Shamie here, just quickly saying
if you live in the Los Angeles area, I'm starting
to workshop my first one person show in a couple
of years. It's called The Tiny Man Is Going to
Kill Me. Don't ask, just show up. It's super silly.
I'll be doing it at the Lyric Hyperion in workshop
form on November one and November twentieth, and tickets are
(00:25):
on sale now. I'll be doing a taping later and
I'll let you know when tickets are on sale to that.
But yeah, if you're in the LA area, come on out.
The Tiny Man Is Going to Kill Me. And with that,
here's our Ken Bone Part two episode Bye. Welcome back
(01:31):
to sixteenth Minute, the show where we talk to the
Internet's characters of the day and see how their moment
affected them and what it says about the Internet and us.
My name is Jamie Loftus and this week is part
two of two of our Ken Bone series. If you
haven't listened to part one, scroll down. King You've got this.
But if you're only here because you want to hear
(01:53):
the dulcent tones of Ken himself, you're in the right place.
It's now been eight years since Ken became an overnight sensation,
creating what many thought was an irrational amount of media
attention after asking a question at a presidential town hall
debate in twenty sixteen, a particularly awkward and creepy event
between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. You can hear all
(02:16):
about the context of why Ken was so popular and
what the history of these American debates are in Part one.
But this week I'm going to let Ken take the mic.
Here is our interview. Okay, Ken vone, Hello.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Ry, how are you today?
Speaker 1 (02:32):
How are things in your world right now? I'm realizing
that I've known who you are for the better part
of a decade now.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, we're coming up on the a anniversary of me
becoming a meme, which is weird. It has changed a
lot since then, but not necessarily because of meme stuff,
just because I'm older now, I have more grey hair,
and my son is a grown adult now as graduated
high school. On just a lot, you know, life moving on.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Are you still living in the same place.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yeah, I live in the same house I lived in
when it all happened. I've been here in this house
for I think this is eleven years this month since
we had it built. You know, still largely the same.
I work at the same job. I have a different
title and different responsibilities now, but I've been working at
the same place for fifteen years now and still the
same family situation and everything. I've been married for twenty
(03:28):
years now and just our son's a little older.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
And this is now your third presidential election as a
historic figure.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
The last three or four months, since the elections started
heating up, it's been a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
It is well that you havecome synonymous with the concept
of a debate.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, it could. I mean, they don't really do debates
the same way they did. My debate was the town
hall format run by the Commission on Presidential Debates. I mean,
we've seen what it's been the last couple of months,
a tremendous mess of No, you have to come on
my channel. No, you have to come on my channel.
You have to come where people will be sympathetic to me. Oh, no,
you have to come. It's disgusting. It's our political climate
(04:12):
is a national disgrace. It's the only way I can
really think to put it.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
I am in agreement with you there, and I want
to get there because what a election cycle to become
a major part of and I feel like, you know,
the trust in cable news has severely declined since, and
not that it was great in twenty sixteen, but a
great sort of stress test for everything about it that
doesn't work. I wanted to just start by getting to
(04:36):
know you a little better. I think it's interesting and
kind of funny that, like, part of all you're famous
is because you are a normal person, something that really
drew people to you aritually. So I will love to
know a little bit more about you, where you grew up,
what was life like?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Sure, I'm you know. My real name is Ken Boone.
Some people thought that that was like a fake name
or like a moniker or something. I went by Jarland. Yeah,
my name is Kenneth. My last name really is Bone.
I was named after my grandfather, who was also Kenneth Bone.
We both went by Ken, but when I came along,
(05:11):
he started going by his middle name Sherman. Most people
call him Sherman. But yeah, I've been Ken Bone or
Kenny Bone my whole life. I'm going to be forty
two here really soon, just like a middle aged guy
from a working class town called Granite City, it's really
close to Saint Louis. We tell out of towners that
were from Saint Louis. You can almost see the gateway
arch from my house, like if you get up on
(05:33):
top of a building, but it's actually across the Mississippi
River on the Illinois side. So the whole town was
built around a steel mill that is sort of in
operation these days. Steel prices have kind of driven production
way down, but it's like a typical middle class or
working class town where there's one giant employer. Everybody works
(05:55):
either for it, or for its suppliers, or for something
that only exists because it is there. My grandfather worked
for the steel mill. My grandmother worked for the hospital
that was only there because the steel mill drew in
enough population where they needed a hospital. My mom also
worked at that hospital, and then my dad worked at
various like vendors and suppliers that mostly dealt with the
(06:16):
steel mill. Over the years, so I've lived with my
mom and dad. They lived with dad's mom and dad.
So I grew up in a house with my parents
and my grandparents and my little brother and sister, pretty crowded.
His new generation would come along and then there'd be
more people living in the house. When my son was born,
I didn't have my own place yet, so he lived
(06:37):
in the basement with me until he was about six
months old.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
We were on free a fourth generation, and why not.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
My wife and I were on waiting lists to get
an apartment, so we had four generations living in the
house by the time we were able to move out.
So it was a great way to grow up. It
was always crowded. You were never alone, so the family's
very close knit. I graduated high school in the year
two thousand, so we were like the millennial class that
made a big deal out of it when we started kindergarten,
and none of the kindergarteners knew why why there was
(07:05):
this big party. We're like, man in school, maybe it'll
actually be kind of cool because that's party for us.
Then we realized real quick that no, they don't do
that every day. I'm an old millennial now with yeah,
with gray hair, and my parents were stereotypical gen xers,
and you know, of course they had to work for
a living, and my grandparents were still working when I
was younger, so Sesame Street kind of raised me. I
(07:28):
was the oldest of the kids, so I kind of
helped look after the kids a little bit, and we
were until grandma and Grandpa were retired. We were kind
of last key kids. Like a lot of people my age.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Well, were you interested in when you're a kid.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Oh, I was a big time nerd, Like I enjoy sports,
but I was never any good at sports. I'm like
the stereotypical broadcaster or analyst who like loves everything about
sports but can barely throw a baseball from third base
all the way to home plate. You get more into
the statistics and stuff. Well, I loved all the stereotypical
nerd things. When Dragon ball Z first came to the
(08:03):
United States on Toonami, I was in high school and
so that was huge for my friend group, Like, oh,
this anime thing. I wonder if this will ever catch on,
And of course it didn't, and so that was huge.
I've always loved, like science fiction, stereotypical nerd stuff, things
that are like it's okay to like now but made
you sort of sort of weird. When we were younger,
(08:24):
the high school in Granite City was kind of a
big school, so there was enough kids there to form
a group of friends no matter what your interests were.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
I'm also into a pretty big high school, and it
was kind of I feel like I ended up avoiding
a lot of bullying I probably would have gotten at
a smaller high school. But there was like enough weird
kids and just enough kids that you're you know, you're
a moving target, you know, like no one can really
get yet.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah, I've never did much of a problem with bullying.
I was fortunate there because like of all the nerdy kids,
I was by far the largest. So even when I
was when I was younger, I wasn't super athletic, but
I wasn't I wasn't small. I was big even before
I was overweight. I was about five ten and had
a pretty large frame. So the bullies were like, well,
there are smaller s, growndier kids to pick on.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Hey, and bullies are famously cowards, so.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, they don't want to pick on the kid who
is as big and strong as they are. They want
to pick on the small, weaker kids. So yeah, like
my immediate group of friends, when we'd be together, everybody
was safe because we were all together and I was
a little bit larger. But then, of course a lot
of people will get bullied individually, or in smaller groups.
So you hate to see that sort of thing, But
I personally didn't have to suffer much of it, so
(09:33):
I was kind of fortunate there.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
I also have seen that you were interested in music.
I've seen you play the drums. Where did that come from?
When did that come into your life?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
There was a church right around the corner from my
house where I grew up, and my grandmother started going
there when I was a little kid, and she always
wanted me to go, so I after like my mother
would take me to Catholic church when I was really little,
but then, like most good Saint Louis's, she quit being
Catholic after all. She became like a lapsed Catholic who
(10:01):
didn't go to Mass and didn't make her kids go.
But then my grandmother started taking me to her church
when I was twelve or thirteen, and they needed someone
to play the drums, so I learned to play the
drums then and after I had learned to play the drums,
so I wanted to learn to play other instruments. And
I play the drums and the bass and the piano
and a few other things, and not amazing at any
(10:21):
of them. But I'm pretty good. I can have fun
and play with any group that I feel like. That's
actually my activity for this weekend is to restring my
bass guitar. But yeah, I still play whenever I can.
My father plays guitar, and that's one of our things
that we do together. Like a lot of young guys,
especially in working class backgrounds, I didn't have a great
relationship with my dad when I was young. Once you
grow up and you have kids on your own, if
(10:43):
you're in a situation like mine, you realize that your
dad tried hard and he did the best he could.
So we're you know, we're friends now. We love to
hang out and that's one of the things we get
to do together is play guitars. It's kind of weird.
Like my wife and I we had our We got
together when she was still in high school. I was
a freshman in college and she was senior in high
school and we met at the bowling alley where we
(11:04):
were both working.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
That's so wholesome.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Oh yeah, it was wonderful. And she's the best person
I've ever met. You should be interviewing her instead. She's
more interesting and better looking and a better person than
I am. She's a surrogate mom who had twins for strangers.
Because she's such a wonderful and giving human being. I
could go on and on about her. She's the best
person I know. Yeah, we got together there, and when
she got pregnant, we were already planning on getting married,
(11:28):
but we hadn't told anybody. So then we started making
plans to get married, and we didn't want to just
rush and have the wedding before the baby came along.
So we've got this great picture from our wedding with
five generations of the family. My great grandparents, a few
of them were still living. My whole family still lives
around here, especially since my grandfather passed away about nine
years ago. We make it more of a point to
(11:49):
get together while we're all still able to.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
I also love it. It's like you're a hobby's guy experience.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
A lot of my hobby stuff is behind me. I've
got the guitars here, We've got the whiffle ball I
was doing last weekend up on my top shelf. Back
there are some model kids. That's part of my nerd stuff.
My favorite anime in high school was mobile Suit Gundam wing,
so I started building gun plow Building, Gundam Models.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
What are your favorite animes right now? Because I don't
know what I'm talking about, but I know that a
lot of my listeners do.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Right now, I'm in the middle of Mobile Suit, Gundam,
Iron Blooded Orphans. That's more of a well known one.
My favorite niche anime that's probably not as popular is
Kenetzchee The Mightiest Disciple. I love the main character. He
always reminded me of me as a younger person, where
the whole gag of the show is that he tries
to become a martial artist but he has no natural talent,
(12:42):
but he works super super hard, and I'm like, well,
that's me when I try to do sports or try
to do anything. I don't necessarily have a lot of
natural talent, but I can hang out with the other
kids because I worked at it really really hard.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Getting into the big viral moment for you in October
twenty sixteen, what does your life look like? And how
does the possibility of even you know, attending this debate,
how does that come up?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Well, life largely was the same, except I was eight
years younger and not that much on the in a
big picture where it's change other than normal, like growing up.
Sort of think my back hurts a little bit more
in how than it used to. And my son is
a grown up, so we no longer have to like
take him to activities or anything. Now we're helping him
with his job search. You know, we had a job
interview earlier. Today. The big picture thing is, like a
(13:30):
lot of people in their early thirties at the time,
we had a place to live. We were fortunate enough
that we were able to buy a house at like
the bottom of the market. Housing was still pretty cheap
after the two thousand and eight crash. It's not like
it is today, where it's such a horrible struggle for
people who are in the exact situation I was in
then would not be able to get a house now.
(13:53):
So I feel super bad that those opportunities aren't there
for them. Yeah, so we were fortunate and we're able
to do that. You know, we still would have our
occasional financial struggles, but I had a decent career that
I was building and we were doing all right, and
then I just got a random call on a Sunday
afternoon on my day off. I thought it was like
the old collector or something, so it's behind on my
(14:13):
car payment. I'm not very good at handling money, and
I'm like, god, geez, I better answer the phone, and
you know, either give them some money or make up
some excuse. And it was the Gallup poll. They wanted
to do a survey. I'm like, okay, I'm just sitting
here watching Futurama. Sure, So I do their survey and
then at the end of it they said, well, based
on the survey results, you would be a good fit
(14:33):
to attend this debate. I'm like, oh, okay. Sure.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Was the takeaway from the survey just essentially like determining
that you were a then undecided voter? Was there anything outside?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Was it really a survey so much as it was
a screening process? And yeah, there's a lot of questions
like who are you going to vote for? How sure
are you that you want to vote for that person
on a scale of one to ten, How likely are
you to change your mind? To most people, this is
where like a lot of the controversy would then people
are like, how could you be undecided between Donald Trump
and Hillary Clinton? One is so much obviously better than
(15:06):
the other, Like, well, it's not so much that I
couldn't decide which one I liked more. It was that
I didn't like either of them. I had a very
unfavorable opinion of both candidates. And that's more how they
defined undecided, Like, yeah, you seem to have kind of
decided who you're going to vote for, but anything could
come out and change your mind. And a lot of
(15:26):
stuff did come out and change a lot of the
people's minds that were on the platform with me. When
we went through that screening process. It was before the
Access Hollywood tape came out, the grabbed the woman grabbing tape.
People were really asking like, how could you possibly even
consider voting for that guy? Like, well, a lot of
the people up here that had not happened yet. People
(15:48):
did not know about that yet. So there was a
bunch of people up there who had absolutely written Trump
off at that point, but they had already been selected
and gone through the Secret Service and everything. It's not
like they can just pick people off the street that morning.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
How far ahead did you know you're going to attend
before it actually happened.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
About two weeks and the Access Hollywood tape only came
out about three days before the debate. It was the
hot thing.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Lord, it's interesting the qualifications it took for you to
be characterized as undecided, because what you're describing now, I
feel like, is a way more at least commonly discussed
feeling well, I don't like either of the candidates for
different reasons to different degrees, but there's no candidate running
that I feel like I can vote for with my
(16:36):
whole heart because of all of these things, and I
feel like that's just part of being a well informed voter.
It seems like, at least in the gallop pole sense,
that undecided is this kind of weird, nebulous term that
is almost making it sound like you feel a way
that isn't exactly accurate. It's making it seem like it's
a fifty to fifty chance. Who knows what I'm going
(16:56):
to do?
Speaker 2 (16:57):
You know, No, I think folks like in your generation
and younger understand a lot better than people my age
and older this concept where you slap a label on
something and that defines them, like people who don't know them,
they think that label is now their definition. So one
of the various labels that got slapped on me is undecided,
and like, well, that's that's just a word you know,
(17:19):
and what could that mean? And what does that mean
to many different people? I think the word that the
Commission on Debates would rather have used, and the one
they did use, and all their official stuff was uncommitted, like, yeah,
they kind of feel like they want to vote for
this person over this person, but they could change their
mind if something happened. Trump's famous mind was always like
(17:40):
he could shoot a guy on Fifth Avenue and people
would still vote for me. Well, that wasn't the folks
up on the stage. If you had somebody on Fifth Avenue,
they wouldn't have voted for him anymore.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
And we'll be right back with ken Bone. You get
the call, you're offered the opportunity to go. Did you
have any anxiety but participating? How are you feeling going
(18:12):
into the day. What was it supposed to look like?
I have no idea how these events are run.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Well, the only thing that made me nervous was that
I was running late, because I'm constantly late to everything.
But I don't get nervous about being on camera or
being in front of people. I don't care. I'll walk
out onto a stage and if you want me to
fill ten minutes, I'll do it. It's whatever in front
of ten thousand people. I don't care, not because of
anything special about me. It's just I don't happen to
(18:37):
be afraid of that. Like I really labored over what
question I wanted to ask. Because you write your own questions, okay,
nobody gets to know what they are. I always assume
that it was just some dog and pony show where
they picked a bunch of like struggling actors and put
them up on the stage, and it was unless this
is an elaborate prank played on me, it was totally legit.
We were all randomly selected and we wrote our own questions,
(19:00):
and the candidates did not get to see the questions
ahead of time. Even the moderators did not get to
see the questions until that day. Every person that was
up there, there were forty of us, wrote our questions
and we each were supposed to write too and give
them both of the moderators, and the moderators would then
like look through them, and a couple hours later they
came back and said, Okay, if we have time to
(19:22):
call on you, we want you to ask this one,
not this one. My brick up question was about student
loans because I at the time was still trying to
pay off my student loans and looking at a son
who was going into high school who I would never
be able to help go to school because I was
still paying for me to go to school fifteen years before.
So I wanted to ask about that, and that wasn't
(19:42):
really one of the hot issues of the time, and
they didn't have time for So yeah, I wrote my
question about energy policy because I work at a power plant.
I work at a coal fired power plant, and I
know how much work goes in behind the scenes to
try to be environmentally friendly with this fuel that is
not like if you just light coal on fire, it's
(20:03):
disgusting and dirty. A lot of work goes into cleaning
up the emissions that come from this coal. And if
I didn't think that we could do it responsibly, I
wouldn't work there. But I wanted to know, like as
we transition to clean energy, like if we could run
one hundred percent solar, somebody invents a better battery and
all of a sudden, we can just do that. That's great, then,
but what happens to me, and what happens to all
(20:23):
my friends, and what happens to our families. That was
where I came up with that question. So I get
to the debate venue, which was Washington University in Saint Louis.
The debate was at seven pm. We had to be
there by eight am. There's lots of orientation and instructions
and makeup. So I was supposed to be working that day,
but I had taken the time. I took the day off,
and then I was supposed to have the next day
(20:44):
off and I did, and then the next two night
shifts after that, I ended up calling in sick because
I was too busy doing media. We went through all
the orientation. They showed us where we were going to
be sitting. You know, there's folks who had never seen
or touched the microphone before, or who might be uncomfortable
on camera or something, so a lot of it was
about getting you comfortable with where you're going to be looking,
(21:07):
seeing all the cameras and stuff ahead of time so
he wouldn't be nervous. We met the moderators so like
Anderson Cooper came in. He's the nicest guy in the world.
By the way, when you're born, you can say other
people to be mean for you. He's an heir to
the Vanderbilt fortune. He doesn't have to be mean by himself.
He's got people for that. He came in We met
him the first time at about ten in the morning, gorgeous,
(21:27):
perfect suit, so put together, not a hair out of place.
And Martha Raddits, the other moderator, a wonderful journalist, was
there also. She just looked like a normal human being.
But Anderson Cooper looked like a caricature of a supermodel.
He's just incredibly and so. And then they said we've
got to go to hair and makeup and wardrobe, and
(21:49):
Martha Raddits. You know, she looked fine, but not ready
to be on camera, like you know, nobody would be.
Anderson Cooper looked like he could have just walked out
and done the news, like I think he wakes up
like that. It's bizarre. After that night, I did his show,
I think on Tuesday, after the segment was over. Normally,
in between segments, a producer will be talking in your ear,
(22:11):
telling you whether you know whether you can go or
they want you to stay on for another segment or whatever.
He was talking to himself. It's very unusual for the
on camera talent to be like talking to you themselves
while they're trying to prep for the next segment. He
happened to be coming through Saint Louis doing a live
show and Andy Cohen do a show they call ac Score.
(22:33):
They tell stories and stuff because they're very good friends,
and he invited me to the show and like sent
me tickets and everything. He was a joy. It was
a lot of fun. That show was one of the
most fun things we did. Sorry, I get on tangents
all the time, but back to that day. We meet
the moderators. We give them our two questions, and then
they say, okay, if we call on you ask this one.
(22:54):
And then they just kind of take all those questions
and they put them on in order. They're like, all right,
these six people asked about foreign pow, and these few
people asked about taxes and whatever, and they'll kind of
group them so they can guide the discussion by topics.
And I was the only person who had asked about energy. Okay,
So that's one of the reasons why they called on me.
Nobody else asked about energy or environmental policy at all.
(23:17):
I figured I'd asked about because it has a lot
of personal impact for me and also a lot of
impact for the regular voter. And then we get to
time for the debate and they march us out on
the stage and it is so cold out there. They
keep the whole area like sixty degrees. It's one of
the reasons I wore the sweater, like I wore the
sweater because the suit I was going to wear, I
(23:37):
tore the seat out of the pants because I got
too fat for it. But I switched quickly to the sweater,
knowing that they had told us how cold it was
going to be, and they keep it so cold because
President Nixon basically sweated through his suit when he was
debating John F. Kennedy. I thought they weren't going to
call on me. I ended up being the second to
last person they called.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
So you didn't know when the debate starts if you'll
be called on or not. It's in the moment.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Okay, there's forty of us who had all turned in questions.
They only had time to get to I think eight
or nine of them. And you don't know what order
they've put them in. You don't know if they're going
to call on you or not. They just said be ready.
They call on me. I read the question. I mispronounced
one of the words in my question. Hillary Clinton got
to answer first, and she said blah blah something about
(24:20):
Donald Trump buys steal from China, and then Donald Trump
something about how isis is bad. I'm like, okay, I
know isis is bad, but that's not going to make
or break my job at the power plant. So they
did their politician non answers and then the debate was over.
After it was over, Hillary Clinton walked by real quick.
She had to get to the like you know, war
(24:41):
room or whatever to start doing the after shows and
strategizing and whatever. She stopped and shook my hand and
talked to us for a few seconds and walked out.
I didn't go over and talk to Donald Trump because
I didn't want to. And then I heard from across
the stage somebody yelling to me, and it was President
Bill Clinton. Wanted to talk to me. I talked to
him for like fun. He remembered my name at first
(25:03):
when he was yelling to me. He was like, hey,
the energy guy, come here. You had the question. And
I walk over to him and he's like, your name's Ken, right,
and he had, you know, wanted to talk more in
detail about the Clinton energy policy as they saw it.
I was like, okay, so I was happy to talk
to him about it. And then his his security guy
was like tugging on his jacket, like, mister President, we
got to go. So he leaves and then I look
(25:24):
around and there's not really anybody left on stage. So
I kind of took a few more pictures with the
disposable camera that they gave us. I didn't take that
with me. By the way, people associate me with the
disposable camera. We all had one. The Commission gave them
to us because we weren't allowed to have cameras or
cell phones or anything. I'm going to take pictures of
the camera equipment because I'm a nerd about av stuff.
(25:45):
And I was like, Wow, that's a really big boom
crane for this camera, and well there's a big soundboard
over there before.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
We get into like whenever you're allowed to check your
phone after this event, I am curious what was your
relationship with the internet, Like prior to this, I.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Was mostly a lurker, Like I had a Twitter account.
I had like two followers. One of them was my
grandma and I think the other one was also my
grandma who might have forgot her password and then made
a new can get on Reddit. And I was mostly
just a lurker. I had an account, and I only
made you know, sporadic comments, some of them really stupid
and you know, regretful. But I didn't spend a whole
(26:23):
lot of time online. But I was aware of the
whole internet thing. I wasn't like a terminally online person.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Here's the rest of my interview with Ken Bone. The
debate is over, you check your phone. Walk me through
that moment of checking your phone after Well.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
They told us before the debate, They're like, don't be
surprised if there's reporters out there wanting to talk to
you or take your picture. Don't be surprised if you're
like caricatured on Saturday Night Live or something. It's just
it could happen. And I'm like, well, I'd kind of
like to talk to a reporter, and then maybe my
grandma could have something for her scrap book if I
get my picture in the paper. I didn't really think
(27:12):
much of it. And then as I'm walking back to
my car, there's no reporters, there's no photographers or anything,
and I was almost a little disappointed. I'm like, oh,
I get back to the car and open the glove
compartment where I had my phone locked up and power
it back on. And my voicemail box was full and
I had like a couple hundred text messages and my
phone was already ringing as soon as it powered on.
I'm like, what the heck's going on here? And the
(27:34):
first call I answered was from a woman who I
had gone to high school with, who now lives down
in Dallas. She's was a producer for like a local
morning show on there. I think it was the NBC affiliate,
like their morning news show. And she's like, hey, Ken,
I remember me from high school. I'm like that kind
of I guess, do you want to do a phone
(27:56):
interview for our show tomorrow. I'm like, oh, sure, okay.
I'm not really sure how she got my number. I
didn't even have a cell phone in high school because
I'm old, but I was like, yeah, sure, Katie, had
no problem. And then as soon as I hung up,
it was ringing again, and it was Fox Sports and
they were like, yeah, you want to be on our
morning show tomorrow. And then my friend Ryan is calling me.
He's like dude, you're on every channel. I'm like, yeah,
(28:17):
I was on the debate. I told you I was
going to be there, Like no, man, not just like
in the background, they're talking about you. And I was like, why,
why are they talking about me? It's weird. And he's like, well,
I don't know, because you're wearing bright red and you
got a stupid name. I'm like, well, I already knew
I had a stupid name. I thought he was messing
with me. Even with all the messages and stuff, it
takes me forty five minutes to get home, and sure
(28:38):
enough on TV is me just like a close up
with my face on like CNN or something. I'm like,
what the hell is this? And my wife says, yeah,
it's been like this since the debate was over.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
What is your wife and son's reaction to all of this.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
It's weird for them because obviously they know me better
than anybody else, and they're seeing all these people on
TV speculate about who I am and where I came from,
and they're like, well, that's wrong, and that's wrong, and
that's wrong, and it was just sort of disbelief, and
the whole time we all just sort of thought like, well,
they'll find something else to pay attention to in a
day or two. You know, it actually took several weeks
(29:13):
before they were ready to pay attention to something else.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Your existence was politicized for moment one because it was
in the context of politics. And what was it like
seeing yourself presented in this very like political way.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
I didn't see any coverage of myself for like days
and days after except what people were directly like texting
me about, like my friends, because it was too busy
doing interviews and stuff. It was really surreal. Like I
did an interview with the New York Times. They published
the interview online like a half an hour later. Five
(29:49):
minutes after that, I'm getting requests for comment on that
interview from other media outlets and also from like my
brother in law, and he's like, have you seen this?
I'm like, no, I don't I have time to read
any of that. In fact, I'm hanging up on you
now because I'm supposed to be on this radio show
in Fort Worth, right, I gotta go.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Was there any moment of hesitation of like do I
want to do this? Was there any like calculus I'll
talk to I'll do this I don't know how I
feel about this. It just sounds like it was happening
so fast. How did you know what to say yes
or no to.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
I didn't say no to almost anybody. The only people
I said no to were ones where literally like I
have something booked at that same time already. Sorry. I
was enough at the time to know that, like, this
is going to go on for a few days, and
it's I'm not actually a big deal. People just want
to pay attention to me for right now. So I
never got like an inflated sense of like, oh man,
(30:41):
I must be so smart and so great and everybody
loves me. So I think I was fortunate enough that
I had that online exposure before, so I didn't buy
into my own myth or whatever. Didn't let it change
me as a person, at least I hope I didn't.
I guess somebody could go through that kind of experience
without being a little bit changed. But I don't feel
like I have came too self absorbed or anything because
(31:02):
of it. It was just bizarre. I had stuff booked
in fifteen minute increments about four am until two am
every day for three days until then I finally had
to start telling people no so I could sleep.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I'm curious to talk to you about just like how
that degree of sudden attention and expectation and this projection
of responsibility, like all of which did not exist twenty
four hours ago. What does that do to your sense
of mental well being?
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Well, I've did a lot of therapy over the last
couple of years, because once you go back to like
when you've had a stadium full of twenty thousand people
chanting your name and lining up for two hours just
to take a picture with you humans as social animals,
you get like endorphin rush from that. You know, sure
you feel that's addictive. It gave me a good insight
(31:52):
into why some people who got like reality show fame
or whatever, will sell their soul for a little bit
more attention. From the outside. You look at it and
you're like, how could you do that? That's disgusting? Why
are these people debasing themselves? Like because it's addictive. I
feel like I was very lucky that I didn't get
so hooked on it that I couldn't let it go,
(32:12):
because it eventually is no matter who you are, it's
going away. But I think I recognized from early on
that It wasn't because of any innate talent or anything.
It was just like a perfect storm of like I
had a funny name, i was wearing a weird outfit,
I'm not afraid to be on camera. I ended up
being kind of good at the sort of banter. So
I felt like that all came together. But it wasn't
because I'm like an amazing media analyst or something like that.
(32:36):
It was just a lot of factors that came together
that made it so. I was I don't know, I
was almost purpose built to be the Internet meme or something.
But I was okay with it going away again. I
wrote it out for a while because it was fun once.
It wasn't as fun anymore, but I started answering the
phone lesson less, especially since it's not really that lucrative.
I did make some money on I did a few
(32:57):
commercials and there were a few bigger things. I sold
T shirts. That's what I made the most money on.
But I did as much as I could to give back. Also,
I gave ten percent of all the money I got
to charity. And every place I would sign a contract with,
I would make that company, I'd make them give money
to charity also, so we raised tens of thousands of
dollars for local charities and things. Yeah, I'd like to
(33:18):
think that most people are just doing the best they can.
Like the hawk Tua girl is the hot thing of
the moment as we're recording this, and she's done a
lot for like pet shelters and other charities and stuff,
so I'm really happy for her. I haven't got a
chance to talk to her, and I've been looking for
like her email address or something so I could just
(33:39):
send her a note. But she was probably like fourteen
years old when I was a meum, so she might
even know who I am sure she.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
I mean, everyone does it like you had the full
kind of arc where you had the original wave of attention,
that the appearances, a lot of requests, you had the
moment of the Reddit post resurfacing and having to just
navigate all of that and such a short period of
time when things are coming that fast and that intensely,
(34:07):
how do you manage in the day to day sense?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Well, I you know, everybody's like the hero of their
own story, and it's no different to me. So when
I started getting questions about like why did you say this, insensitive,
terrible thing on Reddit. I'm like, well, that was a
jerk thing to do. I don't know what to tell you.
And I think because I didn't try to go out
of my way to justify it, that was big and
(34:31):
people like being willing to forgive and move on. They're like, oh,
you thought you were anonymous, you said something insensitive, you know,
tried to play it off for cheap laughs or whatever
at the time. But what I would always say to
people is like, it wasn't a press release. I did
not curate this for you know, wide consumption. I was
talking to the three people that I was, you know,
(34:53):
in a comment thread with made a dumb joke that
was that I feel bad about but I I believe
in learning from your mistakes and moving on. I read it.
Username is stan Gibson eighteen. I still use the same username.
I do not have an alt account. I think that
alt accounts are for cowards, honestly, and I think that
(35:13):
even more strongly now if you look far enough back
in my history, you can read the comments yourself. I
have not deleted or edited a single one, because even
the ones that I'm not proud of, I feel like
if you do not stick by your words and learn
from them even when they're wrong, then you failed as
a person. That's something my grandfather taught me because I
made that mistake, and I think that goes a lot
(35:35):
farther than just pretending it was okay or pretending it
didn't happen.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
When did it feel like? Things started to kind of
feel less intense, it's less of a part of your
daily life.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Probably by about Thanksgiving it started to tone down because
of the nature of what I was famous for. You know,
it's because of the election. Well, the election is obviously
not over yet. The election wasn't until early November, and
then of course Donald Trump wins, and I know what
I saw that. I don't think Donald Trump saw that coming.
The political climate is super fraught, and people are either
looking for somebody to lash out at and blame or
(36:08):
they're looking for some kind of anchor of something that's
supposed to be fun. That's one of the reasons why
I got so big is because everybody was so busy
in this nasty election cycle, with everything that's so awful,
they're like, hey, this guy seems kind of fun. Let's
talk about that for a while. And after the election,
was over, They're like, let's talk about fun guy a
little bit for a while, because oh my god, this
is bad, this is so weird. So that carried it
(36:30):
a little farther, you know, started settling down where I
was only doing a couple of couple of things a week,
you know, the interview here and there. I went to
Seapack that that year, in twenty seventeen, in February, the
big conservative thing. I'm not a very conservative guy. I
didn't go as a speaker or anything. There was a
company that sells fundraising and campaign management software that wanted
(36:55):
me to be the spokesmarsa a spokesperson. So I went
to a Seapack and then I went to net Its Nation,
which is sort of the sort of the liberal equivalent,
except it's not nearly as much of a party atmosphere
as Seapack. So we went to these big political conferences
trying to sell the fundraising software. I mean that was fun.
I got to meet AOC before she got elected. We
got a picture of me and an AOC from before
(37:18):
her primary, before anybody else knew who she was, so
I got any So I did a few more events
with them. They were the ones who arranged for me
to be on Bill maher like the year after that,
but it really slowed down a bunch, and then by
the time we got to the pandemic that stopped everybody's
life completely in its tracks and never really picked up
as much after that.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Was there ever a point where you were able to
make a full time living? Did you want to make
a full time living of this or was it sort
of like, well, we'll just sort of see what happens
early on.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
If I had gone and gotten like an agent who
could help me navigate all that stuff, Yeah, pretty confident
that I could have made a full time living being
like one of those talking head contributors does segments, you know,
a few times a week, and then while you're doing that,
you write a book, and then you plug your book
when you're in this stuff. Yeah, it was a whole
ecosystem of people that do that, and I'm pretty sure
(38:07):
I could have done it, and I could have done
a good enough job where I could have kept it going,
But it also seemed kind of like a bummer. And
I have a decent career that I already liked. That's
like a sure thing that I'm really good at. What
I do, and it doesn't require me to be out
of town all the time or be stressed out and
do hair and makeup and stuff. The media atmosphere moves
so fast. If you don't jump on that immediately, it's done.
(38:31):
If I wanted to write a book, now, nobody's going
to buy that book. I did have more staying power
than most. I think that's attributable to me just being
willing to do more appearances and being kind of okay
on camera. People don't remember Chewbacca Mom as much because
I don't think she wanted to do as many appearances
as I did. People don't remember her Ambie because he's dead.
He don't do interviews anymore. Yeah, you don't grow without
(38:53):
changing a little bit. You know, It's been eight years
since I was a meme. I'm not the same person
I was eight years ago. Have grown and changed and involved.
I'm not to slap too many labels on it, but
I think I'm a lot more progressive than I was before.
Believe more in things like universal health care and things
of that nature. And not because I'm like I used
to be a bad guy and I wanted Grandma to
(39:15):
die because she was broke no, it's because I used
to believe that it would never be efficient enough to
roll out wide scale. And the more I've read about it,
and the more I've talked to people about it, and
realized every other civilized nation in the world does it.
Why couldn't we do it? Then my beliefs have grown
and changed over time. But I also realized that there's
(39:35):
a lot of people who think the way that I
did eight or ten years ago. They're not evil. They
came by those beliefs honestly. And most people, probably ninety
plus percent of people, want everybody to have rights. They
want everybody to have health care, they want everybody to
have whatever. They don't agree on how we should get it.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
You both have a lot of criticism of media and
have experienced and bored and witness to American media in
a way very few have. Has your view on media
shifted in these last eight years.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Very much so, media and politics. Also, once you've peered
behind the curtain, you can't unsee that stuff. We have
so many politicians and media figures who could not chew
bubble gum and walk at the same time. In general,
they're good at one thing. Politicians are good at getting elected.
And media figures are good at staying on television, and
(40:32):
that is largely it. Very few of them actually have
something to say. Most of them are just good at
drawing your attention for short periods to close out.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
When you look back on this time of this initial virality,
have your feelings changed towards it? And you know, as
you like have processed that experience over the years, how
do you look back on it now?
Speaker 2 (40:52):
The more distance I get from it, the more I
realize that it does not define me as a person.
And that is a lot of what I had to
talk through in therapy. If like I had these great
emotional highs of everybody loves me without even knowing me,
that's addictive. But I realized that I don't need that
to define me as a peron. I'm defined as a
person by the relationships that I maintain and the internal
(41:17):
work that I do on improving myself. Also by smaller
things like my career and my interests, and those things
define me as a human being, not the way people
chose to perceive me on television. If somehow a magic
wand were to excise that whole experience from my life,
I realized that I could still be who I am.
(41:39):
I could still be a good person, I could still
be a worthwhile human being without any of that attention.
And I think that having some distance from it and
some years later has helped me gain perspective on that.
If I had to do it all again, absolutely when
it's an amazing, unique experience that almost nobody gets to have,
and I was very fortunate that I was able to,
(41:59):
you know, I'm not a saint. I've gained financially from
it also, but I was able to help my community
as well, so a lot of people benefited. So I
think overall it is a great experience. If I had
to do it the same way, you know, and I
didn't get to change anything, I would still do it.
But I don't need it. I don't have to have
had it to be satisfied with who I am.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Wonderful. Thank you for being so open and so generous
with your time and your experience. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
I really love, you know, interviews like this and programs
like yours, because the long form format where you can
really get into a subject, is so much more beneficial
and so much more fun to engage in than the
like eight minute radio segments that I've done a million.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Of I hope, so thank you, Thank you again to
Ken Bone. You can follow him on Twitter for updates
he shares as he sees fit, and you can also
donate to his nonprofit of choice, the Saint Patrick Center
in Saint Louis, at the link in the description. I'll
be doing the same, and I really appreciate it. Ken
made it a part of his mission to include the
(43:02):
interest of his own community. I really hope this is
something that characters of the day kind of put into
practice when their time randomly comes oddly enough. Talk to
a girl. Hailey Welch is a pretty solid example of this.
She's recently started a nonprofit for stray animals in her area.
But at the end of the day, there will never
be another Ken Bone. But he is an important hallmark
(43:26):
in Internet history. He's a clear and early example of
the milkshake duck phenomenon, a crossover between the mainstream media
and social media, and a person who was able to
grow and change with the phenomenon that surrounded him. So
here we are again at the end of another fucked
up American election cycle. Vote your conscience, vote down ballot
(43:50):
in your community and participate in mutual aid in your area.
Vote blue no matter who is for losers and Nimbi's
people help people period. And for your moment of fun
this week. There are still a few weeks of rancid
SNL sketches to get through before election day. So here
was Ken's rancid SNL moment. Next week, more hot dogs.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Bye, all right, and now since everyone has been so good,
it's time for a special treat. That's right, ladies and gentlemen,
put your hands together, the one, the only, mister Kenbone.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
You all ready for the Oh my god, he is
so cute.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I really needed that right now.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
No, wait, Ken, You're not going to turn out to
be a weird little creep or anything, are you?
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Maybe?
Speaker 1 (44:56):
God, we can't have anything nice? Oh well. Sixteenth Minute
is a production of Whole Zone Media and iHeart Rodeops.
It is written, hosted, and produced by me Jamie Rastus.
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The
Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
(45:18):
Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
from Grant Crater and pet Shout Outs. To our dog
producer Anderson, my Kat's flee and Casper, and my pet Rothbert,
who will outlive us all. Bye.
Cold Zone Media. Hey, it's Shamie here, just quickly saying
if you live in the Los Angeles area, I'm starting
to workshop my first one person show in a couple
of years. It's called The Tiny Man Is Going to
Kill Me. Don't ask, just show up. It's super silly.
I'll be doing it at the Lyric Hyperion in workshop
form on November one and November twentieth, and tickets are
(00:25):
on sale now. I'll be doing a taping later and
I'll let you know when tickets are on sale to that.
But yeah, if you're in the LA area, come on out.
The Tiny Man Is Going to Kill Me. And with that,
here's our Ken Bone Part two episode Bye. Welcome back
(01:31):
to sixteenth Minute, the show where we talk to the
Internet's characters of the day and see how their moment
affected them and what it says about the Internet and us.
My name is Jamie Loftus and this week is part
two of two of our Ken Bone series. If you
haven't listened to part one, scroll down. King You've got this.
But if you're only here because you want to hear
(01:53):
the dulcent tones of Ken himself, you're in the right place.
It's now been eight years since Ken became an overnight sensation,
creating what many thought was an irrational amount of media
attention after asking a question at a presidential town hall
debate in twenty sixteen, a particularly awkward and creepy event
between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. You can hear all
(02:16):
about the context of why Ken was so popular and
what the history of these American debates are in Part one.
But this week I'm going to let Ken take the mic.
Here is our interview. Okay, Ken vone, Hello.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Ry, how are you today?
Speaker 1 (02:32):
How are things in your world right now? I'm realizing
that I've known who you are for the better part
of a decade now.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, we're coming up on the a anniversary of me
becoming a meme, which is weird. It has changed a
lot since then, but not necessarily because of meme stuff,
just because I'm older now, I have more grey hair,
and my son is a grown adult now as graduated
high school. On just a lot, you know, life moving on.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Are you still living in the same place.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yeah, I live in the same house I lived in
when it all happened. I've been here in this house
for I think this is eleven years this month since
we had it built. You know, still largely the same.
I work at the same job. I have a different
title and different responsibilities now, but I've been working at
the same place for fifteen years now and still the
same family situation and everything. I've been married for twenty
(03:28):
years now and just our son's a little older.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
And this is now your third presidential election as a
historic figure.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
The last three or four months, since the elections started
heating up, it's been a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
It is well that you havecome synonymous with the concept
of a debate.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, it could. I mean, they don't really do debates
the same way they did. My debate was the town
hall format run by the Commission on Presidential Debates. I mean,
we've seen what it's been the last couple of months,
a tremendous mess of No, you have to come on
my channel. No, you have to come on my channel.
You have to come where people will be sympathetic to me. Oh, no,
you have to come. It's disgusting. It's our political climate
(04:12):
is a national disgrace. It's the only way I can
really think to put it.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
I am in agreement with you there, and I want
to get there because what a election cycle to become
a major part of and I feel like, you know,
the trust in cable news has severely declined since, and
not that it was great in twenty sixteen, but a
great sort of stress test for everything about it that
doesn't work. I wanted to just start by getting to
(04:36):
know you a little better. I think it's interesting and
kind of funny that, like, part of all you're famous
is because you are a normal person, something that really
drew people to you aritually. So I will love to
know a little bit more about you, where you grew up,
what was life like?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Sure, I'm you know. My real name is Ken Boone.
Some people thought that that was like a fake name
or like a moniker or something. I went by Jarland. Yeah,
my name is Kenneth. My last name really is Bone.
I was named after my grandfather, who was also Kenneth Bone.
We both went by Ken, but when I came along,
(05:11):
he started going by his middle name Sherman. Most people
call him Sherman. But yeah, I've been Ken Bone or
Kenny Bone my whole life. I'm going to be forty
two here really soon, just like a middle aged guy
from a working class town called Granite City, it's really
close to Saint Louis. We tell out of towners that
were from Saint Louis. You can almost see the gateway
arch from my house, like if you get up on
(05:33):
top of a building, but it's actually across the Mississippi
River on the Illinois side. So the whole town was
built around a steel mill that is sort of in
operation these days. Steel prices have kind of driven production
way down, but it's like a typical middle class or
working class town where there's one giant employer. Everybody works
(05:55):
either for it, or for its suppliers, or for something
that only exists because it is there. My grandfather worked
for the steel mill. My grandmother worked for the hospital
that was only there because the steel mill drew in
enough population where they needed a hospital. My mom also
worked at that hospital, and then my dad worked at
various like vendors and suppliers that mostly dealt with the
(06:16):
steel mill. Over the years, so I've lived with my
mom and dad. They lived with dad's mom and dad.
So I grew up in a house with my parents
and my grandparents and my little brother and sister, pretty crowded.
His new generation would come along and then there'd be
more people living in the house. When my son was born,
I didn't have my own place yet, so he lived
(06:37):
in the basement with me until he was about six
months old.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
We were on free a fourth generation, and why not.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
My wife and I were on waiting lists to get
an apartment, so we had four generations living in the
house by the time we were able to move out.
So it was a great way to grow up. It
was always crowded. You were never alone, so the family's
very close knit. I graduated high school in the year
two thousand, so we were like the millennial class that
made a big deal out of it when we started kindergarten,
and none of the kindergarteners knew why why there was
(07:05):
this big party. We're like, man in school, maybe it'll
actually be kind of cool because that's party for us.
Then we realized real quick that no, they don't do
that every day. I'm an old millennial now with yeah,
with gray hair, and my parents were stereotypical gen xers,
and you know, of course they had to work for
a living, and my grandparents were still working when I
was younger, so Sesame Street kind of raised me. I
(07:28):
was the oldest of the kids, so I kind of
helped look after the kids a little bit, and we
were until grandma and Grandpa were retired. We were kind
of last key kids. Like a lot of people my age.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Well, were you interested in when you're a kid.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Oh, I was a big time nerd, Like I enjoy sports,
but I was never any good at sports. I'm like
the stereotypical broadcaster or analyst who like loves everything about
sports but can barely throw a baseball from third base
all the way to home plate. You get more into
the statistics and stuff. Well, I loved all the stereotypical
nerd things. When Dragon ball Z first came to the
(08:03):
United States on Toonami, I was in high school and
so that was huge for my friend group, Like, oh,
this anime thing. I wonder if this will ever catch on,
And of course it didn't, and so that was huge.
I've always loved, like science fiction, stereotypical nerd stuff, things
that are like it's okay to like now but made
you sort of sort of weird. When we were younger,
(08:24):
the high school in Granite City was kind of a
big school, so there was enough kids there to form
a group of friends no matter what your interests were.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
I'm also into a pretty big high school, and it
was kind of I feel like I ended up avoiding
a lot of bullying I probably would have gotten at
a smaller high school. But there was like enough weird
kids and just enough kids that you're you know, you're
a moving target, you know, like no one can really
get yet.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah, I've never did much of a problem with bullying.
I was fortunate there because like of all the nerdy kids,
I was by far the largest. So even when I
was when I was younger, I wasn't super athletic, but
I wasn't I wasn't small. I was big even before
I was overweight. I was about five ten and had
a pretty large frame. So the bullies were like, well,
there are smaller s, growndier kids to pick on.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Hey, and bullies are famously cowards, so.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, they don't want to pick on the kid who
is as big and strong as they are. They want
to pick on the small, weaker kids. So yeah, like
my immediate group of friends, when we'd be together, everybody
was safe because we were all together and I was
a little bit larger. But then, of course a lot
of people will get bullied individually, or in smaller groups.
So you hate to see that sort of thing, But
I personally didn't have to suffer much of it, so
(09:33):
I was kind of fortunate there.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
I also have seen that you were interested in music.
I've seen you play the drums. Where did that come from?
When did that come into your life?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
There was a church right around the corner from my
house where I grew up, and my grandmother started going
there when I was a little kid, and she always
wanted me to go, so I after like my mother
would take me to Catholic church when I was really little,
but then, like most good Saint Louis's, she quit being
Catholic after all. She became like a lapsed Catholic who
(10:01):
didn't go to Mass and didn't make her kids go.
But then my grandmother started taking me to her church
when I was twelve or thirteen, and they needed someone
to play the drums, so I learned to play the
drums then and after I had learned to play the drums,
so I wanted to learn to play other instruments. And
I play the drums and the bass and the piano
and a few other things, and not amazing at any
(10:21):
of them. But I'm pretty good. I can have fun
and play with any group that I feel like. That's
actually my activity for this weekend is to restring my
bass guitar. But yeah, I still play whenever I can.
My father plays guitar, and that's one of our things
that we do together. Like a lot of young guys,
especially in working class backgrounds, I didn't have a great
relationship with my dad when I was young. Once you
grow up and you have kids on your own, if
(10:43):
you're in a situation like mine, you realize that your
dad tried hard and he did the best he could.
So we're you know, we're friends now. We love to
hang out and that's one of the things we get
to do together is play guitars. It's kind of weird.
Like my wife and I we had our We got
together when she was still in high school. I was
a freshman in college and she was senior in high
school and we met at the bowling alley where we
(11:04):
were both working.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
That's so wholesome.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Oh yeah, it was wonderful. And she's the best person
I've ever met. You should be interviewing her instead. She's
more interesting and better looking and a better person than
I am. She's a surrogate mom who had twins for strangers.
Because she's such a wonderful and giving human being. I
could go on and on about her. She's the best
person I know. Yeah, we got together there, and when
she got pregnant, we were already planning on getting married,
(11:28):
but we hadn't told anybody. So then we started making
plans to get married, and we didn't want to just
rush and have the wedding before the baby came along.
So we've got this great picture from our wedding with
five generations of the family. My great grandparents, a few
of them were still living. My whole family still lives
around here, especially since my grandfather passed away about nine
years ago. We make it more of a point to
(11:49):
get together while we're all still able to.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
I also love it. It's like you're a hobby's guy experience.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
A lot of my hobby stuff is behind me. I've
got the guitars here, We've got the whiffle ball I
was doing last weekend up on my top shelf. Back
there are some model kids. That's part of my nerd stuff.
My favorite anime in high school was mobile Suit Gundam wing,
so I started building gun plow Building, Gundam Models.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
What are your favorite animes right now? Because I don't
know what I'm talking about, but I know that a
lot of my listeners do.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Right now, I'm in the middle of Mobile Suit, Gundam,
Iron Blooded Orphans. That's more of a well known one.
My favorite niche anime that's probably not as popular is
Kenetzchee The Mightiest Disciple. I love the main character. He
always reminded me of me as a younger person, where
the whole gag of the show is that he tries
to become a martial artist but he has no natural talent,
(12:42):
but he works super super hard, and I'm like, well,
that's me when I try to do sports or try
to do anything. I don't necessarily have a lot of
natural talent, but I can hang out with the other
kids because I worked at it really really hard.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Getting into the big viral moment for you in October
twenty sixteen, what does your life look like? And how
does the possibility of even you know, attending this debate,
how does that come up?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Well, life largely was the same, except I was eight
years younger and not that much on the in a
big picture where it's change other than normal, like growing up.
Sort of think my back hurts a little bit more
in how than it used to. And my son is
a grown up, so we no longer have to like
take him to activities or anything. Now we're helping him
with his job search. You know, we had a job
interview earlier. Today. The big picture thing is, like a
(13:30):
lot of people in their early thirties at the time,
we had a place to live. We were fortunate enough
that we were able to buy a house at like
the bottom of the market. Housing was still pretty cheap
after the two thousand and eight crash. It's not like
it is today, where it's such a horrible struggle for
people who are in the exact situation I was in
then would not be able to get a house now.
(13:53):
So I feel super bad that those opportunities aren't there
for them. Yeah, so we were fortunate and we're able
to do that. You know, we still would have our
occasional financial struggles, but I had a decent career that
I was building and we were doing all right, and
then I just got a random call on a Sunday
afternoon on my day off. I thought it was like
the old collector or something, so it's behind on my
(14:13):
car payment. I'm not very good at handling money, and
I'm like, god, geez, I better answer the phone, and
you know, either give them some money or make up
some excuse. And it was the Gallup poll. They wanted
to do a survey. I'm like, okay, I'm just sitting
here watching Futurama. Sure, So I do their survey and
then at the end of it they said, well, based
on the survey results, you would be a good fit
(14:33):
to attend this debate. I'm like, oh, okay. Sure.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Was the takeaway from the survey just essentially like determining
that you were a then undecided voter? Was there anything outside?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Was it really a survey so much as it was
a screening process? And yeah, there's a lot of questions
like who are you going to vote for? How sure
are you that you want to vote for that person
on a scale of one to ten, How likely are
you to change your mind? To most people, this is
where like a lot of the controversy would then people
are like, how could you be undecided between Donald Trump
and Hillary Clinton? One is so much obviously better than
(15:06):
the other, Like, well, it's not so much that I
couldn't decide which one I liked more. It was that
I didn't like either of them. I had a very
unfavorable opinion of both candidates. And that's more how they
defined undecided, Like, yeah, you seem to have kind of
decided who you're going to vote for, but anything could
come out and change your mind. And a lot of
(15:26):
stuff did come out and change a lot of the
people's minds that were on the platform with me. When
we went through that screening process. It was before the
Access Hollywood tape came out, the grabbed the woman grabbing tape.
People were really asking like, how could you possibly even
consider voting for that guy? Like, well, a lot of
the people up here that had not happened yet. People
(15:48):
did not know about that yet. So there was a
bunch of people up there who had absolutely written Trump
off at that point, but they had already been selected
and gone through the Secret Service and everything. It's not
like they can just pick people off the street that morning.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
How far ahead did you know you're going to attend
before it actually happened.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
About two weeks and the Access Hollywood tape only came
out about three days before the debate. It was the
hot thing.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Lord, it's interesting the qualifications it took for you to
be characterized as undecided, because what you're describing now, I
feel like, is a way more at least commonly discussed
feeling well, I don't like either of the candidates for
different reasons to different degrees, but there's no candidate running
that I feel like I can vote for with my
(16:36):
whole heart because of all of these things, and I
feel like that's just part of being a well informed voter.
It seems like, at least in the gallop pole sense,
that undecided is this kind of weird, nebulous term that
is almost making it sound like you feel a way
that isn't exactly accurate. It's making it seem like it's
a fifty to fifty chance. Who knows what I'm going
(16:56):
to do?
Speaker 2 (16:57):
You know, No, I think folks like in your generation
and younger understand a lot better than people my age
and older this concept where you slap a label on
something and that defines them, like people who don't know them,
they think that label is now their definition. So one
of the various labels that got slapped on me is undecided,
and like, well, that's that's just a word you know,
(17:19):
and what could that mean? And what does that mean
to many different people? I think the word that the
Commission on Debates would rather have used, and the one
they did use, and all their official stuff was uncommitted, like, yeah,
they kind of feel like they want to vote for
this person over this person, but they could change their
mind if something happened. Trump's famous mind was always like
(17:40):
he could shoot a guy on Fifth Avenue and people
would still vote for me. Well, that wasn't the folks
up on the stage. If you had somebody on Fifth Avenue,
they wouldn't have voted for him anymore.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
And we'll be right back with ken Bone. You get
the call, you're offered the opportunity to go. Did you
have any anxiety but participating? How are you feeling going
(18:12):
into the day. What was it supposed to look like?
I have no idea how these events are run.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Well, the only thing that made me nervous was that
I was running late, because I'm constantly late to everything.
But I don't get nervous about being on camera or
being in front of people. I don't care. I'll walk
out onto a stage and if you want me to
fill ten minutes, I'll do it. It's whatever in front
of ten thousand people. I don't care, not because of
anything special about me. It's just I don't happen to
(18:37):
be afraid of that. Like I really labored over what
question I wanted to ask. Because you write your own questions, okay,
nobody gets to know what they are. I always assume
that it was just some dog and pony show where
they picked a bunch of like struggling actors and put
them up on the stage, and it was unless this
is an elaborate prank played on me, it was totally legit.
We were all randomly selected and we wrote our own questions,
(19:00):
and the candidates did not get to see the questions
ahead of time. Even the moderators did not get to
see the questions until that day. Every person that was
up there, there were forty of us, wrote our questions
and we each were supposed to write too and give
them both of the moderators, and the moderators would then
like look through them, and a couple hours later they
came back and said, Okay, if we have time to
(19:22):
call on you, we want you to ask this one,
not this one. My brick up question was about student
loans because I at the time was still trying to
pay off my student loans and looking at a son
who was going into high school who I would never
be able to help go to school because I was
still paying for me to go to school fifteen years before.
So I wanted to ask about that, and that wasn't
(19:42):
really one of the hot issues of the time, and
they didn't have time for So yeah, I wrote my
question about energy policy because I work at a power plant.
I work at a coal fired power plant, and I
know how much work goes in behind the scenes to
try to be environmentally friendly with this fuel that is
not like if you just light coal on fire, it's
(20:03):
disgusting and dirty. A lot of work goes into cleaning
up the emissions that come from this coal. And if
I didn't think that we could do it responsibly, I
wouldn't work there. But I wanted to know, like as
we transition to clean energy, like if we could run
one hundred percent solar, somebody invents a better battery and
all of a sudden, we can just do that. That's great, then,
but what happens to me, and what happens to all
(20:23):
my friends, and what happens to our families. That was
where I came up with that question. So I get
to the debate venue, which was Washington University in Saint Louis.
The debate was at seven pm. We had to be
there by eight am. There's lots of orientation and instructions
and makeup. So I was supposed to be working that day,
but I had taken the time. I took the day off,
and then I was supposed to have the next day
(20:44):
off and I did, and then the next two night
shifts after that, I ended up calling in sick because
I was too busy doing media. We went through all
the orientation. They showed us where we were going to
be sitting. You know, there's folks who had never seen
or touched the microphone before, or who might be uncomfortable
on camera or something, so a lot of it was
about getting you comfortable with where you're going to be looking,
(21:07):
seeing all the cameras and stuff ahead of time so
he wouldn't be nervous. We met the moderators so like
Anderson Cooper came in. He's the nicest guy in the world.
By the way, when you're born, you can say other
people to be mean for you. He's an heir to
the Vanderbilt fortune. He doesn't have to be mean by himself.
He's got people for that. He came in We met
him the first time at about ten in the morning, gorgeous,
(21:27):
perfect suit, so put together, not a hair out of place.
And Martha Raddits, the other moderator, a wonderful journalist, was
there also. She just looked like a normal human being.
But Anderson Cooper looked like a caricature of a supermodel.
He's just incredibly and so. And then they said we've
got to go to hair and makeup and wardrobe, and
(21:49):
Martha Raddits. You know, she looked fine, but not ready
to be on camera, like you know, nobody would be.
Anderson Cooper looked like he could have just walked out
and done the news, like I think he wakes up
like that. It's bizarre. After that night, I did his show,
I think on Tuesday, after the segment was over. Normally,
in between segments, a producer will be talking in your ear,
(22:11):
telling you whether you know whether you can go or
they want you to stay on for another segment or whatever.
He was talking to himself. It's very unusual for the
on camera talent to be like talking to you themselves
while they're trying to prep for the next segment. He
happened to be coming through Saint Louis doing a live
show and Andy Cohen do a show they call ac Score.
(22:33):
They tell stories and stuff because they're very good friends,
and he invited me to the show and like sent
me tickets and everything. He was a joy. It was
a lot of fun. That show was one of the
most fun things we did. Sorry, I get on tangents
all the time, but back to that day. We meet
the moderators. We give them our two questions, and then
they say, okay, if we call on you ask this one.
(22:54):
And then they just kind of take all those questions
and they put them on in order. They're like, all right,
these six people asked about foreign pow, and these few
people asked about taxes and whatever, and they'll kind of
group them so they can guide the discussion by topics.
And I was the only person who had asked about energy. Okay,
So that's one of the reasons why they called on me.
Nobody else asked about energy or environmental policy at all.
(23:17):
I figured I'd asked about because it has a lot
of personal impact for me and also a lot of
impact for the regular voter. And then we get to
time for the debate and they march us out on
the stage and it is so cold out there. They
keep the whole area like sixty degrees. It's one of
the reasons I wore the sweater, like I wore the
sweater because the suit I was going to wear, I
(23:37):
tore the seat out of the pants because I got
too fat for it. But I switched quickly to the sweater,
knowing that they had told us how cold it was
going to be, and they keep it so cold because
President Nixon basically sweated through his suit when he was
debating John F. Kennedy. I thought they weren't going to
call on me. I ended up being the second to
last person they called.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
So you didn't know when the debate starts if you'll
be called on or not. It's in the moment.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Okay, there's forty of us who had all turned in questions.
They only had time to get to I think eight
or nine of them. And you don't know what order
they've put them in. You don't know if they're going
to call on you or not. They just said be ready.
They call on me. I read the question. I mispronounced
one of the words in my question. Hillary Clinton got
to answer first, and she said blah blah something about
(24:20):
Donald Trump buys steal from China, and then Donald Trump
something about how isis is bad. I'm like, okay, I
know isis is bad, but that's not going to make
or break my job at the power plant. So they
did their politician non answers and then the debate was over.
After it was over, Hillary Clinton walked by real quick.
She had to get to the like you know, war
(24:41):
room or whatever to start doing the after shows and
strategizing and whatever. She stopped and shook my hand and
talked to us for a few seconds and walked out.
I didn't go over and talk to Donald Trump because
I didn't want to. And then I heard from across
the stage somebody yelling to me, and it was President
Bill Clinton. Wanted to talk to me. I talked to
him for like fun. He remembered my name at first
(25:03):
when he was yelling to me. He was like, hey,
the energy guy, come here. You had the question. And
I walk over to him and he's like, your name's Ken, right,
and he had, you know, wanted to talk more in
detail about the Clinton energy policy as they saw it.
I was like, okay, so I was happy to talk
to him about it. And then his his security guy
was like tugging on his jacket, like, mister President, we
got to go. So he leaves and then I look
(25:24):
around and there's not really anybody left on stage. So
I kind of took a few more pictures with the
disposable camera that they gave us. I didn't take that
with me. By the way, people associate me with the
disposable camera. We all had one. The Commission gave them
to us because we weren't allowed to have cameras or
cell phones or anything. I'm going to take pictures of
the camera equipment because I'm a nerd about av stuff.
(25:45):
And I was like, Wow, that's a really big boom
crane for this camera, and well there's a big soundboard
over there before.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
We get into like whenever you're allowed to check your
phone after this event, I am curious what was your
relationship with the internet, Like prior to this, I.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Was mostly a lurker, Like I had a Twitter account.
I had like two followers. One of them was my
grandma and I think the other one was also my
grandma who might have forgot her password and then made
a new can get on Reddit. And I was mostly
just a lurker. I had an account, and I only
made you know, sporadic comments, some of them really stupid
and you know, regretful. But I didn't spend a whole
(26:23):
lot of time online. But I was aware of the
whole internet thing. I wasn't like a terminally online person.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Here's the rest of my interview with Ken Bone. The
debate is over, you check your phone. Walk me through
that moment of checking your phone after Well.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
They told us before the debate, They're like, don't be
surprised if there's reporters out there wanting to talk to
you or take your picture. Don't be surprised if you're
like caricatured on Saturday Night Live or something. It's just
it could happen. And I'm like, well, I'd kind of
like to talk to a reporter, and then maybe my
grandma could have something for her scrap book if I
get my picture in the paper. I didn't really think
(27:12):
much of it. And then as I'm walking back to
my car, there's no reporters, there's no photographers or anything,
and I was almost a little disappointed. I'm like, oh,
I get back to the car and open the glove
compartment where I had my phone locked up and power
it back on. And my voicemail box was full and
I had like a couple hundred text messages and my
phone was already ringing as soon as it powered on.
I'm like, what the heck's going on here? And the
(27:34):
first call I answered was from a woman who I
had gone to high school with, who now lives down
in Dallas. She's was a producer for like a local
morning show on there. I think it was the NBC affiliate,
like their morning news show. And she's like, hey, Ken,
I remember me from high school. I'm like that kind
of I guess, do you want to do a phone
(27:56):
interview for our show tomorrow. I'm like, oh, sure, okay.
I'm not really sure how she got my number. I
didn't even have a cell phone in high school because
I'm old, but I was like, yeah, sure, Katie, had
no problem. And then as soon as I hung up,
it was ringing again, and it was Fox Sports and
they were like, yeah, you want to be on our
morning show tomorrow. And then my friend Ryan is calling me.
He's like dude, you're on every channel. I'm like, yeah,
(28:17):
I was on the debate. I told you I was
going to be there, Like no, man, not just like
in the background, they're talking about you. And I was like, why,
why are they talking about me? It's weird. And he's like, well,
I don't know, because you're wearing bright red and you
got a stupid name. I'm like, well, I already knew
I had a stupid name. I thought he was messing
with me. Even with all the messages and stuff, it
takes me forty five minutes to get home, and sure
(28:38):
enough on TV is me just like a close up
with my face on like CNN or something. I'm like,
what the hell is this? And my wife says, yeah,
it's been like this since the debate was over.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
What is your wife and son's reaction to all of this.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
It's weird for them because obviously they know me better
than anybody else, and they're seeing all these people on
TV speculate about who I am and where I came from,
and they're like, well, that's wrong, and that's wrong, and
that's wrong, and it was just sort of disbelief, and
the whole time we all just sort of thought like, well,
they'll find something else to pay attention to in a
day or two. You know, it actually took several weeks
(29:13):
before they were ready to pay attention to something else.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Your existence was politicized for moment one because it was
in the context of politics. And what was it like
seeing yourself presented in this very like political way.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
I didn't see any coverage of myself for like days
and days after except what people were directly like texting
me about, like my friends, because it was too busy
doing interviews and stuff. It was really surreal. Like I
did an interview with the New York Times. They published
the interview online like a half an hour later. Five
(29:49):
minutes after that, I'm getting requests for comment on that
interview from other media outlets and also from like my
brother in law, and he's like, have you seen this?
I'm like, no, I don't I have time to read
any of that. In fact, I'm hanging up on you
now because I'm supposed to be on this radio show
in Fort Worth, right, I gotta go.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Was there any moment of hesitation of like do I
want to do this? Was there any like calculus I'll
talk to I'll do this I don't know how I
feel about this. It just sounds like it was happening
so fast. How did you know what to say yes
or no to.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
I didn't say no to almost anybody. The only people
I said no to were ones where literally like I
have something booked at that same time already. Sorry. I
was enough at the time to know that, like, this
is going to go on for a few days, and
it's I'm not actually a big deal. People just want
to pay attention to me for right now. So I
never got like an inflated sense of like, oh man,
(30:41):
I must be so smart and so great and everybody
loves me. So I think I was fortunate enough that
I had that online exposure before, so I didn't buy
into my own myth or whatever. Didn't let it change
me as a person, at least I hope I didn't.
I guess somebody could go through that kind of experience
without being a little bit changed. But I don't feel
like I have came too self absorbed or anything because
(31:02):
of it. It was just bizarre. I had stuff booked
in fifteen minute increments about four am until two am
every day for three days until then I finally had
to start telling people no so I could sleep.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I'm curious to talk to you about just like how
that degree of sudden attention and expectation and this projection
of responsibility, like all of which did not exist twenty
four hours ago. What does that do to your sense
of mental well being?
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Well, I've did a lot of therapy over the last
couple of years, because once you go back to like
when you've had a stadium full of twenty thousand people
chanting your name and lining up for two hours just
to take a picture with you humans as social animals,
you get like endorphin rush from that. You know, sure
you feel that's addictive. It gave me a good insight
(31:52):
into why some people who got like reality show fame
or whatever, will sell their soul for a little bit
more attention. From the outside. You look at it and
you're like, how could you do that? That's disgusting? Why
are these people debasing themselves? Like because it's addictive. I
feel like I was very lucky that I didn't get
so hooked on it that I couldn't let it go,
(32:12):
because it eventually is no matter who you are, it's
going away. But I think I recognized from early on
that It wasn't because of any innate talent or anything.
It was just like a perfect storm of like I
had a funny name, i was wearing a weird outfit,
I'm not afraid to be on camera. I ended up
being kind of good at the sort of banter. So
I felt like that all came together. But it wasn't
because I'm like an amazing media analyst or something like that.
(32:36):
It was just a lot of factors that came together
that made it so. I was I don't know, I
was almost purpose built to be the Internet meme or something.
But I was okay with it going away again. I
wrote it out for a while because it was fun once.
It wasn't as fun anymore, but I started answering the
phone lesson less, especially since it's not really that lucrative.
I did make some money on I did a few
(32:57):
commercials and there were a few bigger things. I sold
T shirts. That's what I made the most money on.
But I did as much as I could to give back. Also,
I gave ten percent of all the money I got
to charity. And every place I would sign a contract with,
I would make that company, I'd make them give money
to charity also, so we raised tens of thousands of
dollars for local charities and things. Yeah, I'd like to
(33:18):
think that most people are just doing the best they can.
Like the hawk Tua girl is the hot thing of
the moment as we're recording this, and she's done a
lot for like pet shelters and other charities and stuff,
so I'm really happy for her. I haven't got a
chance to talk to her, and I've been looking for
like her email address or something so I could just
(33:39):
send her a note. But she was probably like fourteen
years old when I was a meum, so she might
even know who I am sure she.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
I mean, everyone does it like you had the full
kind of arc where you had the original wave of attention,
that the appearances, a lot of requests, you had the
moment of the Reddit post resurfacing and having to just
navigate all of that and such a short period of
time when things are coming that fast and that intensely,
(34:07):
how do you manage in the day to day sense?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Well, I you know, everybody's like the hero of their
own story, and it's no different to me. So when
I started getting questions about like why did you say this, insensitive,
terrible thing on Reddit. I'm like, well, that was a
jerk thing to do. I don't know what to tell you.
And I think because I didn't try to go out
of my way to justify it, that was big and
(34:31):
people like being willing to forgive and move on. They're like, oh,
you thought you were anonymous, you said something insensitive, you know,
tried to play it off for cheap laughs or whatever
at the time. But what I would always say to
people is like, it wasn't a press release. I did
not curate this for you know, wide consumption. I was
talking to the three people that I was, you know,
(34:53):
in a comment thread with made a dumb joke that
was that I feel bad about but I I believe
in learning from your mistakes and moving on. I read it.
Username is stan Gibson eighteen. I still use the same username.
I do not have an alt account. I think that
alt accounts are for cowards, honestly, and I think that
(35:13):
even more strongly now if you look far enough back
in my history, you can read the comments yourself. I
have not deleted or edited a single one, because even
the ones that I'm not proud of, I feel like
if you do not stick by your words and learn
from them even when they're wrong, then you failed as
a person. That's something my grandfather taught me because I
made that mistake, and I think that goes a lot
(35:35):
farther than just pretending it was okay or pretending it
didn't happen.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
When did it feel like? Things started to kind of
feel less intense, it's less of a part of your
daily life.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Probably by about Thanksgiving it started to tone down because
of the nature of what I was famous for. You know,
it's because of the election. Well, the election is obviously
not over yet. The election wasn't until early November, and
then of course Donald Trump wins, and I know what
I saw that. I don't think Donald Trump saw that coming.
The political climate is super fraught, and people are either
looking for somebody to lash out at and blame or
(36:08):
they're looking for some kind of anchor of something that's
supposed to be fun. That's one of the reasons why
I got so big is because everybody was so busy
in this nasty election cycle, with everything that's so awful,
they're like, hey, this guy seems kind of fun. Let's
talk about that for a while. And after the election,
was over, They're like, let's talk about fun guy a
little bit for a while, because oh my god, this
is bad, this is so weird. So that carried it
(36:30):
a little farther, you know, started settling down where I
was only doing a couple of couple of things a week,
you know, the interview here and there. I went to
Seapack that that year, in twenty seventeen, in February, the
big conservative thing. I'm not a very conservative guy. I
didn't go as a speaker or anything. There was a
company that sells fundraising and campaign management software that wanted
(36:55):
me to be the spokesmarsa a spokesperson. So I went
to a Seapack and then I went to net Its Nation,
which is sort of the sort of the liberal equivalent,
except it's not nearly as much of a party atmosphere
as Seapack. So we went to these big political conferences
trying to sell the fundraising software. I mean that was fun.
I got to meet AOC before she got elected. We
got a picture of me and an AOC from before
(37:18):
her primary, before anybody else knew who she was, so
I got any So I did a few more events
with them. They were the ones who arranged for me
to be on Bill maher like the year after that,
but it really slowed down a bunch, and then by
the time we got to the pandemic that stopped everybody's
life completely in its tracks and never really picked up
as much after that.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Was there ever a point where you were able to
make a full time living? Did you want to make
a full time living of this or was it sort
of like, well, we'll just sort of see what happens
early on.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
If I had gone and gotten like an agent who
could help me navigate all that stuff, Yeah, pretty confident
that I could have made a full time living being
like one of those talking head contributors does segments, you know,
a few times a week, and then while you're doing that,
you write a book, and then you plug your book
when you're in this stuff. Yeah, it was a whole
ecosystem of people that do that, and I'm pretty sure
(38:07):
I could have done it, and I could have done
a good enough job where I could have kept it going,
But it also seemed kind of like a bummer. And
I have a decent career that I already liked. That's
like a sure thing that I'm really good at. What
I do, and it doesn't require me to be out
of town all the time or be stressed out and
do hair and makeup and stuff. The media atmosphere moves
so fast. If you don't jump on that immediately, it's done.
(38:31):
If I wanted to write a book, now, nobody's going
to buy that book. I did have more staying power
than most. I think that's attributable to me just being
willing to do more appearances and being kind of okay
on camera. People don't remember Chewbacca Mom as much because
I don't think she wanted to do as many appearances
as I did. People don't remember her Ambie because he's dead.
He don't do interviews anymore. Yeah, you don't grow without
(38:53):
changing a little bit. You know, It's been eight years
since I was a meme. I'm not the same person
I was eight years ago. Have grown and changed and involved.
I'm not to slap too many labels on it, but
I think I'm a lot more progressive than I was before.
Believe more in things like universal health care and things
of that nature. And not because I'm like I used
to be a bad guy and I wanted Grandma to
(39:15):
die because she was broke no, it's because I used
to believe that it would never be efficient enough to
roll out wide scale. And the more I've read about it,
and the more I've talked to people about it, and
realized every other civilized nation in the world does it.
Why couldn't we do it? Then my beliefs have grown
and changed over time. But I also realized that there's
(39:35):
a lot of people who think the way that I
did eight or ten years ago. They're not evil. They
came by those beliefs honestly. And most people, probably ninety
plus percent of people, want everybody to have rights. They
want everybody to have health care, they want everybody to
have whatever. They don't agree on how we should get it.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
You both have a lot of criticism of media and
have experienced and bored and witness to American media in
a way very few have. Has your view on media
shifted in these last eight years.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Very much so, media and politics. Also, once you've peered
behind the curtain, you can't unsee that stuff. We have
so many politicians and media figures who could not chew
bubble gum and walk at the same time. In general,
they're good at one thing. Politicians are good at getting elected.
And media figures are good at staying on television, and
(40:32):
that is largely it. Very few of them actually have
something to say. Most of them are just good at
drawing your attention for short periods to close out.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
When you look back on this time of this initial virality,
have your feelings changed towards it? And you know, as
you like have processed that experience over the years, how
do you look back on it now?
Speaker 2 (40:52):
The more distance I get from it, the more I
realize that it does not define me as a person.
And that is a lot of what I had to
talk through in therapy. If like I had these great
emotional highs of everybody loves me without even knowing me,
that's addictive. But I realized that I don't need that
to define me as a peron. I'm defined as a
person by the relationships that I maintain and the internal
(41:17):
work that I do on improving myself. Also by smaller
things like my career and my interests, and those things
define me as a human being, not the way people
chose to perceive me on television. If somehow a magic
wand were to excise that whole experience from my life,
I realized that I could still be who I am.
(41:39):
I could still be a good person, I could still
be a worthwhile human being without any of that attention.
And I think that having some distance from it and
some years later has helped me gain perspective on that.
If I had to do it all again, absolutely when
it's an amazing, unique experience that almost nobody gets to have,
and I was very fortunate that I was able to,
(41:59):
you know, I'm not a saint. I've gained financially from
it also, but I was able to help my community
as well, so a lot of people benefited. So I
think overall it is a great experience. If I had
to do it the same way, you know, and I
didn't get to change anything, I would still do it.
But I don't need it. I don't have to have
had it to be satisfied with who I am.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Wonderful. Thank you for being so open and so generous
with your time and your experience. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
I really love, you know, interviews like this and programs
like yours, because the long form format where you can
really get into a subject, is so much more beneficial
and so much more fun to engage in than the
like eight minute radio segments that I've done a million.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Of I hope, so thank you, Thank you again to
Ken Bone. You can follow him on Twitter for updates
he shares as he sees fit, and you can also
donate to his nonprofit of choice, the Saint Patrick Center
in Saint Louis, at the link in the description. I'll
be doing the same, and I really appreciate it. Ken
made it a part of his mission to include the
(43:02):
interest of his own community. I really hope this is
something that characters of the day kind of put into
practice when their time randomly comes oddly enough. Talk to
a girl. Hailey Welch is a pretty solid example of this.
She's recently started a nonprofit for stray animals in her area.
But at the end of the day, there will never
be another Ken Bone. But he is an important hallmark
(43:26):
in Internet history. He's a clear and early example of
the milkshake duck phenomenon, a crossover between the mainstream media
and social media, and a person who was able to
grow and change with the phenomenon that surrounded him. So
here we are again at the end of another fucked
up American election cycle. Vote your conscience, vote down ballot
(43:50):
in your community and participate in mutual aid in your area.
Vote blue no matter who is for losers and Nimbi's
people help people period. And for your moment of fun
this week. There are still a few weeks of rancid
SNL sketches to get through before election day. So here
was Ken's rancid SNL moment. Next week, more hot dogs.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Bye, all right, and now since everyone has been so good,
it's time for a special treat. That's right, ladies and gentlemen,
put your hands together, the one, the only, mister Kenbone.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
You all ready for the Oh my god, he is
so cute.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I really needed that right now.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
No, wait, Ken, You're not going to turn out to
be a weird little creep or anything, are you?
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Maybe?
Speaker 1 (44:56):
God, we can't have anything nice? Oh well. Sixteenth Minute
is a production of Whole Zone Media and iHeart Rodeops.
It is written, hosted, and produced by me Jamie Rastus.
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The
Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
(45:18):
Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
from Grant Crater and pet Shout Outs. To our dog
producer Anderson, my Kat's flee and Casper, and my pet Rothbert,
who will outlive us all. Bye.
Host
Jamie Loftus
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