083 Famous & Gravy Announcement!

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Michael: [00:00:00] Welcome to Famous and Gravy. I'm Michael Osborne.

Amit: And I'm Amit Kapoor.

Michael: And today we are doing something a little bit different. Uh, a lot different. Yeah. Before we get to that, where have you been?

Amit: Where have I been?

Michael: Yeah, where have you been?

Amit: Metaphysically?

Michael: No, physically on, on Planet Earth. Recently on our show, there's been a lot of guests, a lot of rere releases.

People have been asking me, Amit, things. Good. What's up? They've been asking.

Amit: Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. Well, you first acknowledge that you have seen my face every single day for about the last 120 days, roughly. Be it, be it on Zoom or,

well, or at least in the mind's eye. No. Yes, you have not. We've been in touch

very much.

Yes. I've been here. I've been working with you doing a lot of work on the show. Yeah. I've had to do a few other personal projects. I traveled to India for, for about a month. Yeah. Uh, I got to [00:01:00] guest lecture class at Tulane, so I've had those little things that's distracted me, but largely I've been focused here on the show and the work that we're doing to kind of bring a bigger and better famous and gravy.

Yeah, it's

funny. So I knew that answer.

Michael: Did you? I did. Okay. I mean, so partly yes. Partly I knew, yeah. You were in India and Yeah, you were in Tulane and yeah, you had some personal projects you were working on, but I, there's also a part of me that has just felt a little abandoned despite having

Amit: seen

Michael: my

Amit: face.

Michael: Yeah. Look. Okay. No, no. I'm not proud of it. I'm a little needy. All right. Okay. Wow. And the

Amit: BDI with that, I just,

Michael: you are, you are, you are, you are. Um, I needed to say this. I need to stand up for self here. I need to stand. It doesn't, let's get on with it. You are a lot more puppy dog than you admit. I think that's true.

I look. You know what, that's one of many lessons I've learned over the course of this podcast. Yeah. That it is okay to have vulnerability sensitivity. It's, it's good to state your needs. Yeah. And I'm saying I need you on this show, and I'm glad to have you back. Well, thank you. And let me say you look, you look [00:02:00] marvelous.

Oh, shucks.

Amit: Where is the, like this figure, where is this? This, oh, well I've been, you know, sculpted figure morning

Michael: yoga has been a big part of my life. Have you been

Amit: doing the pic thing A little.

Michael: No, I haven't gone that far, but I, I've been cutting out the carbs. Nice bit. Nice. Thanks, man. Okay. And you look well as well.

FM cards? Have we lost weight?

Amit: Yeah, I guess so. You look thinner. Thank you. Yeah. Beer deer as well. Which it's hard to distinguishers 'cause

Michael: you've gotten your face and hair have expanded.

Amit: Yeah. You know, I get this Mark Ruffo thing a lot. Have we talked about that?

Michael: No.

Amit: So people, people stop me on the street or you know, at a bar or something and say, you know, you look a lot like Mark Ruffo.

No kidding. Michael. Three times in the last week. Have I received that? Normally at best it's once a month at best. Yeah. Like that's all it takes for the ego. Yeah. Is once a month, but three times in the last week. That's great.

Michael: He's a good one to get. He's a Hulk. Sure. Uh, all right, well let's get down to business.

Okay. Okay, so we have some announcements. Let's lead off with the big one. Yeah, the big one. Okay. You take it. Uh, we are now partnering with Wondery [00:03:00] Wondery. If you're not aware is a well, how would you describe him? I'd one of the largest podcast networks in the world. Yeah. They also produce a lot of original shows.

They have

Amit: a wondering, huge ones, Dr. Death, business Wars, morbid, tons of them.

Michael: And they have a premium network called Wondery Plus. With this partnership, famous Eng Gravy is now going to be available early and ad free on Wondery Plus. Correct.

Amit: So in, in addition to receiving it as, as you do, uh, if you'd like to get an ad free version or get access to episodes a week early, you subscribe to Wondery Plus and Famous Eng Gravy is included in that package.

Michael: Really exciting. Yeah. Yes. I mean, we need to feel good about this partnership. I mean, I do feel

Amit: good. It's the company that we get to be in. Mm-Hmm. With Wondery, just the caliber of shows that they have going from huge global phenomenons. Yeah. Down to this budding growing sectors that, that we get to be a part

Michael: of.

Yeah. Wondery has a long track record of being a very big distributor and of being associated with a lot of really excellent [00:04:00] shows. They're clearly

Amit: masters of their craft. Yeah. It's, it's all too exciting. Yeah, absolutely. It's too exciting. I've got my Michael Osborne giggling.

Michael: Good going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I think that's good. State your needs. Okay. That's like one of the more exciting things. But the other thing that has happened over the last several months is in addition to, you know, being in conversations with Wondery about a partnership, we are also now doing some real deep thinking on. What is happening on Famous Eng Gravy?

Yeah. And where do we take this show? Ly? We've, we've been renovating the house. Can we say that? Renovating the house? Yeah. I think that's a good way to put it. And I, and there are some changes coming to the show. I think for us, they're a bigger deal than there'll be for the listener. I think functionally it's gonna be really similar to past episodes of Famous and Eng Gravy, but there are a few changes that I think are worth talking about.

Yeah. So what is the first one we should mention? To me, the

Amit: biggest is the scope of who we cover on the show. I think that's the one that personally will affect listeners the most. So we've had a 10 year constraint on people that have died, meaning if somebody's [00:05:00] died over 10 years ago, we do not do an episode about them on Famous and Gravy

Michael: here to Ford.

That's been the case.

Amit: We are now opening that up. Yeah, so we are broadening it to include all of the 21st century. So any famous icon who has died after. January 1st, 2000 is eligible for us to do an episode on. Why is that a big deal in your head? Uh, I think it allows us to apply our formula in what works to a broader range of really interesting figures.

So people that others want to know more about, want to know a different perspective of their story. But we've. Previously limited them out. Yeah. Uh, and I think we've come to the recognition that the thing that we do best is provide a different point of view on a biography. And the reason that we've focused on recency is it's very important to us to add a personal layer of our own experience with this person.

Personal

Michael: layer in terms of fandom and exposure, or, I kind of knew who this person was growing up. I re I remember them. Yeah. [00:06:00] Big

Amit: or small

Michael: or how well I knew them or knew about

Amit: them. And so we. Figured that we can still do that for anybody that died after the year 2000 and still maintain our recency. So we're still very much doing modern history, but we're opening it up to answer the call for a lot of episodes that people have asked for.

Michael: Okay, let's come back to that in a second. You used the word history. This is another thing that is a. I don't know, in our minds at least kind of a big change on this show. Uh, yeah. So we are self-identifying as a history podcast now. We're now a history show. Yes. I think we were always a history show and nobody told us.

Yeah. People did tell us sometimes. Yeah, sometimes we were, yeah, I actually did hear that. Oh, I love history shows. Like actually we're not a history, are we a history show? I think some of it is us coming to peace with our own agent. We finally hugged it. Yeah. We've, history has come, has been asking for a hug for a while.

Where I had some hesitation about history is exactly to your point before I had living memory of the figures we have covered on the show. Yes. Right. And they don't feel like historical figures. One thing that [00:07:00] I've come to since we launched Famous Eng Gravy is that history happens faster than you realize.

Way faster. Yeah. And I mean, we've always sort of been interested in. You know this zone between what's happening right now and what happened 10 years ago. I mean, I think that's what that 10 year constraint was around was like, what does living memory look like? Yes. What does collective living memory look like?

Amit: I think the other concern that we've probably had in not getting into history, at least my own. Reticence was history is, is boring.

Michael: This is a stigmatized category. It is a stigmatized, it is. Category is a

Amit: smoking of categories.

Michael: Yeah. You get over there in the history section where you can light up your podcast.

Yeah.

Amit: But that's what is happening now and that's what we do really well, is make history fun.

Michael: I hope so.

Amit: Uh, we know. So, okay.

Michael: You're right. We know. So we know so and wonder saying We do. So we must.

Amit: Yeah. Yeah. So, um, you know, we're, we're. We're happy and excited to be in history. We know it's part of our job to make history more fun to learn as you connect all of the dots.

Michael: Yeah. Alright. I think the only other [00:08:00] thing that we should mention in terms of. Reimagining of the show is, so we've revisited each of the categories and kind of asked a question, what is this category doing? How does it advance the mission or vision of the show? And I should say a lot of this is based on listener feedback.

Yeah. So we've asked people to really like weigh in on what's working and what's not. I won't go through every category, but there is one. Semis significant change, which is the reimagined or tweaked VanDerBeek. So the VanDerBeek, as we've presented it so far, has been named after James VanDerBeek who said, and varsity blues, I don't want your life.

We've posed that question as a binary. Do you want this life? Yes or no? We are no longer doing that. We're still posing the question

Amit: of, would you want this life? Yeah. But we are arguing for a single side of it. We are arguing for a case four because our duty, what we've learned [00:09:00] from listener feedback and the people that that like our show and listen, is that different point of view.

Yeah. And so if we take the assumption that there are certain things about a famous life. That seem complicated, tortured, or I just don't like celebrity, or I just don't like fame. And we can make the case of why this life as a human being going through the process of living is worthwhile, has redeeming qualities and maybe even above and beyond.

All of that is desirable on the most basic plane that we have found is some of the most interesting arguments that we get to make and build up to, and have the most mystery behind them.

Michael: I think that this is a little bit of a nuanced point. So we are no longer really considering the case against

Amit: Yes, no, it's acknowledged.

It's, I mean, definitely you can, this is not, this is not all roses and lollipop,

Michael: right? You can't build a case for, without acknowledging counter arguments. But it is, uh, in my mind it's a little bit more constructive than Dunking. You know, earlier [00:10:00] you said that you think one of the biggest changes is that we've expanded the scope.

I think this is a bigger deal. Do you? Yeah, absolutely. For a couple of reasons. But I think the biggest one is that like a lot of the podcasts I like, some of them are dunking shows, right? They're myth busting and we definitely don't want to be that. That's just not us. It's not us. And there's something in my mind.

That is like a project that surrounds famous and gravy that we are trying to build towards something. There are cross-cutting themes that come up on a lot of our episodes, whether it's gratitude or being of service or upward staircase. I mean, if you are presenting an argument for why you would want.

This life. What we're really doing is saying these are the things I value in my life that I want to bring in. So while I'm excited about the expanded eligibility, you know, and some of our forthcoming episodes are finding some figures that are a little deeper in the past, I am honestly more excited. In a funny way, I thought it was gonna hamstring us, right?

I thought it [00:11:00] was gonna be, if we don't ask this binary question, do you want this life? Yes or no? Do we have an interesting thing we're doing on this show? I think we are still. Putting together an argument and putting together a, a point of view. Yeah. I, I just think it's, it's actually all pointing in a much more productive and generative direction

Amit: and the amount of trials that we had to do to arrive at this, I think is testimony to that.

Yeah. Which nobody else may have that visibility into, but. A, a pretty deep process. Yeah. Uh, yes. But, so I think we do have a disagreement. I do think the, the broadening of the years is a bigger thing than the Vander beak, but I will make this analogy. I think the tweaked Vander beak is a rudder shift that will be noticed over time in directionally the service that this show does

Michael: as an accumulation.

Amit: Yeah. As an accumulation, what's gonna be noticed more in the first several episodes the next few months as we kick off and, and get further in with Wondery is going to be the expanded scope of names that we cover. Interesting. But the rudder has moved.

Michael: Yeah, I, yeah. Yeah. [00:12:00] Okay.

Amit: We'll agree to disagree on this.

Can we agree? It's pretty much the same listener experience?

Michael: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay, let's do a quick recap. So we're now partnering with Wondery. We are now expanding the scope so that we are featuring people who died after January 1st, 2000. We are recategorized, uh, and we now have a slightly different point of view with the Vander beak rather than it being a binary yes or no.

It's more of a rebuttal to the statement. I don't want your life, our retort is here's why. You would want this life or you could want this life. So

Amit: that's where we are, man. It's, it's good to be back in this seat in front of you and not, not have a screen necessarily. Yeah. That like we're planning all the time.

We're we're doing it. We're, we're, we're back. Yeah. We're in the recording seat. We're pumping out new episodes. I think we've got our best stuff right

Michael: ahead of us. I agree with that. I feel it's funny. I, I look forward to every single episode we do and every episode we've done, but, uh, I don't think the show actually needed.

New [00:13:00] energy or a fresh, like infusion of energy, but we're getting that in a way that's really like exciting, you know? Yeah. Uh, like there's some real momentum here. I don't know where it's going, but yeah. That's what the journey is all about.

Amit: Yeah. So join the Ride, stick with us. New episodes will be out soon and we will keep it, churning them out.

Michael: All right. Uh, here is a little teaser for the next episode of Famous Eng Gravy. He was a guest soloist on U Two's 1993 album Zooropa. Oh my God. Well, it can't be Phil Collins. It's not Phil Collins who, as if this recording is still with us. Thank goodness. Famous and gravy listeners, we love hearing from you.

If you wanna reach out with a comment, a question, or to participate in our opening quiz, email us at hello@famousenggravy.com. Famous Eng Gravy is Co-hosted by Amit Kapur and me, Michael Osborne. Megan Palmer produced [00:14:00] this episode. Thanks to Kevin Strang for original music. Thanks for listening to this episode.

See you next time.