Roughly 365,000 people were born on December 4, 1984. I was one of them.
Jeremy Claud was another, and the first interview subject in my long-gestating podcast project “12/4/84.”
Brett Zuckerman is yet one more, and the subject of this second installment, hot off the presses — despite being recorded in April.
I had invited Brett to meet me at a vacant Christopher Street storefront which my friends at Bleecker Trading had loaned me to stage a vintage pop-up. Over the course of that rainy Friday afternoon, Brett and I ran the gamut of conversation — with an occasional customer interrupting every now and again — from our New York metro area upbringings, summer camp experiences, Mets and Phish fandom, 9/11, dead popes, first loves and sexual awakenings, Saturday Night Live, the impacts of social media, Bar Mitzvahs, and what it means to truly become an adult.
It turned out we had much more than a birthday in common, and as the similarities eerily stacked up, it occurred to me that we might be cosmic twins — a case study in parallel lives, separated by a few simple twists of fate and perhaps the ultimate sliding door moment in any young Jewish man’s journey: the decision to go to law school.
Big thanks to Brett for taking not only the time to sit down with me, but for his thoughtfulness in bringing a pile of nostalgic goodies for the first-ever 40 Year-Old Podcaster show & tell. Even bigger thanks to Brett’s brother Ross for connecting us in the first place. And special thanks to The Surfboard Six whose music appears in this episode (“Metrograph” instrumental from their new album New York City Baby).
Ripping a 1989 Topps pack live at the shop, on the pod
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