Ep. 395: Life Lessons, Reflections on Coming of Age in the 1980s, and "When the Game Was War"

Rich Cohen is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Tough Jews and Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football. Rich is a co-creator of the HBO series Vinyl, and a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair.  

His new book is When The Game Was War: The NBA’s Greatest Season. 

Rich Cohen reflects on the generational experience of growing up in the 1980s and how it is so very different from today because of helicopter parents and smart phones, the meaning and death of mall culture, and how the storied NBA rivalries and sports dynasties of the 1980s still resonate to the present and continue to influence Americans culture more broadly.     

In this conversation, Rich Cohen and Chauncey reflect on being men of a certain vintage and the adventures they had as young people in the 1980s (adventures that would likely get their parents in big trouble today), what they learned from their fathers about street smarts, human nature, and psychology, and their shared love of AM talk radio and such personalities as Art Bell and Larry King.   

Chauncey DeVega shares his epic story of going home to see his mother to recharge, why he slept in his dead daddy’s bed, meditated in a cemetery and talked to a Great Tree, howled at a storm, and the healing power of eating at his family’s favorite restaurant. 

And Chauncey offers his thoughts about the hellish new Exorcist movie and reads Ed Simon’s essential new Time magazine essay “Why We Love to Talk About Demons”.

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