Hello there, I'm Chuck Todd and this is the Chuck Todd cast believe it or not, there once was a time without Twitter, AirPods or COVID.

We called it the 90s, 4 9 11 back when Bill Clinton was present.

Novana's never mind was still new. Culture and politics looked a lot different than they do today, but are we even remembering it all the way it actually happened.

My guest today is author Chuck Closterman, his latest book, The 90s, looks at that last decade before the internet was everywhere and why Gen X might be in his words the least annoying of the generations that are still alive.

Of course he and I are both members of Gen X, so of course we're going to consider us ourselves the least annoying, at least I hope so.

So I will say this Chuck, I always find it awkward to say my own name at somebody else.

So I'll admit that so it always feels like I you want to call me Charles. Yeah, I'm being self-represential. Let me just ask the only because only people named Charles care about this.

Were you always Chuck? Were you Charles Chaz Charlie any of that any of that stuff?

Well, in my memories, I always Chuck, my mom called me Chuck, there was a strange window of time in like eighth grade where I considered transitioning to Charles, but that didn't really happen.

I had one friend who used to call me Chaz. I always thought it'd be cool to be called Charlie, but I guess that's just not me.

There's a huge difference though. I do wonder if my whole career would have been different if I went by Charles. Like because people when they hear the name Chuck, they just think it's like I just, there's Chuck.

Just a dude, like I can just go over and talk to the dude. I like, you know, maybe I would seem different if I had a different first name.

Do you ever, I remember when I first started in journalism, I thought, my byline has to be Charles. I keep it Chuck. Like for some reason, I thought, what would the New York time say? Did you ever feel like your byline had to be Charles at any point?

You know, no, I mean, that's what I mean. I wonder if my career would have been different if I would have went by Charles. You know, there was that period where you, you're kind of into literature when you're young.

And you're like, what if I use my first initial and my middle name, but my mind. I would be, I would be C John Closterman, but you have C as your first letter. It almost seems like a child's look like C John run.

Right. C John tried journalism. So I just, I guess I am a Chuck. That's just how it is. I can't do anything about it.

I have a friend of mine whose middle name is Forester. So he tried that. And I like, that's a great letter. I named S Forester Hayes, but he only did that for freelance stuff about spices or something. Anyway, let's talk about your book.

In many ways, you were, I feel like your entire writing career has built to this book fair that you've been sort of.

You've been writing in and about sort of Gen X, the cross section of culture and Gen X are placed in some ways. Is that, is that a fair observation?

Well, my short answer is, I hope that would be kind of troubling if it turns out that this is it's like a Zalbin building. I don't want to say it.

I will say, okay, yes, I have written about this period of time for a lot of my career. There are some things in this book, which I have literally written about before.

When I write about Ted Kaczynski in this book, I have written about that before. When I read about Garth Brooks, I have written about that before. Obviously, I've written about Nirvana a lot because I worked in spin in the early 2000s.

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