Welcome to Nobody Told Me.

I'm Laura Owens.

And I'm Jan Black.

On this episode, we'll get a behind the scenes look at what it was like to work at Vanity Fair magazine during a magical time in the magazine business.

Our guest is Dana Brown, who was a 21-year-old college dropout when he was hired by a legendary

Vanity Fair editor-in-chief, Graydon Carter.

And over the course of 25 years, Dana rose up the ranks to become the magazine's deputy

editor.

He's written about this coming of age experience and

dealing with celebrities, politicians, journalists, photographers, and the like in his new

book, Dilettante, true tales of excess, triumph, and disaster. Dan, thank you so much for joining

us. Thank you guys so much for having me. So kind of you. Congratulations on writing a book that is really hard to put down. Amen. It's fabulous.

Gosh, you're so, you're so sweet. You know, it's funny because you exist. And I worked with writers for,

for, you know, almost 25 years. And I'd never sort of been on this side of the equation. And it is a really, like,

lonely, frightening thing to sit down with a blank piece of paper and start to write a book and then

write a book. And then, you know, you kind of forget, like, oh, my God, people are going to

actually read this. I forgot. Like, oh, gosh. But I've gotten such wonderful

feedback. So it's been, it's been really gratifying and really exciting. And thank you so much.

It's so kind of you guys to say. How did you first encounter Graydon Carter, the legendary editor

of Vanity Fair, like we mentioned? And how did just a few encounters with him change the entire course of your life?

Well, so in in the early 90s, and I'm aging myself now, getting older. But in the early 90s, I was,

I was sort of like a wayward youth in New York City. I was from New York, but I was I was working in a restaurant, and I'd been

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