E215 - The Low Culture of 1999 Predicting Modern America w/ Ross Benes

American Prestige

Daniel Bessner & Derek Davison

History, Politics, News

4.8 • 705 Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For an ad-free experience and much more content, subscribe now. Subscribers at the "Top Secret" tier get a one-year digital subscription to The Nation! In this week’s episode, Danny speaks with journalist Ross Benes about his book 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times. They discuss the connection between the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and “trash culture”, what makes the instantiation of reality TV in 1999 unique and how early reality shows foreshadowed modern politics, how Beanie Babies were akin to “stock investments” for working class and lower middle class people, Pokémon as a pure distillation of unrestrained capitalism, and the other features of that moment that predicted American life as we now know it. If you enjoyed this episode, listen to our discussion with Colette Shade, “Y2K: The Future That Never Was”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to American Prestige. To listen ad-free, you can subscribe at Americanprostagepod.com. Find the link in our show notes.
0:11.2	Right, that's it. Come on. Lights out. You've got a test tomorrow. Just two minutes. I'm about to reach the next level.
0:16.6	It's going off now. Yeah, whatever. Let's see. Where's the app? Oh, here it is.
0:22.1	What?
0:22.8	How?
0:23.4	Oh, no, you're out.
0:25.6	Better look next time.
0:26.3	Mom!
0:27.3	It's game over for late nights on school nights.
0:30.1	EE Wi-Fi controls help you get them off the Wi-Fi and into bed.
0:34.0	More parents are choosing EE broadband,
0:36.4	the UK's fastest growing broadband provider.
0:39.0	To verify, seee.com.com. Hello, Preachish Heads, and welcome to I'm Danny Bessner here alone because Derek got lost in the wind.
1:09.5	But we are very excited, as in I am very excited to
1:11.8	welcome to the podcast today. Ross Benis, Ross is a journalist and author of 1999, the year
1:17.7	low culture conquered America and kickstarted our bizarre times. So Ross, thank you so much for joining
1:24.6	us. Thanks for having me here. So let's start with a question.
1:28.6	What made you want to write about 1999?
1:31.0	I remember 1999.
1:32.6	I was 14 for most of it.
1:35.9	Woodstock 99, everyone always talks about.
1:38.5	Everyone talks about how it's basically
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Daniel Bessner & Derek Davison, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Daniel Bessner & Derek Davison and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.