Buzzy Podcast Examines The Life And Legacy Of Former ‘Harper’s Bazaar’ Editor-In-Chief And Fashion’s ‘Forgotten Queen’ Liz Tilberis

One of the buzziest podcasts for fashion people—and those on the outside looking in—is BLOW-UP: When Liz Tilberis Transformed Bazaar, a six-part series about, as its description reads, “fashion’s forgotten queen and the biggest moment in ‘90s fashion.”

The forgotten queen? Liz Tilberis, the former editor-in-chief at Harper’s Bazaar from 1992 until she died from ovarian cancer on April 21, 1999, at just 51 years old. The show is hosted by best friends of 30 years Dennis Golonka and Cynthia True, who met as assistants at Tilberis’ Bazaar in 1992 and, as I speak to both of them via Zoom, have a shorthand so familiar that they’re no longer Dennis and Cynthia, they’re just “Den” and “Cyn.”

It’s interesting that BLOW-UP is defining the moment for fashion podcasts, because it’s all about “Den” and “Cyn” remembering when they realized, when they were working for Tilberis at Bazaar, that, in True’s words, “This is a moment”: “I was completely bowled over, and it was insane, honestly,” she adds of showing up at Tilberis’ Bazaar in 1992. “And you knew, you were like, ‘Oh, I’ve dropped into something.’”

Only the most fortunate people realize they’re living right in the thick of the zeitgeist while the zeitgeist is still happening. To hear Golonka and True tell it, Tilberis’ star power, her sheer wattage, was so powerful that it was impossible to not realize it at the time, and they still remember those halcyon days wistfully 30 years later.

“It was a moment, and she [Tilberis] was like—it’s funny, it’s easy to hyperbolize when someone’s passed, and especially if they’ve died young, but honestly, she had such charm and such a sweetness about her, and also she was brilliant,” True says of her former boss. “So there was a celebrity—you felt like you were in the elevator with a movie star.”

Lauren Sherman, one of the fashion industry’s most forefront voices who is a fashion correspondent at Puck News and host of the aptly named podcast Fashion People, recently had Golonka and True on her show to discuss BLOW-UP. “If anybody hasn’t listened to it yet, you have to immediately,” Sherman said, adding she was “completely obsessed” with BLOW-UP.

“If you care about magazines at all or care about workplace culture and stories about amazing leaders and all that stuff, like, this has something for everybody,” Sherman said. “And especially if you’re obsessed with fashion in the ‘90s. It’s really, really good.”

“I should have just hung on and not worried about the insurance”

Golonka arrived at Bazaar in 1992 and stayed at the magazine until after Tilberis’ death seven years later; he started in the art department at Bazaar under well-respected creative director Fabien Baron, who’d arrived from Italian Vogue to help Tilberis in her quest to revive the magazine from, as True put it in conversation with me, an era when Bazaar was “dead as a doornail.” Golonka rose to become photo editor and a frequent photographer during his time at the magazine in the ‘90s; he’s now a photographer full-time. While Golonka’s time extended the length of Tilberis’ leadership, True’s tenure under her direction was far shorter.

“I had the exact opposite experience at Bazaar, which is to say, well—Dennis was the picture of longevity,” she tells me. “I was there briefly. I was only there for a year.” True’s decision to leave Hearst—the publisher of Bazaar—and defect to Conde Nast (which publishes imprints like Vogue, Vanity Fair and Allure) came down to health insurance. She called leaving “a bummer, because I loved Harper’s Bazaar.”

True continued in magazines for a while in New York City before moving to Los Angeles and getting into television writing. She’s created and developed several television shows, written a book about Bill Hicks and was a former contributing editor at Glamour; during the pandemic, as True’s monthly phone calls with Golonka increased from once a month to once a week, they were escaping the present by remembering the past, including their days together at Bazaar, where their close friendship originated.

“We were just exhausting all the topics,” True says. Eventually, conversation waded into a documentary on Anna Wintour that True had just seen and enjoyed. She realized, “There’s like, four or five really smart, interesting docs about Anna,” but “nothing about Liz,” she remembers telling Golonka.

“We just both were like, oh my God, maybe this is the project we’ve been looking for together,” True says. “So that’s what happened, and we started it pretty quickly after that.”

Golonka got on the phone and started calling folks to appear on the show. “Once we started calling those people, everyone just said yes,” he says. “I mean, I really can’t think of many people who said no, to be honest with you.”

Baron—who, in addition to Bazaar, has worked at Calvin Klein, French Vogue and Interview, as well as designed Madonna’s Sex book, photographed by Steven Meisel, the project he was working on when Tilberis tapped him to join her—said yes. As did fashion elites like Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Amber Valletta, Grace Coddington, Tonne Goodman, Paul Cavaco, Isaac Mizrahi and Donna Karan; Patrick Jephson, former private secretary to Princess Diana—who was a close friend of Tilberis—also agreed to come on the show. Interviews started in the fall of 2022, and the show’s first episode premiered on September 12 of last year. Episodes dropped weekly—with titles like “The Angel in Chanel,” describing Tilberis—until mid-November; last month, a reunion episode aired, and subscribers-only conversations with Turlington, Jephson and Daryl Hannah rounded out the programming (so far anyway).

It wasn’t enough content for ‘90s fashion obsessives, but to those folks, there’s hope: True tells me she hopes BLOW-UP isn’t the end of her foray into podcasting. “We had the best time, honest to God, just the best time ever for me,” she says. “This was my favorite project of anything I’ve ever done.”

Reflecting on Tilberis—who was “incredibly stylish, really beautiful by any standard, but at the same time not your rail thin, cold fashionista,” True says—True adds that she regrets leaving Bazaar so soon. “I was sad to go, and, in retrospect, I should have just hung on and not worried about the insurance,” she tells me, to which I say to her that we can only make the best decision we can with the information we have at the time. True can’t go back to 1992 and stick around for what was to come from Tilberis as editor-in-chief, but she can tell the world about her with her best friend “Den.” And so, she did.

“She was so smart about the way she handled people”

Long before the Met Gala—held, of course, the first Monday in May for 20 years now—became what it is today, Tilberis was accompanied by her dear friend Princess Diana for the late Princess of Wales’ one and only Met on December 9, 1996. Tilberis, editor-in-chief at Harper’s Bazaar, was co-chairing the event that year; Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief at Vogue, co-hosted in 1995 and would take it over again in 1997 and would remain in charge of the event (and become practically synonymous with it) up until the present day. (But more on Wintour in a bit.)

The 1996 Met was a bit of a Diana 2.0 emergence—by December 1996, her contentious divorce from then-Prince Charles had been finalized for just over three months, following a four-year separation (and plenty of marital strife before that). Diana wore about as non-royal a look as she could—a sexy, midnight blue John Galliano for Dior slip dress that, with its black lace negligée trim and matching silk robe, looked so much like lingerie that Diana almost didn’t go through with wearing it for fear that it would embarrass son Prince William, then 14, who was struggling with his parents’ divorce. The urge to go the bold and daring route as a newly single woman won out, and Diana’s Met look is considered a more under-the-radar followup to her infamous 1994 “Revenge Dress.”

Diana and Tilberis had become close after forming a working relationship and, later, deep friendship after meeting when Tilberis was still at British Vogue. (Tilberis succeeded Wintour as editor-in-chief of the publication in 1987, becoming editor-in-chief at Bazaar five years later; during her tenure at the top of the masthead, Diana appeared on British Vogue’s cover two times.) As documented in BLOW-UP—which leans into the friendship between the two women, including interviews with Jephson—in 1995, Diana made a special visit to New York City to present Tilberis with a Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) award. Their friendship was largely under-the-radar, but, as True says, Tilberis was one of a few key people at British Vogue who “taught this teenage princess to dress” when Lady Diana Spencer first entered public life ahead of her marriage to Prince Charles in 1981, and Tilberis would continue to advise her on wardrobe matters—as well as far beyond that scope—even after Diana became the most famous woman in the world. The two women connected over both having a pair of young sons (Tilberis’ sons Robert and Christopher were born in 1981 and 1985, respectively; Diana’s sons Prince William and Prince Harry were born in 1982 and 1984). “I think that there was tremendous bonding over that,” True says. “Liz had wanted to be a mother so badly and went through so much and adopted these two boys that were her life.” Diana and Tilberis’ friendship wasn’t for show; it was for real. And, while the two women did have some very public moments of their friendship—not the least of which was the Met—their friendship “was really mostly carried on offline, and just the sweetness of these daily faxes between them,” True says.

Newsweek called Tilberis “a powerful ally of the princess during her separation from Prince Charles,” and, after Tilberis’ original cancer diagnosis in 1993—just one year after taking the reins at Bazaar—Diana became an ally for Tilberis in her cancer battle. True tells me there were very few people Tilberis could talk to about cancer like this—but Diana, known and beloved for her empathy, knew how to handle those difficult conversations. The Princess of Wales would often call and write to Tilberis, giving her words of encouragement and comfort during the darker days of Tilberis’ illness. It was clear by the mid-1990s that Tilberis might not get to live the octogenarian-plus life she deserved; no one would have known that Diana would die in a Paris car accident on August 31, 1997 at 36 years old, less than two years before cancer would rob Tilberis of the chance to continue to impact fashion.

Jephson was originally scheduled to chat with Golonka and True right around the time that Queen Elizabeth died on September 8, 2022. He was summoned to England, “and he was gone for what, Cyn, like a month or two or something,” Golonka says. “And then he kindly got back in touch with us to show how badly he wanted to do this and how much he loved Liz.”

“That affection for Liz—that really came through on his part and saying, in my job, ‘Yes, I have the fancy job [as private secretary to Diana], but also a lot of people would overlook me and just sort of, you’re just the private secretary,’” True says. “And he was saying, ‘Liz was always looking to make sure that I was also having a nice time. And if I had to come to New York to do a week of advance work, there were flowers for my wife.’”

Tilberis “really knew how to take care of people,” True adds. “And it’s not only obviously a good thing to do, but it’s also smart. She was so smart about the way she handled people.”

“It comes from the top”

“The ‘90s were not known for kindness,” Golonka tells me. “People didn’t treat each other that well, and, if anything, you just sucked it up and you did it, because that’s what you had to do.”

But Tilberis? Tilberis was kind. In Episode 2 of BLOW-UP, an anecdote is shared about how Tilberis’ dog once gave a fellow Bazaar employee’s dog a birthday gift. As is said in the episode, “Her warmth, plus the fact that she was prematurely white-haired and a relatable size 12, made her something of a unicorn in both fashion and magazines.” In episode 4—called “Civilized Warfare,” referencing the perceived feud between Tilberis and Wintour—Tilberis was committed to leading a magazine that was “a cozy place where staff were treated warmly as creative equals.” The Devil Wears Prada, Tilberis was not. She was, remember, “The Angel in Chanel.” She led a staff of around 30 that were all intentionally chosen.

“She was brilliant at casting,” True says. “She was a very, very good judge of character. And I think that she also really understood onset chemistry and that it matters. It really does. She’s the person who’s like, once she’s sure of you, she’s going to stand back, and it’s yours to screw up.”

She was also maternal, True adds, and like a sister, too. She was someone who would say to women—especially in light of her own struggles to conceive—that, if they wanted kids, to have kids. To prioritize that. In Golonka’s words, she had her staff’s best interest at heart.

“One day in the elevator she said to me, ‘What type of photographer do you really want to be?’ And I was like, ‘I want to be a fashion photographer,’” Golonka tells me. “And she was like, ‘Then you should focus on that. You do not want to be pigeonholed.’ And I thought, gosh, it would’ve been better for her to just let me be pigeonholed and shoot whatever the magazine needed, but yet she thought about me and my best interest. And that’s what she did with everybody at Bazaar.”

You could be Tilberis’ friend and work for her, Golonka says. There was kindness, there was excitement. What there wasn’t at Bazaar was ego or power playing. Everyone coalesced. Everyone worked together and learned from each other. “A lot of that came from the top,” Golonka says. “It comes from the top.”

“It’s so cornball, but love—tremendous love between all of these people and tremendous love for her and appreciation of the love she extended to the people right around her professional family,” True adds. But aside from all that, “we forget that Liz was a great editor,” she continues, citing a point Cavaco made. “She was a really great editor.” Sometimes that fact got buried, True says, “because she was so charming.”

“We had a kind, talented leader who trusted the people that she surrounded herself with,” Golonka says. “Doesn’t happen all the time. Doesn’t happen a lot today.”

“It really blew everything up”

There’s a reason that the podcast is called BLOW-UP, and it has to do with Tilberis’ 1992 arrival at Harper’s Bazaar.

“This was the biggest sort of tsunami in the publishing industry in probably 10 years when it happened,” True says of Tilberis leaving British Vogue for Bazaar. “And it really blew everything up.”

Before Tilberis arrived in New York City, Bazaar wasn’t doing well. “It just wasn’t selling, and it wasn’t fun to look at,” Golonka says. “Liz came on board and changed all of that. She blew it up.”

As the podcast put it, Tilberis’ hiring was a revival of the “long-comatose Harper’s Bazaar, which was once Vogue’s greatest rival.” It’s true. The rivalry between the two magazines dates all the way back to their respective formations in the late 1800s. “And so from the go, it was this very hardcore competition,” True says. “And obviously there have been other fashion magazines, but nobody occupies this sort of King Kong [versus] Godzilla place of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue.”

Bazaar was always more avant-garde, True continues; a little more cutting-edge, if you will. But by 1992, Vogue had eclipsed Bazaar. If it were a foot race, Vogue would be miles ahead. By Tilberis’ hiring in January of that year, Wintour had already been at the helm of Vogue for years. In fact, at one point, Tilberis had been Wintour’s second-in-command, so the women, roughly the same age and both British, had been in one another’s orbit for a long time. Former right-hand to Wintour though she was, Tilberis was Wintour’s “polar opposite,” as is said on the podcast. When Tilberis arrived, she wanted to take a different approach with Bazaar. She hired Baron, which was critical. They wanted to respect Bazaar’s past—a century of history by now—but also modernize it. Usher in ‘90s minimalism. Supermodel Evangelista starred on Tilberis’ first September cover alongside the coverline “Enter the Era of Elegance”—and suddenly, Bazaar was back in the conversation, becoming the hip alternative to Vogue. Hiring photographers like Patrick Demarchelier and Peter Lindbergh only helped the cause.

“I remember buzz, I remember everybody excited about this new magazine,” Evangelista said on BLOW-UP about the rebooted Bazaar. “I mean, everyone was so positive and excited about it, knowing that it was going to give the other magazines a run for their money and knowing that it was going to be on the more artistic side.”

According to True, “I think that it was important to Liz that she positioned herself as a counterpoint to Vogue.” The rivalry between Tilberis and Wintour—encapsulated in the 1992 New Yorker piece with the headline “War of the Poses,” written in hot pink—“served the business story,” True says.

The ‘90s was good to the magazine industry for the most part. (After all, former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter who, like Tilberis, took over at his respective magazine in 1992, didn’t call his upcoming memoir When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines for nothing.) As Golonka puts it, there was an open checkbook. There were really not a lot of nos. He tells me he was no longer Dennis Golonka, he was Dennis from Bazaar. “And I loved it,” he says. “I embraced it.” He felt like a bit of a celebrity, he says. By the mid-1990s, Tilberis’ and Baron’s vision was working. Culture felt it—and so did the Bazaar staff.

“Can you imagine the first day that the whole cast of Mad Men did a read through together and they realized that they had lightning in a bottle?” True says. “There was some of that too at Bazaar, where everyone looked around and went like, ‘Oh my God, we’re going to be this supergroup. I’m part of the moment. I’m in the moment.’”

But there was a ticking time bomb—on two fronts.

“I wasn’t ever thinking, ‘She is going to die’”

By around 1995, it became clear that maybe the checkbook needed to close sometimes at Bazaar. Some yeses became nos. The magazine needed to make money, bring in advertising revenue. As detailed in episode 5 of BLOW-UP, Hearst gave Tilberis and Bazaar a carte blanche pass in the beginning, but by the middle of the decade the editor-in-chief was under pressure to cut costs and up sales. Her solution was “Celebrity. And lots of it,” as detailed in the show. “Suddenly, actresses, rock stars and royalty graced the cover almost as often as supermodels.” (It’s difficult to imagine now, but this was not the norm 30 years ago. Magazine covers were for models—not pop stars and Oscar winners, and certainly not influencers. What the hell was an influencer?)

At the same time there was a reality check about the money, there was a reality check about Tilberis’ health. She had first been diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer in December 1993—less than two years into her tenure at Bazaar—at just 46 years old. She spent the remainder of her life balancing chemotherapy and running the magazine, and underwent a grueling bone marrow transplant in 1995. Tilberis’ friendship with Princess Diana only escalated through her illness, and she wrote in her memoir—the tragically titled No Time to Die: Living with Ovarian Cancer—that not many people could talk to someone about a cancer diagnosis. Diana could.

“There was a point where Liz was just very tired,” True says. “The bone marrow transplant had not gone well. And there was, I think some, not pressure, but there was some like, ‘Hey, I think we should do this other, we should do chemo again.’ And she was just getting really worn out. And Diana was the one who said to her, ‘You don’t have to do anything. This is your body, and if you want to stop, you stop.’”

True had left Bazaar by this point, but Golonka remained until after Tilberis’ death. He, as everyone did, noticed the transformation in his boss physically—the hair loss. The weight loss. Knowing she was out of the office for health matters. Having to bring layouts by her home. Keeping the press as unaware as possible.

“But I wasn’t ever thinking, ‘She is going to die,’” he says.

He was in denial about the state of Tilberis’ health right up until the day of her death—April 21, 1999. Golonka’s birthday. “It was such a surreal day,” he tells me, adding that, to him, “it was not evident that she was going to die until I was told she died. I mean, that’s how I was living my life, because that’s how she lived her life. She never came into that office with a ‘woe is me’ attitude at all. It was always work—passion for the work. We always all focused on the work.”

Aiding in his denial about the reality of the situation was that she’d been through cancer earlier in the ‘90s, beat it, and come back. “And so I was thinking, ‘Yeah, any day now they’re going to tell us she’s coming back to the office, like, the stem cell stuff that she had done worked, and she’s going to come back,’” he says.

Before that awful day became an awful day, everyone wished Golonka a happy birthday. Gave him gifts. And at the end of the celebration, Bazaar’s managing editor Karen Johnston walked in with a look on her face that was evident that something terrible had happened. “And she said, ‘Happy birthday,’ and then delivered the news,” Golonka says. “And we all just went into shock.”

There were tears. The phone would not stop ringing. Tilberis built a team around her that was as tight-knit as it gets. The endless ring, ring, ring of the phones felt like an intrusion. It pissed Golonka off.

“We still had to do a job,” he continues. “We still had to put the issues out. So I know that we stayed there all day and we worked, and then we all got together that night, and that’s when the idea for the tribute issue came out, the white issue. And we were excited to work on something that was going to be dedicated solely to Liz. I remember that. But yeah, I just remember it being very sad and quiet.”

In her 1998 memoir—published just a year before her death—she wrote of Princess Diana, “If anything, I had imagined the princess attending my memorial service, and here I was, attending hers. I don’t know how to resolve this conundrum, to make peace with these ridiculous facts, except to embrace the long life that she was denied.”

Tilberis, of course, was denied a long life, too. In a press release Hearst issued on April 21, 1999, Tilberis’ husband Andrew said, fittingly, “Elegance and dignity were with her right to the end. She never lost those qualities.”

“I think that fashion would be very different”

Liz Tilberis died 26 years ago at just 51 years old. For context, Anna Wintour is now 75 years old, still on the throne at Vogue, the most powerful person in fashion—and there seem to be no signs of that ending anytime soon.

Had Tilberis lived, “I think that she would have taken over Anna’s job, totally,” Golonka says. “I think Conde Nast would’ve gotten her, and she’d be there.”

It’s a crystal ball prediction that True agrees with. “Liz was super competitive,” she says. Grace Coddington—who somehow was simultaneously Tilberis’ best friend and Wintour’s right-hand as the longtime creative director at Vogue—said Tilberis took great joy in the competition.

“I think that fashion would be very different,” True says of a world where Tilberis had lived to see her mid-70s, too. For starters, she thinks the Met Gala would have alternated between Tilberis hosting one year, Wintour hosting the next, and not be so synonymous with Vogue. BLOW-UP covers the rivalry in episode 4, called “Civilized Warfare,” where it calls Tilberis “Anna’s only real rival, to this day,” adding that some of the rivalry between the two women was drummed up, and some of it wasn’t. Tilberis and Wintour refused to participate in the innuendo, “but there was some truth to it,” the episode details, adding that it was but yet another example that exemplified all of the cliches about women being in competition with each other.

It fell to “the idea of having to put these two women together, against each other—that idea that there can sort of only be one,” True says. “It can’t be that there’s two incredibly dynamic, brilliant British women.”

The two women were “comic book opposites,” in True’s words, but they were both competitive, and both charismatic. It was the perfect storm. Ultimately, though, Tilberis and Wintour “had fundamentally different aesthetics,” True says. “They had really different beliefs about the role of a fashion magazine. Anna wanted it to be a, and I kind of love this, an accessible, tear the page out, bring it into the store and buy your thing. Whereas Liz wanted theatricality and fantasy and escape and let this be an inspiration to you when you come up with your own outfit. So those things were so diametrically opposed, and really kind of interesting.”

In addition to the way they ran their respective publications, the two women’s personalities differed, too: “You have one person who seems to be quite introverted, and another person who is like, ‘Let’s all have a picnic in my office,’” True says. “Very different people.”

“And that’s okay,” Golonka adds.

“No, absolutely,” True responds. “But she [Tilberis] did usher in a very nice counterpoint, editorially. I think that that counterpoint coming in was extremely refreshing for people.”

The rivalry was played out in headlines and “In a way, I get it,” True says. “It’s a great business story. How often do you have a great business story with two very glamorous women who are titans, who are basically the same age, basically from the same social class? It’s pretty great.”

It’s difficult not to fall in the sinkhole of what might have been had Tilberis lived to see 2025. Though Tilberis was editor-in-chief for seven years, she was just shy of two years into the role when she received the diagnosis that would ultimately take her life. For context, Wintour has led Vogue for 37 years and counting.

“To see Anna going so strong at 75 and Grace [Coddington, who is 83 years old], it’s beautiful,” True says. “And at the same time, it gives you a little bit like, ‘Oh, Liz should be here.’ She was still doing super creative stuff.”

Of fashion today with Tilberis still here, “I think it would probably be different,” she reiterates wistfully.

“Maybe that’s what’s resonating with people”

Since its release, BLOW-UP has struck a chord—about the importance of remembering a woman like Tilberis, but also about remembering fashion in the ‘90s.

“One of the things that has struck me is the amount of people who reach out to us just to simply tell us how much they loved Bazaar in the ‘90s and how it’s this podcast has reminded them of that, how much that period of their lives when magazines were what they were at that point,” Golonka says. “And, again, magazines were a big deal. They were everything. Your culture, your news, your history. We didn’t have social media. So of course, hearing these people reaching out to us, telling us how much this means to them—I think a lot of it is that it’s jogging these beautiful memories in their lives at that point.”

It’s certainly jogging the memories of the Bazaar staff of the era, many of whom appear on BLOW-UP. “It’s just a beautiful story that is told by amazing people who—we were all in this amazing cocoon during a time when, again, the industry was not known to be kind,” Golonka continues. “And yet you had this little cocoon of beautiful people just supporting each other and doing amazing work. So I don’t know, maybe that’s what’s resonating with people.”

Many remember reading Tilberis’ Bazaar in the ‘90s, but the lucky few remember working at Bazaar in the ‘90s. Does it sound idyllic, even too good to be true? Is it biased towards a boss two people really loved? Just a touch saccharine? Maybe. But it’s their story, and they’re telling it their way.

“Maybe all of us would like to go back and talk to our first bosses a little bit years later. And so that’s maybe a relatable thing. I don’t know,” True says. Not all of us can say their first job was at Harper’s Bazaar, but there’s a relatable quality to Golonka and True’s dissection of that era in their lives: “We’ve all had that first job that, maybe it wasn’t as exciting as Bazaar was, but that workplace thing that you have with people when you’re young,” True says. In a world where there’s currently so much to escape from, an escape back to a simpler time—a happier time, the aforementioned halcyon days—is likely what’s hitting home for so many who are tuning in and remembering when.

Instead of focusing on what could have been—and what the world was robbed of when it lost Tilberis and her talent far too soon—BLOW-UP focuses on what was. What blessedly, gloriously, beautifully was. It was a moment that is captured powerfully as the show concludes, as music plays over these poignant words: “We were also keenly aware of how lucky we were to have found ourselves in proximity to this wonderful editor who not only gave us our first jobs, but access to magical lives in the best city in the world,” the podcast concludes. “It made our 20s. We like to think of Liz as having driven away in that dark green Frankencar her father built, having endless adventures, with the music turned up, yelling out the window.”

It’s true, we may never know what might have been, and we can’t change the present—but in BLOW-UP, proof exists that, if you have a willing best friend and a microphone, you can sometimes come home to the past, and take the world right along with you.