Backstreet Boys Meet World (Kevin & AJ)

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Speaker 1: M h.

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Speaker 2: On past sitting on your patge? Is that yours?

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Speaker 3: Do you need to pass?

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Speaker 4: Okay, okay, thank you for clarifying that, because I know why they stopped us.

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Speaker 3: I don't know why they're stopping you guys.

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Speaker 5: Well, I changed my hair color every week, so that's why I have to keep it blonde because of content.

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Speaker 1: So I can't change it now.

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Speaker 2: I can't.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm forever stuck as long as we keep extending dates, which congratulations.

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Speaker 2: By the way, you've heard about the extension.

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Speaker 4: I'll talk about that at the end too, because I'm going to promote the heck out of that are.

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Speaker 3: We will help them. They're not selling.

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Speaker 2: I know they need help. That's why they asked, wait, hold on, we have one more piece for you.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah. I had to do it. I had to do it.

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Speaker 4: I was so impressed when we came downstairs and he was dressed like this.

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Speaker 2: I was like, you really you brought it?

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Speaker 3: Hell, yeah, that's a commitment.

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Speaker 1: I like it.

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Speaker 3: I was asked to bring in.

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Speaker 4: If later tonight you need someone extra to come up on stage.

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Speaker 3: My nails, yeah, se yes, I need to get mine redone.

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Speaker 5: But next week you have Millennium blue.

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Speaker 1: Great minds, great minds.

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Speaker 4: Well, we're very excited to be here with A. J. MacLean and Kevin Richardson of the Backstreet Boys at their Sphere residency, which is unbelievable. Uh, you have been a part of the Backstreet Boys. The backstories by boys have been around for thirty two years. The average American marriage is eight years, and so I want to know, why do you think boy bands are more successful than marriage?

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Speaker 3: Women involved?

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Speaker 5: Not touching that subject, not touching that.

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Speaker 3: I'm not touching that one.

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Speaker 1: I'll tell you right now.

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Speaker 6: You know what I'm gonna We joke and say this is our second marriage. But it's it takes a lot of communication. We've learned to communicate much better as we've gotten older.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 6: Also our test house has makes different.

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Speaker 3: It's definitely teenagers.

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Speaker 1: Is just it's this flying and everything.

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Speaker 3: But now we talk things out and it's much well.

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Speaker 4: So many of the pictures that I have seen have been of these nostal celebrity photos with people who are coming to see you before the show starts. It's a little bit of it's a little unorthodox. But where did the idea of the pre show hang come about?

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Speaker 5: I mean, so well, so we've kind of changed some things around as far as the layout of the show. So normally we would do our meet and greets before the show, so we now do our meet and greets right after the show. So all of our guests are friends, family, any celeb guest that might be coming to the show.

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Speaker 1: We have a little like.

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Speaker 5: Vip lounge to go mix and mingle before we get ready for the show. So that's kind of our little hang sashon prior to getting ready before and then you know, some of them will come downstairs after the show, mainly family, yeah, and our close friends and we'll kind of catch up for a minute before we head to meet and greet. But I feel like my wife's to me, I think it was like two days ago. She's like, I'm so proud of you guys and all this stuff. She's like, this feels like the most celebs coming to your show in a while. I mean, we did have quite a few people come to the first residency we had in a Planet, but not like this. This is this is pretty get into your head, like if you ever had that moment of like, oh so and so is here. No, but I've definitely geeked out for some of the people like Elizabeth Banks came I freaking love and like full on geek.

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Speaker 1: Out once you're once you're on stage doing the show, it doesn't matter, like it doesn't no but you.

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Speaker 5: But what's funny is you get to like if you can find them, because you know, it's like where's Waldo.

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Speaker 3: Unless you're wearing all black, everyone's in white.

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Speaker 1: So you're trying to find out where their seats are.

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Speaker 5: They're like if if if they're in a suite And like, I finally found Elizabeth the other night during the show, and she was just having the time of her life. And I love that. Same with Macaulay Culkin's wife. She was just living her best life, the best.

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Speaker 7: Just how much is what you're feeling inside change from performing when you're like twenty as to now.

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Speaker 1: Not really really, It's it's wild.

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Speaker 6: You get up on stage and it feels very familiar. You in your head are still twenty five strapping it, and you don't realize until you get off stage and you get out of the car to go up to your hotel room and your bones and on stage it's you're you know, you're in the in the zone.

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Speaker 1: Pretty much.

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Speaker 4: It's amazing.

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Speaker 1: It's cool.

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Speaker 6: It's been a little renaissance. It's it's pretty amazing. It's incredible. We're very fortunate. Not not everybody gets gets this opportunity.

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Speaker 4: You're right now many years removed from the Millennium when performing the show, have you noticed any songs that you feel like have improved with time.

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Speaker 5: I don't know if they've necessarily improved, but there is a there's quite a lot of songs in this set that we haven't done since nineteen ninety nine and.

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Speaker 1: Have a bit of a fresh take.

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Speaker 5: On it in the sense of a we haven't done it in twenty five years, and just kind of seeing the reaction, feeling the energy from doing certain songs like no one else comes close, the Perfect Fan, you know, Spanish Eye songs that we like. There are certain staples that we've kept in our tours over the years. The Margin of Life, Yeah.

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Speaker 6: It hits, but there's a lot of Millennium album Yeah this time I love it along with most of our greatest hits. So we do a little medley of deep cuts off the Millennium album that weren't hits that we really haven't performed in twenty five years.

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Speaker 5: And that's like to me, that's probably one of my personal favorite parts of the show because it is it's a very stripped down moment. It's a very like motown do wop feel that's happening, and I don't know, it's just a really like you really get to connect during this little section in the show. And then we have our our new single, our new song Hey, which we get to do in the show as.

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Speaker 1: Well, which is.

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Speaker 5: It's a really cool moment, you know, like because it wasn't like pushed as a radio single type thing. It was if you pre ordered the album, you got the single. But to still see everyone singing along and loving the song. It's a beautiful song. It was supposed to make it on the DNA record. It sadly did not because we were under the gun to get the song, you know.

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Speaker 3: Just the album. Yeah, but it wasn't meant to be.

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Speaker 1: On this album. It definitely found it found it definitely found a home.

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Speaker 4: If you two could go back and tell your trl selves one piece of advice, knowing everything that's come since, what would you tell yourselves.

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Speaker 6: I'll probably say relax, go with the flow, enjoy it, because I was always like, all right, when's the bottom gonna fall out kind of mentality. Yeah, and with age, I've gotten rid of that, thankfully. But yeah, so, and I was the oldest, and I was always like, I felt like I was responsible for the other.

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Speaker 2: Guys a lot, the planner, the organized, I.

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Speaker 6: Don't know, just keeping the train on the tracks. And you know, when fame hits and it hits big and you're young, stuff can go off the rails. And I'd done a lot of living before I joined the group, so I don't know, I just tell myself, relax, enjoy the moment, it's gonna be okay.

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Speaker 1: I was definitely the stuff that went off the rails.

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Speaker 3: I was, yeah, but we're back on the tracks.

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Speaker 1: So we're good. But I was definitely the Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So what would you tell your young self back then?

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Speaker 1: Breathe?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, breathe, because you know, I put on a smile, I put on a happy face. But for me personally, there was a lot of inner turmoil and there's a lot of things going on in my head because it really was this like whirlwind moment. Yeah, you know, people thought it was an overnight thing for us, but we had already had an out, well two albums prior to technically two albums prior to the Millennium album. Yeah, but Millennium was when like the roof blew off and it was pandemonium, and to really go back and breathe and like take it in and really appreciate it and smile more.

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Speaker 1: Inward.

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Speaker 5: I think that's what I would do, or tell myself, you know, because you put on the happy face, you put on everything, and you're you're just like you're in go mode. You're in this machine mode, like you're there's no stopping, you know. We literally went nine almost ten years straight and after Black and Blue we.

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Speaker 1: Had to take a break.

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Speaker 5: We had to We would have fizzled out if we didn't take a break. And we took like almost a year and a half off before we made the next record.

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Speaker 1: We had to do that for our sanity, for our health, and for your family, for our families, for our brotherhood, you know.

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Speaker 6: So yeah, I'm so curious because we we did podmet World Live.

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Speaker 2: We did three in a row once and wanted to die.

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Speaker 3: So how do you do it?

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Speaker 2: How do you do show after show after show physically?

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Speaker 1: Mentally?

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Speaker 2: I mean, what what do you have to do to prepare for something like that.

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Speaker 6: I mean this, this beats being on the road because typically if you're on the road, sometimes you'll do two nights in one spot, sometimes three nights, but most times you're either getting on a tour bush or you're going back to the hotel, getting on a flight or getting on a plane, and that to me is more physically mentally exhausting than doing a show going back to the hotel, right you know, Yeah, this is I love it because we can commute. AJ and I are West Coasters. We can back and forth to La So I go home on Mondays, I come back. I just flew in a couple hours ago.

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Speaker 5: And you're in an international hub if you think about it, like, you know, the amount of people that come through Vegas daily, they're from all over the world, right, so, and we are fortunate enough to have fans from all over the world. So staying in one place is easier on the body, easier on the mind. Yeah, and you know you're not it's you know, whether you're at the hotel or you're renting a house, or you live here like Nick. Nick's been living here since twenty seventeen, you know, so after the show he gets to go home, right, you know what I mean.

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Speaker 1: So it's as I.

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Speaker 3: Say after the third show.

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Speaker 5: Though my knees, I'm right there with him, Yeah, I mean him and I have. He he had knee surgery. I've been I've had both my knees done, and oh.

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Speaker 6: My gosh, I tore my a cl two days before my wedding and two thousand riding dirt bikes with my buddies back in Kentucky.

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Speaker 5: I mean, so it's good.

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Speaker 6: It's just my moniscus.

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Speaker 5: It's a lot of wear and tear. I have a torn rotator cuff right now as we speak. But it's like the show.

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Speaker 1: Must do what you gotta do. You make it, you make it work.

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Speaker 5: But he's gonna have surgery, and surgery or stem cell whatever comes first.

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Speaker 1: Well, I just want to get it sorted. But I will say.

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Speaker 5: We are like athletes in one absolutely aspect.

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Speaker 2: You know, are you reading cortisone injections?

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Speaker 1: I don't really know.

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Speaker 5: I I have a consultation on Tuesday to see. I'm trying to avoid surgery if I can, but if I have to, I have to. Actually, I just talked to Aoki came to our show last this past weekend.

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Speaker 1: He did both the shots and the surgery.

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Speaker 5: So I'm like, all right, well, whatever I have to do to get it done to be back one.

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Speaker 1: Hundred percent, you know, yeah, but it happens. What are you gonna do? You know?

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Speaker 4: Well, I know your fans appreciate it because they keep selling out your shows over and over. As we talked at the very beginning, new dates have just been added to your Sphere residency. December twenty sixth through the twenty eighth, the thirtieth, and the thirty first, meaning New Year's Eve and January second and third. Are you guys looking forward to spending New Year's Eve on stage?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that'll be cool.

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Speaker 1: That is cool.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, we've only done that a couple of times in our career where we've actually been on stage and like ranging the New Year with our you know, fans, so to be in Orlando, Florida. Yeah, yeah, So ringing the New Year in Vegas with twenty thousand people is going to be awesome and then celebrate with our families and their friends after. You know, it's going to be a party.

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Speaker 2: Are you guys aware that while we were on Boy Meets World, the male cast of Boy Meets World in the later seasons, performed a song and dance to your song for our live studio audiences every table, every single week.

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Speaker 3: It became in the middle, in the middle.

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Speaker 2: To entertain the audience.

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Speaker 4: Halfway through shooting the live show, we'd clear the cameras out of the camera aisle, the guys would come out. They had choreographed a dance, then took off his shirt.

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Speaker 3: Spoiler alert.

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Speaker 1: We were not as good as that.

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Speaker 5: Except take off his shirt in the crowd.

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Speaker 3: It became this whole We have definitely.

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Speaker 2: We have footage of it, so I'll get you the footage because.

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Speaker 3: It is it. It was so great.

00:14:44
Speaker 2: One last thing I want to ask you.

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Speaker 4: There has been some teasing off and on over the years of whether or not in Sync would ever do of any type of reunion tour, and it's been fall started quite a bit over the past year. And here you guys are with possibly your biggest undertaking yet.

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Speaker 2: If they were listening, what would you tell them.

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Speaker 4: About getting it together and being able to do something like you guys are doing here.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it would be huge.

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Speaker 5: I think you know, of course the fans want it, and but they have to.

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Speaker 1: I would just say, look, follow your hearts.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, do what is right for you and just lean on each other and you know, if it's meant to be, it will be. Yeah, but yeah, I mean it'll be, it'll be maybe.

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Speaker 4: Yeah. I love when you earlier, when you called it a brotherhood and you're it is you guys are.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you are. I mean honestly, like you know.

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Speaker 5: I know Kevin said it was our second marriage, but this was our first marriage before any of us were married.

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Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, you've been married for twenty five years.

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Speaker 3: Wow, two thousand.

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Speaker 6: I met her in ninety two though, before we started dating, before I got in the group. Yeah, that's amazing. Been alone for the whole d Kristin.

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Speaker 2: I know, Kristin.

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Speaker 4: I love her so much. It was literally the first thing I asked him. Every time I see him, the first thing I says, Kristin, You're.

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Speaker 2: Best.

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Speaker 5: She's the best we we all got. I was the only one because some of the boys went to the after party and I went with keV to celebrate Christ's birthday and we went out and had but.

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Speaker 1: It was just she's just she's just awesome. I know, she's so she really is.

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Speaker 4: She's so big sis, Yeah, she is well, thank you guys so much for spending your time with us before the show.

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Speaker 2: So looking forward to.

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Speaker 1: Have you seen any shows here yet?

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Speaker 2: We saw and Co? We saw and Co here, what about you guys?

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Speaker 4: Have you guys a.

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Speaker 5: Little different than that?

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Speaker 3: I don't know.

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Speaker 6: And saw the Eagles together to scout it when we were, of course, like after we saw it, we're like, heck ya, yes, do this place. And then I came and saw them two more times to do homework. And then I saw djma Honey mounts it and then I saw Kenny Chesney.

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Speaker 3: Wow, okay as well.

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Speaker 5: I definitely want to see Dead and Co if they come back. Yeah, it was a great show because Mayer was here a couple of weekds ago and I was like, dude, I hope you guys are doing this again because I really want to see that like that and uh yeah, I mean whoever, I also want to bring my kids back to see The Wizard of Oz like that.

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Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, it looks amazing movie.

00:17:20
Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 7: We were just talking about what bands we would want to see, and we all instantly went Pink Floyd, Oh, Floyd in Sphere, cold Play, Lloyd.

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Speaker 5: I love to see Lenny Kravitz I think, I mean, he's got a huge catalog.

00:17:35
Speaker 3: I think I.

00:17:36
Speaker 6: Think every artist is going to want to play this venue, to just play in this medium.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, Taylor of One.

00:17:43
Speaker 3: I'm not familiar with her.

00:17:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of Taylor, Max Martin just did her.

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Speaker 5: I know, Max and Shellback, I know, I'm yeah, Max is actually coming tomorrow night to the show.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's so great.

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Speaker 5: Well, I mean, you know, Max is, Max is who Max is. He is an absolute legend. Yeah, he is one of the greatest pop songs of all time.

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Speaker 6: He's the goat.

00:18:08
Speaker 2: Yes, really, he really is. Well, thank you again, it's really looking forward to this. Always a pleasure.

00:18:15
Speaker 3: Thank you you you know fandom.

00:18:21
Speaker 2: International superstars. Thank you.

00:18:27
Speaker 4: Pod Meets World is an iHeart podcast produced and hosted by Danielle Fischel, Wilfredell and writer Strong Executive producers Jensen Krp and Amy Sugarman, Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor Tara sudbachsch producer, Maddy Moore, engineer and Boy Meets World super fan Easton Allen. Our theme song is by Kyle Morton of Typhoon. Follow us on Instagram at Pod Meets World Show or email us at Pod meets World Show at gmail dot com.