Later he had a conversation with a New England farmer. The two concluded that a combination of fear and uncertainty about the future limited their discussion of the coming election between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Steinbeck enjoyed learning about people by eating breakfast in roadside restaurants and listening to morning radio programs, though he noted that, "If 'Teen-Age Angel' is top of the list in Maine, it is the top of the list in Montana" (35), showing the ubiquity of pop culture brought on by Top 40 radio and mass media technologies.