Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / “Being a Satirist in Censorious Times” with cartoonist Jason Chatfield

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“Being a Satirist in Censorious Times” with cartoonist Jason Chatfield · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas one of the most dangerous and uncomfortable
• 0:09
  conversations that independently employed creative artists have with themselves in this climate is
• 0:15
  how far they should push the envelope how far is too far how self expressed can we be how authentic
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  can we be versus how much should we count out the opinions of our peers the opinions of our leaders
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  and the mandates of the algorithms that drive so much of our income today's guest is arguably the
• 0:35
  most successful cartoonist in the world he's an Aussie who lives in New York City and at the age
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  of 23 he was handed the keys to Australia's longest running most iconic most famous
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  newspaper comedy comic strip if you think of things like Dilbert and Dennis the menace and
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  Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield and peanuts and so on in Australia we had ginger megs and Jason
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  wrote and drew ginger megs for almost 20 years it was syndicated all over the world he moved to
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  New York City and became a big deal in American cartooning as well he ended up the president
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  of the National Cartoonists Society essentially the chief grand pubert of satirical cartoonists
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  in the United States so how do you sustain a career independently on substack when your craft is
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  so seemingly old-fashioned as writing and illustrating a comic strip Jason joined me for a substack
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  live on the day that Zoran Mamdani became the mayor elect of New York City so I wanted his thoughts
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  about politics about satire about the vibe of the city with Mamdani coming in about how you
• 1:47
  construct an authentic creative life in this crazy world of ours and resist the forces of
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  censorship from the powerful and from your peers this is a premium episode so you will get a
• 1:59
  healthy and interesting chunk of it whether you pay or not but the heart and the meat of the
• 2:04
  conversation where we throw around our ideas about creativity and authenticity and independence
• 2:10
  of thought that mostly comes after a paywall so if you're a paid subscriber and this episode
• 2:16
  doesn't run for well over an hour then you need to hop over to your premium feed you're listening
• 2:21
  to the wrong one if you're a free subscriber and you want to hear all of every episode because
• 2:27
  roughly every second episode of this show is paywall halfway through you can click to subscribe
• 2:31
  in apple podcasts or in Spotify or better yet to get all of our live streams and all of our
• 2:36
  other goodies at uncomfortable conversations dot substack dot com I hope you enjoy as much as I did
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  the one and only Jason Jefffield I unfortunately stood Jason up a couple of days ago and
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  the I told him that I would tell him why because in my defense Jason I was quite busy this week
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  there was a lockdown okay Papa had things to do one of which was I was flying down to Canberra on
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  the day that I was supposed to talk to you the day before yesterday to moderate a panel event with
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  four parliamentarians former cabinet minister head of the national party in the center you know
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  important people about getting money out of politics and I was a little underprepared and so I had
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  that had to do that and then I had to sort of prep for your interview and I also had another
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  thing that I was doing that day and then I was going to have to fly down and I hadn't had much
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  sleep for the past two nights and so that was the context so I thought before I took to Jason
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  I'll get up early I'll get up at five I'll have a couple of hours to do a bit of writing for the
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  thing before coming in and talking to you um so I creep downstairs my eight-year-old twins
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  are asleep I get my morning vitamin pills together and I'm packing my stuff together my daughter
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  comes in because I've woken her up she's standing there in the dark I'm not paying much attention
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  I'm a bit bleary I'd I take my pills and I go to pack my bag and it's very very very rare
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  that I am in possession of hardcore sleeping pills but if I have a big gig and I'm going to be
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  amped up and I've got an early flight the following day and I know I'm going to get back to my
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  hotel room at 11 p.m full of adrenaline and I have to get up at six I'll take a sleeping pill and
• 4:34
  not myself out the sleeping pill was what I took at five in the morning and I took it by mistake
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  thinking that it was just a vitamin pill in the dark and then I was like oh shit you can't you
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  can't drive if you stay awake when you take these things it says be aware that you will go into a
• 5:00
  fugue state and you will babble like a madman and you will have no recollection of whatever you
• 5:05
  said so I can't do a sub stack live stream where I just start railing against the Jews or something
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  I wish you did it would have been wild it would have been incredible I would have just been
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  off my face so I was like I mean I just have to go to bed and like
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  yes I went back to bed and slept for five hours you were on lute against that's what I was rolling Jason
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  rolling oh you I mean that's pretty impressive so the fact that you stayed awake as long as you
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  did is very impressive I just it was it was rough so just if you if you're in possession of
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  you know psychoactive pharmaceuticals then be careful with them because you don't want to
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  maybe put them in a different state you would think you would think that I mean the thing is they
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  were in a totally different packet and I even popped it out of the I it was I picked up the blister
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  pack to put in my bag absent mindedly popped the pill out of it and then just took it right so
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  Sigmund Freud would say that when it comes to the mind there are no mistakes and I was actually
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  subliminally saying zeps you got too much on today mate yeah screw this it's the deck have a
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  light down buddy too much going on I mean there's getting dressed in the dark and then there's
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  getting blushing there's getting drugged drugging yourself I mean it is although I feel good about
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  myself that the hardest drug that I had in the house was the sleeping pill like you know you're
• 6:45
  boring in middle age right the hardest drug that you can put your hands on is an ambient or whatever
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  how's are you in New York now I am in New York now I'm in your old stomping ground yes it's it's just
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  the way you left it but with a new mayor yeah I know I mean I still go there about three or four
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  times a year when I can but not under Mamdani town have things have things shut down already are
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  the grocery stores closed in anticipation of his free state owned grocery stores yeah have the
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  other months three years getting in yeah of course all the buses are free people are refusing to
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  pay people are going into these state runs grocery stores and getting free apples it's wild you wouldn't
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  believe it you wouldn't recognize a place are you able to vote to you a citizen or no yeah I mean you
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  are citizen now I panicked because Trump blocked me on Twitter and I thought I should probably become
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  a citizen because I'm now clearly on a list yes I mean I always thought that when I was a permanent
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  resident and had a green card I was like I mean you're basically a citizen like the only differences
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  that you can't vote how naive I was not apparently yeah yeah I that was the panic that set in was
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  that I I noticed some people on oh ones and he be ones getting shunted out under the last
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  administration so under the first Trump administration so I was like oh I want an EP one that
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  should probably become a naturalized citizen although I did learn the word denaturalization
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  this week which panicked the hell out of me that's a thing well presumably that's
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  means a person normally would be giving up the citizenship by choice wouldn't they when they
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  denaturalize or are you saying that people can be stripped of their citizenship yeah that's what
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  it usually means and now it means a presidential ability to strip one of their citizenship if he
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  signs one of those big steakhouse menus with a Sharpie yeah that can't be legal that can't be
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  conscious no it's not at all but the time that it takes to challenge it in court is longer than
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  it would take to enact the actual things so they're already out by the time it's challenged it's
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  yeah that's the play that's incredible I mean the city country who does the country belong to
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  if not its citizens like when the constitution says we the people it's talking about the citizens
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  of the country you can't just have no idea we the people in the White House you've you've misread
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  that document I see ban and he'll tell you I thought it was the people on the ground the voters the
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  citizens okay I know you Josh sorry sorry it's Stephen Miller means whoever Stephen Miller says
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  is we the people yeah it's how me the people yeah how have you found the run up to the election like
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  what has the mood but what first of all explain to people who don't know you what kind of circles
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  you swim in what your interests are and who you are because sure I I am an Aussie in New York City
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  I've been a cartoonist for 20 years I work for the New Yorker and I've done work for Mad Magazine
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  and syndicated comic strips the Aussies might know me as the cartoonist for Ginger Megs for 16 years
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  but I do political cartoons I've done political cartoons for
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  yeah like 20 something years started in Perth in Frio doing local politics and then work my way
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  out to doing national Aussie politics you might have seen me talking with Mike Bowers on talking
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  on insiders for many years and then I moved to New York 11 years ago so the lead up in 20
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  a question the lead up to the I've never seen anything like it the lead up to the mayoral election
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  not only did it force people to learn what a mayor can do what it was what they're where their
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  authority begins and ends versus the governor but also people actually really started to young
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  people especially started to really engage and got very very intense so all of a sudden you actually
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  had to say in the way that you might say in a federal election how you are going to vote people
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  where their politics on their sleeve here it's not it's not a faux pas like it is in Australia to
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  tell people everyone how you vote right that's interesting I mean more in a local election that
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  I had been at a national level because I think that New Yorkers who voted for Trump have always
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  felt bashful about talking about it they do now yeah it's it's an interesting thing that I've
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  never noticed before this is this is basically like Trump was on the ballot that's how it felt
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  it felt like Trump was on the ballot and this was a big protest vote against him that's how it
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  felt right right and the three people who voted for Andrew Cuomo were the people who were voting
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  for Donald Trump with Cuomo as as his proxy essentially you know what for all his foibles he
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  actually did get remarkably close for a minute a minute right yeah I can't imagine that it was
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  particularly helpful in New York for Donald Trump to throw his support behind the independent
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  candidate rather than the Republican that Republican dude was interesting what the hell was his
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  deal yeah I mean I think his whole life he was born to just want to be the mayor of New York also
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  he needs a job yeah it is funny because the Republicans just produce these characters you know like in
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  the way that it's just like an SNL sketch they just this just they just barrel out of the out of
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  the wings and you're like is this and then they've got this whole backstory and an accent and an
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  at and a costume and a you know I don't understand why he didn't just it doesn't make any sense if
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  even if he combined his votes with Cuomo he still wouldn't want which is not I mean in my brain I
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  can't appreciate him exactly but in my brain the Republican candidate is wearing a beret and
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  has a parrot on his shoulder correct beret yes and he's been running every single election I mean he's
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  he's a career nominee as a career candidate I should say right and um he is honestly he is very
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  entertaining in the debates okay and mdani mdani sense of like what he actually wants to accomplish
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  in practice is is more inscrutable to me than what his vibe is right I mean like is he
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  up do you expect him to be a practical mayor I I want to say yes I really want to say yes but I
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  just can't in all honesty knowing how politicians operate and how the machinations of
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  of this certainly government politics uh those local government uh I just can't say that is
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  going to be that effective I really you know there's all these great promises he's making and
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  wonderful assertions that he's making that that really are galvanizing this young generation of
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  people disappointed in politics and politicians and and you know just this bottomless endless pit of
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  broken promises and here's this guy who's going to come in and he's going to make everything
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  right again and he's going to be a democratic socialist and he's going to do these great things
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  but he's never held office he's never had to compromise he's never had to actually work
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  within the machinations of this particular government he's never had to make the connections that
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  a career politician someone like Brad lander or Curtis slua or you know or Cuomo have had to make
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  to get things over the line so I don't know as he he may well try to get all these things done
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  but he'll probably hit a bunch of brick walls because he's a kid I say that I'm 41 he's 34
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  so I'm still calling on the kid but it just feels so I don't want to say I don't want to say he's
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  he's a smart he's a very smart young man incredibly smart um great at campaigning but um
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  as an actual mayor I don't have a confidence in him and I hate saying that I really do
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  I mean the problem is that the same criticisms were made of Obama before he was president he'd
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  never been an executive he hadn't run things right um and you know part of me feels like
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  everyone who I talk to about Mamdani in the States is either super enthusiastic that the
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  democrats are growing a spine and talking about economic justice again instead of you know a bunch
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  of work issues or they're terrified that he's a communist who's going to ruin the city and
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  there'll be capital flight out of the city and a death spiral of higher taxation and the city
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  will become decrepit I mean I feel like maybe we just hold our breath and give him a chance
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  for a little while and see like if it's if it's if it's if it's if it's we don't have a choice
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  if it's impossible for a yeah I mean if it's true that it's impossible for an idealistic
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  young person who's very bright to come in and get anything done that strikes me as more of an
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  indictment on the way the system is set up and the way vested interests are entrenched than on
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  the idealistic person coming in yeah anyone with the energy or enthusiasm to actually come in and
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  want to do anything who the hell would want to get into politics now um it is you know give
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  him all the rope they need you know just like let him do the thing let him try at least to do
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  something um city can't get much worse than it already is um I mean it's so funny I believe
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  history yeah watch my beer yeah yeah I honestly and like you I think it is more of an indictment
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  on the system you know the fact that yeah yeah someone comes in and they're like hey I've got
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  all these great big ideas and it's going to be interesting and it's like yeah okay all right here's
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  the playbook and they're like oh I can't do any of this stuff yeah exactly yeah that's right
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  I mean totally let's try to reform the port authority will it start by asking what the hell is
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  the port authority like who runs the port authority what do you like you know why is there a
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  port authority why is it called a foreign history is like the Pyramids yeah no one is you know
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  yeah exactly like is like can we get a train can we get an actual train to JFK instead of one that
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  you have to get off and get on to another train that goes to another car park that you have to
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  get a monorail from like is this is this the best we can do New York you gotta go through the unions
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  and the mafia you gotta know the right people you need an italian yeah exactly and you want to
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  extend the subway line by like three stops and it costs the same cost as it costs you know France
• 17:22
  to build its entire TGD network in some GDP of Belgium yeah that's right so we'll see how he goes all
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  right good luck uh Mem Donnie how have you found New York as a place to live like coming from an
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  extremely isolated uh I would say hedonistic sunny but maybe semi-medioca city like uh semi
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  if you don't want to be untied no no lovely place to sit with a beer
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  Perth is a great place to sit with a beer and gaze out over the waves of the Indian Ocean but it's
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  uh it doesn't it doesn't attract the world's best and brightest unless you're a minor if you're in
• 18:03
  mining correct then you're it's your home but how have you found the experience of living in New York
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  well I'm a cartoonist in a comedian so I uh yeah my parents are thrilled uh so I had a I had a
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  very tough time living in Perth trying to make that my full-time gig as a you know any anyone in
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  the creative arts will tell you you know anywhere in Australia really that it's a tough slog um doing
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  it as your only thing um but in Perth which I love I really do love Perth I'm going back for Christmas
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  I love it uh but you're right it is a great place to be a baby and have a baby and not a lot in
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  between because if you really are a young and you you have energy and enthusiasm to do a thing
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  as the Lord Mayor will tell you there there is this insane just brain drain to the East Coast
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  or overseas you know because I want to you know but if you have that inclination you can't really
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  do much this so I will say this um to answer your question New York is like drinking from a fire
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  hose versus living in Perth um uh the the good thing about Perth is you can kind of make your
• 19:17
  mistakes while no one's watching so to speak so you you can kind of hone your craft you can
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  like you got a warper and be an actor you can you know do your study as an artist or a whatever it
• 19:28
  is in a very small enclosed as you say the most isolated city in the world um and then when you're
• 19:36
  ready to you know sort of meet the big wide world you sort of come in with a lot of practice and
• 19:44
  mistakes behind you so they're like oh what what the hell do you come from you know you didn't you
• 19:48
  want to hear a minute ago well how do you know how to do all this stuff already so that is
• 19:51
  actually an advantage and I mean I felt the same way I'm talking to realize that about coming from
• 19:56
  Australia to the to the United States as well I guess Perth Perth to the East Coast of Australia is
• 20:02
  probably akin to Australia to the United States in the sense that like all of a sudden
• 20:07
  casting agents and agents and people who sort of thought that they knew the pool of people in
• 20:13
  New York were like oh who's this in fact I remember my agent you just reminded me I've completely
• 20:18
  forgotten this for 10 years but my first agent in New York was like it's extremely rare for people
• 20:25
  to find someone who is both completely new and experienced and that's what they get with an
• 20:33
  non-American like normally new people have no experience but here you are you have experience
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  from Australia you know what you're doing and you're completely novel which is a great
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  right point when you're coming into a new market yeah I think that's true I think you're quite right
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  and that hasn't really changed anyone who does come here fully formed does get kind of like oh wow
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  where'd you come from yeah and and I I did have unfortunately I've got I've had a just a litany
• 21:00
  of bad luck with that sort of thing like my agent died of COVID in the pandemic and then I know
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  it was pretty bad and then I got a new agency and they told me that all the Aussies fled
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  in the pandemic so I was one of very few left so that's in some ways that's very good and in some
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  ways I'm like oh wow really that's kind of depressing the last man standing the last
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  Australia yeah it's like I am legend yeah yeah exactly why don't you like the president of
• 21:29
  like the Grand Poo bar of like cartooning international globo cough globo I was in charge of
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  globo cough for many years I am what was that the national president of the national
• 21:43
  captain society yeah Australian customization and then the national
• 21:48
  cartridges yeah and and I mean what fascinates me about your career Jason is that like every one
• 21:54
  who produces content in this day and age is constantly bouncing around trying to find what the
• 22:01
  new platform is on which to express themselves and sort of dancing to the tune of whatever tech
• 22:08
  company is incentivizing them to either maybe it's going to be live video maybe it's going to be
• 22:15
  you know streaming or whatever it is and you know some people put all their eggs in one basket
• 22:20
  and then all of a sudden vine no longer exists and everybody's out of work but like clearly the
• 22:27
  lamest and most uncool format for content creation would be an old school cartoon strip that used
• 22:34
  to be printed on you know sliced up trees and delivered to people's houses in their daily
• 22:40
  newspaper and yet you make that work like what are what are cartoons in the 21st century?
• 22:52
  cartoons in the 21st century are what they were when they started which is dangerous
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  because they transcend language they transcend language barriers because they images for the most
• 23:03
  part um and that means you can sort of transmit an idea or a view or a perspective or a
• 23:10
  or you know galvanize a movement without anyone having to understand your language
• 23:18
  and it's the reason that visual language online is so powerful so memes are obviously viral you
• 23:28
  know anytime there's something visual that really just like encapsulates an idea or a thought or
• 23:34
  a you know a zeitgeist it just it just catches fire and goes viral more so than like a thousand
• 23:41
  wood think piece in the Atlantic um just because it's so much easier to digest and a cartoon has
• 23:46
  always been there um the trick is that now cartoonists are contending with two pretty big um I want
• 23:56
  to say bricks that have been dropped on our head one is the algorithm it doesn't like static content
• 24:01
  anymore it loves video and two is censorship on the left and the right um certainly right now it's
• 24:09
  on the right um there is always a sense in any uh country in the world that when people start to
• 24:18
  think outside of the orthodoxy um of the government or the culture of the day um and it's being
• 24:24
  driven by um a parrot like a satirist or a cartoonist or a comedian or something like that
• 24:31
  they're very quick to clamp down on that voice and it happens it's it's as reflickable as anything
• 24:37
  it goes all the way back hundreds of years um the internet being what it is and I saw bouncing
• 24:44
  around from you know vine to twitter to tiktok to the instagram to topstack and all these things
• 24:50
  um it really is sort of us just desperately sort of scrambling to keep uh you know
• 24:56
  mouths above the waterline to stay alive um because yeah as you say i mean dead trees uh that
• 25:03
  industry is done um frankly and it's sad but um but it's true i was in newspapers for nearly 20
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  years uh started doing editorial cartoons in newspapers and i absolutely loved it i loved the
• 25:14
  ink on my hands but i have to confess those days are done and i think substack and these sort of
• 25:20
  live streaming things that you and i are doing now and that i do in my substack are kind of
• 25:26
  i feel like it's just a natural evolution i guess um but yeah the way that i think is visual so
• 25:34
  any idea i have i try to distill it visually before i try and articulate it bugle
• 25:39
  i understand the the distillation of an idea visually from an artist's perspective wanting to
• 25:45
  portray some the images of something but the other component of cartoons obviously is the
• 25:51
  dialogue and the point as well certainly in a strip on it right so yeah what is the how do you
• 25:59
  get an idea or a joke or a point down to a point of concession that it's so tight
• 26:06
  that it can be represented in the context of a cartoon that's honestly the riddle every cartoon
• 26:12
  is solved it's the same it's it's one of those puzzles that we have to contend with it's word
• 26:18
  economy it's uh directing the audience's attention it's directing people's brains toward a perspective
• 26:26
  or an idea such that they can comprehend it and then maybe even ask questions about whether they
• 26:33
  think they agree or disagree more often than not the best cartoons don't um necessarily slam
• 26:41
  an idea uh using words um if they need to use words they do um but often it just starts a conversation
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  it's similar to this i mean i it it pushes back on an idea such that you test the rigor of the idea
• 26:55
  um and and check that we're all in agreeance on you know the the the provenance of the idea or
• 27:02
  just even the the the the the structure of it um i think a lot of cartoonists i'm i'm i'm biased
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  but i genuinely think the best cartoonists in the world are Australian um not myself excluded
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  i mean like pat olefront um i think is probably one of the greatest cartoonists who have ever lived
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  he's still around um Paul Rigby um i think there there are brilliant uh comic strip cartoonists
• 27:27
  who have come out of Australia as well Gary Clark Tony Lopez i think there are political
• 27:31
  minds that just happen to learn to use drawing as they're conduit for their ideas and for their
• 27:39
  it's like they they could have been a colonist but they became a cartoonist and they are just as
• 27:43
  incisive as the as the people who write uh but they have to be able to distill all those ideas visually
• 27:49
  in one panel instead of a thousand words yeah it read that's interesting i mean it it sounds when
• 27:54
  you say it not dissimilar to radio in the sense that there is uh in that brevity is like the only
• 28:02
  thing that you're really working with and i started out doing satirical comedy sketches uh and
• 28:07
  impersonating politicians and writing those sketches and that taught me that if you've only got
• 28:13
  60 seconds to make a point i mean in fact political cartoons from the newspapers were a great
• 28:18
  inspiration because i could just steal some of the ideas from them and then write them into the
• 28:22
  sketches as well because often they would put their finger on some particular aspect of political
• 28:29
  hypocrisy or something that i can then flesh out um but it's a great i think it is something that
• 28:35
  we are at risk of losing in the deluge of content where we can just ramble for an hour here and
• 28:42
  there's no real requirement for us to be like careful and concise and uh professional in precisely
• 28:52
  what we say and how we say it we can spitball and there's a lot of the world's full of spitballing
• 28:57
  at the moment even from like the present of the United States you know it's just like flying things
• 29:01
  out instead of take time to curate your perfect little work of art and say exactly what you say
• 29:08
  in the way that you say it the challenge of doing that is that then how do you not get paralyzed by
• 29:13
  perfectionism when you have to get the thing out and for people who don't understand what you were
• 29:18
  doing when you were a daily cartoonist i mean you were handed the keys to the longest running and
• 29:25
  most important cartoon in Australia which was a century old thing uh and that was syndicated all
• 29:32
  over the world into like the Bangkok post and all these different you know the Hindustan times in
• 29:36
  India and all over the world there would be this cartoon strip called ginger mags which was
• 29:41
  around since the 1920s and when you were in your early 20s you inherited it from the person who was
• 29:46
  doing it who died and so then every single day you have to come up with this thing
• 29:51
  how do you make it both like perfectly concise and also meet your deadline
• 29:58
  it's one of the most difficult balancing acts i've ever had to do and and uh the trick is the
• 30:04
  build systems i mean truly um you're always panicking as soon as you hand in your seven strips for
• 30:12
  the week there's no relaxing it's just countdown to when you panic about the next seven um and i
• 30:19
  you know there's all these weird little tricks and tips and things that everyone gives you and
• 30:23
  then you try and they don't work and then one thing does work and then it stops working after two
• 30:27
  weeks um that the conciseness is absolutely as you say it's similar to radio you really have to
• 30:33
  get to the point as quickly as possible you realize that people in the way that as they say you know
• 30:40
  you decide not to read Garfield after you've already read Garfield you know it's so easy to
• 30:46
  to read that you can't even accidentally not read it um it's it's the kind of thing at the kind
• 30:53
  of skill honing that down and just cutting out all of the flap and getting straight to the quick
• 31:00
  it's the kind of skill that takes a long long time and to be honest with you i did i was not qualified
• 31:06
  to do it when i first took it over i felt very i felt like a real dilatant i i did not think i
• 31:11
  was qualified to do it um but it's a it's a skill that you learn out of mad panic i mean i'm sure
• 31:16
  you're the same with radio where you learn on the air you you make your mistakes kind of all
• 31:22
  people are watching in a in a way you um you figure out the little things that do work and then
• 31:29
  double down on those and there's a point with uh certainly because i was doing political cartoons and
• 31:35
  i was doing the comic strip the comic strip was apolitical the political cartoons were very political
• 31:39
  and so i kind of had these i had this bipolar kind of these dual personalities um just by dog by the
• 31:46
  way uh these dual personalities he just wants to say i uh where i i had to change gears so it's like
• 31:55
  i had a persona you know when you were when you were doing sketch you probably had to
• 32:00
  re purpose yourself into these different in-person impressions that you had and and you kind of
• 32:06
  become this persona i was doing that with the comic strip i was writing and drawing through for one
• 32:11
  particular voice and because as you say it was a legacy strip it had a it had a style guide and
• 32:17
  it had a voice and then i had my political stuff which was me and uh yeah it's a real bipolar
• 32:24
  existence and as you say getting down to just what needs to be said and nothing more is extraordinarily
• 32:31
  difficult and uh same goes for comedy uh i know will mention it the other day it's one of the
• 32:36
  hardest things to do is just to be concise as i was not with this answer i mean that sense that you
• 32:44
  had when you were handed the you know the comic strip at the you know at what you you seem to be
• 32:50
  too young an age then you were not ready for it and you were an imposter and you weren't qualified
• 32:56
  for it i mean i think everybody has that sense don't they until they realize that actually
• 33:05
  nobody is qualified and everybody is just winging it to different degrees right there's no there is
• 33:13
  nobody you know when you're when you're in your teens you have this illusion that the world is
• 33:18
  run by judicious prudent people who know something that you don't and then in your 20s you realize
• 33:28
  oh everyone's the kid everyone's a kid wearing grown up suits and just you know the whole things
• 33:33
  held together with duct tape and twine no one's no there's nothing making up as they go along yeah
• 33:39
  so so why not me yeah i mean when you're in your 20s that's at your early 20s you think everyone
• 33:47
  else hasn't figured out and they're an expert and they're absolutely adapted everything and
• 33:51
  yeah that's what kind of brought on the the notion that i was not at all qualified um but yeah
• 33:56
  there's no better way to find out than to do it you know and i did do you still have that
• 34:04
  you know i have that with writing now i write on substagnally every day and i am not a writer
• 34:09
  Josh i'm not i'm a cartoonist i draw and i can do comedy that's my my two only employable skills
• 34:16
  a stand-up and cutturning uh too deeply unemployable skills uh but i do think that when i write
• 34:24
  i have enormous um imposition drum purely because i read a lot of other writers like i review
• 34:32
  i read sam harris i read you know these other people who have made writing there you know this
• 34:37
  sort of touched on this sort of skill that they've really honed over many many decades and so i
• 34:42
  do feel like i'm just like you know i'm in the kiddie pool in the right world i mean yeah i
• 34:49
  think every i still think that so many people feel that way i don't feel like i know what i'm doing
• 34:53
  when i'm writing but i know that uh as long as i just cut out all the words that aren't necessary
• 35:00
  and try to get to the point of what it is that i'm trying to say with a bit of levity then it'll
• 35:04
  end up being okay uh the the challenge then becomes are you producing the content whatever it is
• 35:12
  in order to try to get something like are you trying to uh at the risk of you know using
• 35:19
  horial cliches like audience capture or like chasing uh yeah clicks or something like that
• 35:24
  then the question becomes like what am i producing and who's it for and what what's it for is it so
• 35:30
  that i can get this next thing that i want to notch on my belt or is it to give people a laugh or
• 35:37
  is it to make them think or is it to increase my follow account like how do you think do you
• 35:44
  go through that checklist do you do that consciously or subconsciously subconsciously i mean i work hard
• 35:50
  to not produce content on the basis of metrics and uh clicks and things like that because i don't
• 35:59
  i don't think that's why people come to this show uh right so i think you have to work against it
• 36:06
  if you're not going to get i think that's it yeah i think it's a point of differentiation with you
• 36:10
  particularly is that you notice when everyone starts to slip into audience capture and start reading
• 36:16
  the comments and and then you know start producing these sort of derivative versions of the best
• 36:20
  performing posts um versus people who aren't afraid to celebrate the unsubscribed um you know i
• 36:26
  think you're in a field of people who are maybe you know as as comfortable as is to have a big
• 36:34
  audience it's i think more uncomfortable probably to compromise your integrity by just
• 36:41
  playing to the playing to the crowd um and i i always like they didn't have integrity in the first
• 36:47
  place so they don't have to portray their integrity like you know what i mean like some people are
• 36:51
  just like yeah you want me to have integrity i'll have integrity well what do you want me to say
• 36:55
  i'll say whatever you want um just like it sounds like a groucher box
• 37:01
  exactly that's right um but what how do you how do you what metrics do you use to know whether or
• 37:07
  not you're doing a good job so i used to do the same thing of of tracking metrics and looking at
• 37:14
  numbers and checking unsubscribes and all that stuff i stopped looking at that about two years ago
• 37:20
  and i turned off any notification if anyone subscribing or unsubscribing um and really just started to
• 37:28
  go well what's the worst that could happen i lose all the subscribe like what's the worst case
• 37:33
  scenario and every time i pushed that button to go all right let's try it it didn't happen the
• 37:40
  thing that i thought would happen when i said the thing didn't happen in fact the opposite happened
• 37:44
  they doubled down because all of a sudden they're like always i didn't think you'd say that and then
• 37:50
  i think with with substacking particular it's it's a great way to find your people but it's also a good
• 37:55
  way to keep a community of people who seem to enjoy or certainly for me and i wonder what it's like
• 38:04
  for you but for me it's people who they're not subscribing necessarily to the content they're
• 38:08
  subscribing to you they're here just to listen to you to watch you to breed you um and i i didn't
• 38:16
  know that when i first started and used that i started to use that a long time ago and was just
• 38:19
  playing to the crowd but then also terrified to upset anybody lest i lose subscribers and i just
• 38:27
  liked seeing the graph go up to you know like seeing that line and then i just got to a point i
• 38:33
  don't know what change so i just kind of snapped and went i'm just gonna save the things i want to
• 38:37
  say in my voice and draw the things i want to draw in the way i've drawn because after years of
• 38:42
  drawing in someone else's style and writing in someone else's voice i was like it's and it sounds
• 38:47
  morbid but it's like if i die tomorrow what am i gonna regret i'm gonna regret not saying the things
• 38:52
  i wanted to say in the way i wanted to say them so i just kind of started doing that and the
• 38:56
  graph went like this yeah it was insane yeah as wild it was counterintuitive but that's what happened
• 39:01
  what do you think you were tapping into that i think it was a combination of just vulnerability and
• 39:09
  just being very authentic very real i i wasn't sure good coding anything i wasn't trying to
• 39:15
  make myself look good certainly i mean my reflex as a comedian is to slip on my own banana
• 39:19
  PLA i'm i'm the first to you know take myself down a notch before anyone else but but also i
• 39:26
  i wasn't sparing any i i took my prisoners it was it was very much i i'm gonna tell you what i
• 39:31
  think about the things i think without hedging or without sort of saying well listen i know some
• 39:37
  people like this but here's what i think it was just here's what i think see me in the comments
• 39:41
  yeah um what do i say in the comments you can argue i'll be over here uh yeah
• 39:48
  stringing my decorate uh it's interesting Jason you saying that when you had to be fulfilling a
• 39:55
  role on behalf of another institution that that was tricky because it's both constraining
• 40:04
  to have to have the impromarter of this centuries old like strip that you're now
• 40:13
  producing but it's also i imagine an ego boost in the sense that i am now the sort of the voice
• 40:21
  behind the curtain the puppet master of this thing that i didn't create but that i'm now a
• 40:26
  custodian of uh i mean i got a glimpse of that when i had a radio show on the public broadcaster here
• 40:32
  where yeah the downside was i can't say whatever i believe but the upside is like i'm the voice of
• 40:39
  the public broadcaster like when i'm talking is this it's this institution that's yeah talking
• 40:46
  that i'm talking on behalf of i'm much happier now that i can say whatever the fuck i want but i'm
• 40:53
  also i also am sad to have lost like now i am just a guy with a podcast who's talking you know what i
• 41:00
  mean there isn't like i don't have a green check mark of like authority that the institution that
• 41:06
  a revered institution is bestowing on me how do you wrestle with that if at all i yeah it's a really
• 41:11
  interesting insight because get a humans well if you listen to this much of the episode then
• 41:17
  you must enjoy it presumably unless you're just releasing from masochistic reasons uh so you
• 41:22
  should listen to the rest of it and the way you do that is by subscribing to the premium feed where
• 41:26
  you not only get to hear the rest of this delightful conversation and trust me oh it gets better
• 41:31
  than what you just heard uh but you also get to hear no ads zero ads and previously up until now
• 41:37
  you had to go to the old sub stack to do that and follow me on sub stack and add one more platform
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  to your life if you're not already on sub stack uh but here's the thing we're now on apple uh premium
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• 42:02
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• 42:07
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• 42:13
  freer more freewheeling attitude towards the things that we can talk about uh a way to steal man
• 42:18
  our opponents and to take the most gracious approach towards disagreement that is what you're voting
• 42:23
  for when you vote for uncomfortable conversations by going into your apple podcasts and clicking
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  subscribe uh i love you if you don't do that that's fine i'll see you the next free episode i guess
• 42:34
  take care