This one gets pretty raw. No surprise, really, given the nature of Sam Zabel And The Magic Pen, a semi-autobiographicalish comic that deals with the nature of and relationship between creativity and depression, kicking things off with a chapter titled “Anhedonia,” an inability to experience pleasure that arises from melancholy states. Of course, it’s not all gloom and doom. When New Zealand cartoonist Dylan Horrocks stopped by my office in lower-Manhattan, we conducted a long and wide ranging conversation that hit upon pieces from throughout his career, from the beloved 1998 graphic novel Hicksville, to his sometimes controversial run on the DC comics series Bat Girl. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“It's a good story,” Joe Biel wrote in an email from a few weeks back. “It’s our 20th anniversary book and my big reveal is that I have Asperger’s.” When Good Trouble comes out from Microcosm in March, it’s bound to cause a stir in the company in which Biel’s publishing has played such a central role over the past couple of decades. It’s deeply personal to a fault, exploring Biel’s work, relationships and the role his diagnosis has played in both.  Not that the deeply personal is anything new in the small press world, but the writer takes care to offer as much insight into his own development as possible, learning important lessons about himself in the process. It’s a fascinating look at self-publishing, punk ethos, and the nature of autism.  In a followup to our wide ranging conversation from earlier this year, Biel and I hopped on Skype for a bonus conversation about his diagnosis, the process of writing the book and where he goes from here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

He calls it “the curse of being multi-talented” and insists that it is, in fact, a curse. Musician, author, politician, comedian, and all around gadfly, Kinky Friedman is one of the those rare multi-faceted artists who is arguably equally well-known for several of different endeavors. Reflecting upon his singular career at 70, Friedman hesitates for a moment, invoking the curse with the suggestion that he may have found more fame, had he simply buckled down and focused on aspect at the expense of all others. But in 2006, for example, the call for public service trumped the rest, as the self-proclaimed Original Texas Jewboy threw his 10-gallon hat in the ring, challenging incumbent Republican candidate Rick Perry for the role of governor of the lone star state. Two decades prior, he penned a long string of hard-boiled detective books inspired by the likes of Raymond Chandler. This year Friedman returned to music with The Loneliest Man I Ever Met, his first studio album in 35 years, a set of songs that caught critics completely off-guard, trading acerbic standards like “Asshole From El Paso” and “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore” for restrained and musically minimalist covers of arts like Tom Waits and Dylan. Though, as our half-hour together can happily attest, all the reflection in the world can’t stop Kinky from being Kinky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When I asked for interview suggestions for my five day work trip to Berlin, Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon suggested Olivier Schrauwen, heaping praise upon the Belgian expat and categorizing him among the top living cartoonists.And indeed, the trip halfway around the world afforded a rare opportunity to speak with the Arsene Schrauwen cartoonist, who, in spite of growing acclaim within the comics literati, hasn’t granted all that many interviews over the years — particularly with the English speaking press. Schrauwen agreed, meeting me at Modern Graphics, a wonderful independent comics shop located in the German city’s Kreuzberg district. He arrived on his bicycle after I’d just finished spending some ungodly number of Euros purchasing an armful of comics and minis. We found a sidewalk cafe on the corner and drank beers as trendy Berliners passed by on their way to do some afternoon shopping. An ideal setting for an utterly fascinating conversation with a singular cartoonist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It had been eight or so years since I last interviewed Raina Telgemeier. After a few years spent adapting the beloved young adult series The Babysitter’s Club into a handful of graphic novels for Scholastic, the cartoonist was getting ready to branch out on her own. Telgemeier was understandably nervous ahead of the book’s debut, unsure whether or not she would even be able to find a publisher. As of this week, Smile has spent an astonishing 173 weeks on The New York Times’ Graphic Novel Best Seller List, since joined by three more Telgemeier titles, to monopolize four of the list’s top ten spots at last count. The word “phenomenon” doesn’t quite cut it. No other single YA cartoonist comes close — an really, one would be hard-pressed to find any one cartoonist who has experience so much success in such a brief period. Naturally, Telgemeier can be a bit tough to pin down, but after months of trying to meet up, we finally managed to carve out some time to sit down over some Greek food in our mutual neighborhood of Astoria, Queens to discuss her meteoric rise on of comics’ most beloved artists. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“It comes down to a lot of educated guessing and trying to handle it like a grown up,” explains Jaime Hernandez. We’re seated on a curb outside the San Diego Convention Center and the subject of the Love and Rockets cartoonist’s propensity for strong female protagonists has come up. For Hernandez, writing women is second nature. Writing men, on the other hand — that’s where things get difficult. ”I guess because I am a guy, I would get very self-conscious when I write men. The very first time a woman told me they liked the way I write women, I was gone, man. No holding back.” The cartoonist is kind and candid discussing the 33 year history of alternative comics’ most beloved series. No question is off limits as we sit somewhat uncomfortably watching costumed foot traffic and loud pedicabs pass by. It’s a terrific conversation that’s as wide ranging as it is casual about superheroes, keeping things interesting after three decades, and why that new Mad Max movie wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I first encountered Ed Piskor’s work through the cartoonist’s collaborations with the legendary Harvey Pekar. The duo released the book Macedonia in 2007, highlighting The American Splendor author’s work to push non-fiction storytelling forward in the medium by highlighting cultural struggles in the Republic of Macedonia in comics form. It was no doubt a formative experience for the cartoonist who would rise to even greater fame in the indie comics community half a decade later with the release of the first volume of Hip-Hop Family Tree, a sweeping on-going series highlighting the music’s rise from the streets of the Bronx to the driving force of international popular culture. Also recorded at San Diego Comic Con back in July, part two is a chat with cartoonist and fine artist Marc Bell, who hilariously explains why his attempts to tell a straight forward story with his latest book, the delightful Stroppy on Drawn & Quarterly, went so horribly wrong.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was one of the most surreal things I’ve experienced, legendary civil rights leader turned congressman John Lewis leading a procession of small children through the packed halls of the San Diego Convention Center during rush hour at Comic Con.Turns out it was even more amazing than any of us suspected. Without telling anyone, the Congressman had gone full-on cosplay, recreating what he had worn during the Selma to Montgomery march 50 years prior, right down to the apple he carried in his knapsack. It was, as one might suspect, a packed weekend for Rep. Lewis, who was attending Comic Con along with March collaborators Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell to mark the release of the trilogy’s second volume. We did, however. manage to sit down with all three (first Lewis and Aydin and then Powell) to discuss the powerful graphic novels. Rep. shed light on his history, his thoughts on the current state of the struggle for equality and Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, the $0.10 comic book that influenced a generation of civil rights activists. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In one sense, perhaps Comic Con is the ideal setting for this conversation. It’s a conversation about authenticity, about the unintended artifice of a sketchbook created for public consumption. By all other measures, however, it’s completely bizarre. The show occurred a week or so after the release of Ander Nilsen’s new book, Poetry is Useless. A loud and boisterous setting for a low-key artist making low-key art. Nilsen recommended a spot behind the San Diego Convention Center — a small island of grass and shade with pedicabs whizzing by on either side blaring top 40 hits. Even so, it’s a fascinating conversation about the creative process, letting art happen, and the ups and downs of dealing with grief in a public forum. And cosplay, naturally. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The moment I heard Alex Winter was working on a Zappa documentary, I wanted to get him on the phone again. For starters, their was our first conversation, which ranks among my top RiYL episode — and then there’s the fact that I’m constantly on the look out for someone to help gently nudge me into the musician’s massive and sometimes impenetrable back catalog. As Winter quickly notes, however, that’s not his job. Nor is it the job of his forthcoming documentary. The Deep Web filmmaker is far more interested in Zappa the man and polymath, examining his strange and singular career outside of music, including his increasing involvement in social activism.  It’s another fascinating conversation with Winter about Zappa’s legacy and why it’s was so important for the director to go beyond the standard rock-doc. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We delve into insecurities almost immediately. It’s a surprising way to kick off a conversation with an artist infamous for going topless at regular intervals in public gatherings. Surprising, but appropriate, given the nature of Haspiel’s new collection, Beef With Tomato.The cartoonist, who’s made a name for himself with Jack Kirby-influenced takes on the superhero genre such as his own Billy Dogma, takes a far more introspective turn in this latest collection, pulling together short autobiographical pieces documenting his move from Manhattan to Brooklyn. It’s a collection no doubt inspired by Haspiel’s work with autobio masters like Harvey Pekar and Jonathan Ames, the latter of which helped the artist score a Emmy Award for his work on the much beloved HBO series, Bored to Death. In the course of the hour-long interview, we discuss Haspiel’s long list of collaborators, a push toward minimalism and his self-imposed growth as a storyteller. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As we prep ourselves for the onslaught of belated Comic Con interviews, here’s a trio of quick conversations with comics creators, Kate Beaton, Jeffrey Brown and Jeff Lemire. Our conversation with Beaton occurred at the Scholastic offices in the weeks leading up to San Diego. The Hark a Vagrant cartoonist was in town to promote her new kids book, The Princess and the Pony, which centers around the friendship between a young girl and her portly equine friend. We caught up with Jeffrey Brown who was wandering the halls of the San Diego Convention Center in between panels about his own recent success with younger audiences, thanks to his unique take on the Star Wars franchise through books like Darth Vader and Son and Jedi Academy. It’s a galaxy far away from the manner of introspective autobiographic work he was best known for the last time we spoke. And speaking of fascinating career trajectories, we sat down with Jeff Lemire to discuss how the author of the idiosyncratic Essex County series went on to become one of the most prominent writers of mainstream superhero books. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With his Seattle City Council campaign behind him, I suggested to John Roderick that we sit down for a short conversation to reflect on the run.  But as fans of the Long Winters singer’s popular podcast Roderick on the Line are no doubt already aware, when it comes to John Roderick, there’s no such thing as a short conversation. The Pacific Northwestern polymath’s knack for nuanced conversation may not fit in particularly well in the soundbite-driven world of stump speeches, but it makes for an extremely compelling podcast for anyone interested in the a conversation about running for office from someone who’s more than happy to discuss all of the gory details. We’re running this as a bonus episode, since the conversation was conducted remotely, but hopefully you’ll get as much out of it as any installment of the regular show. You can also find a longer RiYL conversation with Roderick here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This conversation with Bobby Tisdale begins with a story in which he picks a scab until he starts bleeding on a woman on the subway, segues into a conversation about the time a kitten bit into his scrotum and then proceeds to snowball from there. I had some semblance of what I was in for when we sat down following his brief set at the QED performance space in Astoria. The comedian doesn’t hold much back on stage, a quality that translates well into a one-on-one interview. In a wide ranging conversation with the Bob’s Burgers actor, we discuss the process of discovering one’s voice as a standup, finding happiness and what to do when all of your friends become wildly successful. Tisdale also reveals the details for his dream project, which I attempt to convince him to follow through on. In fact, we make a handshake agreement during the interview to conduct a followup interview when the podcast finally airs — so stick around until after the intro to find out of the status of the Bobby Tisdale variety special. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some days nothing goes right with an interview. Other days the stars align and you score someone like John Leguizamo on a bit of a whim, because he happens to be promoting a new graphic novel at Book Expo America. This, as you’ve already gathered, is one of the latter. Due out in October, Ghetto Klown is the actor’s first foray into comics, an adaptation of the 2011 one man Broadway show that scored him Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards and an HBO special. Drawn by  Christa Cassano and Shamus Beyale, the book find Leguizamo spilling the dirt on some of his best know acting gigs, from To Wong Fu to Romeo and Juliet and the Steven Segal action vehicle, Executive Decision. We discuss some of the best stories, Leguizamo’s love of comics and whole lot of therapy in a fascinating behind the scenes interview at BEA Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The contents of this interview originally appeared as a Q&A for my day job at TechTimes. I enjoyed speaking with Mike Mignola so much I thought it would be fun to run the piece in its entirety as a bonus episode on this here podcast — and besides, as is so often the case, there are some intricacies that just don’t translate in transcribed form. I spoke with Mignola ahead of the release of Hellboy in Hell #7, the latest issue of the on-going series that finds the cartoonist returning to writing and drawing the hybrid demonspawn he helped bring into the world. The conversation touches on Mignola’s work on the series, his relationship with his best known creation and how the pair of Guillermo del Toro impacted his feelings about old Hellboy. It’s a fun and quick chat — and a rare phone conversation for us. But hey, that’s why they’re called bonus episodes, right? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nothing says reunion of old friends quite like a few cups of tea and a couple of microphones. It had been a year or two since I’d last seen my former Engadget colleague and current world record holding blogger Darren Murph, so I suggested a sit down at my favorite combination tea house/impromptu podcast recording venue when he found himself in the city for a few days. In addition to his PR day job, Murph is an incredibly prolific writer who has penned a 17,000+ blog posts and a number of electronics guides. His latest book, however, is by far his most personal. The self-released Living the Remote Dream is a sort of bible for the blogger’s world traveling, remote working lifestyle. Murph and I sat down over some pots of green tea and discussed our glory days of gadget blogging and surviving the rapidly changing world of digital publishing. As with Murph’s latest book, it’s one of the most personal episodes of RiYL, along side the conversation with fellow former Engadgeteer Tim Stevens about life in the trenches of tech journalism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The indie comics booths present a perfect sort of eye in the middle of the Comic Con storm. Top Shelf, Drawn & Quarterly and Fantagraphics form a perfect sort of triangle where the costumed self-madness of the show takes a momentary reprieve. This is where Not Funny Ha-Ha has its unofficial debuts. A few week later, Leah Hayes will present the book more formally, reading from the abortion-themed graphic novel in front of a crowd at Los Angeles independent bookstore. For now, however, she discusses the story with curious parties who pass through the Fantagraphics booth. The stories have already begun flooding in, she explains as we sit down in a shady spot behind the San Diego Convention Center. The subject matter is nothing if not a conversation starter. Thus far, she’s already have several strangers describe their own abortion experience or the the experience of someone close to them.  Others have discussed different difficult moments — heck, over the course of our conversation, I find myself relating a story about recently losing a pet. It’s just that sort of book. Hayes and I discuss the impact of debuting such an intimate book in boisterous environment on a small patch of grass as cosplayers ride in the backs of rickshaws on either side of our little green island. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jeff Smith made comics safe for kids again. In 1991, the cartoonist began self-publishing, an all-ages adventure story rendering in a style reminiscent of legends Walt Kelly and Carl Barks that felt like a breath of fresh air in a world of sequential art utterly disrupted by Watchmen and the Dark Knight half a decade before. With 55 issues spread out over the course of 13 years, Smith created one of the medium’s great masterworks, a 1,300 cartoon page epic to rival the likes of the Odyssey or Lord of Rings, racking up ten Eisners and 11 Harvey Awards in the process. After a decade and a half in Boneville, Smith abruptly shifted gears with RASL, a sci-fi tale of a dimension-hopping art thief also published on his own Cartoon Books. Shortly after the end of RASL’s run, Smith once again pivoted, exploring the world of Webcomics through Tüki, the largely wordless tale of African tribesman who dared venture to other continents. We sat down with Smith at Book Expo of America to discover his wideranging and pioneering works, the wild world of self-publishing and how his hometown of Columbus, Ohio has been transformed into Comicstown, USA. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some context before we get started: I met Sam Seder five or so years back when he cohosted a video show in the Air America break room. By then the progressive talk station was on its last legs. Both Seder and cohost Marc Maron had been through the ringer with other programs and had ended up setting a desk directly in front of a vending machine in a radio station kitchen.After the plug was unceremoniously pulled, Seder did what countless abruptly unemployed comedian/radio personalities have since: he launched a podcast. The show borrowed the format, Jon Benjamin-voiced bumpers and title of an Air American show he had co-hosted with long-time friend Janeane Garofalo. Ten years after launching, The Majority Report is still going strong, featuring daily interviews with guests and left leaning political talk that would make many of the talking heads at MSNBC. When sat down at Seder’s downtown Brooklyn studio, the specter of Break Room Live was very much on my mind, thanks in no small part to a the fact that Maron had released an interview with Seder on WTF that very week. As such, there’s much talk about vending machines, political radio and how to deal with a friend’s new-found success. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I would have been more than content to discuss Wild Cat Academy, the New York City second chance high where Lisa Wilde has taught for more than a decade and a half. What resulted from our hour-long conversation, however, was one of the more wide-ranging interviews we’ve run for some time, hitting on subjects like life in the city and juggling, life, family and part-time creative pursuits. And the, of course, there’s the factotum of jobs that factor so prominently into Wilde’s bio, from baking, to the BBC to the teaching gig that gave rise to Yo Miss, a self-published mini-comic turned anthology by our friends at Microcosm Books. Wilde sent me a few issues while I was writing about zines for Boing Boing, and I knew she’s make for a fascinating interview. It took a year or two for us to finally line our schedules up, but when we sat down in the drawing studio of the Brooklyn home she shares with her husband and son, it was well worth the wait. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This isn’t the first time this has happened, the realization that an upcoming guest has recently been on WTF fills me with an immediate sense of dread. Surely Maron has mined this person for all of their conversational juices. Of course, that worry subsides almost immediately when the interviewee is Kevin Allison The former State member has built a second career for himself standing on-stage and not holding back. The Cincinnati-born comedian founded Risk! as a weekly live show in Manhattan, in August of 2009. A few months later, the series grew into a podcast, setting itself apart from myriad other storytelling radio shows and podcasts thanks to some well-known guests and a dedication to Allison’s fearless confessional style. Risk’s explicit mission statement involves guests, “tell[ing] true stories they never thought they’d dare to share in public.” As a frequent Risk storyteller himself, Allison is no stranger to brutal honesty. It’s a great quality in a podcast guest — and one that was happily on full display as we sat down in an empty bar in Astoria, NY ahead of a Friday night standup set. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’m pretty sure I first heard about Jeffrey Lewis through his music. By the time I arrived in New York City, the singer-songwriter was already a veteran of the same Lower East Side antifolk scene that gave the world the likes of the Moldy Peaches. Turns out the guy also makes some really terrific comics as well. And better still, he takes every opportunity available to combine the two forms, as with with a series of comic essays on the songwriting process written for the New York Times, or the year we asked him to perform at Manhattan’s MoCCA Fest in which he combined singing with an easel baring drawings for a lo-fi multimedia storytelling experience. I ran into Lewis once again at this year’s MoCCA comics show and he happily agreed to an impromptu conversation on a scenic Chelsea rooftop overlooking the Hudson. It’s a relatively quick (by RiYL standards) conversation, due to the rapidly dropping rooftop temperatures and Lewis’s need to get back to his unmanned table at the show, but it’s still a wide-ranging and interesting chat on the nature of creativity from an artist who seemingly does it all. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’m fairly certain the phrase “mommy blog” is tossed around once or twice over the course this interview. I only mention it here as I’m sure it sends up a few red flags, though undeservedly so. For starters, there’s the fact that The East Village Inky predates the phenomenon by at least a decade or so. Ayun Halliday has been producing the pocket-sized, photocopied zine for over 20 years now, having just released issue 55 when we sat down for a chat a local watering hole following the Brooklyn Zine Fest. The series is a breezy and largely lighthearted first-hand account of two artists raising children in the city, told through a series of stories, mini-comics and whatever other assorted odds and ends Halliday opts to include. The Inky also manages to avoid most of the preachy and rose-colored trappings of its successors, which are no doubt a large part of what’s made the long-running zine beloved even amongst childless readers. Despite living in the same metropolitan area, I’ve had a surprising amount of trouble tracking Halliday down — due, perhaps, to a busy schedule of work related and artistic pursuits, travel and the whole raising two children thing. When we final sat down in the backyard of a Brooklyn bar, I’m happy we were finally able to make it happen. It’s a wide ranging and fascinating conversation about child-rearing, artistic ambition and the give and take between the two. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For me, it goes Kids in the Hall, Kurt Vonnegut and punk rock, in that order. I shudder to think what sort of person I might have become had Comedy Central not started airing the Canadian sketch show in reruns right after show during my formative years. KITH presented new frontiers in comedy my tender suburban brain never imagined were possible. And Bruce McCulloch was their poet laureate. McCulloch was the weirdo in a group of weirdos. The angry young man with a penchant gruff voiced, world weary characters and flair for beat poetry, as evidenced by 1995’s criminal underrated comedy record, Shame Based Man. Spending a Halloween chewing on an unlit cigar with half a head of cabbage taped to my skull seemed like a no-brainer in high school, and when I found out that KITH were making a triumphant live show return to New York City, his publicist was the first on my list to receive an overzealous email. When he answered the door to his room, McCulloch gently ribbed the hotel employee for letting the riffraff through security. Once inside, the comedian opened up about his time the troupe and the youthful rebellion behind his new TV series, Young Drunk Punk. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jon Spencer is tired of talking about music. Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s been talking about it professionally ever since Pussy Galore emerged from the garages of Washington DC 30 years back. Or maybe it’s because he’s knee deep in the press junket for Blues Explosion’s 10th full-length, Freedom Tower No Wave Dance Party 2015. I met the musician at his practice space, a nondescript spot, located in a lower-Manhattan basement down a dank flight of stair a few days after I managed to catch him during the final show of his five boroughs tour.  It was an explosion ending at a brewery in Astoria, Queens, which found Spencer unraveling and wearing a giant American flag and hanging from a balcony while performing daring feats on rock and roll.  As excited as I am to talk about what I’ve just seen however, the singer really comes alive when the topic of comics arise, as he discusses collaborations with cartoonists like Paul Pope and Tony Millionaire, and his love for the magazine Heavy Metal, whose back page rock writing turned him onto rock and roll oddities like The Residents. Spencer also happily discusses the late night horror films that introduced him to the otherworldly sound of the theremin that has become tentpole feature of the group’s unhinged sound. By the end of the conversation, he pulls out a backpack full of the week’s scores at the nearby comics shop, Forbidden Planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark Stewart doesn’t want to talk about music. Least of all his own. A few hours ahead of The Pop Group’s appearance at The Bowery Ballroom in support of their first record in 35 years, he makes that much clear. He’s been talking about for decades. He’s bored. It’s not so much that the musician is a difficult interview as others have suggested, it’s more a matter of figuring out precisely what he wants to discuss. Sometimes finding that out is a simple matter of stopping the interview and asking outright. Tonight it’s politics. “Post-punk secret agents,” as he lovingly puts it. Contemporaries who have managed to find their ways into positions of power to help spread the word of progressive politics. For Stewart, spreading the word of political disarray means harnessing the power of pop culture press. It’s a wide-ranging, hour-long conversation that touches on aspects of global politics, cryptocurrency, popular music and creative inspiration. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Too Much Coffee Man creator became a member of the extremely rare two-timers club, with a second RiYL appearance. Shannon Wheeler was among the show’s original guests early on when the interviews were primarily recorded remotely. When he mentioned that he’d be in New York for work for a few days, it seemed as good a time as any to give the interview thing another shot, this time face to face. In a lot of ways, the interview is the platonic ideal of an RiYL episode, a casual cafe (or, in this case, tea house) conversation that likely would have gone the same way whether or not I’d decided to bring my microphone setup along with me.  Though, for the record, most of my conversations these days don’t begin with a discussion of Ayn Rand — but when Wheeler confided in me that he was attempting to watch the Atlas Shrugged film series, I couldn’t help myself. Also, I’m not sure I’ve talked that much about God in a single sitting in college, but when you put out an abridged adaptation of the bible like God is Disappointed in You, it gets to be a fairly regular topic of conversation. But don’t worry, much like the book itself, there’s plenty of laughter to be found throughout. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kevin Barnes has a cold. He looks tired, taking swigs of coconut milk from one of those oddly-shaped cartons, but his face is sparkling in the mid-day sun. It’s the first truly nice day in New York City in several months, and we’re jammed into a corner on the southside of a packed Union Square Park. Barnes asked if we could find a sunny spot to speak, so we walked the five blocks up from Webster Hall and now he’s sparkling in the sunlight with the residual glittering of last night’s show, like those teenage vampires of lore. It’s bright and it’s crowd and noisy as the city takes momentary respite from the longest, coldest winter any of us can remember. It’s hardly the ideal spot for frank and intimate conversation about the creation of art in the wake of lost love, but it somehow works, as Barnes and I discuss the Elephant 6 alum’s 13th record, Aureate Gloom and the painful separation from his wife that followed shortly after the release of his last album. It’s an honest and fascinating conversation with an artist’s whose musical themes are sometimes seemingly impossible to penetrate. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Several years ago, I began to notice a pattern emerging. Practically every book of interest I'd pick up at independent bookstores and zine fest had the same logo on the back: a small bicycle gear with a heart at the center. Microcosm had seemingly come out of nowhere to corner the market on things that fascinate me. Joe Biel formed the indie publishing empire out of his Cleveland bedroom in the mid-90s, moving Microcosm to greener Pacific Northwestern pastures of Portland, Oregon in 1999, where the company still remains, along with with a retail storefront baring the same name. After a year and a half of attempting to coordinate an interview, Biel and I finally found ourselves in the same place. He was kindly enough to make a detour to my Queens apartment during a brief stopover in New York following an appearance at bicycle policy convention in Colombia. It's a subject matter than has long been near and dear to the publisher, recently manifesting itself in the form of Aftermass, a documentary exploring Portland's cycling community. Biel and I sat down over a couple of cups of tea to discuss cycling, his filmmaking and the strange and fascinating world of independent publishing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The last time I saw Jean Grae in person, she was giving out free hugs in Union Square. The event was a unique attempting to cope with and have a discussion around the events unfolding in Ferguson. Grae and a group of fellow #TheHugStation attendants were offering a slew of hug varieties off of a lengthy Hug Menu. For the life of me, I can’t remember which variety I settled on, but I’m happy to report that hugging is, in fact, yet another one of her seemingly endless list of talents. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Grae was solely an emcee. She has, after all, issued dozens of records since she began rapping in the mid-90s (included several EPs in 2014 alone). But her ever-increasing portfolio also includes producing, writing, directing and starring in her an online sitcom (Life With Jeanie), writing and recording the audiobook The State of Eh and several live comedy shows like January’s Ghostbusters II ½: The Rise of Winston. And that’s all with the last year.Since 2008, Grae’s mission statement has more or less been stop talking, start creating. That year she opted to true embrace digital distribution as a means by which to eliminate the endless string of middlemen and the roadblocks and excuses they bring, telling her fans, "I don’t wanna complain anymore, I just wanna change some things about the way artists are treated and the way you guys are allowed to be involved, since it IS the digital age." Grae began releasing her work through Bandcamp, embracing the new found freedom of self-distribution to deliver a diverse array of work unfiltered to her fanbase. Her steady output means, among other things, that Grae is a tough person to pin down for an hour-long interview, but after a year of trying, we finally managed to sit down over a couple of drinks at a Williamsburg bar to discuss creativity, mentorship and moving to Los Angeles. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I knew Brooks Wheelan was moving. His PR reps had already alerted me to the fact that the comedian only had a few days remaining before moving on to greener entertainment pastures. And, of course, he hadn’t exactly been quiet regarding his intentions to leave the city after his unceremonious departure from Saturday Night Live (nor anything regarding those unfortunate circumstances).Even still, I wasn’t fully prepared to find his entire life in boxes when I arrived at his soon-to-be vacant Lower East Side apartment. He had one final standup set directly following out conversation, and that was pretty much it for Brooks Wheelman and New York City. All of his worldly belongs were now stashed away in U-Haul boxes, but there were, thankfully, a few beers left in the fridge. We grabbed a couple of beers and sat cross-legged on the floor. In what many might have reflected upon as a moment for regret or solemn reflection the comedian expressed only excited at a new life on a new coast full of unlimited possibilities. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when, in the email lead up to our interview, Vivek Tiwary told me he was pals with former RiYL guest, Mike Watt. When, after the interview concluded, he asked me who I was speaking to next, it also shouldn’t have caught me off-guard that he friends with Alex Winter, as well (who subsequently referred to Tiwary as, “a ray of sunshine” when I name-dropped him during the subsequent conversation). Tiwary has seemingly lived a million lives in the entertainment industry, rising through the ranks of the major label record companies, running a entertainment financing company, producing musicals like American Idiot at the forefront of a new wave of Broadway shows and, most recently, penning the Eisner award winning graphic novel, The Fifth Beatle. Perhaps more so than any other projects, that book was a real labor of love for Tiwary, the culmination of multiple decades of research about legendary Beatles manager Brian Epstein, a figure who perfectly embodied the writers dual fascinations with music and business. When we finally sat down to speak at Tiwary’s Manhattan office, the conversation was, fittingly, equally wide ranging, discussing Broadway production, film making, and Eddie Vedder’s basketball prowess. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While the old adage about truth making for great art certainly applies to standup, the equation can be something of a mixed bag. After all, comedy is often as much about deflection as it honesty, a slight of hand designed to distract from larger, painful and more personal truths. But honesty, it seems, isn’t really an issue for Guy Branum. The comedian, writer, podcaster and  former Chelsea Lately guest deals in truths — largely about himself. As Branum put it in a recent comment about the Trevor Noah Twitter dustup, "Good stand-up comedy cannot be safe; it must shock or surprise an audience. Some comics can do it magnificently with insights about socks, but the best do it with bracing commentary about the stuff that really matters to us." For Branum, such truths are largely internal, tackling obsessions, body issues and coming to grips with his own sexuality, in spite of a less than supportive environment. This quote from his new standup album, Effable, sums the whole thing up pretty nicely. "When my parents realized I was going to be gay, they figured they might as well raise the largest in the county. If there not getting grandchildren out of the deal, at least they could get a blue ribbon." And thankfully, for interviewers such as myself, such honesty isn’t designated for the stage alone. Freshly arrived in New York, Branum made the trip to my apartment for a wide-ranging and deep digging conversation about comedy and life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I never knew New York before the war. The towers were gone by the first time set foot in the city. But nearly a dozen years after making the place my home, I have a fundamental distrust for anyone resident who claims not to have a conflicted relationship with the city. Even in my relatively short while here, I feel as though I’ve watched the city undergo constant transformation. It’s to be expected to some degree in a city famous for never stopping, and life certainly can’t exist in a vacuum of nostalgia. But there’s forever a sense that something fundamental about the city is quickly eroding. Jesse Malin is an expert on the matter. The Queens native spent his whole life in the city, and his love of its native sounds is precisely what led him to plumb its depths, diving headfirst into the world of New York City hardcore at age 12, fronting the legendary band heart attack before officially entering his teens. Malin’s musical leanings have mellowed out considerably since Heart Attack’s Hilter Demo, but City has continued to play a key role in his songwriting, taking center stage for this year’s New York Before the War. We met up in the East Village ahead of the record’s release, grabbing a table at the back of Odessa’s, a rare reminder of old New York remaining in amongst the long ago gentrified East Village, directly across the street from Niagra, a bar co-owned by Malin that proudly boasts a rainbow colored Joe Strummer mural on the side that faces Tompkins Square Park. Malin and I ordered a couple of teas in the happily familiar location and talked collaboration, commitment, the Big Apple and The Boss. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Flood is my Beatles on Sullivan, my self-titled Velvet Underground record and Run-DMC on MTV. It was the first time I remember being keenly aware that an ever-expanding musical universe existed beyond the confines of the rock and Motown the radio played on the way to and from soccer practice.  It was a strange and idiosyncratic world of misplaced accordions, horn-rimmed glasses and lyrics that only began to take on some semblance of meaning after repeat listens. So I listened, over and over again on the cassette tape a friend had record on, the mystery only deepened by the lack of official art work.  I was in college by the time I realized I’d been getting key lyric to “Particle Man” wrong all these years—singing it at full volume in a car full of people who knew better. The sense of discovery is inextricably linked to the They Might Be Giants experience. It’s a tie that bonds so many of my generation, discovering in those days just before the mainstream adoption of the internet that maybe we weren’t so weird after all — or, perhaps more appropriately, that there were other weirdos out there just like us. Dial-A-Song is the most literal manifestation of the phenomenon, an old answering machine purchase by the band to get its music out into the world as John Linnell healed from a broken wrist and Flansburgh recovered from an apartment robbery. The duo advertised a phone number in the back of the Village Voice readers could call to hear the band’s songs. The band resurrected the project this year, through the decidedly less intimate medium of YouTube, with the ambitious goal of releasing a new song each week for the full calendar year. In this 100th episode, we discuss Dial-A-Song, the importance of partnerships and the role of discovery in art. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This one’s going to be a bit different, as you’ve no doubt gathered from the title. It’s a bit of an, as the Who so eloquently put it, odds and sods — interviews that never got their own standalone episodes for a number of reasons, which will be detailed below. Those of you out there who are looking for a place to start in amongst our nearly 100 episodes, I strongly suggest you turn back now. That said, I think there’s something in each of these worth posting. I’m a big fan of everyone featured here, and am happy that these are finally seeing the light of day, in some cases several months after first being recorded. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the real dangers of recording interviews is that plenty can change over the course of a few weeks. One interviewee lost her job of 17 years the week before that conversation was posted. Another didn’t get their show renewed. The news isn’t always bad, however. And in the case of artists like Sara Benincasa there’s a sort of unspoken understanding that five or 10 new project will be unveiled in the interim. The bulk of our hour-long conversation was dominated by Benincasa’s 2012 memoir Agorafabulous (now a newly-released audiobook), which tackles her struggles with agoraphobia, anxiety and chronicles her somewhat accidental early comedy career. Fittingly, we also discussed the ways in which the internet has affective creativity, leading so many to build a career from bits and pieces, rather than plugging away as some singular goal. Benincasa’s Twitter account is a testament to a writer who seemingly never slows down, and as I was readying this interview for a few weeks back, it occurred to me that we really ought to find a way to shoehorn fascinating new Kickstarter project into the mix. The comedian agreed to sit down for a rare Skype followup, setting aside 10 minutes during a teaching trip to Chicago. So there you have it, two interviews — or maybe one and a half — for the price of one. Which, incidentally, was free in the first place. What’s not to love? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If I’m being totally honest, it takes me a few minutes to shake the fact that I’m sitting across the table from Bill S. Preston as I unspool mic wires in the kitchen of some stranger’s Tribeca apartment. But if there’s stigma attached to having starred in a number of iconic films at a young age, Alex Winter shed it years ago. The career of the self-proclaimed “showbiz lifer” has been a fascinating one to watch over the years, as he transitioned from child/teen star to respected filmmaker, first through the uniquely absurdist comedic visions of his MTV sketch series Idiotbox and the Troma-esque feature Freaked to award-winning features like 2012’s Downloaded, a documentary detailing the rise and fall of Napster soundtracked by former RiYL guest, DJ Spooky. I caught up with Winter as he was in town filming the culmination of the followup, Deep Web, capturing the trial of Silk Road founder Ross William Ulbricht, which concluded three days before our conversation. Though the director was shockingly at ease despite having a number of interviews to conduct just over a month before the film’s premier. That film, which premiered this week at SXSW in Austin, complete with narration by once and future fellow Wyld Stallyn, Keanu Reaves, was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the focus of our conversation, from its birth as a Kickstarter campaign to the relationships he formed with Ulbricht’s family during shooting. Even still, it’s a wide ranging conversation from an accomplished director with no concerns about rehashing old gigs. And hell, when the conversation turns to a third Bill and Ted film, I’m not going to be the one to change the subject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“All the bull**** of the music industry dying,” Brian Rosenworcel explains, his passion drowning out the din of the packed Manhattan bar, “all the babies, all the egos, nothing really matters except the fact that we’re honing in on a classic pop album.” The babies, incidentally are his own, the drummer’s primary focus in the half-decade since the last Guster record. Maybe it’s the beer speaking, but Rosenworcel sounds damn excited about about Evermotion, convinced that the band’s seventh record just might be its best. It’s the sort of excitement you don’t find in a group approaching its 25th birthday. Perhaps there’s something to be said for taking a good five years between records. Around halfway through, multi-instrumentalist Luke Reynolds takes a seat at our table — a somewhat fitting later arrival for the band’s most recent addition, having joined Guster in 2010, after the release of their last record, Easy Wonderful. It all adds up to a fascinating peek into the of day to life of band that’s been doing its thing longer than many of its fans have been on this planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Art Bell will forever hold a special place in my heart. Coast to Coast was a mainstay as I drove late at night to fill in 3AM slots at my college radio station. The show opened up the true potential of late night radio for my sleep addled brain, strange night dwellers relaying stories of encounters with werewolf spirits and unidentified flying objects.In its own way, Welcome to Night Vale captures that mystery of the Land of Nye, through bi-weekly stories from a fictional town in the Southwestern desert, where paranormal is the status quo. The series, co-created in Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, clearly struck a nerve with the podcast listening public, quickly skyrocketing to a number one position atop the iTunes charts, beating out mainstays like This American Life and Radiolab with its scripted idiosyncratic tales of a small desert community, exploring the possibilities of of a longform episodic podcast well before Serial took the nation by storm. Cranor and I sat down at a teahouse in Manhattan to discuss the roots of the show, the seemingly endless dark mysteries of the Nevada desert and how we’re only beginning to explore the breadth of possibilities the podcasting medium has to offer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’d have been content to spend the whole time talking about Thelonious Monk. There’s a picture of the composer wedged in one corner of the home office located in the lower of Vijay Iyer’s Harlem brownstone. But while he invariably comes up over the course of the conversation, there’s far too much ground to cover to spend too much audio card space dwelling on the matter. And you get the feeling, sitting with Iyer for longer than a few minutes, that’s he’s never been one to stay in the same place too long. His creative impatience has paid off, winning the pianist a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2013 and a professorship at Harvard last year. And on a more selfish note, he’s got me thinking a lot more about contemporary jazz, a genre I’d—perhaps foolishly—written off in some stubborn decision somewhere along the line to not listen to anything recorded after 1975. But Iyer’s thoughts and records like this year’s intricately-woven Break Stuff form an extremely compelling argument that there’s still plenty of ground to be tilled in both that genre and the more ancient realm of classical — though Iyer, unsurprisingly, is not hung up with those sorts of tags. In this wide ranging conversation, we discuss Iyer’s creative growth, from learning to play violin at age three to his rise as one of the most celebrated jazz musicians of the modern era — including an ever so brief detour that landed him degrees in math and physics at Yale and UC Berkeley. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant isn’t as easy book. As the title implies, in deals in topics few are equipped to candidly discuss: family, aging, mortality. But long time New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast valiantly marches headfirst into a memoir of her parents’ decline armed with humor, insight and desk full of watercolors. The result is one of the best comics of 2014. I met Chast in a strange cavernous room below a luxury hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, following a talk and signing. We sat on a bench, discussing her work as a fascinating collection of fellow comics luminaries like Art Spiegelman and Charles Burns milled about between appearances. Given the subject matter of her most recent book, I wasn’t entirely sure what tone the conversation would take, but quickly realized that as with her work, Chast has a knack for making even the heaviest of conversational topics immensely entertaining. During our 40 minute interview, we spanned the cartoonist’s entire career, beginning with an envelope dropped off at the New Yorker in 1978, stuffed with 60-odd submissions. All of these years later, the artist The Comics Journal called, “the first truly subversive New Yorker cartoonist” has had well over 1,000 cartoons run in that most prestigious of periodic institutions and one of the most touching graphic memoirs in recent memory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The phrase “those who can’t, teach” runs through my head pretty consistently when I sit down in front of a blank page in an attempt to flex some creative muscles. It’s the curse of the critic, the curator, the teacher — anyone on the outside looking in who assumes their work, perhaps rightfully, will be subject to that added level of critique when they finally unleash it on the world. That, no doubt, is a large part of why it took Scott McCloud so damned long to bare himself in such a way. The artist has, quite literally, written the book on making comics — three of them, in fact. For decades, his work has been largely regarded as the gold standard for making and interpreting sequential art, a watershed moment in the academic approach to the form. Like so many on that side of the creative process, however, McCloud’s bibliography has long lacked a major, self-contained narrative work. In the 80s, the artist produced Zot, a manga-influenced light-hearted take on superhero books, but until The Sculptor, McCloud has never given himself a long-form opportunity to put into practice the rules he’d first committed to paper in the early 90s. A half-decade in the making, the new book shockingly lives up to the hype. It’s a masterfully constructed and pitch-perfectly paced take on the Faustian archetype with creative roots that reach back well beyond the publication of McCloud’s earliest work. I sat down with McCloud in a colorful room at First Second’s Flat Iron Building offices ahead of his speaking engagement at the 92nd st. Y to discuss The Sculptor, thinking critically about comics and the frustrating notion of the effortless artist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I feel a bit bad entering the hotel room. There was a bit of a miscommunication on timing, and Legs McNeil is clearly quite comfortable lying in bed watching Law and Order. It’s an episode he’s already seen multiple times, a fact he lets be known by rattling off the entire plot in a couple of quick sentences, so he’ll be able to give me his undivided attention as Detective Briscoe successfully apprehends some pure. McNeil and frequent collaborator Gillian McCain finished up an talk at the Rough Trade record store earlier in the evening, discussing their latest, Dear Nobody, a posthumously published diary of troubled young teenager, Mary Rose, though the pair had devoted most of the New York City trip to a forthcoming book focused on Charles Manson, which McNeil promises will shed new light on the well trod story — even if he’s admittedly a bit cagey on the specifics. McNeil and McCain’s first — and best-known — collaboration was 1996’s Please Kill Me, an oral history of punk rock’s early years that is widely regarded as the definitive document of the movement’s New York City roots. It’s a story McNeil knows as well as anyone, as the co-founder of Punk Magazine, the iconic fanzine that give the CBGBs movement a name. These days the author no longer calls New York his home, having traded in the skyrocketing rents and disappearing culture for a far more bucolic life in a small Pennsylvanian town, where he lives, writes and catches the occasional rerun of Law and Order. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The list of people I’ve cohosted ska shows with is a short one indeed. It’s like going into battle with someone, really — a battle that trades the gunfire and mortar of trench warfare for song request from teenage Reel Big Fish fans, but a battle nonetheless. It’s the sort of experience that forms life-long bonds. Our careers have taken divergent paths since then — both of us eventually coming to the realization that ska radio DJ just isn’t the lucrative career path it once was. Jordan has made a name for himself in the Los Angeles comedy scene, thanks in no small part to his role in podcasts like The Sound of Young America and a titular co-hosting gig on the long-running comedy program, Jordan, Jesse Go. After a hilarious stint cohosting red carpet and movie junket interviews for extreme sport cable channel Fuel TV, Morris landed himself a position as a writer on the popular Comedy Central series, @Midnight, a gig that recently brought him out to New York City for a week. We caught up over some whiskey and a couple of microphones in between whirlwind schedule of podcast appearances at a bar in Astoria, Queens to talk success, superheroesvmovies and, naturally, ska. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Practically every episode of RiYL has had the same format — two people having a long form discussion into two microphones. Given my portable setup, things get a bit more complicated when a third is added in, as is sometimes the case when interviewing band members. It’s not that I don’t welcome more voices, of course, it’s just that I don’t really have the setup to accommodate such things.  And then there’s the Birthday Boys. When I walked into the conference room at IFC, I was greeted by the entire sketch troupe — all seven of them. And as such, the first ten or so minutes of the conversation revolved around where we should position the chairs in order to get the maximum effective of seven different people sharing the same microphone. The good news is that thing pick up considerably from there, as the Odenkirk acolytes shed some light on their origin story and their seemingly overnight rise to fame in one of the funniest episodes we’ve ever recorded as the Los Angeles troupe discusses some of the bluer stories from the time they spent sharing the same house, Monkees-style. So sit back, relax and enjoy — but maybe put the headphones on if you’re planning on listening to this one at work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’m not sure where to start with one, but the gallery seems as good a place as any. It was, after all, the reason Jim Woodring was in New York for a particularly cold few days last week. Fine art has been the cartoonist’s focus off and on for the better part of a decade, bouncing between the world of galleries and the paneled pages on which he first made his name. It’s hard to believe, then, that the artist is only now having his first solo gallery showing. Honestly, though, that’s likely the least surprising revelation in this hour long interview. I defy you to have an extended conversation with the artist without having your mind blown a bare minimum of four or five times. Woodring has long used his comics work as a method for exploring his singular vision of reality, beginning in the 80s with the publication of Jim, which explored the artist’s dreams and long standing hallucinations in the form of autobiographical comics. His most beloved work, Frank, was a more fully realized world inhabited by assorted anthropomorphic beings, including the titular buck-tooth hero. The last time I spoke with Woodring, the artist was promoting Seeing Things, a collection of his charcoal drawings that presented an even more direct insight into his visions. At the time, the artist had seemingly turned his back on comics, but has thankfully returned to the medium with even longerform works. These days Woodring works in whatever medium best represents the images he’s attempting to represent as he walks through life, moleskin sketchbook in-hand. I ask to see what he’s been working on during his days in New York City and he happily stands up from his hotel bed and rummages around in his jacket pockets. Woodring is that rare and wonderful sort of interviewee who creates work that requires no additional discussion, yet is perfectly willing to discuss it ad nauseam when the time comes. The result is a frank and fascinating conversation tracing the course of the artist’s career, beginning with his very first frog hallucination. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.