Beginnings

On today's episode, I talk to singer/songwriter Peter Salett. Born in Princeton, NJ, Peter grew up near Washington DC in Columbia, MD. As part of the New York arts scene in the 1990s, Peter crossed over with the vibrant film and comedy scenes at the time and has written or contributed to the music for a number of films including Wet Hot American Summer, Keeping the Faith, The Ten, The Baxter and F...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Laura Ballance. Originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, Laura moved around a fair amount as a child, eventually ending up in Chapel Hill for college where she met Mac McCaughan, who convinced her to be in a band. That band is Superchunk, who over the last 36 years have released twelve albums, numerous EPs, compilations and live albums and created one of th...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Carson McHone. Originally from Austin, TX, Carson has been playing music live since she was a teenager. Her first EP came out in 2013 and brought her immediate attention. Over the next five years, Carson built a reputation for herself in the country scene, and her second album Carousel was named by Rolling Stone as one of the "40 Best Country and Americana Al...

On today's episode, I talk to Eisner and GLAAD Award-winning comics writer Mark Russell. Born in Springfield, OR, Mark broke into professional writing with his book God Is Disappointed in You, a modern retelling of the Bible. This led to comics work writing Prez for DC in 2015 and a number of other comics in the last decade including The Flintstones, Exit, Stage Left!: The Snagglepuss Chronicles,...

On today's episode, I talk to cartoonist Rory Blank. Originally from Carrollton, Georgia, Rory eventually ended up in Austin for college, where he began making cartoons for the student newspaper. In the early 20-teens, Rory began posting his comics online on places like Tumblr and Twitter and began to gain a following. Most recently, Rory was voted the Best Cartoonist in Austin in the 2025 Austin...

On today's episode, I talk to writer and showrunner Selwyn Seyfu Hinds. Originally from Georgetown, Guyana, Selwyn and his family moved to Brooklyn in the 1980s, when he was 14-years-old. After graduating from Princeton, he began writing for The Village Voice. Then in the late 1990s, he became a hip-hop critic and then editor-in-chief at The Source magazine. As a TV writer, Selwyn wrote for Jordan...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Daniel Littleton. Originally from Annapolis, MD, Daniel's first band The Hated was part of the first wave of hardcore/post-punk/emo in the 1980s. In 1991, Daniel and Elizabeth Mitchell began recording together as Ida. They released their first three albums on the formative indie label Simple Machines, and as the '90s progressed they became loosely associated...

On today's episode, I talk to Eisner Award-winning comics writer Kelly Sue DeConnick. Born in Columbus, OH, Kelly Sue moved around a lot as a child and eventually got into comics professionally through adapting translations of manga. Since the mid-aughts, she has jumped between creator-owned work for publishers like Image such as Pretty Deadly and Bitch Planet, and work-for-hire at Marvel and DC,...

On today's episode, I talk to comics creator Michael DeForge. Originally from Ottawa, Michael had been making mini- and webcomics for years before he created his first "real" comic Lose, which was published by Koyama Press in 2009. Since then, he's published over a dozen books and collections through publishers like Koyama and Drawn & Quarterly, and also worked as a designer on Adventure Time for...

On today's episode, I talk to musician David Bazan. Originally from Phoenix, AZ, David started Pedro the Lion in 1995, and his first full-length album It's Hard to Find a Friend was released three years later on Jade Tree. In 2005, David recorded a more synthesizer-focused album as Headphones, and then a year later, Pedro the Lion broke up. David continued to record music under his own name, relea...

On today's episode, I talk to Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner of the band Tune-Yards. Started by Merrill in the mid-aughts, Tune-Yards first official release Bird-Brains came out in 2009 on 4AD. Almost immediately, the band began to garner acclaim from Pitchfork, the Village Voice and many other publications. After the release of Bird-Brains, Merrill moved to Oakland where Nate lived, and since th...

On today's episode, I talk to Constance Keane, Jamie Hyland and Sean Nolan of the band Dublin and London-based band M(h)aol. Formed in 2014, the band released a few EPs and singles in their early days, but it wasn't until 2023 that they released their first, full-length album Attachment Styles. A mere two years later, they've put out their second album Something Soft on Merge Records, and it's a d...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Maia Friedman. Originally from Los Angeles, Maia's family moved around to different California locales, and eventually after college Maia ended up in New York. She formed the band Uni Ika Ai in 2016, joined Dirty Projectors in 2018 and began the band Coco around 2020. As a solo performer, she's released two albums, her first Under the New Light in 2022 and he...

On today's episode, I talk to political cartoonist Dwayne Booth AKA Mr. Fish. For over 20 years, Dwayne has been creating political cartoons for publications like Harper's Magazine, Truthdig.com, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones, The Advocate, and many, many others. In addition, he was an animated character designer for Bento Box Entertainment and is the subject...

On today's episode, I talk to musician David Longstreth. Originally from Southbury, CT, David recorded his first album The Graceful Fallen Mango after dropping out of college. After returning to finish his degree, he began recording under the name Dirty Projectors, and in 2003, Western Vinyl released their first album The Glad Fact. They continued to record albums and slowly built a name for thems...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Krisitin Hersh. Originally from Atlanta, Kristin's family moved to Newport, RI when she was six. Here she met Tanya Donelly, and they formed Throwing Muses when they were teenagers. After moving to Boston years later, they quickly became part of the burgeoning scene that produced everyone from the Pixies to the Lemonheads, and the band similarly found success...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Tina Halladay. Originally from Long Island, Tina met Matt Palmer, and Kyle and Hart Seely in college, and formed Sheer Mag in 2014 after they had all moved to Philly. From 2015 to 2016, the band released three EPs - titled I, II and III - and then performed at Coachella and on Seth Meyers, and since then, they've steadily built a following. Their next two alb...

On today's episode, I talk to musician John Davis. Growing up in Cambridge, MA, John formed The Folk Implosion with Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr.'s Lou Barlow in the early 1990s. Their first album 1994's Take a Look Inside was a brilliant lo-fi pop record, and then a year later, a song of theirs on the Kids soundtrack blew up, and in the diverse atmosphere that had been created in Nirvana's wake, the b...

On today's episode, I talk to cartoonist Anders Nilsen. Growing up between Minneapolis and the mountains of Northern New Hampshire, Anders is the artist and author of ten books including Big Questions, The End, and Poetry is Useless. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Poetry Magazine, Kramer's Ergot, Pitchfork, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His comics have been translated widely ove...

On today's episode, I talk to comics creator Daniel Warren Johnson. Originally from Massachusetts, Daniel started in the world of cartooning with his web-comic Space Mullet, which ran from 2012 to 2017. This led to work at Dark Horse, and eventually Image published his comic Extremity, which netted him an Eisner Award nomination (he would go on to win four for other things). Since then, he's creat...

On today's episode, I talk to musician and cartoonist Jeffrey Lewis. Originally from the Lower East Side, Jeffrey has bounced back and forth between his two loves comics and music for most of his professional life. As a cartoonist, Jeffrey's longest project was Fuff, which he wrote and drew from 2004 to 2020. He also created Revelations in the Wink of an Eye (My Insane Musings on Watchmen, from Co...

On today's episode, I talk to Emmy Award-winning writer Jack Pendarvis. Originally from Mobile, Alabama, Jack has been writing books, articles and TV for decades. HIs first book of short stories The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure was published in 2005 by MacAdam/Cage, and since then he's written eight other collections, novels and books of poetry including Awesome, Your Body is Changin...

On today's episode, I talk to musician Bob Mould. Originally from Malone, New York, Bob attended college in Saint Paul, Minnesota where he formed Hüsker Dü in 1979 with Grant Hart and Greg Norton. One of the most well-known bands of the hardcore punk era, Hüsker Dü released six albums, mostly on SST and then on Warner Bros. before breaking up in 1988. After this, Bob began performing under his own...

On today's episode, I talk to artist Jamie McKelvie. Born in London, Jamie came to prominence in the world of comics through his collaborations with Kieron Gillen. In 2003, the two started a comic strip in PlayStation Magazine that lasted for three years. This led to their book Phonogram in 2006, and its subsequent sequels, as well as Young Avengers and The Wicked + The Divine. He's also illustrat...

On today's episode, I talk to TV writer Josh Zetumer. Originally from San Diego, Josh broke into screenwriting on the back of a script that got on the Black List. This led to working on Quantum of Solace, which led to the 2014 RoboCop reboot and the Peter Berg-directed Patriots Day in 2016. Most recently, Josh adapted and showran the FX show about the Irish Troubles, Say Nothing, which was easily...