An Army of Normal Folks - Second Place to Peyton Manning: And Other Lessons That Will Level Up Your Life (Pt 1)

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

For our Supporting Greatness series, two-time Emmy-nominated cartoonist Marshall Ramsey celebrates the Army of Normal Folks that shaped his life. And how we can be that Army for those around us. Plus, his fascinating stories about Peyton Manning, Barbara Bush, and his cousin Dave (yes, that Dave).Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

And I walked up to my dad and I said, I want to be an editorial cartoonist, which is probably the weirdest thing in the world for an eight-year-old to say. Yeah, an eight-year-old wants to be a cop or a fireman. Or a cop or fireman or go play quarterback for somebody. I mean, I played for the Falcons, right? And I could have probably started, you know, at that point. But I wanted to be an editorial cartoonist. And my dad, bless his heart, he gave the best answer ever.

He looked at me and he said, and you're going to be the best one ever. Wow. And that lit a pilot light in my heart that helped me get. through a lot of really weird moments on this career journey and career path because I knew what I wanted to do when I was eight years old. Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband. I'm a father. I'm an entrepreneur and I'm a football coach in inner city Memphis. Go middle college bulldogs. And the last part unintentionally led to an Oscar for the film about one of my teams,

not the middle college bulldogs. The movie is called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems are never going to be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits, using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks. Guys, us, just you and me deciding, hey, maybe I can help. And today, we have another edition of our special series, supporting greatness. And this time, it's with my buddy, Marshall Ramsey. I cannot wait for you to meet him

and learn how much you can impact lives through a healthy mix of encouragement and tough love right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Marshall Ramsey from Oxford, Mississippi, welcome to Memphis. It's good to be here. It was a long drive. Good to have you take that hour and 20 minute drive up. I guess. It took us 45 minutes, but I wasn't driving. Yeah, okay. Well, there you.

Did y'all go together? Yeah. Yeah. I told you this, Marshall lives around the corner from me. Yeah, we literally. They live like 12 houses apart. Oh, perfect. Yeah.

Go pick up your neighbor and bring them to a podcast day. Take your, take your neighbor to a podcast day. Probably the one and only time that's going to happen. Probably the one and the only time. Wait a minute. Yeah. Everybody, Marshall is a buddy. And I guess our. our weird friendship started probably 15 years ago shortly after undefeated released.

And I honestly don't know how we got in contact with each other. But let me tell everybody a little bit about you and then we'll get into all that. Today, guys, is our next installment of supporting greatness. For those of you've listened to us for a long time, you know what supporting greatness is. for those of you hearing us for first time or haven't heard a sporting greatness series, we interview folks occasionally who've achieved what we would call public greatness in some discipline and really explore their world a little bit, but it gives folks like Marshall an opportunity to pay homage to those who have supported their journey.

to get them to where they are today. We've interviewed people like Mike Rowe, Paul Young, the author of The Shack. We've interviewed Medal of Honor recipients and now Marshall. Okay, why am I here? Yeah. Well, interestingly, it's a good segue because I was thinking about this on the way over. For those of you who don't know Marshall Ramsey's name, I would bet you know or have been touched by him

because after having done over 10,000 cartoons, it is almost impossible if you read anything that you haven't seen something that Marshall has once drawn. What do you think about that? You know, it's weird. I was thinking about that a little bit this morning. You know, I had a cartoon that I did about Barbara Bush

a few years ago. That was pretty, people always say, what was the one that probably got the most fine? That one went so viral. It was, they even showed it during the funeral. I mean, it was in the family, loved it and everything else. But what was so beautiful about that cartoon, for instance, was that because it showed Barbara Bush reuniting with their daughter, Robin.

Who died at three. She died at three. The family did everything they could to help her. I mean, it was, you've got to think the science hadn't caught up to, and she had leukemia. And the science had not caught up to that, but they tried everything to save her. Well, apparently, when I thought of the cartoon idea,

and I was talking with Jenna Bush Hager about this, when I thought of the idea, because I'd heard she had COPD and they were taking off her support, oh, my mom had recently died of COPD. So I knew what that meant. And I thought, here's a woman who had everything, but she'd suffered the worst loss that any parent could ever suffer. She'd lost a child.

So I had them reuniting. Well, apparently, when I thought of that idea, at the exact same moment, George W. Bush, when I was on his knees talking to his mother about Robin because she had an oversized presence in that family. And so, I mean, I caught lightning in a bottle and didn't realize it, but what was so special about that cartoon, and this is something I think I always tell people that we're all artists

because we all create something that can change somebody's life and make their life a little bit better. Heard from over a thousand people who had lost children. And it wasn't just Marshall, love the cartoon. It was Marshall, I love the cartoon. Let me tell you about my child. Yeah. And it reminds me that I'll one day reunite.

with my child that I lost. Yeah, it gave some people some hope. So that's it. Marshall is an editorial cartoonist. His story about how he got there is really, really interesting, which we're going to unpack. And we'll talk about the people along the way of that journey that have impacted him the most,

thus supporting greatness. Who helped support your greatness? Who of this army of normal folks in the world that we would never have heard of or seen their work, but for their work in you, you would not have reached a level as a cartoonist that pretty much everybody listening to me. It's almost impossible. It's not seen something that you have done at one point or another, not even having known it. I mean, let's be honest, I've read, I've seen lots of cartoons, but rarely do I look down at the scribbled signature on the bottom corner and remember exactly who it was that drew it, even though it may have impacted me. And so in this weird innocuous way, in your discipline, you reach thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people often who never know you reached them in the first place.

I know, it's so funny. It's usually the people that are mad that figure out who I am. Those are the ones. That's right. So, hey, before we get in one cool data point two to build you up even more, you told me this during the pre-interview, that when you started being a full-time editorial cartoonist, there was like 200 of them across the country only,

which makes it even harder than being in the NBA to be one of those people. Yeah, there's more people in the NBA than there are successful editorial cartoonists. And there's maybe like, you thought like around 10, Yeah, 10 or a dozen, something like that. So let me give you a little bit, and then we'll get into it. He became an editorial cartoonist, like Alex said, when there were only 200 full-time cartoonists in the old country. Today you say there's maybe only 10. Full-time that work for newspapers.

Yeah. So small fraternity. Marshall has done work at the highest level. He's a two-time Pulitzer finalist, a Southeastern Emmy winner. And his cartoons are syndicated nationally by creator's syndicate. His work has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today. He's appeared on CNN and Fox News. And today he's the director of the Mississippi Media Lab, which is really interesting.

And I can't wait for you to talk a little bit about that. And the director of engagement for the Jordan Center at the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi, Ole Miss, Adi-Tati. And if you've not heard of Ole Miss, you can Google Lane Kiffin and see the misery. He has put an Ole Miss faithful lane. He's this guy, he coaches at LSU now. Oh, see, I graduated from Tennessee and then I now work at Old Miss. So I never have heard his name before. Oh, you've been burned twice by this guy.

Yeah, yeah. And so are the mattresses. So, Marshall, tell us a little bit about your track and along the way, who among the army of normal folks, these innocuous names that we've never heard that helped you get where you are today? I think it all starts with, I'm trying to think if it was me hitting my head

on the fireplace three times, if that's what gave me my start or the fact that I grew up, you know, kind of like Cassius. Yeah, Cassius, man. Oh, yeah, his story's incredible. That could be a whole podcast too. But no, so when I was a kid,

I was growing up in Georgia near Atlanta. I had two older sisters. My parents would make us sit at the dinner table and talk about what was going on in the news every day. It was really weird. It was before phones, obviously. I mean, phones still were connected to the wall. And one day I walked up to my dad, and this was think about 1976. So Jimmy Carter, our governor, is running for president.

And my parents were Republican, but I thought it was just cool that my governor's running for president. And I would look at these editorial cartoons on the pages. And there would be these great pictures of Jimmy Carter with huge teeth. I was going to say teeth. Yeah, teeth. That's what you think of. It was fantastic. And I was like, I love this. And I would sit there and I'd love to draw.

So my mom figured out really early to keep me quiet in church to give me paper and crayons, right? So she discovered I had a talent pretty early on. And I walked up to my dad and I said, I want to be an editorial cartoonist, which is probably the weirdest thing in the world for an eight-year-old to say. Yeah, an eight-year-old wants to be a cop or fireman or go play, you know, quarterback for somebody. I mean, I played for the Falcons, right? I could have probably started, you know, at that point. But, you know, I wanted to be an atoll cartoonist. And my dad, bless his heart, he gave the best answer ever.

He looked at me and he said, and you're going to be the best one ever. And that lit a pilot light in my heart that helped me get through a lot of really weird moments on this career journey and career path because I knew what I wanted to do when I was eight years old. And now, a few messages from our generous sponsors. First, please consider signing up to join the Army at normalfolks. us. By signing up, you'll receive a weekly email with updates about the Army and short episode summaries in case you happen to miss an episode, or you prefer reading about our incredible guests.

Please sign up. The more numbers, the more impact. We'll be right back. That's unbelievable. I mean, how many people really won't know what they want to do in their age? and do it. Well, you know, I realized, I was just generally lazy, so I figured that, you know, if I could draw pictures all day, that would be pretty cool.

A great story about your dad loved a water ski and the trauma he put you through because he wanted his son to do it as well. His methods of teaching water skiing have been banned in seven countries. They are now considered child abuse. What guys by age were considered good old-fashioned child rearing. I drank so much of the Tennessee River, I'm surprised I don't have gills. In fact, I had spinal surgery, so I've got a scar on my neck and I tell people that's what it's from. Well, I tell you what, so dad loved a water ski.

He water skied at 78. Now, that's unbelievable. Yeah, his name is Dave Ramsey, right? So you may have heard of Dave Ramsey. He's named after my dad because we're cousins, and so our dads are brothers. So the financial guru, Dave Ramsey, is my first cousin. Is your first cousin. That's right.

And he's named after your father. And my first name is Thomas and his dad's name is Tom. So they're, that's, yeah. It's like, wait, are you related to Dave Ramsey? I said, yeah, he's my dad, he's my cousin, and he's my son. And they're like, what? They're trying to figure that family tree looks like a switch, right? I'm trying to figure that one out.

No, dad loved a water ski. And so he wanted me to share in his love. He tried that with golf too, and that was a little bit bumpy also. So he took me out. My grandparents had a cabin on Fort Loudden Lake near Knoxville. So he took me out five miles down river because he didn't want me trying to escape, threw me in the water, and he said, you're not getting out of the water until you get up.

Well, apparently, in my genetic code, I'm part concrete block, right? So he's dragging his eight-year-old child who did not want to be doing this up and down the river. And there's, I mean, literally, I drank a bunch of water. And so about 5.30 rolls around. He's running low on gas in the bus. boat and he's running low on patience. I'm running low on oxygen. And he looks at me and he said, we're going to try this one more time. And then we're going to get you in the boat and we're going to come back out here tomorrow and do it again. You're going to do this until you get up. And I'm like,

no. And so I get there. So just imagine this. So I'm a little kid. I've got my little ski belt on because they hadn't invented, you know, the full vest, right? Ski belt, my skis. I'm hanging on. He guns it. And lo and behold, I get up. By the grace of God. By the grace of God. Yeah, definitely. there were angels that were lifting me up out of the water. It feels like there was music at the background. So we're doing it. And I'm sitting, you know, and there's a safe place when your water skiing is in between the wake, right? So you're in a safe place.

It's a little calmer. It's a little safer. I'm kind of crouched down still. And I'm looking at my dad and I can see him start getting, you know. He's like thing one and thing two, right? So when dad, because he was 40 and I was eight, but he was really eight and I was really 40, right? So he takes the boat and he turns it as tight. as he can, and he slings me outside the wake,

and then he starts driving his circles. Well, you understand centrifugal force, right? So the boat's doing 25, and the little kid on the skis is doing 750 miles an hour. I remember cracking the sand barrier. And then I hit a stick. And it wasn't really a stick.

It was a log, because for some reason, they raised and lower the Tennessee River, and all this driftwood was out there. You remember the agony of defeat guy on Wide World of Sports? Yeah, coming down the ski jump. Yeah, do, do, do, do.

That was me. I did like seven cartwheat. and the ski hits me in the head, and I go down hard. You know, the little ski belt's trying to keep me afloat. My dad, being a compassionate loving man, pulls the boat slowly around, gets his paddle, and starts poking me with it. And he said, hey, are you okay? I'm like about half out.

And I'm laying there looking at it. I just said, go away. And he said, no. And I said, I'm swimming back. And he said, Marshall, it's five miles. You can't swim that far. You'll drown. I said, well, you tried to drown me just a second ago.

And he said, no, I want you to grab the rope. And I said, why? And he said, because I want to change your story about how you got back up, not how you fell down. And he pulled the rope around to me. I got up again, and I've been water skiing ever since. And I think about that because 25 years after that, I was sitting in the hospital. I just had melanoma surgery, which is skin cancer. Three doctors missed it.

It's a grace of God, and I'm here. And I laying there and feeling sorry for myself because I have, quote, unquote cancer, which I did have cancer, but I was really just like on pain pills and everything else. And I feel this pressure on my forehead and I open my eyes and there's my dad. Pressure like tapping? Tapping. So like tapping you on your forehead. My dad's tapping me on my forehead. How lovely. After surgery. No, no, no. And he looks at me and he says, get up. And I said, I just, I just had surgery. And I'm making excuses. And he's like, I'll help you up. And I said, why? He said, because we're going to make your story about how you beat cancer, not how you had cancer.

and he picked up his son, and he's probably my size, 6-1, 200 pounds, picks me up, walks me around the hallway. The reason why he did that was because he had cancer the year before. He had a bladder cancer, and he would get up every morning after his surgery, and he would walk, and he healed. And he had a special surgery that they did down at Emory University where they took a piece of his, I guess, small intestine and made a fake bladder. And he was one of the few that had really done well.

He did really well with that because he got a, up and he walked and he said, we're going to change your story. And that's something that has helped me along the way because every time I'm like in a career situation, like when I was made part time a few years ago, and that's a long story. But and then like when I had spinal surgery, I always hear his voice, grab the rope because I know that means that I can reframe what's happening and look for opportunity. I don't guess it surprises me after hearing that story that he was water skiing at 78. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What'd your dad do for a living? Dad was a salesman. So we moved around a lot. Then he got to Georgia and he went through several jobs because he

didn't want to leave Georgia. He really loved Marietta. It was close to Tennessee. And then in the 70s, I guess 74, dad and my next door neighbor who'd just gotten out of the Air Force who was a pilot decided that they wanted to open up a gas station. No kidding. And dad opened up. He became a small businessman. I was really proud of him, and I'm really, I've always been inspired by that. And he did that up until the time I went into college. He had a car garage and a gas station with his business partner who just recently passed, Mr. Towery. You know, once again, you know, you're raised by your neighborhood. At least I was in my neighborhood. Mr. Towery, might as well been my dad just as much as dad. He would have poked you with a paddle too. Oh, man, big time. But he was a little bit more of a,

he was quiet and smiled a lot and grinned. And dad was more of the salesman. that. But he did that and then he worked for the bus barn. And then he was like every time he'd retire, he'd go home and sit down with mom and look at mom and then he'd go get another job. And he finally became a Marshall on a golf course. And that was his last gig. A marshal on a golf course sounds fun too. Yeah, he had a good time. So along the way, the very first person that you feel like supported your greatness was your dad because it sounds like his mentality was we're not going to be a victim of the circumstance. We're going to change the narrative around our own stories.

That's it. That's it. And it's one of those things that I... What a phenomenal way to grow up. I mean, I get how as a kid, you may not see it at first. But my goodness, what an unbelievable legacy to leave your son. The first time I ever told that story was at his funeral. Really?

They played Rocky Top. He was a Tennessee graduate. They played Rocky Top as they pulled the casket out of the church, which is pretty special. But I told that one on that. And my sisters and I, and I'm very blessed to have two wonderful sisters also. And we just talked about Dad. We didn't realize a lot of the wisdom that he was giving us along the way. You know, like my sister, she lost her husband to ALS, which is terrible, terrible.

Terrible disease. And Adam, and folks, Adam was an incredible human being and I miss them. One day she was just really having a tough time and she called up dad and she said, Dad, I feel like I'm faced down in the mud and he said, we'll roll over. You know? Oh my gosh. That's one of the greatest lines I've heard. I feel like I'm facing it.

We'll roll over. But you know, the thing was, gets you some air. But the thing was, you know, he said that. then he would, you know, he would be there for her. I understand, but the point is that good, old-fashioned, common sense, wisdom. Yeah. And it's, it's sometimes, when I get like, you know, I need to put on my big boy pants and quit feeling sorry for myself, you know, I can almost hear his voice.

It almost feels like a little bit of loving sarcasm. Oh, well, we did sarcasm in our family. We breathed it like oxygen. So it's no wonder I became a cartoonist, right? I was just about to say some of that even has to come to. through and the art that you create. Think about it. My mother is an art teacher. One of the best middle school art teachers in Georgia.

She won that award a couple times. She, you know, it was very good. Then you get my dad who's got this get up and go. I mean, when I was at the University of Tennessee, I switched majors. And he said, what do I need to do? And he said, do marketing. I said, why? He said, because there's people who can outthink you, who can outdraw you.

But if you can outsell them, you will always have a living. Yeah, he's a smart guy. Now, I will say this, before we put the halo too much on dad, we were sitting in Nalen Stadium because that was our love language, right? We could talk Tennessee football together. And so, and I, when he got dementia later on his life, and that was the first thing I couldn't talk to him about. And I started grieving.

You know, the thing about Alzheimer's and dementia is like you literally get an advance on grief, right? But we were sitting in the stadium, and it was right after I was named a Pulitzer final, so second time, which means, by the way, I lost. But I was close. Like horseshoes, it does count. So we're sitting there, and I was feeling cocky, and I said, I bet I'm the only two-time Pulitzer finals in this whole stadium. And my dad smiles, and he said, and I'm the only other person who cares. He was a very, very funny man. And I'm the only guy who cares. But you know what? I've got a picture of him hearing me off the football field after I got

injured, you know, and I mean, I treasure that because that's who my dad was. We'll be right back. What amazing legacy. I hope it's funny how you, you can see when you talk about them, it's funny. And you said he was 40, I was eight, but it was really reversed and everything else. But the reverence is very real. He and I were working on a truck. He had pulled this 53 Ford out of the woods.

This was before he even owned the gas station. So he liked working on cars. A 53 Ford pickup truck, it was red, but it wasn't red because it was beat up. And so he was restoring it. And, I mean, he crunched his finger, and he let out a string of profanity that absolutely would have curdled milk. It was just the, I was like, and I said, Dad, it's not good to say things like that. And he said, well, I've got to deal with God. I tried to do nice things for other people.

And then, you know, that makes up for what I just said. I've done Sunday school. I've never heard that scripture before, but that's okay, Dad. It's there somewhere. But you know, at his funeral, the line was like two and a half hours long. Wow. We just stood there for two and a half hours meeting people that kept by and said, you know, I had this problem of my car and your dad fixed it for free.

You know, he was always trying to find ways to be able to help people in the community. And that's why, I mean, I listen to your show and I hear people that just, they're not, you know, they're not doing it to be on your show. They're not doing it because they want the attention. But they just sit there and say, you know what? This is my community. I want to make it a little bit better. and dad was like that too.

He signed a personal loan for them to be able to build the football stadium where I went to school. And thankfully they paid it off, but, you know, I mean, yeah. So he's like he, he, and I will say this, I'm not just saying just dad, it was all of our parents. My friends and I who played football, we'll run into each other at the reunions or we talk through Facebook and the usual thing.

And most of everybody that I went to played football with are pretty successful. But we credit our parents and the fact that they invested the time, into us, into our school, into our community, for us to be able to have a shot. So, yeah. That's coming, that's coming up. That's, that's adolescence and, I guess, teenage days, right?

Right. But at eight, you knew you wanted to be an editorial cartoonist. Yeah. So how does that manifest itself? You don't typically equate a guy who's both an artist and, plays high school ball but i know you played football and and you know i'd maybe there is a degree in editor editorial cartoonism but i don't think there is so i'm curious you know you decide what you want to be and her dad says you're going to be the best day when there is on the face of the planet if that's

what you want to do how do where does the track take you and who did you run into next that kind of help direct that tract, if that makes any sense. Wanda Patterson. She looked, she used to, she kind of reminded me a flow from, I can't remember, Alice. Alice, Flo, eat my grits. Yeah. Yeah, she kind of, she dressed up like that one time for something. It was pretty funny.

Did she have the B. have hair? No, but it was, it was, yeah, she could do it. Yeah, I got it. She was great. She was an English teacher, and now I was playing football. I was a student guy. What's her name? Wanda Patterson.

Okay. So Wanda put me on the high school newspaper because she heard I could draw. And back then, this was back before computers, we typed up the type and we cut it out and we pasted it with glue sticks. And sometimes, well, the type didn't fit or whatever. And there were these holes. So basically, all I did was sit around for like a month. And then the last day, I drew cartoons to fill up the holes. So my first cartoon...

Oh, you mean when they set the type for the school newspaper, because... said it wouldn't always fit. There were holes. There were holes in the page. And you were the hole filler. I was the whole filler. That was my job. That's pretty cool.

It was cool. And she did make me write a story and she said, well, you can't write. I was like, well, I can't write. That's okay. That was fine. But I wasn't going to argue because I wanted to do the cartoons. So I did a cartoon about the library and my very first cartoon. And I thought the next day I was going to come into school and they were going to be laying

rose petals at my feet. And, you know, I was going to be a hero and they were going to carry on my shoulders and all that stuff. By 830 and the most, morning I was in the principal's office with one very angry librarian. What was the cartoon? Well, it was, okay, so the point of the cartoon, I had the, I can't believe that, let me print this.

She had like a little Nazi helmet on and a machine gun and at a nest at the guard entrance saying, where's your past, sweetie? Because to get into the library, you had to, like, have a lock of your dead grandmother's hair. And my grandmother's were alive, so that was a problem. And, I mean, it was just so impossible. And I played football and I worked, and I did a bunch of things. different things. So I need to get in there and actually study, and I couldn't get in there.

And so I'm telling this, she's over there, you know, tears coming out of her face. I feel about three inches tall because I didn't mean to make her cry. I don't know what I was thinking if I was going to draw her that way. And the principal, who was Benny Farmer, was his name. And I love Benny. He was great. He was a fantastic principal. But he looked at her and he said, is that true? And she said, yes. And he said, what? And he said, he said, why? And she said, because the kids keep messing up the books. And he said, that's why the books are there for the kids to use. And so they changed the policy.

Bill, I got to tell you, that's the last time one of my cartoons made a difference. It was incredible. But I was hooked. At that point, I said, I'm going to do this no matter what. And so because I worked on the Stinger at Spraybury High School, which I will say that Travis Trit went there also. So, I mean, there's a few famous sprayberry people. But that's when I kind of gave up my dream of being an excellent.

high school quarterback. Well, that and Pat Dye told me I was too short, the great Auburn coach. And I was about... Pat Dye, who's 5-7? Yeah, exactly. The irony was not lost on me at the moment. But then when I stood next to Peyton Manning, I realized, yeah, he was right. I was way too short to play college football.

But yeah, that's when it got started. So Wanda Patterson pushed me in a good direction, too. What, when you sit down, okay, let me pick a current event today. Just about pick one. Okay, number one, it's so hard now to out satire satire. That's honestly, you read my mind. Yeah. How, when, okay, I'll tell you something I read in the newsfeed this morning.

Thailand and Cambodia are fighting again. About two months ago, they had a ceasefire that Trump went on and said that he was the peacemaker of the world. and now Thailand bombed Cambodia's military installations because Cambodia apparently did something on a border skirmish and killed a Thai soldier. All right. Right. That's all I know, and I don't know anything about it. All right.

I'm just picking that for one thing. And that's not typically what you cover. But just let's say, someone said to you, I want you to draw an editorial cartoon about this. this issue what goes through your mind what what are the steps how do you think about it what what I know if I'm gonna write an op-ed for the USA Today or the New York Times or something I know the issue and I kind of know how I feel about the issue and I know the points I want to make and then I try to be half-ass creative and maybe even a little interesting in my take on that issue,

and I jot it down, and I hope it's interesting enough, they want to put it in a newspaper, all right? You don't have words. You may have a few words in a bubble on a picture. How does an editorial cartoonist, without saying to his audience in words, the point they're trying to make, how do you,

how do you contrive this thing that you're going to create to try to tell a story without words? The best cartoons would pop into my head instantly and I wouldn't have no words whatsoever and it would be an image and I could draw it and I could go home. Because that usually ends up being the ones

end up being a Pulitzer finalist. And I'll just do you. Think about 9-11, for instance. I'm sitting there watching the world ending. I have a child sitting home in a high chair. I'm wondering what kind of world he's going to grow up in. And then they show an image of the Statue of Liberty standing proudly

before the smoke coming off of Manhattan. And I see that as the Statue of Liberty bent over with her head and her hands. And I draw that and I draw that within an hour. And it's probably one of the best cartoons I've ever done. That said, the one of the scenario... You did that cartoon. Yeah. I remember seeing that cartoon.

Yeah. Yeah. of the Statue of Liberty, like with her hands and her head going, what has happened? Right? Wasn't that the idea? Yeah, it was just basically she was in shock like the rest of us. And you could see it.

And it's really funny because I look at that cartoon now, there's like a little bit of a silver lining on that. And that silver lining of any of that, because it was so much evil on September 11th, but on September 12th, there was so much good. You know, we realized that there were people running into the buildings, which they suffered, but that there were people that, you know,

on our behasts were going, there were heroes that day, and we paid attention to who our neighbors were, we wrote a check to strangers, we came together, it was a very interesting time. Now, if I'm doing the scenario you talk about, I do the same process you would do to do an op-ed.

I sit there and I do my research, I do my homework. Back in the day, thankfully, they have now the internet, so I can, or now even chat GPT, you know, you have AI. But you could do my research, find out a little bit more about it.

Try to look for things that I could use visually as a metaphor and use that. Then I probably would do four or five sketches. I would show my editor. Usually in my process, I allow the editor pick out of maybe four or five sketches. I know some cartoonists say, nope, this is it. This is the one we're going to do. But sometimes I trust other people to look at my genius to make sure that my genius is not stupid. You know, what I think is a great idea may not be.

You might actually do three, four, five cartoons on the same thing. on the same topic. Which one speaks best. It just kind of allows me to play around with the images a little bit. And that concludes part one of our conversation with Marshall Ramsey, and you do not want to miss part two. It's now available to listen to. Together, guys, we can change this country.

But it starts with you. I'll see you in part two. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.