The Chaser Report - The most awkward meeting ever | Wil Anderson

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

At the start of the millennium, The Chaser team met with one of Australia's best standup comedians to explore the prospect of working together. Which, in hindsight, would have been a great idea – at least for us. It did not go well. 20 years later, Charles and Dom talk it over with Wil Anderson – and discover why nothing excites him more than a standup show with no plan.Wil's show Gruen is back on TV (and iView) from today, but despite our best intentions, we didn't really talk about it much – and you'll highly likely watch it anyway! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the Chaser Report for Wednesday, the 13th of October 2021. I'm Dom night. Hello, Charles Firth. Oh, it's Hump Day today, Dom. Hump day. We're on a holiday and I'll tell you what. I'm just bursting to get back to work really because, you know, all this holidaying is really wearing me out.

Yeah, and I mean, I've spent the whole week at home basically hiding. I don't want my freedom. I'm like a jailbird has become accustomed to the simplicity of life on the inside, Charles. So I've seen no sun. There is a theory that lots of people will go through that as we emerge from lockdown and that people will want to stay at home and act like middle-aged people. But my lifestyle didn't really change much, you know, from before lockdown to lockdown. So I'm not expecting it to change hugely after lockdown anyway.

Given that it's hump day, we've put the most awkward interview of the week today. with the wonderful Will Anderson, one of Australia's greatest stand-ups, of course, we have to bring up because we couldn't not. The time we met him, I don't know, 20 years ago... 2001, wasn't it? Yeah, it was exactly 20 years ago. We met him in a little office in Darlinghurst to talk about potentially working together. So he might have actually worked together, but we didn't.

And you're about to hear why. You'll also hear lots about his whole approach to comedy, why he does these incredibly balsy, completely improvised shows. it's a bit of a masterclass actually and God knows I'll learn something from it. Yeah, yeah. It's a really great interview. Before that, though, we've got Rebecca Day and Muno in the Chaser Newsroom.

Australian's support for the Royal Family has skyrocketed after Prince Charles mocked Scott Morrison for not wanting to attend a climate conference in Glasgow. Experts say Scott Morrison has achieved what was previously thought impossible to outsmug Prince Charles himself. The new New South Wales Premier, Dominic Perrote,

has spent his third successive day in the pub, doing photo ops about coming out of lockdown, raising concerns that he may actually just be a massive alcoholic. Mr Perrite cancelled the Oslan interpreters for the media event, pointing out that he was planning to get blind drunk, not deaf drunk. News Corp has slammed News Corp after it launched a campaign for action on climate change. The far-right media company slammed the far-right media company for pandering to far-left greenies,

who don't want the earth to be destroyed in a fiery inferno. That's the latest chaser news you can't trust. I'm Rebecca de Unamuno, and I'm tired of saying white men drinking on the news. Oh, so tired. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore?

Fizz is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. The iconic TV show about advertising Gruen returns tonight on the network with no ads, the ABC, today at 30 p.m. Will Anderson hosts the show. He just finished up, question everything. Of course, when he's not doing TV, he's a comedian, podcaster, and many other things besides. Will Anderson, thank you for joining us on The Chaser Report. How are you? Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. I wish people, I mean, you know,

what, let's take them behind the scenes, because obviously we're pre-recording this. We're all in different places. This is the modern world that we live in, that, you know, no one's ever in the same room to do these things anymore. And I do a whole bunch of different podcasts. And poor old podcast, Mike, who is my producer, who edits it all together, I do nothing to help. Like, you know, I have people on going, do you need to do a countdown?

Do you need to do a clap? Do we all need to push record at the same time? I'm just like, oh, he'll work it out. Like, you know, I'll ask my first question. and he can put the answer at the end of the first question, the rest of it will be fine. I've come into you guys, and it is like we're doing a Rock of Stedford. We're counting down, we're doing three claps. I thought I was going to have to, like, drop to my knees and do a spin.

I must say your magic hands weren't as good as I was hoping for, Will, as a season podcaster? No, I appreciate the three claps, too. Like this, I don't think that I've ever, like I've done somewhere as like a countdown and a clap. I always like, three, two, one is a good countdown. But I always like when somebody's just decided three, 2.1 is not a good enough countdown. I've done podcasts where they've gone from 5. I even did one where they've gone from 10. And I'm just like, are you the count from Sesame Street? Is that who I'm doing a podcast with today? Because that is two big a countdown.

If you are launching a rocket to the moon, you go from 10 to start a podcast from 3 is 5. 3 is 5. Yeah, no, we have this thing where we go 3, 2, 1, clap, clap, clap. And Will said clap rather than clapping. And I thought that was good enough. But Charles said, no, no, we've got to do it properly. No, because I was a skeptic. Like Will, I was a skeptic of the necessity to clap. And then I had to edit something one day. And I realized, actually, it's really useful to clap because you can see it on the waveform. It's a brilliant thing that you've, it's a genius idea, Dom. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm 100% on board with it. I'm not anti-clapper. I don't want you to think that I am some sort of anti-clapper conspiracist that I don't believe that you should clap

at the start of podcast. I've seen your name popping up on sort of anti-clepper, Reddit. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you've been on telegram. Obviously, at the start, I loved the fact that, like, because I thought we were rehearsing. I was like just going through it. I was just like, so we're going three, two, one, clap, clap, clap.

And then Dom just started. And I was like, no, no, hang on. I didn't clap. That was just me getting my head around the concept. And Dom's just decided I'm such a sensitive artist that I won't touch my hands together. I'm just going to say the word clap three times. Well, I was picking. to myself. Look, we've only got Will for half an hour. There's a lot to cover. Let's get into

it, not realizing that I was giving us our first five minutes, which I think will be very useful to anyone working out how to start a remotely recorded podcast. But Will, we've got to rip off the band out on this. This isn't the most awkward meeting that we've had, is it? We talked to Jan Fran, and I wasn't planning to bring it up, but the first time we met you in a meeting room, all of the chaser, as we then were, talking about working on a TV show together. Yeah, so it was in inner city, Sydney, I believe, and it was organized by a fellow by the name of Nick Murray, who happens to be the co-executive producer of both question everything

and grew on the television shows I make these days. So it happened at his back office, I believe. Yep, that's right. And it was myself and all the team from the chaser. And the idea, I think, was that Nick was putting us together in the same room in the hope that we might make some sort of satirical comedy television show together. And in, I think I was, I think my thought was that I was trying to be complimentary, which is why this story hurts so much.

It wasn't like I'd come in to particularly go, here we go, I'm going to put these guys back in their face. I'm absolutely going to zing them around this table. I'm pretty sure the sentence started with, what I love about you guys is that you don't do this, not revealing at that stage that you were the guys. who had done this, and I think it was about, I said, your stuff's really clever. It's not like you're going to press conferences and holding up like fried chicken at Kim Beasley

instead of microphones or whatever the bit had been. And then one of those moments where no one needs to say anything because the silence says it all, like Marcel, Marceau didn't communicate with silence the way that you guys communicated with silence in the room that day. That moment where you're like, oh yeah, okay, so that was you guys? All right. well, let's reset this conversation. Yeah, we'd been filming a secret pilot

for Andrew Denton, he've also worked with, you know, on Groo and everything else. And part, there was some smart political satire, I like to think, but there was also, and I think it was my idea, actually, a corn, cob and a piece of fried chicken in front of Kim Beasley held up by none other

than Charles Firth himself. And I'll have you know, Will, you know, that may be low brow, too lowbrow for you. but that that clip has now done 22 million views on TikTok. So it has got a second life. 20 years later. I mean, there's a lot of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories that go well on TikTok as well.

I'm not sure that how many views you get on TikTok should be our measurement of whether something's a worthwhile piece of content or not. But it's nice that Kim Beasley's brief and unsuccessful leadership has a life to this day. And presumably the kids don't even know who he is, Charles. They just like the fried chicken and the corncog. You know, it's because his reaction is so human. It was actually a corn on the cob that I hold up to him. And he sort of clocked, I think it was the first thing that we'd done. And so he sort of clocked it and then he sort of double takes and then sort of goes to grab it actually.

Like it's almost like he wants it. It's really, and he's quite a, you know, tubby man. So it really works. I mean, I think we understand what the bit was. I think everybody gets what the bit was. I'm glad that you felt like you had to walk us through that, Charles, in case we weren't understanding what the bit was. No, but what I remember about that meeting was

you then spent the next, I would say, 45 minutes tap dancing. Like literally just, you were so... No, literally tap dancing. I put on some tap shoes, I got on the table, and I thought this is the only way out of that. this awkward situation. And then, and you just talked at us for 45 minutes.

And then you, and you, because you were obviously trying to hide your embarrassment or something like that. And then you just left. Like, and it was like,

that was very weird. That was a really weird. The record needs to show that Will was, was right. Yeah. We wouldn't have done that joke today. But the other thing he could have done is just sent out for some, some corn on the cob.

Like that would have, that would have been fine. Which is a shame. This is like, I will say, honestly, like, what your recollection,

of it would have been entirely true because for me, like making a faux par like that, that is my absolute worst case scenario. I wish I was one of those people who could just be like, have the confidence to laugh that off or be like, yeah, well, this is my opinion. And if they don't, you know, if they have a problem with that, then who cares? You know, this is what I think. But instead, that is the, you know, young kid brought up with polite manners by his nana going to like the Church of England to, you know, sing hymns and, you know, be polite and, you know, shake hands with people and say, I honestly, I mean, I still carry it with me. Like, even when you mentioned it, when Jan was on your show and I listened back to the,

like, there's still a bit of me that the curb your enthusiasm music starts to play in my brain when that anecdote comes up. The thing is, it's just such a perfect example of the form. And normally Craig Roocastle's the one who does massive faux pas without realizing. But, no, it's one of those things where you can just, you just have to go, look, it wasn't meant to be, which is a pity because it would have been fun to work on the glasshouse. Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, it can still happen. I think, you know, I mean, I think what the ABC needs is a whole bunch of old white guys making a TV show to get that time to get that project back off.

Get Sean McAuliffe, get Charlie, just have a super. Put the wall in the one show. I mean, maybe that's the way to deal it, free up some airspace for other people. You go, yes, we are going to use Charlie and Sean and the chaser and yeah, all those guys are going to be on. We'll get Adam Hills back. it'll be fine but we're just going to put them all in the straight white guy show and then we're just going to clear up some real stuff bring back the glass house call it the white house just get everyone else off the air somewhere else but no no but will i want to go to that the idea that

you're a polite little boy who cows because why then did you choose stand-up comedy as a profession because surely that's the most exposed thing you can do in the world Oh, so I think, you know, often it's probably because of that, right? Like, I think that one of the things I've heard said about stand-up comedy a lot is that stand-up, people become stand-up comedians because they want to control the way people laugh at them. And I think that that awkwardness in a social situation, when you're the person standing up in front of the room full of people, that it's a very controllable conversation, right? Like, I feel like I'm having this conversation.

The audience is very much part of it. I always think about stand-up as being surfing. You can't do it without the audience there. They're an integral part of it. But at the same time, it is a very one-sided conversation. This is the way that I like to speak to people, you know, for 70 minutes at a time. And I do most of the talking. And that's all the interesting things I have to say for a year and I'll see you again next year.

Like, I think there is a real element of not wanting to be in those situations where I can make those phopas, where I can be nervous. like there is an element of control in stand-up that I think is, you know, really powerful to people who have a little bit of social anxiety. But don't you think it's interesting because I reckon, I don't know, this is my perspective on your career and, you know, you can disagree with it. It comes to faux par many years later, in revenge. Here's my faux bar back. I know.

I'm very comfortable with other people having takes on me. For me, like somebody insulting me, that's not a problem for me because like I look at my own stuff and I probably am my own worst critic. There's not anything that anybody else can say to me that I haven't thought myself. Me like saying something awkward to someone else is much more dangerous to me. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. Fizz is 100% online. You can make the switch in minutes.

Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. It's hard enough to write an hour or 80 minutes of great material and coming back year after year as you do. But it seems like you would like making it even harder for yourself. I've seen you do improv sets before and you go to the audience. And is the adrenaline from that experience even greater?

Is that like the new rush of not even having any material walking out on the stage? because as someone who had quite a bit of stage fright in my younger days, that to me is a nightmare, but you just seem completely in your element when you do it. Now I feel like I am. Now, I mean, we had, we cancelled them, unfortunately, because of COVID, but I had booked the Enmore. We had a sold-out night at the Emmore.

I think your face is still on the side of it. I was going to do my improvised show at the Ammore, which means for people who don't know the Amore theatre, like the Rolling Stones played there when they, you know, came to Sydney, the idea that there's 2,000 people, you know, and I'm going to walk out on stage in front of 2,000 people with no idea what I'm going to talk about for the next 90 minutes is exhilarating to me now. It used to be nerve-wracking, but now it is exhilarating.

In fact, in some ways, it ruins you for all other comedy. You know, like if normal comedy is skydiving with somebody else, you know, you're strapped to somebody else's, someone else, experienced persons on your back and they, you know, pull the parachute at the right time and you get all the kind of surreal of it. But, you know, with the safety that somebody else is looking after you, I mean, that's your act, right? The act is the experienced skydiver who is on your back ready to pull the parachute out. With these improvised shows, what I always say is it's like jumping out of a plane and just assuming that you can teach yourself to fly on the way down. And so all you, your brain is desperately trying to do

is going, how can I work out how to fly? How can I make this work? And it is, incredibly thrilling. Yeah, you're watching your brain figure it out and trying. It's almost funnier when you can't get something for a moment in that situation. That's what you've got to. So the big thing for me was people would always say to me, you must go in with something. You must have something prepared. You must have a backup position.

The minute that I didn't was the minute the show started working. Because if you have a backup position, the minute you get in trouble, your brain just very naturally goes, go to your backup position. Whereas if you don't have a backup position, every time you dig a hole, a lot of the joy is in people watching you dig your way out of the hole. In fact, I think that's a lot of the time why people come. I mean, there's nothing better at the Olympics than seeing somebody in the gymnastics absolutely nail the pommel horse

and land to do the perfect landing. The only thing I would argue that is equally as compelling is seeing someone completely fuck that up. That's what makes the highlight shows. Either way, I think it's like car racing. People come for the skilled, you know, really fast driving, but they also come for the crashes. The idea that there's a possibility.

that it's going to crash as to what makes it exciting. Have you sort of looked at some of the greats who did there? I saw Billy Connolly in New York once and, well, I'm pretty sure he didn't have a plan for the show. It certainly felt that way. And you're right. Like actually part of the show was he sort of, the audience stopped laughing for a while. And he literally took 15 minutes to scoop up literally every single person in the audience and get them back. laughing, and it was the most amazing 15 minutes I've ever seen. Do you actually, do you look at

those people who've done that sort of stuff? So when Billy Connolly was touring Australia, this is like maybe 15. So first, you know, proper comedy gig I ever went to, the night I decided I wanted to be a comedian was that a Billy Connolly gig. I was 17 with my mum at Haymer Hall in Melbourne. She'd like taken me down. I was about to go after uni to study journalism. And I remember sitting in the room that night just thinking, I don't really know what this is yet, but I know that this is the first time I've ever sat somewhere and just gone, this is it. This is where I feel at home. This is, whatever this is, I want to be around this. And so I'd been doing stand-up for about, I reckon, four, five years. And I was doing a split bill at the Adelaide

Cabaret Festival with tripod. So I would do half an hour, tripod would do half an hour. And then we would come off stage. And because it's in a big theatre centre, for people who don't know how those theatre centres work. There might be a big room that say 2,000 people, but they have these monitor screens in all the back stage areas that people can watch for their cues if they're doing, say, Swan Lake or that sort of thing, right? So every night after our show, Billy Connolly would go on in the main room. So we would just go down into the green room where they had a pool table. And me and the boys from tripod had a thing that we did for two weeks where we would play pool until Billy Connolly did a joke that he had done the night.

before. And that was our thing. So he was doing like 10 nights in a row or whatever. And we would play pool until we heard one story or joke that he'd done the night before. And we'd be there minimum an hour every night before he ever got to anything. And sometimes then he'd get to a story that he'd told the night before, but he'd tell it in a completely different way. And that's one of the things that I don't rule myself out of doing in these improv shows now. In the past, it used to be very much, if you've told a story before, like it's out of the set now. But I realize that was a terrible way to do it because sometimes your brain, you've just got to let your brain roll in those improv shows and let it go wherever it wants to go. So if I get to a story

that I've told before, the only rule I have for my shows is you've got to tell that story in a different way than you told it last time. You know, you can't do the same jokes. You can't do the same beats. You've got to look at it from a different perspective. You've got to find something new in it that last time you told that story wasn't there. So yeah, absolutely. I mean, Billy Connolly is my absolute hero. Would not be doing stand-up comedy without Billy Conno. And very much the inspiration of these shows originally probably came from watching Billy work in that way. We should get on to Gruen, given that they've organised this interview, as much I'd love to hear you talking about. Ah, you know, Gruen's on Wednesday night, it's 8.30.

Everyone knows what Gruen is. It's been on for 13 years. If you haven't got the hang of it now, then you probably won't like it anyway, guys. It's fine. What is it you love about podcasting, Will? Because you do an awful lot of it for a man as busy as you. Well, I mean, I don't know. Like, I mean, I like it, I guess, is.

probably the simplest of all answers. You know, I'm at a point in my life where I just try to do things that I like, you know, I find creatively satisfying. I like the, I like the space to explore complex ideas, even silly complex ideas. You know, you can explore an idea from every angle. You don't have to have that radio style, this is my take and this is my perspective. And if someone came through this conversation halfway through, we need to reset and let them know what we're up to. The jokes always have to be that first beat jokes because people are listening

while they're, you know, doing something else or any of those sort of things. I think that podcasting, you have that opportunity to have long, in-depth, complicated, complex conversations with people. That's the thing that I find most compelling about it. In some ways, it feels like it's the opposite of social media. I think one of the reasons why podcasts is sort of so successful alongside social media is social media drives you towards extreme conclusions with no subtlety

and podcasts are where the subtle conversation can happen and one is completely advertiser driven and sort of focused on invading your privacy and the other one it puts the listener

at the centre of the experience and just goes well what you know what would be great to listen to. Yeah, and that's the other thing is I often have, you know, you get feedback from people because now the commercial world is in the world of podcasts. So it's all like, oh, your show's got to go for 40 minutes or it's got to go for 15 minutes or you've got to get this person, ah, like, who cares?

I hate all that. We, we got told, oh, we should do this, this show should never go over 20 minutes because then you'll get a really good spot on Spotify. Yeah, who cares? I just realized, that's not what it's more. We jettisoned it after about a week or two because it was like, no, but That's not what we want to do. But also, who cares?

Like, I mean, honestly, who cares? This is the one space where we get absolute creative freedom. Why am I going to hand over that sort of creative freedom to other people? I love this. You know, people will say to you, even sometimes guests, like on philosophy or whatever, you know, we'll get to the, sometimes I'm in a two-hour chat with people. And they'll be at the end going, well, if anyone's made it this far. And I'm like, mate, people make it this far. I see the numbers.

People listen to the whole thing. They don't listen to the whole thing necessarily in a go. Like, you know, often they'll listen to it over. four days driving to and from work or something like that they'll get back to it whatever it is but this idea that we have to bend our world into the commercial world again oh i hate it so much it like stop ruining something that is great stop bringing in celebrities the host podcasts that they're not invested in that have to go for 20 minutes so you can sell dumb advertising to your dumb podcast that is not going to last and no one's going to give a shit about

in like, you know, six months. Like, you know, there's going to be this gallery of failed celebrity podcasts. Celebrities are like, oh, I should have a podcast and then just realized it was hard work and their heart wasn't in it and therefore the audience's heart wasn't in it. We've got one rule in terms of guests on our podcast, which is that they've got to be somebody who you'd want to go for a walk with because, like, you know, because we sometimes get politicians on and people who, you know, you know, a bit controversial or don't necessarily agree with.

But they've got to be people who you can invite into your earphones, you know. So, you know, it's not the same as going, okay, well, we'll balance it out and, you know, we'll talk to some hard right fuck wit and then we'll counterbalance with a boring left winger or something. You just go, no, no, it's just got to be someone who you want to go for a walk with. And I think that's, that is what podcasting is. It's, it's company on your walks. Yeah.

And what I love about it is that so much of my other work, like particularly my television work, you know, I've always, you know, my shows serve the shows. So my voice on Gruen is a bit different to my voice on question and everything. They are voices that serve the show, you know, that, well, they're meant to serve the show. What does this show need from me? But it's not the full me. You don't get a sense of what I truly believe about things. you get one particular perspective that serves the show.

Whereas in podcast, you know, you get to see a little bit more of what my thought process is about what I am interested in. Even with philosophy, the way that I choose the guests, I have a real policy of like, I don't have anyone on that I don't like. Like, never. Like, I don't, this is my world. I'm just never going to have someone on who's a contrarian or for the sake of having that conversation with this person who doesn't believe

that what I believe, because I've done 300 episodes. of that. And I talk to people that I like all the time who believe completely different things to me on a whole range of topics. In fact, I don't think I've ever done the podcast and got to the end of it and thought, oh yeah, I agreed with everything that that person said. You know, and that's with people that I like and love and admire. The idea that I need to invite someone in that I don't like or that I completely disagree with is something that I'm like, this is my space. I'm just going to keep it nice. If you see a guest on my podcast, you know that it's because I personally am interested in that person and I want to have them on the show.

And I think that's part of the agreement. I'm saying, come to a party at my house. I've invited a bunch of cool people. You're not going to get stuck in the corner talking to Joe Hilderbrand. Does this mean you haven't had Pauline Hanson on philosophy as yet? I mean, Jessica Rowe got her first. That was the problem. But I'm not even going to have, you know, the drummer from the band Hansen because of his

anti-Vax views. like, you know, he's a Qanong guy. So, like, I don't want to go that extreme because I think that's dumb anyway. I'm sure you guys probably have a similar perspective, which is this idea that balance comes from taking somebody who is, you know, ridiculously far on one side and then putting someone who is ridiculously far on the other side and getting them to yell at each other for half an hour. And we consider that in our modern world debate and balance, which is the most, that's the most ridiculous thing that we have absolutely as a society succumbed. Like, that is unhelpful to anybody two people who are never going to change their mind

yelling at each other and never going forward it's why in the early season of gruin like russell and todd used to yell at each other a lot and it was a popular bit like it's entertaining for people to watch but we really said to them two or three seasons in we were like don't make this the caricature don't you know Todd and russell agree with each other 95% of the time it's the five percent that they don't agree on that makes it interesting and moves us forward because we can have a genuine debate. But if you get two people who completely disagree on every topic, you are never going to move forward on anything.

Yeah, no, because it's interesting because Sky News, it was touring December at Sky News a couple of months ago, and they were pitching a show where they wanted to get a left winger on and a right winger on each week. And then the left winger would have to, you know, explain anything through that lens. and it was like a game show of perspectives. And I said to them, but you're misunderstanding.

Like, politics is not a game. The fact that you're treating the whole thing as a game actually shows that you're not interested in politics as a sort of way to move humans in the right direction. You're just, it's not a game. Well, they used to have Hannity in Combs. Remember that? Hannity was the popular one,

and they got the drippiest liberal they could possibly find. Yeah, I was a bit insulted that they want to be. me to be the left dream. Oh, you think I'm the pathetic person who make the left bad. Hey, Will, thank you so much so much for joining us. It's been a joy and much better than the first time we met you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much. And I appreciate that you sent me this fried chicken microphone to talk into for this interview. Thanks, mate. And Gruen returns 8.30pm tonight on ABC TV and Ivy. It'll be on for a few Wednesday nights hereafter. Thank you for your patience.

Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at FIS.ca. Do you think we healed the rift today, Charles? Yes, yes.

I think we might work together. Yeah. Don't you get that vibe? I certainly hope so. It will is fantastic. And look, I'm sure he hasn't thought about that awkward meeting since about a day later, given his glittering success thereafter. But yeah, lovely to get to chat to him and don't forget, once again, Gruen, is on tonight on the ABC.

Tomorrow we have one of our favorite people to chat to Nina Oyama. Yes. He's on the podcast almost every week anyway, but we've got a longer chat with her this week. Yes, and it's a sprawling, mad, mad story that she's. recounts that is just hugely entertaining, so it really is worth catching tomorrow's episode. If you haven't heard about the bad artist friend, if those words mean nothing to you, then you'll enjoy it.

And even if you've read the story that it's based on, I think your loved Neander's take on it. That's tomorrow in our feed. And then on Friday, our final lazy day is with Saul Griffith, who's an extraordinary inventor, energy guru, and honestly believes we can pretty much fix climate change. or get a long way there by electrifying everything. So that's on Friday. Don't miss that.

Gears from Road Microphones were part of the ACAS, Creator Network. Catch you tomorrow with Nina. See ya.