860. - Shepard Fairey

All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Stateside with Kai and Carter, a new podcast from The Guardian. And they are using this podcast to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions that we all have about what's happening in the world. And they do it three times a week, Jason. Does that sound familiar to you? We don't really talk about, you know, a lot of international global news items and climates and cultures and sports and things like that. We do talk about fashion and wellness, but for everything else, Kai and Carter are a great place. All right, so who couldn't use more news? Listen wherever you get your podcast. or watch on YouTube. How long gone? My shit was fucked up. Chris Black, still touching grass down here in the swamp. Them jeans, what's good, bro? Them jeans, what's good, bro? I'm just writing down a note for our guest today. Carolyn was like, are you going to ask him about getting up? I saw something right before we got on that I want to talk to you about. I don't know if you've seen this series that Rolling Stone is doing, the musicians on musicians thing. I think we talked about it a little bit. It's like their version of actors on actors. I saw it, but I definitely did not click through. Oh, I haven't watched any of them. I don't care. But apparently there's one with a friend of the program, Lucy Dacus, and Janelle Monae. One out of two ain't bad. So Janelle Monae says that she time-traveled and saw David Bowie. She's time-traveled many times, and she's telling Lucy this, and Lucy has to keep a straight face because Janelle Monae is dead fucking serious. And Lucy does a great job of keeping a straight face. And I was impressed because I would have been like, bitch, you are tripping. Yeah, but that's where I want the real Lucy to come through and say, excuse me, because I mean, but what does that exactly mean? So you're saying she she teleported, went back into time. Hold on. Hold on. I'll read it to you verbatim. I think when I saw David Bowie.

I traveled back into the 1970s and I saw him do Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. And it was incredible. I was backstage and I was like, this is what I want to do. And so I jetted back to, you know, the 2000s. And I was like, I can have the musical, make the music, create the lyrics and create community around transformation and being queer. And not even just in sexuality, but just in how we see the world. So it's a bigger. God, I mean, it would take somebody as corny as Janelle Monáe to be like, I went back, you know, because I've talked to people in my life who did the right, you know, correct sequence of drugs to really believe that they went back to the 70s to go kick it backstage with Ziggy Stardust and the spiders from Mars. That plausible. But then as soon as she starts saying like, building community around you know what bro let me tell you something no queer spaces didn't exist in the 70s bro david bowie said the queer space was wherever i am if a guy's sucking my dick that's what david even david bowie himself said queer space is our guy i just love i just saw this and it's like a it's like a p you know it's like a screenshot like pdf graphic and it's so fucking it's just so funny and like What are you going to do? You have to let her get away with it. What do you do if you're Lucy? Be like, yo, you're crazy, bitch, and then the whole thing breaks down and you have to leave? You have no option to be like, yeah, okay, sure, tell me more. Yeah, I would hit her with the Jennifer Lawrence on Hot Ones, what do you mean type of reaction. What do you mean? What do you mean? What do you mean? Truly, what do you mean? Are you just being a crazy person or did this really happen? you know, a close encounter with a third kind or an alien abduction story or, you know, I actually died and saw God and came back to life. I want to hear more about that story, and every detail that further is added to it makes the story less believable, less plausible, and less good. I just like that Janelle Monae is so detached from reality that she thinks she can say that shit and everybody's got to keep a straight face. But I guess she makes that much money, so there's a lot of people around her that are just like, yeah, whatever you say, babe. She does make a lot of money, but I don't know anyone who's listening.

Listening to that music. No offense to all the Monetists out there. She's sort of the original her, where it's like, this is so popular, and I see the numbers and they're staggering, but I've never heard anybody say, I listen to this or I like this. I think her and her have been around. For about the same amount of time. Now, of course, Janelle Monae is kind of going for a female childish Gambino thing with the titties out. I met Janelle Monae as an indie artist in Atlanta in like... 2003. Damn. I feel like her was in middle school. I feel like her was in middle school. Okay. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe, maybe her is older, but I mean, I don't need, we don't need to spend more time talking about these two bad musicians, but I just thought that, I just thought that story, like that's taking a dream story to the worst possible level. Yeah. I'm looking at Janelle Monae 2003. Ooh, that hair was poofing and puffing, but people really got excited when Janelle Monae led the titties out a couple of years ago. When she did like that music video that was like topless. My version, my little wing of creepy black guy Twitter was loving it. You talking about the Joe Biden podcast? Me and the fellas. They're part of the subsect. They're not, you know, not not. You posted a video, Audrey Hobart performed Sumi on Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, and you gave this a positive affirmation here, a positive reaction. And this feels very, all of those words feel antithetical to Chris Black. She's everything we need. She's actually, she writes the songs herself and they're better than all the other girls. And there's no Jack Antonoff in sight. That song, there's five songs in her record that are better than any Addison Rae song, any Sabrina Carpenter song, any Gracie Abrams song. Like, it's kind of crazy. It's kind of crazy how much better it is. And she's doing it herself. But I also understand that the quirked up side of it could turn people off. I recognize that. And I, of course, don't expect you or Tom Krell, who listens to like,

chamber music to like that. I'm fine with that. I'm fine with making that. R slash chamber heads, we're not feeling a-hobe as much. That's okay. But you're okay with the, like, oopsie-daisy, I'm so adorkable, oh my god, is the camera on? Where do I stand here? Is this me? I'm just a random chica. I don't know nothing. Like, you are okay with that shtick? It doesn't seem insufferable to you? Unfortunately, it would seem insufferable, except I believe that it's authentic. I think she's really a freak. Addison Rae has no songs, but she's lobotomized and hot and it's cool. Sometimes that's all you need. That's fine too. There's different strokes for different folks and they can all scratch the same itch, I guess is what I'm trying to say. I believe it to be real. I can like Addison Rae and you could like Audrey Hobart. And it's always okay. But I like Addison. I like Addison Rae, but no one likes her music. Do you know what I mean? Like, that's not what it's about. I would disagree with you on that. You think people are at an Addison Rae show because they like the music? I think they're at the Addison Rae show because it's experience and they think it's cool. Which is also... But I'm saying that's fine. If she didn't have any music that people like, nobody would go to the show just to watch the theatrical dance numbers. I... I think the music is fine. It's the same way that nobody's going to go to an Audrey Hobart show if they don't actually like the music. They're not going to go see her. I think it's a different thing. Whatever she's doing, Ike Harley on stage. I think it's a different thing. I think that Addison Rae is like a cultural thing that people want to be a part of, like a la Brat, you know? And I think that is as powerful as music these days because people want to be a part of whatever community they can be a part of. And I think it's I think some things are more about the music than others, I guess is all I'm saying. I would say Audrey Hobart has an equal. Yeah, yeah. Not not as big, but she has her own totally sense of community and her own style of person that she's being marketed to. Totally. I feel like I've seen more of a wide range.

Obviously on a much smaller scale. We'll call it a less attractive demo. Yeah, well, it's less like 19-year-old gay guys. It's more 30-year-old gay guys. I think it's the difference. Do you think guys listen to Audrey Hobart? I feel like it's 90%, 94% exclusively female marketing girlies. I'm telling you, bro. I'm telling you, that shit is like... It's like Taylor Swift. I get your aversion to it. I totally do. But I can't believe how good it is. It's so much better. better than everything else that's meant to be like that. And it's, it's, it was, and it also fascinates me because she's the one who wrote the Gracie Abrams hits and Gracie Abrams in my mind has no songs. You know what I mean? It's like confusing to me a little bit. You are, you are not making, you're sort of making my point a little bit by doing that, but you know, it all goes back to what, what is a hit, you know? No, totally. I mean, but I think that, I think that there's a certain level of like, thing that gets so big that people don't even know why they like it you know what i'm saying like i think for sure like i think that some of these i think some of this pop stuff gets to this point where it's like you could ask somebody about the music and they would like stumble over their words but they could talk about the outfits or the tweets or the instagram you know what i mean which and i think that's just part of our modern society many many of our listeners might feel the same way about the music of like black pink for example just like i'm going to the black pink show tonight what what's your favorite song they make music yeah i don't know it's just i just like they hand me a thing lights up yeah but i think that's where we're at i think i think it's this very strange time where that's like not you know that the idea when we were younger that if you wore a shirt of a band that you didn't actually know or like you would get clowned for that that's completely out the window That kind of behavior is totally out the window. Not for me. I see Kylie Jenner wearing a suffocation long sleeve. Boom. We're just on site. Fuck you, bitch. King Kylie could get it any time if she's wearing the wrong suffocation long sleeve. King Kylie wearing the I Hate God hat. Oh, fuck no. Name five albums, bitch. Dude, I saw there's a book coming out about Florida, basically underground music.

the the addison who does despair books was like yeah i worked on this and posted like an ass suck chapter and i was like man this is crazy shit this is crazy shit there's a book about florida coming out And there's multiple spreads about Asak in this book. I don't know if we're going to make the McNally Jackson top ten with this one. A little more of a niche audience. I pre-ordered my copy, of course. But yes, it's on site for Kylie. It's on site for Travis when he wears his avail shirt. You already know what time it is. We have a guest today. Our guest today, Shepard Fairey. You know his art. He's been beasting for, I mean, at this point, 30 years. Known for the Obey giant. Andre the giant got a posse. He's tangled with the long arm of the law over the Obama poster that he made. He still does these insane murals that take days and several pieces of construction equipment. to get up there. And he just has a collab show in London right now with Damien Hirst and Space Invader. I was looking at that earlier and I was like, oh, all three of these motherfuckers touched all this shit. It's not just the three. It's not a group show. It's like, no, we all did this together, which is kind of a crazy thing to do. It was a polycule art show. We'll get into it with Shepard. All right, let's give him a call. This episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Squarespace. Obviously, Jason, you and I spend a lot of time on the World Wide Web. So do our peers, our listeners, our friends, our colleagues, maybe even your parents if they're freaky. And if you're doing anything in the world, writing, taking pictures. I do topless boxing. You need a website. Exactly. A website that works, that does what it's supposed to do, that allows you to be creative but also business-minded. Jason, there's one place to go for that, Squarespace. Yeah, Chris, I'm over here. I'm modifying calculators and putting Claude inside of them so you could cheat at school. And I just want a place where I could, you know, have everything all in one place. I can have the SEO tools so those future graduates can find me. And, you know, I'm able to accept, quote, unquote, donations for my services that might be gray area.

You know what I mean? And then email campaigns. Hey, I got a new 2.3 version upgrade. Boom, boom, boom. Get the analytics going. Raise some money. Show your investor all of your cool analytics of what's going on. They're going to want to get in early. And we can use Blueprint AI to make your website look as professional as your competition, if not more. So head to squarespace.com slash howlong for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code howlong to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Quince. Jason, the temps are warming up. It's getting hot out there. Summer always changes how I get dressed. I need pieces that feel lighter, more breathable, and they're just easy but still put together. I don't want to look like a slob. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high-quality essentials that feel and look amazing. Breathable linen and soft organic cottons. Well-made basics, but without the luxury markups. That rare balance where everything feels elevated, but still effortless. Yeah, Chris, linen season is here. I wore a linen blazer to dinner a few nights ago in the warm California sun. But, you know, you got that Italy trip coming up this summer. And quality European linen pants and shirts. Upgrade that look starting at just $34. You know, if you get a nice linen suit, a little t-shirt underneath it, some chill shoes, you're looking good, but you're staying cool. The inside of your special areas are nice and dry as you turn up with your besties. So elevate that summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com slash how long for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, even on a nice holiday now available in Canada. That is Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash how long. That'll get you free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince punto com slash how long. This episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by a new podcast from The Guardian stateside with Kai and Carter. This is covering a lot of our bases, Jason. It's trying to slow down.

The news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what's happening in the world. And I know you particularly have quite a lot of questions. A lot of questions. But how often? Because we do this podcast three times a week and that's a sweet spot. How many times do they do? Three times a week. And I have a feeling just based on the platform and these talking points that they're maybe going to be covering different stuff than we do. That's just a guess. The Guardian is not some billionaire owned. They're not afraid to say what they want to say, brother. Yeah, Rupert ain't sniffing around in what journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman are up to over there at Stateside. But yeah, listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch it on YouTube. It's three times a week. And who couldn't use more news? Especially when it's not from here, let's say. Give it a listen. Give it a listen. You're sounding good. You're sounding good. How are you doing, buddy? You know, busy. You were just talking about it. I just got back from London and Berlin, and I have a lot of other projects moving along, so never a chance to catch my breath. But, hey, you know, in a world that's quite fickle to still have demand for my creativity this many years in. Sure. You're like, I'll take it. Yeah, exactly. I'll sleep when I'm dead type B. I get it. I get it. I get it. Okay, so we're back in Echo Park at the studio? Yeah, yeah. I'm on Sunset by Dodger Stadium. You know the spot. Oh, I know the spot. Dodgers going to the World Series. That's going to fuck your next two weeks up, isn't it? Just in terms of parking and getting in and out of your lot. Yeah, that might be true, but I will sustain the wrath of many Dodgers fans if I complain about it. I'll take one for the team. No problem. I love it. You can't say shit. You can't say shit. That really does cause problems over there, though. It's an interesting – but, I mean, how many – there's seven games in the World Series. They play half at home. We're looking at three to four if it goes all the way. It's not that bad. Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess speaking of that and that neighborhood, you've been in that studio space for, what, 20 years? Since 2008, beginning of 2008.

15, 20 years. How have you experienced the neighborhood changing from when you first got there to now, just in terms of your level of gentrification? Well, it is gentrifying, but I think COVID and the 2008 financial meltdown, it all sort of slowed that. And so the cost of living everywhere in LA has just gone crazy. So I feel bad for everybody who doesn't have the ability to already be in the housing market and have, you know, have a mortgage to pay instead of rent. But, you know, we own our building, so we're lucky that way. But, yeah, I mean, I still think there's a good mix of kinds of people in this neighborhood. But I think if you're young and trying to get your start, it's harder than ever. I know a lot of people that they would have lived here. 10 years ago, but now they're in Boyle Heights or even further out because rent's so expensive. That's a bummer. I worry about that for LA because one of the things I loved about LA when I moved here 25 years ago was that relative to a place like San Francisco or New York, it had the same kind of cultural opportunities, but the cost of living was a lot more affordable. I could never have had all the... studio space for my art in those places but i could in la yeah that is kind of crazy to think about because no one would say that today yeah no they would they wouldn't um and i don't really i'm not an economist so you know i don't i don't really wait hold on hold on who are we talking to you're not you're telling us you're not an economist got it okay go ahead go ahead but i think that maybe maybe the uh the ice raids or something else will just um have all those people thinking they're gonna get on a soap opera or become an influencer, have them not show up because it's too expensive and things will mellow out. I don't know. You're right. There's not a lot of content creators coming from Iowa to boil heights and kick their career off. That's a good point. That's a good point.

The mom bloggers aren't relocating to Boyle Heights to get it started. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, with the popularity of Yellowstone, it's better for your MAGA demographic to be in Iowa anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Take a second look at Wyoming, guys. I mean, those places are – because I guess I pretty recently went to Jackson Hole for the first time, and I was like, oh, this is – I get what this is, but I felt like – places like that sort of feel and maybe this is because i've watched them on tv but they just feel like a sort of like a backlot they don't feel real and it feels like a disney world type situation and i just i didn't it didn't sit right with me the way i thought it would yeah they're like cowboy hats and cowboy boots as as kind of a costume of authenticity it's it's really depressing to me all right this is a good question for you shepherd you made you've made some bread in your time why do rich guys become cowboys Why do they want to become cowboys once they make money? What do you think the reason is? I know what the reason is. It's because they want to project this American fantasy of I pulled myself up by my bootstraps. I don't need anyone. Me and my six gun. laid claim to this land. And, you know, it's not that you were born with a silver spoon and your hedge fund thing worked out. And, you know, it's not that. It's that, you know, you broke them horses to your will and now you rule things. You got it out the J.P. Morgan mud, as they say. Yeah, yes. I'm from Charleston, South Carolina. That person's not just in Wyoming. They're everywhere, yeah. Yeah, down there. you know the the whole thing is yes i'm a banker all week long but on the weekend i um i drink some rock and rye and bring home the limit of green heads and uh yeah i could live off this land i i'm you know i'm tough i could live off this land it's like bitch you have a g-wagon you could not live off the land yeah yeah i'm i mean i'm i'm so glad that i discovered skateboarding and punk rock i might have ended up one of those guys i'm from it i'm from atlanta and i so i have a similar charleston's a little more um

A little more of that, I think, and always has been because it's just smaller. Yeah. But I know what you mean. A few wrong turns, and that's you. Yeah. You'd be wearing a Vineyard Vines shirt right now. We call it the Blue Blazer and Khakis Mafia. Yeah, no, that's real. That's very real. Yeah, it is. And my parents are still there. When you go back there to Charleston. Are you a little bit of a local celeb, or are you able to kind of go under the radar because you are not wearing vineyard vines and things like that? To be fair to Charleston, it's not one-dimensional. It's not a monolith. I have a lot of friends I skateboarded with in high school that still live there. I'm still friends with. The woman I used to cut school with a lot now runs two Montessori schools. I don't know how good an idea that was. No, she's actually amazing. Sounds like a new Hulu show. Also, a lot of my parents' friends who are sort of more Charleston culture centric, they still like what I do as an artist. A lot of them have a little bit of a creative spirit in what they do. There is a lot of creativity there. Whether it comes to antiques or architecture or... landscaping there's a there's a lot of aesthetic appreciation there and it's not all for what the kind of stuff i do but they can kind of they can kind of uh say okay you know we would never live in la where it's you know coke fueled orgies all day and and antifa and drive-by drive-by shootings but like but you know hey if you if if that floats your boat like we have we're happy for you we're happy they're saying i i personally didn't vote for obama but i did like your artwork shepherd yeah seriously seriously there is there's plenty of that and um that's like but that's an archetype that's a southern archetype where it's like oh i mean you do whatever you want to do sweetheart but like that ain't that ain't my thing and my my parents have become more politically outspoken because of because of trump i mean they've always been democrats but i think that

Finally, this whole idea of sort of the, you know, the genteel assimilation to whatever, whichever way the wind is blowing in the south. My parents have decided, OK, we can't do that anymore. And, you know, there was a No Kings March there. My mom, my mom was out there. It is definitely part of Charleston culture to sort of just. politely disagree and do things that might oppress others um when you vote and and well put well put no no it's fine it's fine as long as the others live far away enough then it's not a problem yeah yeah just keep out of my zip code and i'm happy well i guess speaking of the obama things it's i was listening to you on mobi's podcast and you mentioned that your daughter was born the same year that you did that Which would make her, what, 18 now? 17, yeah. She'll be 18 in January. I cannot believe it's been that many years since we were trying to get Obama in office. I feel old. I can only imagine how old you must feel then. I think I am older than you, so I do feel older. All right. Well, let's not get into facts here, Shepard. It's a feeling. We're talking about politics. We shouldn't be dealing with facts. Yeah, we don't deal with facts. That's not the point. No, no. We're just having fun here. Precisely. Precisely. Well, since enough time has passed, it'll be a 20-year anniversary in a couple of years. Have you felt inspired to create your next version of that to make a strong political message for good? I'm trying to do that all the time, not necessarily in that way. I did make a poster for Kamala Harris, who I admire, but I don't think she has the same. communication skills as obama and she also didn't have she does not no she does not she did not have the same runway as obama also um obama is pretty special in terms of his oratory ability where he made yeah i listened to him on mark maron he shut his little ass down it's hard to get maron to shut up that take that takes an obama level obama had more runway but he could have done it with kamala's runway he was that good he just came out of nowhere and we said who the fuck is this guy

The real challenge, I think, is promote the kind of culture that means that people like Obama can rise to the top. But the whole cult of celebrity and personality is not necessarily something that I want to do moment to moment, because I think that that's that's not making the ground fertile for the right people. sort of moving from person to person where you use all the tactics that are used against progressive people from the other side. I don't want to be fighting fire with fire in that way. I do enjoy that Gavin Newsom has used a lot of Trump's tactics in in combating Trump because all of a sudden when the tables are turned. You know, we'll see who the snowflakes are on this one. Sorry, you know, that Mag is melting, melting under the heat of of of what Gavin Newsom is doing. But that's not what I want to do. Sometimes I look at what will be effective in grabbing attention and, you know, maybe going viral versus what creates the world. I want to live in in a sustained way. They're different. sometimes not all the time but sometimes i think they're different most of the time probably just just based on how the world moves you know what i mean well unfortunately i think a good example of that is you creating art to share this political message and spread the word for decades of your life and then within the last year you and everyone else has to record themselves talking into their phone for tick tock to to get that message across you know what i mean yeah and i don't i don't do tick tock but i do all the other platforms for the most part and um right yeah there's a there's a book i read recently i know this is definitely not where you guys want to go with this podcast but i'm going to do it anyway sorry we don't know we don't know No wrong turns, brother. A book called Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari that's looking at how social media algorithms and AI are really leading us in these directions away from each other. Polarization, not unity, echo chambers, but also how AI can track your patterns.

To such a degree that you aren't even necessarily conscious of that its ability to manipulate you psychologically is going to become very dangerous for politics. Hold on, Shepard. You're saying that that that screen I've been talking to is not a hot chick who wants to have sex with me. You're telling me that that's a computer. Yeah. Damn it. Allegedly. Yeah. I think it's even deeper than that. It's, you know, noticing that you. You respond to certain things and that you're, you know, that you're angry about certain things and then feeding you that in a way where you're only focusing on something much in the way that with Brexit, there was research done by Cambridge Analytica that people didn't like the idea of money going out of the country that could be spent in the UK. So they focused all on that without without mentioning that. The return on that investment was much greater than the expenditure. And so people were like, oh, yeah, forget that. We're UK. We won't take that from the rest of Europe. All those horrible people that were so similar to. Well, let's not. We don't. No one loves the Parisians. But go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, I do. I will take issue with you on that. Here's what here's what you have to do. You just have to meet some influencers like Daft Punk or whoever and get them to vouch for you, and then everyone from Paris likes you. I've done it. Jason, I know you know this too as a DJ. No, no, no. I got in early with the Ed Banger crew. Yeah, Pedro Winter. That's your boy. Good old Pedro. I've seen you DJ with him. You can hang out with Daft Punk as well. I'm not on that level just quite yet. They don't love me as much as they might love you. But anyway, my point is that I think that the way that I want to reach people is everywhere possible, but I don't like the idea that the medium itself is compromising the nature of the communication, and I'm working against that in how I use Instagram, how I use...

Does that make it less successful as far as the reach goes? I'm always trying to be reasonable. Reasonable doesn't mean I don't say what I truly believe. I don't share my convictions. But I'm not just trying to stoke outrage. And that's terrible for engagement, bro. It's going to be hard for me to hate watch your shit if you're just a regular reasonable guy. Yeah, exactly. Because I'm tired of seeing that. And so when I do a post about something that I genuinely believe, like human rights in Gaza matter, I will, you know, I'll get. A lot of people that are like, yeah, and a lot of people that are like, you're an anti-Semite. And so that gets a lot of engagement. But I'm not going to court controversy on a regular basis. just to try to get numbers on my social media. It's disgusting. People that do that disgust me. You're better than me. All I do is stoke them on this podcast. That's all we can do. You don't even want to know the shit I say to get people to listen to this garbage. You have no idea. I feel the same way, and we've talked about it, and you could see other podcasters or TV hosts or whatever over the evolution over the last few years and how... you're able to find financial success, followership, and overall success in general if you pick one side and go full in. If you pick one side, Jason, you know if I went. If you pick the right side. If I became either a youth pastor or a fucking right-wing podcaster, I'd have a lot more money. And instead, I'm slumming it with you fucking bozos going the wrong way. I mean, this is a good segue to Donald Trump's strategy. He was a Democrat when it when it suited his interest to be a Democrat. He was pro choice, gave money to Hillary Clinton's campaign because he was in New York. But then when he decided he's going to run because of his his.

His racism that he just couldn't shake even though it wasn't classy in New York. The stain will not come out of the shirt. As a racist Democrat, it's not an easy existence. It's tough. His whole birther conspiracy about Obama, when he decides to run, he just goes, who are the people easiest to manipulate? How can I aggregate power most? Quickly and efficiently. And of course, it was scapegoating. It's the that love scapegoating that feels like, you know, somebody is taking something from them. The American dream of being, you know, rich and having trophy wives and cheating with a porn star, all of which Donald Trump embodies. Where where are they going to find that? Yeah, I find that I got people in my life. Here you go. Here you go. Yeah. No, but I mean, I think there's a pretty there's a pretty, you know, there's a history of a lot of people doing that over time. You know what I mean? Where it's like you look at their the records are public. You know what I mean? We can tell what you were doing, whatever, 10 years ago. And if you decide to change that, it's almost like if you go hard enough, no one cares. Like no one even chooses to look at that or remember it if you go so far in the other direction. Well, I think what it is is that there's always going to be an audience because we're a polarized nation. And some people think that the more extreme you go, the more conviction you have. If you're uncompromising, then like you're principled. No, no. society in our culture hasn't created a lower ceiling for that bullshit yeah we're here to win we're not here to do actual good things yeah in the world and the um you know the the spewing um whatever you're spewing and uh it does not necessarily mean that you're going to be able to solve problems and that's been that's you know played out uh in real time for lots of people but

We're susceptible to the grift as a nation. I don't know how to get past that, really. You guys are smart. You guys aren't susceptible to the grift. Oh, Shepard, I think it's going to only get worse. I use drugs to block it out, but the older you get, it's like I remember being a kid, and every four years it would be like, The current president, all he does is play golf all day. Not me. I'm not going to do that when I'm in office. They get voted in office. They play golf all day. Every four years, a new president plays golf more than the last president. And nothing changes. Nothing gets done. So it's easy to get kind of disaffected and just kind of just remove yourself from it completely. I admire how strong-willed you are and how political you still are. I feel like you could be somebody running for office. You could be. Here we go. you know echo park school board right here you got to start somewhere well i was thinking you you brought up gavin newsom and like it takes a world so shitty for us to start being like damn gavin newsom's kind of tight you know what i mean like that's how rough things have gone gavin newsom the one thing he has going for him is that he looks presidential he looks like he could have played the president on tv and that's for half the people that's all they need oh this is huge for me personally this episode of how i'm going It was brought to you by TaskRabbit. Oh, baby, let me tell you something. This is not a joke. I use TaskRabbit a lot because I can't do anything. You need some art hung? TaskRabbit. You need something put together? A cabinet? Got to reach that cheese grater on the top shelf? TaskRabbit. Anything you need, TaskRabbit can take care of it for you. How it works, TaskRabbit connects you with skilled taskers in your area. They can help you move. They can assemble furniture, repairs, yard work, mounting, and more. You can search for a tasker based on cost, skill set, availability, and past client reviews so you know exactly who's showing up and can have confidence that they know what they're doing because taskers have assembled over 3.4 million pieces of furniture, completed 700,000 home repairs.

handled 1.5 million moves, and the numbers are just going up, Jason. Yeah, throw a little money at the problem. It's not so expensive, and that job that you really don't want to do is something that another person out in the world is very good at doing and would gladly do it in exchange for a little bit of money. So when life happens, your to-do list grows. Get ahead of it now and get $15 off your first task at TaskRabbit.com or grab the TaskRabbit app using promo code how long taskers book up faster, especially for same day tasks. So book trusted home help today. That is $15 off your first task using promo code how long with the TaskRabbit app or at TaskRabbit.com. Hi Talk House Network listeners, it's your old friend Nels Klein from Wilco here. Wilco is touring this summer and we'd love to see you somewhere on the road. We're playing shows this June and July in Rochester Hills, Michigan, Chautauqua, New York, Lafayette, New York, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Vienna, Virginia, Forest Hills, New York, Portland, Maine, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Memphis, Tennessee, LaGrange, Georgia, Charleston, South Carolina, Virginia Beach, Virginia, Wheeling, West Virginia, and Columbus, Ohio. Plus, there are even more dates, some with Willie Nelson that I didn't even mention here. So please go to wilkoworld.net to see the full list of dates. We'll see you on the road this summer. So you're saying with Hilton Honors, I can use points for a free night stay anywhere? Anywhere. What about fancy places like the Canopy in Paris? Yeah, Hilton Honors, baby. Or relaxing sanctuaries like the Conrad and Tulum? Hilton Honors, baby. What about the five-star Waldorf Astoria in the Maldives? Are you going to do this for all 9,000 properties? When you want points that can take you anywhere, anytime, it matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. Yeah, I think, and, you know, that's been...

seen as um a liability because the right is like oh he's he's slick he's handsome he's not you know and um you know meanwhile they went um sarah palin was vice president running for vice president they were like she'll do a great job because she's kind of pretty yeah i i was i heard somebody talking today i don't know what i was listening to but they were talking about like the og sort of like ai porn stuff and it like the a lot of people remember it being sarah palin like they would put sarah palin's head on an on another body and the original baddie the original baddie all the women in the world who have ever been alive who could we put oh yeah we're gonna go with sarah palin i i totally forgot to know about sarah palin i feel like we forget about and how insane that was when she was on tv and when snl was making fun of her every week that was a simpler time yeah it was because She seems somewhat civilized compared to, say, Marjorie Taylor Greene or any very, very. Are you kidding me? Very civilized. Yeah. I mean, she didn't let's go to dinner. She didn't say anything about Jewish space lasers. I like this. Marjorie Taylor Greene has actually said that. And then and then also joined the whole. Well, you know, the free Palestine movement is is. a problem on campus because these campuses are permitting antisemitism. I mean, you know, like the Orwellian double think, double speak is so pervasive now. And they're like, Orwellian, what's that? Marjorie Taylor Greene did a tweet or an ex post, whatever, that said, if you get Kamala Harris as president or Joe Biden right now, I don't remember which one it was, but. It'll be Marshall Law, but she spelled it like Marshalls, the department store. I'm declaring a full Maxinista on this country.

Hey, look, man, spelling errors happened. You know, she was hurrying. It was on her phone. Do you remember that Dan Quayle misspelled potato? And then it was like his political career is over. We never heard from Quayle again. Quayle went quiet. We forget how spelling can be a real minefield sometimes for our uneducated. That's actually really funny. Yeah, I forgot about quail. Thank you for reminding me. Yeah, there's a bunch of people out there that are D-U-M. Yeah, yeah. No, there's a lot of D-U-M asses out there. No, that's true. So, yes, all that is to say you are running for office then? I don't have the I don't have the constitution for that. And we aren't going to have a constitution at all. OK, this guy. But all right. What about I mean, you are you are a pun king. So maybe a movement into the male podcaster political space. I feel like you're a great chitter chatter about all this stuff. Like you brought up Marjorie Taylor Greene. She's recently flip flopping to be a little anti-maga lately. Do you believe she's doing this in earnest or do you think it's a little smoke and mirrors? I think that she's so ignorant that she didn't understand that attacking health care might affect her own family. And then when the threat of that emerged, she went, oh, wait, I think you could be on to something here. I think maybe her understanding of the outcome was, you know, maybe not. So that would mean that these people who we. could consider to be, you know, monsters in so many ways, might actually have a heart and a conscious deep down in there that could be turned? Here's my take on things, which isn't particularly fun, but I think that what's going on with Trump right now and, you know, this sort of authoritarian manipulation, getting his tentacles into every branch of government, putting... loyalists in, you know, in positions of power, even in places that should be bipartisan or nonpartisan. I think that the consequences for the country are going to be so severe that people who are normally just assuming they will be safe and comfortable will be stung and it's going to create more suffering for people who are already struggling or marginalized. But what is the thing that that people who.

are in power fear the most. It is a solidarity from people who normally they can pit against each other. So I think it will eventually backfire in that a lot of people who are suffering economically, even if they've been told like, oh, it's because of immigrants or it's because of non-white people or whatever, they might realize, oh, you know what? We're all dealing with the problems of Trump trying to create a Putin style fascist government that relies on his cronyism with oligarchs and everybody else is screwed. Look, I want to be clear. All my problems are caused by white people. I want to be very clear and on the record. Any problem in my life is caused by white people. Maybe those powers that be that you're speaking of are already aware of this as well. And do you think that when the time for this revolution comes, we're going to be too busy jacking off to our AI Sarah Palin, you know, links and and having our food tubes delivered to us. And we're just going to be so, you know, just numbed out and apolitical. And we're just going to roll over and take it. What do you think is going to happen? What will need to happen to have a true revolution? I wish I knew. I really do. You're like, have you considered wheat pasting? I've got a few ideas. Just stick with me. I've got a lot of stickers. That's a big question. I think that we're too far gone. I think we've gotten to an every man for himself or their selves position, and it's only going to get more. more extreme as we go on because it doesn't feel like anything is stable enough to believe in or like put put your weight behind or sort of align yourself with it's it's better to be like i care about me and the three people in this fucking house and that's all i can concern myself i have been pandering to the wealthy lately now that i think about it yeah i would never do that you know that yeah it's hard it's hard to say yeah i know that there are a lot of people who care about

The principles I care about, but the way in which the mechanisms to achieve that in terms of governance and policy is those are all those are all disintegrating. So how do we yeah, how do we bounce back? And that's one of the things that I think dystopian novels like Fahrenheit 451 or 1984 or Brave New World. there were meant to caution people against letting things get to that place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, oh, shit, this shit came true. That's crazy. It's like, no, that's not the point. Okay, so maybe you're saying what we need is somebody, you know, somebody really cool needs to take an Orwell novel and turn it into like a dope-ass Netflix documentary or like a really cool podcast, and then we will be like, oh, shit. You know what's funny? I mean, I'm... I watch TV and movies pretty regularly. I was just on a long flight back from Berlin, so I watched the most recent Mission Impossible. Not necessarily the sweet spot of my taste generally, but I know it would be fun and totally ridiculous. A fine plane movie, except for the part where planes crash, but yeah, go ahead. In this newest Tom Cruise Mission Impossible, The villain is a thing called the entity, which is a weaponized A.I. And having read Nexus by Harari, I was like, wow, whoever whoever wrote the script for this film is looking at the way things could get more extreme. And in the film, the A.I. is stoking distrust from nation to nation, group to group and showing how that makes us vulnerable to. A potential nuclear war because we're in such fear of other people that we'd have to strike first. And I think it was a really good metaphor for what's happening. And then and then there's this whole Ving Rhames has a has a whole sort of CODA speech in the film about how how we need to see the that we have more in common and build the ability to collaborate, et cetera, et cetera. And I was like.

damn, everything that I am worried about and believe politically just actually got done by this movie. That is fucked up. Yeah, I want to just be clear. That's the first time Ving Rhames has been mentioned on this podcast in our history. I want to give you props for that. So you're saying we need to basically elect in some way Tom Cruise's character to sort of take over. Definitely not. Okay. Well, I think on the dark sides of that, Like films where we have like an enemy that could have a face or a country, you know, from our childhood into now. It went for, you know, the Russians and the Chinese and the Middle Easterns. And then it starts getting a little bit more vague as political correctness grows. And then it's just kind of like vague people that are bad. Whereas, you know, like when you watch Back to the Future, it's like the Lebanon. guys are coming on the volkswagen bus and those are our enemy the libyans libyans the libyans the libyans are coming the russians are coming blah blah blah and now we it's it works perfectly with our political correctness of like it's the entity yeah it's just it's just a blank enemy we don't and when you have that you it's you feel as if you'll never defeat it you know what i mean it doesn't feel like something that you can like all right Movie's over. We killed the entity. Everything is going to be okay now. You finish the movie and you're still like, oh, we're... Yeah, the entity wants Trump to get elected. It has nothing to do with Russia, the entity, but it wants... We don't know where it's from. It could be a 300-pound guy in his basement bedroom. Remember, that's what Trump said about the Russia election interview. Look, I still don't know. I don't want to be... No, I think... Could just be a guy. I think that anything creative that gets people to consider that we're social creatures, we need to work together to maintain the things that we all benefit from. You know, libertarians have always been disgusted by libertarians because they're really selective libertarians. They don't build pave their own roads. They don't take their own garbage to the dump. They don't remove their own sewage.

Most of them don't homeschool their kids, but they don't want to pay taxes. They take for granted everything that a functional society provides and the governance that goes on within a functional society. And they go, yeah, let me cherry pick the things that work best for me, not pay taxes when I want to, blah, blah, blah. And realizing that we all are benefiting from these the distribution of responsibilities and labor within our society and how, you know, we get to have our thing we do well. And then we don't have to do all the other things well, because there's somebody else out there doing that that provides a service for us. Like, just don't be a selfish dick. That's basically like we need we need creative things that tell those stories. You know, all the best music, all the best film, all the best art to me has some, you know, idiosyncratic take that is unique to that to that creator, yet has a way to find an audience that sees a connection to it. That's there's something universal and there's something and there's also something unique to it. So I just I want. I want people to experience more of that because I think the current way of relating to the world is making a lot of people very unhappy and hostile and no one benefits from that. I'm miserable. I'm miserable. I totally, I agree with you. I mean, I agree. Yeah. And when, when your ratings slip from having me as a guest, you'll be more miserable. So. Oh, it's okay. We've done, we've done way worse. Don't worry. This will be fine. This will be fine. No, we're off. We're off to a good start. This is good. No, I think that you, I think that, Making something that is both sort of like appeals to, I don't know what the right term is, maybe underground or like a niche audience, but then finds that sort of universal appeal eventually is the hardest thing to possibly accomplish with whatever the art form is. I agree. So like when I say hopefully finding something universal, I don't mean pandering to the lowest common denominator. Not at all. I think kind of asking the audience.

to lean in and and then and then it you know that can build a critical mass where something's talked about and then it becomes like a reference pointer what is a good example of this musically for you like the clash or something like what is something that felt very but then really had the universal appeal yeah the clash public enemy rage against the machine um you know i mean la tigra cool cool cool wow okay Damn, Latigra is lucky to be thrown in with that mix. Latigra is quite popular. And, you know, I love Bikini Kill, but Latigra is is is far more infectious. It's sort of like the way that Devo saw for their challenging ideas that really catchy music would be a better delivery vehicle. It's like the Trojan horse. The Yes new album is talking about climate change in a couple in a couple of the songs. And yet it's not it's not done in a way that's going to divide people. It's sort of more it's more poetic and symbolic. But I appreciate when anybody is is trying to find a way to nudge people in a direction that allows them to absorb it, process it and and then embrace it without feeling like they're just being scolded. I feel like I feel like Tool was always good at doing that as well. I know that, Chris, you're not a big fan of Tool, but I think exposing some of those messages and ideas to, you know, OzFest crowd is a good demographic to focus on. The OzFest crowd needs more help than most. I think that's the, you know, the late Tigras and the yeah, yeah, yeah, as it could be a little preaching to the choir. But I mean, I mean, come on, Black Sabbath. I mean, not that the people or even Metallica, you've got a song like Disposable Heroes by Metallica or with Black Sabbath, War Pigs or Children of the Grave. You know, there's so many songs in Black Sabbath that are not just about how Satan is scary. There's a lot of there's a lot of stuff that's about in War Pigs, you know, is talking about.

sending off the poor to do the fighting. They're being treated like pawns. Yeah, it's actually pretty smart stuff, but it doesn't mean everybody absorbs it. In fact, maybe with that crowd, a small percentage absorb it, but at least an effort's being made. Yeah, yeah, I respect that. I think I see it with country music nowadays a little bit, because, I mean, like War Pigs and a lot of those songs, Vietnam War, 60s, 70s, there was a lot of great music. That was a reaction to that, and we don't really have a ton of that today in the mainstream. We obviously have a lot of politically charged music nowadays. I can tell that you've never read the Jelly Roll lyrics, Jason, and that's something we're going to fix if I have anything to say about it. Jelly Roll wrote a song about how it sucks that we're sending all of our young men to war to die for these corporations. That would enact some true change versus kneecap saying free Palestine. No offense. Yeah, I agree. I mean, that's Zach Bryan shit that happened a couple weeks ago. It was crazy. He wrote this song. He basically says ICE sucks. Everybody that I heard talk about it for the first couple days just assumed it was him supporting ICE because of who he is. Yeah, saying ICE is going to come and get you. and they were like hell yeah and then they read the rest of the lyrics and they're like oh wait a second but like a guy like that is in a very interesting position where he's successfully become like you know arguably the biggest artist in the world walking this line of being sort of like an an you know a veteran and like a good old boy, but never crossing the line either way. Like, I think the reason this, the ice thing got so much attention is because he'd never really made a statement either way for whatever, four or five years since he became so popular. Um, but I, I just, I found that to be, I love people jump into conclusions and then being like, Oh shit. Well, uh, all right, nevermind. Yeah. I, the number of comments, um,

about i've done some things with uh tom morello and rage against the machine over the years yeah and the number of comments about them raging quote unquote with the machine because they said you know get out and vote um You're like, all right, look, you might have gotten me on a technicality, but let's talk this through. Let's talk it through. I thought I was supposed to throw a Molotov cocktail at the voting booth, but you want me to go in there and wait in line? Hell no. That's really funny. That's really, really funny. But, you know, there's always going to be that issue. And there's plenty of art and music that isn't political that I like. You know, there's a lot of fun stuff. One of the things that I've found in the people that endure as activists because it can feel like such a daunting thing to contend with the world's problems day in and day out is maintaining joy in your life. And Nadia from Pussy Riot is a friend, and she's somebody that definitely sort of toggles between having a good time. And you can see that in the music and the videos that she does. She likes to have fun. And and also she thinks that getting under the skin of people with too much power is fun. The mischief is fun. I find that fun, too. A lot of people have been saying to me, like, oh, are you going to tone down what you say? Because look what happened to Jimmy Kimmel. Look what happened to Stephen Colbert. I'm like, well, I don't have a show where I work for a network. I can't fire myself, so I think we're good. It's not going to happen to me. I could, but I choose not to. So you're saying Greta Thunberg could have a little more joy in her life? Definitely. Yeah, Greta could. I see what you're saying. Being engaged and that being your cause doesn't mean you have to have a miserable, joyless life. Like you can do both. Exactly. And in fact, it's like the it's probably the only way to find the correct rhythm and balance to to maintain that kind of effort, because otherwise it's a really heavy, depressing thing. Yeah. I mean, like I feel like if AOC was a little more.

had a little she could be a president if she was a little more fun and joyous and didn't have like a narky energy to it you know what i mean easier said than done of course obviously you have to consciously make an effort to i'm having fun now you know like it's it's something that should come natural jason you know you know as well as i do that shaking a narky personality that's almost impossible that's something that is almost impossible to to shake if you're born that way job well um speaking of of of cutting loose, having fun a little bit. You just DJed your photo show, Arch Retrospective in Berlin. Were you playing anything new? Any new music? Probably the only new thing, Wet Leg and Yard Act. But I like those two bands a lot. Yeah, on the hip-hop side, I like Joey Valance and Bray. Do you know them? They're kind of Beastie Boys-esque, but they're new, and I think they actually rhyme. They don't just come up with sort of a chant and then have some lazy beats under it. They actually rhyme. They're saying words? Yeah. You know me, Jason. We've DJed together a lot. You know that I love... the artistry of classic hip-hop from, you know, Public Enemy, Eric B and Rakim, Boogie Down Productions, Run DMC, Public Enemy, Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, you know, even N.W.A., they seem like Rhodes Scholars now compared to some of the stuff. That's true. I mean, look, to be fair, N.W.A. is a Rhodes Scholar compared to Playboy Cardi. I agree with you. I agree with you. Because I... I don't listen to that music at all. It was never my thing. I respect it, of course, because it's like foundational. But I guess, did you get into that through punk and skateboarding or was that first? Punk and skateboarding were first for me, I mean, 40 years ago plus. But I got into the Beastie Boys because it was quite infectious. And then I had already liked Run DMC when I was...

14 but thought if i got into punk that like i had to abandon anything other than punk and so i went back to run dmc back then you kind of did yeah and then um when thrasher had a review of the first public enemy record yo bum rush the show they described it as this is the new punk which For me, it was like, OK, now it now it's safe to embrace hip hop because it's been it's been, you know, ordained as the new punk by by Thrasher. And so speaking of Rhodes Scholars, the good people at Thrasher. Yeah, exactly. Like Moses from on high. Yeah, it's so well. That was that was my Bible at the time. Of course. And so for me, all that hip hop was it had a lot of the same spirit as punk. It was very underdog DIY. Punk was about not having to be a virtuoso musician. A lot of hip hop people didn't have any formal musical training, but they had a good ear. And so the way that there's with this remix culture in the late 80s and the 90s that was emerging, the way it sat perfectly in there, sampling really creatively, building a collage and then rapping over it, it suited my sensibility 100 percent. A lot of it was also social and political commentary, especially Public Enemy, but a lot of the other groups too. And then when it got to be more successful and this whole like, oh, I deserve to be making a lot of money became I am making a lot of money. it got less interesting to me i mean that happens to a lot of people in a lot of industries you know what i mean that that that is a common i've never heard it put so well though i like that going from i should be making a lot of money to i am making a lot of money really you really i don't want to listen to that song anymore did bands play in like in charleston and you're like in high school and stuff or were you having to drive to to other cities in the south um

I saw the Circle Jerks at a high school gymnasium in 86 in Charleston. That's a shit. And that was great. But otherwise, I went from Charleston to New York to stay with my friend and his aunt in the summer of 86 to see the Smiths on the Queen is Dead tour and then GBH, the Cro-Mags, and Seven Seconds. um at the ritz which is now webster hall bro hold on hold on bro we're not gonna just breeze over the queen is dead tour i just got i mean that's when morrissey had abs for christ's sake that's that long yeah yeah yeah um that was pretty that was pretty amazing i i was a smith's fan but i'm probably more of a smith's fan now than i was back then even though i find morrissey really tedious in a lot of ways i had a feeling you wouldn't be sort of with him i think i think more tedious is a beautiful way to put it but um but yeah i i mean i was really really hungry for seeing music and then when i went to the Rhode Island School of Design in 88. Providence is right between New York and Boston, so I could see tons of great stuff. You know, I saw Boogie Down Productions and Brand Newbie and like on the Browns campus and the RISD campus. I saw Firehose and Fugazi in the RISD dining hall. You know, I saw the Ramones with Jane's Addiction opening. I saw Primus. I saw so much good stuff. Because I was right there. But yeah, I saw Ice-T. Public Enemy canceled because Flavor Flav like went on a vendor and couldn't be found. But I've seen Public Enemy a lot since then. It's really cool. It's really cool when I remember that Flavor Flav was in Public Enemy. Like I totally – I'm totally like – detached him from that completely and then when you say that i'm like oh yeah he was like the other guy i mean he was a major part of public enemy he wasn't like just the hype man like he was the star yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean for for me the um he's the morrissey of public enemy i should say sorry yeah yeah yeah chuck d's the johnny mar and he's the mar yeah that's good that's true that's that's funny um

Yeah, I mean, Chuck D worked on the production with the Bomb Squad, and he wrote the lyrics. I mean, it's really like Chuck D's entire project, his conception for everything. Are you guys buddies now? You've done some stuff with them, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. I actually just talked to him yesterday. Oh, that's funny. That's really funny. I wanted to talk about the art show in London that you just had. We were talking about it in the intro with Damien Hirst and Space Invader. You earlier in the pod, you mentioned Orwellian. What's that? As like not really knowing what the references are and what, you know, the original things are. And now it had me thinking of like Space Invader. And now I'll go on my phone and I'll see people just basically doing that themselves just because it looks fun to make a little tile of a creature and throw it against the building until it sticks or whatever. And I feel like we're on the verge of I mean, there's millions of people who don't even know that he's stealing that from somebody who stole it from somebody. What do you think about all the, you know, the lost scrolls of information as the art world continues on? I think it's OK for things to just have an influence that it takes on its own life. It's great if somebody takes the time to understand the history where things. where things came from. I have a natural, just inquisitive nature to look at like, oh, you know, I like that sound in that song that's a hip-hop song. Let me research the sample. Or if the Sex Pistols talk about how they listened to the Stooges, then I'm going to go back and listen to the Stooges and see what that's about. But for other people who maybe they just don't have that mindset, I'm okay with that. Space Invader should get a lot of credit for developing an approach to street art that is really visually effective and usually doesn't get cleaned because a mosaic looks ornamental, decorative. Too cute to buff. Yeah, it's smart and it's subversive in the way it works. And he's also a maniac. He's such a hard worker.

thousands of those things across the globe and something like 1,800 of them in Paris alone. Jesus. So, you know, I guess when I look at the power of art, thinking that something is inspiring enough to move beyond the crowd that wants a little bit of credit for knowing everything about it. You know, that's that's the side of the art world that I really don't like this. This insular elitist side of the art world. I, you know, there are people that have referenced either the graphic approach to the Obama or the, you know, the obey with a red bar underneath, which I actually stole from Barbara Kruger, her her red bar with white type and Supreme stole it from Barbara also. But. I see those things out there and I say to myself, even if that person has no idea who I am, the fact that this graphic approach to communication has impacted them to do their mutation of it, it shows that it worked, that it worked, that something I'm doing is effective. And it also makes me think, OK, well, for the next thing to be meaningful, maybe it can't look. The same because somebody might just assume that I'm one of the millions of people who, you know, have have like looked at that and a riffing off of that without without knowing it's become wallpaper to a degree. So maybe I have to do my next evolution that has some connection to that, but feels like it's taking it to a fresh place. So I enjoy all of that. It's like a constant dialogue with the with the public that. keeps me keeps me energized i think that's a good attitude to have about it i think that is like that that i i sort of agree i think that's when something has worked when it's crossed over to the point where people have no idea where it came from they just like it because they like it yeah i mean all this stuff it sort of gets down to are you delusional about um about your contribution and about how creativity works or are you honest because people keep saying to me like

AI is taking things that other people made and it's remixing it. I'm like, yeah, that sounds like the entire premise of classic hip hop right there. Right. That's also what humans do in general. We are we are receptors of information that then we process that information and spit something out based on all those experiences, based on the things we've been inspired by. That's what AI does, too. Don't get mad at the AI because you're just the human version of the same thing. We did it first. I also I wanted to ask you about your art collection. What do you gravitate towards over the years? Is there something that you've really gotten a lot of that you're happy with? Yeah, I mean, there's tons of people who I admire. A lot of them come from. The Street Art Zone, but definitely not all of them. I have a few pieces by Jamie Reid, who did all the art for the Sex Pistols. I have a few pieces by Winston Smith, who did all the art for the Dead Kennedys. Stuff from punk culture that really helped shape me, I've tried to collect. I have the two original drawings for Suicidal Tendencies by Lance Mountain, the skateboarder from the Bones Brigade. Yeah, of course. But then I've collected some Banksy stuff, a lot of Twist, Barry McGee, Thomas Campbell. Phil Frost, Swoon. She's a she's a good friend. Yeah, I think I think a lot of these people is sort of your generation in some ways, which is cool. Yeah. Yeah. There's a guy from Portugal named Vils whose work I really like a lot. There's stuff that I respond to purely aesthetically. Oh, I have some Raymond Pettibone stuff. He did all the art for Black Flag. But then a lot of times it's almost impossible to divorce how I feel about the aesthetics. from how I feel about how I first engaged with those aesthetics. What was the cultural path to it? I don't try to untangle that. If it makes me feel a certain way and it was important to who I am, then cool. You mentioned Banksy. The recent heist over at the Louvre with the jewelry, that reeks of Banksy, wouldn't you agree? Yeah, only a few.

you know, put like a poop emoji back in their place. There's a free idea, Banksy. When when's the last time when's the last time you got arrested? Are you clean? Yeah, I'm clean for now. The last time I got arrested was a while ago now. I think it was I think it was 2015. Oh, yeah. OK, that's that's longer than 10 years. Honestly. Yeah. I mean, I have I have 18 arrests under under my belt. But. But that's enough. I mean, I don't. 18 is good for you. Out of those 18 arrests, I'm sure they've happened various cities all over the world. What is the number one jail you've been in? Treated you the best, nicest accommodations, etc. They were surprisingly nice in Chicago. Midwest, classic Midwestern charm. Can I get you something to eat there? I gave you a pillow and shit. It was all good. They let me come. They were watching TV, and they saw me sort of leaning against the bars. They were watching the movie Shaft. And so, you know, I like that movie. So I was leaning out and they were like, oh, you want to come out here and watch it? Like they just opened up the holding cell and let me go out and like hang out and watch the movie. You don't appear to be a physical danger to us at all. Would you like to come and watch the rest of Shaft with us? You're not going to stab me in the neck with a pen? Hey, you artist pussy, get in here and watch the movie with us. Yeah, I know, right? Poor guy. He's in his early 30s still doing this. What's wrong with you? Get a job. The slim-bristed stuff, yeah. Yeah, how many, once you're getting, like, let's say you got arrested 10 years ago, 2015, you were a full-grown adult man. At a certain point, you're older than the police that are arresting you for graffiti. Yeah, that has happened. And then instead of the cop saying, hey, what are you doing with your life? You're telling them.

What are you doing with your life, kid? Come on. You know what I mean? Yeah. You pull up the checkbook. How much is it going to cost for this to go away, chief? What's going on? It's I mean, the way it's gone down in different places. When I got arrested in Boston in 2009, I had literally been doing a photo op with the mayor that two days before or something because. They installed a giant banner of my art on the side of City Hall. It's a brutalist building, which that's an actual architectural term. It's plain concrete. So they're all very embarrassed that brutalism was the trend when they made that. So they always want to put something that like, you know, lightens the place up a little bit. So I did the Bostonian brutalist movement. They're not proud of it. Yeah. And so. So then, you know, a couple of days later, I get arrested by the by by undercovers from the from the vandal squad. And, you know, a lot of times different branches of government aren't talking to each other. And this created a whole a whole thing of like conspiracy theories where, oh, are the cops trying to embarrass the mayor because he didn't give them a big enough raise when they were lobbying for it? And, you know, I sometimes am amused by how this stuff plays out in terms of. the theories from the from the public so you were a pawn in their dark political game is what it sounds like not to quote black sabbath and metallica but potentially yeah i i don't i don't i don't know yeah i don't know i did i did my eight hours and i was kind of out of there uh but you guys get this out i hope you guys can work it out anyway and another thing is the guy who was prosecuting me the prosecutor from the government side he he didn't make enough money as um as a prosecutor to do that only as his job. And there was a bar where the owner had installed a bunch of my art and I went there for lunch with the curator for my museum show. And Adam, the prosecutor, was working the bar there and came up and had a chat with me. Really, really nice guy. Seriously, seriously. But but, you know, it was it was his job. But you could see how I kind of.

half-hearted his approach to... I eventually was able to get out of a situation in Boston where they were charging me with 32 felonies, which could have been a cumulative 82 years in jail for allegedly putting posters and stickers up. Shepard said, I'm exonerated on all charges. All right, so what do we think? We're going to have to go, but give us an estimation on legal fees throughout the years. What do you think the tickets hit? Oh, man. And if Amanda's listening, turn the podcast off now. Unfortunately, we're talking about well over a million dollars. That's what I was assuming. I mean, and look, we're happy you're free, bro. It's look, if you got it and that's you got to spend it. That's what some of that money should be used for. It goes back into the business. But of course, going through all these situations always made me think about the people that don't have the kind of resources that I can now throw at a situation like that and how. It's going to screw them that they can't defend themselves properly. And, you know, I've done a lot of criminal justice reform stuff because I understand that it's not crazy. Yeah, it's not it's not fair. We got to get these graffiti artists to stop selling heroin and like really get on the straight and narrow. I couldn't agree more. That's what we got to fight for. Well, you know, a lot of a lot of people from graffiti. had a code of you never pay for anything or else you're not keeping it real like you shop everything you gotta rack everything yeah i you know i always paid for almost everything i figured out a few scams with kinkos to get free copies with a paper clip by rigging the machine and stuff like that but it is minor but i did not want if i was caught for something for it also to appear on my record that i did things like like shoplifting, because I wanted to be able to stand 100 percent behind my crimes and say, like, hey, I'm sure I'm a taxpayer. I think there should be room for expression. This shouldn't just be purely top down. If you're a big corporation, you can pay for a billboard and subject everybody to that. But if you're if you're just a citizen that that has a, you know, a cute, fun idea that you want to put on a poster on a corner, then you're going to you're going to go to jail. Yeah. So, yeah, that's been my approach. All right. Yeah. Tougher to pull that off if you've got caught.

Stealing catalytic converters for a couple years. Look, officer, I have the receipt for all of my Rust-Oleum right here, actually, if you want to see it. No, thank you for joining us, Shepard. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Chris. Thanks, Jake. Congrats on all the new shows, and we'll see you soon. All right. Take care. All right, bro. Have a good one. All right. Later. Thanks, Shep. Good seeing you, buddy. Yeah, good to see you, too. Peace. This episode is brought to you by White Claw. Grab life. Grab old friends who know you best. Grab new faces you don't know yet. Grab your pack. Grab a 12-pack of White Claw. Grab a variety of iconic flavors, tropical mango or summer black cherry for every personality in your crew. Grab 100 calories and 2 grams of carbs. Grab a lightly sparkling, seriously refreshing taste for moments that don't need a filter. Grab life by the claw. White Claw, please drink responsibly. White Claw Seltzer Works, Chicago, Illinois.