I love podcasts. They’re like really good versions of the radio, covering loads of fascinating subjects and costing zilch.

Here are some of my favourites (let me know yours in the comments):

Arseblog Arsecast/Arsecast Extra: I have a journey to work that requires me to spend around 40 minutes in the car twice a day. These podcasts are the perfect length for that and a very enjoyable way for me to keep up with all things Arsenal. I actually enjoy Monday’s Arsecast Extra best and look forward to my Monday morning commute because that’s my special AE time (unless we’ve just lost, in which case it’s all a bit shit).

The Football Ramble: a similar kind of thing, but it covers all the teams. Four or five blokes (I think they’re comedians) discuss the most recent Premiership action like five men in a pub who are both funny and knowledgeable about football. They also discuss the Championship and European games but I’ve usually turned it off by then (pro tip: the first 5-10 minutes is taken up by them answering some kind of surreal question such as ‘which football manger would make the best cowboy’. I tend to skip that). I actually found this most enjoyable to listen to when I was walking round Tokyo and taking a river trip in Bangkok. The contrast between the football chat and the environment seemed to enhance both.

Hardcore History: this one isn’t about football; it’s a long, deep analysis of some period or event in world history (eg: the atom bomb, WW1, Genghis Khan etc.). There are generally several episodes of roughly 1-1.5 hours each per subject and they are absolutely brilliant. Even if you’re not really into history (I can’t say I am particularly) they tell you so many fascinating things about why the world is the way it is today that you can’t help but find it compelling. It’s also presented by the excellent Dan Carlin, who has a great voice and manner (he used to be a radio host). It’s also worth mentioning that this is considered to be the podcast’s podcast, and by that I mean that everyone who loves podcasts loves Hardcore History, and you will too.

Desus vs Mero: do you want to hear a black guy and a guy from the Dominican Republic who live in the Bronx discussing their culture and taking the piss out of every single thing on earth? You may not get all the references (I certainly don’t) but you will definitely laugh out loud more at this podcast than any other. Here’s the visual version of it to whet your appetite (#caucasity, #knowledgedarts, Seth Rogen is the Sesame Street character who comes, and if you follow @thefatjewish on Instagram, he joins this show and is very funny):

Real Time with Bill Maher: this is a podcast of the excellent HBO TV show which dissects American politics from a Liberal viewpoint. Bill has some great guests and skewers all sorts of things with lots of lovely swear words.

WTF with Mac Maron: this erstwhile stand-up comic with a somewhat chequered past has now rehabilitated himself into polite society with this excellent interview podcast. So if you want to hear from everyone from Louis CK (check that 2010 interview and discover the sad reason why Louis once wanked over a trumpet case) to Richard Linklater, this is the podcast for you.

The Tim Ferriss Show: the author of the 4-Hour Work Week and the 4-Hour Body has a motivational podcast that gets some great interviews (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and helps you to reassess your entire life in a more functional way. Possibly.

Sodajerker on Songwriting: this is a couple of guys who do in-depth interviews with great songwriters (and a few shit ones) about their processes and careers. Obviously it helps if you’re into the subject’s music, but they’re all interesting.

The final ‘podcast’ I enjoy is the Howard Stern Show, which as actually a radio show on XM over here in the States. I don’t think there’s a way of getting it if you’re not in America, but the best thing about it is the brilliant interviews that go on much longer than your average celeb delvings and tend to involve far edgier questions. The good news is that most of them are available on YouTube not long after they’ve been broadcast, so fill your boots:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5HsgmyJ4t4

There are loads and loads more but those are my regulars. What are yours?

This looks good:

Myth busting infographic.

There’s a lot of funny stuff here.

Artist changes her name to ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ (thanks, J).

Fine impersonations from Christina Aguilera and Jimmy Fallon:

Kids rock Zep on xylophones (thanks, V):

Rare Kurt Cobain interviews:

Now that I live in LA I don’t get quite the same opportunities to chat about football, so when this week’s Chelsea fan racism piqued my interest I wondered how I could engage in a forthright debate on the topic. Unfortunately for those among you who aren’t into football or racism, I have selected this blog as the forum for that debate. The rest of you, please read on, and do add to the chat in the comments section.

I should start by making two things clear: first, I support Arsenal; second, I dislike much of what Chelsea does, stands for and represents.

Now that’s clear, here’s a video of what some Chelsea fans did on the Paris Metro last week. Further information has since come out about this incident, regarding the people involved and their connections to certain political parties (AHEM – UKIP). You can Google the heck out of it if you like, but a few additional facts:

they were singing a song about how they love their team captain John Terry because he’s racist.

John Terry was found guilty by the FA – but not by a court of law – of ‘using a racial insult’ in 2011.

The FA fined him two weeks’ wages and stripped of the England captaincy.

If Chelsea punished Terry for this they did so ‘in private’. It’s possible did not punish him at all, particularly as several senior employees of the club acted as character witnesses in Terry’s cases; more here.

So those are some facts. Now for some opinions:

Had Chelsea had publicly punished, or even fired, John Terry (after all, many people, if found guilty of using a racial insult by their industry administrative body, would be fired, and if this had been a reserve goalie rather than the team captain it feels a tad more likely that Chelsea might have done that) then it might have sent a message of zero tolerance with regard to racism and reduced the delight these fans seemed to take in having a racist captain.

You might reply that Chelsea does indeed have a ‘zero tolerance’ policy regarding racism, but I would argue that the Terry punishment shows clearly that instead they have a ‘slight tolerance’ policy towards racism. Of course, it would be insane for anyone in this day and age to claim anything other than zero tolerance when it comes to racism (‘Yes, well ‘zero’ seemed a bit much for us, so we do allow the occasional cross burning by the corner flags’), but when push comes to shove what does that actually mean, and what are the consequences?

As the Telegraph article suggests, Chelsea do indeed do many nice things, such as paying the Living Wage, something no other club does, apparently. It has also saved Aldershot FC from bankruptcy and raises a lot of money for charity (not so unusual). They also condemned the racist thugs from the Paris Metro and have banned them from the ground pending further investigation. Then they invited the victim to come to Stamford Bridge and see for himself how lovely the non-racist Chelsea fans really are.

All well and good, but there is now news of further racism, as well as many eye witness reports of other acts of racism amongst the fans that happen with great regularity:

As a lifelong Spurs fan I, and many thousands of others, have been the victims of vitriolic antisemitic abuse at Chelsea FC on a scale not even matched at similarly racially motivated West Ham Utd. For the 30 years I have followed Spurs to away games – in pubs, around tube stations, on the streets around the ground and within Stamford Bridge itself, the venom, ignorance and breathtaking casualness of Chelsea fans’ references to Jews, Auschwitz, the Holocaust and foreskins, often accompanied by a hissing simulation of gas chambers, is simply shocking – not least because it goes unchallenged by police, stewards or the club itself, bar a token reference furtively hidden away in the match-day programme.

I’m certainly not saying that Chelsea is the only club with racist fans, indeed I’d bet all the money I have that there are even some who support Arsenal, but Chelsea seem to have the most obvious and the most deep-rooted. They even have a famous group of supporters, the Headhunters, who have links to the neo-Nazi group Combat 18 (the 1 and the 8 refer to the position in the alphabet of Adolph Hitler’s initials). So Chelsea have a history of strong racism and indeed the crowd shouted abuse at Anton Ferdinand, the victim of Terry’s racist insult, the following time Chelsea played his team, QPR. The club then promised to root out the offenders, but unless that also happened ‘in private’ that didn’t actually happen, suggesting a little more tolerance to annoying old racism.

So tough on racism, but not really on the causes of racism. Zero tolerance so long it doesn’t weaken their team or displease their fanbase. All the right gestures but little effective action. And that’s strange for a team that’s has had many great black players and is owned by a Jewish man.

This weekend they play Spurs, the team famous for having the most Jewish supporters in the league. I assume the club intends to place staff amongst the fans and call for the arrest of anyone who chants about the Holocaust or hisses like an Auschwitz gas chamber.

Actually, I assume it’ll be business as usual, and anyone who feels uncomfortable about that can rest assured Chelsea will be handing out a few more of these on its next ‘Equality Day’:

Three cheers for that…

A recent survey suggests that, out of all the jobs on the planet, 60% of Britons would most like to be an author. (No idea who they asked, but the fact that positions two and three are taken up by ‘librarian’ and ‘academic’ suggests to me that very few viewers of X Factor took part.)

Interestingly, this author thinks they’re mad, and if they only knew the reality of writing novels for a living they would surely and quickly change their minds.

Well, as some kind of an author, perhaps I can offer an opinion as to why this might be, along with an insight into my impression of doing the most attractive job in the world©.

On its best day writing a novel is an immense pleasure. Creating a world and populating it with people who have sprung from your imagination is a lot of fun. You can play God, all the while fantasising about the millions that might come your way when your finished work defines the zeitgeist and is then bought by a rich film producer and made into an Oscar-winning movie starring Natalie Portman. Perhaps not every author harbours this attendant fantasy, but I’ve often thought of writing books to be a long, difficult version of buying a lottery ticket: if the book turns out well it could be made into There Will Be Blood or Jurassic Park. And that would be pretty cool. If the book turns out shit, or is never finished, then that dream must disappear, but until reality sets in, everything is perfect.

But is the actual writing (typing, marking out chunks of time when you could otherwise be playing Crossy Road on your iPad, suffering creative speedbumps and road blocks) fun? I think so. The things that make it less enjoyable are external processes that you can choose not to suffer: the guilt writers feel if they haven’t written enough or solved a plot flaw; the insane and seemingly insurmountable difficulty of actually getting down to the bloody thing when there are so many distractions on the internet; the torture of looking with envious eyes at the success of others, etc. But the actual writing? When it’s flowing? Sheer bliss.

Then again, it’s not my only job. I’m fortunate enough to spend my working days with a bunch of fantastic, pleasant, funny, driven people, all of whom are making great efforts to solve fascinating problems for a company that millions of people love, and that is a great privilege. If I had to spend most of my hours alone, cranking out the words and pages that might allow me to crank out more words and pages, and hopefully pay the mortgage, I might find it less appealing. In the first link above, Sebastian Faulks, an immensely successful author, talks about wanting to give it up to do a proper job for just that reason. And my old boss, Peter Souter, writer of several excellent plays and a fine TV series, told me the same thing, which is one of the reasons he decided to return to agency life.

I’d guess that the 60% who want to be an author want to choose their working hours, in which they produce an excellent and beloved work of art, giving them the golden treble of autonomy, mastery and purpose. That does sound appealing, but of course it misses the uncertainty that your next novel will be enough of a success to pay the bills. That’s the reality of being an author, and in these impecunious times the chances of making decent cash solely through the writing of novels are slim to none.

Having said all that, I’m the kind of vain, shallow wanker who takes immense pleasure in knowing lots of people want to do something I’ve done, so I shall continue to bask in their envy as I procrastinate away another hour in which I could otherwise be writing my next book.

Mranswerman (thanks, S).

Cathy cartoons with Louis CK quotes.

Excellent John Milius interview (thanks, J1).

Famous footballers as kids (thanks, J2).

Pantone chip art (thanks, J3).

Fine, fine gif.

Jurassic World (sort of):

Watch the guy on the left and realise just how much you’ve been wasting your life:

Interesting doc on some of the men of Florida:

All of Saul Bass’s title sequences:

Do you like top knots? (Thanks, P.)

When you leave college will you continue your advertising education? If so, how?

I was a bit of a nerdy autodidact, who read The Copy Book a disturbing number of times and spent many Saturday afternoons reading D&ADs in that library at the bottom of Leicester Square. But I was also lucky enough to work at AMV BBDO, which contained many great creatives that I could learn from. I remember showing my work to David Abbott, Peter Souter, Paul Brazier, John Gorse, Malcolm Duffy, Paul Belford, Nigel Roberts, Dave Dye, Sean Doyle, Mary Wear (I can’t be arsed to keep typing this list; it goes on forever), and having it improve enormously as a consequence. But I had to want to do that; I had to seek out the advice. It would have been easier not to bother, but I’d never have got into the D&AD Annual that way.

A step beyond that wish to learn from one’s superiors was the use/creation of a mentor.

The most successful younger creatives at AMV latched themselves, limpet-like, onto one particular shit-hot creative and did not let go. (One particular AD went so far as to emulate as closely as possible the clothes, beard and car of his hero.) I remember when we heard the news that Paul Belford and Nigel Roberts were on their way: you could almost smell the superglue being applied as the ADs waited at the door to attach themselves to Paul and the writers to Nigel.

But that had to be a two-way street; the mentors had to agree, whether explicitly or not, to spend the time improving the mentees. If the requisite effort and improvement were not apparent then the mentor thing would simply not materialise. Would the junior cross the line from merely being the subject of some occasional creative direction to actually become a great creative’s protégé? It was interesting to watch.

Anyway, I wonder if such a situation exists today. Are there enough great teachers and willing learners? If not, what will that do to the chain of knowledge? Will it be broken forever or will people find other methods by which to swashbuckle their way to excellence?

And what’s the mentor situation like in your office?

Oh, and if you want to name a great mentor or two, go ahead. They should all get the gallons of credit they deserve.

UPDATE: apologies, I have neglected to mention any mentors of my own. Oddly, when I was a youngster I never felt as if I had a specific mentor, so much as lots of great CDs. But since I left Lunar I’ve found a few people to be sort of mentor-friends, who helped me see where I should head, sometimes in advertising, sometimes outside it. Without going into specific details I’ve found a lot of inspiration from knowing Dave Trott, Mark Denton, Dave Dye, Peter Souter and Paul Belford.

Shame there are no women or racial minorities on that list, but white men are just fantastic, aren’t they/we?

Last week I was listening to this episode of Marc Maron’s excellent WTF podcast, featuring an interview with Paul Thomas Anderson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F59SVVlPdy4

It’s a great listen if you want to find out how the director of Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood came up with that kind of stuff. There’s also a very funny story at around the 53 minute mark, if that’s what floats your boat.

Anyway, the thing that stuck out most to me was a little passage from PTA:

My favourite movie of all time is The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. I must have seen it five or six times and thought, ‘OK’. And then, whatever it was, when I came across it at just the right time, at just the right moment… And I went ‘Holy shit’. My life opened up and I thought ‘This is the best movie I’ve ever seen, and that’s when I was writing There Will Be Blood. I just watched it over and over and over again. These movies are moveable feasts, in other words, you catch it on an airplane, you catch it on your  phone: where are you going to see it? It’s out there and it exists and it’s going to be something different all the time.

Marc replies:

I think that’s a movie, not unlike Pynchon, or not unlike a great piece of literature, that as you evolve, or music, that when you go back to it it speaks to you differently

I entirely agree. When I mentioned this to my wife she reminded me how our perspective had changed on the the film Brief Encounter. When we first saw it we thought it all seemed like an exciting affair for a married woman in austerity Britain; a couple of years later we saw it again and the guy who was making the affair happen seemed like a really rapey bastard, changing the tone of the entire story.

But there are countless examples of music tracks that only spoke to me after I either listened to them many times, or grew a bit older and was able to appreciate them with more experience. For example, the album 2001 by Dr Dre remained on heavy rotation for years because every few months a new track would become my favourite. The art somehow met me further down the road when I was ready for it.

And of course the opposite can happen: who hasn’t cajoled their friends into watching ‘this great movie I saw last year’ (usually a comedy), only to find yourself sitting there while tumbleweed blows through the living room because Cameron Diaz’s jokes seem roughly one millionth as funny as they had done the first time around?

Obviously that means you must now revisit every artistic expression you’ve ever seen thus far, just to check if it really is shit/great.

Here’s a comment from one of last week’s posts:

It got me thinking: was the brief easy? 

No idea. I suppose the people involved would know, but even then there is a massive set of variables that alter enormously the degree to which a brief is or is not ‘easy’.

Let’s take the Last Minute ad as an example. The brief might have been, ‘Show how LastMinute.com is the best way to have a dirty weekend’, in which case the leap from brief to solution does not seem to be particularly large. But even then, you could answer that brief in many, many ways: are LM the kind of client that likes to push the boundaries and get a bit saucy, or are they quite staid, requiring a great effort from the agency to get them to buy edgy work? Is this indeed the ‘first thought possible’ or was it a desperate 2am solution after weeks of rejection? Was there even a brief? Was this in fact done on spec? Had it been sitting in a drawer for several years after being declined by twelve other clients? Was the initial solution more elaborate, only to be pegged back by a tiny budget and a minuscule lead time? Was the creative team a pair of wet-behind-the-ears newbies who needed a lot of support, or a pair of grizzled veterans who can turn this kind of stuff out in their sleep? Did the agency have to wait until the boring client was on holiday before slipping it through her more broadminded substitute?

Then again, the brief might have been, ‘Show how adults 24-35 could use LM.com as their primary resource for a city break’. Then the question of genesis gets trickier: did the creative team spot the potential diamond in the rough? Or was it the CD? The client? The planner? Did that take weeks, facing a great deal of resistance from various personnel who did not fancy a tough/embarrassing chat with their prudish client? Was this the umpteenth incredibly dull brief on the same subject, leaving all concerned immensely grateful to an inspired creative for finally pulling something funny out of the bag?

And those are just some of the questions that could have made this easier or harder. What about the mood the creative team was in? Was the AD going through a divorce? Had the copywriter just been turned down for a dream move to another agency?

Etc.

When I was judging the Press section of D&AD in 2005 we unanimously awarded the Silver to this campaign:

In a sea of turgid shite it made us laugh, and it was pretty unusual for a car ad.

Anyway, after the results were revealed someone from VW’s agency told me that the idea was basically handed to the team by the planner during the briefing, with the implication that the award shouldn’t really have been given for such an easily-reached solution. Well, none of the jury knew how hard it had been to come up with that campaign; we just saw it, liked it and awarded it.

So no one can ever truly know how tough a brief really is. Those 90″ Nike brand ads are probably just as tough to generate as a really good 25×4 ad for 15% off carrots at Tesco. Which is the harder brief? Fuck knows, and at the end of the day no one in the public gives a toss, so it’s best not to worry about it.

Theo from Artsy writes:

Hello,

My name is Theo and I work at Artsy. While researching Paul Strand, I found your page: “www.ben-kay.com/2012/08/its-nice-that-its-nice-that-have-featured-my-bookshelf/“. Great content, by the way.

I actually worked on Artsy’s new Paul Strand page, and I think it would be a great resource for your readers. Our newly designed page includes Strand’s bio, over 20 of his works, exclusive articles about Strand, as well as up-to-date exhibition listings – it’s a unique Paul Strand resource.

I’d like to suggest adding a link to Artsy’s Paul Strand page, as I believe it would benefit your readers.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions on how we can improve the site. I look forward to staying in touch with you about future opportunities.

Best,
Theo

“Look at the things around you, the immediate world around you.”
-Paul Strand