Speaker 1: Hi there, It's Ruby Jones and I'm back to introduce
Speaker 1: another episode of your favorite podcast about books, Read This.
Speaker 1: It's hosted by the editor of The Monthly and self
Speaker 1: confessed book nerd Michael Williams and features conversations with some
Speaker 1: of the most talented writers from Australia and around the world.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we're going to hear from writer and
Speaker 1: filmmaker John Saffran, who's just published his fourth book called
Speaker 1: Squat a Week Squatting at Kanye West Mansion. As always,
Speaker 1: I'm joined by host Michael Williams to tell me a
Speaker 1: bit more about the episode.
Speaker 2: Hey Michael, Hi Ruby.
Speaker 1: So Michael, like many people, you've followed John Safran's career
Speaker 1: for years now, and I think it's fair to say
Speaker 1: there's been some twists and turns. I wonder if you
Speaker 1: could sum it up a bit for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, John first hit Australian media like an absolute
Speaker 2: mailstream when he appeared on the ABC TV show Race
Speaker 2: Around the World. For those who don't remember that show,
Speaker 2: it was like one of the first reality TV show
Speaker 2: formats and the ABC did it. They gave a whole
Speaker 2: lot of young people cameras and travel budgets basically, and
Speaker 2: they had to go and make these short documentaries and
Speaker 2: John was in the first series. He didn't win because
Speaker 2: he lost a whole lot of points for recording secretly
Speaker 2: in a confessional, which broke the law and meant that
Speaker 2: he was penalized for it. But he was definitely the
Speaker 2: person in that first series ever unremembered. John's brand was
Speaker 2: this kind of combination of high concept explorations of identity,
Speaker 2: of religion, of race, of politics, coupled with a kind
Speaker 2: of punk esthetic and a deep sense of madness. And
Speaker 2: really his career has followed that trajectory ever since, and
Speaker 2: in recent years he's made the move to books.
Speaker 1: So tell me about his latest book, squat He's exploring
Speaker 1: identity and belonging, but in this kind of unusual way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unusual is right, and it is classic Saffron. Basically,
Speaker 2: the premise is that he took issue with some anti
Speaker 2: Semitic comments that Kanye West made publicly and decided that
Speaker 2: this was something worthy of exploring, and then John being John,
Speaker 2: it kind of went from that to him ultimately squatting
Speaker 2: in one of Kanye's abandoned mansions in la and through
Speaker 2: this he looks at ideas of Jewishness, ideas as you say, belonging,
Speaker 2: and really just pretty quickly goes mad in an abandoned
Speaker 2: mansion in la And as you'll hear from the interview,
Speaker 2: madness is never that far away when you're talking to John.
Speaker 1: Saffron coming up in just a moment, the only difference
Speaker 1: between Kanye and John Saffran.
Speaker 2: You decide to go and use Kanye's abandoned mansion as
Speaker 2: a writer's retreat. But at that point you don't even
Speaker 2: know the book you're writing. You're not in there because
Speaker 2: you know you want to necessarily explore Kanye, explore Andy, Semitism,
Speaker 2: explore you just you've got a vibe and totally that's
Speaker 2: what I want to ask you about today is because
Speaker 2: for you, you sent to me to be the most
Speaker 2: counterintuitive mix between intuition on the one hand and the
Speaker 2: way that you approach your work and then a real
Speaker 2: kind of deliberateness and a real sincerity which I think
Speaker 2: surprises people about you. And that's that's what I want
Speaker 2: to get to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I follow things that feel emotionally true to me
Speaker 3: and just the energy in the universe, and that might
Speaker 3: sound pretendial but it's not because I'm like, I like
Speaker 3: leave the house. And so when you leave the house,
Speaker 3: if you're like walking around the streets of LA and
Speaker 3: you're sort of you're following things and reaching for things, yeah.
Speaker 4: You just you get vibes.
Speaker 3: And probably because it's my fourth book, I reckon I
Speaker 3: would have been more nervous. If it was my first book.
Speaker 3: I would have gone, Okay, it can be a chapter
Speaker 3: of me going into Kangne's mansion.
Speaker 4: But I felt it.
Speaker 3: I felt like, if this book is basically set up
Speaker 3: my whole week inside this mansion, yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 3: go with that. And it just seemed, even though I
Speaker 3: couldn't quite explain it, it just seemed it seemed unusual
Speaker 3: enough and a bit you know, not the same old,
Speaker 3: same old.
Speaker 4: So for instance, if the book.
Speaker 3: Was me chasing Kanye and then hanging with Kanye like that,
Speaker 3: of course that could have been really good in some
Speaker 3: other way or whatever. But I felt, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: like I'm old, and I thought, is that like a
Speaker 3: bit cringe? You know, chasing Whilst I felt there were
Speaker 3: all the pieces of like making my way into Kanye's
Speaker 3: mansion and spending a week there, as the Writer's Retreat
Speaker 3: just had enough stuff that it made it kind of
Speaker 3: you know, interesting and tense and everything like that.
Speaker 2: Tense and also quite exposed, like it is a story
Speaker 2: about a kind of week long descent into a kind
Speaker 2: of madness in your own head. As you get more
Speaker 2: and more spooped by the weirdness of your surrounds, you
Speaker 2: have moments of lucidity where you realize how crazy the
Speaker 2: thing you're doing is, and then you know, Also the
Speaker 2: overlay of that is some of the questions that you're
Speaker 2: asking about Kanye as a figure. I want to maybe
Speaker 2: go back to that for a second, because while you're
Speaker 2: a huge hip hop fan, you weren't a hardcore Kanye
Speaker 2: devotee necessarily.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it was Kanye coming out in support of
Speaker 3: Hitler that was just so fascinating to me because he
Speaker 3: was a mainstream celebrity. Also, it was like eclectic his
Speaker 3: anti semitism, like it like it wasn't like just this
Speaker 3: general like I'm pissed off as the Jews, where you
Speaker 3: could kind of, you know, just some generic kind of
Speaker 3: thing where it could have been Asians or Muslims or whatever.
Speaker 3: Like he was reaching into things like the protocols of
Speaker 3: the Elders learned Elders of Zion. So yeah, so it
Speaker 3: was just like fascinating that this mainstream figure was spreading
Speaker 3: that to a totally new generation who had no context
Speaker 3: of it, of what it meant. And then also the
Speaker 3: fact that you know, he wasn't a white American, who
Speaker 3: was a Black American.
Speaker 4: That made it interesting because.
Speaker 3: You know, I got to look into the history of
Speaker 3: Black Americans and Jewish Americans and how they were allies
Speaker 3: over things like civil rights sometimes, but there was a
Speaker 3: there's a prickly relationship to sometimes and you know, even
Speaker 3: looking at the threads in the founding of hip hop
Speaker 3: and there's the Jewish record producers but also Jewish artists
Speaker 3: and stuff, and like are they taking that music?
Speaker 4: And and yeah.
Speaker 3: So it just it like ticked a lot of boxes,
Speaker 3: a lot lot of awkward boxes.
Speaker 2: That the awkward boxes one hundred percent on brand for
Speaker 2: you is that there's a friction here in a set
Speaker 2: of contradictions, and lots of people would be like it
Speaker 2: was a bit uncomfortable. I'd rather look away, and you're like,
Speaker 2: I'm going to just keep picking up that scab.
Speaker 3: Yeah, lots of writers would have liked that if it
Speaker 3: was Mack or Moore, why did it have to be
Speaker 3: a Black American rapper? Why couldn't have been Vanilla Ice? Well,
Speaker 3: I couldn't have been post Malone.
Speaker 2: Is it still could be.
Speaker 3: They're very capable, yes, so yeah, And it's just I'm
Speaker 3: really interested in cultural fault lines, and I think I'm
Speaker 3: just interested in it generally. But also so if I
Speaker 3: never got into what I got into as my occupation,
Speaker 3: I'd still be interested or whatever. But like in my work,
Speaker 3: it just seems to be the gift that keeps on giving.
Speaker 3: I'm one of the first things. One of the earlier
Speaker 3: things I did on a TV show called John Saffran
Speaker 3: Versus God, is I try to join the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 3: And I'm acting all phone naive lately, you know, like
Speaker 3: I find out their history and about how or one
Speaker 3: point they didn't allow Catholics in, but now you know
Speaker 3: they're allowing Catholics in. So I went there through want
Speaker 3: of the bunkers of one of the chapters of the
Speaker 3: Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 4: They didn't know what's Jewish before I got there.
Speaker 3: But then during the interview, I'm asking who can join
Speaker 3: the clan, who can't or whatever, like can women join
Speaker 3: the clan? And yeah, of course non Americans, Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: Catholic yeah yeah. And I said, what happens if you're
Speaker 3: you know, you're brought up Jewish, but you don't do
Speaker 3: anything Jewish anymore because that's.
Speaker 4: Where I'm at.
Speaker 3: And then he's sort of what is like, is your mother?
Speaker 3: He goes, yes, and she were. Jews are from their father,
Speaker 3: the Devil. They're from the Synagogue of Satan. And I'm
Speaker 3: like phone naively pitching back to him, going yeah, but I
Speaker 3: don't do anything Jewish, you know, I drive on the Sabbath,
Speaker 3: I mix milk and meat. And he says, going, yeah,
Speaker 3: but we think it's a race, not just a religion
Speaker 3: or whatever. And then I said, yeah, but look I'm
Speaker 3: white and than Hitler. He had brown hair and brown eyes.
Speaker 3: I have blonde hair and blue eyes. If I went
Speaker 3: to school with Hitler, I'd be the one beating him
Speaker 3: up for being a wog. And so when I did
Speaker 3: that at the time, I didn't like overly think about it,
Speaker 3: like the whole kind of arbitrary nature of like identity
Speaker 3: and race and how it's so important, but like exactly
Speaker 3: that I'm wider than you know, like, and I think
Speaker 3: that taps in with a lot of people, especially a
Speaker 3: lot of people in Australia who have like their Australian
Speaker 3: but they've got something else as well. And I think
Speaker 3: this kind of vibration I have in my head of
Speaker 3: like where do you stand and you're one thing.
Speaker 4: But you're the other.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people feel that, even though
Speaker 3: I express it in the silliest outrageous way or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just interesting because I identity. It's so important obviously,
Speaker 3: and yet yet it's so kind of arbitrary.
Speaker 2: It's so important and important to your work. But like
Speaker 2: you mentioned in the Klan example, yeah, the phone naivity thing,
Speaker 2: you know, there is an element of performance there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Ever since race around the World when you clocks that
Speaker 2: actually your instincts were good about what people wanted here
Speaker 2: and the sweets was putting yourself in situations of mild
Speaker 2: to severe peril in the interests of kind of teasing
Speaker 2: out these uncomfortable ideas. But there is a kind of
Speaker 2: performance there. Yeah, definitely. How does that performance make the
Speaker 2: shift when you become John Saffron writer of books.
Speaker 3: I just yeah, I kind of float around to see
Speaker 3: what's working. So yeah, once an American saw one of
Speaker 3: my shows and they said, oh, it's very confusing to
Speaker 3: watch because if you compare it to like some Sasha
Speaker 3: Baron Cohen thing, like there's a consistent reality. So, for instance,
Speaker 3: a voiceover by Sasha Baron Cohen on a Borat thing
Speaker 3: is the same character as Borat, but he's going It's
Speaker 3: so confusing because you can have one one segment on
Speaker 3: your show where you're kind of phone naive, and then
Speaker 3: on top of that, the voiceover is you being sincere,
Speaker 3: but then the next segment is you just being more
Speaker 3: Louis Thurrouy in more just normal you and you're going
Speaker 3: to a Hindu temple or whatever, but you're just you,
Speaker 3: and you're there and you're very curious and you're normal
Speaker 3: and whatever, and then the next segment is like a
Speaker 3: scripted song parody or something like that. So yeah, it's
Speaker 3: definitely left me with a kind of a CV that's
Speaker 3: kind of which where I'm like all over the place.
Speaker 2: I do think like, notwithstanding that eclecticism, like the through
Speaker 2: line from your earliest media work to this book is
Speaker 2: a pretty clear one. Yeah, on the question of sincerity.
Speaker 2: How since his can you like, how much is this
Speaker 2: useful stuff to pass or unpack and how much of
Speaker 2: it is part of hyper performance or frankly just unwellness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so when it comes to is it a performance
Speaker 3: or does he actually believe these neo Nazi things? Like
Speaker 3: I look into that in the book where I have
Speaker 3: a conversation with, of course a problematic person, Gavin McGinnis,
Speaker 3: who's the founder of the Proud Boys, because we were
Speaker 3: discussing about how well David Bowie had a period where
Speaker 3: he leant into like fascist iconography, including the swasticker, and
Speaker 3: I think that's part of his thin white duke period.
Speaker 3: So it became well, aren't artists allowed to lean into
Speaker 3: dangerous things? And I mean the other one is Sid
Speaker 3: Vicious from the Sex Pistols, the nineteen seventies punk band,
Speaker 3: and you know he had us a swasticker, and it's
Speaker 3: like people kind of come to these things with their
Speaker 3: own little reasons and and ill thought out reasons, and
Speaker 3: Kanye maybe like just you know, that's part of it,
Speaker 3: you know, Like David Bowie, like Sid Vicious was just
Speaker 3: feeling this is the ultimate transgression and I should put
Speaker 3: this out there that people have said to me and
Speaker 3: it's a very good point. They go, yeah, John, it's
Speaker 3: the laziest transgression. It's like, if you were really a
Speaker 3: good transgressive artist, you just come up with something less
Speaker 3: corny than using neo Nazi iconography. And he's probably a
Speaker 3: bit like me, not fully thinking through everything and just
Speaker 3: like chasing these kind of like impulses.
Speaker 2: I like that you reference the whole concept of trolling
Speaker 2: because it is so much part of that provocation for
Speaker 2: provocation sake, Oh, there's this orthodoxy that is therefore the
Speaker 2: safe way to be. If I want to be an
Speaker 2: artist or an agitator or whatever, then it's my job
Speaker 2: to push to that uncomfortable place, which strikes me as
Speaker 2: a position that you would personally have a huge amount
Speaker 2: of sympathy for.
Speaker 4: I would.
Speaker 3: But the thing where I'm different to Kanye is the
Speaker 3: only thing, the only thing where I'm and also some
Speaker 3: other part. I really think literal politics kurdles art. But
Speaker 3: I guess when you're in this transgressive space where you're
Speaker 3: sort of trolling and everything like that, I do think
Speaker 3: the energy in your work is partially relying on the
Speaker 3: ambiguity of things. You know, Like, I don't know why
Speaker 3: he ruins his work by kind of hanging out with
Speaker 3: political figures and taking out the ambiguity in things.
Speaker 2: When we return. As unlikely as it seems, John shares
Speaker 2: the emotional truth behind the writing of Squat We'll be
Speaker 2: right back. The thing about most of John Saffron's work is,
Speaker 2: even the first time you watch it, you've got your
Speaker 2: hands over your eyes. You're kind of cringing with the sheer,
Speaker 2: excruciating audacity of it. So it seems unthinkable to me
Speaker 2: over a career that his work is something he would
Speaker 2: return to. So I had to ask, does he rewatch
Speaker 2: his earlier work.
Speaker 3: The only thing I've watched several times is when I
Speaker 3: got exercised by an evangelical Christian exorcist in America or whatever.
Speaker 3: I've watched that several times. That's like half hour long
Speaker 3: of just me being for some reason, I can watch that.
Speaker 3: Everything else I don't really watch. But then when I
Speaker 3: do watch some of that back, I kind of go
Speaker 3: when I was fourteen or sixteen, if I watched this stuff,
Speaker 3: I would have gone, oh, it's pretty cool or whatever.
Speaker 4: I feel better about it.
Speaker 3: And I also think it's interesting how the backdrop to
Speaker 3: the world changes and things are a different context, and
Speaker 3: that's kind of interesting, and it kind of explains that
Speaker 3: different reactions explain the changing backdrop.
Speaker 2: Given what you say about like the ambivalence about rewatching,
Speaker 2: say race relations. Part of it is having done it,
Speaker 2: you're happy to relinquish it to the people who watch it.
Speaker 2: Is that different for your books, like your four books
Speaker 2: in that And I do think there is a discernible
Speaker 2: difference in the kind of storytelling you're doing on the
Speaker 2: page the stuff that you're doing on the screen. And
Speaker 2: I'm curious about how much you get in your own
Speaker 2: head about it as a physical artifact that is unchanging.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I definitely like and it's never like one thing
Speaker 3: or the over arching thing in my mind or whatever.
Speaker 3: But I do like things like you're not meant to do,
Speaker 3: but not in a bad way. Like I like how
Speaker 3: this story about Kanye should be a series of tiktoks
Speaker 3: or whatever, but it's not like there is something kind
Speaker 3: of fun about how.
Speaker 4: It's this old school book.
Speaker 3: There's already a bit of that online even though the
Speaker 3: book's just been released on like this hip hop American
Speaker 3: hip hop subredit where they've already picked it upthough they're
Speaker 3: just confused, like.
Speaker 4: Why is this a book? Like why are you allowed
Speaker 4: to do a book like this?
Speaker 2: And also it means that you do play with the
Speaker 2: book form as well. Some of the chapters are super short.
Speaker 2: The chapter that shares its name with the book Squat
Speaker 2: is just about you going to the toilet in there,
Speaker 2: and that's a very short chapter but necessary because you know,
Speaker 2: a pastor points out to you the Jesus' story isn't
Speaker 2: meaningful if you don't cover him defecating on the cross,
Speaker 2: so you have to do the same for yourself.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I feel like this book I Reckon.
Speaker 3: My first book is way more I'm shooting my documentary,
Speaker 3: but I just happen to my first book should almost
Speaker 3: be open on a wide shot of it, And by
Speaker 3: this book, I've kind of got a bit more casual
Speaker 3: and cruisy, and it's yeah, I think it's more of
Speaker 3: a book book, even though it is like short chapters.
Speaker 3: Like for instance, like that's sort of like bumble around
Speaker 3: at the start of when I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 3: in Los Angeles, like what I'm.
Speaker 4: Doing or whatever. I reckon. If earlier on.
Speaker 3: In my writing career, I would have been like really
Speaker 3: nervous that I've got to explain to the reader, like
Speaker 3: almost like in a documentary it's or a TV show,
Speaker 3: it's like coming up, you know, like oh, you know,
Speaker 3: everything has to be on the first place, like I
Speaker 3: can't lose anyone or whatever like that.
Speaker 2: Like going into a podcast and insisting you have to
Speaker 2: set up the book at.
Speaker 3: Yes, totally the start of the podcast, rather than just
Speaker 3: give it over to it.
Speaker 4: I know, I know, very similar.
Speaker 2: One of the most stressful things in this book, and
Speaker 2: there are many stressful things in this book, but is
Speaker 2: that you only have a single pair of socks that
Speaker 2: were wet on the way in. That seems like a
Speaker 2: useful metaphor for lack of forethought on your part.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you're validating mine my process where this book,
Speaker 3: I just wrote things that just felt right, and I
Speaker 3: didn't like this. I had some emotional truth that I
Speaker 3: did not overthink a lot. I've never thought of what
Speaker 3: you just said then, but it's true, and so now
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, that's why I must have put it
Speaker 3: in the book. But subconsciously, I think there's connection of
Speaker 3: all these scenes that are like emotionally true and some
Speaker 3: are more kind of focused and on point with some
Speaker 3: kind of thesis about identity and anti Semitism, and some
Speaker 3: are less I feel like because they're all emotionally true
Speaker 3: and I'm at the center of them, it somehow makes sense.
Speaker 3: I feel like lots of my stuff makes sense until
Speaker 3: I have to explain it, and I guess that is
Speaker 3: because this is an art project as opposed to old
Speaker 3: school thorough getting all sides of things journalism, so you
Speaker 3: can kind of hold things together through emotional truth.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting to me because I'm curious about the
Speaker 2: extent which the book reads like an exploration, like you
Speaker 2: genuinely don't know how you feel about this stuff, and
Speaker 2: you're teasing about and you're playing about. But how much
Speaker 2: is the emotional truth for you in grappling with his
Speaker 2: identity stuff infused with grief or fear or you know,
Speaker 2: because some of these are pretty weighty kind of concerns,
Speaker 2: particularly at the moment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: When I went there, I didn't know what I was
Speaker 3: going to entirely use Kanye's outburst in service of Like,
Speaker 3: for instance, I was thinking, perhaps it can be about
Speaker 3: the history of artists and their uneasy relationship with benefactors,
Speaker 3: and so I'd go back to Michaelangelo and the Church
Speaker 3: and see how that all the way up to Taylor
Speaker 3: Swift and having fights with Apple Music over royalties and
Speaker 3: stuff like that.
Speaker 4: So I thought like that might be it.
Speaker 3: And in Australia, because I did a little bit of
Speaker 3: research beforehand, and then also in LA when I was
Speaker 3: talking to people that I was still kind of feeling
Speaker 3: away whether that was going to to the idea. The
Speaker 3: other possible idea was going to be about artists who
Speaker 3: go too far and how we kind of want to
Speaker 3: We want artists to be transgressive and go into worlds
Speaker 3: that we're too scared to go to, and it's all
Speaker 3: fun and games until it isn't. And there's a little
Speaker 3: bit of that in the book. But like that's how
Speaker 3: I didn't actually know it was going to be so
Speaker 3: focused on using Jewish Americans and Black Americans as some
Speaker 3: illustration of you know, identity and how precarious identity is
Speaker 3: and all these weird cultural fault lines or whatever. But
Speaker 3: the conversations I had, just because they were so much
Speaker 3: more meaningful to me intellectually, I could write a piece
Speaker 3: about Taylor Swift and Spotify and but I don't think
Speaker 3: people would have felt it. I've always like talked about
Speaker 3: things like about my grandparents, but I realized I didn't
Speaker 3: do this on purpose, but I really I've always let
Speaker 3: myself and the reader off the hook. So, for instance,
Speaker 3: in puff Piece, my book about Philip Morris the cigarette
Speaker 3: company getting into e cigarettes, there is a bit of
Speaker 3: a motif of like eight million people die a year
Speaker 3: from cigarettes and that's a holocaust and a half or whatever,
Speaker 3: and so what is it about that we're just allowing
Speaker 3: this to happen?
Speaker 4: And da da dah.
Speaker 3: And because of that, you know, I told this story
Speaker 3: which I think is quite powerful, about my grandfather and him,
Speaker 3: you know, escaping Germany. But then it wasn't the Nazis
Speaker 3: who killed him. It was cigarettes. And in fact, he
Speaker 3: had this operation where the Nazis saved him because they
Speaker 3: used to have this health system there where you know,
Speaker 3: even if you're Jewish.
Speaker 4: You got the best blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: And it was like, so it was really interesting, and
Speaker 3: I'm like telling saying this real interesting thing about how
Speaker 3: my grandfather on my father's side was saved by the night.
Speaker 3: So it's really like pokey stuff. But then because it
Speaker 3: was like embedded in this book about Philip Morris or
Speaker 3: whatever it meant. Oh, it's kind of interesting how he's
Speaker 3: running book about Pilip Morris, but he's got this personal thing.
Speaker 3: But you could just got to like move on. And
Speaker 3: in this book, I just felt all this kind of
Speaker 3: painful stuff about the history of Jewish people in killing
Speaker 3: my family, escaping the Nazi, I was like, I'm not
Speaker 3: going to allow myself. And it was a risk, I guess,
Speaker 3: because I could have just come across as whiny or
Speaker 3: something or I don't know what, but I'm not going
Speaker 3: to let myself or the reader off the hook. So
Speaker 3: part of me being in this mansion for one week
Speaker 3: is just going to be exploring all these painful things
Speaker 3: in Jewish history in cleaning my family history. And people
Speaker 3: have told me they go, oh, John, this book is
Speaker 3: like weird because at the end you sound angry and
Speaker 3: I've never seen that side of you before, and I'm like, oh, cool,
Speaker 3: And I think that is because I like, for better
Speaker 3: or worse, this book just doesn't let me or the
Speaker 3: reader off the hook.
Speaker 2: You mentioned puff Piece, So there is a reminder late
Speaker 2: in this book of the fact that in the writing
Speaker 2: of puff Piece, you put your own health the risk.
Speaker 2: You decided that you couldn't write about addiction to these
Speaker 2: cigarettes without actually taking them up yourself at the expense
Speaker 2: of your own health. To what extent in Squat did
Speaker 2: that come at the expense of your own health, Because
Speaker 2: you seem angry at the end, but you're also seeing
Speaker 2: like you seem troubled by the Yeah, I was worried
Speaker 2: about you, John, I wanted to give you a hut A.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I probably wouldn't have done any of that stuff if
Speaker 3: I didn't think it creatively vibrated, if you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. Like I have things in my life I
Speaker 3: just do not talk about, but not because it's.
Speaker 4: Like a creative decision.
Speaker 3: Basically, the stakes higher than me being scared and being
Speaker 3: troubled in his mansion. And the other thing is that
Speaker 3: I've got this job to do, and it's like I
Speaker 3: don't have a plan B. I would not squat at
Speaker 3: Kanye's if it wasn't for this sort of project, you know,
Speaker 3: for ave reasons or whatever. So I have to go
Speaker 3: against all my kind of feelings. And but it's just
Speaker 3: what I have to do because I like creating stories
Speaker 3: and it's very narrow what I'm good at so yeah,
Speaker 3: this is my lot in life.
Speaker 2: It's a pretty good light a y. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for your time, John surfram No, thank you. John
Speaker 2: Surfren's new books, Squat is available at all Good bookstores now.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to another special episode
Speaker 1: of Read This. Next Sunday will be the final Read
Speaker 1: This episode for twenty twenty four, but we look forward
Speaker 1: to sharing more of our podcast with you in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. As always, if you want to dive further
Speaker 1: into Read This, you can search for it wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. There are now more than sixty five
Speaker 1: episodes and the archive for you to enjoy