Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today, we have
some returning guests, Max and John from Superhuman Public Radio. It is an
NPR style station podcast, a commentary on the entire superhero genre and also just
a great story, and these two guys have created it. I had the
mind to talk about season one a while ago. They're back with season two
and we're gonna be talking with them not only about their what they put out
and sort of thinking that goes into it, but what it means to talk
about superheroes in an audio only format. So let me just start with some
introductions. Max, what don't you go first? Yeah? Sure, Yeah,
I'm Maximilian Clark. I've been the co creator with Jack on this.
My backgrounds in film and web, and I'm I'm currently running three different shows
and three different networks. Another fiction show for Good Scory Guild and a non
fiction show for Podcast one, but Superhuman Public. But Superhuman Public Radio is
my baby and I love it so much. You can also find me like
trolling at QAN on events on socials Nice nice as you should be. And
mister Dorsey, Yeah, and I'm John sometimes Jack John Jack Dorsey, co
creator of the show. I produce less programs than Max, and beyond being
a podcaster and writer, I work as a union prop master in the DMV
area. Awesome, DMV. That's the Department of Motor Vehicles. That's true
department. But I am wherever you get your license played. I was thinking,
I mean, I've seen some DMV agents who I think think they are
on set with the like level of Pedanta Tree, so that would make sense
to me. Well, good, good to have union folks involved. So
let me kind of just get started with what is SPR It is not Superhero
Public Radio, as I put out under our social media last time, and
Maximilian was very kind enough to gently correct me, But what is Superhuman Public
Radio? Yeah, Superhero Public Radio would have been a good title, as
it turns out from an SEO spit standpoint, but human. Let's see what
I did there, Jack, I don't like the branding. Yeah yeah,
yeah no. So we tell original stories in a superhero world through the lens
of an NPR station. So we do in depth news reporting in our fictional
world, but we also have segments like These American Supers or one hundred sent
Invisible that does deep dives into the lives and behind the scenes of some of
the things that make a superhero world work. It's the shorthand is it's what
MPR would sound like if superheroes were real. Yeah, right right, yeah,
and yeah, when we just try to tell really personal, original stories,
it's a playground for us to do little thought experiments on stuff and you
know, like all or just express our own world through goofy stuff. Right
well, And I really love that. I think the term goofy that you
used is really perfect because it is both you give a great picture into the
world and I feel like, you know, it's funny. Yesterday I started
listening to a couple of the older episodes because I wanted to kind of have
it in my head, and I wanted to all build up to the first
episode and the trailer that you have out for season two, which we'll definitely
talk about at a later point in the podcast. And I was thinking to
myself, like, Okay, we'll just listen to like three or four,
and I got so wrapped up and things I couldn't stop. So I had
to be like, wait, no, how much time to have before we
record. Let me finish that this morning and and we'll talk more about the
superhero side of it, but I want to hear you talk more about why
NPR specifically, Like there are a lot NBR is a very particular brand with
very particular sort of quirks that you really play into. Well, you know,
everything from the kind of like gentle music in the like fresh air type
segments and then this American life that is this American soups to the your version
of click and clack, the Clackett Brothers of car talk in what utility about?
Thank You? What was it about that kind of like because clearly my
senses you both listened to a lot of NPR. What was it that made
you kind of choose NPR? And kind of how how has it been?
Like what have been your thoughts about what you're saying about that before you can
get into the superhuman side of it. So a lot of it came from
So the original idea for the show came from, you know, I write
movies that nobody buys, but I wrote a gag into one of them,
you know, that was essentially an NPR station called SPR and me and Max
worked on a project that was going to be an independent web pile and that
didn't wind up going anywhere, but we talked about the project, and you
know, both of us are dirty liberals, so we both listened to an
incredible amount of NPR. But it was also just the fact that if you
look at their programming, it's less it's it's a lot of it's not informative,
isn't the right word, but it's a lot of you know, human
stories, And it felt very easy to kind of go from there and you
know, find a basis. The first segment that was ever written on the
show was the interview between Cosmos, who's our Superman analog, and Kelly Close,
who's basically Terry Gross, and from there it just kind of felt like,
oh, we should just really dig into that and beyond that the ethos
that we have on the show, because you know, there's a lot of
superhero parody out today. You know, you have Invincible and you have The
Boys, and you know they do a really good job of skewering comic book
heroes. But we we like to use the phrase it's it's parody with a
purpose. So whenever we pick a topic, we try to make sure like,
Okay, what are we actually saying about this? Yeah, well,
I mean as someone on Reddit actually said it better than we did, uh,
where they said it's not so much a deconstruction of comic books as it
is a deconstruction of the real world using comic books, Like like we're sating
we're satirizing the news cycle more than we are comic books. But what I
really like about the format too, is like it gives us a lot of
variety. Like, I mean, you named like five of our different shows.
We have another one based on Cereal this season, which is gonna be
a lot of fun, and so we just get to attack it from a
lot of different angles using a lot of different voices. And I mean we
have a sixty three person cast, Like we we get to make this big,
immersive world, and we designed it in a way that like, if
you're playing in the car, like and you're not paying attention, your brain
will just say, like, hey, I'm listening to NPR right now.
And it's really cool to just sort of like be able to like create a
world that feels very tangible for people. That's been one of the big great
pieces of feedback we've done. One thing, if I understand how you're doing
it, Like you gotta pay the bills and you do have advertising in it,
but but you generally have a like an actual ad from some company that
I'm hoping, you know, help help support you all, and then a
fake ad that would exist in your world. And like, there's one ad
that that played sometimes on mine that was, you know, for Nordstrom and
I so we can immediately tell. But there was another one that was for
kind of like kind of new advance in eyeglasses, and I honestly couldn't tell
if it was an ad you had created or an AD someone had put in
that was helping to make you money. And because it came followed by your
ad for uh, Spanko I think or not spanko. That's a real thing,
sp spandexo. And I just thought it was so brilliant that like I
could literally couldn't tell what was the ad from our own world and what was
the ad internal to your own to your world. Oh that's always fun to
hear. Yeah. No, we we typically uh like to play on like
a lot of the podcast aids you here. Uh we have like uh over
Armor this season, we have like Dollar Shoe Club in the Tar Shave Club.
But what's the one from the first episode, big ass shorts, Yeah
for for for Hulksters. Basically, uh, the extra stretchy what was the
what was the one that we did with the squares space shield Space Shield space
that like builds your custom uh superhero lare in minutes and and and plugs it
in. But yeah, it's it's great. Actually, I think my favorite
this season is going to be Rings dot Com. Oh my god. Yeah,
yeah that's h episode six. And if you want to hear why it's
my favorite, you know, come back later. I I was thinking about
this the other day because we made so in our first season, like even
for our press releases, we did it all in universe. We even got
an email back from somebody who's like, this is the weirdest press release I've
ever gotten. I don't know what's happening, but I am going to publish
this, which is kind of like, oh, that's great. But then
a lot of people sort of missed out on the joke. So we've sort
of we've dropped the mask a little bit. Yeah, we're on Fable and
Folly this season, and it was into our trailer and looked at some of
our promos and they're like, hey, we liked the trailer, you never
you never mentioned that it's like audio fiction and that people can listen to it
and then you make episodes of the thing. And we both looked at each
other like, yes, because in a trailer that would be good for people
to know that it's a show. But that's a level of like dedication and
immersiveness. You know, it feels like the equivalent to the actor who just
like method, you know, is never breaking character. I like that.
Yeah, I mean, we might do intellectually, but as it turns out
inside like a great yeah. But it I was, I was, I
was really thinking about like why I love doing this, and I was,
I guess I still remain. I was a huge fan of Lost, and
specifically I loved that expanded universe that they had with the Dharma Foundation, and
they even published the book that Sawyer's reading in season one, and it felt
like this this you know, it felt like this world that you could could
could scratch at just endlessly and find new nuggets of information, which is what
we've tried to do with the show and make sure it feels as real and
seamless as possible. Right. We have gags from the first season that people
have not found that we like built into the website, into the artwork,
and just they're there. Well, and folks, listeners, if you go
back, hopefully you've already listened to season one. If you haven't, definitely
do so. And if you find some new ones, send them into us.
So I'll give you the contact avation at the end and make sure John
and Max get tagged. Yeah, we'll send you a T shirt. Yeah,
especially if you find the one that promises you a teacher. That's true.
Awesome, Okay, sounds good, sounds good. Well, and I
want to talk more about the superhero format that you guys are satirizing in a
bit. But but I want to start to do with what you said about
the way you're kind of using superheroes as a method to make commentary on our
own real world because one of my favorite segments that I listened to from season
one, so I fell okay, Spoiling is about a man who gets rescued
by a powerful woman and he's so overwhelmed about the experience that he starts crying
and then he like a picture of that gets taken and it gets turned into
a meme, and then that meme winds up getting used to support causes that
he's totally against, and he talks about how much it affects his life.
And as I was listening to that, I was struck by I have heard
this story and if you take out the fact that it was a super person
who rescued him, a woman's superhero, and just make it some other embarrassing
photo of him became an internet meme and has been online and cause this person
harm. Like, that's a real life story. And to me that was
a brilliant thing where you're just you're making the superhumanists the cause of it,
but it's really just an incredibly relatable real life situation. Yeah, I mean,
I mean that's always the goal. I loved that segment. To Jeff
Grimwood is a guy I always try to plug into things I use. He
plays the cry baby in that episode and Hesus is such a good performer.
I think that's actually a good example the mix we try to do where we
we like, we look at something, you know, and that goes the
other way. Because that's something that we think about a lot in comic worlds
of like what is the traumatic ripple effect of being rescued? Right? Like,
like people to act like Superman pulls you out of a like erupting volcano
and then you're just fine. But like, yeah, just the like the
unintended consequences from just any interaction you have in the superhero world fascinates us.
And yeah and yeah, and we we we we try to find like an
emotional mirror when we're discussing something like that, and we're just like, yeah,
do you know what that feels like? It feels like the unintentional consequences
of these people that like like hide the pain Herald that's a real dude,
right, like like like he has to go out and live his life with
people just like given him that that little grin at him and uh, like
all he did was sign up for a stock image like photo shoot. He
probably got paid like twelve hundred buckstops and now his life is defined by this
thing. And and I think that both of those are fascinating and it's really
cool when we get to Nixon. Yeah, I mean, I apologize in
advance for anyone who's going to feel chronologically challenged by this. But you know
a lot of the kind of like pictures of young children that became internet memes,
like you know, angry baby or girl in front of fire with a
mysterious smile on her face, Like those people are now adults and or you
know, they'll talk about how like they didn't even get page twelve hundred bucks.
Maybe their parents did, but you know they're constantly minded of you know,
or they're trying to hide the fact that please no one record, no
one look at my baby pictures because you'll see that I'm that meme that everyone
has seen. Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that's sort of like
the weird thing about internet culture in general too, is like anything you do
online could potentially like just spiral way out of control for no reason. And
so you're now kind of at the point where like when you're here or have
you always been at this kind of point, or where you're hearing a new
story, or you're thinking about some new you know, group of people who
are getting screw it over, or some new kind of evil that's happening in
our own world, or you know, terrible thing and thinking, Okay,
how can we make this, how can we put this into the super human
world. It's definitely something that we talk about a lot, because even when
you look at just like the characters that already exist Superman, Batman, Spider
Man, and I feel like the stories that really kind of carry through and
are the ones that are iconic, They're the ones that are inspired by world
world things, all right. Clark Kent's whole identity is based in the fact
that the writers were Jewish during a time when it was not cool to be
Jewish, and they wrote this character that was about the fact they couldn't be
there their real selves, they couldn't feel that they could live up to their
potential, and they created Superman, and he's he's become this icon that,
like you know, is eternal. So when we're trying to tackle these stories,
it's it's never We almost never start with comix first. It is usually
something going on in the world. So when we finished season one, you
know, just like a couple of weeks later, January sixth happened, and
you know what, we watched I live outside of DC, and I was
holding my newborn son and I was like, oh my god, is the
United States going to burn down? And that's made its way into the show.
The Women's March has made its way into the show. Yeah, I
mean Markland, Yeah, I mean season two. It's been two and a
half years since season one ended, and in that time, like I've been
producing for my friend Walter Masterson for like all that time, and he was
at January sixth. I was only not there because my wife has a long
thing and we didn't we weren't. This is prevacs and I was like,
oh no, like I can't wear a mask, like I'll join you for
the inauguration. But like, you know, we spent a lot of time
in the ault Right spaces and talking to people, like like having these deep
conversations with QAnon, and that's shaped one of our main antagonist groups in season
two. And it's funny because some feedback that I've gotten on our draft is
that it seems like a characterature, and I'm like I have to explain,
like, no, this is so authentic to the way that these that the
that the ault Right is right now, like like I am sometimes like lifting
quotes for our segments here. It just seems like two dimensional satire because of
the nature of the space. But yeah, like I don't know, this
is well, I mean, you know, the world's on fire and this
is how we cope. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean that's one
thing I really appreciate because I think it's all the stray before, but I
know it's all the stray before, So I'm trying to make a brief.
But I got into science fiction because my mother would sit me down to watch
all the episodes of Star Trek, the original series, and she didn't care
at all about the spaceships and that the science of it, but she wanted,
you know, to talk to me at like age eight or nine,
about like, yeah, this episode where these people have different colors on their
face, what do you think is going on there? And what does it
have to think? She she introduced me the idea of science fiction as holding
up a mirror to worn world, and I figure, like comics can do
that. You guys are really doing that too, and I love how intentionally
you're being about that. Yeah, yeah, thanks, I mean I mean
that's I mean, that's why we tell stories, right, I mean,
like like it's why literally any story exist, is to con face something about
the world. And yeah, it's just nice that we have this like outlet
where we get to like talk about so many different things. And it also
like it softens it, right, like like it's hard, like you know,
are especially season two is incredibly political, but it is softened a little
bit by the fact that, you know, we're talking about people who are
concerned about getting melted in their seats, uh, you know, by their
classmates, and that's why they want to ban supers from public schools. You
know. Yeah, you know, it's just another way in go ahead,
please check. Well. I was just gonna say, it's just the stories
that you're talking about, the ones that are taking things in the real world.
Those are the ones that you remember, just just the sort of blank
hero fights, villain saves day. You know, those are not the ones
that stay with you because they're kind of inherently hollow. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean, I mean not to dis sky beams, but I mean,
how many of us really think about sky beams in your day to day life.
Yeah, that's fair, that's fair. Well, and I I'm so
tempted the one. I don't want to ask you more about season two,
but I also, with every media cover have such a strong anti spoilers policy
that I don't want to go too deep. But I just what you said
about like this idea of students being afraid that someone else is gonna, you
know, help them in their seat. You know, on the one hand,
I get that there's a humor there of oh, that is such a
ridiculous fear compared to our own world. But also if you listen to people
who are afraid of you know, and I'm sure this is kind of where
you're going, you know, trans kids in their school or you know a
certain books on the bookshelves, those fears are actually just as fictionally ridiculous as
the They're gonna melt me in my seat. But that's what we're dealing with
in our own world. So yeah, it is very believable. Yeah,
I mean, I guess no official comment given the spoiler, it's full,
it's not a spoiler to say when we were initially and you can kind of
see because we wrote this over. We wrote the season over last year,
but we had been talking about it for a year before, and it took
us a while because I got COVID, I had one COVID, I was
a sleeper, I've got a toddler. You know, I was working on
a TV show, so everything was getting in the way. And originally we
had you know, imagine sort of like you know, this sort of que
kind of figure, you know, leaking something about storyline that is so gone,
and that was back when Q was like, ha ha, look at
this cute thing these fringe people are doing. It's like, by the time
we started writing that is really bad. This is incredibly dangerous, and then
start thinking more about kind of our world and sort of the pieces on the
table. Well, I mean, I think that storyline got kind of absorbed
by what we are doing. But it's also like it did. But one
of the things that we we did is just kind of we looked at where
the baton was in season one and we're trying to figure out, Okay,
who's going to pick this up. At the end of our first season,
the the United States is considering publicly registering all superhumans. So it's you know,
what's that the response to that. You're gonna have people who are for
it, You're you know, all right, and then you're gonna have well,
I mean, who's centrist people do who also are like caught up in
the well you know, I hear, I hear these things. Yeah,
and then it's how a how are young people are going to respond? You
know? Obviously, you know X Men has been sort of overtly and unintentionally
political throughout its run so kind of you know, how are the youth gonna,
yeah, going to respond to this? What's going to be the corporate
response? And and it's worth pointing out there that, like, you know,
it's it's funny because like we talk about things that are topical to a
certain extent, but it's like, you know, the cyclical nature of history.
We're doing the mutant Registration Act. I mean, when was that storyline
first put out? Like like the first time that X Men talked about that.
But like what's old is new again, right, It's just there are
certain societal dynamics that just keep rearing their ugly heads, and yeah, we
we try to bring a fresh perspective, but like him, yeah, it's
twenty twenty three, and here we are again. Yeah, you have people
saying the thing that tried. You know, I'm in DC Comics, Twitter,
Marvel, Twitter, and every once in a while they'll see it's just
like, oh my gosh, this book got political, and like people will
be saying this about the They'll be saying it about the X Men, a
book where the leaders were based on MLK and Malcolm X, and like it
makes my head want to explode every time, and they're trying to get everything
scrubbed out of comics. I don't know if you're familiar with like the Comics
Code Authority, which was basically right, and like people are essentially asking for
this thing to return. And while like some very cool art kind of eked
by just sort of how you know, there's a lot of very not controversial
but artistically done films who were trying to dodge like the Haze Code. It
just seemed it's weird that people are trying to muzzle themselves so that they don't
have artwork that challenges any idea that they might have. You know, it's
so true. And we've got a couple episodes on the history of comics on
this podcast, and you know, for those folks who say, like,
why is it so woke? Now, you know, the first literal episode
of Superman, some of the villains he deals with are a greedy landlord who's
overcharging tenants because they have nowhere else to go, and a person who's you
know, committing in him Department of violence against their spouse, and a man
who's beating his wife, and like, those certainly aren't issues in our own
world anymore, but they were they're very political now, and they were just
a political then. Jack Kirby, I'm convinced, created Captain America because he
wanted the US government to pay him to go over and punch Nazis in the
army. And it was a nineteen thirty nine and we weren't fighting the Nazis
yet, so he created a person who could punch Nazis because that's what he
wanted to So yeah, and that's actually a great segment because there's a way
in which I never really put this together, and I was listening to this
these episodes again, there is a huge frustration I have with the comic book
superhero genre that you guys are addressing in a way I've never really thought about
before it and I want to talk to you about it and wonder how much
this is intentional, because, like take Captain America, Civil War probably my
favorite comic movie, one of them, in part because I think the question
of if people have the ability to use violence to do what they think is
right, to what extent should they be accountable to others and what happens if
that accountability isn't good accountability and the dangers of both sides, and what I
want is Tony and Steve to sit in a room and debate it for two
hours, but that doesn't sell tickets, and so instead one of them states
their point and the other states their point, and then they start to punch
each other. Or you know, T'Challa his idea about how a powerful black
nation should act, and kill Monger has his idea, and they state it
once or twice, and then they start punching each other because that's what looks
good on screen and on comic book pages. You guys are telling a story
about superheroes and supervillains and superpowered people where you have some cool sound effects every
now and then, but you can't really do a fight scene. And so
you're giving me kind of what I wanted there, and that it is all
just the talking, it's all the lets. We don't have to put up
a huge spectacle on screen, so we can just go so much deeper in
those conversations, to what extent is that something that's been conscious in your head?
Is it something you just kind of stumbled into, because it seems like
such a brilliant part of this is that you can go deeper in a way
that when it's on the page, or on the screen, and people are
expecting the visual side of it that so often gets lost. Yeah, well,
I mean, I mean something I like about comics is the ability to
maintain a conversation through an action scene, right, Like that's that like uh,
you know, but it's just that not everyone does it. But like,
like you know, I mean Alan Moore doesn't like stop talking. Yeah,
that's fair. I think we should say it's more about the on screen.
Yeah, And I think that's for showing because like the it's it's a
very corporatized model, right, like like the mcuth like like like these are
these are products more than they are stories to a certain extent, right,
and so having a like you know, it's it's like if you have to
drop a character because it's not going to test well in China or they're not
going to screen you in China, you're no longer making art, right,
right, you are making a product. And I think that a lot of
the filmmakers, like we're like Jack mentioned with like the haste code, it's
like they find a way to insert it, right. But but but like
they are overcoming the the the mission. And I think because Jack and I
have no one can give us money or set the expectations for us. We
get to just say things freely and like you maintain a viewpoint. I yeah,
I think this season we are bringing a little bit more action in but
it's audio, so it's it's like zip zip talk talk talk. It is.
But you know, like a catchphrase we use for the show is,
you know, these are the stories between the panels, you know, and
it actually it actually goes on. I'll go on to say, like,
you know, this is what happens after the punching is done and the hero
flies away, because you know, as Max said, we're not beholding to
Disney or anybody or even readers, like we're just gonna We're just gonna have
these characters wind up where they wind up. You know. One of the
big storylines that we have that we carry through is, you know, our
our Superman analog cosmos. You know, he got deported last season and he's
now on an island with a bunch of other people that have been rejected by
the countries where they are from. And this question of and this isn't a
spoiler, because we talked a lot about Magneto and sort of what would happen
with him, because you know, we've seen a lot of evil Superman,
but we've never seen We've never seen a Superman who's just kind of dealing with
the consequences of his actions and just with how people treat him. And we
had a lot of conversations about where this guy would end up, where is
his head and what's going to happen because of it? Yeah, yeah,
yeah, And the interesting thing about Superman to us is the restraint is the
responsibility that he feels. But like, yeah, we experimented a lot with
untethering that from the rule of law and like, like what happens when Superman
gets to pursue his own idea of justice, which is like what the versions
of Magneto we like best does. It's like, yeah, right, you
know, if you know this is Malcolm X, like like what is the
you know, just response not necessarily the lawful response? Yeah, no,
I think that makes so much sense. I mean, especially as and you
know, and there's a lot we actually did an episode recently on on the
X Man and how the Malcolm x mart Luke King comparison doesn't always hold up
directly, but it certainly does in terms of the American perception of those two
characters. And that one thing I think is fascinating about the X Man is
how the way Malcolm X was perceived by most of America in the sixties really
reflected who malcol who Martino was today, who at then. You know,
today a lot of people have read the autobiography of Malcolm X, like he's
not seen as the villain, whereas Martin Luther King was the good guy,
and and the perception of Magneto I think has changed in a lot of similar
ways. And so yeah, it's it's I love how you can address those
things and keep those stories going. And a big piece of that is also
consequence. We try to make sure that if something happens, then we're gonna
try try and take it to like it's more it's most natural and most dramatic
point. Yeah, because you know, comics are super guilty of you know,
these huge storylines will happen, and then because there's a change in editorial,
like you know, it's all reset. Like I'm a huge fan of
Tom King. His run on Batman was essentially a relationship drama between Batman and
Catwoman where they get married and kind of one are the stresses of all of
that. And I like his comics because he writes very adult storylines and not
in the sense of adult there's nudity and gore and violence. It's more,
well, here, here's something that's actually going to be interesting to you,
you know, thirty five and up man. And then immediately after his run
was done, they're like, no, this is not married anymore, like
let's throw it all away. And we we're not going to do that.
These these characters are going to change when something big happens, it's going to
affect everyone. Yeah, and and and we try, I mean as hard
as we can too people who I mean Season two was like three hundred and
fifty pages. Uh so, but we try our best to maintain continuity.
On my wall, I have a map of the US with little posted flags
of every story rerun, just in case something happens in the area. It'd
be like, oh wait, do what happened in this area in season one?
Right? Like like like because you know, we said a story in
the Southwest, We're like, okay, Hella Monster is the Legion hero.
That's that's uh, you know, assigned to this district, and so what
do we know about this? Like, like, how is that going to
affect things, which is extremely annoying to do, and I do not recommend
it for any creative just we get guys, it's it's all. So we
are a two man team not only doing the business and the directing and the
editing and the boys like just everything, and we just need like a writer's
assistant. But again, we have no money, so we can't be like,
come work for us for not even exposure. You'll just be working in
the dark. I mean, I'm trying hard not to make myself volunteer for
that role. But that's the story entirely. But no, I really get
it, and I there's like five conversational directions I can take that in.
But just just staying on this one more second. That line about the stories
between the panels. For me, the thing that I've always been so fascinated
by and where a lot of this podcast has gone, is that is what
happens to people below the page. You know, what happens to the people
who are affected by all this. And as you said, you know,
if you're gonna pay Chris Hemsworth a huge amount of money, you're mostly going
to keep him on stage. You're not going to have on screen. You
might get the few moments that we've gotten the Avengers movies of a support group
of people who were affected by the blip in the MCU, but that's not
the main part of the story. And I just that as a sociologist,
theologian and something like that, that's what's fascinating to me. You know,
in The Boys, they do this really interesting plot line of a religion that
would form and how that would change, and like you know, Zack Snetter
Superman explored that for like five seconds but then moved on. But then I
know you guys might understand it's gonna go deeper and things like that. I
think there's just for me, there's something really fascinating about asking how would society
change when these superhumans exist? And I just love to hear you talk more
about kind of your thinking on that and how you're exploring that side of it.
Yeah, Jack actually had a people worshiping Cosmos story that it still exists
in a folder somewhere because I couldn't quite figure out the way to break it.
But it was we were gonna it was a segment that was going to
be about someone who is specifically writing about superhero cults and it was it was
based on an interview I had heard somewhere on the radio with a woman who
was who was talking about cult leaders, because I was, you know,
it's a it's again I like you. I just I'm endlessly fascinated by Okay,
who's like, who's the Rosencrantz and Gildenstern of this world? And what
are the reactions to all that? One of my favorite you know, we
had talked about The X Men. One of my favorite runs was The X
Force, where a multiple man is a PI in mutant town and New York
and you know, it's again it's the street level hero and you get to
see how these mutants are getting treated and the issues and trials of their lives.
And you know, they were lower stake stories and obviously we do hide
stake stories, but we also kind of delight and what are going to be
you know, what's what's going to be the macro lens of what's going on
in this world and we can go further and further to the ground and look
up instead of being that person and the sky looking down. Yeah, and
we also we have a lot of anime influences. I mean, you'll see
traces of My hero and one Punchman on this. But something I really love
about Attack on Titan is they will spend ninety seconds on a random apartment of
characters you've never met, and it's just like a old woman teaching her granddaughter
how to knit and there have finally getting their life back on track and then
boom of, like a giant fist comes through and kills them all and what
like when you zoom out, that's like every time a building gets destroyed,
that's happening, right, Like you know we like you know nine to eleven
was a week ago, and you know you hear these personal stories. When
the tower felt like every individual life of there was a story and like and
we never get them, and it makes the destruction feel so small. Right
if you destroy a city of nobodies, I mean, what do they say,
Like a person dies, it's a tragedy. A million people dies,
it's a statistic, right, and it just like there's no emotional impact.
But an Attacking Titan. You show that scene for a minute and then when
that building goes down, like your heart just squeezes. Yeah. I had
to take a break from that show because I I just can't take it anymore?
Fatherhood huh Yeah. A long time ago. I used to love watching
Law and Order and my views on the police and the way police retreated media.
I've changed a lot, but but still one thing I always remember is
they would always have like three to five minutes of either the people who are
having this argument and they come across the dead body and or whatever it is,
and it often feel like, no, no, I want to know
more about that story, like what happened when you got back from the club,
you know, like and it's such a cree thing, but you know,
another one of my favorite segments you guys did in season one was about
the people who have powers that aren't actually that useful and you're this great thing
about a woman who can turn pickles back into cucumbers and things like that.
That's actually season two. Oh I'm sorry, you're right, it is season
two, and I just I loved it because, like when I've talked to
my friends about the X Men, that was always my comment was, how
is it that these completely random genetic mutations always seem to be so useful in
combat? You know? And what about the people, like if it is
just random genetic mutation aren't some of them totally useless? And you guys normally
addressed that we're talked about how that would be pretty devastating to find out you're
a superhuman in a completely useless way. Yeah. Yeah, that second that
actually used to be almost twice as long too, just really going into like,
yeah, like like the idea that like if your superpowers you can jump
six inches higher, you don't know you have a superher a superpower. You
think you're really good at track and field, like you're great at basketball,
you jump a foot and you go to the NBA you jump twenty feet and
you're a superhero, And it's like that idea of degrees and how Yeah,
I still I wish there's a way that that could have made the funnel draft.
But but but yeah, just like these like small little like like like
it's a complete world, right Like you look at you know, Savior School
for the Gifted, and you know they're recruiting for their paramilitary force, right
like, like you know, I'm sure that there's the person who can tell
you how many pulls ceiling fan has before it turns off, But like you
know they're not going to go in the blackbird. Yeah, well, and
so let's start talking about season two, and I want to hear more about
the overall process, but I want to start with how how I got a
little bit involved with this, because I think it it really speaks to your
writing process in a way that we talk about so often is missing. It's
the idea of representation not only on screen but in the writer's room. Because
and I and we'll talk much more about this in the future. I have
another episode with these folks planned after a much later episode, which also for
those of you who are wondering at you're yelling at your radios or your your
podcast things of like forget about spoilers, Matthew, you asked them more about
upcoming storylines. We'll get to talk to you much more about the upcom storylines
when we do that. But the reason we're doing that is because I know
that disability is going to be a theme you explore. And I know that
because you all approached me a disabled person and asked me to kind of like
look at the script and look at some of these ideas and talk with you
through it, which I really loved and talking to you more like my understanding
is that yeah, when you cover transisues, you like, reached out to
people in that community and things like that. That is something that so often
is missing and that will often hear. You know, you'll look at a
character and people from a community will be like, clearly they didn't like that
character was written by people who don't understand that community. Talk to us about
like how that was a part of your writing process and why I think it's
well, personally, you know, I come from a film background, so
I've like been around writers and I've her into how they've run rooms. But
it's also just we're two straight white guys, and you know, you can
come up with a great idea for a story, and you can there's nothing
that stops you from imagining somebody who's you know, LGBT or you know who
who is disabled. But then once you're going to put that story out into
the world, you know you're also representing those people, and if you have
zero input from them, it just you know, it does not take much
to make sure that you were doing right by a community by reaching out.
You know, we have people in our writer's room this season who were queer
who gave us feedback on stories that you know that weren't overtly queer, but
dealt with those storylines and they certainly weighed in on them. It's just it's
it. It's it's the way people should do it. It just it feels
like this should be common practice these days. Well, you know, I
think there was this toxic thing that went around uh studio execs in like twenty
fifteen is when I first remember hearing it, the uh this idea of right
what you know, but they misinterpreted it. They're like, oh, you're
a banker, you should write about banking, Like like this is great,
you have a life. Like it's like because the idea isn't that you can
only write things that you yourself have lived. It's that when you write something,
you should be knowledgeable in it and you it should be a in conversation
with people who, like, who have lived those experiences in order to bring
it to life. I mean, because not everyone's a writer, but you
know, everyone has, you know, distinct viewpoints and perspectives and it's important
to collect those as you're as you're writing things. And I love that,
like you know, and like you know, we try also, like in
casting, to like make sure that we create opportunities for uh, actors of
all walks of life, and really like as we're going, just like you
know, uh, whenever I direct someone, I always like try to like
check in, like even regional things like like when A characters from the South
in places I've never been in it like is this fog horn? Like horn?
Is this? Like did I just did I hear this in the Looney
Tunes and write this down? Like how would you say this? And you
know, just fine tuning it, yeah, because when I mean, you
know, it's when doesn't hit, it's just a minstrels show, like it's
not like, yeah, it's not substantive. And I love how you're talking
about that with a really both hand perspective, because like, yeah, you're
right the right what you know can sometimes me so no more like learn more
about something before trying to write about it. But also I think sometimes that
can be Oh, I've got a trans friend and I read one book about
being trans, so now I know how to write trans people. And I
like what you guys are saying of that. Both you want to educate yourself
so that you know more, but then also you're bringing those people into the
writing room and they're writers, not just you know, your friend who had
one conversation with Yeah. Yeah, it's just like, yeah, you know,
I guess the party didn't say. It's like, if you just write
what you know and you stay in your box, then like, you know,
guys like us will only write boring stories about straight white dudes no thank
you, which is a lot of what we get right exactly, you know,
yeah, because of the way the note is usually assigned to people,
but it's also just it's an opportunity for different voices. My favorite segment on
this season period is in the next episode, and it is one that someone
else pitched and wrote, and it's a writer named Rachel Music. She's working
with Max on another series right now called Josie and Josie's Onely Hearts Club Joe's
Josie's Lonely Hearts Club, and she she had heard the show. She approached
Max at the Catalyst Festival. She's become part of our writing team and she's
just she's one of those strongest writers that we have. And again, like
one of my favorite favorite pieces like it came out of her and had we
not thought like, hey, we need women in the writings room, because
it's otherwise it's just me and Max making unblinking eye contact for like days,
which you know, some gold nuggets come out of but there is there's a
lot of dry poop that falls out of there as well. So there we
are forty seven minutes in before Jack mentioned poop. This is a miracle our
recording sessions. When he does his parts, it's this poop poop, poop,
poop poop. And no, it's not poop, it's specifically my armpit
butthole. Yes, I was trying, which is a piece of relationship lore
between me and my wife that's somehow bled into our recording sessions. Oh my
goodness. So moving back to it's awesome. I love it. But yeah,
I love that idea, the process and so so talk more about in
writing season two. I imagine there's a lot of lessons learned from season one.
What did you learn after doing it that you wanted to kind of either
like, oh, let's do more of that in season two, or maybe
this was like we could have done this better differently, or what was that
process, Like would you learn from doing the first season of this? So
a big piece was we kind of had a main character in Stephen Singh,
who's our newsreader and spoilers. He dies and he's essentially we knew we wanted
a sort of death of Superman storyline for the first season, which I will
admit was kind of for the shock factor. We we decided it was going
to be somebody's voice who our audience was going to hear all the time,
and through killing this character off and it became this kind of big tipping point
for the world and the politics of the world, we decided, Okay,
we need We're gonna need main characters. We're gonna need somebody that folks can
grab onto. I mean, one of my favorite characters on the show was
whiz Kid, and you know he doesn't essentially have a story right now,
so we wanted to go back figure out, Okay, who's the heart of
the show, and we it was a throwaway line that Stephen Singh had two
daughters, and we had just it was something I wrote in a little bit
of Hey, it's even worse that this guy died because he has kids.
But then we were talking like, oh, where's season two going to go?
Who are we going to follow? We had started thinking about, Okay,
this act is going to come this, the Superacts coming coming out.
You know, there's gonna be pro registration, there's going to be people are
Auntie, and we've we've decided that his daughters are essentially going to be on
different sides of this issue. So you're going to meet a poor of a
Singh who is Stephen's eldest daughter who works for spr and is balancing her life
of being a reporter with her feelings towards what's happening in the world. And
his youngest daughter too. He's saying, who as an activist, And we
don't because we like to present the world. We don't like just saying like,
hey, here's the main character. You're following them. Now they we
kind of slowly get to know them, and you know this isn't spoilers through
the season, but you know, really everything's going to revolve around these two
young women, and especially as we go into season three. Yeah, and
especially as we go into season three, but it became, you know,
we started caring about these characters more. And yeah, well, I mean,
I mean, I mean that was really huge for us, because you
know, the first season is very anthology based for the most part, but
yeah, I mean, you know, because like we do like we have
these big emotional beats, but then we weave the characters for the most part,
and we found that we tended to miss them and like yeah, and
that like, you know, because we are telling a fictional story that like,
yeah, this like we wanted to find more ways to make it,
uh, and to to find an overarching narrative and like you know, as
Jack was saying, like like like to make it about characters that we carry
back and come back to, but also have storylines that really feel like you're
progressing as you listen to it. And so uh, season two definitely listened
to it in order there's gonna be some really cool stuff that happens as the
season progresses. No, and I think I'm really interested in that that as
well. First of all, it's one thing I noticed with Stephen Stephens saying
when I was listening to it is because here again how representation matters in a
way that you don't have to lambshade it. You know, that last name
sounds South Asian, but it's not a character beat at all. And then
when I heard his daughter's names mentioned and they both also were South Asian,
I was like, oh, that is just such again, a brilliant part
of just making this feel like a real part of our world. And here
I want to it's such a brilliant part of it, and I don't want
to spoil anything, so I'm gonna be as vague as I can. Here.
In the first season, you have someone call into your Car Talk story
where it sounds like something bad happens on air to that person and you're not
sure about it. And then I heard in the trailer that that storyline is
get further explored, and I was like, oh, that is so cool.
How you know, because yeah, it made me wonder and I might
google this at some point or maybe you know, like has anybody ever called
in to I guess probably not because it's no like it maybe wonder like has
anyone ever called in like while they were driving to click and clack it and
then like people heard an accident happened on air or something terrible like that?
Oh my god, probably probably not on car Talk nothing but that dramatic and
we can talk about it, so we have a well we can. It
doesn't spoil anything. Yeah, I guess it's in the season two trailer.
But so look, if you're if you haven't listened to episode four of season
one, stop now, go over. Listen to it. A short episode
to like twenty minutes long, but it's it's essentially our World's Robin, you
know, stole the batmobile and he calls into the to the show asking for
help, and then you know it disappears under mysterious circumstances and a new segment
on the show, which you know, we had tried to figure out how
to do on the first season, but we just we never could find the
end. And after writing that, segments like, oh, our show on
Cereal should be about this this young sidekick who disappears and what happened to him.
Yeah, I mean, I mean essentially we're doing you know, Jason
Todd Yeah, yeah, right, and as our version of Cereal, which
is a lot of fun. And Jack wrote these four episodes and uh,
they are so good and the build is so satisfying, and it was just
like introduces his true crime into the season, which is just a lot of
fun. Got it so much him. Yeah yeah, And also like I
don't know, just like on on on the Stephen sing diversity thing, it's
like, you know, Sean Ahmed who plays Stephen sing is great and we
hated killing him off because he's like one of the best supporters of our show
works all the time, does Hallmark Movies? Great actor he was, he
was in the expanse. Yeah, And when he told me that, I
was like, wait And he told and his scene is you know, he
plays uh, he's he's a character actor, you know, and I remembered
his scene, like his scene popped down. I was like, oh my
god, we got that guy. Yeah, yeah, no, it was
great. But but when we cast his daughter's uh, you know, we
we we heard a lot of Indian American actresses and it was actually God,
I have such mixed feelings about it. But like, uh, like whenever
we did the cold reads and auditions and when I brought them in, they're
like, so, like do you want the accent? I was like,
why you grew up here? And and just like the look of relief on
their face. Yeah. Like it's just like because you know, I mean,
you know, we don't cast people for their diversity for the most part,
but like you we try to get down to people from a mix of
different places. But it's like, you know, because they're legitimate perspectives matter,
not because we want to do like well say, characters and it's so
good. It makes it so big. That's why we have so many actors.
Yeah, but also, you know, the context helps there might be
something that we wrote that was wrong. And also we found a lot of
you know, we found a lot of really talented women through this who we
you know, cast in other roles outside of these two leading roles. And
probably one of our favorite voices of the season came from this casting call.
And I don't know if she would have auditioned for the show and Jolly Jolly
she disappears and what is her last name? Yeah? No, she has
some move of sixty three people in the okay, so Max is going to
look up her last name. Anyways, This this woman who auditioned for us
specifically because we were looking for, you know, women of Indian descent.
She came in and throughout the season when she plays characters, I yeah,
because I'm pretty removed from the editing program, I would always ask Max,
wait, which actress is this, and you'd be like, it's in Jolly,
and she would just vanish into a role yeah, and Jolly Corona.
Yeah, and like like like try to listen to her voice without falling a
little bit in love with her, like it's tough and and but she plays
a good spread throughout. She has a really good part in episode seven.
And I do think that way you're talking about that is so important because yeah,
like it'd be great to get, you know, if you do a
story that is mirroring something happening in South Asia or India or Pakistan or whatever,
to get actors from that world to do it, but that they don't
have to you know, like I, and that their story doesn't have to
be about that. You can have a story about a reporter who is an
Indian man, but that's not what the story is about. I, you
know, growing up recognizing that was bisexual when I was like sixteen or so,
you know, And I was growing up in the eighties and nineties,
and it was great at first that gay man and queer man were finally appearing
on screen, but they were all dying of aids, which was, yes,
a very real story. But I still remember how important it was to
me when that there was a queer man who was on screen, but his
queerness wasn't his character arc. His character art was about something different. It
just happened to be that the person he went home to was a man instead
of a woman. And so I think the way you're doing that makes so
much sense. Yeah, I mean, I mean I live in New York,
right, I mean, like, like I look at the like WNYC
news team or any of the TV news team, and it's a big mix
of people, right, And it's like it's just our desire to make the
world feel authentic, right, Like we need a giant mix of human beings.
Like and also like this is what my wife talks about a lot a
lot of older actors too, which it feels weird that they don't that people
just aren't casting older actors as protagonists and things like I don't know how important
it is for them to be sexy in like a horror movie. Yeah,
because like there's some such good talent out there and they're bored as hell.
They're just so bored doing like old person parts yea, instead of just like
parts. Yeah, we stold a sense anything else I want to not do
too much more of our time, And in our members only section, we're
going to talk about a different part of geekiness that I wonder if it's impacted
how you do your world building, because it's certainly what I thought of.
But just for kind of like wrapping up, Is there any other last things
you guys want to say about lessons learned from season one or things and how
the plays into season two, or to other stuff that about season two you
want to get get into. I mean, one big thing out of season
one is we made the decision to go bigger. We wanted to, like,
you know, everything was in world and we told like these quiet little
stories throughout, but like at the end of it, it's like, you
know, we're in total control of this. We could do whatever the hell
we want, Like let's let's like up the anti end and yo, it
created so much more work for us. Season two is one hundred pages longer
than season one was, and like a bunch more characters, a bunch more
like set pieces and things like that. And it's so fun the fact that
we just like let ourselves like go off, that's awesome. Jack. It's
just I would say for season two, it's just it's more serialized. You
know, we we really wanted season one to feel a little bit more variety
show. There's obviously an a story, but for this second season, we
the story definitely takes bigger swings episode to episode, and certainly from our first
half and the second half, because we're gonna have a two episode break where
me and Max are going to interview each other about behind the scenes and things
we might not have told each other about and sort of the inspiration of the
show, and it'll be about the podcasts that have inspired it, and then
another episode that's just absolutely about the comics that inspired it and mostly that exists.
So Max gets a break because if he hasn't said it, he's our
series director and editor as well as the co producers, so he wears a
lot of hats and needs he needs time. Yeah, I'm I'm we are
we really season. We release episode two on Wednesday of this week, and
I have the first six done and then there's another six episodes that are not
quite done, and so those are two weeks. It couldn't be great.
I understand that. I understand it. Well, Yeah, it is really
wonderful what you're doing with it. It's like I'll say, there's kind of
especially about the directing part, like in terms of like the music and things
like that. One thing I think is so interesting. I'm also a liberal
I'm a New Yorker, I'm a lifelong NPR listener, and I love that
you managed to poke gentle fun at some of the NPR things without it becoming
satire, without I mean it's satire, but without it becoming mockery. Like
there are times where the music is like every now and then I'll kind of
roll my eyes a little the way I roll my eyes about that music during
an NPR segment. But I'm also there are other times where the music is
just it's having the effect on me that the music during NPR has, and
I'm just like, oh, that's it's such a hard line to walk that
it's it's tribute to NPR as much as it's poking gentle fun of it,
but also it's just recreation that in ways that I just think are are brilliant.
Yeah. Thanks, I mean, we love comics, we love NPR,
we hate the world, and so NPR so so so so our show,
like you know, on satirizes the things we hate using the things we
love. Yeah. I love that. I love how you do that well.
And that's maybe my last question. You're doing this all in NPR and
showing us what NPR is like and I hope you stick with that. But
will we ever have like play a moment from the CNN of your world or
of the like the have a segment about well we all know that, you
know, Blonde Vanity gave a speech last night, like yeah, talk about
that. Uh. Well, it was a Patreon exclusive with season one,
but we released it on April Fool's Day. We have an episode from The
Villainous League news on our street. Uh, and you can hear great shows
such as Wait Wait, Don't Kill Me and Frocks and Friends and yeah,
yeah, it's It's episode thirteen. Is that what we called it. It's
a It's Episode thirteen live from VLN. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So
we have that a little bit. And you know, our third season is
going to shift perspectives a lot a little bit when we get there. Uh
we can't say how, yeah, but you'll you'll understand why by the end
of the amount of work that we give ourselves and specifically we're gonna just dogpile
on Max in season three is going to be so big but so worth it.
I love it, I love I can't wait. And for those people
who are hearing about you guys for the first time now, which want to
hear more. First of all, tell us how we can find superhero Let
me, first of all tell us how we can find Superhuman Public Radio,
but then also how we can find some of the other creative projects or our
commentary of places that that Max and Gen are up to. Sure, Superhuman
Public Radio if you just search for that on any place you get your podcasts.
Also, spr pod is all of our social head handles. It's our
website sprpod dot com. And we're also like doing some like social media stuff.
The season will behind the scenes and stuff you follow us on TikTok and
in stuff. Yeah, Jack keeps saying I need to make a website for
things. Yeah, yeah, you can hear me and Walter h go inside
QAnon and uh, you know, mock Moms for Liberty and Matt Gates and
folks to their Face. We have a show coming up called We Are Not
Journalists, which does in depth dives from people who are asking the question journalists
are too smart to ask and uh on Good Story Guild coming January, we
have Josie's Womanly Hearts Club, which is a fake am romance love guru show
with a bunch of improvis that I throw with the host and it's a lot
of fun. That is conjunction with series writer Rachel Music. Yeah, who
is pretty much the star of episode two, which comes out this Wednesday.
Yeah awesome. We're recording this about a week and a half before this episode
will come out last Wednesday. All that stuff will be upable by the time
this all comes out. Yeah, and if you want to find me,
just look me up at J and d i V. Pretty much anywhere this
winter. I will be coming out with my friends comedy special, which I
directed and produced over the summer. Yeah awesome. J N d I V.
That's John Nelson Dorsey, the fourth J and d I V. Did
you just get that? No, I've just thought it would be useful for
people who can't like, if you spell like something in front of a toddler,
I won't get it, And so I thought it'd be useful for people
with auditory processing issues that you know, just saddler letters. What a guy
just say six random letters at people and they're like, oh, yeah,
I'll follow your gens. Dan like, yeah, I'm on the internet.
You can you can find me. You know, my phone name is Matthew
Davis McCreery. Fox and so my on my email my personal stuff. I'm
not gonna tell you the whole of it, but it includes the words M
D M Fox, which is what makes sense. But I've realized some people
are like, wait, when did you become a medical doctor? It's medical
doctor Matthew Fox, Like no, no, not what this is about.
Well, thank you both so much. And to our listeners, what do
you all think? Like? Have you listened to this? Are you NPR
fans? What do you think some of the storylines we're talking about. Love
to get your comments and feedback. You can find all the ways to contact
us in the show notes. All the ways to contact them and all their
stuff is in the show notes as well. Check it out. And of
course, the best thing you can do is become a member. Members for
only five dollars a month get ad free content. They get the bonus content.
Like I said, we're going to ask these folks about another geeky passion
of mind that I think plays into what they're talking about. And it's also
just a great way to support everything that's going on. One reason why I'm
able to have these guys on, which is great. As you all know,
I'm supporting the strike, and so I'm not doing any commentary on struck
media, and so it's just wonderful to seat. You know, Hollywood is
not the only face that these stories are coming out of. And but but
a reason I say all that is that during the strike twenty five percent is
that during the strike, twenty five percent of everything that I get in through
those membership fees is being donated to the Strike Fund. That helps out not
only the actors and the writers themselves, but all the people who are affected
by the strikes. You know, the security, the caterers. John you
mentioned you to prop work. I don't know if you're affected by the strike,
but I know certainly there are a lot of prop people who are affected
by it. The Strike Fund helps support all of those kind of stuff,
saying, oh, I've taken it on the chin. I would normally be
working a television show right now. So my income went from you know,
seventy K year to zero when the strikes started. So yeah, like,
I think there's just so many ways that we're not we don't even think about
how, you know, the awful things that these studios are doing is affecting
everyone. It's not just the you know, people think, oh, you
know, the writers and the actors, they get paid huge about some money.
That's just the very top of the bill. You know. There's everything
from security, the prop masters. There's some pizza shop that I'm sure you
used to deliver late night pizzas to some studio in Hollywood that has just lost
all its business. You know, these people, we need to help support
it so the strike can go on and so the people can get what they
need. So yeah, if you become a member of this, twenty five
percent of that goes to that strike fund throughout the strike and also just helps
keep the lights on and keeps us give me a chance to meet great people
like Max and John and hear what they're doing. So please help support the
podcast, Please help listen and pass us on to your friends. Check out
Superhuman Public Radio. It's a fantastically entertaining uh and informational and it's it's the
kind of thing that you're gonna want to pass on to people. So check
that out. Check out all the great stuff we're doing. Thank you all
so much. We have spoken