If you sang “John Henry” as many times as me – “John Henry was a steel-driving man / Died with a hammer in his hand / John Henry said a man ain’t nothin’ but a man / Before I let that steam drill drive me down / I’ll die with that hammer in my hand.”

If you had sung that song as many times as I did, you’d have written “How many roads must a man walk down?” too.

Bob Dylan

Wow. What a great and rambly read.

“Treat your career like a bad boyfriend. Your career is fucking other people and everyone knows it but you.”

Amy Poehler

“Squeeze out some sunshine.”

Steven Colbert’s Producer

His producer says it to him just before he goes through the curtain to start the show. It’s a good call to arms for me.

In listening to this chat, I couldn’t help but think about the writers’ job. I thought to myself: their job is not to make funny jokes about the news. It’s to write scripts.

Which made me wonder about if I’ve got my job right. Is my job to make podcast episodes and articles and courses? Is it up a level: to help people make progress on their business? Is it down a level: to write lede paragraphs and write anecdotes and find a quote and make a case and write a closing story and ask a final question and then to slam those all together into an article?

I have my hunches.

More from this interview

“The pitch is not just ‘this is the story, we think it’s interesting and here are the jokes,’ but also ‘what is your character’s take? What is his opinion of it?’ Because in this show feeling is first. When feeling is first whoever pays attention to the syntax of things will never fully kiss you. So my character has to kiss the news really hard, he’s very passionate. He’s not ironically detached, he’s passionately attached. It’s important if only because he’s talking about it.”