In this episode of Creative Guts, co-hosts Laura Harper Lake and Sarah Wrightsman sit down with Andy DeMeo of Granite Goodness! Granite Goodness is a podcast and newsletter focused on OPTIMISM in New Hampshire. He interviews problem solvers and shares stories of progress and solutions in and around the Granite State. In this episode, we talk about progress journalism and why we all should be a little more optimistic, the many ways in which creativity and goodness overlap, and the technical nitty gritty of podcasting! We’ll also cover Oscar Wilde, elevators, playing the accordion, and more. Find Granite Goodness on the web at www.granitegoodness.com and on all the social media channels! Most importantly, you can find the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and on the Granite Goodness’ website! You can also find Granite Goodness on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube! www.instagram.com/granitegoodness www.linkedin.com/company/granitegoodness www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=6156650498 www.youtube.com/channel/UCKQ1RxdlRdz7vXQJa0sqK7g Listen to this episode wherever you listen to podcasts or on our website www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Be friends with us on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/CreativeGutsPodcast and Instagram at www.Instagram.com/CreativeGutsPodcast. If you love listening, consider making a donation to Creative Guts! Our budget is tiny, so donations of any size make a big difference. Learn more about us and make a tax deductible donation at www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Thank you to our friends at Art Up Front Street Studios and Gallery in Exeter, NH and the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts in Rochester, NH for their support of the show!
In this episode of Creative Guts, co-hosts Laura Harper Lake and Sarah Wrightsman sit down with Andy DeMeo of Granite Goodness! Granite Goodness is a podcast and newsletter focused on OPTIMISM in New Hampshire. He interviews problem solvers and shares stories of progress and solutions in and around the Granite State.
In this episode, we talk about progress journalism and why we all should be a little more optimistic, the many ways in which creativity and goodness overlap, and the technical nitty gritty of podcasting! We’ll also cover Oscar Wilde, elevators, playing the accordion, and more.
Find Granite Goodness on the web at www.granitegoodness.com and on all the social media channels! Most importantly, you can find the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and on the Granite Goodness’ website! You can also find Granite Goodness on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube!
Listen to this episode wherever you listen to podcasts or on our website www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Be friends with us on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/CreativeGutsPodcast and Instagram at www.Instagram.com/CreativeGutsPodcast.
If you love listening, consider making a donation to Creative Guts! Our budget is tiny, so donations of any size make a big difference. Learn more about us and make a tax deductible donation at www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com.
Thank you to our friends at Art Up Front Street Studios and Gallery in Exeter, NH and the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts in Rochester, NH for their support of the show!
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:00] LHL: I'm Laura Harper Lake.
[0:00:01] SW: And I'm Sarah Wrightsman.
[0:00:02] HOSTS: And you're listening to Creative Guts.
[EPISODE]
[0:00:18] LHL: Hey, friends. Thanks for tuning in to Creative Guts.
[0:00:21] SW: On today's episode, we're talking with Andy DeMeo of Granite Goodness. Granite Goodness is a podcast and a newsletter focused on optimism in New Hampshire. He interviews problem solvers and shares stories of progress and solution in and around the granite state. I discovered Granite Goodness sort of randomly on LinkedIn of all places. And only a few days after connection, I realized that Andy had interviewed a colleague of mine in New Hampshire Housing. We had a bunch of guests in common, so there's lots of connections there. So, we're super excited to talk with a fellow podcaster today.
[0:00:56] LHL: And, well, you will be soon listening to our interview with Andy here, you will also find Andy's interview with use, Laura and Sarah on Granite Goodness, all about Creative Guts. So, you should listen to that one next. In the meantime, let's jump right in to this episode of Creative Guts with Andy DeMeo of Granite Goodness.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:20] SW: Hi, Andy. Welcome to the podcast.
[0:01:22] AD: Hey. Great to be here. Love it.
[0:01:25] SW: We're super excited to talk with you.
[0:01:26] LHL: I love talking to other podcasters.
[0:01:29] AD: Me too.
[0:01:29] LHL: Because we really get to dive into the heart of exactly what we're doing right now. It's awesome.
[0:01:34] SW: It is. It's really awesome.
[0:01:36] AD: So, I really like the intro to your show, and I always find myself trying to – like I play drums, so I'm – then, it's a very rhythmic, like interesting sounds from when I was listening to it the other day. I was just like – like
tried to pantomime it with my mouth.
[0:01:51] SW: We, thank you. We totally made it ourselves, right, Laura?
[0:01:54] LHL: Yes, yes, totally.
[0:01:55] SW: With our mouths.
[0:02:01] LHL: No, it is sourced music.
[0:02:01] AD: It's really cool.
[0:02:02] LHL: It really, really fits our vibe.
[0:02:03] SW: The world of YouTube free, whatever.
[0:02:06] LHL: YouTube's Studio Creators Audio Library.
[0:02:09] SW: Yes.
[0:02:10] AD: I thought it was like a – it works.
[0:02:12] LHL: Yeah.
[0:02:12] SW: Thank you.
[0:02:13] AD: It's just wonderful.
[0:02:14] LHL: We do have, for our mini-episodes, we do have a mix of music from sourced music, a musician that's been on the podcast, and then, I make some every now and then too. So, we have a nice mix, a little catalog.
[0:02:25] SW: I will say that after the past five years, the theme song or the transition music sort of like plays in my head sometimes when we're doing this.
[0:02:35] LHL: Yeah.
[0:02:36] AD: Or like your daily life, you're just like, "Oh, this is just, I'm transitioning to the grocery store."
[0:02:39] SW: I just said something that's like very podcast, and like, the music happens. I'm like, "God damn."
[0:02:45] AD: You can't even tell if it's playing or not anymore. Like it's just, "Is that, is that going? Can you hear that?"
[0:02:53] LHL: So before we dive off the deep end here, just chatting about our industry. You ready?
[0:02:59] AD: Oh, I'm dying. I'm sorry, I'm diving. Getting ready to swan dive into this table.
[0:03:04] LHL: Will you let us know, our listeners, who know nothing about you, who are you, and what do you do?
[0:03:12] AD: Oh, you're talking to me, that's – I thought you were asking that to the listeners. I was like, "What a wonderful –" because a lot of people are doing that in the new year right now. That's something I actually want to do. Yes. So, my name is Andy DeMeo, and I have a podcast and newsletter called Granite Goodness. Granite Goodness is all about optimism in and around New Hampshire. What it actually is, is I collect news stories of people doing positive things, solving hard problems, or improving the status of a hard, complex problem in and around New Hampshire. Generally things, like the average person could probably look at and say, "Hey, that's good. That's something I think is nice." Like building more housing for people, or conserving some land for the environment, or some bipartisan law that got passed after a lot of negotiation and it's like a good compromise. All these things that happen, you don't typically see them compiled in one place.
When you see a bunch of "goodness" put together, it gives you a different feeling of, "Oh, look at that. I didn't know that all that good stuff was happening." So, it's that, and that's kind of like the macro approach to like, "Hey, you can be a little more optimistic about what's going on around here." Then, the show is about the person-to-person, the human-oriented, people-sized approach of, "Are you someone who's working on solving a hard problem in or around New Hampshire? Great. Tell me your story. We want to promote those perspectives." That's the 10-foot view of what Granite Goodness is.
[0:04:48] SW: We didn't write very many questions about the newsletter, but I am on your newsletter list, and I think it was last week that you sent out sort of a 2024 wrap up of good news, and it was like 99 news stories. How long did it take you to put that together?
[0:05:05] AD: Yes, I'm glad you asked that. That's kind of my magnum opus. So, maybe to give people a little bit more context. I consider myself to be a member of, I guess, what you could call, kind of the progress journalism movement. There's a bunch of smart people, clever, intelligent, ambitious, highly motivated, like positive journalists around the world who, like a lot of people have kind of arrived at this place where they feel, "Hey, the news is important. Journalism is really important. We want people to understand the big things happening in the world."
But when the orientation of those stories tends to be towards things that are negative or things that can be sensationalized, and then, all those things are being put into the same place all at once in a news feed or a collection of front-page stories and whatnot. You see that, and if it's all you see every day for a long time in all these different mediums that you can get information, apps, and television, and radio, et cetera, et cetera, it can feel really overwhelming. I think every
person listening is probably just about every person living in the 21st century and kind of the information era can relate to this feeling of, "Man, the news is so negative. I feel overwhelmed by it, and I feel frightened, and it makes me feel anxious."
It's tricky because journalism is great. I don't mean to malign it. Many of my good friends are working journalists, and the work that they do is important. But what I kind of take issue with or the thing that I'm trying to work on is the curation and presentation of stories around the world, and about the world. So, a bunch of these people, which I'm just one very, very tiny part, realized this and they said, "Okay, we need something better for the modern world." The way that we do it now are the traditional kind of sensational drama, negative thing. And there's all these studies that you could go into of like, you can look at the last 20 years, and you can see a very distinct rise in the presence of feelings of anger, fear, and disgust in literally just the words that are used in media.
If you look at everything that's been published in newspapers and everything for 20 years, you can zoom out and say, "Whoa, there's a lot more anger and fear inducing language that's been thrown into this." So, it's kind of no wonder that people are feeling a little more anxious. But what to do about that is, maybe try and focus on what are the good things that are happening. It's about getting away from this notion of "good news" as a feel good thing, right? Something that's small potatoes. When most people hear the phrase "good news," they probably think of a 30-second news spot at the end of a 29 and a half minute news segment that's doom, death, and destruction for all that time. And then, 30 seconds about, "Hey, cat got rescued in a tree." Whoopee, right? That doesn't really balance out the scale or the feeling.
Again, the role of journalism isn't necessarily to try and make people feel good. I'm not alleging that. I'm just saying, the way that we present these stories is very incentivized to be the lowest common denominator of what's going to grab people's attention and get their eyes to glue to it. That's not necessarily the same thing. That's probably a net positive for the average person in their media experience. As it turns out, there's all kinds of things happening all the time that are really, really positive that the average media consumer probably doesn't know about. They wouldn't know about it. If all you did was watch or consume the most sensational stuff.
There's new vaccines for malaria. Less people than ever are living in extreme poverty on really, really hard conditions. The price of renewable energy has just gone down so dramatically, so fast. Stuff like this is happening just all the time everywhere. When you put all those stories together and present them to people, it gives you a different view of the world than one that you would just get, kind of reading the traditional stuff.
My goal or the goal of other people who do similar work isn't necessarily to encourage people to not read the news anymore, but it's to create a different kind of stream of media that's like, "Hey. there's other stuff's happening too, that maybe give you a little more balanced view of the world." Sure, only focusing on "good things" and optimistic things is maybe an overcorrection for that. I mean, my view isn't like, I don't think that I'm an unusually optimistic person, per se. It's more that I just think the default of everything else is irrationally and inappropriately pessimistic. Particularly when you look at all the different ways that the world has changed in the last 200 years for better or for worse.
Tons of people, they have done this work. They've been doing it for a while. Some of my favorite organizations that do this, and they're all over the world. This is the beauty of it. Fix The News, which was formerly known as Future Crunch in Australia, a group called The Progress Network here in the United States, and too many others to name. They all take this view of, hey, what's going right instead of what's going wrong? Granite Goodness is just that, but applied locally to New Hampshire, which is the place I'm from. I'm living forever in all likelihood. I like it here very much, I'm not going to leave.
I got overwhelmed with all the media stuff, and then, I was like, "Who's doing this, but not awfully?" And discovered the work of kind of the progress journalists and got so excited about it. I was like, someone should do this for this area. I looked and didn't find anything. So, yes, that's more than you ever wanted to know about me.
[0:11:04] LHL: Well, I think that's wonderful because I like how you kind of positioned it. It's not just, "Oh, here's something positive. Look, there's a beautiful rainbow in the sky." Like, there was a problem and we see problems in the news all the time, but people work together or someone came up with a solution to that. So, having people think creatively on how to change their perspective into, "This sucks" into, "How can we make it not be this? What can we personally do to help it get better?"
[0:11:31] SW: Yes. When did you start the podcast?
[0:11:34] AD: June of 2024, so about six months ago.
[0:11:38] SW: Okay. Wow, that's amazing. You've been really prolific because you've already
interviewed quite a few people.
[0:11:43] AD: Yes. I think I've got 40 episodes finished. I think I've released 38 of them. I've got like two or three in the tank, a bunch more lined up. I mean, you guys know how it feels. You get really jazzed by a thing. I don't make any money off it. I'm going to get like preps someday. Sure, there may be an opportunity to kind of monetize what I'm doing, but that's so downstream for me from just doing the work that I'm really interested in, because it's persona. I actually think that there is an audience for this stuff and I think it makes people's lives better when they are aware of, not everything's horrible all the time everywhere.
My fantasy is that, I don't know why people fix it on these scenarios and elevators, but like, someday I'm going to be stuck in an elevator with someone. I'll be going up to floor thousand or whatever, don't know why. Then, the elevator breaks, and then they're just like, "Oh man, this is awful. Everything sucks. I hate the world." Then, they're stuck in there with me. I'm just going to be like, "Well, maybe not." They're going to be like, "Well, whatever do you mean, Andy? I don't know how I know your name, you're a stranger in an elevator."
[0:12:57] SW: Maybe you have a name tag on.
[0:12:59] AD: That's right, that's right. I've got a name tag on.
[0:13:00] LHL: For a reason.
[0:13:02] SW: For being in the building.
[0:13:03] AD: Exactly. Then, I can tell them, "Well, you know what's not so bad? I talked to this guy named Charlie Cummings the other day, he started a bank called Walden Mutual, and their entire purpose is to take people's savings and to channel those savings into helping local food entrepreneurs in New England get their businesses off the ground. They literally started the first new mutual bank in 50 years in America to do this, because they thought that that model would be a good fit for what they're trying to do, and their stakeholders, and all that." Then, in the elevator, Seneca is going to say, "Okay. Well, that's just one guy." Then, I'm going to say, "Well, it's not just one, there's hundreds." Then, by the end of it, they're going to fix the elevator, and he's going to be like, "Wow, I'm a performed optimist. That's great." This is what's going to happen. This is why I do the work.
[0:13:51] LHL: Well, maybe the work is being done. You're just not seeing it because it's reaching the ears of some on-the-fence people, and this optimism is just seeping into them. Because what is so great about a podcast that we find with ours is our listenership grows with every guest that we interview, because they promote it out. So, this person that you interview, all of a sudden shows it on their networks, and maybe there's some pessimists there, but they want to support their friend. They listen to it, and they're like, "Oh, dang. There's lots of goodness."
[0:14:23] AD: Yeah, it's kind of like a positivity virus, like we always talk about.
[0:14:28] LHL: Let's get everyone infected.
[0:14:29] SW: Yes, a pandemic.
[0:14:29] AD: Yes, virality has a negative thing, but it can go the other way.
[0:14:33] LHL: I don't know if you can even say the P word, that just – it's so triggering of 2020.
[0:14:39] AD: I just call it the panini.
[0:14:39] LHL: There we go.
[0:14:40] AD: You heard that before?
[0:14:42] SW: Positivity panini.
[0:14:42] LHL: Yes.
[0:14:43] AD: Yes, someone dropped it on me, and I was like, "The what?" and they're like, "You know, the COVID thing."
[0:14:46] SW: Yes, that started on TikTok, I think, the panini.
[0:14:51] LHL: So, on your website, you share, Granite Goodness is my love letter to New Hampshire. The people who have lived any part of their story here and anyone else orienting towards optimism and community over fear and loneliness. I don't know if you know this, but we just had a zine where the theme was love letter to a place.
[0:15:10] AD: Oh my God.
[0:15:12] LHL: Yes. So, Andy, this is just beautiful and I love this. So, you've talked a lot about your positivity and you said, "I'm never leaving New Hampshire." So, why do you love New Hampshire so much?
[0:15:23] AD: Yes. I mean, a couple of things come things come to mind. I fully recognize and embrace them. This is all just random, I just happen to be from around here. I do think there is something beautiful about it. If you look statistically, most people don't actually end up moving away from the place that they're from. Whether you think that's good or bad, it's just that there seems to be a consistent observation you can draw about like human nature or whatever. Or if nothing else, the structure of the world, like you could have a whole interesting debate about if there were no constraints to travel anywhere, what would the world look like? That's an interesting conversation to have, but it doesn't.
I'm just happy to be from here, and the older I've got and the more I've – I think like a lot of people, and there's a whole term for these people from stay, work, play, you just mature and then you appreciate, "Oh, there's a lot of wonderful things about this place that I'm from." Growing up, you think, "Oh, man. New Hampshire, what a podunk place. What even is this bizarre state on the edge of civilization, in a corner?”
[0:16:28] SW: When I turn 18, I'm going to move to the big city.
[0:16:30] AD: Yes, exactly. I mean, when I was a teen, I was in the marching band at London Dairy, and had the opportunity to go all across the country, and do all these fun things, and march, and things, and perform, and I'd meet other teenagers from across America. We'd be like, "Oh, cool. Where are you from?" "Pasadena, Sacramento, Texas." Then, they'd be like, "How about you, Andy?" With a name tag. Then, I'd be like, "Oh, I'm from New Hampshire," and they would say, "Cool. What state is that in?" It's just like, it says it all.
Now, I think that's kind of a beautiful thing. It's a fun analog for kind of the philosophy of my work, which is that, there is a lot of great stuff happening. You're just not hearing about it. There's something really fun, and beautiful, and pragmatic to lean into about the fact that New Hampshire is a small state in terms of population, in terms of its physical size. It's not a very diverse state. I think that's certainly one of our weaker points. But despite these things that you could construe as weaknesses demographically and economically in all these different ways, my view is that, we really, really punch above our weight, so to speak. We shouldn't be as forward-thinking, and innovative, and prosperous as we are in all these different ways.
I say that having full awareness, probably better awareness than the average bears of – I don't know why people are bears now, but of the problems that we have. I don't mean to be pollyannaish or to dismiss. This is a misconception that I think people can have sometimes about taking the perspective of optimism, of like, they say, "Oh, well, aren't you upset about homelessness, or addiction, or the unaffordability of housing?" It's like, "Yeah, of course I am. That's why I have to be." My belief and my conviction, it's that I've come to embrace and I learned from the smart people doing progress journalism is that, optimism is the triple threat.
There's a very good argument to be made that the average person should probably, from a totally just rational "viewpoint," be a little more optimistic about this day of the world. When I say that, I mean, okay, the trajectory of the last 200 years alone, if we're going to define what's gotten better, human suffering, let's look at that. In the year 1800, and I'm going to butcher this, but the broad picture of it is accurate. I think it's like one in five kids just didn't make it to age five, which is insane. We can't even conceive of that, right? Today, I think it's like one in 100. Even one is horrible, right? Even one person dying from something that's totally preventable is obviously tragic, and you would hope to maintain that perspective always, like talk into a person who's suffering. But when you zoom out, a lot of suffering has been reduced right relative to the past. That's a really important thing that people should know so that they can understand. Okay. Why did that happen? How do we keep making it better for the people who are still suffering today for reasons that they don't have to?
Infant mortality is just one highly, visible, sad example of it, but there's all these different things that you could measure. The people who study this stuff really seriously, they have a mantra that I think is very helpful for kind of squaring, and awareness of suffering, and problems with a desire to make the world better. That is three statements. The world is awful. The world is awful because more than one child is born and then they don't make it to age five or whatever. That's unacceptable. The world is better than it used to be in many ways you can measure. That's true because that proportion of kids who do make it to age five is much higher today than it used to be. No one is pro-infant mortality. No one is against – everyone is like, "Great, more kids living happily. That's good." The world's better than it used to be in a lot of ways you can measure.
The third statement is, the world can be better than it is now, a lot better. It could be so much better. They all exist at the same time. They don't contradict each other. So, people should be optimistic because you can study the trajectory of improvement on all these different things. And you can at least have a rational awareness of, "Hey, we've done it before. We have taken incredibly challenging problems." Imagine every person in the world doesn't know how to read. Imagine we see entire classes of people as second-class citizens and we don't view them with the same perspective of human rights as we see other people. We've had real improvement on a lot of this stuff.
That mantra, if we've done it before, we can do it again, we can keep doing it. So, it's kind of our duty to be optimistic to that possibility, that's underpinning all of this work for me. That's why I love New Hampshire, I guess. Which is your original question, sorry.
[0:21:32] LHL: It was, wasn't it?
[0:21:34] SW: What you're talking about is something we talk about in housing advocacy all the time, where sometimes we put together event or things where we're kind of celebrating success and celebrating progress. We always have to acknowledge and make sure we're balancing. It is so important for us to celebrate success and progress because it's hard work, and the people who do the work are going to burn out if we're not taking a moment to acknowledge the hard work, the results of that hard work, the progress. While also kind of being respectful and cognizant of the fact that there are still people who don't have homes right now.
Always walk in that line of, we need to be positive, and we need to celebrate success, and we need to talk about that success, and we need to make sure that people know, and it's being promoted, that things are happening, and people are working really hard while also acknowledging that other piece, which is that, there are people who are still in crisis for whatever reason.
[0:22:25] AD: Yes, I totally agree.
[0:22:29] SW: I don't know how much our listeners care about this, but I think that we want to ask you some of the technical stuff of like, when you decided to start a podcast, did you know how to do that?
[0:22:40] AD: No, absolutely not.
[0:22:44] LHL: So, how did you bound forward and make it happen?
[0:22:47] AD: I convinced 10 of my friends to be my guinea pigs.
[0:22:50] SW: Oh, I love that.
[0:22:52] AD: Yes. Well, those are the first 10 guests in Granite Goodness, they're my friends, and colleagues, and former professors, or coworkers.
[0:22:59] SW: Now that we're five years into it, I feel like I can tell people like, "Oh, you really want to know how creative got started?" Like, "Go back to episodes two through five." Those were the ones where we didn't really know what we were doing, and our equipment wasn't good. We interviewed my brother, we interviewed like people we knew. You could experiment on people that you know.
[0:23:19] AD: That's good that you got it together after episode five.
[0:23:22] LHL: We really did.
[0:23:22] AD: I'm on episode 40, and I'm still – I learn stuff every single time.
[0:23:28] LHL: Well, it wasn't like magically, "Waha wala, you are a podcaster."
[0:23:33] SW: I don't know, I think we were pretty good. Maybe we were just naturals.
[0:23:36] AD: When things go wrong, that's when you learn the most though, for sure.
[0:23:40] SW: That's definitely true. That's definitely true.
[0:23:42] LHL: So, do you edit your podcast that much, heavily, a little, not at all. Like everyone sort of has different levels as far as what they edit.
[0:23:51] AD: Yes, a little bit, a little bit. I mean, I'm time constrained, like everyone, and it's even changed. So, a couple episodes ago, I started taking advantage of some of the tools that Adobe has, in terms of like, they can remove all the pauses, and stuff, and do that pretty well.
[0:24:09] LHL: Does that mean you use Edition, Adobe Edition?
[0:24:12] AD: Premiere. Well, yes. I don't use Edition.
[0:24:14] LHL: Oh, because you're doing film.
[0:24:15] AD: Yes, that's what I aiming for.
[0:24:15] LHL: Okay, that's right. Then, Premier Pro.
[0:24:18] AD: I would like to use Edition, I just don't know how to use it.
[0:24:20] LHL: Well, it's kind of similar. I mean, it's similar in that all Adobe stuff kind of has the same little bit of language, but I use both.
[0:24:30] AD: Because you're a pro, that's why. I think that's why.
[0:24:35] LHL: Well, for like in my job and in my personal life, when I make film stuff, I use Premiere Pro, but I can show you Edition if you want some time. Like, it's right here.
[0:24:44] AD: You might regret saying that. You'd be like, "Oh, man."
[0:24:46] SW: For our listeners who missed that, Andy both records the audio and films, the interviews.
[0:24:51] LHL: Which is very impressive.
[0:24:51] SW: You can watch the interview. It's very impressive.
[0:24:55] AD: I thought it was going to be a lot of work. I mean, you know, there's a million things you could do with cameras. You can make it much, much more slick and streamlined than what I have. Just having a face to the voice, I think is a cool thing.
[0:25:05] LHL: That's absolutely feedback we've heard from people like, "Oh, you should get into video too." We're like, "Well, listen, we've got this where we've got it right now, maybe someday, maybe someday." I don't want to watch myself on video.
[0:25:18] AD: There's a lot to be said for just like having the thing be up and running, I think that's underrated. The instinct of well-intentioned listeners or commentators is to – like we all have a bias – and we could even, this is a creative thing, you'll like it. I think we all have a bias towards adding. If we see a thing we want to improve, the instinct is, "Okay. What can I add to this process or this thing to make it better?" What's hard is to remove, to take away.
[0:25:45] LHL: Edit designers.
[0:25:46] SW: Yes.
[0:25:47] LHL: Project Runway. Like editing down.
[0:25:51] AD: You're out. But I had to answer your question. I really try not to change. If I'm going to substantively edit something, it's going to be because someone said something in a really drawn-out way, kind of like I did earlier in this episode. But I would never substantively change the meaning or context of what someone's trying to say. Really just like, "Okay. Are they pausing, or umming. or whatever?"
[0:26:17] LHL: Smooth it out a little.
[0:26:19] SW: Right. Well, and that was probably the biggest road bump for Creative Guts when we first started, was that, we were making editing much harder on ourselves than we – I mean, especially than we do now. But in the beginning, we'd be enjoying talking to someone, so we'd talk to them and record it for like two hours. And then, we'd have to whittle it down to 45 minutes and people are like, "Why do we do that?"
[0:26:40] LHL: We should do a part two for one of our guests.
[0:26:42] SW: And we do not do that anymore. Now, we're like, we're going to keep it to roughly 45 minutes.
[0:26:45] LHL: I watch the timer.
[0:26:46] SW: We watch the clock. We have it sort of down to a science where we're like, "Oh, okay." But it took us five years to get there.
[0:26:53] LHL: And we have editors to.
[0:26:55] SW: Editing editors.
[0:26:57] LHL: So, that is a good thing.
[0:26:57] AD: This is good. I can selfishly learn from you.
[0:27:00] LJL: Absolutely.
[0:27:03] SW: When podcasters talk to podcasters.
[0:27:05] LHL: I know.
[0:27:05] SW: Well, and we talked a little bit before we started recording about transcriptions because that's something that Creative Guts started doing kind of recently when we hired the editor who we pay, we also pay them to do the transcriptions. So, you have transcriptions for yours, but they're AI.
[0:27:19] AD: Yes.
[0:27:21] SW: Yes. So, how has that experience been?
[0:27:22] AD: I mean, it's good enough for what I want it to be. I use Substack, which is great. It's an all-in-one. You want to have an easy email list, you want to host your podcast, it'll transcribe it, it'll pull out video clips for you. I probably don't even take advantage of everything, but what I was trying to like mess with making a whole website, and then my wife was like, you should just use Substack, it's free, and you can do all this stuff with it. Then, I was like, oh wow, it made it really, really easy.
[0:27:48] LHL: Does it have an RSS feed that sends your podcast? Holy moly, and it's free?
[0:27:53] AD: Yes. Well, it's free for now. I mean, I'm sure someday they'll – like all businesses, they're going to try and experiment with ways to monetize the platform.
[0:28:01] LHL: That sounds like the equivalent of Zeffy, like how do they do it? How do they stay in business?
[0:28:05] AD: I don't know how they do it.
[0:28:07] SW: How do they do it?
[0:28:07] AD: I super take advantage of it.
[0:28:09] LHL: Wow.
[0:28:09] SW: It's actually something that I've noticed, and I don't know the source exactly, but it's something that I noticed on Spotify lately. Is that, all podcasts I was listening to, I've been listening to a podcast all day today and all podcasts have a little transcription going under the – which I've just –
[0:28:22] AD: Yes, it's cool.
[0:28:22] SW: I had never noticed it until today.
[0:28:24] LHL: And lyrics for all songs.
[0:28:26] SW: Oh, yes, I knew about that.
[0:28:27] LHL: I found out about that recently during a singalong in a car ride.
[0:28:30] AD: I need that.
[0:28:30] SW: And it jams along, like karaoke when you're doing it, which is interesting. I did notice for yours that Spotify does not know how to spell your last name, so it's always.
[0:28:39] AD: That's fine.
[0:28:38] SW: Yes. Which is, it is what it is.
[0:28:40] AD: Well, I'm not – to me, the view of the transcript is just like, if someone wants to search for something.
[0:28:46] LHL: For accessibility purposes.
[0:28:48] AD: Yes, for sure, right. I try and – this is a relatively new thing. One of my favorite shows, they include a little written summary of it too. The great thing about the transcript is, you can take it, and then you can ask ChatGPT to just summarize the conversation? That to me is one of the things that someday I think it's really, really helpful for. Is like, "Oh, okay. I could try and summarize this." But this thing can just pull out what the important parts are, then, I can have an easily digestible 10-paragraph summary of it. So, if someone doesn't want to listen to it when I send the episode out, there's a nice written summary. As a one-person show, I try and leverage or take advantage of the things that I can to bring the quality higher.
[0:29:35] LHL: Being a one-person show, I got to say, that is very gutsy. I definitely take comfort in the fact that if I get stumped somehow, Sarah's there to fill the airspace if I have a brain meltdown for a hot second.
[0:29:49] SW: We can riff and support each other.
[0:29:51] LHL: Yes. In your experience so far, have you had moments of feeling flustered or not knowing what to say, or has it all kind of been smooth easy sales?
[0:30:01] AD: No, it's definitely – yes, I mean, there's – I mean, again, my show isn't perfect by any means. I mean it when I say, I've learned something from each episode. And if you listen to episode one, and then you listen to most recent one, I would like to hope that you could observe a trajectory of improvement in terms of the production quality and the interview skills. I mean, you two are the same way. I think to have an interview-based podcast, you kind of have to just be a curious person, and wanting to know, and ask questions.
My basic view on this is like, conversation is one thing, but if you're not really excited to talk to the person who's on your show, it's like, "Well, why are they there?" You brought them or they put an effort. That, to me, is plenty of fuel. Then, once you get going with someone, as you know, you run out of time. That's how you know.
[0:30:52] SW: That's the worst.
[0:30:52] AD: My goal is to get to that point, or everywhere with everybody.
[0:30:57] LHL: I mean, speak of the devil. Look at the time stamp right now. I know. Don't – yes, I know it's wild. It really does go by fast when you're engaged in good conversations. So, we love hearing about the technical side. So, thank you for sharing that.
[0:31:11] AD: Sure.
[0:31:11] LHL: You just kind of touched upon interview skills and conversation. Part of the art of interviewing on a podcast is being able to tell the story and help the person tell their story. I think that's the true art form of it all. So, I'd love to hear more about what you've learned on storytelling in general.
[0:31:31] AD: Yes. I mean, I find it helpful to have a couple of questions that are relatively standard. I try and ask people to get into the real meat of right, because they all know what the show is. They know that it's supposed to be about an optimistic perspective. It's like, okay, I want to get to that as quickly as possible.
It is about New Hampshire, of course, like it's about people doing these things in and around New Hampshire. So, talking about their relationship to the state, and where they've lived, or worked, or what they love about it, et cetera, et cetera. That's always a good segue into things in terms of orienting people's story around their work or the impact that they're having. But to me, it's all about meeting people where they're at. Like you were saying before, some people, they're really comfortable with the media training or the talking points about themselves. Where some people are less comfortable with that. I'm not like a bluster halt or whatever, I'm not a perfect interviewer. I don't have a ton of experience doing it, but I'm a big fan of putting the reps in.
This is going to sound, I don't mean this in a mean way, to the wonderful 40 people who have come on my show so far. But I am a big believer in the idea that, your first 50 of anything, they're probably going to suck. They're not going to be that good. You need to embrace that. Like one of the things that I think is really nice or positive about America, for example. Because the show is about New Hampshire and it's like, "Okay. Why does this matter for our corner of the country, and this and that?" We are connected to these bigger concepts, but we're very encouraging of not failure, but we accept and we embrace trying new things in ways that a lot of other countries and cultures don't necessarily. That's actually real strength.
So, taking the same kind of, let's be entrepreneurial, let's try new things, let's not be afraid to make mistakes, and just fail. The more you can get – I mean, I'm preaching to not even the choir, like you guys are like the symphony of it, because it's the creative discipline. It's all about, you need to put your stuff out there, and accept what it's going to be. That's the only way you grow.
[0:33:42] SW: Right. I want to give a shout out to the guests that we've had in common. So, Emmett Soldati, and Will Stewart, and Jennifer Moore, Jam, and Nancy Pearson have all been on your show and our show.
[0:33:56] AD: Yes, Lionel Loveless came on, his episode's not out. That is coming out.
[0:34:00] SW: I love that. Talk about a slice of positivity. Lionel is the coolest.
[0:34:05] LHL: I know, yes, really good choice.
[0:34:07] SW: There is five guests that we have in common. Your problem is probably similar to our problem, which is that there are a lot of people on our list.
[0:34:17] AD: We're going to run out of time on planet Earth before we run out of people.
[0:34:21] SW: Which is great.
[0:34:23] AD: Yes, it's a good problem.
[0:34:23] SW: That's beautiful. There are people in New Hampshire doing great creative things and people in New Hampshire doing great positive things. So, yay.
[0:34:31] AD: And they often overlap, right? Which is a beautiful – I think they would and should overlap. I mean, creativity and optimism for how we can improve the world and see possible.
Like creativity is at the center of that view. That's one of the things I'm excited to talk to you two about.
[0:34:49] LHL: No, the tables are going to turn a little bit.
[0:34:52] SW: Oh, no.
[0:34:54] AD: To be an optimist is to be a creative. That's my view.
[0:34:56] SW: Absolutely. So, how are you sort of building that guest list and where do you find your guests and how do you make it happen?
[0:35:04] AD: I mean, you know how it goes. It's always something, it's messy and beautiful. Sometimes, it's like you hear about someone, and you're like, "Oh, I've got to get them on." Sometimes they reach out to you. My favorite is when a guest comes on and they have a great experience and they say, "You know." That's how Lionel came on actually. My second guest was this wonderful, wonderful lady, Allyson Ryder, who I learned about her from my time at the Entrepreneurship Center at UNH, great organization, New Hampshire Civics. She came on, and then she said, "You know, if this is about positivity, and it's about New Hampshire. There's this guy who lives around here. He makes up cycle bow ties. Talking to him is like looking into the sun in a good way."
[0:35:38] SW: Yes, that is true.
[0:35:41] AD: Then, she's like, "You got to have him on." And I finally got him on. So, it's like, whenever there's positive referrals, that's my favorite way. But they come in all always.
[0:35:49] LHL: Yes.
[0:35:50] SW: I'd say that's true for us too.
[0:35:52] LHL: Yes. Yes. Oh, absolutely. I know, even before we met you, I was like, "Ooh, I have like two or three people I want to tell him he should put on his list." I bet like everybody does that, right?
[0:36:02] AD: Sure way. Yes, the list, it's like 200 billion people and that's how it should be.
[0:36:04] LHL: Yes, I know. Ours, we have this huge Google Doc, and it's – You're also curating stories, from episode to episode. So, we try not to have five just visual artists in a row. We want to have musicians, and writers, and woodworkers.
[0:36:20] LHL: Chefs.
[0:36:20] SW: We're thoughtful of diversity and other ways too. We don't want to have a season where like, we only talk to women. We're like, oops, sorry, fellas.
[0:36:27] LHL: Or just a bunch of white people.
[0:36:28] SW: Or just a bunch of white people.
[0:36:30] AD: Yes. No, those are good considerations to have. I think if you're not thinking about – I mean, people, I think they can get hung up on the word diversity and the DEI stuff, and it's like, "Okay. My view is, everyone should be interested and everyone in the world is happy, and capable to the highest level." Whatever that takes in different forms, we are at our best when all the different pieces of the beautiful pie that is our society can thrive and be happy, and feel accepted, and embraced, and freest to fulfill whatever they see their potential as.
Diversity can be racial, but it can also be every other thing you can think of for the things make people different. I make the same considerations around, okay, you could do a whole – I mean, they do have a whole show about housing, for example, but I'm always most interested in, okay, who is someone working on a thing that I haven't talked about yet. Whenever there's a nugget of that, that's like the next – that's who I'm looking for next if I have any agency at all about it.
[0:37:37] LHL: Yes, absolutely. Where can people go to learn more about this in particular and just getting more positive news sources in general?
[0:37:48] AD: Sure. My personal favorites and the organizations that I respect and have been influenced by the most, fixthenews.com, or the progressnetwork.org. I don't know if it's called that, but if you just Google The Progress Network, it'll come up. That is my go-to source for really good news stories about everything you could think of, environment, human health, energy, human rights, everything under the sun. There's good news about it. That's not small potatoes, nonsense. Then, their purview is the whole world. But if you're looking for something a local, and you want good news on substantive things in and around New Hampshire, you can find that at granitegoodness.com.
[0:38:27] LHL: Awesome.
[0:38:27] SW: I was going to say, you got to plug Granite Goodness. Okay. It's time for rapid fire. So, what is your favorite podcast other than your own?
[0:38:37] AD: What Could Go Right? by the Progress Network.
[0:38:40] SW: Nice.
[0:38:41] LHL: What is your favorite question to ask a guest on your show?
[0:38:44] AD: What makes you optimistic?
[0:38:46] LHL: Love it, you're really rapid. This is great.
[0:38:48] SW: Yes, that was great. Favorite color?
[0:38:51] AD: Orange.
[0:38:52] LHL: Favorite scent?
[0:38:53] AD: Oh, elevators, hands down. I'm completely serious. The smell of elevators is incredibly enchanting to me. I don't know what it is. You know the smell I'm talking about. It's like old motor oil and batteries.
[0:39:06] LHL: And a cocktail of other peoples' scents, I think too.
[0:39:09] AD: Yes.
[0:39:09] SW: Oh, fascinating.
[0:39:10] LHL: That's a new one for us, and I always like getting a new one.
[0:39:12] SW: Definitely is. It immediately made me think of, I was in an elevator, this is not rapid in Nashville, Tennessee And it was like the most disgusting elevator I've ever been on my entire life, and that is not the elevator you're talking about.
[0:39:24] AD: I don't know. I have a list of my favorite elevators. People are going to think I'm a psychopath for saying that, but I have a list of them I keep track.
[0:39:31] SW: Rapid-fire question. What state in the United States has the most elevators?
[0:39:35] AD: I wish I knew. I wish I should – I would hope it's –
[0:39:39] LHL: Listeners, call in now, let us know.
[0:39:40] AD: It's definitely not in New Hampshire.
[0:39:42] SW: What's your favorite sound?
[0:39:44] AD: Okay. There's an old video game called Donkey Konga, and it's like, you have this bongo drum that plugs into the GameCube, and they put a bunch of dumb songs from the nineties into it. When you open that game, the main menu music is this incredible drum solo, and it sounds something like – and I'm doing it badly, but that's my favorite sound in the world,is the drum solo on the main menu of the video game Donkey Konga for the Nintendo GameCube.
[0:40:08] SW: That was such a good answer.
[0:40:09] LHL: Love it.
[0:40:10] SW: It was nostalgic, and specific, and like there's probably listeners out there who are like, "Yeah, I know exactly what it sounds."
[0:40:15] AD: Oh, they know it.
[0:40:15] LHL: I bet my husband would.
[0:40:16] SW: People know.
[0:40:17] LHL: Yes. What is your favorite texture to touch?
[0:40:20] AD: My dogs fur.
[0:40:22] LHL: That's a good one.
[0:40:23] AD: I want to make a sweater out of him, and I love him.
[0:40:27] SW: What's the most inspiring location you've traveled to?
[0:40:30] AD: This is going to sound strange, but my apartment in Brighton, Massachusetts when I was in college. Because one of my roommates, I'm a really big fan of the writer, Oscar Wilde, and he notoriously has this grave in France that like a kind of touristy tradition people would go and they would leave kiss marks on the grave of Oscar Wilde. I've always wanted to do that. So many people were kissing the grave that they had to put like a glass and casing over it, because it was starting to deteriorate the stone. There was a demarcation point where you could no longer actually, physically – you kiss the glass now, like they still kiss it, but you can't actually go kiss the stone. I was really sad about this.
I shared this story one night in my apartment with my friends in college. One of my old roommates here was like, "I actually went and did it before they put the glass on." I was like, "I know this is going to sound weird, but can I kiss you?" Just like casually, just right now in the mouth so that I can imbibe some of the juice. She was like, "Of course, of course." She was like, "Just a little peck like that."
[0:41:34] LHL: And now, she's your wife.
[0:41:35] AD: No.
[0:41:35] LHL: Oh, okay.
[0:41:36] AD: I haven't spoken to her in like eight years, but Mar was there, and she's always great. But that would be like, to visit kind of like the mausoleum of Oscar Wilde, who's one of these like great creative inspirations for me. That's as close as I've ever gotten, and that happened in my apartment.
[0:41:53] SW: Hands down the best answer we've ever had.
[0:41:55] LHL: Yes, to a question. Oh my God. All right. Where do we go from here, guys?
[0:42:03] AD: It just a little, little peck, just like that. Don't edit that out.
[0:42:10] LHL: What is the last new thing you've learned?
[0:42:13] AD: Oh, I'm an awful accordionist.
[0:42:16] LHL: Is it because of lack of trying?
[0:42:18] AD: No. Well, it's complicated. What I would say, I'm in a group chat right now called Accordionists Anonymous with two of my really good friends, and the description is simple. If I don't practice accordion every day, I die. So, every day, I have to leave them a voice message explaining what I did on the accordion that day, and I've done it for 14 days in a row.
[0:42:39] LHL: What?
[0:42:39] AD: And I'll be doing it tonight when I go home.
[0:42:40] SW: So, you just start learning accordion?
[0:42:42] AD: I've been trying to learn it for like eight years, and I'm taking it really seriously this year, because I love it.
[0:42:48] LHL: I have an accordion, but I'm not super good at it. I'm just a little okay at it.
[0:42:53] AD: You're definitely better than me. Like, hands down.
[0:42:55] LHL: I mean, I'm just, I'm a noodler per se.
[0:42:59] AD: I'm a fan of noodlers.
[0:43:01] LHL: Yes. Like a long time ago, I used to play out music, and I would have a looping pedal on my synthesizer, and the, loop it.
[0:43:06] AD: I see, you're way better than me. I don't even know what that is.
[0:43:08] LHL: But very basic stuff. Then, I'd play my little – noodle my little accordion and have a jam session with myself a long time ago.
[0:43:15] AD: That's very cool. I'm not at that level.
[0:43:18] LHL: And actually, it's not even – those aren't my main instruments now. I play the electric ukulele. That's my jam.
[0:43:24] AD: That's seriously cool.
[0:43:25] LHL: Yes. But this isn't about me, this is about you.
[0:43:28] AD: No, I want to talk about the electric ukelele.
[0:43:29] LHL: So, are you leaving notes of you playing it too?
[0:43:33] AD: Oh, no, just a voice memo.
[0:43:36] SW: Can you record a clip of you playing, and then we can put it on the podcast right here?
[0:43:40] AD: Sure.
[0:43:40] SW: Yes.
[0:43:41] AD: It's not going to be pretty, but I'll send you what I can do.
[0:43:43] SW: All right, folks. Here it is. Enjoy.
[0:44:02] LHL: Clincher question. This is how we end every episode. If you could go back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?
[0:44:10] AD: Just lean into being optimistic sooner, harder, more jubilantly. Just be your jubilant self sooner, faster, I guess. That's what I would say.
[0:44:22] SW: You sound like you're a Daft Punk song. I love that.
[0:44:26] AD: Sooner, faster, optimistic. Accordion.
[0:44:34] SW: Oh my gosh.
[0:44:35] LHL: All right. Thank you so much for being on the Creative Cuts podcast.
[0:44:40] SW: Why are you laughing?
[0:44:40] LHL: It was really, really, really fun.
[0:44:42] AD: This is super fun. I love it. Thanks for having me. What a blast.
[0:44:47] LHL: Yes. No, it's been really amazing. I think this is a topic we definitely haven't really touched on or discussed. I think we talk a lot about how people use their art to give a message, to have a concept, to make social change or different things like that. But I think just an overarching like tapping into a different viewpoint in how you're consuming other things is like a really interesting new perspective.
[0:45:14] AD: Oh, sure. All our worldviews are curated, right? And I view what I do as deeply artistic. Like more than anything else, I'm trying to curate an approachable, optimistic, pragmatic, rational approach to feeling better about the world and the things that people can do about it, which is art. If that's not art, I don't know what is.
[0:45:37] LHL: Yes. Yep. Thank you again, Andy, for being on the show.
[0:45:41] AD: Thank you too.
[0:45:41] SW: It was really great.
[0:45:42] AD: Now, the tables will turn.
[0:45:43] LHL: So, with that –
[0:45:45] ALL: Show us your Creative Guts.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:45:53] LHL: Another huge thank you to Andy for joining us on Creative Guts. That was such a spectacular interview.
[0:46:00] SW: It was so fun.
[0:46:01] LHL: Yes. Yes. I think it was just such a cool experience to have a – we interview him, then he interviews us back-to-back, because we talked about a lot of the same things, but we actually didn't repeat anything. We just really dove into all these different areas.
[0:46:15] SW: No, yes, that's true. I was thinking about knowing that we were going to be sort of recording this exit, our sort of conclusion to our episode. It's like, I hope I don't get confused about like what we talked about in what episode.
[0:46:27] LHL: I know, because we just finished our interview with him interviewing us. And our listeners are getting a little like behind the scenes.
[0:46:36] LHL: But his methodology in the way that he approaches it all is really amazing, and fascinating, and very valuable.
[0:46:45] SW: It is. I left that interview feeling optimistic and inspired, and sort of jubilant, and like, he's totally right. I think I mentioned in our conversation with him on Granite Goodness that when we were interviewing Andy, I thought a little bit about, we haven't talked about like journalism that much on the podcast, but we did interview Jason Moon at NHPR. I was thinking of how important it is the work that NHPR does and the work that Jason does, but also how sort of sad, and hard, and like heavy the topics are that they cover.
Then, Andy's over here talking about the happy, and the optimistic, and the positive, and the progress. I think we need both of those things. They're both important and they balance each other out in ways. They both are stories that need to be told, but they're just so different from each other. Even our conversation with Andy was different than our conversation with Jason because of that.
[0:47:39] LHL: Yes, I think you're absolutely right about the balance. Just as I think we are aiming for Creative Guts to be documenting the arts and culture of New Hampshire and beyond, he is documenting the change makers of New Hampshire and not just painting, "Oh, it's just a pretty picture." No, there was hard work to make this picture pretty because someone saw a problem and worked on a solution, either independently or collaboratively, which I love about all the stuff that he's covering. It's such a diverse array of topics. I'm sure he's learned so much when we were asking the question, "What's the last new thing you learned?" I was like, "He must learn so many things every single time, beyond just regular life learning. It's amazing. I think that's such a beautiful perspective and subject matter, and just a really wonderful way to tell stories.
[0:48:30] SW: Yes, absolutely. It is interesting. I love that we have so many guests in common. Because unlike on the surface, I don't know if it looks like his podcast is similar to our podcast, but then, like you dig into it, and like there is so much overlap between what he's doing and what we're doing based on location. And like there is so much, he's like talking about optimism and talking with problem solvers, and there's so much creativity and art in that. That like, of course, he's interviewed some of the same people we have. We might look at his podcast and be like, "Oh, that person's awesome and interview them."
[0:49:00] LHL: It is so true. I mean I think we're at the point we're starting to gush so maybe we need to –
[0:49:05] SW: I know.
[0:49:05] LHL: We were just talking about trying not to gush and it's happening. Andy, thank you again so much for being on the show. It was truly such a joy to get to know you and to now call you a friend.
[0:49:16] SW: Yes, absolutely. It was fantastic. Listeners, if you want to check out Granite Goodness, we mentioned it on the show, but it's granitegoodness.com. You can also find Granite Goodness on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. We'll drop those links for you in the episode description and they'll be on our website, creativegutspodcast.com. You can also find us, Creative Guts on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn Probably most importantly you can find the podcast, Granite Goodness, wherever you listen to podcast, probably where you're listening to this episode right now, and on Granite Goodness website. We think you should start with our episode, but we're biased.
[0:49:55] LHL: Do it, do it. We have used this soundboard more than any other episode.
[0:50:05] SW: This episode is the winner.
[0:50:12] LHL: This episode is sponsored in part by the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts. Thank you to our friends in Rochester for their support of the show.
[0:50:19] SW: A big thank you to Art Upfront Street and Exeter, New Hampshire for providing us space for Creative Guts to record our episodes. But also, in the case of tonight, where Granite Goodness can record their one episode with us.
[0:46:33] LHL: If you love listening and you want to support Creative Guts, you can make a donation, leave us a review, interact with our content on social media, purchase some really cool merch, whatever you're able to do, we appreciate you.
[0:46:43] SW: Thank you for tuning in. We’ll be back next Wednesday for with another episode of Creative Guts.
[END]