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Welcome back for another episode of Is There Something In This? Dools and Chatto are back in the writer’s room, slinging zingers, avoiding Obvious Ocean Liners and vying for the Outback Steakhouse Pick-of-the-Week®!
This week, we’re trying something a bit new by recording our video of the show. Let us know in the comments if you like it, and we’ll keep doing it… probably.
By the way if you want to binge all of our previous episodes in an endless playlist like it’s some kind of Netflix Drama that just got nominated for an Emmy®, You can find our entire backlog right here.
Send us your cartoon idea suggestions! We can’t guarantee we will read every one on the show, but we will read all messages we get here.
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If you’re new here…
Hi. We have a podcast called Is There Something In This?, where we sit down with a beer and try to build a New Yorker cartoon out of nothing but two Australian accents and a shared refusal to be defeated by a joke idea.
We hadn’t recorded in a while. How long is hard to say precisely, but Scott put a pin in it for us: the last time we potted, the Knicks hadn’t won anything, there had never been hand-to-hand combat on the White House lawn, and Charlie Kirk was alive.
So. Bit of a gap.
What the show actually is
If you’ve never listened, the premise is embarrassingly simple: Every week we bring in half-formed ideas, and we hold them up to the light together until they either become a cartoon or die of shame. Some become dailies for the New Yorker’s site and socials. Some go into the magazine. Most of them go nowhere, and you get to watch that happen, which is the best part.
The whole exercise is right there in the name. Somebody says a thing. The other one says: Is there something in this? And then we find out, live, with no editing and no dignity.
We got about ninety seconds in before I derailed us with a story about the comedian Gary Gulman, backstage, being told the costumes were designed by a man named Beowulf Borrit. Scott’s contention is that with a name like Beowulf you have exactly two career options: Broadway costume designer, or vampire.
Which led us to the image of young Beowulf brushing his teeth in the mirror while someone gently breaks the news. Hey, buddy. You can see yourself.
It’s like a fighter pilot learning he’s colourblind.
The Knicks cartoon
The cartoon we got up was the Knicks seating plan, because the tickets were eye-wateringly expensive. World Cup fans looked at those prices and said no thank you. The sections were the usual suspects: celebrities, your boss’s boss’s boss, tech and finance bros, and then, in the cheap seats of the soul, real fans who are terrible with money.
A mate texted Scott the same night: Yo, I feel pretty called out, I’m going tonight. He spent a fortune and watched them lose because Trump was in attendance.
We also got fact-checked by Ronny Chieng, who suggested we add crypto. I said crypto lives inside tech and finance bros. It was two in the afternoon.
I officiated a Titanic-themed wedding
This is real. I am ordained in the state of New York, which means going downtown to City Hall to register with the county clerk, where they marry someone roughly every five seconds and you can always spot the second wedding by the white two-piece tracksuit.
The clerk handed me my paperwork and said, congratulations, sir.
I said, oh, I’m not getting married, I’m officiating.
She said, oh, I’m sorry.
I said, no, no, I’m divorced.
We’re now having an entire conversation. I explain that I’ve just filed my divorce papers and I’m about to officiate a wedding. She says: that’s bad luck.
I said: you think that’s bad luck? The theme is “Titanic!”
They are getting married on the door. They have recreated the door. I am dressed as the captain, which Scott correctly pointed out is a man famous for steering directly into a disaster, and if that’s the metaphor for the marriage, well.
Also worth noting, for anyone whose art is stuck: go and sit in City Hall and watch the weddings come in and out. The parents, the divorcees, all in the same building. It is the richest room in the city. I sketched the clerk at the desk and gave it to her, and she went from I hate my goddamn job to oh my God, holy s**t! in about a second. Scott said he could never do that, because he can’t draw, so his version would be walking up and saying “Hey, look at these photos I took of you while you weren’t watching.”
Send us your rubbish ideas
Genuinely. If you’re watching on Substack, drop your seedlings in the comments. We had precisely zero listener suggestions this week, on account of the eight-year gap, which is nobody’s fault but ours.
We might scribble it up, mention you on the pod, and if it’s good enough, submit it with your name on it. We’re not paying you. Nobody’s paying anybody. This is the arts.
‘til next time!Your pal,
PS. Look, if this actually did something for your brain (or at least distracted you from the creeping dread of your own inbox for six minutes), please consider restacking this and sharing it with your people. It’s the only way the word spreads.
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