Andy Clarke shares what excites him lately, sparking memories of his early photography career and frequent trips to Schaffhausen. His pivot from art school and darkroom work into technical sales, and lessons about good selling as an art of solving real problems. The discussion moves to creative storytelling on the web, focus and distraction habits, challenges with open-plan offices, and how he’s built a work life around late-night rhythms and self-managed attention. Clarke also reflects on family history, his father’s suicide and trauma, changing views on mental health and heredity, and a desire to do more consequential political or social work while relearning how to create for pleasure.

Topics:

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (01:17) - Rebuilding The Sinar Camera
• (08:28) - Pre Digital Car Shoots
• (14:28) - Sales Lessons That Stick
• (27:15) - Storytelling On The Web
• (37:10) - Writing Needs Silence
• (48:45) - Designing Your Rhythm with ADHD
• (01:08:01) - Turning 60 Reflections
• (01:12:36) - Mr Rogers Envy
• (01:17:49) - Providing vs Purpose
• (01:25:30) - Objects as Memory Anchors
• (01:40:43) - Music Picks and Billy Bragg
• (01:45:42) - Where to Follow

• Up (2009 film)
• Love Story (1970 film)
• Philadelphia (1993 film)
• Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
• Mister Rogers biography
• Billy Bragg
• Motörhead
• Meat Loaf
• Led Zeppelin
• Miranda Lambert
• Megan Moroney
• The Rolling Stones
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
• Wilco
• Woody Guthrie
• Bat Out of Hell
• Between the Wars
• Power in a Union
• Unfinished Business
• stuffandnonsense.co.uk
• Sinar P2
• Schneider Super-Angulon
• IWC Schaffhausen
• Rolex
• Hermès
• Rickenbacker
• Gibson Les Paul
• iPod Classic
• Game Boy
• Tiffany & Co.
• Amazon
• David Hockney
• Jeremy Keith
• Preston North End F.C.

We’re finding renewed excitement for discovering music through going to gigs and reflecting on how live shows offer an irreplaceable shared experience. The discussion shifts to the indie web, hyperlink culture, and how social platforms and chatbots reduce discoverability, while AI could lower barriers to building websites but raises concerns about credit, control, hosting complexity, and accessibility.

Topics:

• (00:00) - What has you waking up excited?
• (01:03) - Music and Travel
• (07:16) - Owning Music Again
• (10:59) - Re-discovering the Indie Web
• (15:19) - AI for Personal Websites
• (23:47) - Accessible Defaults and Standards
• (39:02) - Web Trends Come Full Circle
• (43:02) - Smaller Models Better Choices
• (53:38) - Accessibility Positivity vs Policing
• (01:10:10) - Assistive Tech vs Novelty Use
• (01:12:42) - Music Picks

Brad chats with Miriam Suzanne about pottery, theater, CSS, and why we shouldn’t just accept AI as the way. Miriam describes their through-line as collaborative creativity across pottery, theater, client work, and CSS standards, arguing process shapes results and that CSS is inherently collaborative with users, browsers, and devices. She critiques rigid notions of originality and authenticity, emphasizing growth and multiplicity. Miriam rejects “results over process” arguments, challenges claims of democratization amid surveillance, environmental costs, and corporate control, and calls for collective agency to imagine and build better tools and systems.

Topics:

• (00:00) - Waking Up Excited
• (02:26) - Returning to Pottery
• (04:51) - Theater as Hybrid Art
• (07:00) - Inviting the Audience In
• (11:14) - Questioning Authenticity
• (17:20) - Theater in Prisons
• (28:36) - Facilitating Collaboration Everywhere
• (38:06) - Why CSS Feels Fuzzy
• (53:01) - AI for Early Prototypes
• (01:01:05) - Fix Orgs Not Tools
• (01:08:10) - Using AI Without Hype
• (01:17:40) - Uneasy Benefits Tradeoff
• (01:26:10) - AI's Original Sin And Accountability
• (01:36:28) - Vision And Agency
• (01:45:22) - Music Recommendation
• (01:48:09) - Where To Follow And CSS Courses

• oddbird.net
• grapefruitlab.com
• miriamsuzanne.com
• courses.oddbird.net
• Balsamiq
• Harvest
• Claude
• ChatGPT
• Discord
• The Rolling Stones
• Velvet Underground
• Lou Reed
• Parliament-Funkadelic (P-Funk)
• Maggot Brain by Funkadelic
• Teacup Gorilla
• Emily Rogers
• "Franchise" by Isaac Asimov
• Walt Whitman
• John Allsopp — "Dao of Web Design"
• Busch Gardens
• Riverdance
• "12 Angry Men"
• Timnit Gebru
• Emily Bender