badger badger mushroom (with jonti picking)

In my day, there were but three things middle schoolers cared about -- BADGERS, MUSHROOMS, AND SNAKES. This week, we look at the peak of Flash animation -- Jonti Picking, aka Mr. Weebl's masterpiece "Badger Badger Mushroom," and the obsessive subculture that was Newgrounds flash animation of the 2000s. How do you become an iconic animator online? Here's a tip: be an incredible musician already. Jamie talks to the multi-talented Jonti about how he makes art born from problem-solving.

Follow Jonti: https://www.youtube.com/@weebl

See Jamie on book tour for Raw Dog!: https://us.macmillan.com/author/jamieloftus

Watch Boston PD Zamboni Crimes Division: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRTunzDofwY&list=PLTHWo4zMtfja4vxOAxnyDK0VXGpRhvRW5

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, sixteenth Minute listeners. Jamie here and we have one
more weekly episode of Sixteenth Minute next week before we're
going on a short hiatus. We will be coming back
in the summer with a brand new season.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
But before we go, my book Raw Dog is out
in paperback too today and today I am on tour
starting literally the moment this episode comes out, So for one.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
Last time, I want to remind you this is where
I'm going to be, with more dates to be added
in the summer during full Hot Dog season. But if
you are in the following cities in the days to come,
this is where I'll be. Tonight, May thirteenth, I will
be in Los Angeles at North Fig Bookshop. Tomorrow May fourteenth,

(00:55):
I will be in Louisville, Kentucky at Carmichael's Bookstore. May fifteenth,
I will be in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Cambridge.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Public Library with Tory Bedford. May nineteenth, I will be
in Portland, Maine with my friend Maya Williams at Longfellow Books.
May twentieth, I will be in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania at Midtown
Scholar Bookstore. May twenty first, I'll be in Richmond, Virginia
at Fountain Bookstore. May twenty second, I will be in Pataluma,
California at Copperfields Books. And May thirty first, I will

(01:25):
be in Larkspur, California at the Marin Country Mart. And
that is just to start. All of these events are free,
so there are a few places you have to sign up,
so just check the link in the description and I
hope to see you soon and welcome to the Badger Zone.
Some of our planet's most defining moments are the results

(01:48):
of years, centuries of concerted effort, a singular vision willed
into reality, and others are complete fucking mistakes. My favorite
example of this is from the late nineteen twenties. In
a science lab in London, a certain doctor and I
won't say who because it gives it away to all

(02:08):
you dorks. So let's just say a certain doctor went
on vacation and like many people who just got back
from vacation, he had left his station at work a
complete mess. But scientists don't have desks like mine covered
in coke zero bottles and collectible minions figurines. Scientists have

(02:30):
workspaces that, if left untidy, can become dangerous ecosystems. What
was on this doctor's desk was a collection of petrie
dishes that contained bacteria in them, which, now that I
say it, could actually describe my desk at varying times
depending on which dishes were left on them. But when
it's a scientist, the bacteria is there, at least intentionally,

(02:54):
and in these petrie dishes were I'm going to try
to read it staff O lock Cook. Nuphilophagus a bacteria
that causes abscess's sore throat and boils, probably something that
the scientists should have rinsed out before going on vacation,
But in this case it was world changing that he

(03:15):
was a slob because in one of these dishes a
mold had grown that appeared to be killing this nepholophagus bacteria.
The doctor took notice of this and told his assistants, who,
instead of calling him disgusting, began to examine the mold,
identifying it as something that very well may have saved
your life a few times over. That is, if you've

(03:38):
ever gotten an ear infection, pneumonia, strep, throat boils, syphilis, gonorrhea,
meningitis a UTI, or a gastro intestinal infection, which probably
you have. This slab's name was doctor Alexander Fleming, and
his disgusting vacation mold was penicillin.

Speaker 5 (03:58):
Filling battles with the medium and which will grow the
mold that produces penicillin Canadian.

Speaker 6 (04:03):
I'd put of this amazing drug.

Speaker 5 (04:04):
Perhaps the medical discovery of the war has been greatly increased.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
It was a beautiful accident, one that was motivated by chance,
But it would not be the most beautiful mistake to
ever happen in the United Kingdom, No, dear listener, That
would not happen until two thousand and three. Two thousand
and three, in the year of Our Lord's School of
Rock and the best season of Gilmour Girls. In my opinion,

(04:31):
the product of another beautiful accident hit the Internet and
inspired not a medical miracle, but something even more powerful.
Johunt Picking was already a successful animator in the early
two thousands, but what most motivated him in his work
was finding new animation techniques that solved a technological problem

(04:51):
he was having. And in the two thousands, there was
no shortage of problems that came with distributing independent animation
on the Internet. In the days where buffering times could
be the difference between your work being seen or not.
When compressing a file could be the difference between being
able to afford to host your work or not. Jounty

(05:13):
took it upon himself to make animations that were memorable, musical,
and very fucking funny, and one day he cracked it.
What better way to create the illusion of a longer
animation than creating something that was a perfect loop, a
content or a boris if you will, one that hit

(05:34):
his target audience intentionally or not. People who would play
this loop until their parents threatened to shoot them with
a harpoon gun. It was a piece of art that
wasn't a mistake to make, but was born from a
problem solving stance and became a masterpiece, a piece of
art that inspired a generation of middle schoolers to be

(05:57):
more annoying than you could possibly imagine. The cartoon in
question was a simple one, a looping one pulled from
earlier Internet hits like real ones will know peanut butter
jelly time. But the colors in Jaunty's animation, though, are distinct.
It's imagery direct, its joke, perfectly calibrated to the senses

(06:19):
of a tween. It consists of three images and if
I'm evangelizing, and I am a holy trinity of images
of badgers, of mushrooms, and of snakes. It is this
cartoon that I feel is the penicillin of Internet flash animation.

(06:41):
All this delivered at sugar rush level speeds. On September third,
two thousand and three, a legend was born. Room Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger,
Mushroom aka mister Weeble aka John d Picking. Your sixteenth

(07:02):
Minute starts now that joy.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Time say it than.

Speaker 7 (07:23):
Sixteen sixteen sixteen.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take
a look back at the main characters of the Internet,
see how their moment in the spotlight affected them and
what that says about us and the Internet. I'm your host,
Jamie loftus in to round out our first year of
sixteenth Minute, where we've talked about a new Internet character
of the day every week, I wanted to revisit an

(08:16):
artist of the early Internet who was and is one
of my favorites, the one and only Weeble or English
animator Jaunty Picking, the mind behind some of the Internet's
most enduring flash animation classics and an artist whose work
encapsulated feeling like your favorite Internet cartoon was the best
kept secret in the world. And yes, of course we

(08:39):
spoke to the man himself. What do you take me for?
This video first became popular when I was in late
elementary early middle school, and was as popular as an
online video could be with a fifth grader at this time,
So of course it could be seen as a little
bit annoying, but that was so much of the early Internet,

(08:59):
right And I say that with love. Hashtag random humor
is always going to be popular with the middle school set,
but hashtag random humor was kind of popular with everyone
around the time of this video's release, at least everyone
who would dare step foot in a hot topic at
the mall. And I'm not pulling from anything scientific here,

(09:19):
but during the Bush into the Obama years, there was
this strain of comedy among gen X and millennials that
would rightfully come to be considered cringe. It's parodied quite
a bit. So I just did a thing, and what
intarnation could that be? He might ask. I bought pumpkin
chocolate chip muffins in true hufflepuff fashion, but cringe is

(09:43):
not exclusive to any particular generation. Gen Z is slowly
learning that their brand of random humor by way of
nihilism is going to be considered cringe by younger people
as well, even Gen Alpha, who will one day have
to answer for skibbity toilet. I do kind of like

(10:07):
to think that there will be a Jamie coated Jen
Alpha thirty year old one day intellectualizing skivity toilet, and
I bet they'll be great at it. The point is
that no one is immune here. Even gen X's most
famous comedic legacy, down to the little voices that tend
to appear in all of these videos, started as one

(10:28):
of the first viral videos ever in the early nineties,
South Park's Jesus versus Santa. You know, I don't think
that was the real zena guise, Oh no shit, Sherlock. Yes.
South Park began as a popular video e card before
moving to TV on Comedy Central. So while I know

(10:50):
that every generation thinks that they were the one to
invent random humor that appeals to twelve year olds, this
goes back to your parents, and we're going to jump
in to this story. The story of Jahunt Picking as
a twenty seven year old English tech guy with a
lot of weird energy and experimentation bounce aground in the
early two thousands in just a moment. But before we do,

(11:13):
Jahunty's deserved success needs a bit of grounding, a bit
of new grounding, one might even say. In two thousands,
internet culture and the way that home computing democratized extremely
silly art and building up skills in enthusiasts who would
use the Internet to become artists in their own right.

(11:34):
So come with me if you dare to the early
two thousands Internet. By two thousand and three, the increase
in Internet use in people's homes continued to rise in
the US, reaching sixty percent of households according to the
Census Bureau, doubling from less than ten years before. This

(11:57):
was the year that my neopad's account was hacked and
all one million of my neopoints were stolen, leading me
to leave the website, only to return when my dad died.
And now I have seventeen million neopoints. I'm talking two
thousand and three. The Internet of loud, primary colors, of
dial up tones and buffering, of defragmenting a desktop every

(12:20):
two weeks in the hopes that your mom wouldn't ban
you from neopets because it was allegedly breaking the computer.
And as that Internet access continued to grow, as these
massive machines migrated into homes and libraries and schools, it
really was Prina bund.

Speaker 6 (12:40):
Of Gelatine rena bund.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Of gelatine on the dial up Internet. It would be
completely impossible to cover all of the sites and programs
that defined this era. So the things I'm going to
focus on here that had a hand not only in
Jaunty picking slash Weebel's success, but also with much of
the Flash Animation generational standbys we still talk about is

(13:05):
Flash Animation itself and the website new Grounds. Okay, Grandma,
go to bed, No, it's time to talk about Flash Animation.
Flash Animation was a program that became extremely popular in
the mid to late nineteen nineties and was this consumer

(13:26):
software that made it possible for at home users to
create their own amateurish animation in a very particular style,
very flat but more fluid than illustrating frames by hand.
The esthetic was high contrast, bright, often with noticeably bad
audio if you made it at home, because there wasn't

(13:48):
really a consumer equivalent of audio equipment at this time,
and while software made it much easier to create low
budget animation at home than it once did, it was
mainly used in TV in these early years. Some notable
early examples were on shows like Ren and Stimpy, The
Powerpuff Girls, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and later on

(14:11):
shows like My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic, and Smiling Friends.
These shows all share common aesthetics, if not character design itself.
They were clearly digitally animated and usually brightly colored. But
flash wouldn't really break through to the everyday Internet user
until a few years later, largely in part because the

(14:32):
general online streaming speed wasn't fast enough to load these
kinds of animation without significant difficulty sidebar, but important, Flash
animation also needed the aesthetic of the Internet to catch
up to its aesthetic, something that was largely assisted by
the introduction of the looping gift I'm not saying, Jeff

(14:52):
sorry in nineteen ninety five, where the Internet mainly consisted
of text prior to that time, kind of this big
digital book, particularly when it came to self generated websites
and blogs. The wide dissemination of gifts made it possible
for everyday people to add little looping animations to their sites.

(15:12):
Think virtually every angel Fire fan site lurking in the
back of your mind, Think of and maybe I'm dating
myself here, and I know I am those blingy online
paper dolls where you could make your little brat's looking
dolls sparkle on an eternity loop Nut butter jellty Peanut
butter jelly time literally is just a looping gift of

(15:36):
a dancing banana accompanied by music. In twenty twenty, flash
animation plugins were discontinued, to the dismay of many early
Internet natives, even if the slow fade of the technology
kind of made sense. But in the early two thousands
into the twenty tens, Flash was king and was both

(15:56):
a major generator of culture for kids and launched a
lot of careers for animators that may not have had
access to the big studios or the ability to make
their own work without this tool, which brings us to
the big daddy, big Daddy of flash animation, one that
took advantage of increasing Internet speeds and however unintentionally had

(16:20):
a hand in curating how animation online is upvoted and
curated today New groundress. If you were on the internet
when cartoons like Badgers were spreading like wildfire and sending
parents into constant spirals of you're putting viruses on the computer,
you had a very specific attachment to a very specific

(16:43):
piece of flash animation. For me, obviously it's Badgers and
it's my podcast, so we're talking about that. But maybe
for you it was salad fingers. Hello, I like stay spoons,
I like to touch them. Or statistically, if you're any

(17:07):
man I've dated in my entire life, it is certainly
home Star Runner.

Speaker 6 (17:12):
A wait full of pancakes in the championship, I'd like
to see a chuah.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
I'm serious. My fiance is the smartest person that I know,
and yet he was born in nineteen ninety five, and therefore,
if Homestar Runner comes up, he instantly becomes the most
annoying person I've ever met. Okay, Grant, Yes, I'm going
to give you fifteen seconds to explain the appeal of

(17:39):
Homestar Runner. You ready, yes? Okay? Three? Two one.

Speaker 5 (17:47):
It felt like a secret, like you had to find
it out from a friend on the playground, and it
had the humor of sort of witty simpson esque writing,
but it felt accessible and you could actually write into
it was interactive. It was an early proto interactive.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
I really thought you were going to do the voice.
I'll give you a bonus five seconds.

Speaker 8 (18:06):
An extra five seconds to do in a strong, bad voice.

Speaker 6 (18:08):
I'll take it every time.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Gee, you're done, You're done.

Speaker 5 (18:13):
Hold on, you gotta do a better home star. I
gotta do a better home start four seconds?

Speaker 6 (18:19):
WHOA come on.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
Another element I've noticed is that original music is a
big part of what separated the flash animation Wheat from
the chaff. Here and Badgers is a great example of
that because, as we'll talk about, John dy Picking was
a musician first and animator second, a quality that he
was not alone in. David Firth, the creator of Salad Fingers,

(18:46):
was also a musician first, as was Neil Csariga of
Potter Puppet Palace fame. And the marriage of a distinct
online visual with music makes a lot of difference, especially
the further back you go. But flash animation wasn't limited
to these short narrative cartoons. It was also games. There

(19:07):
is just as much of a culture around young game
developers making early experimental or silly work in flash and
gaming as there are in narrative animators. Okay, this is
becoming a young millennial endoored kid circle jerk. So if
you exist outside of those bounds, I'm going to try
to calcify the appeal of this style of animation. It

(19:30):
was funny, sure, but internet animation was funny in a
different way than what you enjoyed on TV. It's like
Grant was saying in his impassioned endorsement of Homestar Runner,
a lot of Internet cultures still felt like a secret
to a lot of kids at this time, and while
things like Badgers would become hugely successful, it wasn't the

(19:52):
kind of hugely successful that your parents would immediately understand
the reference to. And this feeling of secrecy and exclusivity
has carried on into the animation culture that exists online
in the last ten years, even as the popularity of
online animation has waned. I am literally living proof of this.

(20:14):
It was this generation of animators that later motivated me
to make my own jolty absurdist cartoons. Hi, I'm off
as a crimes and I'm off as a get on
the ground, Aweya the Boss and pd Zamboni Crimes Division.
That joint is called Bosting PD Zamboni Crimes Division link

(20:37):
in description unless you're scared. And animators like Jaunty Picking
and other early pioneers like my personal favorites Brad Neelye
and Amy Winfrey of Making Fiends really did create a
pathway for a lot of what would inform the next
generation of animated entertainment. But I'm not saying that the

(20:57):
existence of flash animation meant there were absolutely no barriers
to who could make something special online, because you'll notice
that most of the people I've cited, including John T.
Picking himself, were at the time they became famous, young
white men who came from at least middle class backgrounds.

(21:18):
And while the Internet has obviously become more widely available
over the years, early adaptation to home computing was largely
informed by class, meaning that financially privileged, disproportionately white families
were the first to get the big, monstrous gateways in
their homes. And add that to the highly gendered way

(21:40):
in which tech jobs are still viewed with As recently
as three years ago, over ninety percent of American software
developing jobs held by men, and you know, white patriarchy.
It even affects Badger Mushroom. In the early two thousands,
most animators would have to lure viewers to their personal

(22:03):
websites time and time again to maintain viewership because there
was no YouTube yet. There was no BuzzFeed clickbait culture.
There were no automated feeds. There were just shared links
on blogs and very little else in terms of pulling
a random middle schooler into your artistic vision, which is

(22:24):
where the website new Grounds comes in, and for the
purposes of this story, two of the most successful forum
slash video sharing slash have you seen this one? Prototypical
sites that would eventually give way to sites like Reddit.
New Grounds was the big one, Although there were many

(22:45):
imitators and successful ones at that You might remember names
like Albino, Black Sheep, Ebombsworld, smash dot Com, to name
a few, but it seems pretty commonly decided upon by
Internet historians that the new Grounds was where most now
iconic flash animation originally found its footing. I only ever

(23:07):
knew new Grounds as a website prior to researching this episode,
but it turns out that it's even more of a
gen x endeavor than I ever realized because new Grounds
actually began all the way back in the early nineteen
nineties as a physical fanzine for something called Neo Geo

(23:27):
that I've never heard of, but it was founded by
a then thirteen year old boy named Tom Fulp, who
eventually converted the zine into a website in nineteen ninety five.
But as time went on, what made new Grounds special
was that their greatest successes were both user generated and

(23:48):
originally hand curated by Tom Fulp and his brother. The
site started taking off in the late nineties into the
early two thousands, with Tom expanding from his own fan
cartoons into originally submission based content that ended up costing
the then college student upwards of one thousand dollars a

(24:08):
month to continue hosting. He shockingly managed to break even
as the site grew more popular by selling old school
banner ads, but the cartoon violence that was all but
inherent to this era of flash animation Joy.

Speaker 6 (24:25):
Candy Mountain, oh like Mine Candy.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Mountain, would sometimes make it difficult to sell said ads,
But like so many sites before and since, new Grounds
both lost money and became really popular at the same time,
this was still very much the era of being paid
in exposure, being paid in just happy to be here,

(24:49):
an era that the Internet will never give up on.
But like most sites with generational poll, new Grounds didn't
last forever in terms of cultural poll, nor did animation,
but their legacy is genuinely important to some of the
most successful platforms today. There's no doubt that early YouTube

(25:10):
and other user uploaded sites, the same sites that alternatively
turn people into fascists and create compelling six hour video
essays about video games I've never heard of. We're taking
cues from the community building and viral techniques that came
together on sites like new Grounds. Just before new Grounds

(25:32):
and all of its imitators became the Western middle schoolers
de facto destination for annoying cartoons to talk loudly about
in algebra class, a star was born and he had
a really fun character designed for a dancing badger. Okay, class,
When we come back, we're talking johnt picking. Welcome back

(26:08):
to sixteenth minute, the show where we compare the Badger
Badger mushroom video to the invention of penicillin. Happy to
have you here, and now that you're fully thrown back
or caught up on the state of flash animation in
the early two thousands, we can jump into the story
of one Jaunt Picking aka mister Weeble aka the Badger

(26:31):
Badger Mushroom Guy, but make no mistake that was far
from his earliest hit. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot
of his independent work would continue to blow up once
it was re uploaded onto more curated sites like new
Grounds and Ebomb's World and eventually read it years after
their original publishing, and then would blow up again when

(26:54):
they were re uploaded to YouTube, where Johunty Picking's new
work still ends up today. So who is this guy?
Johnty was born in nineteen seventy five in what he
describes as a very boring suburb in South Yorkshire, England,
and was a kid who was really into both music
and technology, both of which would go on to heavily

(27:16):
inform his work. I'll let him tell you more in
the interview, but at the time he began experimenting on
flash animation, Johnty was working primarily as a sound engineer
in his early to mid twenties, and he would actually
go on to work in visual effects on the Resident
Evil movie in two thousand and three. Same year as

(27:37):
Badger's big year for Johnty, But in his twenties in
the late nineties, Johnty was a multi hyphenate with too
many passions to fully throw himself into. He really loved
music and sound design, but he also really loved messing
around with animated visuals and in a skill I am
so envious of. He had both a great sense of

(27:58):
humor and the ability to solve artistic problems with incredible
scientific precision. And it was from a technical problem he
was having at work while working in digital media that
we got john Ty's first successful animated hit, a series
called Weeble and Bob. There they are the little voices again.

(28:29):
Weeble and Bob was a series of simply animated cartoons
by Johnty following the titular characters who are literally wobbling,
talking eggs yapping against a hot pink background every single time.
The bigger egg Weebel Bull is obsessed with pie and
his best friend, the smaller egg Bob bobertson random alert,

(28:53):
is his best friend who also loves pie.

Speaker 8 (28:56):
This is a.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Clip from the first Weebel and Bob short from the
early two thousands, Simply titled Hi.

Speaker 6 (29:14):
Yeah Pa.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
It's set against that bright magenta background, and we see
both eggs rocking gently back and forth and chatting unintelligibly.
If you recognize the voice, it's because both of these
eggs are voiced by Jahunty Picking, who also voices the
Badger video. And the only way you ever really know
what Weevil or Bob is saying is by reading the

(29:43):
caption speech bubbles that come out of them. The Weebel
and Bob shorts were very low fi, partially because Jaunty
was learning how to animate, and because the more low
fi the cartoons he was making, the easier he found
it was for them to stream on an Internet with
a much slower speed than today, and the easier a

(30:04):
short was to stream, the more people could see it.
And this experiment very much worked. We Will and Bob
were so successful in this early iteration that it eventually
expanded into over one hundred and twenty episodes of the
show in the same short, simply animated format that is
scored with Johnty's voice and music. It was so successful,

(30:28):
in fact, that we Will and Bob made it to
mainstream television. And keep in mind, this was really early
in the process of major TV networks attempting to understand
the Internet, and it would be years before the Internet
was written for TV by people who had an intimate
understanding of it. But when we Will and Bob was

(30:50):
put onto MTV UK and the early two thousands, the
suits were at least paying attention to what the kids
were watching, and they had the good sense to not
just try to replicate it. Instead they hired the guy
that was making it. There was a stretch of six
exclusively televised Weebel and Bob Schwartz on MTV UK that

(31:11):
We're met with positive reception, and this increased attention and
financial flow meant that Jaunty was able to experiment with
his work using other animated concepts online when the MTV
deal made it possible for him to leave his day job,
and it was this that led to his grand opis

(31:33):
on September second, two thousand and three. But you know
what I'm talking about. An animation with badgers appearing in
a meadow, dancing identically and perfect harmony, with one more
badger appearing slightly further away with each subsequent pronouncement of
the species, and then we go to a bright red

(31:57):
cartoon mushroom with a push zoom for every repetition of
the phrase, and just when you thought it would go
on that way forever, a danger is presented, a bright
green cartoon snake presenting a danger to our badger, and
probably not the mushroom. Do badgers eat mushrooms? I don't know.

(32:19):
But while the snake is presented visually and orally as
a sense of existential danger, nothing ever happens to the badger,
because as soon as we see the snake, the animation
just loops back to the beginning.

Speaker 7 (32:33):
Bugs budget Bude.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
And long before YouTube hits, the Badgers became big, slowly
growing there and Jaunty slash mister Weeble's audience to a
level of public recognition that was so popular that his
body of work won a UK People's Choice Awards in
early two thousand and five. The inspiration for this short,

(32:55):
according to Johnty, was pulled from a novelty track that
was popular in the UK his childhood, a song called
Saturday Night by Wigfeld, and specifically a very particular element
of that song, and see if you can spot it
here is how the song starts. It was not clear

(33:24):
to me immediately either. But the little repeating thing you
hear in this song is a duck sound, one that
apparently inspired John d Picking to do something equally loopy
and looped and silly. So from the duck sound in
Saturday Night, we get Art is great. And the benefit

(33:45):
for viewers of John Dy's first becoming successful with Badgers
pre new Grounds is that he had already made follow
ups in response to the cartoon's success, meaning that by
the time I saw Badgers on new Grounds, there was
already a lot more to watch in this universe, and
all of the follow ups to Badgers hit these very

(34:08):
of the moment cultural touch points, including themes like zombies
or Santa Son Son Son Son Son good Son and
Son Sign the Press. This I think was my favorite

(34:29):
one as a kid, so I do want to include
what went in the place of the snake. That's funny,
you're laughing. And in a relatively short amount of time,
the animations became beloved, particularly in the UK at first,

(34:50):
where Wee Bile and Bob were already popular by being
seen on MTV. In two thousand and four, Johnty released
a soccer football I Don't care what you call it
both Countries suck themed version of the Badger's video for
the two thousand and four FIFA Tournament Pooch Pooch, Pochi,
Pochi Pochio. What made this format so sticky was its simplicity,

(35:18):
while remaining very distinct in both look and sound. It
was absolute drugs for middle schoolers and went on to
experience many subsequent lives on new grounds. Albino Black Sheep,
Ebomb's World and YouTube Badgers is Internet cannon, But like

(35:39):
many animators of this time, this only empowered Jaunty Picking
to continue exploring his ideas through one off flash animations
with weird concepts, stuff like narwhals.

Speaker 6 (35:52):
While swimming in the Ushian causing of commotion because.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
Like amazing horse.

Speaker 6 (36:01):
Look is amazing, give it a leg, or like.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
Johnty's personal favorite in his catalog, a cartoon called a
Walk in the Woods, which is both very beautiful and
also ninety percent cartoon animals shitting so hard that they fly.
And while some of Johnty's work could get violent or sexual,
his work isn't characterized by these qualities in a way
that much early flash animation was I'm gonna cut your

(36:31):
throat open and use your bloody syrup on my pancakes. Yeah,
Jahunty or mister Weebles's work was musical and silly first,
and so even when it did fall into violence or sex,
it was never defined by shock. And again, so much
of what makes his work special is that Johnty composed

(36:53):
all of the music, and he's continued to release music
on his own. He's been releasing full versions of his
original songs and war on band camp since at least
twenty ten, and transitioned into making full albums of just
music independent of his work in animation starting in twenty fourteen.

(37:13):
His current band, Savlonic is his most music forward blend
of music and animation to date. It's mainly jaunty, but
the animated band is composed of virtual members similar to Gorillas.

Speaker 6 (37:28):
Hi story, okay, because you're still my god. It seems
like a zoo me now, I will drive around in
the cor tells me too, feel free.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
But as you can hear, the animation and a lot
of the voice and instrumentation is still very much jaunty,
as well as some of his most common collaborators. As
of this writing, Savlonik has released two cover albums and
four full albums. I'll let him tell you more about
it in the interview, but the work itself is cynthie

(38:05):
and really cool. This is from their most recent album,
I Don't Feel Like.

Speaker 5 (38:15):
With Us.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Johnty remained a creature of the Internet post Badgers, after
emerging from a generation of online animators that I would
say split the difference in terms of pursuing mainstream success
in traditional animated media versus maintaining increased creative freedom for
their audience on the Internet. And in Johnty's case, we

(38:41):
are richer for the fact that he stayed online because
while he's never pigeonholed himself as particularly fixated on any
one project, he's also never resisted the positive legacy that
projects like Badgers and Weeble and Bob have associated him with,
which maybe brings me to the weirdest offshoot of Badgers

(39:01):
that exists from ten full years after its release.

Speaker 8 (39:05):
Listen to this, Oh No, John.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
Now, if you're thinking, wait, why did the introduction to
that Badger's video sound like Queen? Well, that is Brian
May of Queen, who reached out to johunt Picking in
twenty thirteen asking to help him preserve actual English badgers,
real badgers as a part of his conservation work. And

(39:42):
so what you're hearing at the beginning there in a
beautiful twist of fate, is a song from Queen called Flash.
Brian May said of the project at the time of
the release.

Speaker 5 (39:53):
The British people are speaking in their many thousands, and
yet the government is refusing to listen. We think that
for buying this track and giving the badgers a voice,
let's get this to number one so David Cameron cannot
avoid it. The cull is unscientific, unethical and won't work.
The government is set to murder five thousand badges, and

(40:16):
yet all the peer reviewed scientific evidence shows that the
answer to the problem of bovine tb in cattle does
not lie in this slaughter, and that this action will
be ineffective and potentially damaging to the welfare of both
farm animals and wildlife.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
And so the badger became politicized to the point where
this song titled Save the Badger, Badger Badger literally played
in the House of Lords in protest to the David
Cameron back proposal to exterminate real life badgers. Far beyond
any ethical limit, and the intention of the song is

(40:56):
to prevent their slaughter. Johnt Picking said this in a
twenty fourteen interview on how the project came together.

Speaker 5 (41:03):
The new version was based on the soundtrack to Flash Gordon,
written by Queen and Brian May. He asked me what
we could do to make something together featuring my Badgers,
and that was the first thought in my head. I
love Flash Gordon. I did a rough remix using my
track and samples, and sang the new lyrics I'd come
up with in a Queen style, and sure, I'll.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Risk a copyrights strike to share Brian May shredding, because
it's Brian May shredding. For Christ's sake, here it is.
The video ends on a screen that says, be the mushroom,
stop the call, and the song ended up charting on

(41:48):
the UK charts, peaking at number seventy nine. And by
this time this was a ten year old meme and
a very niche political issue. Badgers had and meaning. And
while I couldn't possibly rain all of the influence of
Jaunty Picking's work in the space of a single episode,

(42:09):
I do think this is a really cool example of
how much it really meant to people, and the rest
of the story I'll let him tell you himself. He
is incredibly funny and still innovating any animation and music
space to this day now a married dad of two preteens,
and as you'll hear, he is incredibly patient with an

(42:32):
interviewer that has active bronchitis. When we come back my
interview with Jaunty Picking. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I

(42:55):
just got back from visiting my nephew and all he
watched was Blues Clues and it sent me into a
death spiral of listening to every interview on the phase
of the Earth that's available with any of the hosts
of Blues Clues in order to compare their general vibes
and relationship to the blue screen. And they're my friends
and I love them. Anyways. My interview with the wonderful

(43:18):
Jaunty Picking is up next. But a quick note at
the top, my voice sounds very bad in this interview.
I'm aware of that. There is no need to contact
me about this. This interview was recorded back in January
twenty twenty five, shortly after the Los Angeles fires had happened,
which while I was very fortunate to not be affected

(43:40):
by and you can listen to our episode about relief
efforts that came out at the time. But I did
have bronchitis and ended up leaving town because I couldn't
breathe well. And these are the circumstances the interview was
conducted in. So leave me alone and please enjoy this
interview with the lovely Johunty picking.

Speaker 6 (44:01):
I know it is actually pressure because loads of people
call me Weebel or mister Weeble, which was a terrible
choice of name, by the way, never do that. Some
people call me John t. Some people call me Jonathan,
usually only if I've been very bad. I'd make cartoons
and music on the internet mainly, but every now and
again not on the internet, just to mix things up.

(44:26):
I like to keep it interesting.

Speaker 7 (44:27):
You know, you do buy many names, are you? Are
you sick of weebel? Is that what I'm picking up on.

Speaker 6 (44:33):
I'm sick of the fact that I chose a word
that's not spelled how you assume it would be spelt. No,
it was a terrible choice of name. I watch your
website and you go, it's mister whit's weeple without at
the end, and then there's like and then stuff, Yes,
like the word stuff dot com. So you'd be like
that all the time.

Speaker 9 (44:53):
Like, that's a lot of early Internet mistakes. Is a
name that looks funny but it is impossible to say
out loud. Yeah, I've had my share of like, well,
it's funny to me, but it's humiliating to have to
spell out for others. There's tell me a little bit
about to the extent you're comfortable, how you grew up,

(45:14):
Where you grew up, What kind of kid were you?

Speaker 6 (45:16):
I grew up in the North of England, in South Yorkshire,
which is you know, in the North, in the South
of the North, in the North in York, in Doncaster,
which was a mining town. What they're up to now,
it's apparently very honest accent. I sounded real trustworthy me,

(45:38):
but that's why I grew up in like the eighties
really quite a depressing place, if I'm honest. Me ping
me didn't really have much of a plan. Flailed around
for many years doing music bits and bobs, and eventually
got into the side stuff fire and music courts, and
then a company in London took notice of what I
was doing flash and hired me and that was my life,

(46:01):
I think.

Speaker 9 (46:02):
So I know that like music and animation, it sounds
like this they've all sort of like coexisted for you
for so long when you were a kid in like
figuring out what you liked, Like, was it one particular
thing that you're like, Oh, this is my thing, and
then more things came later.

Speaker 6 (46:19):
It was it was always a mix of like art
and music. If I'm honest, I had the Commodore sixty four,
which had like this weird one and a half octave
plastically overlay on the key. It's awful and sampler. I
loved the music of the Commodore sixty four, and that
kind of electronic music was what I listened to, not

(46:41):
sort of like the prog rock or anything. I was
very much into since sense of fantastic love them new
noises all the time. It's like, oh this is great.

Speaker 7 (46:50):
That's a very particular kind of eighties kid.

Speaker 8 (46:52):
I love that.

Speaker 6 (46:55):
Like when synthwave happened, I was like, whoa wait a minute,
this is my shine.

Speaker 9 (47:00):
What were your early experiences with the Internet. Do you
have like memories of like, oh, this was like a
website or a creator online that I really liked At
the beginning. I'm curious who who you were into or
what you were into when you started making your own stuff.

Speaker 6 (47:14):
I was on AOL You've Got mail all that business terrible,
quite text heavy back then. Obviously you couldn't really have this.
And then Flash came along and things started picking up.
I ended up on new grounds, like looking through that
I think it was. Yes, it's like the Britney Spears
Munster Truck Jump Challenge or something. It was a different time.

(47:34):
It was quite violent and very edgy. The Random movie,
which was a Flash thing. I love that. It kind
of opened my eyes and I started I was messing
around in Flash obviously for work, so I started doing
animations more as a sort of technical thing, like what
can I do and have it straight away on like

(47:54):
a fifty six K mode? And I think that was
a lot of it, And the loops came around that
way as well, because just keeping file sizes down. Really
it was kind of just more problem solving. Oh this
is good animation.

Speaker 7 (48:08):
WHOA wait, that's that's really interesting. I didn't know that, Yeah,
you were.

Speaker 9 (48:11):
So it was sort of like as an experiment to see,
like what how much you could get away with on
a certain modem.

Speaker 7 (48:18):
Were you working at day job throughout all of the
early cartoons.

Speaker 6 (48:22):
Yeah, and then work in the evening doing my own stuff.
Then one day out of the blue, NTV phoned up
and said, do you want a series on UK MTV?
Not you know, fancy MTV. Yeah, So they got me
in to do that, and then I quit my job
and took a chance on doing this Friday. I think
it was a year to make it something like that.

Speaker 7 (48:43):
What projects specifically was it like? Was it Weil.

Speaker 6 (48:47):
Bob? Yeah?

Speaker 9 (48:48):
I have such a hard time explaining new Grounds to
someone who was not there to experience it.

Speaker 7 (48:54):
Can you help me?

Speaker 6 (48:55):
It was a lot of people could get poted copies
of Flash is what it breaks down to. So teenage
boys in their bedrooms were playing around as teenage boys do,
and I count myself among them, even I was much
older than in my teens. Probably i'd so madness happened
and you'd see just the weirdest stuff. It's very hard

(49:19):
to describe. You've put me on the spot, haven't you.
It's in my head, but trying to put it into
words is surprisingly difficult.

Speaker 9 (49:25):
Because it was also like you're saying, really really edgy
humor sometimes like the cartoon violence, especially cartoon.

Speaker 7 (49:31):
Violence and flash.

Speaker 6 (49:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (49:33):
I think it's always very funny and never very scary,
which is great.

Speaker 9 (49:38):
I guess I want to talk a little bit about
weeble and because that comes before Badermania, how do you
come up with the idea for.

Speaker 6 (49:47):
Weebl and Bob You're gonna hate me?

Speaker 7 (49:49):
No, I like you so much, don't worry about it.

Speaker 6 (49:51):
It was a technical challenge. Oh really, they were very
simple shapes. I'd figured out that processes were very very
poor back then, like you could and you didn't really
have fancy graphic cards either. It was all done with
the CPU, so shapes. I think I used about four
points for each shape of the bodies and then the

(50:14):
eyes are like too. Possibly. It was made to be
as simple as possible. And the only reason they actually
spoke was because Rob Manuel and Peter said I think
they should actually speak, which really annoyed me at the time,
but I accepted his sage advice.

Speaker 7 (50:30):
What was the experiment for? Was it like another web
to sign experiment or.

Speaker 6 (50:34):
Yeah, it was can I make this playback smoothly with
a very much file size for as many people as possible?

Speaker 9 (50:43):
And so how how long were you making we Will
and Bob? It started online and then it went to MTV.
What was that process? Was there a big change in
process when you took it to TV?

Speaker 6 (50:54):
The only real problem was exporting them in a TV
friendly video format, which turned out surprisingly tricky. So if
you ever saw the Monkey Song on MTV, all the
frames were all over the shop it was it was awful,
and I said, please let me fix it, and they went, no,
that's how it is now.

Speaker 7 (51:15):
From or maybe during Weebel and Bob, Badgers happens, the
world changes forever. Two thousand and three big year for
me because Badgers came out and so did School of Rock,
and these were transformative pieces of art for me personally.
Take me through your process. Where does Badgers come from?

Speaker 6 (51:35):
Okay, so there's a song called the Riddle I think
by I'm going to say Nick kersh or However, there
were a couple of Nicks around at that time, so
it's hard to say one hundred percent everyone's what you mean.
And it turned out that it had no meaning. It
was all just placeholder words and they went, yeah, that'll do.

(51:56):
So I kind of had that going on with the
lyrics side. Of Badge in the musical side of things.
I've become obsessed at tune will get people's attention because
of the wig Field theory. Which do you remember Saturday Night?
Maybe it wasn't big in the US. I don't. I
don't know if like the way you moved, there's a

(52:16):
duck quacking all the way through it, I swear to God.
So Badgers has an annoying squeak all the way through it.
So I paired that mess, and Badger has happened, and
you know, the rest is history. And people were like,
I love how people love to apply meaning to nonsense.
It's intrigued me for years.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
So I.

Speaker 6 (52:35):
Kind of abuse that a bit. Really, I like to
just be very vague.

Speaker 9 (52:39):
When Badgers started to really like explode, I mean, how
does that feel as like the artist?

Speaker 7 (52:45):
Does it feel like oh cool? Like there's this validation?
Is there pressure to make more? Like?

Speaker 9 (52:49):
How do you?

Speaker 7 (52:50):
Yeah? What was that like?

Speaker 6 (52:51):
The first happened, it was very cool. I remember I'd
gone away for the weekend, so I wasn't near the
internet because I don't think why. I was widely popular
and I got back and I think it was like
fifty thousand views which at the time was huge for me.
And then it just kept going bigger and bigger and bigger,
and it was appearing everywhere, and it's like, wow, what

(53:13):
is going on? And I think at that point my
website costs just got ridiculous. That's hosting. Yeah, we were
on fancy hosts. I can't remember when we managed to
get adverts on the website, but for a while there
was nothing, and I had no idea of how to
monetize anything. So I'm just like, yeah, here you go.

Speaker 9 (53:31):
Wow, okay, so yeah, I mean, how did you manage
to adjust that so that you could make a living?
I was always so curious was it possible to do
full time? I know now that it was, but like, yeah,
how did you make that work?

Speaker 6 (53:44):
There are a lot more sensible people with business minds
who I hung around with on the internet, and again
it was a lot easier to collaborate with people in
many different ways. And one guy I knew knew another
guy and he was in advertising. What he said, well,
I'll set up an ad company online and we'll get you.

(54:07):
Certainly would go off and do deals and all that
sort of thing and find the banner rads. This was
pre ad sense as well. It was all very new
and exciting and odd, very like tied to the website.
Adverts would happen, so it was kind of fun. I
was all for it.

Speaker 9 (54:24):
So as this video takes buff, you do a series
of it was also featured during a football championship.

Speaker 7 (54:32):
Is that true?

Speaker 6 (54:33):
Yes, fans were singing it wild Badgers. Yeah, it was crazy,
but there was a lot of good vibes in the
country at that point. I'm not deeply into football at all,
but that one got me. I seem to remember.

Speaker 9 (54:47):
I'm always curious when it's like, oh, you became the
Badger's guy, right, did that sit well with you?

Speaker 7 (54:54):
Or you're like, oh, I want to I.

Speaker 9 (54:55):
Better make something else so I don't become the Badgers guy,
Like how did you you know, like creatively think about that.

Speaker 6 (55:03):
I never really thought of that at all, because I'd
always be I'd always been making other stuff as it
went along anyway, So I was always I think, I
do weeble and Bob do Badges do?

Speaker 8 (55:16):
It?

Speaker 6 (55:16):
Never really could Now it's very clear that Badgers is
the one that everyone remembers. I never really thought of
myself as the Badger's guy until later on. Really, I'm
not sure I do now, to be honest, maybe it
doesn't sit well with me. Maybe this is what we
can take from this. I don't want to be it's
like Bart Simpson in that episode and or you know,

(55:37):
we've just got a duty catchphrase. I've always hated sort
of catch race humor and yet here well, but it's.

Speaker 9 (55:43):
I want to you have built out like an expanded
universe of characters and works like before and since.

Speaker 7 (55:53):
What is your favorite series of animations that you've made?
Series or I mean, doesn't have to be serious.

Speaker 6 (56:01):
I think my favorite to D animation, if you're like
looking that way, probably be the Walk in the Woods one,
just because it amused me so much to do. What
if this happens and the bunny would come in and
then it pooped its way off screen and that was
going to be the end. But then I thought to myself,
well what if it isn't the end? So I had,

(56:21):
I had. I had a really good time making it,
so maybe that's part of why it's one of my favorites.
I think it came out pretty well exactly a few
things I really want to change, which is is pretty
good for me.

Speaker 9 (56:33):
You started your own production company is does that change
the way you work?

Speaker 7 (56:38):
Does it just expand it? Are you a boss now? Like?
How does that work?

Speaker 6 (56:42):
I've always been a boss now, so it's kind of
It's just a comfortable space, really, I guess where someone
else deals with the business side of things and keeps
me under control, which is fantastic because I need that
my part and also joins him with writing and stuff.
It's very much a partnership now and I love it

(57:05):
to bits. I'd love to do like stuff external as well.
I'd love to be a director on something and just
be around people every now and again would be nice.
Twenty years in a room is quite a lot.

Speaker 7 (57:18):
How is making stuff now for the Internet different than
it was when you started?

Speaker 6 (57:22):
It's much harder to get noticed. I would do it
for everyone, and just because there was less people making
stuff initially, I would say, and now it's very easy,
which is great in many ways. The algorithmical changes, you
could talk about those endlessly, and whether that's interesting or not,
I don't know. The whole tailored search thing is a
huge bugbear of minds, Like there's not much natural growth

(57:47):
of things anymore, I would say, but maybe I'm just
doing it wrong. Maybe I'm an old guy in his
ways who can't really see the future anymore. My favorite thing, though,
is just I love problems solve and I love puzzles.
So changing with the software and that sort of side
of things it has been fantastic. I've taught myself blended
now and I'm loving that's sort of the creative tools

(58:11):
that we have at our fingertips now, Like from where
we were with Flash, which was it Okay, I guess
at times he served a purpose, but now we can
just do Oh, I want to do this and you
can do it. Madness that that's where we're at.

Speaker 9 (58:24):
You started doing this because you wanted to problems off something,
so of course you've grown with the times.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (58:31):
I like surreality because life is surreal and I just
kind of look at things to go, oh, I'm now
going to poorly explain this part of life.

Speaker 7 (58:40):
Is there anything that you haven't done?

Speaker 9 (58:43):
Are there characters that you're like, oh, or just even
concepts you've wanted to get off the grounds for years
and it's like someday, someday.

Speaker 6 (58:52):
Yeah, this is part of why I've been teaching myself blender.
There's two things I want to do I'm kind of
obsessed with. I realized that asking two D animators to
do what I wanted to do was just not fair
on anyone. The other thing is I want to do
a three D stage show for Sablonik with the sort
of Pepper's Ghost things. I've been working towards that, like

(59:14):
trying to do live motion capture all DIY and Indie.
So I'm getting there, but it's a slow road.

Speaker 7 (59:22):
That's so quiet.

Speaker 9 (59:23):
I wanted to ask you more about Savlonic because I
feel like that's like your you know, music, first project,
and I know you've released other stuff over the years,
but how did that come together?

Speaker 7 (59:34):
When was it like the right time to start that project.

Speaker 6 (59:36):
I think was the first one was two Thousand Nights
that it was meant to be a parody back then.
So the original songs are very silly, and over the
years they've grown up really and I think when we
finished this album, we all kind of looked at each
of them like this is a proper grown up adult album.
Now feels good. But I do love about the Internet

(59:59):
as well as like the fact that we've been given
the room to change from a silly band doing the
almost parodies to whatever they are now, or because all
these things are on the internet to let people do this,
it wouldn't have been possible. Like it's fantastic, like whenever
I'm down on myself and just like you know, I'm

(01:00:19):
very lucky. Really you've got all this stuff.

Speaker 9 (01:00:21):
I wanted to touch on this just because it is
like such a weird fun thing in you in your catalog, brilliant.
Back to badgers for a second. I do want to
talk about save the Badger, Badger Badger from twenty thirteen.

Speaker 7 (01:00:34):
What a singular? How did that come together?

Speaker 6 (01:00:39):
Like most things, it's just odd things happen and you
kind of have to say, yes, I'll do that. That's
sounds ridiculous. I got Yeah, I got a phone call
from Brian May himself and he's looking to someone about
badgers and they was said, I'm paraphrasing a lot. You're
the badger guy to talk to. Do you want to

(01:00:59):
help save badgers? And of course yes I do. Well
I'd love to help out as well. What do you
see me doing on it? I think was what he said. Well,
your Brian mate, I assume you'll play guitar.

Speaker 7 (01:01:11):
It's like, yeah, okay, and play guitar. He did, He did.

Speaker 6 (01:01:14):
He enjoyed it as well. He had a good time.

Speaker 7 (01:01:17):
It shred. It's so good.

Speaker 6 (01:01:20):
He's quite a good guitar player, it turns out. But
I got to play around with like the master tapes
of flashcrdon as well, which is my favorite film of
all time, and I'm not joking. It's literally my favorite
film of all time. That was just magical for me.

Speaker 7 (01:01:35):
Oh and then it seems like it was it was.
It was really well. It did exactly what he was hoping.

Speaker 6 (01:01:39):
Just played in the House of Lords, which again is insane,
what is going on? But life is ridiculous, and it's
wonderful that this ridiculousness has been seen in ridiculous places.

Speaker 9 (01:01:51):
Has that changed the like way you've interacted with the
internet as having kids to use it.

Speaker 6 (01:01:57):
I was very aware of what the Internet was like
when they were growing up. For sure, they've been encouraged
to stay away from social media sites, but they're welcome
to like chat to their friends and all that. And
my daughter loves Pinterest. My son just loves gaming anyway,

(01:02:17):
so it's not He plays with his friends and they
chat to each other, so that it's quite a wall
garden Internet that their experience at the moment. I think
I'd like to think, so who knows what goes off? Really,
i'd like to they're very sensible, much more sensible than me,
which is wonderful to see. I do remember my mom

(01:02:39):
phoning me up once at work telling me she was
very disappointed in me about one of my cartoons. Oh
she's quite religious.

Speaker 9 (01:02:51):
My parents, how they Well, that's actually that's that's the
question I should have asked you is because you're, you know,
like one of the first waves of those.

Speaker 7 (01:03:03):
Kind of like super absurd cartoons on the Internet. Yeah,
how did your family receive that?

Speaker 6 (01:03:10):
I've tried to just say to them, this isn't for
you who don't watch everyone and again there will be
one I can go you can watch this one, that's
fine for you, but yeah, general is like, it's not
for you, please don't watch as my main Yeah, that's
that's what I'll say. And generally they don't watch. But

(01:03:32):
my mom is quite proud of me, like you'll tell
her friend, oh he does this.

Speaker 9 (01:03:37):
And I guess my last question to kind of dovetails
with talking about your kids relationship with the internet.

Speaker 7 (01:03:43):
How has your relationship to both like the Internet and
the work you two. How is it change, Like, how
is distributing art on the internet changed for you?

Speaker 6 (01:03:56):
I mean everything's become a lot more sort of homogenized, really,
So don't have you work popping up on like Albino,
Black Sheep and ebombs and all that stuff. It's generally
it's on YouTube and that's where everyone goes, or it's
on TikTok and that's where everyone goes. I can't stand
this vertical video from it, but that's you know, I've

(01:04:19):
got someone who does it for me. They're doing really well.
I have no idea how they're doing it or what
they're doing. I don't want to know. I concentrate fully
on the YouTuber. It's like this is how I want
my heart to be seeing. Thank y. Yes, I've become
kind of nobby about that. It spent ages with the
zab Lonic video just making the red slightly less red

(01:04:41):
so it wouldn't look look pixelated on YouTube. But again
that's problem solving again, I guess. So it all comes
back to there's a problem, let's fix that.

Speaker 7 (01:04:49):
For It's just different problems.

Speaker 6 (01:04:51):
Yeah, always new problems. Always be scared that's my motto.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
Thank you so so much to John D. Picking, not
just for his amazing work of the years, but for
patiently tolerating my traumatized bronchias voice. You can follow his
work at the links in the description, and I really
hope you do. Johnty is a breed of Internet artists
that I worry that we won't get more of in

(01:05:18):
a landscape that is increasingly driven by algorithms. And while
there were certainly trends during this era of online video
that we were talking about today, there was also room
for experimentation in a way that I find to be
way more limited now. And this criticism scales out to
mainstream media too, so many experimental shows are being pushed

(01:05:43):
out of production in favor of what is perceived as
a sure thing with wide appeal. And when it comes
to work that appeals to young people, that seems to
me in a lot more emphasis on trend following than
any encouragement to experiment or try something weird and new.
I really hope I'm wrong, because I think every kid

(01:06:05):
deserves their looping jaunt picking Badger's video, So jaunt Picking
your time will never be over. But Badgers your sixteenth
minute ends. Now, okay, here's your moment of fun. Grant
really in his element here doing some strong bad impressions

(01:06:26):
and giving me a headache. I can't tell you why,
but that cartoon it really makes me mad.

Speaker 7 (01:06:33):
Here it is.

Speaker 5 (01:06:35):
Wow, holy sixteen minutes of fame for Hope star Water.
What a great time?

Speaker 7 (01:06:42):
Is that?

Speaker 5 (01:06:42):
Pretty good?

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
I don't know. I wouldn't watch it. Sixteenth minute as
a production of Whole Zone Media and iheardwod apps. It
is written, posted, and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. Our
executive producers are Sophie Lickderman and Robert Evans. He amazing.
Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our

(01:07:05):
theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from Grant,
Crater and Pet. Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson,
my Kat's Flee and Casper and my pet rock Bert,
who will outlive us all. Bye