badthings

There’s a lot of bad things going on in the world. Global warming is real, and Democrats and Republicans have never been further apart—except for, you know since the Civil War— and there’s a lot of bad things, like Russia is on the march, you know, and there’s just a lot of badness in the world.

But one place where things are going great is there has never been a better time to do creative work, like that part of our culture, we are totally, you know, everything is great, and there’s really incredibly wonderful work.

The fact that the Internet exists means anybody can create work and get it out there and it can find an audience.

. . . 

I don’t know, there’s just never been a time that’s been better to be a young person or an older person, and think like ‘I want to make stuff and I want to try to get it in front of people,’ and you can do it. You really can do it.

And there are all these examples of people who, if you can just make one great thing, one great 3 minute video, 4 minute video, one great radio story, like, that’s all you need for people to notice you and then you can turn it into a job, and you can quit your day job. . . You know what I mean, like, there’s a route, there’s a way out. And it didn’t used to be that way.

And I feel like, you know, like look around us. TV is incredible and there’s great music, and culture is going great. And I think there’s a whole class of people who feel like ‘oh things are getting worse and worse and whatever,’ and I feel like there’s so much incredibly wonderful stuff being made all the time, like, none of us ever even has the time to consume all the stuff that we would want to consume if we had the time, you know?

 — Ira Glass (2014)