Creative lives, followed past the obvious answer.
RiYL speaks with musicians, cartoonists, writers, and other working artists without rushing them toward neat conclusions. A tour schedule, a pet, a book, or a side job can become the doorway into ambition, community, grief, craft, and survival.
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RiYL is a longform interview show about creative people, but its best moments rarely stay inside the tidy boundaries of career talk. The conversations are patient. They can begin with a book release, a tour itinerary, a debut record campaign, a memoir, a jazz project, or a question about a full-time job, then drift toward the material that actually explains the work. That drift is the point. Recent episodes move through cartooning, songwriting, memoir, indie bands, Inuit cultural practice, short fiction, aging, parenthood, sobriety, and the fragile business of staying useful to other people. Nicole Georges talks about animals, meditation retreats, senior-center volunteering, queer community, and the gift of growing into a chosen life. Langhorne Slim turns a funny song into a conversation about unity, fear, fatherhood, and what happens when ambition stops being the main engine. Björn Yttling’s episode lingers in the practical strangeness of touring jazz venues while being known for other work. Adele Bertei treats memoir as a personal document and a record of a cultural moment, with the dark and light held in the same frame. Ben Easton speaks from the overlap between band life and music-industry work, where the calm before a record can still feel like a storm forming. Bette A talks about slow stories, rural roots, media overload, community, and the small rituals that help people check in with themselves. Beatrice Deer’s conversation makes culture contemporary rather than museum-like, moving from hunting and sewing to language preservation, tattooing, music, and the emotional force of songs. RiYL has a relaxed surface, full of digressions and revised questions. Underneath, it is unusually attentive to how artists age, work, doubt themselves, care for others, and carry history without turning it into a lecture. It suits listeners who want room for pauses, tangents, and serious reflection. It also rewards curiosity about the less glamorous parts of creative life: day jobs, small venues, stalled drafts, family responsibilities, online pressure, and the need to step away for a week sometimes. The show’s interviews feel less like promotion than an attempt to notice what kind of person the work has made.
Made for: For listeners who like unhurried artist interviews that connect music, writing, comics, memoir, and cultural work to daily life. It especially suits people drawn to craft, identity, aging, community, and the private doubts behind public work.
What sets it apart: RiYL stands out by letting digressions do real work. Instead of flattening guests into career milestones, it follows small details until they reveal how artists think, cope, remember, and keep going.
Recommended if You Like: longform conversation with musicians, cartoonists, writers and other creative types. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
RiYL turns artist conversations into candid accounts of process, ambition, community, and the practical work of sustaining a creative life.
RiYL lets creative work lead into the less orderly business of making a life. The host's conversations move easily between process and circumstance: Nils Edenloff considers arriving at music later, his resistance to writing, and an experiment with AI-generated lyrics, while…
A song about butts sits beside a fear of dwindling crowds; you get both sides.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A piece about animal care, forgiveness, senior-center work, and the communities that make a life feel shared.
The piece moves steadily between animal care, guilt, and forgiveness, from blind-dog and Russian tortoise Facebook groups to the turtle she let go at 21 and later revisited in Buddhist meditation retreats.
A loose, funny career check-in that keeps circling back to what happens when the crowd thins.
This episode opens with We Have Butts and keeps a steady hold on the tension between a joke and a serious life. It moves into the question of what keeps an artist going when attention is not a sure thing, while the small domestic detail of a two-year-old asking about butts and…
A patient review of slow creative work, daily repair, alarming news, and sustainable care.
This single-episode review follows a conversation about creative patience and the harder work of staying human. Its strongest thread is the account of short stories left to change over time, carried from memory, revised through repetition, and eventually tested against the fear…
A grounded conversation about Inuit continuity, face tattoos, and the responsibility a song can carry.
Beatrice Deer frames Inuit identity as something practiced in the present, not preserved behind glass. Hunting, sewing, language, and music sit beside snowmobiles, bought fox fur, and the everyday work of keeping traditions useful.
A late start, an AI provocation, and a fear of writing shape a candid look at how songs get made.
A late start in music becomes a thoughtful discussion of timing, creative fear, and the strange pressure of making songs when the work can feel futile.
Peter Bagge makes Buddy Bradley's political exit plan funny, uneasy, and harder to dismiss.
Peter Bagge's conversation keeps Buddy Bradley fixed in a funny, slippery position: trying to become a political nothing. That premise opens into the pressure to choose sides, and into the odd comfort of stepping away from the whole argument.
A butt joke becomes a warm, candid conversation about smaller crowds, ambition, and leveling up.
RiYL uses the joke of "We Have Butts" as a way into something sturdier: how to make and live with love in a culture that often flattens nuance.
Funk history, straight from the players.
Cartoonist Peter Bagge returns to discuss the revival of his comic Hate with a new miniseries.
Musician Langhorne Slim discusses his viral song 'We Have Butts' and the joy of creation.
A parent reflects on the positive experience of cycling their young daughter to school daily, highlighting the benefits of outdoor activity, neighborhood interaction, and morning routines.
This episode features an interview with musician Charles 'Wigg' Walker discussing his life journey from Nashville to New York and back, his music career, and connections with artists like James Brown.
This episode explores the historical origins and migration of Anabaptist groups like the Amish and Mennonites to Pennsylvania, discussing their religious differences and community dynamics.
She talks about a book coming out while working on two others at once.
The episode starts with a joke and keeps uncovering the nerve inside it.
Björn Yttling discusses his current European tour with his jazz project, comparing venues and audiences to his experiences with Peter, Björn and John.
Adele Bertei discusses how Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy inspired her to chronicle her personal life experiences in a memoir that serves as both inspiration and cautionary tale.
A musician discusses balancing band commitments with a full-time job in the music industry while preparing for an upcoming album release and tour.
The guest talks about short stories that took two decades to become a book.
Beatrice Deer describes Inuit identity in Montreal as a lived mix of Inuktitut, hunting, sewing, clothing design, and travel back to Nunavik and Nunavut, including a trip to Iklulik in minus 56 weather.
The guest looks back on arriving at music in his late 20s.
Samantha Crain discusses how adopting a dog has positively impacted her touring life as an introverted musician, serving as a stress reliever and social equalizer in venues.
Craig Thompson discusses his three-month European book tour, plans for a sabbatical to rediscover creativity amid a midlife career slump, and the serialized release of his graphic novel 'Ginseng Roots' while living nomadically.