Words of Wonder: Apricity - with Grant Snider

Rob Bell:
Hello, and welcome to Sketchplanations The Podcast, your fortnightly dose of wanderings and wanderings through the fascinations of the world, inspired by the ever-growing collection of work at sketchplanations.com.

I'm engineer and broadcaster Rob Bell, and here with me once again is the creator of Sketchplanations, Jono Hey, and entrepreneur and past winner of The Apprentice, Tom Pellereau.

And I'm delighted to add to that list on this episode by welcoming Grant Snider.

Grant is a celebrated and widely acknowledged cartoonist, illustrator and writer, and let's not forget, skilled orthodontist.

His works appear in numerous books and newspapers and right across the internet, and they are truly a sight to behold.

Grant, Tommy, Jono, hello.

Grant Snider:
Hello.

Hi, great to be here.

Rob Bell:
Grant, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

It is lovely to have you with us.

Grant Snider:
Thank you, Rob.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you again.

Rob Bell:
I mean, when I listen to people talking, I listen to a lot of talk, radio and podcasts, I enjoy picturing the scenario.

So Jono, Tommy and I are all roughly in the London area.

Can I ask where you're joining us from today?

Grant Snider:
Yes, I'm right in the centre of the United States in Wichita, Kansas.

Rob Bell:
Lovely.

Grant Snider:
And the first time I mentioned Kansas, people think of the Wizard of Oz.

I think that's the worldwide cultural reference.

It is pretty windy today, so we'll make it here.

Rob Bell:
And you know what?

I don't know why, but I feel like Wichita is a town that Brits have heard of.

Probably don't really know where it is, but I feel like a lot of us have heard of it.

Grant Snider:
We call ourselves the air capital of the world because I think that's where a lot of the aviation, small plane manufacturing started.

So I'm not sure if that's the reason or if there's some other more sinister reason which does on the map.

Jono Hey:
I feel like there's a famous song.

Grant Snider:
The White Stripes song talks about going to Wichita.

Rob Bell:
Ah, here we go.

Grant Snider:
There's another cultural rep in Brickneat.

Jono Hey:
Wichita is Wichita Lineman is that as well, of course.

It was a long time ago from my childhood.

Grant Snider:
Can you guys sing for us or do some karaoke here?

Rob Bell:
It's not that kind of podcast.

Grant Snider:
It's only about 3 p.m.

here.

So yeah, about five or six hours, I might be.

Rob Bell:
So the wider theme for this episode is the illustration of interesting words or as described by Grant's collection, the illustration of words of wonder.

And we've headlined the episode with Jono's sketch that defines and illustrates the word apricity, the feeling of the warmth of the sun in winter.

And you should be able to see Jono's Apricity sketchplanation up on your screens now as the artwork for this episode.

And you can head to sketchplanations.com to see more like it that we'll probably bring up and discuss as we go along.

But interestingly, Grant has also illustrated the word apricity.

And I'll link to that as well at the very top of the episode notes so you can get a really good feel straight away for the style of Grant's handiwork, which, as I said, is just truly enjoyable and just wonderful to lose yourself in.

And after looking at both of those, you really should have no doubt what the word apricity means.

And it is this act of accompanying a word with an image or images that I'd love to explore in this podcast episode today, especially the kind of obscure, outdated, maybe sometimes esoteric words that maybe not everybody knows or uses that often.

I certainly didn't know the word apricity before Jono had sketched it.

So we'll talk about all that before finding out a bit more about Grant's work and his inspiration and motivation for the art he produces.

So, Grant, can we kick off by talking about your illustration of the word apricity?

Can you remember where you first heard the word and what you liked about it, enough to motivate a piece of art for it?

Grant Snider:
I was inspired to illustrate it because it's such a poetic word.

You walk outside, you feel the cold wind on your face.

You look at the trees with no leaves.

You see maybe a sad-looking flock of geese going across the sky, but then you feel the warm sun on your face.

There's something, I guess, poetic about that.

So that made me want to draw it.

A lot of those words of wonders start when I'm reading a book, maybe the book of poems or a novel, and I come across the word that just jumps out at me.

I'm like, I have to draw this.

So I have my notebook sitting beside me.

I sketch out the word and usually touch it up and put it on line with the good brother words.

Rob Bell:
So you talked about that your words of wonders, this is a collection of illustrations that you've done in, would you call it a series or a collection?

The Words of Wonder Series?

Grant Snider:
Yeah, it's a series I started probably about a year or so ago.

I think I'm done maybe between 150 and 200 words.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Grant Snider:
I'll keep going.

Sometimes I do a bunch in a week and don't look at them for a while.

Other times, I'm really motivated to do them, but it's really fun to just illuminate my reading by jotting down these words and then see if I could put an interesting image of what they're on.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Lovely.

Because in my intro, I talked about obscure, outdated, and maybe sometimes esoteric words.

But you introduced another phenomenon of newly coined words as well, which is perhaps why many people possibly haven't heard of.

Grant Snider:
Yeah.

I've put a few newly coined words without knowing that they were actually not officially Webster's Dictionary Words.

Then of course, once you place on the Internet, you're going to have a handful of people setting you straight.

But I acted like I meant to do that basically.

So I try to make them at least words that have some use.

So maybe it's something that hasn't been used very commonly since it was put down into print.

But I don't want it to be completely irrelevant.

I want it to be like a word that somebody can take and be like, oh, I can use this in conversation to impress my friends or put it in a story or maybe write a poem with it.

Something that's going to have life after putting it on words of wonder illustration.

Rob Bell:
I mean, my wife and I get so much enjoyment of noticing to each other when we're feeling apricity.

Grant Snider:
Now once you have that word for it, it's perfect.

You start noticing it everywhere, right?

Rob Bell:
Yeah, you do.

But there's not an opportunity that we let go by without using that word out loud to each other because there is that enjoyment.

And even though we've done it time and again, we are still showing off to each other.

Look at the words we know.

Jono Hey:
I think with apricity in particular, it's so lovely because if you're in the middle of winter, a bit of warm sun, a bit of beautiful day, it's just such a joy, like this rare joy, or it's like the turning of like, oh, spring's on the way.

And so it just feels just right every time, doesn't it?

To go, ah, apricity.

I just love it.

I love apricity.

Grant Snider:
I feel starved for those people who live in sunny tropical climates, we're perfect all year round.

Rob Bell:
Oh, yeah.

Grant Snider:
It gets very gray and not super rainy and not super sunny either here in Kansas in the winter.

So, you know, when you get those rare moments of sunshine, it's really enjoyable.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, those poor people who never get to experience apricity.

Grant Snider:
Just sit on the sandy beach all day.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, you're right.

I feel for them.

So, Jono, why did you want to do your sketch about apricity?

What was your motivation for that?

Jono Hey:
I was asking myself the same thing.

Like, why am I motivated to illustrate somewhat obscure words?

And, you know, like Grant, it's not just apricity.

I was looking back through and, you know, we did an episode in Schadenfreude and other ones like Apophenia and things like that where you're like, oh, this is an interesting concept, an interesting word that you don't use every time.

And I think, I think apricity in particular, because it is such a lovely thing.

And as you could just envision some, some nice scene which makes you feel good when you learn about it.

And I think in general with Sketchplanations, whenever you have, you know, whether it's a word or a concept, then you come across some situation in life, just as we were saying, and you can like apply this concept or you can apply this word.

So I feel like that's a nice one to do.

I probably have not done a whole lot of really horrible words, let's say.

You know, I don't know why you'd want to do that, you know.

Maybe they wouldn't make such nice pictures to look at.

But yeah, I feel like there's something nice about it.

And it's not, I mean, it's definitely not just me, right?

I looked at, I did one not too long ago called Snirdle.

And it's from, I learned about it from somebody called Susie Dent.

And she does like a Word of the Day on X and various social platforms.

And people love it.

People love learning about it.

Grant Snider:
What is the definition of that word?

Tom Pellereau:
Snirdle.

Jono Hey:
Snirdle is to sort of lie under the covers and hold off the day a little longer.

So don't get off on them and do something, but just stay under the covers a little longer.

Rob Bell:
I'm just going to snirdle a little while longer.

Grant Snider:
And that definitely suggests an interesting illustration to go with it as well.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, right.

I will link to all of these words and sketches that we talk about.

Grant Snider:
And I'm going to steal snirdle for our future Words of Wonder as well.

Rob Bell:
That's great.

That is great.

Jono Hey:
Apparently, Susie also said that snuzzle, snooze and snirdle are all verbs for snuggling under the covers as though your life depended on it.

Tom Pellereau:
Life depended on it.

Jono Hey:
And there was apparently a Scottish word called hercledercle.

And hercledercling is reveling in staying in bed long after you should have gotten up.

Grant Snider:
I was surprised that so many of these words that like jumped out at me were Scottish words.

I don't know what they are.

I think about the language and the music of it, you know, makes for amazing words.

I've never visited there.

I'd love to do that.

Rob Bell:
Looking through your collection, Grant, and I have a bit of a pwn to pick with you about this, actually, because having been introduced to your work through the Upricity Illustration, I saw the three others that you posted with it in your, in that substack, which was Gloaming, Petrichor and Claggy.

And then that took me onto the wider collection under the the Words of Wonder title.

And before I knew it, I'd lost a whole hour and I hadn't even got through them all.

I mean, you obviously have a fascination with words.

And I think I noted some that were definitions of types of rain.

I think I'm right.

And, and in the back of my mind, I have a trivial fact that the Scottish have, I'm going to say about 60 different words for different types of rain as the, I think the Icelandic do for different types of snow.

Grant Snider:
That makes perfect sense.

Rob Bell:
If you have this phenomena, you would know the details and the difference between these subtle types of rain.

Grant Snider:
People in Kansas have 60 words for wind.

Rob Bell:
Okay, there you go.

Grant Snider:
I need to illustrate some of those.

Jono Hey:
There's poor Sandy Agans on the, on the beach.

Got so many words for lying in the sun, having a nice time.

Rob Bell:
Tommy, just, did you know the word appricity before you saw Jono sketch on it?

Tom Pellereau:
And half the words I'm looking at here, I feel like they're made up.

Grant Snider:
They were by somebody at some point, exactly.

Tom Pellereau:
Well, I suppose that's exactly the point, isn't it?

Some of them reading through my dyslexia really struggles to actually work out what the word, like, just too long.

Rob Bell:
Well, so, so, Grant, can I ask you how this collection of these just beautifully illustrated and wholeheartedly charming visual definitions for words came about?

Grant Snider:
Yeah, I think I did a nine-panel comic that I called Perfect Words, and I just did it as a one-off, you know, different from my normal weekly comic I've done for about 15 years, thinking, oh, this will be fun to do for once.

And then people just started sharing it and, you know, really got excited about it.

So I was like, oh, maybe I should do more of these and of course, you know, if you put something online and get a nice response, that's going to motivate you a little bit as the artist to make some more.

So yeah, I kept running with it.

Rob Bell:
Why do you think people enjoy this so much, this illustration of interesting words?

Grant Snider:
Well, I think there's a portion of people who probably really enjoyed vocabulary words here in the United States.

You have SAT and the ACT, the standardized test where every high schooler has to learn all these obscure words that they feel like they'll never learn outside of the exam.

But I don't think that's most people.

But when you see it outside of the context of, I have to know this for a test, when you see it with an interesting colorful illustration, it becomes something like but an interesting, it doesn't feel like forced schoolwork.

So I think maybe it's experiencing the joy of words outside of that, the rigours of the academic system.

Maybe that's part of it.

I don't know.

Maybe I'm reading too much of that from my own experience.

Rob Bell:
I did a test called the GRE.

Grant Snider:
Oh yes, I took that as well.

Rob Bell:
To try and get into an American university.

And the words that you had to learn on there, you had to, they give you a word and then you have to say which of the list that follows is a synonym of that word.

If you don't know any of the words, including the original one, it's pure guesswork for me.

Unsurprisingly, I did not get into the university I was after.

Jono Hey:
Have you ever played, I think it was called Boulder Dash?

You ever play that?

I've never played it.

Boulder Dash was a fun game.

It was kind of like it would give you some crazy word, which could be many of the words.

I'm just looking at some of the ones Grant's done, like pellucid or elision or whatever, right?

And they would give you the real definition of it, but then also people could make up definitions.

Rob Bell:
Oh, that's good.

Jono Hey:
And people had to vote.

And if somebody picked your definition that you made up for the words.

And it's really fun to do.

And we also had, I remember, maybe this was different in your family, Tom, but we had a lot of word games at Christmas and stuff.

My aunt taught classics.

And so she was brilliant and very strong and still is on the etymology of words and where they came from, whether they came from the Greek or the Latin.

And she could tell you, oh, this part is from this and this bit means that.

And you put them together and then people were always trying to score points off each other in Scrabble or Boggle or something with obscure words.

We had to rule out that you could search on the internet because as you say, everything's on the internet, whether or not it's actually in a dictionary.

But words are quite fun.

And so, yeah, we've always had fun about words and learning where they're from and things in our family.

Will people play Pictionary with you, Grant?

Grant Snider:
Oh, you know, I'm actually very bad at Pictionary, I think, because I can't draw it fast enough.

I try to make it too exact, where you really just need a quick dash of a few lines.

So, but if there was a game that combined Pictionary and Balderdash, I think maybe we can all go in together on this new game that has the words and the pictures, and we'll all excel on this together.

Rob Bell:
Ooh, I like that.

Grant Snider:
Just needs some venture capital funding.

Rob Bell:
We need a name as well.

We'll come back to that.

We'll come back to that.

Yeah.

Are you always on the lookout then for new words, Grant?

Because I noticed in a lot of the texts around your posts and in your sub-stack newsletters, you reference poetry quite a lot as to where you've discovered new words.

Grant Snider:
Yes.

So my previous children's book was a book called Poetry Cavics, which is just what it sounds like.

Poems I wrote, put in the convex form.

And so I was reading a lot of classic and modern poetry for that.

And realizing that there's a lot of words I don't know, but I'm excited to learn about.

And I started jotting those down.

So this was a natural extension of, of reading and writing a lot of poetry.

My future project is a novel, a novel in burst.

And so reading a lot of novels, I mean, you don't quite have the same density of amazing words as in poetry I feel like, but I'll often come across a word where I'm like, oh, I've never heard that before.

It's amazing that they can use this in the story and have it be relevant, you know, even though it's a completely outlandish or incredible word.

So yeah, I feel like I've been a lifelong reader.

And if I read with a sketchbook beside me, that's when I generate these ideas for words, for new work, for my stories, for my poem.

Rob Bell:
That is lovely.

I mean, I was going to ask about any favorites within the Words of Wonder collection.

I mean, I can definitely go, I mean, in the top of my list, I've got Tintinibulation, which is a ringing sound, which I just love.

Grant Snider:
Yeah.

And that was from an Edgar Allan Poe poem that I remember reading like in elementary school.

Oh, wow.

Not the biggest fan of the poem, but I love the word.

I did an April Fool's Day edition last year.

And I'm trying to remember some of them for that.

I think Galley Nipper, which is like an oversized mosquito.

That was one of them.

Rob Bell:
That's good.

Grant Snider:
Bumbershoot for an umbrella, which maybe is more common.

More commonly used in the United Kingdom, but I've never heard that before.

Jono Hey:
50 words for umbrella.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Grant Snider:
And I think that a love of long, ridiculous, useless words really extends to all ages because my son, who's in fifth grade, 10 years old, was super proud because he learned how to spell the longest purported word in the English language, which is numino ultramicroscopic volcanoes, silicoconiosis, another completely useless made-up word, but he can spell it.

And I was pretty impressed by that.

Jono Hey:
You know, I have not heard some of these for a long time, but I remember learning Flocky, Knocking, Nail, and Polification at the same time as I learned the other one.

And there was another ridiculous one, anti-disestablishment Arianism.

Rob Bell:
Yes, that's the one I knew that was the longest.

But what Grant just said, which I won't attempt to repeat.

Tom Pellereau:
Seems a lot longer.

Rob Bell:
Yes, but it feels like it's probably newer because it sounded like they had some newer bits in there.

Grant Snider:
Every new generation has their own completely useless, long, ridiculous word.

Rob Bell:
Well, without having long words, another word that you've illustrated, Grant, that I love, was plush to break the surface of water, like splash, but without the S.

Tom Pellereau:
I love that.

Grant Snider:
It's so much better without the S, isn't it?

Rob Bell:
Yes.

It's so much more interesting.

Grant Snider:
That was the great Emily Dickinson, a pretty renowned poet, I'd say.

Rob Bell:
But that is a word, right?

Grant Snider:
I think her word was plushless.

Rob Bell:
Right.

Grant Snider:
Yeah.

I wish I was better memorizing lines of poetry, but it's something about butterflies leaping plushless as they swim.

And so I took plush from plushless.

Rob Bell:
Lovely.

Grant Snider:
And I just think it has a lovely ring to it.

It's very much an automatopoeia word.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, it is.

It is.

And I'm doing some work, some filming around the kingfisher at the moment.

The dynamics of its beak means that as it enters the water at high speed, it is for all intents and purposes plushless as well, so that the fish beneath the surface don't detect that it's coming.

And it can, it's a much better predator because of it.

Jono Hey:
It's just like the Olympic divers.

Rob Bell:
Just like the Olympic divers.

Jono Hey:
Exactly.

Grant Snider:
There was, that reminds me, there was one word that also means was never worth for kingfisher and I'm blanking on what this word is.

It'll come back to me about five minutes from now.

So in the illustration, I put a kingfisher in a branch and I'd never actually seen a kingfisher before in real life until like a month or two after I drew this word that I noticed one on the power line when I was going on a run.

So I'm like, this is perfect.

A nice conjunction of words in real life coming together.

Rob Bell:
That is just like apricity.

Now that I know the meaning of the word apricity, I experience it all the time.

Grant Snider:
It attunes your mind to notice it.

Exactly.

Rob Bell:
Any other favourites?

Cause I have one more that I wanted to get out, which is based on another personal interest.

Grant Snider:
Yeah, tell me yours.

I'm going to look up real quick what this kingfisher word is.

Rob Bell:
So another one that I has in it.

And again, your illustration of it is, they're just charming.

And as I say, totally heartwarming.

It's obelisk or licheny, which is basically another word for a lighthouse.

And what I enjoy about that is that I recognize the word obelisk within that.

And then I relate, oh yeah, lighthouse, you know, this tall thin tower.

So obelisk or licheny.

And I don't know if I'm saying that right.

Grant Snider:
I found one place that said that was the name for a lighthouse itself.

And one that said it was a lighthouse keeper.

So I don't know if it has both.

Meanings or if one of those references was inaccurate.

So that's the interesting thing for a lot of these, you know, more outdated or obscure or unused words.

The references are pretty spotty.

And I don't think the new AI search helps with that at all.

So I think, yeah, I think if I turn these into a book or some bigger project, I'll need to go a little deeper and, you know, do some digging on some of these words.

But I found the Kingfisher word, it is a Halcyon, which means peaceful or tranquil.

And I think Halcyon was maybe a mythical bird, you know, kind of based on the Kingfisher, if I remember my research on that one.

Rob Bell:
I know Halcyon as in an expression, Halcyon days.

Grant Snider:
Exactly, yeah.

Rob Bell:
Oh, wow.

Ah, see, it's fascinating.

Grant Snider:
Maybe that could be the title of your Kingfisher documentary.

Jono Hey:
I'm not one of Grant's, but just because we might never come to it, as its more modern word was greeble.

And I don't know if you've heard of greeble before.

Rob Bell:
Is this one you've done, the sketch on, Jonnet?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, and I don't know if it's in the dictionary, but it's, I think, made up by George Lucas.

And I think it's a lovely word because it was basically when they were making the models for Star Wars or the shit.

You think of the Millennium Falcon or like you walk into a control room of the ship and there's lights and buttons and levers all over the place.

Or on the outside of a Star Destroyer, there's like, you know, turrets and boxes and pipes and whatever.

And all those little bits that they put on, they started calling them greebles.

And so a greebly or whatever is like a little decoration that you add on to make it seem sort of more realistic and more complicated.

It's quite the opposite that somebody like Apple would do.

You can think of greebling an iPad or something.

Tom Pellereau:
Anti-greeble.

Grant Snider:
It sounds just like what it is.

That's great.

Rob Bell:
I feel like I have a certain amount of greeble around me here.

I don't use any of this stuff behind me on my bookshelves.

It's just greeble.

Grant Snider:
It just makes you look better.

That's great.

Jono Hey:
It looks more complicated.

It's nice.

Rob Bell:
Got a book on Brunel, you must mean.

Grant Snider:
Well, it's nice when a word is born of necessity like that.

So it's like, well, we have to call it something.

Let's find a word that sounds exactly like what it looks like.

And then that word sticks and maybe becomes the wider use.

Jono Hey:
I was listening to a book by Mark Forsyth called The Etymologicon recently, which is all about etymology of words.

And he goes through all these words and where they came from.

And the crazy stories, crazy stories behind them.

And he talks about some, you know, there was some people who invented disproportionate amounts of words.

And so someone like Shakespeare, a lot of new words comes from Shakespeare.

And there was people like John Milton, who, you know, but actually famous for inventing hundreds of words, which is still in the in vocabulary now.

And I'm sort of a bit jealous of that time when you could just, oh, maybe we should, maybe we should all just be inventing words, you know, that fit what we, you know, maybe we should have sat in the sun and just made up a word in the winter that this is what this is.

Grant Snider:
I think that's a that's a great idea for a future set of sketches, though, is like words completely made up and, you know, be honest about it.

Certainly, if you do enough of them, one of them will stick.

I think we can both take on that challenge.

Jono Hey:
See which ones catch on.

Yeah, I like that.

Rob Bell:
So, Jono, you've referenced a few of your words' definition sketches already.

And does what Grant was talking about earlier resonate with you?

And when you see a word, I think, oh, that's worth a sketchplanation.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, people send me them now as well.

Grant, I think you got lots of suggestions from people.

Rob Bell:
Oh, right.

Yeah.

Jono Hey:
So when people come across something fun in an article or whatever, they're like, oh, yeah, maybe you should do a sketch of this.

Because it's kind of that same thing, isn't it?

We want more people to know this.

This is cool.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
More people should know this and more people should find it out.

So yeah, I'm on the lookout for it.

But also people are on the lookout for me now, which is very nice.

Grant Snider:
It can be overwhelming.

It's like, oh, I want to like honor and joy all these, but now I have no idea where to start.

So yeah, sometimes it helps to have the constraint of like, well, I'm only going to find it in poetry books.

I don't know.

That's what I struggle with sometimes.

Rob Bell:
And have you found a similar reaction, Jono, when you put out a sketchplanation that defines a word?

Jono Hey:
I think so.

But you know, just like Grant, there's lots of lovely other stuff, which is not words.

You know, I think sometimes the visuals in sketchplanations do the job, but more often than not, it's the concept.

So I think something like apricity sticks, because I want to keep sharing that, and the people want to keep sharing that.

So I think that one, you know, that one does, but maybe some other ones, which are less joyful in some way.

Grant Snider:
Well, and a good word kind of sells itself, but like a good word suggests a good image.

Whereas I find like when the word is not quite as perfect as apricity, you know, I just can't think sometimes of how to illustrate it.

So there need to be more perfect words.

There's only like, you know, what fraction of the English language is just perfect words.

I don't know.

There's, it's a small fraction of them.

Tom Pellereau:
How do you define that perfection of a word?

Grant Snider:
Completely subjectively.

Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
Just as how it makes you feel, so to speak.

Grant Snider:
Yeah, exactly.

Tom Pellereau:
When the kind of meaning matches the sounding of the word, or whether it just like feels good or?

Grant Snider:
Yeah, the sound is perfect.

The meaning is perfect.

It conjures a picture of your mind.

It's something you want to tell a friend that they can tell another friend and pass along.

The suitcase that contains so much inside.

Rob Bell:
Lovely, lovely.

But a lot of yours, Grant, aren't necessarily like apricity, these overly positive words.

There are others in there that are not more sinister words, but just that don't have the same positive connotations.

I'm thinking of Canopsia, the eerie emptiness of a once busy place that you had.

There's a definition for an idle wanderer, which I absolutely love, which is flanner, a flanner.

Grant Snider:
From the friendship.

I think so many of the ones I've listed are about somebody wandering aimlessly or lying around in bed, like those words you shared, Jono, which I think those are the two activities poets love to do.

They love to lie in bed and when they get tired of lying in bed, they go wander around in the neighbourhood of a city.

Tom Pellereau:
Smoke a cigarette somewhere, chill out with a coffee.

Grant Snider:
I guess it goes back to the Scottish having 50 words for rain and the Iceland 50 words for snow.

Poets have 50 words for wandering aimlessly and staying in bed till being.

Jono Hey:
I mean, that's probably a great place to start, isn't it?

Think of things that you like to do, but perhaps you're not supposed to do quite as much as you like and just make up words for those.

Like procrastination, I bet you could have lots of words for specific types of procrastination.

Sitting at the table and not tidying up your dishes for five minutes.

Grant Snider:
Latibulate was one of those obscure, outdated, unused words, which was to hide in a corner in an attempt to state reality, which every time I turn on the news, I just want to look to be like a little bit.

It's a perfect word for our time.

Tom Pellereau:
I'm currently listening to quite a lot of PG Woodhouse, which was the Jeeves and Worcester, and I just love the language of it, of how he describes being in the soup, or, rubby old thing, old man.

Because I'm listening to it quite a lot, I just want to just turn that language on and start talking in that way, but I can do like three words and then my brain just doesn't want to create, but listening to it, it's such gorgeous poetry and writing of nonsense.

Jono Hey:
Bertie Worcester was like the ultimate flanner, I think.

Rob Bell:
So good.

Tom Pellereau:
Auto.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, a rummy thing, old boy.

Grant Snider:
But the PG.

Woodhouse gives me the idea of like, slang dialects that aren't completely foreign to us, but if we were living in that world, it would be like, oh, I know exactly what they're saying.

I think those words are fascinating.

I'd love to do one that's just slang from a certain vernacular.

Tom Pellereau:
A certain period of time.

Grant Snider:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
I wanted to talk to you about your books, but one in particular, you've published a number of books, including one very recently, which we'll come on to in a minute.

But I have a baby daughter at the moment, and I'm hugely enjoying her exploration of sounds that she can make out of her mouth.

I wanted to ask you about your book entitled My Words, which it feels like it is that exploration of sounds.

Can you tell us a bit about that and where your ideas for that came from?

Grant Snider:
Yeah.

So congratulations on your daughter.

Oh, thank you very much.

The idea for that book came from my own daughter growing up.

Now she's 12 and 13 and knows a lot of words, but.

12 and a half, I should say.

She was our first born and when she was a baby, I just thought it was so fascinating.

Like how does every human go from babbling, baby talk, and then slowly it turns into recognizable words, ma, da, ball, these monostellable words.

And then months later, they're stringing together these perfect, complete sentences or at least sometimes doing that.

So that was fascinating.

I think that book actually started as almost like a vocab book pretty similar to the Words of Wonder where I was taking these words that I found fascinating and tried to craft a story on them.

But it just wasn't quite coalescing.

So my editor said, oh, well, why don't you take the discovery of language?

Why don't you make this the topic instead of these fascinating words because that's been done before.

Luckily, my wife, Kayle, had been keeping a family blog and had been documenting all these hilarious things that our newborn, our toddler now as she got older had done.

For instance, she would say the word guck to describe a bunch of things.

So she'd see a duck and she'd say guck.

She'd tape up her sock and throw it and she'd say guck.

She would get stuck in between the couch and the wall and she'd say, really loud, y'all, guck.

And of course, it sounds close to another word of wonder, you might say.

So it was even funnier.

I just took these small snippets of language she had used and put them through a few vignettes to make that story.

Rob Bell:
That is lovely.

And are we getting that and reading it with my daughter as well?

Grant Snider:
You'll certainly recognize some of the familiar expressions of that.

Rob Bell:
So some of your books are aimed at children and others aimed more at adults, but which I'm certain would also be hugely enjoyed by a younger audience as well.

But you have a new book out, Thinking About Thinking.

Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Grant Snider:
Well, on the adults versus kid books, whenever I have a new quote unquote grown-up book come out, I hand it to some of my friends.

And the first thing I hear from them is, you know, my fifth-grade son or daughter stole it away and read it from cover to cover.

And so I don't think I've heard from one of them that, oh, I really loved your book.

It's always, oh, my son or daughter loved your book.

So I think maybe I'm trying to make books for grown-ups, but I'm failing at it, which is not too bad, I guess.

At least there's an audience and a devoted following there no matter what age they are.

But thinking about thinking is a collection of my one or two-page comics, on the subject of internal life, thinking, feelings, creativity, brainstorming.

Whenever I sit down to a blank page, I'm kind of turning the page back to myself and, you know, looking at what I'm most interested in at the moment, what's going on in my head, and trying to capture that on paper and putting some humor into it, putting some color with it, hopefully telling a short story with it.

Those comics are all an example of that process coming to life.

Rob Bell:
And from what I've seen, it is a beautiful media to just get yourself thinking a little bit more.

There's philosophy in there, there's some psychology in there as well, but very subtly presented in a way that I found myself thinking about things differently, inspired and catalyzed by your illustrations and by those cartoons.

It's gorgeous.

Grant Snider:
You know, mentioning philosophy and psychology, if you were to give me a textbook of those, it would be difficult to read it.

But if you sneak it in in a comic strip, yeah, it's like, oh, that was that was fun.

You know, I feel a little bit smarter.

I feel like I'm seen.

I feel like my my inner life's expressed a bit and I enjoyed reading it.

And it's it's been printed to others as well.

Rob Bell:
Just as we talked about earlier with the words, you know, if you were given a list of these words to learn with their definitions, well, that's a bit a bit dull.

Grant Snider:
Maybe all my work is a rebellion against that.

My many years of schooling.

Jono Hey:
There's something in that because it's really interesting because I've had a similar reaction and I didn't do my book and collection for kids.

But a lot of people have sent me photos of their kids reading it, which is brilliant, although I didn't make it for them.

This can be for adults and you can have pictures and the pictures add to an adult book, but it also makes it accessible to kids.

I think that's when I look at so many of Grant's cartoons and they make you think in a really nice way, but you've also really enjoyed looking at them.

I can totally imagine my kids enjoying looking at these too and getting it for whereas they wouldn't pick up the mini book of philosophy and sit through and read it.

Grant Snider:
That's an interesting observation, Jono, because I wonder for more visually literate when we're younger.

And as we're exposed to more just pure text, I wonder if our appetite or appreciation for that goes down, or maybe not.

Maybe it's just that's the way that we're used to seeing adult books.

But I do think there's a lot of room for novels or even nonfiction to include visuals, to include comics, to include graphics, sketches, and really improve the experience for the reader and make them enjoy it a lot more as well.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, and it's not cheating.

There was just books, right?

But now I can listen to the podcast, you can listen to the audio book, you can watch the video on YouTube.

And none of those are cheating, you're enjoying and learning it in all of those different ways.

Grant Snider:
Yeah, it doesn't make the experience any less, and I agree with that.

Rob Bell:
So at this point, I'm desperate to mention Calvin and Hobbes, which I read loads of as a kid.

All the books I could possibly get my hands on, I read all of that as a kid.

Now, when I go back to my mum and dad's house, where all the books are still on the bookshelves, I will always pick up Calvin and Hobbes and reread it with a whole different perspective on it because as a kid, I was just enjoying Calvin with his toy bear going out on adventures.

Now, there's all the subtle jokes and the philosophy and psychology and whatever else you want to read into Calvin and Hobbes from Bill Watterson's work.

It's all there.

Grant Snider:
Do you have a favourite Calvin and Hobbes storyline or era or collection?

Rob Bell:
Anything to do with snow and sledging.

I absolutely love.

Grant Snider:
I think my favourite are when he and Hobbes are going on the wagon going downhill.

They're having this deep philosophical conversation as they're about to bump into a tree.

And then at the end of every strip with the wagon, they crash horribly and there's some punch line.

So it's like all the philosophy that's packed into that pays off with this great adventure and then an amazing crash at the very end.

I feel like that was my first comic strip I love.

Like most people who grew up reading newspaper comics.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Grant Snider:
Calvin Hobbes was it.

And I think that's also my first exposure to any of that deep thinking, philosophy, whatever you want to call it.

Jono Hey:
What is still so brilliant about Calvin and Hobbes is it gives you such something lovely to look at at the same time.

When I think of trying for something like the Apricity sketch, I'm often thinking of how does Bill Waddeson create these beautiful landscapes where you're looking at the cartoon and you're reading it, but you're also just appreciating the visuals.

There's something still learning from Bill Waddeson and Calvin and Hobbes in everything I try and do.

If you haven't already read it, you should all go out and buy the Calvin and Hobbes collection.

Rob Bell:
For anybody who hasn't heard of Calvin and Hobbes, A, where have you been?

But B, Calvin and Hobbes is a cartoon that ran for years and years and years, written and illustrated by a chap called Bill Waddeson.

Calvin is a young boy and he has a toy, Stuff Tiger, who when it's just the two of them, comes alive and becomes a real tiger.

Within your work, Grant, I think I possibly saw flashes of inspiration from Calvin and Hobbes, which I hope you take as a compliment.

Grant Snider:
I feel like it's the DNA of my comics.

It's something that if I tried to get rid of it, I couldn't because that was just what I built my love of reading and drawing and reading comics on Calvin and Hobbes.

Rob Bell:
Is there a general theme or area of interest that links all of your work across the comic strips you've done, the books, what you put out on Substack?

Is there a way of describing your work in a general sense, Grant?

Grant Snider:
I think a lot of times it comes back to the themes of creativity and how to get from the blank page to something else.

I've done a whole book on creativity.

I'm working on a novel that's about the act of drawing.

At some level, it's always about how to put something on paper where there was nothing there before.

Rob Bell:
I get this sense of the kind of gentle, worldly observation that you communicate.

So soothingly, I think I would say.

I find it all very, very interesting.

Grant Snider:
I like that when I'm making something, I'm trying to be like the best version of myself.

I think that's when I get the best response for me reading it, but also for sharing with other people.

Rob Bell:
So listen, in the interest of time, before we round off, I'm going to ask if there's anything anyone would like to bring up or ask that we haven't discussed yet.

Tom Pellereau:
I feel like Grant's got an incredible grasp of color and almost created a unique sense of color with your identity in quite a few.

And I wonder if that's just a natural talent that just comes or how long you think about color.

Grant Snider:
Yeah, I love that you made that observation.

So when I was starting making comics, I did them in black and white.

I wanted to be like an old fashioned New Yorker, cartoonist, you know, with pen and ink and, you know, watercolor washes.

And I did that for a long time when I was drawing for a local newspaper.

And one day the editors said, OK, we're moving your strip to Sunday.

You're going to make it in color.

And I had no idea how to do that.

So over the course of the time that strip ran, I tried color, I learned.

And pretty soon it became kind of like the lifeblood of what I was creating.

But I started out coloring very simply.

So I'd have some black and white and then add like two or three colors to balance along with that.

And then I feel like as I've gotten older, as I made more and more work, it's just been like an explosion of color.

It's like it's a shortcut to emotion.

And I think we all have like emotional associations with different colors.

Some of it we can describe that we can't.

But yeah, I really try to make the color match the emotional theme of the piece I'm working on.

And when it does, I think it just gives a whole other layer for the reader to grip on to.

Jono Hey:
I wanted to share a word, whether or not you guys know it.

So have you heard of the word winsome, as in win some?

Grant, you know it?

Grant Snider:
Yes.

Are you going to make me define it?

Jono Hey:
No, no.

Grant Snider:
I don't know if I could do that perfectly.

Jono Hey:
Somebody once left me a comment and described after one of my sketches as my work is winsome.

And I didn't know the word and I had to go look it up.

And I think of what I think of winsome, like Rob, when you were describing some of Grant's work, and even some of the description from your book.

So winsome means generally pleasing and engaging, often because of a childlike charm and innocence, cheerful, lighthearted.

And I'd never heard of it before.

He described it.

And I was like, actually, that is quite often, I think, what I'm aiming for.

And what I see in so many of the beautiful pictures that Grant has done, is winsome and that childlike charm and innocence, which is the same in the Calvin and Hobbes, to be fair.

Grant Snider:
Yeah.

My one word definition, if you were forcing me to do it, it was going to be approachable.

I think you said it better.

Yeah, something that invites you in and makes it so you just want to spend more time with it.

I love that explanation.

Rob Bell:
Well, I hope our listeners find this podcast episode winsome.

Grant, thank you so much for giving up your time to come and speak with us on the podcast.

I'm so, so happy I've discovered your work and I feel like there's something even more enjoyable about it now having chatted with you to get even more out of your work to go when I go back and look at it and any future work that you produce.

Grant Snider:
Yeah.

Thanks so much, Rob, Tom and Jono.

It's been awesome talking to you guys and I've learned a couple of new words and I'm inspired to go learn and draw even more.

Rob Bell:
Aside from your new book, Thinking About Thinking, Grant, which I will link to in the show notes, do you have any other projects on the go at the moment and where else can people keep track of your work and your creations?

Grant Snider:
I've posted a weekly comic strip online on incidentalcomics.com for going back about 15 years now, but you can also find me on Instagram and Facebook and on my newsletter incidentalcomics.substack.com.

Currently I'm working on my next collection of poetry comics, a set of flashcards inspired by Words of Wonder, and my first novel in verse which is called The Year I Stopped Drawing, which kind of ties in a lot of these themes we've talked about.

So always a new project, always a new word, I've always something new to work on, and I'm excited to share those with you guys in the future.

Rob Bell:
That is awesome, and I will link to all of that, your social media accounts, substack and incidentalcomics.com as well.

Grant, once again, thank you so much for coming on, lovely, lovely chatting to you.

And thank you all for listening.

If there's anything from this episode you'd like to share with us, you can email hello at sketchplanations.com, or you can leave us a voice note on the podcast website.

And I urge you to check out Grant's work.

His books, his substack articles, his wonderful comics and illustrations, you will not regret it.

However, you might want to set aside at least half an hour for when you first start to explore it so that you don't follow my example and miss a physio appointment you've had booked in for several weeks.

Good luck, and until next time, go well, stay well.

Goodbye.

Tom Pellereau:
That's brilliant, Rob.

Did that really happen?

Rob Bell:
Yes, it did, yeah.

All music on this podcast series is provided by the very talented Franc Cinelli.

And you can find many more tracks at franccinelli.com.