John Saffron has been a fixture in Australian media since his breakthrough in nineteen ninety seven with ABCTV's Race Around the World. That show, if you've never heard of it, was this kind of er reality TV format. A bunch of young, aspiring filmmakers were each given a camera and a travel budget and had to produce short docos each week. John didn't win the first series, but his outlandish, imaginative hair raising pranks gave him a reputation and a career.
Whether it was streaking through the streets of Jerusalem or putting a voodoo curse on one of his exes on the Ivory Coast, his speciality was a kind of boundary pushing monstrousness that explored ideas about faith, race and culture.
After several TV series of his own John Saffron's Music Jamboree, John Saffron Versus God and John Saffron's Race Relations, he made the shift to book length journalism, and it's safe to say that his appetite for provocation and curiosity about subjects more typically approached with caution and circumspection hasn't gone anywhere. I've known John for many years now. In his capacity to make any conversation awkward, somehow combative and genuinely batshit
is without peer. And his latest book, well, actually I should let John introduce.
Him for people who don't know I'm in Kanye, because Michael doesn't know how to set up an interview. I mean, so the book scored squat a week squatting at Kanye's mansion, and yeah, so I went into Kanye's mansion. I made my way in into legal expression, and I used it as a writer's retreat. I'd found out from neighbors that Kanye hadn't been seen there for months and months and months and months and months, so they suspected he wasn't there.
And then also they told me and actually the security guys I saw they left a couple of weeks ago. So I was like, oh my god, this is like and it was probably because he hadn't paid them. That was my addiction or whatever. They're going back any further. You're very asking like why am I even do? Godam it's so defensive, John Saffron, But it's Kanye. He started it. Kanye West started it because the year he went right not a legal defense stuff. Yes, he went ragging on
the Jews. So I thought I'd go there, and I darted around LA and New York and talk to people in each circle and also eccentric people who are interested in the whole Black American Jewish American situation, like rappers and preachers and people in religious sects and stuff like that.
And I was there with another Australian writer and we're talking one night over seafood in a Malibu seafood restaurant, and it was like, yeah, why not for the writer's retreat, John, for your when you have to sit there and write the book. Why not you U see abandoned mansion? So does that make sense? See?
The beauty of a podcast is because it's editable. There's going to be a good setup. John. I promise you.
I'll be fine. I'm putting you at ease. It's fine, John.
You just don't trust you just don't trust there's process.
Okay. Sure? Anyway, that was that it's a good setup. I like it.
I'm Michael Williams and this is read. This a show about the books we love and the stories behind them. You decide to go and use Kanye's abandoned mansion as a writer's retreat, but at that point, you don't even know the book you're writing. You're not in there because you know you want to necessarily explore Kanye, explore Andy, Semitism,
explore you. Just you've got a vibe and total. That's what I want to ask you about today, is because for you, you sent to me to be the most counterintuitive mix between intuition on the one hand, and the way that you approach your work and then a real kind of deliberateness and a real sincerity which I think surprises people about you. And that's that's what I want to get to.
Yeah, I follow things that feel emotionally true to me and just the energy in the universe. And that might sound pretendial, but it's not because I'm like, I like leave the house. And so when you leave the house, if you're like walking around the streets of LA and you're sort of you're following things and reaching for things, Yeah, you just you get vibes. And probably because it's my fourth book, I reckon, I would have been more nervous.
If it was my first book. I would have gone, Okay, it can be a chapter of me going into Kanye's mansion. But I felt it I felt like, if this book is basically set up my whole week inside this mansion, yeah, I'm going to go with that. And it just seemed, even though I couldn't quite explain it, it just seemed it seemed unusual enough and a bit you know, not
the same old, same old. So, for instance, if the book was me chasing Kanye and then hanging with Kanye like that, of course that could have been really good in some other way or whatever. But I felt, you know, you know, like I'm old, and I thought, is that
like a bit cringe, you know, chasing up? Whilst I felt there were all the pieces of like making my way into Kanye's mansion and spending a week there as the writer's retreat just had enough stuff that it made it kind of you know, interesting and tense and everything like that.
Tense and also quite exposed, like it is a story about a kind of week long descent into a kind of madness in your own head. As you get more and more spooked by the weirdness of your surrounds, you have moments of lucidity where you realize how crazy the thing you're doing is, and then you know, also the overlay of that is some of the questions that you're
asking about Kanye as a figure. I want to maybe go back to that for a second, because while you're a huge hip hop fan, you weren't a hardcore Kanye devotee necessarily.
Yeah. So it was Kanye coming out in support of Hitler that was just so fascinating to me because he was a mainstream celebrity. Also, it was like eclectic his anti Semitism, like it like, it wasn't like just this general like I'm pissed off as the Jews, where you could kind of, you know, just some generic kind of thing where it could have been Asians or Muslims or whatever. Like, he was reaching into things like the Protocols of the
Elders Learned Elders of Zion. So yeah, so it was just like fascinating that this mainstream figure was spreading that to a totally new generation who had no context of it of what it meant. And then also the fact that you know, he wasn't a white American, who was
a Black American. That made it interesting because you know, I got to look into the history of Black Americans and Jewish Americans and how they were allies over things like civil sometimes, but there was a there's a prickly relationship to sometimes and you know, even looking at the threads in the founding of hip hop and there's the Jewish record producers but also Jewish artists and stuff, and
like are they taking that music? And and yeah, so it just it like ticked a lot of boxes, a lot of awkward boxes.
That the awkward boxes one hundred percent on brand for you is that there's a friction here in a set of contradictions, and lots of people would be like it was a bit uncomfortable. I'd rather look away, and you're like, I'm going to just keep picking up that scab.
Yeah, lots of writers would have liked that if it was Mack or Moore. Why did it have to be a Black American rapper? Why couldn't it have been Vanilla Ice. Well, I couldn't have been post Malone.
It still could be.
They're very capable. Yes, So yeah, And it's just I'm really interested in cultural fault lines, and I think I'm just interested in it generally. But also so if I never got into what I got into as my occupation, I'd still be interested or whatever. But like in my work, it just seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. I'm one of the first things. One of the earlier things I did on a TV show called John Saffran Versus God is I try to join the Ku Klux Klan.
And I'm acting all fou naive lately, you know, like I find out their history and about how or one point they didn't allow Catholics in, but now you know, they're allowing Catholics in. So I went there through want the bunkers of one of the chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. They didn't know what's Jewish before I got there. But then during the interview, I'm asking who can join the Klan, who can't or whatever, like can women join the clan? And yeah, of course non American, Yeah yeah yeah,
Catholic yeah yeah. And I said, what happens if you're you know, you're brought up Jewish, but you don't anything Jewish anymore, because That's where I'm at. And then he's sort of what is like, is your mother? He goes, yes, and she were Jews are from their father the Devil, They're from the Synagogue of Satan. And I'm like phone naively pitching back to him, going, yeah, but I don't do anything Jewish, you know, I drive on the Sabbath,
I mix milk and meat. And he says, going, yeah, but we think it's a race, not just a religion or whatever. And then I said, yeah, but look, I'm whiter than Hitler. He had brown hair and brown eyes. I have blonde hair and blue eyes. If I went to school with Hitler, I'd be the one beating him
up for being a wog. And so when I did that at the time, I didn't like overly think about it, like the whole kind of arbitrary nature of like identity and race and how it's so important, but like exactly that I'm whiter than you know, like and I think that taps in with a lot of people, especially a lot of people in Australia who have like their Australian
but they've got something else as well. And I think this kind of vibration I have in my head of like where do you stand and you're one thing but you're the other. I think a lot of people feel that, even though I express it in the silliest outrageous way or whatever. Yeah, it's just interesting because I identity, it's so important obviously, and yet yet it's so kind of arbitrary.
It's so important and important to your work. But you mentioned in the Klan example, Yeah, the phone naivety thing. You know, there is an element of performance there. Yeah, ever since Race around the World when you clocked that actually your instincts were good about what people wanted here, and the sweet spot was putting yourself in situations of mild to severe peril in the interests of kind of teasing out these uncomfortable ideas. But there is there is a kind of performance there.
Yeah, definitely.
How does that performance make the shift when you become John's writer of books?
I just yeah, I kind of float around to see what's working. So yeah. Yeah. Once an American saw one of my shows and they said, oh, it's very confusing to watch because if you compare it to like some
Sasha Baron Cohen thing, like there's a consistent reality. So, for instance, a voiceover by Sasha Baron Cohen on a Borat thing is the same character as Borat, but he's going It's so confusing because you can have one one segment on your show where you're kind of phoue naive and then on top of that, the voiceover is you being sincere, but then the next segment is you just being more Louis thuruy more just normal you and you're
going to a Hindu temple or whatever. But you're just you and you're there and you're very curious and you're normal and whatever, and then the next segment is like a scripted song parody or something like that. So yeah, it's definitely left me with a kind of a CV that's kind of which where I'm like all over the place.
I do think, like, notwithstanding that eclecticism, like the through line from your earliest media work to this book is a pretty clear one. Yeah, on the question of sincerity, how since his cany like, how much is this useful stuff to pass or unpack and how much of it is part of hyper performance or frankly just unwellness.
Yeah, So when it comes to is it a performance or does he actually believe these neo Nazi things? I look into that in the book where I have a conversation with, of course a problematic person, Gavin McGinnis, who's the founder of the Proud Boys, because we were discussing about how well David Bowe had a period where he leant into like fascist iconography, including the swastika, and I
think that's part of his thin white duke period. So it became well, artists allowed to lean into dangerous things. And I mean the other one is Sid Vicious from the Sex Pistols, the nineteen seventies punk band, and you know, he had a swastika, and it's like people kind of come to these things with their own little reasons and and ill thought out reasons, and Kanye maybe like just
you know, that's part of it. You know, like David Bowie, like Sid Vicious was just feeling this is the ultimate transgression and I should put this out there that people have said to me, and it's a very good point. They go, yeah, John, it's the laziest transgression. It's like, if you were really a good transgressive artist, you just come up with something less corny than using neo Nazi iconography.
And he's probably a bit like me, not fully thinking through everything and just like chasing these kind of like impulses.
I like that you reference the whole concept of trolling because it is so much part of that provocation for provocation sake. Oh, there's this orthodoxy that is therefore the safe way to be. If I want to be an artist or an agitator or whatever, then it's my job to push to that uncomfortable place, which strikes me as a position that you would personally have a huge amount of sympathy for.
I would. But the thing where I'm different to Kanye is the only thing the only thing where I'm and also some other people. I really think literal politics kurdles art. But I guess when you're in this transgressive space where you're sort of trolling and everything like that, I do think the energy in your work is partially relying on the ambiguity of things. You know, Like I don't know why he ruins his work by kind of hanging out with political figures and taking out the ambiguity in things.
When we return, as unlikely as it seems, John shairs the emotional truth behind the squat, We'll be right back. The thing about most of John Saffron's work is even the first time you watch it, you've got your hands over your eyes, you're kind of cringing with the sheer, excruciating audacity of it. So it seems unthinkable to me over a career that his work is something he would return to, so I had to ask, does he rewatch his earlier work.
The only thing I've watched several times is when I got exercised by an evangelical Christian exorcist in America or whatever. I've watched that several times. That's like half hour long of just me being for some reason, I can watch that. Everything else I don't really watch. But then when I do watch some of that back I kind of go when I was fourteen or sixteen, if I watched this stuff, I would have gone, Oh, it's pretty cool or whatever.
I feel better about it. And I also think it's interesting how the backdrop to the world changes and things are a different context. It's kind of interesting and it kind of explains that different reactions explain to the changing backdrop.
Given what you say about the ambivalence about rewatching, say race relations, part of it is having done it, you're happy to relinquish it to the people who watch it. Is that different for your books, like your four books in that And I do think there is a discernible difference in the kind of storytelling you're doing on the page the stuff that you're doing on the screen. And I'm curious about how much you get in your own head about it as a physical artifact that is unchanging.
Yeah, I definitely like and it's never like one thing or the over arching thing in my mind or whatever. But I do like things like you're not meant to do, but not in a bad way. Like I like how this story about Kanye should be a series of tiktoks or whatever, but it's not. Like there is something kind
of fun about how it's this old school book. There's already a bit of that online even though the book's just been released on like this hip Hop America hip hop subreddit where they've already picked it up, or they're just confused, like why is this a book? Like why are you allowed to do a book like this?
And also it means that you do play with the book form as well. Some of the chapters are super short. The chapter that shares its name with the book, Squat, is just about you going to the toilet in there, and that's a very short chapter but necessary because you know, a pastor points out to you that Jesus' story isn't meaningful if you don't cover him defecating on the cross, So you have to do the same for yourself.
Oh yeah, I feel like this book I reckon. My first book is way more I'm shooting my documentary, but I just happened to my first book should almost be open on a wide shot of it, and by this book, I've kind of got a bit more casual and cruisy, and it's yeah, I think it's more of a book book, even though it is like short chapters. Like for instance, like that's sort of like bumble around at the start of when I'm trying to figure out in Los Angeles,
like what I'm doing or whatever. I reckon. Earlier on in my writing career, I would have been like really nervous that I've got to explain to the reader, like almost like in a documentary it's or a TV show, it's like coming up, you know, like you know, everything has to be on the first place, like I can't lose anyone or whatever like that.
Like going into a podcast and insisting you have to set up the book at yes, totally the start of the podcast rather than just giving over to it.
I know, I know, very similar.
One of the most stressful things in this book, and there are many stressful things in this book, but is that you only had a single pair of socks that were wet on the way in. Like that seems like a useful metaphor for lack of forethought on your part.
Yeah, well, you're validating my process where this book, I just wrote things that just felt right, and I didn't like this. I had some emotional truth. I did not overthink, like I've never thought of what you just said then, but it's true, and so now I'm like, oh, that's why I must have put in the book. But subconsciously, I think there's connection of all these scenes that are like emotionally true, and some are more kind of focused and on point with some kind of thesis about identity
and anti Semitism, and some or less. I feel like, because they're all emotionally true and I'm at the center of them, it somehow makes sense. I feel like lots of my stuff makes sense until I have to explain it. And I guess that is because this is an art project as opposed to old school thorough getting all sides of things journalism, so you can kind of hold things together through emotional truth.
It's really interesting to me because I'm curious about the extent which the book reads like an exploration, like you genuinely don't know how you feel about this stuff, and you're teasing it out and you're playing it out. But how much is the emotional truth for you in grappling with this identity stuff infused with grief or fear or you know, because some of these are pretty weighty concerns, particularly at the moment.
Yeah, totally. When I went there, I didn't know what I was going to entirely use Kanye's outburst in service of, Like, for instance, I was thinking, perhaps it can be about the history of artists and their uneasy relationship with benefactors, and so I'd go back to Michaelangelo and the church and see how that all the way up to Taylor Swift and having fights with Apple Music over royalties and stuff like that. So I thought like that might be it.
And in Australia, because I did a little bit of research beforehand, and then also in LA when I was talking to people that I was still kind of feeling away whether that was going to be the idea. The other possible idea was going to be about artists who go too far and how we kind of want to we want artists to be transgressive and go into worlds that we're too scared to go to, and it's all fun and games until it isn't. And there's a little bit of that in the book. But like, that's how well.
I didn't actually know it was going to be so focused on using Jewish Americans and Black Americans as some illustration of you know, identity and how precarious identity is and all these weird cultural fault lines or whatever. But the conversations I had, just because they were so much more meaningful to me intellectually. I could write a piece about Taylor Swift and Spotify, but I don't think people would have felt it. I've always like talked about things
like about my grandparents. But I realized I didn't do this on purpose. But really I've always let myself and the reader off the hook. So for instance, in puff Piece, my book about Philip Morris the cigarette company getting into e cigarettes, there is a bit of a motive of like eight million people die a year from cigarettes, and that's a holocaust and a half or whatever, and so what is it about that we just allowing this to happen?
And da da dah. And because of that, you know, I told this story which I think is quite powerful about my grandfather and him, you know, escaping Germany. But then it wasn't the Nazis who killed him, it was cigarettes. And in fact, he had this operation where the Nazis saved him because they used to have this health system there where you know, even if you're Jewish, you've got
the best blah blah blah. And it was like, so it was really interesting and I'm like telling saying this real interesting thing about how my grandfather on my father's side was saved by the night. So it's really like pokey stuff. But then because it was like embedded in this book about Philip Morris or whatever, it meant, Oh, it's kind of interesting how he's writing a book about
Philip Morris, but he's got this personal thing. But you could just kind of like move on, and in this book I just felt all this kind of painful stuff about the history of Jewish people in killing my family escaping the Nazi, I was like, I'm not going to allow myself. And it was a risk, I guess, because I could could have just come across as whiny or something or I don't know what, but I'm not going
to let myself or the reader off the hook. So part of me being in this mansion for one week is just going to be exploring all these painful things in Jewish history, in cly my family history. And people have told me they go, oh, John, this book is like weird because at the end you sound angry and I've never seen that side of you before, and I'm like, oh, cool, And I think that is because I like, for better or worse, this book just doesn't let me or the reader off the hook.
You mentioned puff Piece, so there is a reminder late in this book of the fact that in the writing of puff Piece you put your own health at risk. You decided that you couldn't write about addiction to these cigarettes without actually taking them up yourself, at the expense of your own health. To what extent in squat did that come at the expense of your own health? Because you seem angry at the end, but you're also seeing like you seem troubled by the end. I was worried about you, John.
I wanted to give you a hut Ah. Yeah, I don't know. I probably wouldn't have done any of that stuff if I didn't think it creatively vibrated. If you know what I mean, Like, I have things in my life I just do not talk about, but not because it's like a creative decision. Basically, there stakes higher than
me being scared and being troubled in his mansion. And the other thing is that I've got this job to do and it's like I don't have a plan B. I would not squat at Kanye's if it wasn't for this sort of project, you know, for creative reasons or whatever. So I have to go against all my kind of feelings. And but it's just what I have to do because I like creating stories and it's very narrow what I'm good at. So yeah, this is my loss life.
It's a pretty good laugh. Yet, thank you so much for your time, John Saffron, No, thank you. John Saffron's new book Squat is available at all Good bookstores now. Before we go, I wanted to tell you what I've been reading this week. And I'm a huge fan of the books of British writer Alie Smith and her new book Glyph is fantastic. Gliff is the first of two new interconnected novels about dystopian fiction about climate stuff. I'm very curious to see the second half and how it
relates to this first one. But it is a compelling and brilliant novel in its own right, as you'd come to expect from someone like Alie Smith. You can find it and all of her backlist and all of John Saffron's backlist at Favorite in the vendem bookstore. That's it for this week's show. If you've enjoyed it, please tell your friends about us and rate and review us. It helps a lot. Read this as a Schwartz Media production,
made possible by the generous support of Ara Group. The show is produced and edited by Clara Ames, with mixing by Travis Evans and original compositions by Zolton Fetcho. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.