“I was eating cheesesteaks before you were born.” May 2025
Creative risk, Palestinian at heart, hypocrisy, dancing, meat, South Park stories, writing for AI, a betting seal...
Hi everyone,
The man delivering the putdown in the header (yes of course he’s American), was on a video call next to me in central London and I don’t think he was a renowned cheesesteak chef giving online training. His delivery had me feeling both charmed and patronised, not for the first time in my life, and I liked the rhythm and specificity of the line enough to Google it. The results include: a lot of pregnant women on Reddit and TikTok unable to function without steak. A wholesome podcast series on cheesesteaks in Philadelphia – filmed on location with shoddy sound design to prove it – and a story about Bradley Cooper opening a sandwich shop where the queue’s an hour long. An hour. For a sandwich. (It’s an NYT longread that should have been short – not unlike the queue – so no link). Oh and then there’s this poor guy, who’s still recovering from a British cheesesteak.
Sorry to all the vegetarians (including me) for going all-in on steak at the top. To bring it back to nonprofit comms; the new goal is to get your audience to feel ownership of your brand the way this lot do of cheesesteaks.
It’s a big old mix for your creative/storytelling roundup this month… if you have an opinion on what you find here, hit reply and let me have it 🦭
1. “I have a pet theory that whatever makes a creative project feel impossible is also the key to how to make it great.”
Lilly Dancyger is referring to award-winning adaptations of cultural phenomenons but the theory applies to charity storytelling too, and is pretty embedded across creative practice. Prompts for writers and artists often impose strict parameters because it’s easier to be interesting when you’re writing your way out of a pickle. It’s also partly why a good creative brief is like a… squishball toy?! A membrane to be stretched but not broken.
To be clear, whatever makes a creative project feel impossible should obviously not be an absence of resource or strategy. That’s usually just annoying. But when you do things in the right order and identify and embrace the limitations from the start, the results can be more meaningful. I really enjoyed the article. It’s nice to read something wholeheartedly positive about the arts: “This is what it means for form to follow content; for innovation to feel intrinsic to a work because it’s necessary to accomplish what the work is setting out to do. It’s a harmony that can’t be faked when imposed from the outside. This feeling, that a creative workaround has made the impossible possible, is what distinguishes, to my mind, formal innovation that feels thrilling and ingenious from formal trickiness that feels extraneous and frankly irritating.”
2. Did anyone else do a postcard project like this at school?
Potentially a cool way to anonymise the person behind the canvas… or do a big reveal at the end. Very pleasing.
3. ‘Risk-taking brands generate four times higher profit margins... And brands with a high appetite for creative risk are 33% more likely to see long-term revenue growth…’
Also banging the drum for bold creativity: the State of Creativity study from LIONS Advisory. In the intro video, the CFO of McDonald’s endorses point #1 (above): “What we want to take risk on is the execution. We don’t want to take risk on the consumer insight, the strategy, or [...] the fan truths.” That’s the moneyman at one of the world’s biggest brands telling us to take creative risks. Thank you to him! It’s an interesting report that rang true for me but I’m praying I never come across the phrase ‘insight famine’ again.
4. ‘Palestinian at heart’
5. Therefore or but. Narrative drive and causation explained Southpark-style.
6. Sculptor Antony Gormley on Alan Yentob’s skill as an interviewer
‘Yentob was “instantly intimate, instantly on your side, instantly interested in everything that you were doing, had done and were about to do. He had an energy and an eagerness that was never trespassing but always wanting to understand and join you in the adventure.”’ A noble goal for producers, interviewers and people who hang out with other people. The FT obit.
7. “My parents are both dead but they are not gone. We tell stories in order to live but also in order for the dead to live again.”
Sarfraz Manzoor’s poignant take on Joan Dideon’s famous line.
8. Worth your time, streaming:
Will and Harper (Netflix)
The Quilters (Netflix)
The Dance on iplayer (if you don’t like Fleetwood Mac it’s not worth your time)
9. Worth your time, social:
10. “People were torn. They wanted to stay, and they wanted to go, but we had to flee, and it was just devastating to leave behind our Palestinian crew, people who were so excited to finally work on a big, historic Palestinian film like this. We had done so much beautiful work…”
An interview with Palestinian filmmaker Cherien Dabis. It’s hard to imagine what it must have taken for the cast and crew to bring All That’s Left of You to fruition.
11. A wide-ranging interview with Brazilian photographer Sebastião Selgado, who died this month.
12. “We are the last eyes left inside Gaza”
Writer, poet and journalist, Nour ElAssy for the New Humanitarian: We are not embedded with armies – we’re embedded in our people’s grief. We don’t parachute into Gaza for a week with flak jackets and satellite trucks. We live here. We die here. We cover stories in the morning and bury our fears in the afternoon.”
13. A seal betting on who will win the Six Nations = 24 million views
The top 12 UK charities onTikTok according to Nonsensical. You know it’s legit because the RSPB are on there. A great list and the engagement stats are properly impressive.
14. AI as an audience segment, and why that means quality of content will be more important than quantity
‘The calculus is simple: If AI continues growing in influence, the content that matters most will be the stuff accessible to the models. Humans will represent just a fraction of the audience directly consuming content. The imperative shifts toward open, high-quality content that AI can index and process widely.’ So everything’s going to be fine?!
15. ‘Cannes isn’t the future. It’s a mirror, one held up to a civilization that knows exactly how bad things are, but would rather look hot in the group photo while it burns.’
A takedown of Bezos and Lauren Sánchez that’ll make you believe they are in fact, Hollywood villains.
16. American teenagers launched a print newspaper
AI can’t read that at least.
17. WhatsApp chats with sport’s big stars
Via Ochuko Akpovbovbo. Nothing quite like the intimacy of being in a Whatsapp chat with 1000 other people.
That’s it! If you got this far, thanks 🤩 Previous issues are all free to read.
Em