[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Welcome to Disability Empowerment now season four. I'm your host, Keith Murphy Di Ginsini. Today I'm talking to Steve Vasily who is the founder and creator of the the Squeaky Wheel and the creative manager of MBC Universal Corporate.
Steve, welcome to the show.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Thank you for having me, Keith.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: So as we were talking about before we hit record, I've been aware of your work with Squeaky Wheel for some time.
It always makes me chuckle because it's sort of like the Onion, satirical disability related news and jokes.
Where did you come up with that fantastic topic and idea?
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Sure. So around three and a half years ago, I had been playing with all these kind of funny disability related stories that I had wrote and a lot of them I wrote for the screen. I was interested in kind of making short films or trying to write for television and I was writing all of this stuff intending it to be sort of screen content.
And pretty quickly I realized that making video and doing things to the screen is really expensive and time consuming and requires a lot of people.
And all of those were kind of obstacles with sort of the resources and time and skills that I had available.
And what was nice is once I sort of started thinking about, oh, maybe I can translate these stories into a kind of short form Internet satire format like the Onion, like you mentioned, I realized that that format allowed me to tell so many more stories and so many jokes much easier because it was something that I could do independently. I could just write a couple stories in a week and post them up online. I didn't have to worry about budget or time or resources or anything like that.
So I kind of landed on the format of the Spooky Reel because it was a format that was really easy to create fast and for free and sort of as a disabled person with limited time and energy and resources, it felt very accessible for me.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Now I know you also have another job at MBC and that's not ads related to disability advocacy, but still that's a big job of a well known company corporation, what they like to go by.
How did you get that job and what attracted you to that role?
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Sure. So I started at NBC as an intern which was in 2017 and I was a college student studying graphic design.
I was a graphic design intern and I've been with the company for the last seven years in sort of various different roles.
I started doing graphic design and doing a lot of sort of very traditional design work for digital and social and print. And then sort of as I spent more and more time here and became more interested in writing, especially when I kind of launched Squeaky Real and was getting a lot of comedy writing experience that way. I sort of dipped my toes in writing and communications for NBC Universe.
And really what drew me here is I love television, I love film.
I always wanted to work in media.
And again, a lot of the stories that are now spooky, real stories were stories that in my mind originally were ideas for screen, for video, for television.
And what I've learned from working at NBC and from being surrounded by that industry is that it is a beast to try and make that kind of content.
And I wanted to create a platform that was more accessible and easier to get the stories out there. And that was sort of how it pivoted from screenwriting to entry and satire writing.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: So I remember Squeaky Wheel title a few weeks ago that really caught my eye. And I was laughing about it a few minutes longer than I should have, to be honest.
But where you said about some performer or some athlete, her disability doesn't define her. Her art duds. And I would like that's spot on.
And I believe who you wrote that for commented on it or something.
We've talked about the jump he made from a screenwriting to corporate writing and match media.
What drew you to comedy?
Because there's a difference between doing comedy and writing comedy.
What drew you to writing Satirical Walk AKA Allah the Onion.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: And.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Why did you think that incorporating disability content in satirical work would work?
And because beyond the squeaky wheel, I don't know a lot of disability satirical work that is updated with the regular that the squeaky wheel is. And so take me back to the genesis of of that platform and what was the lack of a much better term?
What would be inspiration for the squeaky wheel?
[00:08:19] Speaker A: Yeah, so I think there's a few different questions there I'm going to try and touch on. But first, that story you mentioned, long winded, sometimes no worries at all. Those are all great questions.
So the first one you had mentioned, the story her disability doesn't define her hot ass does. And that is a story that was not written by me. It was written by one of our writers. Her name is Lori.
What's great about the squeaky mail now is we have a team of over 30 writers, so there's tons of people contributing.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: Wait, can you beat the that number.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: Plates over 30 right now. Contributors.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: Over 30 writers contribute to the satirical content of the squeaky world. That's impressive. And to highlight again, the title article that I mentioned that I found way too hilarious for my own Good was written by a woman where it sounded like it was definitely, definitely written by a man.
That's just fantastic on so many levels.
Please give Loin my compliments.
Yeah, it's a bad chuckle because it still makes me chuckle weeks later, but go on.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a fantastic story that she wrote.
She's been writing for us for definitely a few months now, maybe even a year.
And I think that sort of ties back into.
You asked sort of what made me think to bring comedy about disability into satire writing.
I already mentioned a little bit about how screenwriting was something that felt a little inaccessible because of how many resources and people it takes to create video content.
And one other sort of field to add on to that is I love stand up comedy and I live in New York City where stand up comedy is really popular. I love going to comedy shows.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: I think I've heard of stand up comedy and why it's so popular in New York City. There'd you massive comedy scene in New York. People think that it's just Broadway and museums, but if you know where to look, there's a massive comedy following.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: So definitely. Yeah. So in New York, comedy is so big. I love going to comedy shows and comedy clubs. But the stand up comedy industry is another industry that, at least for me, is not very accessible, primarily because a lot of the venues themselves aren't wheelchair accessible. And the lifestyle of trying to perform comedy is pretty brutal in that you're often performing super late at night for no money at all in areas that are really far and sort of you're juggling like your whole day life of working a job and sort of paying all your bills was at the same time you're expected to be going out six, seven nights a week until 1:00 clock in the morning to perform comedy for five minutes for $10.
And that lifestyle is just so hard for anyone, let alone someone just.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Absolutely grueling, I mean, giving me chronic fatigue, which I already have.
Just trying to imagine.
And there are a lot of great comics. I mean, that's the injury to comedy. But just hearing about that grueling lifestyle as a beginning starting point, it boggles my mind how anyone does that on a consistent basis.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: But go exactly. And I think that I brought up the number that we have over 30 contributing writers for the Spooky Reel. I should mention all of them are people with disabilities.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: And I think what makes them fantastic.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: Yeah, what makes it so incredible, so remarkable is that I knew there was funny dis disabled people that wanted to make jokes And I wanted to create a platform where they could make those jokes, but in a format that is accessible. So when writers write for the squeaky wheel, there's no sort of level of commitment. They can contribute once a week or they can contribute once a year. They can write on their own time. They can write sort of as frequently as they like and in whatever tools they like. And I think that that sort of flexibility has allowed people that are sort of being kept out of stand up comedy or screenwriting or other sort of comedy industries. It's giving them a space to be funny in a way that's accessible for them.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: So do you know, do you have viewing figures or subscribers to the website?
And how long has it been going on?
[00:14:53] Speaker A: So it's been a little over three years.
The first six months or so it was just myself writing. I'm still one of our sort of most frequent writers, but I certainly don't write even the majority of the content. I would say most of it comes from the contributors.
And most of our readership is on Instagram.
I think we have around 12,000 followers at the moment. So we're sort of continuing to grow. And what's great is like, I mean, 12,000 is a big number, but compared to some other Instagram accounts, it's not huge. But it is a really engaged readership.
And pretty much everyone that follows us, if I meet them in person or if I talk to them, you know, they remember the headlines, they remember the account. It makes them laugh like it's.
I focus a lot more on reaching the right community. And I think we've reached the disability community really well.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: That's fantastic on every level.
Where would you, as the founder, like to see your creation go in the next five or 10 years?
[00:16:18] Speaker A: Sure. So I think again, we started the spooky reel around three and a half years ago. And around two years ago, we incorporated as a nonprofit organization that we call Squeaky Real Media.
And our organization includes not only the Internet publication that we've been talking about, but two other programs that are really sort of key to our growth in our future.
One of them is that we do comedy writing workshops specifically for disabled people who are interested in learning about comedy writing.
We've been doing them virtually for disabled student unions, which a lot of colleges have. Now a lot of colleges have, like disability club, disabled student organization, things like that.
And we've met virtually with Harvard and Georgetown and nyu, and we're able to teach the students about how to use humor to talk about disability.
I think that program is really exciting because it then sort of lets young disabled people get their first sort of experiences with comedy writing.
And then the other piece of Squeaky Wheel media that is super exciting is in television.
And we just premiered our first season of the Squeaky Wheel Canada, which was a co production between the Spooky Wheel at a Canadian TV production company called Hitsby Entertainment. And it's a eight episode sketch comedy series that airs on television in Canada. Unfortunately, it's not available outside of Canada just yet, but it's very similar to like Saturday Night Live or any of the sort of popular sketch comedy shows you may be familiar with. And it's sort of taking the tone and humor and style of the spooky reel and putting it on the screen. Once we finally had access to kind of those resources and a team that was interested in putting it together with us.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: By the time the Zeppelin shows aired, the Disability Empowerment Now Inc. Non profit will be up.
Right now as we're recording this, it's not up. And so there's so much I could pick your brain on starting success for effective non profit for a multimedia offering.
And we'll continue the conversation offline because I don't want it to distract from the shepherd show, but it certainly relates to disability empowerment, advocacy and employment.
So you have the non profit, you have some offerings other than the Squeaky Wheel. Why did you choose those offerings in in particular to start with and then what down the road or what do you hope would add on to the current offerings that your nonprofit has in place already?
[00:20:32] Speaker A: So I think the writers workshops is something that we came up with because I wanted to sort of reach people who didn't even know that comedy writing existed or was an option for them.
I think a lot of young disabled writers don't think about writing comedy because when you look in the sort of wider landscape of of disabled authors, there isn't a lot of comedy.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: No, no, it's not.
And that's a real shame because.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Yeah, disabled people are funny. They want to. They. There is a stigma that they're very serious and sensitive and it's often not true. Often disabled people love to make humor both at their own expense and sort of about the obstacles that are in their life that are sometimes super like ridiculous. I think when you start to dissect like the US healthcare system, it makes no sense. It is a joke. So it is funny when you start really picking it apart. And I think the writers workshops sort of just place that c in the brain of college students with disabilities like, oh, Maybe when I go into advocacy or maybe when I go into writing or go into business or whatever field they're going into, it's sort of a little reminder that, like, if you use a little humor, it can bring you really far and it can really make your message more relatable. It'll make people want to listen to you if they're entertained by what you have to say.
And then the television production was actually initiated because Andrew Morris, who started Hitsby Entertainment in Canada, reached out to me and basically said, you know, I love the website, I love what you're doing. I would love to imagine what this looks like for television. Not knowing that I had already sort of started the streaky reel as a screenwriting project and that was always kind of where I wanted to bring it.
So that was really just like a fortuitous connection. And I think that I would love for video content to be a larger piece of the spooky reel in the future.
But again, as I keep saying, like, it's so expensive and time consuming and requires a lot of people.
So as a nonprofit right now we're kind of trying to put together grants and fundraising and different ways of raising money so that we can make sure the spreaky wheel is sustainable because primarily right now it's mostly volunteer based.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: So let's go back to the idea of the non profit and how you arrived there.
I will save from my end. The getting to the non profit was always the next iteration of the product that I was offering. Fuzz had started ads, podcast, just audio only. And then we jumped to, to the Video Cats about a season or two earlier than I had originally anticipated.
But after the Video Cats really caught on, it's beginning to catch on more and more.
The non profit was always going to be the next iteration. The next altering of the show, of the project, of what we presented.
That was our journey with the idea of creating a. A non profit.
What was your journey with creating the non profit?
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Yeah, so I think our journey was similar in that as soon as the Instagram account and the website began to see some traffic, I knew it would need to get a little formalized. There need to be some sort of business entity.
But what I really struggled with for a while was would it be a for profit business or should it be a non profit business?
And it wasn't so much that I was concerned about like, do I want to get rich off of this or I want to make a ton of money. It was more about which one gives the project a better chance to Succeed and become sustainable. And I was really fortunate that I was able to reach out and speak to the sort of creators of some of the other really big satire websites. So I spoke with the team behind Reductress, which is a really popular one, the Hard Times, Broadway Beat. All of these are kind of big Internet satire publications. And I spoke to them and I said, look, but how are you doing it?
Are you paying your writers? Do you make any money?
Does your website generate money? How is it all set up?
And what I found when I spoke to all of them is that, like, it's a brutal business and that generating revenue as an online satire publication is really hard because a lot of sort of social media based businesses generate most of their money from advertisements.
And advertisements are really hard if you don't have a really big audience. And they're really hard.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: Yeah, they are, yes.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: I'm sure, as you know, it's really hard to make money that way if you don't have a massive following, which I knew kind of wasn't in our projection because this was always intended to be a project for the disability community and kind of that audience, which I knew maybe wasn't as wide or as big as something like the Onion that really appeals to everyone.
And I really struggled. So I didn't think that it would work that way.
And then I started thinking about doing it as a non profit because I thought that our work had a real sort of social mission behind it. And that mission was to give writing opportunities to disabled people and to kind of share their work and amplify their messages, to kind of educate the general public.
I think if you look at our stories, you'll find that even though they're very silly, a lot of times they're sort of little nuggets of information that you learn from reading them.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: Yeah, they're very, very pointed.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Exactly. And I thought that, you know, maybe if we went the nonprofit angle, we could get donations and grants from people that weren't expecting us to sort of advertise on their behalf, but just because they believed in us and wanted us to succeed.
And it's a very different model than other satire magazines. But I think that where we are now, it looks like it was the right choice for us.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: Well, that's very good. I mean, the podcast started out ads made.
The original idea was me conducting interviews. No one would hear the interviews except me, and I would write them up as blog posts on a website.
But then I quickly remembered, and very true, that no advocate would allow anyone else, not even Another advocate, but themselves to tell their story.
So I just switched the medium that I was using.
As I've gone on into different seasons, I've discovered that balancing the content and making it accessible for both advocates with disabilities, but also the non disabled population, it's incredibly important to sort of act as a bridge or a stop gap.
That's not at all to dismanage what you and your contributors are doing. That's fantastic.
But I will agree with you that everything nowadays is about numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers, massive following.
Whereas five, 10 years ago, that wasn't necessarily the case, or even 15 years ago.
I mean it was a very different landscape in the Internet and how we interacted with people online and how we interacted with people in person right in front of us.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that that really speaks to like, if you look at the.
Because there really is so few satire publications that do have those massive followings.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: It's really only can only think of the Onion.
[00:31:42] Speaker A: Yeah, it's really only literally can only.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: Think of that one publication.
And I'm sure they're not the only one.
But really the Onion, it's the, pardon the phrase, the gold standard of definitely comedy.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: Definitely. And they're kind of the really big dog. And then there's a few, I would say major ones, I would say for those listening people might be familiar with Reductress or Clickhole or the Hard Times, but what all of those have in common, they were started at minimum, I believe, 10 years ago, if not more than that.
And they built those audiences in a time when it was sort of easier to generate views for written content.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: Yes, yes, that very.
And I think a lot of people don't know or realize that.
I think a lot of people think the exact opposite.
Now that adds one. We progressed in the digital age and the always connected mentality that we have now that generating views for written content would be easier than it was 10 years ago.
But instead it is the exact opposite. Talk more about that.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that honestly just getting any kind of Internet audience now is really, really challenging because there's so much over saturation. Like every other person you meet is a content creator of some form.
And when everyone is creating content, there's so much content and only so much appetite for the content.
And the platforms that are big right now are TikTok, it's Instagram Reels, it's kind of short form video type content is really the path to going viral in 2024.
And even that is hard.
But doing it with something like we're doing where it's sort of static images and sort of longer stories that are sort of maybe take two or three minutes to read. But you're asking a lot of someone when you're asking them to take 90 seconds to read your story.
And it is really, really a difficult landscape for that kind of content.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: And show how, how, how are you making it? How are you continuing in the very difficult digital landscape?
Because your work is vital. I mean, it's not surprising to me that you have 12,000 of followers. I would assume it would be a lot long. But 12,000 is not anything to really shake your head at. It's a good number.
And the fact that when you meet people, they can instantly recall what they read through your publication, which I only recalled the title. I didn't know there was an actual article attached to it. I tried to find that on Instagram Cajeta, the title, which again was written by a woman.
By a woman, blows my mind that I just found that title so fascinating.
I wish I had known how to access the article because I would have probably laughed myself silly for 15, probably 30 minutes.
Because, I mean, if the title, just the title of the Origo King, Jimmy giddy with excitement for minutes, I can't imagine what the rest of the article would be. And I'm sure you get a lot of comments like that, like the one I just gave gave from your readers through emails, through phone calls.
And I mean that, that validation from the community must be so fulfilling to both you and your contributors.
[00:38:14] Speaker A: Absolutely. I think that there are two things there. We spend so much sort of time and brain power and energy on those headlines because again, we know that like on the Internet, most people read the headline and keep scrolling. That is sort of the habits. And it's not the Orange Mile that sometimes we actually do run stories lately that are just headlines because again, it's like another way of getting more content out faster.
But most of our stories do have a short article attached or sort of swiped through if you swipe through the Times.
Really the reason that our content works in this digital landscape is because the community really resonates with it and they're willing to share it. And I would say that like, of our 12,000 readers, my guess is 95% of them found the squeaky wheel because someone shared our story or shared our post onto their Instagram story.
[00:39:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:25] Speaker A: And it's a really great model because anytime we write something that resonates, a story like that one you're referring to, it'll get a few hundred people to share it, and then a few hundred more people will see it and come and follow us. And it sort of feeds the cycle. I think that really, we wouldn't be where we are without the readers. Like, the readers are part of the community and they're part of what makes our work work.
People want to spread the word. People want to talk about this wiki.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I would gobsmacked by that title so much that I had to do a double triple take that am I actually reading what I think I am? And this, the title was so out there that, as I said, I thought some guy had written it. And I mean, that's why, I mean, props to Lauren for actually writing that title, because it is eye catching.
[00:40:52] Speaker A: Is.
[00:40:53] Speaker B: Satirical, it is bold.
And I imagine most of your titles and stories are like that or have that flavor.
You and your contributors seem to know your niche, seem to know the community that you serve with your satirical content.
What's it take me back to the beginning?
Was it hard to figure that out? Or would that easy? Or was it a mix of both? I mean, how did you discover?
Because it's a brilliant concept.
How did that come about?
[00:42:06] Speaker A: I think there's been kind of an evolution for me personally as a writer and sort of as the main editor of all the content that you see in that.
When it first started and it was just me writing, I was kind of throwing a lot out there. And I had the mindset that, like, I'm gonna post 50 stories and understanding that maybe some of them aren't going to resonate that well. And that certainly was the case that, like, for every story that sort of got the engagement and the likes, the next one didn't. And from there, I kind of learned myself, like, not only what resonates with people, but what performs well on Instagram and on social media. Something I really started to sort of fine tune was like, the image that goes with the headline is really important.
[00:43:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:05] Speaker A: And there's both, because, you know, people like to look at images and find them engaging.
But sometimes if you put an image, for example, that doesn't have a face in it, Instagram doesn't want to amplify that. The algorithm doesn't like that.
They like images that have faces. So now, as you'll see if you look at our stories, almost every photo has a face or a person.
And it's because the algorithm prefers that. So there are certainly sort of the technical spells that I've gotten better with. I think also at times, I was Trying to kind of impersonate other people who I thought were funny and write stuff in the style of them.
And it didn't always work because that isn't really my sense of humor per se.
And what I noticed is whichever stories made me laugh the most and I liked the most were the ones that other people liked the most.
And that sort of gave me the confidence to sort of trust my gut and write things I thought were funny, even if I couldn't really explain on paper why they were.
One really good example there is. I wrote a story, I think it was earlier this year that said something about re ranked the 6M and Ms. Based on how disabled we think they are.
And it's a story that really is based in nothing.
The M and M characters are not disabled, at least not that we know of. But from the commercials and the media, they kind of have personalities. And it was an idea that I came up with because I was furious with how many people on social media were obsessed with diagnosing fictional characters. I think we all know the stories of like Winnie the Pooh and how each Winnie the Pooh character has a different mental illness and all this stuff like that. And I was like, what if I really sort of satirized that and I tried to diagnose the red Eminem and the blue Eminem and the green M.
[00:45:22] Speaker B: And M and the hot Eminem.
[00:45:27] Speaker A: Yeah, the green one, the sexy one.
[00:45:29] Speaker B: I mean, it. It's just those ideas are both ridiculous and downright genius.
I mean, I could not stop laughing on air as we are recording this episode because they would.
And I.
I wasn't thinking about them. I never thinking I would have never come up with those ideas.
But they're again, both ridiculous and downright genius of and they, they make you think you stop and are like, wait, what?
Hey.
Huh? What?
I wonder what? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I mean, that's just incredible, dude. I mean, that's just mind blowing. So that's all to you?
[00:46:54] Speaker A: Yeah, and the reason I bring that one up is because I think it's a good example example that like when that thought popped in my head, I thought it was funny and silly. And I don't know that there's any science behind why it's funny or why it works or why I think it's another one. If you show that headline re ranked the 6M&MS. By how disabled they are. I think most non disabled people might not find it funny or might find it confusing, but like, yeah, there's just something about it that resonate. And it resonated with me and I put it up there and it performed really well. It also has.
There's another thing on, on social where, like, stories do well when people have something to respond to. And people were in the comments being like, oh, I disagree. I think the green one is the most disabled. Or I think are, like, people have their own takes. And I think that that is great because it, like, it just allows them the opportunity to be silly.
Yeah, I think that that is sort of.
There's no, there's no science on how you can get to a story like that. You just learn over time, like, what resonates and what people find funny.
[00:48:14] Speaker B: So, my friend, in case there are any aspiring advocates who want to get into comedy writing, comedy performance, regarding disability of writing in general, and are unsure of how to get started, what would be some advice you would give them going forward?
[00:48:53] Speaker A: I mean, I think something that worked for me is not really trying to fight my way into someone else's space, but to create the space for myself to create the content.
And by that I mean once I realized I was going to write sort of these disability satire stories, I didn't spend a ton of time trying to submit them to other publications because I knew that, like, it was such a unique perspective and it was sort of my own voice that, like, the Onion is not going to run that story. It doesn't make sense in the Onion.
And so I sort of built the space for myself, I think, for other disabled people. Like, find what you're good at. And if there's not a space for it, sometimes you have to make the space or make the platform.
And other times, I would say, don't worry about the numbers. For a long time, people who write on their own blog and get 50 viewers or 100 viewers or 10 viewers, you're still getting the experience of writing. Hopefully you're getting some feedback. Hopefully you're getting some response. And as you sort of work on your craft, you'll get better and better. And the better and better you get, the more you'll figure out how to find that audience.
I think a lot of people kind of want the. Want the bigger audience right away, and that can be dangerous because if you find that audience on your craft or still isn't at that level yet, it can be hard.
[00:50:35] Speaker B: So I like to think that both advocates with disabilities and those who have yet to discover or embrace their own disabilities and watch this program and groups within those groups.
But I'm not naive enough to think that everyone takes away the same things from each episode.
So as my guests and we've talked about a lot of topics and I hope you will come back again very, very soon. It's been delightful talking to you and thank you for making me laugh on air.
What do you hope that advocates with disabilities take away from this episode? And what do you hope that those listeners of yours who haven't discovered their own disabilities take away from the separate zone?
[00:52:07] Speaker A: That's a great question. I think that for me, the part of it is, is I love when people are engaging with the sort of content that they're consuming. And what I mean by that is if you're a disabled person, if you're an advocate and you see people online who are doing things that you think are cool, reach out and maybe see if you can be a part of it. Share like, say hi, repost it on a different platform, tell your friends and family like, I think it's very easy with the way that the social media apps are designed to just kind of scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and maybe sometimes give a like. But what really, really makes a difference is sort of that next level of engagement which is leaving a comment, making a share, reaching out and well, obviously selfishly and shamelessly. That's great for the streaky real when people engage with our content. I don't even mean it just in that way. I mean it in sort of the way that you had reached out to me to be on your podcast and like it sounded cool. It sounded like a great podcast. I'm happy to be a part of it. This has been fun and I think that both of us are better because we had this conversation. I think that that is so true and sort of the more disabled people are willing to work together and support each other and amplify each other's work and participate in each other's work and.
[00:53:45] Speaker B: We don't have to agree on everything.
We just hold space for each other and let everything else fall away.
We're all in fidget together and no one gets out on scarred unscarred.
And so.
[00:54:20] Speaker A: I was gonna say, I think for the sort of non disabled people or as you were saying, people who maybe aren't identifying as disabled yet, which I think is a clever spin.
I hope that they see our content and maybe have a little, a little emphasis or a little bit of a aha moment where they realize that the reason disabled people love to complain is because the world isn't fair and because they, they want more, they want better, they want, they think that the situations they're in are not only unfair but silly and worth sort of making fun of.
And I think that that can be really enlightening to see disabled people not sort of as complainers but as the jokesters, as the people that see what's going on around them, acknowledge that it's a problem, but have the capability to laugh at you. I think that is incredibly empowering.
[00:55:23] Speaker B: Very well said, my friend, before I let you go. And again, I hope he will come back because it's been nothing but a joy talking to you and hearing about your walk through the school squeaky wheel. If someone wants to find that squeaky wheel or contact you, maybe become a contributor or have a question about starting out in comedy. What is the easiest way to reach you and to find the brilliant, the comedic brilliance that is the squeaky wheel?
[00:56:21] Speaker A: Yeah, so I would say the the best way to find squeaky wheel is on Instagram, which is Hesqueaky reel and our handle is actually Squeakys Q K Y.
So at the Sqky Reel on Instagram. You can also find our
[email protected] or people who want to find me. Personally, I'm on Instagram at Silly verdilly and my last name is V E R D I L e. You can find me Silverdilly.
Yeah, I'm always happy to talk to anyone who's interested, anyone wants to write. If anyone wants to join our team, we're always accepted submissions.
[00:57:06] Speaker B: Thank you my friend. It's a vital, important work you do for the community and I'm very happy to know you and know that your work exists in our community.
I believe we're all better for it and I look forward to our next conversation.
[00:57:35] Speaker A: Same here. Thank you for having me.
[00:57:37] Speaker B: Take care.
[00:57:39] Speaker A: You too. Bye bye.
[00:57:48] Speaker B: You have been listening to Disability Empowerment Now. I would like to to thank my dads, you, Olenzener and the disability Empowerment team that made this episode possible.
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