Beginnings

Updated: 01 Aug 2025 • 729 episodes
beginningspod.com

We all know the stories of how creative people get into the business of creating for a living, but how did they start using their imaginations in the first place? On the Beginnings podcast, writer and performer Andy Beckerman asks well-known and on-their-way-up comedians, musicians, writers, artists and thinkers about their earliest creative acts, their formative childhood experiences, and how they've developed both creatively and emotionally over the years. Beginnings is part therapy, part philosophy and almost all fascinating (95% according to FDA studies).

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01 Aug 2025 • EN

comics writer Mark Russell

On today's episode, I talk to Eisner and GLAAD Award-winning comics writer Mark Russell. Born in Springfield, OR, Mark broke into professional writing with his book God Is Disappointed in You, a modern retelling of the Bible. This led to comics work writing Prez for DC in 2015 and a number of other comics in the last d

70 min
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25 Jul 2025 • EN

cartoonist Rory Blank

On today's episode, I talk to cartoonist Rory Blank. Originally from Carrollton, Georgia, Rory eventually ended up in Austin for college, where he began making cartoons for the student newspaper. In the early 20-teens, Rory began posting his comics online on places like Tumblr and Twitter and began to gain a following.

76 min
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On today's episode, I talk to writer and showrunner Selwyn Seyfu Hinds. Originally from Georgetown, Guyana, Selwyn and his family moved to Brooklyn in the 1980s, when he was 14-years-old. After graduating from Princeton, he began writing for The Village Voice. Then in the late 1990s, he became a hip-hop critic and then

68 min
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On today's episode, I talk to musician Daniel Littleton. Originally from Annapolis, MD, Daniel's first band The Hated was part of the first wave of hardcore/post-punk/emo in the 1980s. In 1991, Daniel and Elizabeth Mitchell began recording together as Ida. They released their first three albums on the formative indie l

76 min
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On today's episode, I talk to Eisner Award-winning comics writer Kelly Sue DeConnick. Born in Columbus, OH, Kelly Sue moved around a lot as a child and eventually got into comics professionally through adapting translations of manga. Since the mid-aughts, she has jumped between creator-owned work for publishers like Im

62 min
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On today's episode, I talk to comics creator Michael DeForge. Originally from Ottawa, Michael had been making mini- and webcomics for years before he created his first "real" comic Lose, which was published by Koyama Press in 2009. Since then, he's published over a dozen books and collections through publishers like Ko

80 min
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