You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I am your host, Chris Duffy.

Today on the show, we are talking with the New Yorker cartoonist, writer, and artist Edith Zimmerman.

We're talking about honesty, vulnerability, and creativity. Edith is one of my favorite artists

because her work is so funny and personal, but also imaginative and approachable. Her style is distinct, but

impressionistic. And what she draws is often the topics that she's wrestling with in her day-to-day

life. So things like sobriety or parenting or figuring out her creative and personal ambitions.

It's all very relatable stuff. And this conversation is also part of our

newest video series, which means that I got to go meet Edith in person at her house in upstate

New York to record this interview. And we also filmed Edith and me running together discussing

what it was like for her to stop drinking and her drawing a hilarious caricature of my face, all of which you can see

online at TED's YouTube channel. I think the video is really a fun and cool compliment because

after you listen to this episode, you can see what Edith's art and what her life look like.

So listen to this, then check out that video. But first, let's get started with Edith.

Well, I drew as a kid and then I took a bunch of art classes in college. I did a lot of

portraiture. I want to say hyper-realistic, but it's just like trying to be regular

realistic. Like, nothing special. And they were all very careful. I really like doing portraits

with pencil. And there was just a lot. I really like doing portraits with pencil.

And there was just a lot of erasing and erasing and just like layering and layering and

careful, careful, careful. And it was good. I was pretty good at it. I did like some really good portraits by the time I graduated.

I was going to be a double major with English and studio art, but I didn't because I was like,

I'm going to like draw for a living. Which actually it sort of like sounds like a joke now, but I didn't because I was like, am I gonna like draw for a living? Which actually, it sort of like sounds like a joke now, but I think it was like totally reasonable. So then when I started drawing again more recently, I started with pen because I didn't want to go back to the like extremely careful drawing. Like, I hope I don't get it wrong. It's like, I'm gonna get it wrong right out of the bat, and that's just like, that's gonna be okay. And I did these like really rudimentary stick figures. And like my drawing's still like bad. I mean, you've seen, sometimes they come out kind of charming, sometimes they're just like absurdly bad. And you're just like, oh sorry, you're like, Tell you're calling yourself an artist? Okay, all right, that's cool.

Yeah, that was sort of part of it.

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