Almost Everything with Jeffery Saddoris

Jeffery Saddoris
  • 4.8 (42)
  • DOCUMENTARY
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I released my first podcast in 2009. I was hooked and have been recording deep-dive conversations with interesting and creative people about what they do and why they do it ever since. I’m taking cues from some of my interview heroes like Dick Cavett, Johnny Carson, and Studs Terkel and distilling the conversations I record into one show. I’m calling it Almost Everything with Jeffery Saddoris and on each episode, I’ll be talking to both creatives and everyday people about their unique stories and lived experiences. 

  1. Let Go Lightly

    3D AGO

    Let Go Lightly

    About 18 months ago, I started seeing a therapist. I had gotten to a place that I’ve only really been once before and Adrianne encouraged me — actually, she implored me — to talk with a therapist. She once said to me, “Every day, I’m terrified that I’m either going to come home and not find you, or worse, that I will.” I’m not going to lie, that hit pretty hard. I knew I was in a dark place, but we often think that we are the only ones who know just how bad it really is — that we are somehow hiding it from the rest of the world. It’s not true, of course, but that was me in that moment, and to hear the person I love the most in the world say that to me…let’s just say that it shone a light on the dark that I felt surrounded by. So for the past year and a half, I’ve been having the sessions and doing the deep work of unlearning what I had learned and letting go of some of the limiting beliefs and behaviors that have seemed so hell bent on keeping me out of the light.  CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com  Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: talkback@jefferysaddoris.com

    9 min
  2. The Weight of Waiting

    09/23/2025

    The Weight of Waiting

    It took a bit to fire up, but once it did, the familiar rumble of my Dad’s 1974 Ford F100 took me right back to my childhood summers. As Art slowly backed the truck off of the trailer, Adrianne commented, “It’s smaller than I thought it would be, given how large it looms in your history.” Indeed, I thought. One of my earliest memories of this truck is of waking up on the bench seat at Buckskin State Park on the Arizona side of the Colorado river. It was cold that morning — though it was light, the sun hadn’t yet crested the red rock hills that bordered the campground to the East. Dad and my stepmother Linda were both awake after having spent the night in sleeping bags in the bed of the truck. Dad had made a small fire that was crackling and popping and I remember the faint smell of coffee on the chilly morning air. CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com  Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: talkback@jefferysaddoris.com

    8 min
  3. Style, Stunts, and a Tiny House

    09/02/2025

    Style, Stunts, and a Tiny House

    I’ve shared this story before, and regardless of whether it’s true or just the stuff of photographic legend, it’s so good that I think it bears repeating every so often. The story goes that a photographer was presenting his portfolio to the great Jay Maisel. He asked Jay how he could take more interesting pictures, to which Jay immediately replied, “become a more interesting person.” It may sound trite, but I think it’s often easy for makers to become myopic in terms of the types of things that inspire them. Painters are often looking at other painters, photographers look at other photographers, musicians are often listening to other musicians, and so on. If you’re always looking (or listening) to what’s familiar, the odds of you arriving at something that’s unfamiliar (even if it’s only unfamiliar to you), are pretty slim, which is why it can be helpful to look outside of your comfort zone for inspiration. I’m interested in almost everything so as you might imagine, my feeds are pretty eclectic. While I’ve gotten away from posts like this over the years, I think I’d like to jump back in and offer up an occasional look at some of the things that have caught my attention, and might catch yours. LINKS Long Hot Summers / The Story Of The Style Council Mubi interview with Lee Pace The incredible tiny home of Masato Igarashi You can find all of the links I mention in this Iteration on my Substack. CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com  Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: talkback@jefferysaddoris.com

    5 min
  4. Making and Money

    08/27/2025

    Making and Money

    For a long time now — years, in fact — I’ve leaned toward the belief that I deserve to be paid for the creative work I do. And to be clear, I don’t think that’s unreasonable, at least not from a certain point of view. After all, in a capitalist system that’s sort of how it works, right? You do a job, you earn money, you buy things. On the other side, goods and services cost money and we generally accept that premise. Cars, houses, a gallon of milk, a bucket of chicken — whatever it is, we accept that acquiring those things is transactional. I exchange the money I earn for the thing that you produce. The same goes for services like electricity, gas, your phone bill, or internet access. That’s just how the system works. But there are gray areas. Some types of goods and services seem to be more or less exempt from that agreement — namely creative ones. Music, movies, and software often fall into that bucket. And, to make it more personal, art. CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com  Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: talkback@jefferysaddoris.com

    8 min
  5. I Buried Another Bird

    06/30/2025

    I Buried Another Bird

    Yesterday, I had a heart-wrenching experience. I was out for a morning walk with Adrianne and Cooper when I spotted a bird flailing in the grass under a tree. As I got closer, it struggled to escape, its life force fading away. When it finally stopped moving, I knelt down and tried to comfort it with a damp leaf (Adrianne advised against touching it directly due to the bird flu). Watching it die right before my eyes was incredibly painful. I still don’t know what happened, but it clearly had endured some serious trauma. Tears welled up in my eyes as I confessed to Adrianne, “I hate this.” She replied, “I know, but in its final moments, you showed it kindness and love.” A NOTE: I know this isn’t the usual fare for Iterations, but I think quiet moments like this can be just as important as the big existential ones. I have dozens of these types of vignettes — sometimes it’s just me taking notes on my life and the observations and feelings are just for me, but other times, like this one, I think they are worth sharing. CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com  Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: talkback@jefferysaddoris.com

    4 min
  6. Little Beasts and Other Pleasures

    06/02/2025

    Little Beasts and Other Pleasures

    Last week, I got a text message from my friend Michelle, who works at the National Gallery of Art. “Lunch tomorrow or Thursday?” followed by “Come see the movie in Little Beasts. It starts at the top of every hour. I would love to discuss it with you.” Not only was Michelle one of the first people I met when I first visited DC in 2014, since then, she’s become a close friend and the National Gallery has come to be my happy place in DC. In fact, some of the best art and photography shows I’ve ever seen, including Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings (Catalog), Gordon Parks: The New Tide, 1940-1950 (Catalog), Outliers and American Vanguard Art (Catalog), The 70s Lens, and Mark Rothko: Paintings on Paper (Catalog), to name just a few, have all been at the National Gallery. I’ve also learned about artists I’d never heard of before, like Rachel Whiteread, Philip Guston, James Castle, and Elizabeth Catlett, among others. And in nearly every case, when I’ve had the chance to walk through a show with Michelle, through her knowledge and experience of art and materials, I’ve come away with a deeper understanding and a greater appreciation of the nuances of both art and artists. CONNECT WITH ME Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com  Instagram: @jefferysaddoris Email: talkback@jefferysaddoris.com SUBSCRIBE Subscribe to Almost Everything with Jeffery Saddoris in your favorite podcast app. You can also subscribe to my newsletter on Substack.

    11 min
  7. The Ballad of the Benches

    05/27/2025

    The Ballad of the Benches

    Whether it’s a sheet of old plywood resting on a couple of sawhorses or a fastidiously crafted hardwood masterpiece, the workbench has long been the centerpiece of studios, workshops, garages, and maker spaces of all kinds. Of the many standout features of our house, I think I was most excited about the multiple basement spaces that I would be able to use as studios for the different things I do. The previous owners were makers — she was a painter and he was a woodworker whose wood shop occupied one of the basement spaces. When we bought our house in 2016, I remember telling Adrianne that I wanted to make one of the spaces my paint studio and that I would make some benches “on day one.” Well, day one didn’t happen, nor did week one, month one, or year one. In fact, it’s taken me nearly nine years to finally build benches for my studio. So what happened? See the photos I reference in this episode on Substack: The Ballad of the Benches CONNECT WITH ME Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com  Instagram: @jefferysaddoris Email: talkback@jefferysaddoris.com SUBSCRIBE Subscribe to Almost Everything with Jeffery Saddoris in your favorite podcast app. You can also subscribe to my newsletter on Substack.

    9 min

  8. 04/28/2025

    It’s Still Just a Tool

    The other day, I was going through my archive of work ahead of a website redesign, and I found a blog post that I wrote in 2014 that’s sort of an homage to my all-time favorite camera and how after finally acquiring one, I couldn’t bring myself to actually use it. Ten years later, I think the post is still relevant to how some photographers and artists have a tendency to fetishize the tools they use. I know that was me once. For what it’s worth, I think photography is unique in that, because it’s art and science, the potential proficiency of the craft often gets conflated with having the “right” gear. The irony is that it really is the purposeful practice of using our gear, whatever it is, that allows us to get better — to see better. I bought my first SLR in 1982 and I have enjoyed taking pictures ever since. Over the past 40+ years, I’ve used a bunch of different cameras and I’ve enjoyed almost all of them for different reasons. But the one thing that they have in common is the ability to look at the world through a viewfinder — and for me, that’s where the marrow is. As convenient as it is to have an iPhone camera in my pocket that captures fantastic pictures, I love the restriction of a viewfinder and I always have. It lessens the visual noise of the world (to a greater or lesser degree depending on what lens I’m using, of course) and it allows me to practice seeing. In fact, it demands it, doesn’t it? After all, you’re only given a tiny swatch of the world, surrounded by black. What you put in that swatch is up to you, whether you’re observing a scene or creating one from scratch. Photography allows us to impose a point of view on the world around us, or to build one from our imaginations that shows a world we want to see. See the photos I reference in this episode on Substack: It's Still Just a Tool CONNECT WITH ME Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com  Instagram: @jefferysaddoris Email: talkback@jefferysaddoris.com SUBSCRIBE Subscribe to Almost Everything with Jeffery Saddoris in your favorite podcast app. You can also subscribe to my newsletter on Substack.

    9 min
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4.8
out of 5
42 Ratings

About

I released my first podcast in 2009. I was hooked and have been recording deep-dive conversations with interesting and creative people about what they do and why they do it ever since. I’m taking cues from some of my interview heroes like Dick Cavett, Johnny Carson, and Studs Terkel and distilling the conversations I record into one show. I’m calling it Almost Everything with Jeffery Saddoris and on each episode, I’ll be talking to both creatives and everyday people about their unique stories and lived experiences. 

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