Virtual Memories Show 657:
Tom Tomorrow (a.k.a. Dan Perkins)
“Every week is a battle between my deadline and my self-loathing.”
Political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow (a.k.a. Dan Perkins) is back as we celebrate his new Kickstarter project, OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE (closing Oct. 30, 2025), collecting 5+ years of weekly This Modern World cartoons! We talk about how he keeps his sanity (well, tries to), what it was like to look back at the past half-decade week by week, why he decided not to go down a rabbit-hole of extra material for the project, and what it means to have a bookshelf of his strips (and not just pixels on a screen). We get into the importance of his Sparky’s List newsletter as the media landscape keeps withering away, his writing process and how the, um, of this administration compels him to build some flexibility each week, and the realization that he’s made a major body of work over the past four decades. We also discuss his major life changes since we last recorded, the good and bad of Being Very Online, his love of Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko mystery novels, what makes him a New Yorker, and the impossibly fraught question of what brings him joy. Give it a listen! And go support OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE!
“Doing a kickstarter is like when a rock musician does a stage dive; you have to trust to audience to catch you.”
“My job is kinda like being a sewage system worker. I pull on the high boots and I climb down into the sewer every day.”
“I’ve been publishing books since 1992. It’s part of what I do, part of the whole thing that is the Tom Tomorrow Experience.”
“Things change so quickly that if I don’t use an idea the week I write it, I might be able to pull out a line or joke, but there’s a LOT of rewriting.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Tom Tomorrow is a Herblock and RFK Award winner, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and creator of the weekly cartoon This Modern World. (Longer bio over here)
Follow Tom Tomorrow on Bluesky and Instagram, subscribe to Sparky’s List, and check out his merch from Topatoco and Threadless. Oh, and you can also follow This Modern World on TinyView and/or Daily Kos.
And go listen to our 2015, 2016 and 2020 conversations!
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at an undisclosed location on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Tom/Dan by Greg Pak. It’s on my instagram.
