Episode #463
Carlos Greaves Is The Satirical Dad
Carlos Greaves joins Ophira Eisenberg to talk about the strange math of building a creative career while raising an 18-month-old daughter, especially when your “job” is a shifting collection of satire writing, freelance work, teaching, and comedy. Greaves describes leaving electrical engineering after a film class convinced him he had chosen the wrong life, spending 12 years writing before opportunities at McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, and elsewhere made comedy feel possible, and then discovering that the creative life he wanted came with plenty of regrets—and very little stability. As a stay-at-home dad in suburban Charlotte, he is constantly negotiating what it even means to be a working parent when his work happens at night and on weekends, while his wife’s nine-to-five schedule means their respective “breaks” are essentially childcare traded for work; meanwhile, Ophira admits that 96% of her conversations with her husband are scheduling logistics. Their conversation turns to Greaves’s book Obey in Advance: How to Survive and Thrive Under Authoritarianism, co-written with Ginny Hogan, and the challenge of writing political satire when reality moves faster than a joke and social media can claim a premise before a book ever reaches publication. Greaves explains why the book targets the atmosphere and institutions surrounding authoritarianism rather than relying on familiar impressions, using forms like Mad Libs, word searches, and fake editorial templates to make frighteningly repetitive political patterns visible—and argues that preserving joy can itself be a form of resistance. That idea becomes especially complicated as a parent: Greaves admits that bringing a child into a world facing climate change and multiple other existential threats requires optimism, even as he feels the terror of having “a piece of your soul outside your body” that eventually has to go out into the world. The episode also connects his instinct for satire to his childhood as an intensely rule-following, oldest-child, parent-pleaser who quietly found ways around the rules, including telling his parents he was sleeping at one friend’s house when he was actually somewhere else. The conversation ends just as Ophira starts asking about the unavoidable dictator hiding inside every parent of a toddler—and Greaves’s Ferris Bueller-adjacent teenage rule-skimming is the last thing left hanging before they pick up the story in part two. August Shows are in Las Vegas NV, Los Angeles CA, NYC Follow Carlos Greaves: https://www.instagram.com/shadesofgreaves Check out his new book Obey In Advance: How To Survive (And Thrive) Under Authoritarianism: https://store.mcsweeneys.net/products/obey-in-advance-how-to-survive-and-thrive-under-authoritarianism See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” as an ALBUM is available now https://open.spotify.com/album/1rHqPoBYc78gzMnCrCFoZy SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ: https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/ Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
