Episode 30 of Season 2. The 80th episode I've recorded since starting this show. And honestly, I couldn't have picked a better guest to mark a milestone like that.
Andy J. Pizza is the host of Creative Pep Talk, an illustrator, a children's book author, and one of the people who has quietly shaped how thousands of designers think about their own creativity. He's also the guy who chose to call himself "Pizza" because his real name made for an ugly URL.
We started this conversation talking about goat cheese pizza in the UK. We ended it somewhere very different — talking about the cave you fear to enter inside yourself, about why his ADHD diagnosis at 25 first devastated him before it freed him, and about a line from his second podcast Right Side Out that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since.
At the end of the recording, Andy told me this was the most personal interview he had ever done.
In this episode we talked about:
Choosing his own name and disobeying Yoda
ADHD as a lens, not a deficit
Cultivating yourself instead of overcoming yourself
Right Side Out and the line that stops you
The cave you fear to enter, Joseph Campbell, and self-acceptance
Taste as the palette of your soul
Why AI is ending the era of perfect — and why that's a gift
Working with his wife Sophie, the Beatles, and why fighting makes the work better
His dad's lesson: hard and bad are not the same thing
The most personal closing of the season
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction & Three Illustrators in a Row
03:12 How Andy J. Miller Became Andy J. Pizza
05:53 Pizza Toppings, Goat Cheese & the Best Fries in the World
08:36 ADHD, Mental Health & Creative Work
09:44 Moving Around as a Kid & the Identity Crisis It Caused
15:30 The Seventh Grade Friend Who Loved Boy Bands
22:00 On Popularity, Connection & Being Less Cool
27:45 Taste as the Palette of Your Soul
32:29 Why Follower Count Doesn't Equal Success
33:33 Why Instagram Doesn't Taste Good Anymore
36:36 How Taste Changes Over Time
39:25 Collaborating with His Wife Sophie & the Beatles
47:20 Perfectionism, ADHD & the Case for Doing Things Imperfectly
58:51 AI, Human Creativity & Why Perfect Is Dead
01:01:49 Cultivating Yourself Instead of Fixing Yourself
Find Andy here:
Website: https://www.andyjpizza.com/
Creative Pep Talk: https://www.creativepeptalk.com/
Right Side Out: https://www.andyjpizza.com/rso
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andyjpizza/
Substack: https://andyjpizza.substack.com/
Find me here:
captnoffscript.com
@captnoffscript
If you liked this episode, listen to... Sophia Yeshi (S02/E22) — another deeply honest conversation about self-acceptance, rejection therapy, and unlearning the fear of not being good enough.
If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful. 🙏
México