Recorded eleven days before he died, this is the last conversation Ron Galella gave, and he spends most of it doing something photographers rarely do, which is hand over the entire method with nothing held back.

Ron Galella was the photographer most often called the world's most famous paparazzo, with a career of more than three million images of public figures, twenty two books, and two courtroom battles that made his name. This conversation was recorded on April 19, 2022, eleven days before he died, and is his last interview.

Ron opens up about dodging the Korean War draft by walking into a recruiting office, and about how the branch that called back first happened to be the one that trained him as a photographer and a camera repairman. He talks about the address on Fifth Avenue he learned to arrive outside by seven in the evening, and about the two legal fights that turned him from a working freelancer into a name. He gets candid about the night in Chinatown that ended in a hospital, and about exactly what he decided to wear the next time the same man was in front of him. Ron lays out his entire method in the open, without withholding any of it, from the two cameras he carried and the lens he taped down to five feet, to why he never looked through the viewfinder, why a car matters more than a taxi, and how to get into a room you were not invited to. He also reads out a letter he kept, reflects on what phones did to the trade, and answers a listener question.

What comes up:

- Two cameras, one taped lens, and never using the viewfinder

- The two court cases, and which one he won

- What he wore the second time he photographed Brando

- Getting into rooms he was never invited to

- What he thinks phones did to the trade

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Three separate versions of the same fairy tale, all developed, all abandoned, none of them the one that got made. Part two of this conversation is largely about the films that exist only as boards in a drawer.

Mark Walton is an American story artist and voice actor who has worked at Walt Disney Animation Studios, DreamWorks and Blue Sky, and is the voice of Rhino the hamster in Bolt. This is the second half of the conversation.

Mark opens up about a filmmaker who is genuinely down to earth, loves other film nerds and puts on no airs at all, and about the presentations he gave on set about how he writes. He talks about spending years thinking improv was too terrifying to attempt, then taking a weekly workshop on the lot anyway and getting so into it he was booking extra practice sessions on his own. He gets candid about being flown up for a Pixar interview, the tight boards on a certain film that scared him, one interviewer who had worked with him before and had reservations, and being told no to every single question he asked on the way out. He walks through three separate unmade versions of a fairy tale, one where the villain repents, one deliberately fractured, and one steampunk take with a lead who invents things and a heroine who talks to painted faces on furniture. Then he takes an hour of listener questions on favourite roles, how a hamster got his name, whether the work slows down as you get older, and what he tells people trying to break in.

What comes up:

- Meeting a legendary director in a queue and just talking to him

- Taking up improv after years of being too scared to try

- An interview where the answer to every question was no

- Three unmade versions of a story everyone knows

- A full hour of listener questions, taken properly

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He applied to Disney with no animation training, some sketchpad pages, and a rough short he and his friends had shot on 16mm for fun. The timing happened to be perfect, and he spent the next several years convinced they had made a mistake.

Mark Walton is an American story artist and voice actor who has worked at Walt Disney Animation Studios, DreamWorks and Blue Sky, and is the voice of Rhino the hamster in Bolt. This is the first half of the conversation.

Mark opens up about being a kid who could draw and had no idea that animation was something you could study, until a magazine article about a school in California turned up. He talks about applying with no formal training, sketchpad pages and a rough hand-drawn short he and his friends had made for fun on 16mm, and how the timing after a very large hit meant the studio needed people they could teach. He gets candid about impostor syndrome from day one, working nights and weekends for years because he was sure they had made a mistake with him. He describes the mall tour where he had to act like he already worked on the film he was promoting, and the story artist who took him on as an apprentice afterwards. Mark also talks about a college comic strip he made with his brother, mining their own bad dates for material, the day he realised his character had been animated to his own voice, and a premiere encounter he says he would happily be run over the next day for.

What comes up:

- Getting into Disney with no training and very good timing

- Promoting a film he had not actually worked on yet

- Impostor syndrome, and the years of nights and weekends

- A college comic strip built out of real disasters

- The premiere, and the sentence he will never forget

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Ten songs written, none of them released anywhere but YouTube, and a very clear reason why. This is a long conversation with a young Ontario songwriter about the part of a music career that happens before any of it counts.

Anna Belleth is a singer-songwriter from Ontario who has been writing since she was eleven and has released roughly ten original songs, so far only on YouTube.

Anna opens up about picking up the piano young, never actually learning anyone else's songs on the guitar or harmonica, and why she went straight to writing her own instead. She talks about a year of busking around Stratford, the town she went to specifically because a certain someone had done the same thing on those streets, and about strangers walking up mid-song to start a conversation while she was trying to earn money. She gets candid about the song she wrote half of in one sitting and then finished the second verse of on the spot in the vocal booth because it needed one, and about why she wanted a particular verse to make people's stomachs turn rather than sit comfortably. She speaks honestly about a hard year in grade nine, the friends she had and the friends she lost, and how much of it she genuinely cannot remember now. Anna also talks about a competition win she did not see coming, her name going up on the screens in her own city, and why she thinks the best thing you can do is actually listen when somebody plays you their music.

What comes up:

- Never learning covers, and going straight to writing

- Busking a Stratford street with a radio station mug out for tips

- Finishing a verse in the booth because the song needed one

- Wanting a lyric to feel uncomfortable on purpose

- Mixing everyone's taste into one playlist, and why that matters

This episode includes an open conversation about mental health.

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Two of them sit down and reverse engineer an entire life for a character who was never named, never spoke, and appears in a film for about fifteen seconds. It should not work as well as it does.

Ethan Henry is a friend of the show who worked as a background actor as a teenager, appearing in the horror film Never Knock and in the DC series Titans.

Ethan opens up about his mother signing him, his brother and his sister up with a talent agency, and how the whole thing worked from a roster and a phone call. He talks about an overnight shoot from nine at night until six in the morning on a real residential street with people trying to sleep, and the very loud scene that made all the kids on set jump. He gets candid about playing two separate characters in the same film in different costumes, and about the moment he pointed out a continuity problem to a director who actually took the note. Then he and McAuley spend a long stretch inventing an entire backstory for a character who was never given a name, working out what he would be doing now, whether he ever got help, and whether the second appearance is secretly the same person coming back to face it. Ethan also talks about waking at half four for a shoot at a school standing in for a college, being split into two groups on the bleachers, and the strange feeling of nobody at school believing any of it happened.

What comes up:

- How a kid actually gets signed and booked for background work

- An overnight shoot on a street full of people trying to sleep

- Giving a director a continuity note and being taken seriously

- Inventing a whole life for a character with no name

- Four thirty in the morning, and nobody at school believing him

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A stroke closed one career and opened a completely different one, and this conversation follows the whole route into the games industry, including five or six unpaid years and a bar bill he thought would get him fired.

Corey Andress is the head of global community at 2K Sports, previously at EA, responsible for the relationship between millions of players and the studios building the games they play.

Corey opens up about the pandemic year that pushed people into games in numbers nobody planned for, including a stepfather who had never owned a console, and about what shutting down a studio does to the work of making one. He talks about a high school basketball coach who never once gave him a pat on the back and made him run until he threw up, and why he still asks his managers to be harsh with him. He gets candid about the method he built with nothing, going through the credits of video games, finding those names on Twitter, and messaging them with real feedback until someone answered. Corey walks through five or six years as an unpaid consultant flying down to EA on his own vacation time, and the day someone in leadership asked why they were not simply paying him. He also reflects on the night in Los Angeles where a famous athlete left early and he was the most important person left at the table, and on what changes the first time you have to trust somebody else to do the work.

What comes up:

- The health scare that ended a police career before it started

- Mining game credits to find people worth messaging

- Six years of unpaid work before anyone offered him a job

- The bar bill he thought would get him fired

- What actually changes when you become the leader

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A long, unhurried conversation with no promotional angle attached to it, which is how it gets to a working artist explaining why he deliberately refuses to profit from his own pictures.

Lake Markham is a self-taught photographer, musician and writer based in Nashville, who records as Pineapple Tours, tends bar part time, and is finishing a novel about the years he spent in Texas.

Lake talks about the book on photography that gave him language for something he had already been feeling, the idea that a still image is simultaneously finished and somehow still alive. He explains how it started with an iPhone 4 at eighteen, moved to a mirrorless camera in college, stopped entirely when he moved to Texas, and came back in 2020 when he realised he had been feeding a career instead of the work. There is a straight answer about training, about the courses and masterclasses being sold to beginners, and about what he thinks those are actually for. Lake describes going back through seven years of his own archive to choose the small handful of images he would want to outlive him, and what he noticed about himself in the process. He also gets into the photographer he found years after unknowingly working in the same style, another one who shuts down whole streets for a single frame, the years his band spent headlining rooms, and the two books he would name if forced to pick.

What comes up:

- The book that gave him language for what a photo is

- Choosing which of his own pictures should outlive him

- Why he prices prints at cost, on purpose

- Finding a famous photographer who was already shooting his style

- The novel he has been circling since he left Texas

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He grew up on the same little league teams as people who are now watched by hundreds of millions, and worked for the channel himself, and the most interesting part of this conversation is the reason he walked away from it.

Zach Hallow is a musician and full-time missionary who worked for MrBeast, and who grew up in Greenville, North Carolina alongside several of the crew.

Zach opens up about being born in Florida, his father packing a bag and moving the family to North Carolina on what he describes as a calling, and the Greenville little league where he met almost everyone who would later be famous. He talks about playing on the same team as two of them for four years, and about a certain someone being the biggest kid in the league because he hit his growth spurt first. He gets candid about switching from baseball to basketball in high school, about a month of drum lessons he quit for baseball, and about the executive chef title he held at a smoothie chain for minimum wage, which mostly involved putting sandwiches in an oven. He speaks openly about growing up in church while none of it landing in a real way, thinking his faith was mental assent rather than anything that could touch the actual world, and the conference where that changed for him. Zach also answers listener questions about the crew, about the noises and made-up phrases his friends have picked up from him, and about the moment his brother's video went everywhere.

What comes up:

- A family that moved states on a decision, not a job offer

- The little league team that turned into an internet empire

- Telling an employer at the interview that he would be leaving

- Growing up in church without any of it landing

- Listener questions, including the one about being somebody's brother

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Recorded early, before most of this crew became recognisable, and it stays on the parts that never make it into a video, including what public recognition genuinely feels like from the inside.

Chris Tyson has appeared in MrBeast videos since the very first upload in November 2015, and this early conversation covers the years before that, from a private school of about a hundred and fifty people to a network technician job that ended with one phone call.

Chris talks about a first channel started two years before Jimmy's, now permanently locked because the password is gone, and about what genuinely made a group of fourteen year olds want to record themselves playing games. There is an honest account of a networking degree, months spent fixing computers for people who had unplugged them and for companies who had been hacked, and the offer that made all of it stop. Chris explains how a school where the elementary, middle and high buildings shared one roof produced almost the entire early crew, and how the hiring later moved on to a Best Buy shift. The conversation also gets into what meeting people in public actually feels like from the inside, the reason a proposal had to happen at one specific restaurant, and a run of listener questions including a recurring case of mistaken identity that nobody has ever corrected.

What comes up:

- The channel that is locked away forever

- A networking degree, and the call that ended that career

- How one small school staffed the entire early operation

- What being recognised actually feels like

- The mistaken identity that keeps happening in public

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The designer behind MrBeast's forty million subscriber shirt explains how he learned the job with no school and no plan, and then goes somewhere a brand interview never would, into what he still cannot say with his own art.

Felix Schlater is an artist and video creator out of a film production and marketing background, best known for the merch he has designed for MrBeast, including the shirt from the forty million subscriber stream.

Felix opens up about stumbling onto Casey Neistat's vlogs, getting obsessed like everyone else does, and deciding to try it himself without knowing what he wanted to make. He talks about growing up in a house where paper and markers were always out and both parents were musicians, and how the drawing and the video work eventually had to be forced to work together. He gets candid about learning graphic design purely out of necessity, messing around in Photoshop and Illustrator until a client liked something, and learning a little more on every job. Felix walks through why art is one of the hardest things to break through in, why he gave up on animation after four or five months, and how you get a drawing onto a shoe without tape. He also reflects on the thing he still cannot answer, which is what he actually wants his art to say.

What comes up:

- The 40 million shirt, and the five designs that lost

- Learning graphic design with no school and no plan

- Why he quit animation after five months

- Cartoons, graffiti, and the style people keep describing back to him

- The message he is still trying to find

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