Politics | Recovery | Current Obsessions
Some things sit on the edge of your desk—or on your conscience—until it’s almost too late. Past Due is a show about those things.
It launches today.
I’m co-hosting it with Open Mike Eagle, and our first episode is a conversation with Paul F. Tompkins about the difference between “success” and “stability,” the shifting ground in Hollywood, and why he continues to do comedy even when it means contemplating a Station-11-style troubadour life. It’s the perfect conversation to kick off the show, because it was born from the same frustrations and contradictions so many of us carry—but don’t always say out loud.
My idea for Past Due came from loving what I do—but being haunted by the sense that it doesn’t love me back.
As I put it in my pitch to our producer Andrew:
Past Due is about surviving in an economy that doesn’t want you to.
We chose the name because it speaks to all the themes we want to unpack: the bills, of course—but also the late realizations, the late reactions, and especially in creative fields, the late recognition.
This show is past due for me because I’ve spent way too much time in the last few years—really, going back longer—believing that any difficulty I have piecing together a steady income is my fault. If I just worked harder, pitched better, needed less, or had more discipline, I’d have the stability I used to.
But that’s mostly bullshit. Maybe it’s all bullshit. Some of the hardest-working people I know are broke. And the grifters on the front page, getting something for nothing, give grifting a bad name—because a real con man hustles, too.
“Just hustle harder” is a lie that keeps us quiet: about money, about burnout, about how the system profits from our solitary struggle. Precarity becomes a source of shame—keeping us from sharing information or forming communities (much less unions) to help each other. That silence—especially around perceived failure—perpetuates the myth that markets are meritocracies, success is earned, failure is personal, debt is a moral stain, and money is the best way to measure a person’s worth.
With Past Due, we are breaking that silence. Mike and I have done what we can to de-stigmatize mental health. We both believe that talking openly about financial anxieties and economic realities is the next stigma to break.
Each week, we talk with hard-working, successful people about what’s really happening behind the scenes—and how they cope with living at the intersection of “making it big” and “what’s my back-up plan?”
We’re interested in:
- The structures of financial exclusion and underpayment
- The difference between victories and actual sustainability
- The tension between loving the work and getting paid what you deserve
- How you kept your head when you got that first huge check
- And how you kept the lights on when you didn’t
The creative economy is the gig economy; this sort of work promises autonomy, but often delivers isolation. Seventy-eight percent of digital platform workers report little or no human contact during their jobs. Past Due is a response to that: a place to talk to each other, not just hustle harder alone.
This isn’t an advice podcast. It’s not a collection of “how I made it and you can too” stories. It’s a support system. A permission slip. A little breathing room in a world that tells you to hold your breath and call it grit.
- Watch the first episode on YouTube or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. (Both YouTube and the RSS are legacy feeds from earlier shows—Past Due really is new.)
- And if you’d like to support the show more directly, our Patreon is still open—yes, that’s your second reminder.
Listen to us while you’re re-sending invoices or staring at an inscrutable client ask. Watch us over your ramen. We’re not a polished example of how to do it—we’re right there next to you, still figuring it out.
So: the first episode is live. I hope you’ll give it a listen. And if something in it feels familiar—I hope you’ll stick around.
—Ana
P.S. More hustle:
- My latest TNR piece will get you through a pretty long commute: “How the Radical Right Captured the Culture.”
- Over on Space the Nation (Another Patreon!), we’re deep into our Andor resistance arc—because I like sci-fi with a side of economic collapse (and vice versa).