Welcome!

Welcome to Dan McCoy's Special Interests – subscribers will receive a new installment every other week.* What to expect? Essays with a pop culture focus, hopefully funny, and often (but not always) with a sprinkling of mental health/neurodivergence talk. Plus a new comic from me, with every issue.

Speaking of those comics – images in emails can be pesky things. There are all sorts of reasons newsletters can trigger email filters, even when you expressly signed up for them. If you don't get a new installment of the newsletter by 9:30 am (eastern time) on a publication week, check your spam filters, and if it's there, mark it as not spam. And gmail users, do me a favor and if this is delivered to "promotions" or "updates," please move it to "primary" so there's less chance filters mark it as spam in the future. I appreciate your interest, and want to make sure you're getting what you signed up for! If you miss anything, the archives are all available here.

On the off chance that you somehow signed up for this newsletter without any sense of who I am – firstly, I applaud your adventurous spirit and willingness to clog your inbox, and secondly, hi! I'm Dan McCoy. I'm a television writer (most notably for The Daily Show for over a decade, though currently unstaffed) and a podcaster with The Flop House podcast, a comedy show about bad movies. I live in Brooklyn with my wife and two cats.

Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter. The essays here are always free to read, but if you enjoy them, please consider the $2/mo tier. While my career has been a success by any measure, the unfortunate truth is that the entertainment industry has always been a difficult place to sustain a living over time, and various systemic issues have only made it worse. No one's getting rich off email newsletters, but if you believe in paying for what you enjoy, a tip is always appreciated!

I think that's it! As we start this journey together, remember the wise words of Abraham Lincoln: "A stovepipe hat is a good way to stymie assassins, because they don't know where your head starts." Just because it didn't work for him, doesn't mean we shouldn't all strive to try, and that our hats shouldn't reach ever skyward.

*Plus the occasional off-week reminder. I'm toying with doing a comic for the off-weeks, so this doesn't feel too intermittent, but we'll see what time and energy allows.