Podcast Summary

Podcast: Old School with Shilo Brooks

Host: Shilo Brooks for The Free Press
Guest: Nick Cave (musician, writer)
Episode: Nick Cave on ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’
Date: October 30, 2025

Episode Overview

In this introspective episode, Shilo Brooks dialogues with Nick Cave, Australian rock legend, about Carlo Collodi’s "The Adventures of Pinocchio." Far from Disney’s sanitized adaptation, the conversation explores themes of adventure, danger, parenthood, grief, creativity, and transformation found in the original tale. Through personal anecdotes and philosophical musings, Nick Cave reveals why Collodi's dark and unruly Pinocchio has accompanied him through every stage of life, offering guidance, comfort, and ever-changing meaning.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Enduring Power and Complexity of Pinocchio

• A Book for All Ages and Stages (01:30 - 02:50)

  • Nick Cave describes his lifelong relationship with Pinocchio: “I’ve read it as a child. I’ve read it as a teenager and as an adult, and recently, too… it always feels acutely relevant to me at any period in my life for one reason or another.”
  • The book resonates differently as life circumstances change; as a child, Cave related to Pinocchio, and as an adult, to Geppetto.

• Pinocchio: Not Just a Children’s Character (03:24 - 06:32)

  • Cave sharply distinguishes Collodi’s Pinocchio from Disney’s version, emphasizing his “lazy little, mendacious, work-shy, incorrigible little guy” qualities—simultaneously mischievous and endearing.
  • The story's depth is rooted in Pinocchio’s repetitive, almost willful mistakes, and his sincere but often derailed attempts at goodness.

  "He’s always wanting to be good, but he’s a puppet to his appetites… I really related to that character, you know, as a child who wants to go to school, who wants to read their ABC." – Nick Cave (04:26)

• Adventures as Education: The University of Life (06:32 - 10:46)

  • Shilo and Nick discuss how adventure, both outer and inner, serves as the crucible of Pinocchio’s education. Collodi’s world is “trying to kill Pinocchio constantly”—he’s “stabbed by assassins, hung by his neck,” making survival itself an education.
  • Yet Cave notes adventure’s double edge: “It’s actually Pinocchio’s love of danger, I think, that ultimately makes a man of him.” (09:29)

  "It’s his disobedience that makes him a man in a way... There is something that’s sort of widening to the personality about transgression and something perhaps narrowing to the personality about virtuousness where you just obey, obey, obey." – Nick Cave (09:37)

• Beyond Morality Tales: Depth of Message (10:46 - 13:13)

  • Brooks probes whether Pinocchio’s lesson is simply “be good” and “do your schoolwork.” Cave counters that “the great excitement of art lives” in exploring the distance “from the transgressive personality to the better end of their nature.”
  • Pinocchio’s failures and misadventures aren’t just misbehavior—they are the path to depth, creativity, and self-knowledge.

• The Value of Formal and Informal Education (14:43 - 15:55)

  • Cave credits not only life experience but also formal education: “A literature professor… sat me down with Crime and Punishment… that really opened me up to literature in general… If I hadn’t have had that guy… I don’t think I would have had the same relationship to literature.”

The Moral and Emotional Dynamics of the Story

• Lampwick and the Limits of Transgression (15:55 - 17:20)
  • Reflecting on Lampwick, Pinocchio’s fate-mate, Cave recognizes Collodi’s warning: “If you are simply transgressive, this can be your fate as well.” Lampwick’s tragic end is an object lesson in unchecked rebellion.

The Father and the Cycle of Loss & Redemption

• Geppetto’s Grief, Creation, and Reunion (20:11 - 25:11)

  • Brooks transitions to Geppetto, whom Cave sees as complex, flawed, vulnerable—a creator who “regrets the making of Pinocchio,” mirroring divine or parental ambivalence.
  • Geppetto’s long, unseen search for his son, climaxing in their meeting inside the belly of the shark, is steeped in subterranean grief. Cave relates this viscerally to his own experience of loss.

  “The absent child returns to basically parent the parent, if you like… This breaking down of what it is to be a father and son turns Pinocchio essentially into a boy rather than this puppet…” – Nick Cave (24:17)

• Selected Passage: The Reunion (25:22 - 28:21)

  • Cave reads a passage where Pinocchio, in the belly of the shark, finds Geppetto—a scene embodying joy, rescue, and the child saving the father.
  • He underscores its centrality: “This is the sort of pivotal moment of the whole book, when Pinocchio finds his father and must take responsibility for his father, rather than the other way around.”

Masculinity, Suffering, and Salvation

• Subterranean Grief and the Universal Soul-Conflict (29:32 - 34:42)

  • Cave discusses male vulnerability and the haunting paralysis of suffering. The story’s emotional force, he says, is the liberation of the “broken man by the innocent, loving child.”

  “A man is always reaching and fumbling towards and so often doesn’t reach that place.” – Nick Cave (32:08)

• The Maternal and the Blue Fairy (34:42 - 36:01)

  • The Blue Fairy, who sustains and redeems Pinocchio, embodies the nurturing, ever-returning presence of motherhood—even appearing as a ghost child: “She actually asks him to call her… she keeps returning to him throughout the story, this ghost of a mother… always there to save him.”

Who Should Read Pinocchio—and Why Now?

• For Whom Is Pinocchio Medicine? (36:01 - 38:02)

  • Cave suggests Pinocchio is “a religious text… with a deep spiritual heart,” a book for the grieving, for those lost or in distress, for anyone whose life feels beset by adversity.

  “It is nurturing for grieving people… It’s encouraging for people who don’t know whether they’re on the right path, that their lives seem to be constantly, you know, that the world seems to be constantly trying to kill them… so it’s a book for people in distress.” – Nick Cave (36:47)

• Literary Craft and Its Magic (38:38 - 42:26)

  • Brooks and Cave discuss Collodi’s stylistic mastery—simple language yielding wild, multi-layered tales. Cave admires its “realness and toughness,” the “messy” structure reflecting life’s unpredictability.

Creativity, Authorship, and the Ongoing Conversation

• On Creativity and Creation (43:55 - 48:07)

  • The book’s creative chaos “is a bit of a mess. There are things that return and characters that return… but it’s a big, long, rambling mess in a way. And that is beautiful in itself.”
  • Cave describes creative process: daily practice, patience, boredom followed by sudden inspiration (“epiphany sits adjacent to boredom”). The meaning of art emerges after creation—an evolving, ongoing revelation.

  “The thing I’ve noticed is that the epiphany sits adjacent to boredom… People say, look, I can’t write. I can’t. I sit there. I can’t write. Well, this is a necessary part of creation itself.” – Nick Cave (45:15)

• Relationship to One’s Creations (47:54 - 51:47)

  • Cave’s best works continue to “present themselves in different ways… an ongoing revealing of meaning… If they’re good, they haven’t just sort of died, you know, died a few days after birth, let’s say.”
  • Pinocchio is the same: “It continues to mean something else… in preparation for this interview, I read it again and it meant something else again. It was just a very, very beautiful, funny, a deeply entertaining story.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Meaning of Pinocchio:
  • "He’s not willfully rebellious...he’s just attracted to what is exciting and colorful and dangerous." – Nick Cave (12:24)
• On Creativity:
  • “You hone your skills… so you can do the best job when the idea arrives. But that initial sort of little epiphany… is the great mystery.” – Nick Cave (44:30)
• On Grief and Salvation:
  • “An absence can have its own saving presence… I’ve found that to be true.” – Nick Cave (29:39)
• On Rereading:
  • “Each time you sing them… [good songs] have the capacity to sort of present themselves in different ways… same with Pinocchio.” – Nick Cave (48:08)
• On Masculinity:
  • “A man is always reaching and fumbling towards and so often doesn’t reach that place.” – Nick Cave (32:08)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Lifelong Relationship with Pinocchio: 01:30 – 02:50
• Disney vs. Collodi’s Pinocchio: 03:24 – 06:32
• Adventure as Education: 06:32 – 10:46
• Depth Beyond Morality Tales: 10:46 – 13:13
• Lampwick’s Fate/Limits of Transgression: 15:55 – 17:20
• Geppetto, Creation, and Grief: 20:11 – 25:11
• Reading the Shark Passage: 25:22 – 28:21
• Masculinity & Suffering: 29:32 – 34:42
• The Blue Fairy and Motherhood: 34:42 – 36:01
• Who Should Read Pinocchio: 36:01 – 38:02
• Collodi’s Literary Craft: 38:38 – 42:26
• On Creativity: 43:55 – 48:07
• Relationship to One’s Creations: 47:54 – 51:47

Final Thoughts & Lightning Round

Cave recommends the Bible as a mind-changing text (52:10). He humorously nominates his own band, The Bad Seeds, as most underrated (52:27) and highlights Australia’s tradition of “cultural agitators” (52:41).

Reflecting on his "Red Hand Files" project, Cave speaks movingly about providing space for people to express grief that society urges them to move on from:

“The most beautiful aspect… is it’s allowed people the space to talk about people they love and have lost where the rest of the world… it’s time to move on. But there is a residual feeling that it’s very difficult to find anyone to talk to about that.” – Nick Cave (53:46)

Takeaways

• Pinocchio is a rich, complicated story for anyone navigating hardship, searching for meaning, craving adventure, confronting grief, or reflecting on fatherhood or creativity.
• Both imaginative chaos and moral ambiguity make the tale enduringly relevant, furnishing medicine for the soul precisely where life and art are most uncertain.
• Nick Cave’s personal connection reinforces that even a “children’s book” can be a lifelong companion and source of wisdom, renewed with every rereading.