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Congress, the Potency Problem, and How To!

The Gist

Wed Feb 18 2026

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Gist

Episode: Congress, the Potency Problem, and How To!
Date: February 18, 2026
Host: Mike Pesca (Peach Fish Productions)
Featured Segment: How To Be a DJ, Not a Playlist

Episode Overview

This episode begins with Mike Pesca’s signature incisive take on the stagnation of Congress and the outsized nature of executive power in U.S. politics. However, the main focus is a special presentation of Pesca’s new podcast project, “How To,” specifically the episode “How To Be a DJ, Not a Playlist.”

The segment explores what it truly means to be a DJ versus simply creating playlists and confronts the hurdles—real and perceived—facing aspiring DJs. Pesca brings together Tom Nash (a celebrated Australian DJ known as DJ Hooky, who DJs using prosthetic hooks) and Stu (an aspiring DJ and human rights lawyer) to discuss the pathway from musical enthusiast to actual DJ, and how to navigate the associated technical, psychological, and business challenges.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Nature of Congressional Power & Political Potency (00:52–10:00)

Pesca examines political stories about failed attempts at legislative change in Congress, concluding that despite its constitutional primacy, Congress today exerts minimal real power, especially compared to executive action.
He critiques the political media’s focus on the presidency over Congress, arguing for greater attention to state houses, governors, and the “first branch” of government.

2. Introducing “How To”: From Playlist to DJ (11:12)

Transition into “How To Be a DJ, Not a Playlist.”
Pesca recalls a viral social media debate: Can anyone be a DJ, or are most people simply selectors of music?
Introduces Stu, an aspiring DJ currently working as a lawyer, and the ways his love of music—and dissatisfaction with local club scenes—inspired him to want to create the experiences he missed.

3. From Aspiration to Action: Stu’s Journey (12:47–16:24)

Stu:
- Background in music journalism and artist management.
- Thrilled by transformative DJ nights in Ottawa—misses the magic in Montreal.
- Has curated playlists for events and weddings but sees a gap between that and “real DJing.”
- Barriers: learning the technical skills, getting a foot in the door at venues, and distinguishing himself in a crowded field.

4. The Realities of DJing: Tom Nash’s Perspective (17:04–19:18, 21:58–23:40)

Tom Nash/DJ Hooky:
- Lost his arms and legs to illness as a teen; DJs with prosthetic hooks.
- First DJ set was in front of 500 people with no technical knowledge: “I found that was the best place to learn was in the deep end... I made a whole bunch of mistakes... and most of the crowd didn’t even look twice.” (19:18)
- Asserts that DJing is not about being the center of attention, but a piece of the vibe; the crowd cares more about the experience than technical perfection.
- Most people romanticize DJing without reckoning with the marketing, business logistics, and hustle needed.
- “Technical ability, I think it’s...a distraction in the beginning. The real way that you’re going to get good enough is going out and doing it...Get out of the bedroom.” (20:46)

5. Is DJing a Meritocracy? (23:59)

Tom Nash on DJing vs. Other Arts:
- “No, in fact, it’s the complete opposite. There’s more daylight between a very good DJ and unwielding failure than there is within something like a guitarist...” (23:59)
- Recognition comes more from understanding what the crowd wants than from technical virtuosity.

6. Defining the DJ: What Matters? (25:42–28:45)

Addresses the misconception that technology or lack of traditional hand-based skills disqualify someone as a “real DJ.”
- Tom Nash: “If you can’t respond in real time, you’re not a good DJ.” (25:48)
- On beat-matching and syncing: “If somebody’s enjoying...using a particular technology, who cares?...It doesn’t matter how you get there.” (26:38)
- On disability and technique: “I use four prosthetics to navigate the world...so I DJ as well...But really not that much of a hurdle.” (27:49)

7. Skill vs. Show: The Crowd Connection (31:28–35:05)

Stu asks about the balance between song selection and entertainment/charisma.
Tom Nash: “Your job is kind of to rev up the crowd a little bit, to have that kind of charisma...There’s a bias towards thinking that the more technically adept you are, the better experience you’ll provide. And I don’t think that’s always the case...” (32:16)
- Suggests a strategy: play two crowd favorites for every new song you want to introduce.

8. The Business of DJing and Building a Brand (35:49–38:48)

Tom Nash demystifies entry into the DJ world:
- “Just pick a name and put it on a poster and then go. This is a completely unregulated industry.”
- Advice: build community first, perhaps by bringing in established DJs and sliding yourself in as support, or develop an online following before launching events.

9. Marketing, Mindset, and Overcoming Self-Doubt (39:38–45:53)

On confidence and regret:
- Tom: “Regret is not something you could really avoid. It’s something that you choose. So you’re choosing between the regret of having tried but failing, or...never having tried. Which one could you live with more?” (42:36)
- “Nobody cares about your life as much as you do...all of the suffering...is happening in your head.” (44:36)
- Encourages embracing risk, but advises against “burning your boats”; keeping a day job allows for more upside and less downside risk.

10. War Stories & Pitfalls (46:40–49:40)

Tom recounts nightmare gigs, including security brawls and technical flubs, illustrating that resilience and error-correction are key.

11. Mistakes and Practical Tips (48:32–50:54)

Biggest mistakes: forgetting to listen to what the crowd actually wants.
Practical marketing ideas: start a YouTube channel documenting the journey of organizing and playing your first event.

12. Social Scenes & Authenticity (51:11–52:45)

Tom rejects the stereotype of DJs as “douchey”: “I find it a really weak attribute to have in common with somebody—oh, we both stand in front of DJ decks and press buttons, we should hang out...No, I relate to people on completely different levels.” (51:34)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Tom Nash: “Technical ability, I think it’s...a distraction in the beginning...You learn better from being in the situation than...in your bedroom.” (20:46)
Tom Nash: “There’s more daylight between a very good DJ and unwielding failure than...a guitarist...What people really regard or love about a DJ often has very little to do with their skill and talent.” (23:59)
Tom Nash: “If somebody’s enjoying...using a particular technology, who cares?...It doesn’t matter how you get there.” (26:38)
Tom Nash: “Just pick a name and put it on a poster and then go. This is a completely unregulated fucking industry.” (35:42)
Tom Nash on regret: “You’re choosing between the regret of having tried but failing or the regret of never having tried. Which one could you live with more?” (42:36)

Timestamps for Key Segments

00:52 – Congressional power, political inertia, and executive action
11:12 – What separates a playlist from a DJ set? Introducing Stu and Tom Nash
19:18 – Tom Nash’s first DJ gig and approach to learning by doing
23:59 – Discussion: Is DJing a meritocracy?
25:42 – Technology, disability, and authenticity in modern DJing
31:28 – Choosing music vs. showmanship: What actually matters?
35:49 – Creating a DJ persona and brand; community-building advice
42:36 – On regret and the mindset needed to take risks
46:40 – Nightmarish DJ experiences and surviving them
48:32 – Mistakes to avoid, and listener/crowd engagement
51:34 – The DJ scene, friendships, and authenticity

Conclusion

The episode blends thoughtful commentary on political gridlock with an engaging, practical, and deeply human conversation about aspiration, creativity, and overcoming perceived barriers. With generous advice from Tom Nash and honest questions from Stu, listeners are treated to a smart deconstruction of what it really means to be a DJ in the modern era—talent, showmanship, branding, and, above all, the willingness to just get out there and try.

Takeaway:
Being a DJ is less about the gear, or even the skill, and more about taking initiative, reading the room, making mistakes, and learning in real-time. If you want to DJ, “pick a name and put it on a poster and then go.” (35:42)

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Transcript

Mike Pesca (0:00)

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Mike Pesca (0:52)

It's Wednesday, February 18, 2026. From Peach Fish Productions, it's the Gist. I'm Mike Pe the New York Times front page had an interesting story today. I have it right here. Wasn't a real front page. It wouldn't sound like this. Budget cuts from Trump were stymied. He wanted $163 billion in deep spending cuts, but this was not a priority or even a possibility to even its most loyal House members. Representatives who would never utter a bad word about Trump in public, but who, under the quasi cover of bureaucracy, did not go forward with the 54% cut to the EPA, the 40, 44% cut to HUD, the 41% cut to the CDC. Maybe you could tell yourself a story of oh, this is the legislative branch asserting itself, if not regular order than normal values. But then I read another story in Politico about the short lived lived Republican effort to get something going on health care spending. What a story. Why Congress failed to reach an Obamacare deal. I mean, maybe because Obama is right there in the name, but it was about mostly moderate Republican Brian Fitzpatrick and he looked at the evaporation of subsidies for 24 million people, including many of his Pennsylvania constituents, and say, well, that's bad policy and certainly bad politics for someone in a swing district like me. And so he had a bipartisan bill and it went nowhere. The theme is that things do not change in Congress. They do not change toward a momentum filled right wing budgetary push symbolized by Elon Musk and a chainsaw. They do not change via the most moderate and sensible worrying of vulnerable members of a Republican district. They just do not change. What does change is through executive action. Here I point you to other stories which don't sound like this because I don't have the paper in front of me. But you've read all the stories about Trump and and the administration effectively gutting environmental protections. Congress doesn't have to defund the EPA by half. The administration can defang the EPA by more of that. Don't believe me? Look at the mileage values on the next cars you're going to buy. There are none. Just however they work, they work or not Brings me to an upcoming conversation I'm going to have about the midterms. The Democrats. They're likely to take back the House. There may be within striking distance of the Senate. I'm skeptical. And then what? Impeachments that cannot lead to conviction hearings with as much lasting effect as the ballyhooed and well produced January 6th commission. So I've always said that we spend way too much time in politics focusing on obsessing over the presidency. And I do mean that in terms of state houses and governors mansions. But in national politics, I have not seen one example of the first branch spoken of in Article 1 of the Constitution having not just primacy but any degree of real potency on the show today, you are in for a treat. I don't do this all the time, but I am giving my show over to another podcast entirely. Now, to be fair, it is also my podcast. It is called How To. It will not be appearing in the Gist feed regularly. You know how I do that with not even mad and funny you should mention. No, that's not how it's going to work with How To, But I do want to prime the pump on this new project I'm excited about. The first episode is how to Be a dj, not a playlist. That's what I'm playing for you here. I got the idea from the Subway Takes guy. Someone said most deejays are really just playlists. And then I found a wannabe deejay and an actual dj and they both disagree in an interesting, exciting way. And even if you don't care about being a dj, this really is an episode about overcoming, if not hurdles, perceptions of hurdles, the things we put in our way and skills we think we have to acquire and reasons that we tell ourselves, don't do it, you can't do it. I have Tom Nash, an actual dj, really successful Australian DJ who happens not to have hands. He has hooks, prosthetic limbs. He has prosthetic limbs on his legs. And he's had a whole life achieving amazing things. And on the show you're going to hear he talks a bit about that life and his time as part of a DJ tandem called Starfuckers that lit the Australia club scene on fire. Or at least the roof was on fire, which from my limited DJ understanding is mandatory. That's the mandatory part of the domicile that must go on fire if you're a good dj. So this is the whole of the show of how to if you go over to the how to feed, this upcoming show is all of what you'll hear, but that's it. No more. I might mention it because, you know, it informs my life and my experience, but I'm not playing it in the just feed. It'll just be its own feed. And the next episode they will air every Tuesday. It's Dan Savage who shares his desire to emigrate to the Netherlands as part of a throuple. 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Tom Nash (19:18)

So the first time I ever djed was in front of 500 people at a nightclub that I started. I had never actually DJed before. Before I got up, I got my friend to tell me where the play button was and I just took it from there. I found that that was the best place to learn was in the deep end, right, because it is totally sync or swim. What I didn't anticipate was how little people cared about my technical ability. I made a whole bunch of mistakes while I was up there and most of the crowd didn't even look twice. And there was a realization in that, which was they're not there for me. They're there for the club. They're there to, you know, meet up with their friends or to be seen there or to, you know, have drinks or to hit on the opposite sex or, you know, take drugs or whatever they're doing. Like, you are a complete afterthought. And I think the problem that most DJs fall into is thinking that they're the center of the whole club and they're completely not. You're just one part of a multifunctioning system. And so I think what we did was we. We became more context creators. So when we started our nightclub, we made sure that we paid attention to all of the little details of it. Trying to get the decorations right. We would do a theme. We would have people to greet you at the door that were friends that you knew. We would have the bar menu sorted out. You know, we would sort of decide on who else was DJing, things like that. So you take everything as a whole to get people to a nightclub, and then you realize how little they care about all of the other shit. And what happens is you keep doing that every week, and then eventually you actually get better. So when we started this club, I couldn't DJ at all. Within, I think, six months, we were being asked to DJ at other nightclubs, which was insane, right? Because we're like, why would anyone pay us to do this at another place? And then eventually you just get better and better because you get thrown in the deep end. So technical ability, I think it's. Honestly, in the beginning, it's a bit of a. It's a distraction, you know what I mean? Because those things can be learned on the job. And you could spend your entire life in your bedroom learning technical skills and constantly thinking to yourself, I'm not good enough yet. I'm not good enough yet. But the real way that you're going to get good enough is going out and doing it right. You learn better from being in this situation than you do being in your bedroom. So my one recommendation would be just get out of the bedroom. Because nobody knows that you're DJing in the bedroom unless they're watching this podcast, which is even more reason to get out and do it.

Tom Nash (32:16)

Yeah. Okay, so your question, what is the other person doing? The answer is nothing. Well, in some scenarios, right. So I play quite regularly as a. As a duo with my closest friend. Him and I started our nightclub together and we, because we play as a duo, kind of like as a band almost, we play back to back. So when he's mixing a track, I'm waiting. That's literally all I'm doing. But when you're in the, in the instance that you're waiting, your job is kind of to rev up the crowd a little bit, to have that, that kind of charisma. And then you go back and forth. There can be some times where, you know, he's mixing from one track to another and I'm playing like an acapella or something over what's happening, or vice versa. But more often than not, we find a lot of these techniques for our style of DJing a little bit distracting. And that kind of brings me to another point, which is you. I think there's a bias towards thinking that the more technically adept you are, the better experience you'll provide people. And I don't think that's always the case because I see DJs that have learned to be extremely technically adept and they are able to do a bunch of like, loop stacks and effects and all sorts of bullshit like this. And they get so in their head about what they're doing that the crowd doesn't care and all they're hearing is like a really great technical loop and an acapella over that and blah, blah, blah. So they're not, they're not utilizing the balance between what you can do and what the crowd actually wants. At the end of the day, it's a supply and demand question, right? Like in. In so much as it would be the same thing as going into a nightclub and prescribing a set of songs that nobody knows and nobody likes, but you think they should like, in that sort of didactic or prescriptive manner and just playing one after the other. Other people are going to leave or they're not going to show up, right? So if your job is to sort of introduce people to new music, the best way I always think of it is you play two songs that people want to hear and you play one that you think that they would like in between it, right? Such that two thirds of your set is what you know people want to hear, and you pepper in new music as you go, and then you just watch their reactions and if they really enjoy something after hearing it for the first time, that's a big plus. If they enjoy it after hearing it the second time, you know you're onto something good, and then you just kind of craft your set as you go along. And so I've always thought about it, like, imagine you're driving a car, but you're holding one side of the wheel and the crowd is holding the other side of the wheel. The direction in which the car goes is kind of decided by both of you. And it's a bit of a push and pull, but, like, understanding the relationship between the audience and you is the most important thing. And if you're doing a whole bunch of technical bullshit that they don't really care about, stop doing it. Just play the music. That's what they're there for.

Tom Nash (36:55)

Sure, yeah. But it's the same principle. I mean, just identify false assumptions that people think. Like, you know, I always say that when people wanted to become DJs back in 2006 when I started, everybody thought that you had to acquire all of this equipment and annoying hats and learn how to DJ for years and you know, have contacts with club bookers and stuff like that. We just remove all of that shit and just start your own brand. You don't even actually these days with technology you don't really have to invest in any. So the best thing that we ever did was we never bought a club, right. We had nights at clubs where we would take the door and they would take the bar. Right. So your downside is very low. But you're, as Nassim Taleb would put it, exposure to positive upside optionality is higher. Right? So you've got more to gain than you do to lose out of the scenario, right? And then it's all about branding. What you could do these days, what I always thought would be a great idea is actually create that community online and then start some sort of a waiting list and say, you know, we've got, we've got DJ Fuck Face, you know, coming over from Toronto, Great brand. In the next few months, we're going to do a first release of tickets that are going to be half price. If you would like to jump on board for this, please give us your email. Right? And then once you get a critical mass of people, let's say 500 emails or something like that, then, then start the night because you know, you've got a guaranteed maybe 100 sales or something like that. Because not everybody that joins the waiting list is going to buy a ticket because they might not be able to go, but you might get one in five, right? If you can sell 100 tickets to a club, then choose the venue accordingly. You, you can already approach them and say, Look, I've sold 100 or 200 tickets. This is how many people were guaranteeing. They're usually about 20, $30 ahead on spend on average. This is how much you can expect behind the bar. I would like the whole door, please go market, become DJ now.