Afleveringen
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Today’s episode is guest-hosted by Sarah Fay, creative writing professor at Northwestern University, former interviewer at The Paris Review, devoted serializer, and lover of all things Substack. Her Substack Writers at Work helps creative writers use Substack to bolster their careers, including how to serialize their writing. She’s currently serializing her new memoir Cured on Substack through 2023.
—Sophia Efthimiatou, Head of Writer Relations
**
You may recognize the names of today’s guests: Mary Trump, E. Jean Carroll, and Jennifer Taub. Their new venture is a groundbreaking Substack: Backstory Serial. The content may surprise you—though it shouldn’t, and I’ll explain why during the podcast. Backstory Serial features their romance novel The Italian Lesson, which is bringing serial novels and Substack fiction into the mainstream.
The Italian Lesson is a serialization, meaning it appears in your inbox, chapter by chapter, installment by installment. The plot of The Italian Lesson is simple: An American woman moves to a small town in Tuscany and opens a café. Then, as Mary put it in an interview, “some stud walks in and turns out he’s a prince.”
Serialization has a long tradition on Substack—I guide writers on how to do it on my Substack, Writers at Work—but no one has had the success that these three have and there are very good reasons why, which we’ll go into.
The three women play different roles in the writing of the novel: Mary is the author, E. Jean fields comments from their vibrant community and plays the role of romance-novel fact-checker, and Jen acts as editor.
In case you don’t know Mary, E. Jean, and Jen, a bit of background:
Mary Trump describes herself as a mom, writer, liberal progressive, and pro-democracy American. She’s the author of Too Much is Never Enough about her uncle (yes, that Donald Trump) and The Reckoning. Her Substack The Good in Us features her commentary on culture, politics, and music (from Tina Turner to Aimee Mann)—plus pet pictures and a community of subscribers who share her vision to use kindness and empathy to ensure that America remains a democracy.
E. Jean Carroll’s esteemed Substack, Ask E. Jean, is the longest-running advice column in American publishing. It ran in Elle Magazine until E. Jean accused Donald Trump of assault and sued him for defamation, after which Elle fired her. She’s since made Substack her home. Her wit, smarts, sass, and empathy are unrivaled. She’s also the author of the book What Do We Need Men For?—part satirical treatise in the tradition of Jonathan Swift and part rollicking narrative.
Jennifer Traub is a one-woman force against corruption in the United States. In her book, Big Dirty Money, she takes on white-collar criminals. She’s also the author of Other People’s Houses. Jen is a law professor, an activist, and the host of the Booked Up podcast. In her firey—and also fun—Substack Money & Gossip, she clarifies what the rest of us miss or don’t make sense of in the financial and legal world.
In our conversation, we talk about everything from why the media has underestimated them as novelists, how they came up with The Italian Lesson’s unique form, why they chose to serialize on Substack, knitting patterns, cocktail recipes, the email novel, and what love really is.
—Sarah Fay
https://www.backstoryserial.com/
Show notes
* Subscribe to Backstory Serial on Substack
* Find Mary Trump, Jen Taub, and E. Jean Carroll on Twitter, and Mary, Jen and E. Jean on Instagram, and listen to Jen’s podcast Booked Up with Jen Taub
* Big Dirty Money by Jennifer Taub and books by Mary L Trump
* [03:31] Writing a romance novel
[05:19] Meeting on Zoom
[07:58] Choosing to serialize
[13:20] Mary’s introduction to writing
[16:32] Building a community
[22:00] Bringing the book to life
[27:27] Collaborating together
[32:30] Subverting traditional publishing
[38:49] Ideas for the next novel
**
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hamish McKenzie, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, and content production by Hannah Ray. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
Taylor Lorenz, a tech culture reporter for the Washington Post, has been both observer and participant in an internet culture that has been emerging since the early 2010s, a period of history that has seen the rise of massive social media platforms, the decay of traditional media, and the increasing power of online influencers. That culture can be delightful and enriching, and it can be savage and soul-destroying.
Of course, anyone who spends much time on Twitter knows that Taylor herself has had ample experience with both sides of that. She is a lightning rod in the online culture wars, loved and supported as much as she is reviled and targeted. She is a frequent subject of critiques from her ideological opponents, a cast that includes such figures as Tucker Carlson, Jake Paul, and Glenn Greenwald, to name a few.
And how does she take that? Well, it’s just how life is online, she says.
“What people do on the internet is they build up other people into characters online, and it’s like this crazy soap opera every day.” Her enemies turn her into a character, she says, because it gives them opposition. “It’s just classic influencer tactics, right? You are going to make this other YouTuber into a villain and you’re going to have this feud and then that galvanizes your audience.”
And yet she remains a believer in technology as a force for good. “It’s cool to see people use the internet for progress and to bring more freedom to all of us,” she says. “I think that’s what the goal of the internet should be. It should be a liberating force.”
In this conversation, we discuss the recent history of the internet, social media, and the rise of influencers—of which Taylor is one. Aside from high-profile reporting jobs at The Atlantic, the New York Times, and the Post, she has also amassed huge followings on TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram. In October, her first book will be published. Its title couldn’t be more appropriate: Extremely Online.
https://taylorlorenz.substack.com/
Taylor’s recommended reads:
Show notes
* Subscribe to Taylor Lorenz’s newsletter on Substack
* Find Taylor on Twitter
* Her upcoming book, Extremely Online
[04:54] Becoming a journalist
[08:20] Tumblr and blogging
[13:05] The “f**k yeah” era of Tumblr
[18:14] Tabloid news
[22:19] Developing a new beat
[26:56] Gaining prominence
[32:13] Dealing with online harassment
[38:57] The state of the media
[42:05] Ephemerality and the internet
[53:14] Being a techno-optimist
[1:01:19] Extremely Online book
[1:05:50] Taylor on her recommended reads
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hamish McKenzie, with audio engineering by Seven Morris and content production by Hannah Ray. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Even among politics and media junkies, few people had heard the name Richard Hanania before 2020. But then, as the pandemic intensified online tribalism, the political scientist emerged with a provocative analysis that carried the headline “Why Is Everything Liberal?” The piece, which explores why almost every major institution in the U.S. leans left, did the rounds on Twitter, announcing Richard’s arrival as a distinctive new voice in American politics discourse. Soon enough, he followed it up with a series of other pithily headlined posts that demonstrated a streak of contrarianism that variously managed to win fans and challenge readers from across the political spectrum: “Liberals Read, Conservatives Watch TV,” “Why Do I Hate Pronouns More Than Genocide?”, and “Conservatives Win All the Time,” to name a few.
Richard, who has a law degree from Columbia and a political science degree from UCLA, doesn’t hesitate to describe himself as anti-woke. He traces wokeness’s legal underpinnings to civil rights law, which he believes has undermined the integrity of public institutions. He expands on this thesis in his upcoming book, The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Trump of Identity Politics. Coming during a time of intense social justice activism, these views have won Richard strong support among conservative readers, but he’s not afraid of pissing off those same people. In recent times, for instance, he has published essays that argue in favor of diversity and praise the quality and honesty of mainstream media.
In this conversation, we examine contrarianism, conservatism, “enlightened centrism” (in praise of intellectuals whose views don’t always easily line up with “left” or “right”), and the future of the culture wars—the perfect fodder for a man who is staking out a reputation as one of the boldest voices in our pugilistic political discourse.
https://www.richardhanania.com/
Richard’s recommended reads:
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/
https://www.slowboring.com/
https://trevorklee.substack.com/
https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/
https://cremieux.substack.com/Show notes
Subscribe to Richard Hanania’s Newsletter on Substack
Find Richard on Twitter
Richard’s post mentioned: “Why the Media Is Honest and Good,” “Why Is Everything Liberal?”
[03:29] Getting started on Substack
[05:40] Growing up
[11:07] Working in academia
[12:01] Writing about wokeness
[16:26] Richard’s audience
[21:33] The main goal of work
[25:40] On Trump and today’s politics
[29:37] Mainstream media
[36:35] Being a “bit of a troll”
[39:53] Politics and trans issues
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hamish McKenzie, with audio engineering by Seven Morris and content production by Hannah Ray. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
At a dinner party Substack hosted in San Francisco last week, I found myself sitting next to Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired magazine and former publisher of the Whole Earth Review. We were talking about the capital of the world. It no longer felt that New York was it, I was telling him, though it had not been replaced by another physical city either. Rather, the world now had only one, digital, capital. If you made it there, you’d make it anywhere.
He agreed, with one amendment. “Silicon Valley is the place least resistant to new ideas today,” he said, which was the original point of the world capital as a destination. I had recently interviewed Nadia Bolz-Weber for this podcast, and her words were still fresh in my mind. I imagined her response to this would be, “The problem is, it is also the place most resistant to old ideas.”
Nadia embodies the old and the new. She is a striking figure: tall and lean, with a thick mane of salt-and-pepper hair and a penetrating blue gaze. She is covered in colorful tattoos of Christian mythology and exudes the warmth of wisdom. She practices one of the oldest traditions, that of the preacher. The texts she “wrestles with,” as she puts it, are centuries-old. Her task is to bring them to the here and now, to the self. They become personal to her because, in order to interpret them, she must first study herself anew.
Nadia has been an alcoholic, a standup comic, and a sinner. She has been a pastor, a prison preacher, and a saint. She talked about what these qualifiers mean to her, how she understands the concept of faith, the relationship between poetry and prayer, and the danger of innovating without consideration for tradition.
One of her observations echoed what Suleika Jaouad and Diego Perez emphasized during their own exchange a couple of weeks ago, when they spoke about the significance of honesty in writing. Nadia reinforced that message when she said:
“Some people make a living off of being sort of influencers, who say things that might kind of be true, but they never feel honest. They feel like they’re ignoring a darker side of our hearts. I always want somebody to really acknowledge the sort of more shadowy contours of my human heart, and then talk about where some grace or hope or forgiveness is. Because I feel like when those things are ignored, it just fills me a little bit with despair, even though they’re telling me something really chipper. I like it when writers or preachers are willing to be honest about their own struggles in a real way.”
This also brought to mind the conversation that Mike Solana and Ted Gioia had here on the Active Voice. As Ted put it, “There’s been an enormous crisis of trust, and certain voices are emerging and succeeding because they’ve been able to parlay that trust.”
What connects all of them is their allegiance to honesty, and the obligation they feel to deliver it to their audience.
https://thecorners.substack.com/
Show notes
Subscribe to The Corners by Nadia Bolz-Weber on Substack
Find Nadia on Twitter and Instagram
Nadia’s books
Francis Spufford’s book Unapologetic
“Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins
[02:00] The House for All Sinners and Saints
[06:18] The church after the pandemic
[10:18] The process of preaching to oneself
[12:54] Finding the Good News
[15:29] Nadia’s regrets
[21:00] On resurrection
[25:00] When we call out to God
[29:40] Being clear-eyed about being human
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hamish McKenzie, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, and content production by Hannah Ray. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
Both Suleika Jaouad and Diego Perez, who writes as Yung Pueblo, arrived at writing through adversity. Writing became a way of life when each was faced with death, a healing mechanism that became a craft.
When they met for the first time in person at our headquarters in San Francisco, they greeted each other with the enthusiasm of old friends reuniting. They fell into conversation with natural intimacy and comfort before we had a chance to press the “record” button and continued talking for another hour past the taping’s end. They were familiar with each other’s writing and eager to share their personal stories with each other, as in an attempt to forge a new friendship. As they spoke, they discovered just how parallel their paths had been, as well as new points of intersection in their philosophies.
Alchemizing pain into creativity is a recurring theme among writers. In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke famously wrote, “So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don’t know what work they are accomplishing within you?”
Suleika and Diego have made this alchemy their mission. They have created spaces—her The Isolation Journals and his Elevate with Yung Pueblo—where people can meet and turn their experiences into art. They foster and grow with their writing communities, and have invited them into their writing practice.
In this conversation, Suleika and Diego discuss each of their journeys to the “art-making stage,” how they turn confession into craft and protect their creative spaces while living in community, and their own advice to writers and poets of all backgrounds and ages.
https://theisolationjournals.substack.com/ https://yungpueblo.substack.com/
Show notes
* Subscribe to The Isolation Journals by Suleika Jaouad and Yung Pueblo by Diego Perez on Substack
* Find Suleika on Twitter, and Instagram, and Diego on Twitter, and Instagram
* Suleika’s book Between Two Kingdoms
* Diego’s poetry and prose books, Inward, Clarity & Connection, and The Way Forward, and Lighter
* [04:31] Suleika on starting journaling
* [06:09] Diego’s background* [08:29] Creativity as healing
* [10:50] Suleika on starting The Isolation Journals
* [13:51] Diego on writing with readers
* [16:16] The universe will take care of you
* [18:29] Suleika on finding painting
* [21:15] Suleika on responding to hard moments
* [25:43] Confronting mortality
* [29:13] The writing process
* [32:08] Art v social media
* [37:00] Writing on Substack and what’s next
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hamish McKenzie, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, and content production by Hannah Ray. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
At first glance, Mike Solana and Ted Gioia might not seem to have much in common. Mike, the publisher of the newsletter Pirate Wires, is very much a child of the internet, a strong proponent of the tech industry and scientific progress, with a career in venture capital (working in marketing) after a brief stint in book publishing. Ted, who writes The Honest Broker and has been a guest on The Active Voice before, is one of America’s greatest music critics, founder of the Jazz Studies program at Stanford University, and the author of 12 books. What they share is a deep love for words and their significance in shaping culture. And even though they will both deliver us the bad news about the latter’s collapse, there is an underlying optimism in their insistence on protecting it, from their own little corner.
This week we brought them together at Substack’s headquarters in San Francisco for a conversation on The Active Voice about maintaining our optimism at a time of neck-breaking technological change. What followed was a wonderful and wide-ranging jam session on everything from the disappearance of counterculture to the significance of trustworthy voices in the age of AI to the ongoing collapse of the media industry and the rise of something new from its ashes. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it!
We have another of these writer dialogues planned for a later episode and may do more of them depending on your feedback—so please let us know what you think in the comments.
https://tedgioia.substack.com/ https://www.piratewires.com/
Show notes
Subscribe to Pirate Wires by Mike Solana, and The Honest Broker by Ted Gioia, on Substack
Find Mike on Twitter, and Pirate Wires on Twitter and Instagram
Find Ted on Twitter, Instagram, and his website
Read Mike’s pinned tweet
[5:55] The changing media landscape
[12:10] Spotify’s algorithm
[16:32] Grimes and AI
[22:10] AI and writing
[25:10] What is “content”
[35:30] The counterculture
[45:00] Traditional publishing
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. This episode was produced by Sophia Efthimiatou and Hamish McKenzie, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, and content production by Hannah Ray. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
I met Robert Reich in his overstuffed corner office on U.C. Berkeley’s campus, housed in what looked to me like a midcentury villa that could double as a restaurant that sells speciality bratwurst. I was shown into Reich’s office by Heather Lofthouse, his collaborator and media partner, who pointed out a mahogany armchair by the window, just past some boxes overflowing with books. It was the chair he sat in while serving in Bill Clinton’s cabinet as Secretary of Labor in the 1990s. Naturally, I asked him to sit on it to pose for a photo (see it below!).
As well as being a leading academic and former government official—he also advised President Obama—Reich has published 18 books, produced and fronted a Netflix documentary, mastered Facebook and Twitter, and has a hugely successful Substack. He is, in short, a master communicator. But when I asked Reich, with our mics perched on a long table adjacent to his desk, how he thinks of himself—is he a writer?—he chose “educator.”
He has been teaching at universities (Harvard, Brandeis, Berkeley) for 40 years and today delivers his lectures to a room of 800 people. He sees his prolific media work (oh, by the way, he’s also a talented illustrator) as being in service of his mission to advance a progressive view of economics, to reduce inequality and, in his framing, stand up to bullies. He is, he says, responding in particular to the way power distorts America. “I saw how power was being abused and how people were being bullied in all sorts of ways,” he says. “If I didn’t do what I could to stop the bullying, then I failed.”
https://robertreich.substack.com/
Show notes
* Subscribe to Robert Reich on Substack
* Find Robert on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and his personal website
* Inequality Media
* It’s a Wonderful Life
* Robert Reich’s writer advice column on combining illustration and writing, for On Substack
[03:26] teaching at U.C. Berkeley
[05:54] Teaching over 40 years
[07:31 ] Young people today
[10:15] The need for humor in teaching
[15:36] Socialism for the rich
[18:45] The void of a working class party
[27:03] The reset
[31:16] Pressing the reveal code key
[32:32] A childhood protector murdered
[34:43] Democracy against the bullies
[37:26] Taking sustenance from family
[43:43] Talking to people who disagree with you
[46:30] Reaching beyond the bubble
[49:04] Being an “educator” and writing well
[50:12] Using multiple modes of thinking
[50:55] Getting older
[57:16] Worry is a waste of energy
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hamish McKenzie, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, and content production by Hannah Ray. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
When he’s about to hit publish on a take that he knows will catch some heat, Ethan Strauss feels like he is about to step off a high diving board. He’s scared, but he knows he will do it anyway.
“That, to me, feels good,” he says. “The entirety of the process and that particular catharsis feels good.”
Ethan writes about the intersection of sport and culture—especially when it comes to the NBA—on House of Strauss, where he also hosts a cult-favorite podcast. He made his name in sports media through covering the Golden State Warriors for ESPN and The Athletic (they’re also the subject of his book, The Victory Machine), but more recently he has become known for defying a silent consensus in his industry. Hence the wobbly knees on the diving board.
In August 2020, he wrote a piece analyzing the NBA’s ratings decline and wondered if it could, in part, be explained by the league’s social justice politics. That piece, coming at that time, won him some enemies. But he hasn’t backed off.
Ethan continues to explore positions that might otherwise get a sports writer cast out from polite society, whether it be an examination of Nike turning away from masculinity in its marketing, or talent agencies’ secret power over the NBA, or Kyrie Irving’s punishment for refusing to take a Covid vaccine.
The result? A body of work that can feel bracingly different, that often provokes, and that always creates room for thought—demonstrating that sports are so much bigger than the game on the field.
https://houseofstrauss.substack.com/
Ethan’s recommended reads:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/
https://www.blockedandreported.org/
https://wethefifth.substack.com/
https://nancyrommelmann.substack.com/
https://smokeempodcast.substack.com/
Show notes
Subscribe to Ethan’s Substack, House of Strauss
Find Ethan on Twitter
The clip Ethan discusses from Comedian with Jerry Seinfeld
Ethan’s book, The Victory Machine
[02:10] The horseshoe effect
[04:14] The sports and culture intersection
[12:15] Speaking out on the NBA’s declining viewership
[23:19] Having moral Tourette’s
[24:44] Ethan’s childhood
[28:09] Jumping off the diving board
[36:34] Twitter and conformity
[48:02] Ethan’s early career
[51:21] The Ricky Rubio story
[58:16] Covering the Golden State Warriors
[01:05:11] Being laid off
[01:09:27] Writing a book in lockdown
[01:14:49] Running an independent business
[01:21:05] Ethan’s recommended Substack writers
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
Alison Roman is enjoying being an “elder millennial” and not feeling the pressure of being on TikTok or even doing all that much on Instagram, the platform that helped make her reputation (although she did meet her boyfriend when he slid into her DMs). “I do furniture shopping on Instagram,” she says, describing what she calls her fraught relationship with the app. “That’s what I use it for.”
The queen of viral recipes is no longer as known for #TheCookies or #TheStew as she is for simply being a food and media personality. She has just published her third book, Sweet Enough (already a bestseller), she has a thriving YouTube channel, her A Newsletter boasts more than 220,000 subscribers, and she very almost had a CNN show that ultimately hasn’t seen the light of day because of the network’s fickle business strategy.
But there’s also that other thing: the cancellation. In a May 2020 interview with a small newsletter, Alison criticized Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen’s business empires, which led to critics—and then a Twitter mob—accusing her of anti-Asian racism. Alison apologized and self-criticized, profusely, but she lost her New York Times column and some friends along the way. Three years on, she’s feeling a lot better about her career and position, but it still smarts. “To have the entire world, what feels like the entire world, wanting you dead and telling you what a bad person you are and how horrible you are, and just wild stuff—I wouldn’t wish that upon anybody.”
This conversation is packed with Alison’s insight and wit, and a steady dose of self-reflection. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
https://anewsletter.alisoneroman.com/
Show notes
* Subscribe to A Newsletter on Substack
* Find Alison on Instagram, YouTube, and her personal website
* Alison’s books: Dining In, Nothing Fancy, and, published this week, Sweet Enough
* Alison’s New York Times column
* The milk girl meme mentioned
* [02:39] Using Instagram as a tool
* [06:32] A writer rather than a creator
* [09:23] Trying journalism
* [11:08] Starting the newsletter
* [17:14] Alison’s fraught relationship with social media
* [20:54] Reaching “visual success”
* [28:00] Becoming a pastry chef
* [31:03] Writing tips from Bon Appétit
* [37:01] Striving for longevity
* [40:16] Sweet Enough
* [43:25] The exorcism of writing
* [46:48] On speaking out
* [49:49] Being canceled in 2020
* [54:49] On resilience
* [1:03:31] Future Alison
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
I met Patti Smith at Electric Lady Studios, the studio in New York’s Greenwich Village opened by Jimi Hendrix a few weeks before he died, and she immediately walked me down to the basement level to show me the original murals—psychedelic, space-themed—that Hendrix had commissioned for the walls. She had first seen them in 1970, at the studio’s opening, when, before she was a well-known artist and the “godmother of punk rock,” she bumped into Hendrix on the staircase. “He stopped and talked to me and told me that he was also shy,” she says. “We talked about his vision for the studio.” Five years later, she recorded the groundbreaking album Horses in Studio A. “It was beautiful but heartbreaking when we started recording to realize that he had such visions for the studio and never got to realize them.”
Our initial plan was to do our interview in Studio A, but a miscommunication meant that it was already occupied by a film crew, so we instead went upstairs to a much smaller room, where Patti sat on a brown leather couch and I planted myself on an office chair opposite her. We sat there in conversation for two hours, and most of the time I was just thinking, “I’m sitting with Patti Smith, I’m sitting with Patti Smith,” breaking every so often in an attempt to produce a smart-enough question.
Confined to her home during the pandemic, Patti started publishing on Substack to serialize a story, “The Melting,” and then began sharing poetry, songs, audio notes, and videos where she read to her subscribers and shared memories. “It kept me engaged with the people in the world.” Once she was free to tour again, she shot video on her iPhone to take her subscribers backstage with her band. She also performed a concert from Studio A that was livestreamed for her subscribers. Her Substack is her only online presence other than Instagram, where, at her daughter’s urging, she opened an account and now has more than 1 million followers.
She’s 76 years old but still rocking hard, as demonstrated by her energetic birthday performance at Brooklyn Steel. In this conversation, I ask her about how being an artist in 2023 compares to 1973, and how she views this current moment in culture. We talked about building things up versus tearing things down, about friends loved and lost, and about living with gratitude. The opening line from Hendrix’s epic song “1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)” has become something like a mantra for Patti: “Hooray, I wake from yesterday.”
Hooray indeed.
https://pattismith.substack.com/
Show notes
Subscribe to Patti Smith on Substack
You can also find Patti on Instagram
[03:37] Meeting Jimi Hendrix
[10:28] Learning to write
[12:18] Transcribing with Lenny Kaye
[14:40] Lost loved ones
[15:53] Friendship at its best
[25:09] Writing The Melting
[20:01] Trying Twitter, then Instagram
[36:31] Taking subscribers behind the scenes
[38:56] Being an artist in 1973
[41:46] Patti’s “not so secret” goal
[44:09] On Picasso and social media
[57:00] On being misrepresented in the media
[59:06] Still mourning John Lennon
[1:02:23] Contributing something of quality
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
When Emily Oster wrote an article for The Atlantic to suggest an amnesty in the pandemic wars, she received a shockingly sharp rebuke from those who weren’t ready to forgive. On the left, there were people who felt that the unvaccinated jeopardized untold lives; on the right, there were people still furious about the way they were treated for not going along with the lockdowns. But by that time, social media cancellations were a familiar ritual for Emily, who had already upset some souls with articles about school closures (she was against them) and the Covid risks faced by children (minor) relative to older people (less minor). Even though she was developing a thicker skin, the force of the response to the amnesty piece threw her a little. The worst part? She couldn’t tell from the angry emails who was who. “The thing that was in some ways incredibly sad about that reaction was I would get then so many emails, and they were all very mean, most of them. And sometimes I would start reading and I would just think, ‘I don’t even know which side you’re on.’ ”
When the pandemic struck, Emily was already well known as the author of the data-informed pregnancy and parenting books Expecting Better and Cribsheet, both of which have become wild bestsellers. But Covid only accelerated her ascent, as anxious parents turned to her for wisdom in navigating uncertain times. She started a Substack newsletter, ParentData, which has become a phenomenon in its own right, with more than 160,000 subscribers. The newsletter was a lifeline for many of its readers, who treated Emily like a trusted advisor or a friend. Those relationships reminded her that, even as the worst of the attacks rolled in via email and social media, she was making a positive difference in people’s lives. It gave her the confidence to say important and true things, even when there was a social cost to doing so.
“There was a connection that was forged there that I think helped people in a time that was really hard, and I’m really proud that I got to do that,” Emily says. “I think that that is totally worth it from that standpoint. So I’m not sorry.”
https://www.parentdata.org/
Emily’s recommended reads:
https://whattocook.substack.com/
https://www.thenewfatherhood.org/
https://substack.com/profile/12430253-nellie-bowles
Show notes
Subscribe to ParentData on Substack
Find Emily on Twitter, Instagram, and her website
Emily’s writing in The Atlantic: on school closures and a pandemic amnesty
[02:41] Wanting to be a writer
[04:41] Writing Expecting Better
[07:15] The Amy Schumer moment
[09:22] Writing Cribsheet
[12:16] The tension of social media
[14:41] Writing about Covid-19 and school closures
[18:33] The cost of being yelled at on Twitter
[21:32] Developing a thickened skin
[25:49] Writing The Atlantic piece
[26:55] Dealing with abusive comments
[28:03] Humanizing both sides
[29:49] Learnings from the blowbacks
[32:09] Weighing up taking the heat
[35:25] The value of writing on Substack
[39:18] On going paid
[42:00] Academia and writing
[45:50] Teaching students
[49:00] Emily’s recommended reads
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
Etgar Keret’s parents, both of whom survived the Holocaust, gave him the gift of imagination, a garden he has been watering with stories since he was a child. His father crouched in a hole in the ground for more than 600 days to escape the Nazis in Belarus, getting through the time by telling himself stories of a parallel universe in which everything was the same except for one detail (like that there were still Nazis who chased Jews, but when they caught them they would give them sweets). Etgar’s mother crafted bedtime stories with as much care as if she were doing needlepoint, passing on a tradition cultivated by her parents in the Warsaw Ghetto. “I grew up with the fact that making up a story for somebody is the ultimate act of generosity,” Etgar says.
Now in his 50s and living in Tel Aviv, Etgar has published prolifically, most prominently short stories, many of which can be found on his Substack, Alphabet Soup, but also essays, poems, and films, including 2007’s Jellyfish, which he co-directed with his wife, Shira Geffen (see his latest short film below). He’s also a favorite guest of Ira Glass’s on This American Life.
In this conversation, we go deep on the importance of storytelling, how to find contentment in an age of social media, and the thorny issue of sensitivity readers in publishing. I am sure you will enjoy it.
Etgar’s recommended reads:
https://joycecaroloates.substack.com/
https://georgesaunders.substack.com/
https://salmanrushdie.substack.com/
Show notes
* Subscribe to Alphabet Soup on Substack
* Find Etgar on Instagram and his personal website
* [05:39] Etgar’s father’s hiding
* [19:23] Memories of his mother
* [20:14] Having a rich inner life
* [22:19] Balcony living
* [24:00] A metaphor for life
* [27:33] Create a small village
* [30:23] On sensitivity readers
* [41:07] Etgar’s new short film
* [42:04] On artistic identities
* [43:25] The hustler’s reality
* [45:55] The world’s biggest problem today
* [52:00] Recommended writers
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
Heather Havrilesky’s writing career has spanned the life of the internet, starting with the satirical site Suck.com, moving through Salon, The Awl, and New York Magazine, and ending up on Substack, where she publishes two much-loved newsletters: Ask Polly and Ask Molly.
Heather has mastered the art of reinvention, bending with the winds of the web, as news sites have variously chased SEO, blogging, Facebook traffic, and the rest. She settled on an approach that has worked for her: doubling down on what she likes. That attitude ultimately took her into advice giving, where she has carved out an immense reputation as one of America’s preeminent practitioners of the form, primarily through Ask Polly, for years a mainstay of New York Magazine’s The Cut. Polly got her start, though, at The Awl, the fan-favorite blog co-founded by Choire Sicha that was home to many of the best and most obsessive online writers of the 2010s, before social media had completely corrupted the landscape for essayists and delightful internet weirdos.
While writing Polly for The Cut, Heather saw social media grow in reach and then start to infect the minds of fellow writers who toiled under its constricting influence. “It’s almost like an issue of when the auditorium becomes too big and filled with voices,” she says, “you start to feel self-conscious about making sounds when everyone is in the room.”
Those pressures came to bear on Heather with exaggerated force after the New York Times published an excerpt of her latest book, Foreverland, an irreverent marriage memoir that comes out in paperback this Valentine’s Day. The excerpt carried the subheading “Do I hate my husband? Oh for sure, yes, definitely.” It was enough to create a meme, and Heather spent the next few days being knocked around Twitter for being a husband-hating harlot (or worse, depending on the tweets).
What was that experience like for someone who has been writing online for 27 years? Well, it turns out, not easy at all—even for an advice columnist who always manages to find the right words for those who are brushed by misfortune. However, in the pain, she has managed to find a balm for herself in a book idea that emerged from her essay writing on Substack.
“One thing that kept me feeling good,” Heather says, “was this idea that life could be deeply romantic even when everything felt terrible.” Her new obsession with finding the romantic in the mundane is proving to be more than just a coping mechanism—it’s a way of looking at life. “Discovering new ways of being happy in spite of a lot of things that are aggravating you is—it’s the most romantic thing of all.”
https://www.ask-polly.com/
Heather’s recommended reads:
https://www.todayintabs.com/
https://therealsarahmiller.substack.com/
https://hunterharris.substack.com/
https://laurenhough.substack.com/
https://www.blackbirdspyplane.com/
https://cintra.substack.com/
https://griefbacon.substack.com/
https://indignity.substack.com/
Show notes
Subscribe to Ask Polly and Ask Molly on Substack
Find Heather on Twitter and Instagram
Suck.com, Salon, The Awl
Heather’s books: Disaster Preparedness (2011), How to Be a Person in the World (2017), What If This Were Enough? (2019), Foreverland (out in paperback on Feb. 14)
Excerpt of Foreverland in the New York Times, and the New York Post response
Writing about voice lessons on Ask Molly
[02:17]: Working at Suck.com
[08:31] Changing San Francisco
[09:13] The “jackassery” of boomer optimism
[10:58] Smart, weird, fun people everywhere
[12:57] The shape-shifting nature of being an online writer
[16:12] Becoming an advice writer
[18:43] The awe of the Awl
[24:58] The freedom, and danger, of social media
[30:00] Ask Molly, Polly’s evil twin
[31:57] Publishing books
[36:59] Being misinterpreted in mainstream media
[40:55] Reacting to being attacked online
[46:44] Workshopping her next book
[50:31] Writing an advice column for 10 years
[52:53] Recommended writers on Substack
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
In the 1990s, the English writer Paul Kingsnorth was a radical environmental activist, taking part in road blockades and protesting at WTO summits. Today he calls himself a “recovering environmentalist” and doesn’t believe people can do all that much to halt the march of the markets and technology. For instance, he thinks of climate change as a predicament to be endured, not a problem to be solved. His focus instead is on making sense of this revolutionary time we are living through and finding wisdom in old stories, especially religious ones, to help us live well through civilizational collapse.
Paul is not like many other writers on Substack. He is uneasy with technology, worrying about how humans use it to become gods, driving ourselves ever further from a state of nature, losing touch with the wild. That might sound depressing, but if you read his essays on his Substack, The Abbey of Misrule, you are likely to find the opposite. Paul writes in search of beauty and, in my opinion, strikes on it quite often. Amid the assessment of cultural breakdown, he offers some comfort and release, giving the reader permission to turn away from technological distraction and focus on the simple things in life: family, nature, love, and intellectual nourishment.
https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/
Paul’s recommended reads:https://carolineross.substack.com/https://martinshaw.substack.com/https://theupheaval.substack.com/https://angelanagle.substack.com/
Show notesSubscribe to The Abbey of Misrule on SubstackFind more books and information on Paul on his personal websiteThe Dark Mountain ProjectPaul’s mentioned books: Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, Real England[02:20] Words as supreme communication [04:34] Being an activist writer[06:45] Environmentalism[15:39] Turning to religion[24:25] Having a famous compost toilet[32:41] Being attacked as a “fascist”[40:17] On the tension of censorship and integrity[44:37] Debating the Covid-19 vaccine[50:30] Substack as old-fashioned, in a good way[53:01] Liberation after losing a father[56:00] Advice to other writers[57:42] Recommended writers on Substack
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
Jessica DeFino’s face literally had to peel off before she gave up on beauty products and turned a critical eye on the beauty industry. As a journalist covering the industry, she had been inundated with free beauty products, which she enthusiastically accepted. Then she developed dermatitis and had a bad reaction to the steroids she was prescribed to treat it.
“My skin started peeling off of my face in chunks,” she says. “For months, my skin was just oozing red. I couldn’t put makeup on. I couldn’t use products. I could barely splash water on my face without being in immense pain.”
She fell into a deep depression and had a crisis of self. “It really made me examine who I was when I didn’t have this armor of beauty products,” she says, “because when I felt like I was ugly, I felt absolutely worthless.”
Today, Jessica writes The Unpublishable, a cult-favorite newsletter with the tagline “What the beauty industry won’t tell you, from a reporter on a mission to reform it.” In it, she critiques obsessions with Botox-like injectables, the sleight of hand behind “no-makeup faces,” and the social implications of nose jobs, among other exceptionally hot topics. This unapologetic coverage, unusual in the beauty space, has helped The Unpublishable grow from 2,000 subscribers to more than 50,000 last year, with boosts from a viral Twitter thread in which she exposed what it was like to work for the Kardashians and a shout-out from Dua Lipa.
In this episode of The Active Voice, I talk with Jessica about the effect social media is having on how we think about beauty, her struggles with writing a book, and why her death-and-redemption experience with beauty culture is definitely just like Jesus dying on the cross for his followers. If you, too, want to see the light, I encourage you to listen to her testimony.
https://jessicadefino.substack.com/
Jessica’s recommended reads:Back Row by Amy OdellHow To Cure A Ghost by Fariha RóisínHEATED by Emily Atkin
Show notesSubscribe to The Unpublishable on SubstackFind Jessica on Twitter and Instagram[04:15] Anti product, pro people [06:12] Participating in beauty pageants [07:30] Working on the Kardashian-Jenner apps [09:34] Developing dermatitis [13:17] Beauty as religion [14:45] Going viral on Twitter [17:52] Working harder than ever before [20:15] The reality of attention [21:18] Getting death threats from nail artists [25:19] Writing a book[29:19] The mind of an online writer [32:08] Instagram face [40:16] Beyond beauty[51:40] The Unpublishable audience
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
Ted Gioia, the great music and cultural critic, has never lived in New York and it has cost him. He knows he is completely out of touch. “I didn’t make the relationships, I didn’t have editors opening doors for me,” he says. “Things were harder for me at every step along the way because I wasn’t at those cocktail parties.”
But not being in New York has its upsides. Perhaps most importantly: it has helped Ted retain the mindset of an independent outsider, less vulnerable to the groupthink that can overtake the modern media. From his perch in Austin, Texas, and previously in Silicon Valley, the author of 12 books on music and co-founder of Stanford University’s jazz studies program sees things that his peers tend to miss. On his Substack, The Honest Broker, Ted has taken the music industry to task for its failure to discover and nurture new music; he has argued that despite a time of democratized access to publishing, society is missing a counterculture; and he has pointed to indicators of Facebook’s impending collapse. Occasionally, he’ll write a deeply researched series about a figure from rock history that would never find its way into a mainstream outlet.
In this conversation for The Active Voice, we discuss how internet platforms are changing our cultural industries for better and worse, how the rise of the likes of YouTube and Substack are helping creators subvert the gatekeepers to outshine traditional channels, and how social media has become a sameness machine—a perpetrator and victim of crowd psychology based on people’s intense need to be just like everyone else. “Platforms like Twitter, which should be independent voices saying fresh things, start to feel like everybody’s shouting the same thing all at once.”
The way out? Find the person who can rise above the fray. Find the honest broker…
Ted’s recommended reads:
https://lewisporter.substack.com/https://greilmarcus.substack.com/https://iverson.substack.com/https://jeffreysultanof.substack.com/
Show notes
Subscribe to The Honest Broker on SubstackFind Ted on Twitter, Instagram, and his websiteElias Canetti, Crowds and Power[02:39] The story behind the name, The Honest Broker[08:41] Journalism and the media[11:17] Avoiding politics[12:10] Perks of being a music writer[15:27] On being the outsider[17:02] Ted’s background[21:12] How the internet destroyed music culture[26:56] The role of TikTok in the music industry[33:09] Mimetic desire, René Girard, and social media[36:21] The exception of Kenny G[40:02] Choosing the writing life[44:05] Advice to young writers
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
I can’t imagine what it must be like to grow up on social media, especially as someone who says things in public—to try to figure out who you are as an adult while living under the panoptic gaze of TikTok and Instagram, or to have one’s intellectual identity shaped by the performative shoutysphere of Twitter. I’m old enough to have missed all that, but Rayne Fisher-Quann, a 21-year-old Canadian writer who has built a large presence on social media and a cult-favorite Substack called Internet Princess, has forged her life and career in the attention economy. How has she dealt with it? With a soul-saving dose of self-awareness.
“I think almost everybody who posts to some degree on the internet is addicted to attention,” she says. “I mean, most of these apps literally try to make you addicted to the attention, actively.” And she’s acutely attuned to the dark sides, noting that the things that win the most attention on social media are those she considers ethically wrong. If she has her way, she’ll be living on a farm by the age of 35, largely disconnected from the internet. For now, however, she remains very online and very interesting.
Rayne communicates on social media and Substack with intelligence and wit to a devoted audience mostly made up of teenagers and young women. Her followers devour her takes on the shaming of public-facing women, the real motivations behind the takedowns of “West Elm Caleb,” and the attacks on Amber Heard. They laugh at her jokes on TikTok, thrill to her (sometimes private) tweets, and go deep with her in Substack Chats.
In this conversation, which we recorded live in front of an audience at Substack HQ, we talk about the hostility of TikTok, where people are constantly seeking to misunderstand each other; how she cultivates an online persona that’s close to, but not quite, her real self; and treading the fine line between an open discussion of mental illness and the commodifying of it through social media. “It’s tough,” she says, “because the fan base that I have, and the way that I can present myself, almost anything that I do can become an object of envy or an object of romanticization, which is really strange.”
https://internetprincess.substack.com/
Publishing note: The Active Voice will be on break for a few weeks over the holidays. See you in January, 2023!
Rayne’s recommended reads:
https://franmagazine.substack.com/
https://kieranmclean.substack.com/
https://evilfemale.substack.com/
Show notes
* Subscribe to Internet Princess on Substack
* Find Rayne on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok
* Rookie Mag by Tavi Gevinson
* [4:53] Becoming famous on TikTok
* [6:31] Being misunderstood online
* [10:54] Insulating against the backlash
* [13:00] The performance of women writers
* [14:40] Creating an internet persona
* [16:34] Growing up with blogs
* [17:56] Writing in lowercase
* [20:40] Mental health communities
* [23:25] Being made into a Spotify playlist
* [27:01] Pitching to Vice
* [27: 53] Rayne’s writing process
* [30:17] Roots in activism
* [33:37] Being chemically addicted to attention
* [40:07] Big tech
* [40:59] Dreams for Rayne’s future
* [42:14] Role models
* [46:17] Making a living as a young writer
* [49:27] Dropping out of university
* [51:21] Getting a job
* [54:17] Recommended writers
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
You’ll have to forgive my self-indulgence in this conversation, because I’ve gone deep with Joshi Herrmann—not a celebrity name or a celebrated author, I hope he won’t be offended by me saying—about a bunch of things that scratch my particular interests in media: local news, New York media-startup scandals circa 2016, subscriptions versus ads, venture capital, and canceled Netflix comedians.
Joshi is the founder of a fledgling media empire anchored by The Mill, a local news publication covering the city of Manchester, England, that he launched in 2020. The Mill, which is based entirely on Substack and funded by subscribers, just reached profitability—a rare success story in a space (local news) that hasn’t exactly been booming in recent years. Encouraged by The Mill’s progress, Joshi has since launched similar publications in Sheffield and Liverpool based on doing high-quality, low-volume longform reporting on issues that matter to cities that are poorly served by the existing media structure.
Joshi was a reporter for the Evening Standard in London for four years before, in 2015, he moved to New York for a dream job as the editor in chief for a startup that published The Tab, a news site written by university students and young people about the cultural issues of the time. The Tab quickly gave rise to a spinoff publication called Babe.net, which shot to notoriety after publishing a story that detailed a young woman’s bad night with Aziz Ansari, which led to the comedian’s “cancellation.” The story came at the height of #MeToo, causing a fiery debate between people who felt it was an important reckoning for behavior that happens often but is under-discussed and those who felt it muddied the lines between truly abusive behavior and something closer to a bad date. Joshi watched it all unfold from an uncomfortable position: he was the editor on that story…
Joshi’s recommended reads:
The Bluestocking, PassTheAux, and Vittles.
Show notes
* Subscribe to The Mill in Manchester on Substack, as well as its sister sites, Sheffield Tribune in Sheffield, and The Post in Liverpool
* The Tab and Babe.net
* Aziz Ansari story on Babe.net and Ansari’s response
* NYT commentary on the Babe.net piece
* The Cut on Babe.net
* [1:46] Breaking even in local news
* [1:55] Feeling like a fraud
* [4:48] Getting into local journalism
* [8:07] On losing a parent
* [12:00] Pursuing an unpromising venture
* [13:55] Redefining the problem of local news
* [18:56] Joining The Tab in New York
* [22:41] Steroidal audience growth vs. community
* [25:25] The “bullshit” of new media’s gold-rush era
* [26:37] How Babe.net started
* [28:28] How Babe broke the Aziz Ansari story
* [30:17] How the Ansari story relates to Me Too
* [38:06] Lessons from being on the other side of the story
* [39:51] Reflections on that time
* [41:40] Adapting a new approach to longform
* [44:48] Shutting down The Tab and Babe.net
* [46:06] Life lessons for The Mill
* [47:55] Launching two sister sites in the U.K.
* [48:38] The public hunger for great local journalism
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
Doomberg, the top-earning finance publication on Substack, is led by a cartoon chicken that previously worked in heavy industry. Okay, so it wasn’t the chicken that worked in heavy industry—but its anonymous creators, with a background in hard sciences and energy, did. They chose the green chicken as their publication’s logo because they want it to be instantly recognizable on Twitter, which they use as their main marketing channel (it is, after all, the bird app). The plucky avian also fits with the cheeky “defensive pessimism” of Doomberg’s ethos, as captured in its tagline: “Chicken Little Gets a Terminal.”
Doomberg is a small team (“you could count us on one hand and have a few fingers left over”) with one man as the lead writer. I talked to that man for this episode, but he used a voice modifier to protect his identity. He’s worried about being discovered by his peers and prefers for people’s focus to be on his analysis rather than his personality.
And what of that analysis? Well, it’s strong-minded, intelligent, and entertaining, featuring bold statements, such as predicting the onset of a “global famine of historic proportions” and classifying “nuclear waste alarmism” as a way to “rob humanity of carbon-free energy.” The aim, they say at Doomberg, is to be “provocative but not polarizing.”
I’ve talked to hundreds of writers over the years at Substack, but none has applied quite so much rigor to growing a media business from scratch as Doomberg. For Doomberg, the content creation is just a small (but important) piece of the process. They spend just as much time obsessing about brand, technology, and operations. For any Substack strategy nerds, this episode is a must-listen.
Show notes
Subscribe to Doomberg on Substack
Find Doomberg on Twitter
The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier
Head coach of the University of Michigan football, Jim Harbaugh
We Are About to Run Out of Some Stuff, June 15, 2021
Farmers on the Brink, Mar. 26, 2022 [discussed at 26:21]
[02:17] The mindset of Doomberg
[03:36] The path to Doomberg
[05:28] Previous consulting business
[06:50] Doomberg’s five strategy pillars for success
[07:42] The bin of great writing never read
[09:43] Brand sketches and objective
[11:13] What type of writer are you?
[13:38] The people behind Doomberg
[15:53] The customer journey
[17:43] The media business is dying
[20:37] Editorial integrity
[23:05] Twitter is a toxic hell
[27:00] On being provocative, not polarizing
[30:11] The state of leadership today
[33:00] Corporate elitism
[37:21] The future of consumption
[38:22] Enjoying personal sovereignty
[41:00] Starting a media business from zero
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com -
Chris Hedges is surprisingly cheery for someone who has, by his own admission, “a dark view of human nature.” When we met for this conversation at Substack’s office in San Francisco, he was full of smiles and good humor—at least during the times we weren’t discussing death and destruction. He had just come from the gym, a habit that borders on a fixation for him, since he works out as a way to deal with the trauma from years of covering war in some of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones: the former Yugoslavia, El Salvador, and Iraq, to name a few.
It has been 20 years since his groundbreaking book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning came out. Its force was so powerful that it was quoted at the start of Kathryn Bigelow’s 2008 film The Hurt Locker: “The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” At the time, Chris was a bureau chief for the New York Times, covering the Middle East and the Balkans, but he quit that position following criticism of a speech he gave denouncing the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He has been publishing in independent media ever since, first at Truthdig and later with an interview show, On Contact, on Russia Today (RT). YouTube wiped out the archives to that show when it removed RT from the platform following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “They’re embracing censorship, let’s be clear,” Chris says.
In this conversation, we talk about why journalists like him keep getting drawn to war despite its dangers, why he sides with the suffering (including in his side role as a Presbyterian minister), and what he thinks is wrong with today’s media.Chris recommends this post from Jonathan Cook’s newsletter.
Show notes
* Subscribe to The Chris Hedges Report on Substack
* Find Chris Hedges on Twitter (as explained in the episode, not run by him)
* War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
* Other writers on Substack Chris recommends: Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Paul Street, Jonathan Cook
* The Catullus poem Chris quotes
* Eunice Wong’s website
* [02:05] Navigating war zones (and avoiding being killed)
* [04:43] Being taken prisoner in Basra
* [5:55] The mental stability of a war correspondent
* [06:51] How Chris got into war reporting
* [08:40] “You don’t stay lucky forever”
* [09:09] Becoming a recluse
* [15:19] Writing a memoir
* [21:03] The Presbyterian minister
* [22:33] The ordination to journalism
* [25:47] The state of today’s journalism
* [31:33] Why social media sound bites are “world without context”
* [33:27] The problem with independent media
* [34:06] Mainstream media and WikiLeaks
* [36:37] What has happened to our institutions
* [37:03] Is there hope?
* [40:40] Meeting his wife, Eunice Wong
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
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