The Long Conversation: Recent Episodes
Every Media, Inc
Reading from this episode:
"Why You Probably Shouldn't Work At a Startup" (Napkin Math)
"Why I Love Working at Startups" (Divinations)
Pulling from an anti-writer's block resource created for Every writers and readers, Rachel takes Dan and Nathan on a journey through a word cloud exercise rooted in one big concept: memory. What could that possibly mean? You'll have to listen to find out—and it won't hurt to have a pen and paper handy while you do.
Rachel, Dan, Nathan and Taylor welcome Evan Armstrong—Every's newest lead writer, and the new voice behind Napkin Math—to the podcast. Topics include: how a background as a Mormon missionary can prepare you to send a newsletter out to thousands of subscribers; the panelists' unique worries about their own publications; and what writers can learn from comments sections.
Rachel, Nathan, and Taylor welcome Kieran O'Hare, an Every writer and editor whose recent Superorganizers profile of Dan Shipper took an entertaining, insightful, and unexpected look at the "Sultan" himself. Digging into Kieran's processes and perspective on chronicling productivity, the panel discusses the need for a more expansive understanding of the word, when the "outsider" perspective is useful, and how working with a collective makes writing a lot like music.
This week, Rachel greets Dan, Nathan, and Taylor with a writing exercise: what is it like when your house is completely silent? Answering that question brings up something different for everyone—from a deeper awareness of home as a physical space, to an appreciation for solitude—but they all agree on one thing: it's necessary to have writing time that isn't subject to pressures of time and clarity.
Join the panelists in the writing exercise by pausing for ten minutes as they begin, and embark on your own free-write!
Rachel and Taylor join Dan to workshop his upcoming essay on something everyone has feelings about: Worry. Topics include: how we might change our thinking about our own thoughts, why we need a wider vocabulary to address issues like anxiety and depression, and why refusing yourself the time to worry can lead to action, not ignorance.
Selected Reading from today's episode:
Rachel recommends: The Tao of PoohDan recommends: The Book of Not Knowing
Viewing: Adam Curtis' Can't Get You Out of My Head
Recommended reading from this episode:
Sing To It by Amy Hempel
Rock Springs by Richard Ford
Your Duck is My Duck by Deborah Eisenberg
The Visiting Privilege by Joy Williams
Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
Brought to you by The Long Conversation, an Every newsletter.
With special guest Fadeke Adegbuyi in the room this week, the gang discusses her upcoming essay on the tracking app Spoonbill, the tensions and triumphs of collective editing, and how the container affects the content. Questions include: How and where do we communicate our own self, particularly in writing about the increasingly fragmented nature of collective and individual online identity? Is neutrality a myth? With insight from Taylor, Dan, and Nathan on the tug-of-war that is finishing a piece and continuing on to the next, this Long Conversation visits a place known to anyone who’s ever “finished” something: where to next?
Returning for the new year’s first conversation, Rachel asks Dan and Nathan about how their writing collaboration mirrors their unique business partnership. Taylor wonders how to move on an idea—and what the most desirable feedback is after that point—and Adam finds parallels between the editor/writer relationship with his time in finance.
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Having spent the week responding to a prompt—What does it feel like to be alive?—Rachel and the Bundle writers spend their final hour of the year sharing their answers, as well as their thoughts on feeling enthusiasm and affection in and for our work and learning. Who is allowed to express these feelings? Who isn’t? When do we get in our own ways, and how might we write ourselves back on track?
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After talking through questions of editorship and delegating, Rachel, Dan, Nathan and Adam turn their attention to the week’s reading: Helen Keller’s memoir The Story of My Life. The book doesn’t just chronicle Keller’s entry into language and her relationship with her teacher, Anne Sullivan—it offers context for her political activity and power of imagination, both of which are rooted in a tool crucial to every writer: Empathy.
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After a writing exercise where the panelists explored different career paths they might have followed, Dan, Adam, and Taylor talk through their experiences imagining alternate realities in writing. Where does regret become possibility? What are the uses—and precarities—of doing personal writing with an audience in mind? Would Taylor have made a good furniture designer?
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Rachel and the writers (including guest panelist Fadeke Adegbuyi!) welcome the author of Writing as a Way of Being, Dr. Robert P. Yagelski—or Bob, as we’ve come to know him. With Bob’s seminal work on valuing the experience of writing as a guide, the discussion ranges from the classroom to the office to the heart, in search of answers to one (massive) question: How can we write ourselves awake?
About the guest: In addition to having written one of our favorite texts, which you can find an excerpt of here, Dr. Yagelski is the author of Literacy Matters: Writing and Reading the Social Self, four textbooks on writing, countless articles, and a children’s book! He teaches at SUNY Albany, where is also the Director of the Program in Writing and Critical Inquiry. He formerly directed the Capital District Writing Project, part of the National Writing Project.
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Taking cues from Robert Yagelski’s Writing as a Way of Being, Rachel guides the panel through pedagogy. At the end of a taxing week, how can we access writing’s meditative potential? What myths have we been taught about “productive” writing — and how do we begin to unlearn them?
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The team talks to John H. Richardson, award-winning journalist for publications including Esquire and GQ — and Rachel’s dad! — about structure, note-taking, doing friendly battle with editors, and how and why to push through blank-page fears.
If you didn’t get a chance to read it before the live show last week, you can find “My Father the Spy” here.
And check out John’s other articles mentioned in this episode — on Dr. Willie Parker; the swinging doctor; prison theater; and polyamory.
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Rachel talks with Dan, Nathan, Adam, and our newest panelist Taylor Majewski about Carmen Maria Machado’s genre-smashing memoir, In the Dream House. What are the individual bricks Machado has formed to keep her house of memory upright? How do you announce your presence within a history that has denied you? When do metaphors end up creating reality itself?
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Introducing The Long Conversation: Podcast Edition! In this edited version of Rachel’s first live chat with the Bundle writers, they discuss editing etiquette, the upside of being down on your own writing, and Alexander Chee’s The Rosary. How long does it take to write something with true layers? Do things only become real when we create metaphors for them? Whose mom beat everyone else to figuring out what this essay is really about?
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