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

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