Podcasts about college jeopardy

The professional hosts of this podcast have decided they dislike guests. So this episode doesn't have one! Their relief at not having to talk to a third person leads quickly to some giddy (and yes, filthy!) improv! Tony delights as Johnny describes his long-awaited Domino's pig-out night and its related temper tantrums. Tony recounts his thrilling night watching College Jeopardy. Then, a guest doesn't show up, and in their ecstasy, the boys do another scene! They welcome the return of Andy's Lame, and then Tony hits his limit, gets tired, and they stop recording. This episode is lean, mean, and has two scenes! This episode is sponsored by Better Help, go to betterhelp.com/pc for 10% off your first month See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Impressive kids out there.

Cobb Police arrived to a stopped tractor-trailer truck to find the driver had been shot and have no leads on the suspect; One of the teachers who helped integrate Marietta High School has passed away at the age of 78; And Kennesaw State's Raymond Goslow continues his roll in to the College Jeopardy semifinals    #CobbCounty #Georgia #LocalNews      -            -            -            -            -            The Marietta Daily Journal Podcast is local news for Marietta, Kennesaw, Smyrna, and all of Cobb County.             Subscribe today, so you don't miss an episode! MDJOnline            Register Here for your essential digital news.              Find additional episodes of the MDJ Podcast here.             This Podcast was produced and published for the Marietta Daily Journal and MDJ Online by BG Ad Group   For more information be sure to visit https://www.bgpodcastnetwork.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An interesting marketing tactic. College Jeopardy! College game shows. Chelsea tries the new Girl Scout cookie. 3 second workout. The best football fan cities. Returns. IRS news. Lottery winner. Flat Earthers, what is on the other side? The best foods to hide an engagement ring in. Razzies. This day in history.

An interesting marketing tactic. National holidays and celebrity birthdays. Jill Biden speaks out about politics. Canadian protests move south. College Jeopardy! Plus local news and sports.

2017 College Jeopardy winner, author of How to Survive a Public Faming: “Understanding “The Spiciest Memelord” via the Temporal Dynamics of Involuntary Celebrification and graduate student at MIT Lilly Chin shares the story of how she became "The Spiciest Memelord", the structural issues and lack of institutional support associated with overnight fame, and strategies to properly respond to online harassment and trolls.Follow Digital VoidTwitter: https://twitter.com/digivoidmediaYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKWoac3SIfsUg6Xl0X1GS8AFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/digivoidmediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/digitalvoid.media/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/34894594Use #DigitalVoid #DigitalVoidPodcast to join the conversation-----CreditsHosted by Josh Chapdelaine and Dr. Jamie CohenAudio edited and mixed by Josh Chapdelaine-----Digital Void Podcast is a production of Digital Void Media.Contact Digital Void:Email: digivoidmedia@gmail.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Nibir Sarma joins us to discuss what it was like getting on Jeopardy, how he prepared for it, and the strategies that led him to be the College Tournament Champion. We also dove into his personal life and his passions for chemical engineering, music, and lifelong learning.Throughout the interview, we cover a wide array of his interests ranging from hockey to caffeine consumption.Some Quick Facts about Nibir:Plays clarinet in the University of Minnesota Band.Has 5 years of competitive trivia experience.Got all three daily doubles in the final round of the College Jeopardy Tournament.Is a Minnesota Native.You can find Nibir on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or LinkedIn.If you would like to reach out to us, the best way to do so is on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.If you enjoyed this episode please share it with a friend.Last, please take a minute to leave us an honest review and rating on iTunes. They really help us out when it comes to the ranking of the show.Thanks for listening!

In the final episode of the 2020 spring semester, all three reporters of "In the Know" examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped the lives of students, reflect on their favorite stories of the year and discuss how students have gathered around one student after he won College Jeopardy! 

TOPIC OF THE DAYDenver Broncos linebacker Von Miller, former Super Bowl MVP, tests positive for COVID-19SEGMENTBrowns chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta on Odell Beckham Jr. trade rumors: 'Completely false'SEGMENTNFL faces multiple issues (including maybe liability) as it decides how to open seasonE-MAIL [History lesson]College Jeopardy! contestant mixed up Jackie Robinson and Babe Ruth in easy baseball questionGive us a call! We'd be glad to hear from you. -- 615-988-5196 --Become a patron on Patreon!Purchase your shirt today at the Cole Sportz VIP Boutique.You have something to say to Cole? Say it right here, and it will go on air: Send a voice messageCole Sportz is a no-holds-barred podcast. Cole Johnson intersects news, comedy, politics, entertainment, inspiration, and intellect in the sports world. Please share each episode posted with your friends and loved ones. Your comments are always welcomed, and differing views are expected! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It can sometimes feel like there isn’t enough time in the day to go to class, work on papers, study for exams and still have a social life. Somehow, Dhruv Gaur, a junior at Brown University, managed to do all of this while preparing for and winning...

It can sometimes feel like there isn’t enough time in the day to go to class, work on papers, study for exams and still have a social life. Somehow, Dhruv Gaur, a junior at Brown University, managed to do all of this while preparing for and winning the popular game show “Jeopardy!” when he was just a freshman.  He holds the title of the 2018 College Champion and was invited back to the Tournament of Champions this past November. This week, Gaur sits down to tell us what being on “Jeopardy!” and going viral as a result has been like.

What if Tom Hardy drove up to your house to deliver loads of LaCroix and cash? That’s the premise of just one of the stories in New Erotica for Feminists, a book of “satirical fantasies of love, lust, and equal pay.” And we were lucky enough to talk to its authors! We got three out of the four—yes, four—authors on the line to talk about writing the book, how they collaborate with so many different schedules and voices in the mix, what it’s like to build a women-run comedy site on a shoestring, and why all of us could use a group of badass creative partners in our lives. > We all have a lot of rage at society…and this partnership helps us sort of channel it into a constructive way where it’s at least cathartic and we can feel like we’re helping other people laugh. I mean, that’s one of the things that came out of this book—we would love for it to change the world. It’s probably not going to do that, but at least it entertains people and makes them feel like they are not so alone. > —Fiona Taylor , co-author, New Erotica for Feminists Links on links on links Pick up New Erotica for Feminists pretty much everywhere Bookmark The Belladonna, our guests’ hilarious comedy site Follow the authors: Caitlin Kunkel, Brooke Preston, Carrie Wittmer, and Fiona Taylor Read the McSweeney’s piece that started it all Also on the agenda We talk about writing with coauthors: what works, what doesn’t, and how to make sure no one loses their shit in the process Katel talks about finding her own voice, distinct from her company’s Sara wonders if her freewheelin’ podcastin’ lifestyle is bad for business (and whether she cares) (Spoiler: her bank account cares) We say farewell to our co-host Jenn, who’s sadly not coming back to the show next season (but whose hilarious takes on balancing parenting and professional badassery we miss every day) Sponsors This episode of NYG is brought to you by: Shopify, a leading global commerce platform that’s building a world-class team to define the future of entrepreneurship. Visit shopify.com/careers for more. Harvest, makers of awesome software to help you track your time, manage your projects, and get paid. Try it free, then use code NOYOUGO to get 50% off your first paid month. Transcript Sara Wachter-Boettcher Thanks to Harvest for supporting today’s show. Harvest makes project planning software that you can use for all kinds of crucial stuff like tracking time, managing deadlines, and my personal favorite—getting paid. They’ve even got all kinds of reports you can run to gain insight and shine a light on the health of your projects. Try it free at getharvest.com and when you upgrade to a paid account, make sure you use the code “noyougo” for fifty percent off your first paid month. That’s getharvest.com, offer code “noyougo.” [intro music plays for 12 seconds] SWB Hey everyone, I’m Sara! Katel LeDû And I’m Katel. SWB And you’re listening to No, You Go, the show about building satisfying careers and businesses KL getting free of toxic bullshit SWB and living your best, feminist life at work. KL Today we are talking to Brooke Preston, Carrie Wittmer, and Fiona Taylor, three of the four—yes, four—authors of New Erotica for Feminists, a collection of “Satirical Fantasies of Love, Lust, and Equal Pay.” It came out last month, after the authors wrote a post of the same name on McSweeney’s earlier this year. We talk with them about the book, why they wrote it, and what it was like to collaborate with four co-authors, as well as how they all came to be writing partners, and what it’s like to write satirical erotica—or erotic satire??—about women getting promotions and men doing housework. It was awesome. SWB Yes, it was a super fun interview to do, but I actually want to start with something a little bit serious—creative collaboration! It’s such a big theme for us, I feel like it comes back around to that over and over again. And obviously, that’s important for me and you, but also it got me thinking about cowriting. I also co-authored a book with Eric Meyer, it’s called Design for Real Life, you may have heard of it. KL Uh, yeah I have. And I remember when you came to us, that’s actually the first and only book so far that we’ve published by two authors at A Book Apart. And when you pitched it, I was kind of not worried, but—and less worried that it would be hard for us to publish, but more about what the process was going to be like because I’d never done that with two authors and I wasn’t sure if you all had an approach or how you would do it. And I don’t think I ever really asked you about how that went. What was it like? SWB You know, you’re asking a little late. The book’s already been out for like [KL laughs] two years! [laughs] KL I know! [laughing] I’m like, “by the way…” SWB Okay! So, at first, I had this moment where I thought that maybe it would be easier than writing a book by myself because I’d actually just written my first book alone before that. And, you know, I thought it’s fewer words per person, right? KL [laughing] Yeah. That totally sounds like good math. SWB Yeah. [laughs] It wasn’t really easier. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. This is not negative in any way, it just wasn’t for me. And I think Eric would probably agree, it wasn’t necessarily an easier process than writing alone because me and Eric, we had never worked together before. So, we didn’t really have a shared history or a shared voice. It wasn’t like this came out of all these other projects, it came out of just sort of—we had some overlapping interests and we had recently become very driven to help designers sort of understand how their work could impact people or hurt people. And so we came at it with a lot of shared passion and sort of some shared values, but we just—we didn’t have a body of work or a history together to build on. So, it was like starting from scratch in a lot of ways. And I think one of the things that we tried to do was just communicate really clearly and really kind of concretely about who was doing what and how we wanted to do things. And it’s not like every decision we made at the beginning about how to break up the work stuck, things morphed over time. But I think it sort of set us up to talk to each other about it and not make assumptions about it, which was good. KL Yeah. And I can imagine. I mean, you’re two different people and it’s two different perspectives, and even though you’re both really great writers, I just want to say that at least from my perspective, it felt very smooth. And I think you’re a natural lead taker on projects, so I’m sure it helped having someone sort of steering the ship. Were your conversations with Eric productive? SWB Yeah, I think that one of the things you mentioned that it felt very smooth, I think one of the reasons it felt very smooth was that we talked a lot about how to fit things together. And, like you said, we’re both strong writers, but I think my experience is a little bit more editorial, meaning I have a lot more experience editing other people’s work. And so, for me, it would be painfully obvious where he had written something and where I had written something. And so for me— KL [laughing] Right. SWB —I spent more of that time smoothing things out before you ever saw it. KL Right. SWB And I worried a little bit—I was nervous about doing too much of it because I didn’t want to make him feel like I was changing all of his stuff or his voice, but I think that we had a good conversation about that. And fundamentally, he trusted me from that perspective and also wasn’t precious about it. And I’m glad that we had that because it did allow me to take something I was already strong at—I’m quick at doing that kind of smoothing editorial from editing other people’s work for years, that it ended up feeling pretty good. I think it made me—I think, I hope—a better writer or a better partner in projects and it also I think just made me better or more confident in collaborating with people, which is good because now I collaborate with you all the time and I don’t know, I feel like it’s going okay. [laughs] [5:35] KL Uh, definitely. I think about this a lot over the years of running A Book Apart because everyone I work with is freelance. So, there’s a lot of collaboration that has to happen in all sorts of different degrees of intensity. Even though we’ve developed a network of editors, for example, I work mainly with Lisa Maria Martin, who is our managing editor. SWB I love Lisa Maria! You know, I have gotten to collaborate with her too. I think the first time was actually way back in 2012. KL Wow! SWB I knew she wanted to quit her job, and a project came up where I was putting together a team for it—it was a really big project—and I was like, “hey, if you are ready to get out of there, I can get you on to this project with me. It’ll go for three months.” She wanted to move and so the timing was perfect. The project was not perfect, [both laugh] but the timing was good and it was the right moment for me to be able to be like, “hey, I think you’d be a really great fit for this.” And from there we’ve gotten to be able to work together a bunch of different times. And it’s just awesome when you have somebody that you can kind of sync with and that you can really trust. And so I’m really glad that you get to work with her! KL I know, me too. And I love working with her. It’s funny because I think about sort of the trajectory of how we’ve built out processes and stuff. And for a long time, I thought having several editors working across projects was the best approach, but then working more and more closely with Lisa Maria, I realized that it was more effective to have a lead on everything and then bring others in as needed. And I think we both actually realized that. Plus I think we both really love having what we consider a quote on quote “real colleague” in our day to day ABA work. I mean, I know I do and I think it’s just been really important to both of us. But I don’t think I’ve collaborated with someone on a really big project in a long time. The podcast and the other work you and I are doing are definitely the biggest outside of my daily gig. And I’m going to say it, it’s been an incredible journey. You know how I like to talk about journeys. [laughing] I have learned so— SWB [laughing] I do, I do know this about you. [both laugh] KL [laughing] I am looking at my crystals on my windowsill. I have learned so much about myself. One thing I did not realize until we started doing more together was that I was really hungry for new challenges. And then we started the podcast and I was like, “wow, here are all these things I do not know how to do.” Like developing a good interview, or crafting articulate ways to tell the stories I want to tell. And I learned so much from you, you’ve helped me get a lot more comfortable with that articulation and you just really make me feel like I am capable of anything. SWB That’s so great to hear because I also—I feel like it’s been really exciting for me over the course of the past year to hear you sort of get more comfortable in interviews, get more comfortable in our conversations and open up more. We’ve talked about this. KL Yeah. SWB I came into this doing a lot of public speaking and it doesn’t mean I knew shit about podcasting [KL laughs] because I did not. I did not. But it did mean that I was a little bit more confident putting sentences together on the fly. KL Totally. SWB And that’s just something you have to get used to. And so, I don’t know, I feel like over the course of us working on this, I’ve been like, “oh my gosh, it’s so great to hear more of your voice shining through on things.” KL I love it. SWB Okay, so something else I’ve been thinking about after we did this interview was what do you do when you have a creative project or a side project or whatever it is, and it doesn’t necessarily align with the rest of your professional identity? So, I asked our interviewees about how this fits in with the jobs that they have because they have jobs in journalism or digital strategy. And I wondered, “are you ever worried about not being taken seriously in those spheres because you’re writing feminist erotica in this other sphere?” And I asked that question for me because [laughs] I’ve wondered about that for this show. We are really open here, I talk about a lot of personal stuff, we interview people who talk about periods and sex tech or just subjects that I think a lot of corporate culture is really uncomfortable with, right? Like talking about race and racism directly. And so I’ve worried and wondered and worried and wondered over and over again—what does that do to my consulting business? And, you know, it actually hasn’t [laughs] necessarily been great for it! KL [laughs] Yeah, I mean, it’s so interesting to hear you talk about that because I think my work is associated with A Book Apart as a company, it’s so different for me. I’m not selling myself directly in the way that you are. And I feel like I do have a certain amount of flexibility and sort of safety to branch out and expand my professional persona. And obviously, I also want to stay mindful of how I present myself on behalf of A Book Apart, but it’s so interesting to kind of look at those two things side by side. [10:15] SWB Yeah and I guess as I think about it and as I talk through it out loud, I think in my head I think, “oh, maybe this podcast is at odds with my consulting.” But I actually am not sure that’s what it is. It’s more maybe, I don’t know, I guess over the past year, I feel like I’ve invested a ton of time in getting this off the ground and really wanting to make it good. And that isn’t tied directly to my consulting and as a result of that, I haven’t done a lot of work to publicly talk about practical issues within design, content strategy, user experience. And I do still have opinions on that stuff, it’s not like I don’t. But I feel like I’ve been less interested in writing and speaking about it, except for talking about sort of bias and harm in tech culture, which isn’t really the kind of thing you get hired for as a consultant. KL Yeah. SWB So, I guess maybe it’s more that. It’s like, where am I spending my time and my focus and my energy? And then thinking, “well what is the right balance?” I might give a talk about something like bias and inclusion in tech products and that might be great for a conference, but do I need that to be able to turn into a longer-term project? Do I need to build clients out of that? Do I need to focus specifically on building that side of things? Or am I okay if people don’t call me as much? [KL laughs] Am I going to be okay with that? KL Yeah. SWB And what does that look like? And so I don’t know that I have the exact answer to that yet, but it’s something I’m really thinking about. And it’s funny, it’s been seven years that I’ve worked for myself and I think this is the very first time that I’ve felt a little bit like, not just that I’m making evolutionary change or iterative change, but more like, “oh, you might be reaching a crossroads.” KL [laughing] Oh my gosh, yes! I was just realizing that. I have been with A Book Apart for—it will be six years in March, which just—I can’t believe it. And it’s amazing and it really feels like a big accomplishment, but I also think about how that’s a long time and only in the last year have I really branched out and developed a bit more of myself that isn’t strictly associated with A Book Apart. SWB I think that’s awesome. I think six years is a long time and I think it is something to celebrate, but I think it’s also a huge thing to celebrate that in the past year, you have been like, “oh wait, I’m not just this business, I am also a person with an individual identity” and wanting to kind of tease that out a bit. And, I don’t know, maybe we’re at the crossroads together. Maybe we can do a remake of that Britney Spears movie. KL Uhh, you know I’m down for that. [both laugh] SWB So, okay. So as much as I want to resolve all of our career questions in the next ten minutes, I don’t think it’s going to happen. KL I mean, that would be great. [laughs] SWB But I will say this. I felt really inspired when I heard the New Erotica authors talk about how they worked together and how they think of their collaboration and how they trust each other because it’s—I don’t know, I feel like that’s more how we work together. KL Yeah, it totally is. SWB They’re funnier, but that’s okay [KL laughs] because it made me really confident that however things shake out and whatever it is that I decide to do with my life and however we decide to work together in the future, I guess I feel like you’re going to be at the center of all of it, which is great. [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out] [13:21] Interview: the authors of New Erotica for Feminists KL Today’s show is real special because we’ve got multiple guests joining us. They are three of the four authors who wrote one of our new favorite books—I’m going to give it to all the feminists in my life for the holidays. It’s called New Erotica for Feminists: Satirical Fantasies of Love, Lust and Equal Pay and we are so very here for it. Brooke, Fiona, and Carrie, welcome to No, You Go. Carrie Wittmer Thank you for having us. KL So, your fourth co-author, Caitlin, couldn’t make it today, but we are really excited to talk with the four of you. How did you all start working together? CW So, we all met on the internet on Facebook about two—almost exactly two years ago. I was a member along with Caitlin, Brooke and Fiona of a private Facebook group for female comedy writers. And I was feeling very frustrated because I couldn’t get any of my work published. I didn’t feel like any of the sites that existed, while great, didn’t really fit my voice. And so one day I just posted, “hey, does anyone want to start a female satire site with me?” and Caitlin and Fiona responded, we started emailing. And Brooke and Caitlin knew each other because they did comedy together in Portland, Oregon. And so Caitlin added Brooke and for a couple of months, we just started planning a website that became The Belladonna Comedy. And so we literally met on Facebook. KL That’s so cool. And we definitely want to ask about The Belladonna a little later on, but since we are talking about the book, let’s dive into that. Tell us what it’s all about and how it came to be. Fiona Taylor So, one day we were on GChat and we were talking about our dream of having The Belladonna get a sponsorship from LaCroix sparkling water. And Brooke said, “I’m not really sure how sponsorships work, but I think Tom Hardy drives up to your house in a box truck full of LaCroix and cash and just [KL laughs] backs up to your garage and unloads it and plays with your rescue dog.” And we were like, “yeah, that sounds scientific.” [SWB & KL laugh] So, then I said, “well, actually, that sounds like porn for Brooklyn women.” And I think Caitlyn may have said, “oh, that’s a premise. Let’s throw that into a Google Doc and start going with it.” And of course, we all had ideas from there and it morphed into the McSweeney’s piece—“New Erotica for Feminists”—that quickly went viral once it was published. And about a week later, we got an email from a book editor in the UK saying, “do you want to write a book?” And we ended up writing the book in three months and then editing it in two, so it was on a really accelerated schedule. KL That’s incredible. So, you mentioned the McSweeney’s piece went viral. Was it weird to have an article become something much larger? [16:11] CW I think it was—I’m speaking for myself—for a comedy article to get that wild, for lack of a better word, was really new and shocking to me. For my full time job I’m a reporter at Business Insider, so I’m quite used to some pieces taking off and having a huge audience. But for my comedy, which is what I’m truly passionate about, I was like, “wait, people actually want to read this.” KL [laughing] Yeah. So, there are lots of things we love about the book and in the beginning, you note that you “intentionally removed many identifiers to allow a diverse array of readers to superimpose themselves onto the page.” I personally think this makes the book very sexy. Why was that so important to do that? Brooke Preston I think these were conversations we were having throughout the process. We wanted to be very aware of the fact that we happened to be four, white, straight, cis women and making sure that were were understanding our privilege there, but also that were were writing in a way that made every reader truly feel welcome. At first, we tried to write a lot of diverse vignettes and reps that were maybe about a woman in a headscarf or about not touching someone’s hair, but it didn’t feel right to speak as someone else’s experience that we didn’t live. And so we decided to kind of go the opposite direction with it and remove a lot of the identifiers unless we were talking about a specific famous person because then everyone can sort of superimpose themselves, as they do in real erotica, and become the sexy star and feel included. CW Yeah, I think another thing we wanted to do with the book was we were trying to kind of embrace good erotica because a lot of great writers have written good erotica. Most of it on the internet is bad, but there are some great writers who have written good erotica and the best erotica is not specific because it invites you to imagine yourself. I think I said at another talk a couple of days ago how erotica is more specific to women and more popular to women because they’re not seeing some guy rail a woman in a kind of gross, upsetting way. They’re imagining themselves, not seeing someone else do it. So, I think it was important to us to also stay true to the good erotica that we’ve seen. KL Yeah. Things start out super strong with the opening vignette and I will read it, if I may. [laughs] “The cop asks if I know why he pulled me over. ‘Because my taillight is out?’ ‘Yes ma’am, it’s not a huge deal, but it could be a potential safety issue. I’m happy to escort you to a busy and well-lit garage a few blocks up run entirely by female mechanics. I won’t give you a ticket if you can take care of it now.’ ‘That’s fair,’ I say, my eyes lingering over his clearly visible badge and identification.” So, [laughs] A) that’s hot. [FT laughs] B) I know this is satire, but legitimately it turns me on too, which makes me think about how sad I am that literal fairness, equality, and not being treated terribly is so scintillating. [laughs] Can you tell us more about how you explored the play between satire and erotica and maybe what kind of boundaries you came up against, if any? [19:26] FT I think one of the things that we discovered while we were writing this is we read our joke and we were like, “haha, that’s so funny.” And then we were like, “but is it really funny? Because that’s how the world should be.” And then there was sort of a mixture of sadness and rage in there as well. So, I think that’s what we tried to do with the satire is just sort of create—it’s funny, but it really shouldn’t be funny because this is really how the world should be. BP And our UK team, as part of the promotion of the book, created a “My Feminist Fantasy” hashtag and had readers kind of write their own vignettes about what their feminist fantasies would be. And it was—they were very funny and very good, but also it was striking that so many of them just centered around safety—just basic safety. Someone wrote in and the gist of the vignette was that they were waiting at a bus stop and a man comes up next to them and takes off his headphones and says, “I can tell that it’s making you uncomfortable that I’m here and you don’t know me, so I’m just going to wait at a different bus stop.” [laughs] And that’s the whole vignette. And that so many of these are just like you realize that we’re not at a place societally on either side of the pond where we can just take our safety for granted. And so even though we’ve come so far in the last year or so in the national conversation, this was sort of also chance to say, “yes, but big and small, there are still so many inequalities that we still have to address and that are still so far from being our erotic ideal [laughs] or reality.” CW Yeah. I’ll also say my approach to writing this book was a little different than my co-authors in that I just read a lot of erotica. This is also how I approach a lot of my satirical writing and comedy. I just go deep into the thing that I’m trying to satirize. So, I just read a lot of erotica and I thought, “okay, I just read a really upsetting master and dom thing with a buttplug and they were coworkers, how can I make this into—spin the feminist issue on this?” So, instead of thinking of what are the issues I want to address, I did what are the erotica things I want to put in the book and then how can I spin them? So, it was really eye opening. KL Yeah, I can imagine. That’s super interesting. And in another set of vignettes in the New Erotica for Feminists Who Are Parents chapter—that chapter is perfection. One of our faves from that, [laughs] again if I may. “I open my blouse, my naked breasts peeking through for a fleeting moment. I breastfeed my child in public. It is extremely uneventful and everyone is chill about it.” So racy! [laughs] I mean, we know from friends with babies that this is quite literally a fantasy. You’re never far from a judgey person or a creep. Why do you think it’s important to call this out and why was it important to include these in the book? BP Fiona and I are both parents. But obviously even though Carrie and Caitlin are not currently parents, they are very supportive of women who choose to be parents. And so the four of us really felt like parents are really just an overworked and under-appreciated part of the population. And feminists who are parents are facing a lot of really real challenges and a lot of the most egregious examples of this inequality—the lack of paid maternity leave being a great one. Or talking about a less than perfect split of emotional labour in the household. And so, I think we have a joke in the table of contents that says something like, “we’ll explore the fantasies of these parents, even if it’s really just naps.” And I think we wanted to make sure there was a parent chapter, even though I think it was the hardest to write because obviously, you don’t want there to be any whiff of that you’re trying to eroticize children. [laughs] And so it was the hardest entry point to try and crack, but it was important for us to include. KL So, talking a little bit more about the process, what was the book writing process like for the four of you? FT I think it was less challenging because there were four of us, which made it a lot easier. Someone always has an idea, even if someone else is like, “I am totally braindead at this moment.” So, what we did is we opened a Google Doc. First, in our book proposal we worked out the sections. So, everyone just started throwing ideas in there and I think our work on The Belladonna—we edit together, we write pieces together, we’re just so used to working with each other now that I don’t think there’s ever been an issue where someone has edited or added to someone else’s work and anyone has had an issue with that because we all make each other’s work stronger and better I think. So, people would have an idea, sort of throw it in there, get it as far as they could, then everyone else would sort of come in and go at it and make it stronger and I think that we’re just really lucky that we collaborate well together. CW Yeah. I think another thing we did really well was communicate on when we were going to work a bunch on the book. So, I would send a GChat to the group like, “hey, I’m getting up early on Saturday morning and I’m planning on spending the entire day writing.” And we were just really good about communicating when we could, and so I think our contributions to the book were all very equal. I mean, we’re—like Fiona said, because we do edit each other and add jokes to some that maybe we—I originally wrote, we all have an imprint on every single part of the book. A lot of people have been asking, “oh, so which chapters did you write, Carrie?” And I’m like, “I wrote the whole book. We all wrote the whole book.” [KL laughs] [25:30] BP I would just say the other piece of that to tack on—we all bring a sort of different sensibility to our writing, so Fiona has a lot of literary depth, as does Caitlin. Caitlin has a strong knowledge of mythology. Carrie, being an entertainment reporter, has a ton of science fiction and TV and referential knowledge. So, everyone just brings something different to the table and has a slightly different voice. And so they meld really well together and so it was a good check on ourselves because there were a few times where we would go back and edit and then in the early stages—the original person that had started the draft of that vignette and would say, “oh, that wasn’t actually the joke that I was originally going for.” But then if we weren’t getting it, maybe the audience wouldn’t have gotten it. KL That’s so cool. It really sounds like you all do really work very well together. You also all co-founded The Belladonna together, which is a satire site by women and other marginalized genders for everyone. We love this. How did you decide to found the site and what are your goals for it? BP I think one of the pieces that was really important to us was that what we didn’t want to do was create a site that the byline wasn’t really of value. The tricky part when you’re a new site and you don’t have any cache or followers yet [laughs] is that we wanted to make it really clear that we wanted to make this a high quality writing site that was selective. Not so selective that women felt they could never be part of it or develop their voice on it, but also not something where you could just send anything in and we would just put it on the site. Because I think those sites exist and they serve their purpose, but they’re not as valuable of a professional byline because they’re not a selective site. So, we wanted there to be an editorial process that was really focused on A) showing women’s voices—developing their own voice, rather than having them fit into a specific style that way that say _The Onion_— FT Yeah, because we want to really help writers and at the moment, unfortunately, we can’t pay because we’re not making any money from the site. One day we hope to have that change, that is a goal. So, in terms of—we can’t pay people, so we are trying to make sure that we give them valuable feedback that will help them get published on our site, help them get published on other sites. And sometimes when we read a piece and it’s good, but it’s not quite right for us, we’ll make suggestions about where they should submit it in order to get another byline. So, we really just want to be a place where voices that wouldn’t be heard that frequently are sort of amplified and we do want to be able to monetize and we do want to be able to pay writers and I’m sure we have other goals too. BP Yeah, I think just the biggest thing is just building that community and widening that pipeline. SWB So, you mentioned that you’re not yet making money off of the site and that you’d like to, and I wanted to ask a little about just sort of where you see the site going and how you kind of keep it in perspective. Because I know that running an indie editorial site is famous for being hard, right? We all miss—well, maybe I won’t speak for all of you—but I know me and Katel definitely miss The Toast, I miss The Awl, and I’m curious—as you’re thinking about what you want to do with The Belladonna, how do you kind of make it work, despite the fact that it is hard to run an editorial site on the internet without necessarily having a big influx of cash? CW Yeah, it’s not easy. You’re very right that it’s very hard. All of us have made sacrifices in our personal life I think to devote to the site. I think we each spend about ten hours maybe per week, give or take depending on how many submissions we get, on our work for the site. And we all work full-time, so it’s mostly our nights and weekends, our days off. And I think that we keep doing it even though we don’t get paid for it yet because we’re all so passionate about it. I know that sounds very cheesy, but it’s true. We really believe in ourselves, we really believe in our writers and we all want to get ahead—we want big TV writing jobs and we want that. So, we’re going to keep doing this because we believe in ourselves and our community and we know that this is a great way to get ourselves out there. [30:04] BP And honestly, we’ve gotten so many great emails and some of the most moving are when someone writes and says, “you know, I was going to give up on comedy and I just didn’t feel heard or appreciated in this community at all, and now I’m going to keep going.” Or a lot of people will write to us and say, “that was the nicest rejection letter I’ve ever gotten and that makes me want to submit to you again.” To me, those are real people that are experiencing maybe a lasting career shift, or maybe they’ll say, “I found sort of my own writing partners or my own people through this site and through this community and now we’re off writing together for other sites.” That is a real, tangible effect that you had on someone’s life. And so to us, that’s well worth the small time sacrifices and financial sacrifices that we’re currently putting in this site to just see this vision that we’d had actually coming to fruition and happening. SWB Yeah, that’s really interesting. It sounds like it’s not just, “we want to run an editorial site to run an editorial site,” but that there’s all these other potential outcomes that you’re looking at like are there screenwriting or TV writing gigs out there? What kind of community does this create? And that sort of changes some of the incentives, which I love hearing about that. BP And we also have really great interns. We hire a pair of interns every—it was designed to be quarterly, but in the last few rounds they have been so great that they have offered and we have begged them to stay on for longer, so it’s been more like six month cycles. And they contribute pieces to the site, they help us on the editorial side just making sure, you know, all the trains run on time. They also sometimes have their own special projects of something they’re really passionate about. Whether it’s how can we bring more diversity to the site and curating some initiatives around that, to merch—we’ve been in process talking about how do we maybe do that. So, it’s been so beneficial to have these young women, who are hungry to start their careers and so talented. SWB And so I want to pick up on something that has come up a little bit here and there as we’ve been chatting and that’s that you all are also doing other jobs. So, for those kinds of jobs, is it ever weird to navigate the different parts of your professional identity? Do you ever get worried that commercial clients or, Carrie, for you, journalists or editors will think you’re, I don’t know, not serious about that work or look at what you’re doing with erotic feminist satire [laughs] as being at odds with the other part of your identity? [BP laughs] CW I don’t really care. [laughs & SWB laughs] And if they have a problem with it, I’ll go somewhere else. That’s what I have to say because this is what I care about. [laughs] Honestly! FT Yeah, I haven’t really run into that issue. My boss, I have to say, is really excited that I published a book. He’s going to publish his own book. And he doesn’t necessarily tell clients what the name of my book is, but he’ll be like, “oh, she wrote a book.” You know, which—he’s like, “this helps me too.” So, so far it’s working out. KL So, Brooke, you and Caitlin are both involved in Second City, right? Can you tell us a little bit about that? BP Yeah! So, Caitlin is the person that created the online satire writing program and curriculum for Second City. And she’s taught that as part of their faculty for seven years. And then she brought me on just about a year ago, and now I teach her curriculum and I’ve added sort of my own notes and experiences to that as well for about a year. KL That’s so cool. I would never have ever dreamed there would be an online satire writing program. How did that start and how has it sort of evolved? BP I mean, I think Caitlin could speak to the origins of it more. But I know that the demand is really high, it’s one of the top enrolled programs perennially in the online pantheon of classes at Second City. And first of all, kudos to Second City for having online classes because I’m the only one of the four of us that doesn’t live in New York. I live in Columbus, Ohio, but that doesn’t make me any less serious about comedy writing. And we’re finding that that’s true with a lot of people and especially women, either because they have a job obligation or family obligation, that not everyone can or wants to live in New York or LA, but that that has been prohibitive for people to have professional comedy careers. So, The Second City really saw that and helped open this new channel that has raised so much talent from across the country and across the world because you can really take classes from anywhere. And it was instrumental to my development. I took Caitlin’s first iteration of classes when she developed the class, I took the first round as a student. And that really helped me polish up work and polish up my skills and find a group of people to write with and earn a lot of bylines that have led to other opportunities. [35:02] KL I love that it sort of morphed into that for you. So, we’re really interested in how you all work together, obviously. And not just logistics of making work happen, creative or otherwise, but also just how it is to work with people who are also your friends. What drives you to keep making things together? BP I think we just really enjoy each other. We are friends and we like being around each other and we really are also true admirers of one another personally and professionally—of our work and our voices. And so it just makes it fun. I wish that I had more time to devote to the things that we’re working on together because it’s much more fulfilling for me—sort of in the vein of what Carrie said—it’s much more fulfilling to me to do this work than it is to necessarily work on a white paper about something. Whereas I’m good at that and I can do it, but it’s not bringing out my passion. [laughs] CW I think it also has a lot to do with the fact that we like each other like Brooke said and we work very well together, but we also know that one day, we can probably help each other do something great or do something great together. We could maybe one day create a show together, or one of us could get hired on a show and try to help us get in too. So, I think it’s just the fact that we have that passion that Brooke is talking about that’s never going to go away. It also helps us just always want to work together because we know that this is something really special that will turn into something big. And it did! [laughs] Our relationship already has benefitted all of our comedy careers, so it can only hopefully go up from here! FT Yeah, and I’m just going to add that I think we all have a lot of rage at society [laughs] in the path to here. And this partnership helps us sort of channel it into a constructive way where it’s at least cathartic and we can feel like we’re helping other people laugh. I mean, that’s one of the things that came out of this book—we would love for it to change the world. It’s probably not going to do that, but at least it entertains people and makes them feel like they are not so alone. And we also have a resource section at the end where people can decide what they can handle and take on and sort of try to change things. And so hopefully our book will make people laugh and then they can sort of go do something constructive as well. KL Sara and I feel this so much. We sort of back each other up and we keep each other going and we’re kind of these—we’re rocks for each other in all of this [laughs] hellscape that’s happening! [BP laughs] And we keep inspiring each other, so I think that’s so important. [FT laughs] And it’s really been important for us to figure out what the boundaries are around and between how we work together and what our friendships looks like. Is there ever any need to adjust or readjust the working relationship in order to kind of keep nurturing the friendships? BP Probably on smaller levels. I mean, I think we all communicate so often and pretty honestly that there aren’t needs for major adjustments too much. One example that’s funny now in retrospect—everyone always tells you how hard the writing process is and that you’re going to get exhausted and that you’re going to have these breakdowns sort of in the middle of it. And I was thinking, “you know, I think we’ve done pretty well, we haven’t had any major breakdowns.” [laughs] And then we were on a call talking about the past—someone had sort of mentioned that they were interested in potentially talking to us about in the future doing a pilot around this idea. And we had tried to start in the process of also doing the book—the book wasn’t out yet—thinking about how could we spin this off into a pilot idea. And I’d had a particularly hard week, I was very exhausted. And I don’t know if you’ve ever reached the creative place where you’re just like, “I don’t have ideas any more!” [laughs] “I don’t have any of any kind!” So, I was just sort of at that point. But I had grown up as a comedy and TV junkie, I’d really, really—what an opportunity when someone brings you to that. So, you’re thinking, “I don’t want to miss this.” And so I was so just sort of beside myself that I didn’t have any ideas [laughs] that were very good for this that Caitlin very gently on an internal call with the four of us said, “do you have any ideas, Brooke?” And I was sort of quiet for ten seconds and then I just burst into tears [laughs] on the call! And I’m like, [wailing] “I don’t have any ideas!” [laughs] It’s only funny now in retrospect, but they were so taken aback and like, “oh, are you crying?” And I’m like, [wailing] “I think so!” But they were so sweet about it and were just like, “well, maybe we should just back up [laughing] and do this after the book comes out. Maybe this is a sign that this is too much to have on our plates right now at one time.” So, that’s sort of a more extreme example of—you know, I should have been more self aware of just like, “nope, that’s too much for me!” and just been more aware of it. But I was just so exhausted that it just manifested in this sudden breakdown that they were very sweet about. [40:20] SWB I love that story because I think it would be great if we were all so self-aware [CW laughs] that we were going to prevent ourselves from going into meltdown mode. [BP laughs] But you need the friends who can help you even when you do go to meltdown mode, so I love that you all found that in each other. I feel like that’s a theme that me and Katel come around to all the time on the show. So, we are just about out of time though and while we could talk with you all day, we’re going to have to let you go. And so before we do, I want to make sure we ask, where can everybody keep up with more of the awesome stuff you’re working on and very importantly, buy your book? BP So, you can buy our book anywhere that fine books are sold. If your local store doesn’t have it, it would be super great if you could ask them to carry it. Our website is thebelladonnacomedy.com. And we have a lot more ideas in the works that we hope to bring more books and more projects to you in the future if you someone will let us do that. So, that would be great. SWB Well, I certainly hope that they do. And thank you all so much for being on the show! [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out] Career Chat with Shopify KL Hey friends, it’s time for our weekly career chat with Shopify. You know, I manage a small business and an online storefront and using Shopify to help us do that is a no-brainer. But what about all those big businesses? That’s where Shopify Plus comes in because they believe large merchants should love their commerce platform too. I really dig that. And the best part? They’re hiring an Enterprise Sales Rep to show high-growth, high-volume merchants like Tesla, RedBull, GE, and L’Oréal all the reliability and flexibility Shopify Plus has to offer. This isn’t just any sales position either. The job description says you’ll need to have a sense of adventure and an entrepreneurial spirit. That means you’ll be taking the reins and growing fast in the role. And get this, you’ll rack up experience equivalent to a real-world MBA. That’s really cool. I also just really love that Shopify values hiring diversity for all their positions. They say, “we know that diversity makes for the best problem solving and creative thinking, which is why we’re dedicated to adding new perspectives to the team and encourage everyone to apply.” So, if that sounds good to you, learn more about the Enterprise Sales Rep position and dozens more at shopify.com/careers. [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out] Fuck Yeah of the Week KL Okay, okay. Let’s get to our fuck yeah. Sara, it’s pretty important this week. SWB Yes, it is. So, you all remember our third co-host, Jenn Lukas. So, back in October, we told you she was out for the season. And, well, she’s decided that she’s not going to be able to come back to the show. And we are really bummed out that we couldn’t figure out a way to make it work, but me and Katel decided we’re going to keep the show going. We actually have a lot more on that next week because we actually have some big news to share about the show! But this week, we wanted to first make sure we took a moment and give a fuck yeah sendoff to Jenn! So, what we want to do is listen to some favorite clips. KL Oh my gosh, yes. This is such a great idea. You know, I have really been missing her voice on parenting and figuring out how to be a mom—and any day now, a mom of two kids—while being awesome at work. And it was so helpful to have her open up about stuff like family leave. JL Maybe two months into my leave, I started watching conference talks [laughing] while I breast-fed because I missed it! I missed being in the know and being still connected to that part of me that is my career. And being like, “how do I stay ambitious while I’m physically acting as food for my child?” [laughs] SWB You know, it was so funny. I remember she actually texted me during that time to ask me, “hey, are any of the talks you’ve given recently online? Are there videos of them?” And I was like, [KL laughs] “yes, but why would you be watching them?” And I just didn’t get! So, that conversation totally helped me get, right? I was like, “oh, because she wanted to feel more connected to the stuff that she felt like she was missing.” And so that made me also remember we need to make sure as we go forward that we talk about parenting-related issues. And we definitely need to bring on more badass moms because otherwise I’m not going to realize all that stuff! KL Yes! SWB You know what I also miss though? I miss Jenn’s sense of humor a lot. She was always bringing so much energy to the show. Like when we all talked about periods? JL You know, they have the Myers-Briggs test and these color tests and I just want you to know that my personality right now is period! KL I know, [laughs] I could not stop laughing. Something Jenn always did was bring a lot of energy to the show, like you said. And also no one—no one—loves Jeopardy as much as Jenn. [45:05] JL At one point during labour, I think I definitely said to my husband and doula, “I wonder who won College Jeopardy.” [SWB & KL laugh] SWB Yeah, so when Lilly Chin, who was the winner of that College Jeopardy tournament that she mentioned, when she agreed to be on the show, I thought Jenn was going to lose it. [KL laughs] Not quite like Ke$ha level of lose it, but still, she was going to lose it! KL Yeah. SWB So fuck yeah, Jenn, we miss you. And we are sending you all of our best vibes as you prep for baby number two! KL Fuck yeah! That’s it for this week’s episode of No, You Go. NYG is recorded in our home city of Philadelphia and produced by Steph Colbourn. Our theme music is by The Diaphone. Thanks to Brooke Preston, Carrie Wittmer, and Fiona Taylor for being our guests today. And if you loved today’s show as much as we did, don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Your support helps us do what we do and we love that! See you again next week for our season finale! SWB And big news! Bye! KL Bye! [music fades in, plays alone for 32 seconds, and fades out]

Matt, Dara and Ezra talk about Republicans, Trump and Russia. Plus: A research paper reveals how Dara lost on College Jeopardy. References and further reading: Politico Playbook piece mentioned by Matt, "GOP to the world: What would you like us to do?" Law Review paper "Separation of Parties, Not Powers" The Weeds has been nominated for this year's People's Choice Podcast Awards! Cast your vote for The Weeds for free before Tuesday, July 31st at podcastawards.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Lilly Chin knew she couldn’t lose during Final Jeopardy, she decided to give a joke answer: “Who is the Spiciest Memelord?” But that joke became a meme itself—turning Lilly into not just the College Jeopardy champion, but an internet sensation. Today, we chat with the MIT grad student about what it was like to be on the show, how the internet treats women in the public eye, and how her brush with fame changed the way she looks at online visibility. We also talk about Lilly’s research on soft robots, mentorship, Twitch streaming, and doing it all for the stories. > We’re so used to thinking about women in terms of their outward appearance that even when it’s on a very academic game like Jeopardy, people are still defaulting to thinking of, like, an object of attraction. > —Lilly Chin, MIT PhD student and College Jeopardy champ _Note: We’ve donated net proceeds from this episode to RAICES, the largest immigrant legal services organization in Texas, and ActBlue’s fund supporting 12 organizations working with migrant, detained, or deported children and families. Please join us. _ Links from the interview: Lilly’s website The infamous “Who is the spiciest memelord?” clip The Jeopardy subreddit Talia Levin’s article about appearing on Jeopardy, “Big Tits for $600” Justine Sacco’s tweet about AIDS in Africa So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson The “right to be forgotten” concept The field of soft robotics Also in this episode: Creating intimate spaces online, from our newsletter to Tiny Letters to private Slack accounts Shopping feminist, ethical, local, and just plain good companies Why Katel has the best sweatshirt ever Sponsors This episode of NYG is brought to you by: Shopify, a leading global commerce platform that’s building a world-class team to define the future of entrepreneurship. Visit shopify.com/careers to see what they’re talking about. WordPress—the place to build your personal blog, business site, or anything else you want on the web. WordPress helps others find you, remember you, and connect with you.   Harvest, makers of awesome software to help you track your time, manage your projects, and get paid. Try it free, then use code NOYOUGO to get 50% off your first paid month. Transcript Katel LeDû [Ad spot] Shopify builds software to help anyone with a great idea build a successful business. In fact, more than 50 percent of the entrepreneurs who use Shopify are women, including me! I use Shopify to power abookapart.com and so do people in 175 different countries! Now Shopify needs more great people to join their team. Visit shopify.com/careers to see open positions, learn about their culture, and so much more [music fades in, plays alone for 12 seconds, fades out]. Jenn Lukas Welcome to No, You Go, the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. I’m Jenn Lukas. KL I’m Katel LeDû. Sara Wachter-Boettcher And I’m Sara Wachter-Boettcher. And we did it, everyone. We did it! KL What? SWB We got Jenn’s dream guest on the show. JL Is it Kesha? SWB Ok. We got Jenn’s second dream guest on the show. That would be Lilly Chin, who’s the 2017 College Jeopardy winner, and a current graduate student at MIT. We talk with Lilly about what it was like to be on the show, how her final Jeopardy answer made internet history, and how the whole experience changed the way that she looks at things like networked culture and online visibility. KL Ugh you know something that really got my attention in Lilly’s interview, I’m really wondering if we can start there for a second. If you subscribe to our newsletter, I wrote a letter to introduce Issue #4 and I talked about how I used to get really bad panic attacks, and I still struggle with a lot of anxiety, and I’ve, you know, done a lot to sort of figure that out. It’s still an ongoing process and while I felt really great to have a platform to share something really personal like that, I also felt really exposed and, I don’t know, it made me think that like, I kind of forget that, you know? We’re in a room talking to each other and it feels really safe and supportive and we’ve had such good feedback about the show, which is great, but, I don’t know, you kind of forget that you’re really putting yourself out there. SWB Yeah, I think about this a lot because I think podcasts do feel intimate, and they feel intimate for the listener, too, but you don’t really who might be listening. And I mean I think with something like a newsletter, you don’t know where that might end up or where it might get screenshotted and shared around. And I think, you know, we’re going to—we’re going to talk with Lilly a little bit more about this, but there’s ways in which that kind of like hyper-visibility or like constant networked feeling online can make it hard to know what context you’re in—and the context shifts on you sometimes without you realizing it. [3:04] KL Totally. I mean even writing that letter for that issue, I was like, ok, this went out to, you know, a hundred some odd people. Thank you for subscribing. But it lives in… forever in internet, and like anyone can find it. And I had these moments the day after we sent it out where I was like, ok. It’s just like, it’s out there. And I think, I don’t know, like it’s a weird feeling. SWB What was making you feel like vulnerable or exposed about it? Or like what is the fear that you have about this letter existing out there where you talked about anxiety? KL I mean I think part of the anxiety that I talk about is the sort of spiral that happens where you start to feel small or weak or like you’re not, you know, up to snuff or you’re not like performing or you’re just not like the person that you’re “supposed” to be. And I think that just is compounded when there’s eyes on that—when people are looking at it and you’re offering it up. And I think ultimately I feel, like I said, very grateful—and I’ve said this I think, you know, to you, if not, you know, recorded it—I’m really proud of the therapy work that I’ve done, and I’m so, so happy that I get to share that. But it’s also, like, weird [laughs] and raw. And so yeah, I don’t know, this whole thing has been like a process a little bit. JL Yeah, it’s never just one feeling. It’s not like [yeah], “Oh ok. I know I’m going to feel exposed so I don’t want to do it,” because there’s things that make you want to share all of this like with people too. The internet’s not just like, “Uh well I don’t know what’s going to happen, so I’m outta here.” It’s very much like not one-sided. SWB And I think some people probably have that feeling. Like I don’t what’s going to happen, so I’m outta here. But clearly we don’t, because we keep doing this podcast [laughter]. And so we are—we have things we want to talk about and things that like… it’s not just about, like, “I want to talk about this,” or even, “I want other people to listen to me”—although I do, I want everybody in the world to listen to me. I’ve got a lot of opinions— but, that I think that the kinds of stuff that we’re talking about and sometimes struggling with are things that are really normal and that are under-discussed. And just the act of having natural conversations about them in a shared space is really powerful [yeah]. But also there is risk there, and I think that that’s one of the things that we have to kind of like constantly make peace with, or at least I feel that, that like I have to make peace with what kinds of risks those might be. And so, you know, we’ve talked about this in the past, right? It’s like, “If I tweet that, what kind of randos are going to come troll me?” And is it just going to be your, like, everyday rando that I can block, or is it going to be actually something more sinister? And like those are real like internal monologues that I’m having on a regular basis. At the same time, though, there’s something to me that’s a little different about both like podcasting and also something like a newsletter—or like, I subscribe to a lot of people’s Tiny Letters—that is a little bit more intimate feeling, and in some ways almost feels like there’s been a resurgence in that. And I look at it almost like a way to reclaim space. Or reclaim something that’s not exactly privacy, but that it feels a little bit more private in a world where so much of our communication feels so, like—actually as Lilly talked about—hyper-networked [chuckles]. [6:34] KL Mm hmm. Yeah. Or like, just branded. And that can feel weird too. I mean I love that some of my friends have Tiny Newsletters because I feel like I’m reading their journals, which is such a cool—it’s such a cool feeling, you know? JL It’s got that same feeling of like, you know, blogging back in the day, or like, you know, it felt just more like … I don’t know, more connected with the people. And I think that’s sort of like what’s nice about the podcast, too, and getting feedback about the podcast is I just feel like it’s a different way to be connected with people. SWB Blogging has certainly changed a lot and, you know, now it’s like, what’s the difference between a blog and an online publication? What is Medium? Like everything has sort of collapsed into like one big text box on the internet. And some of these spaces that we’re talking about give it a little bit of definition, you know? I think the same thing about a lot of the like private backchannel Slack accounts I’m in. I’m in a few of them that are like professionally focused, kind of… but what they really are is private communities of people who I’m close to for one reason or another where we can talk really openly and honestly about things that are happening in our professional world, but in a space where we have absolute trust with people. And I find that to be really valuable, and I feel like that’s where I turn so often to process how I’m feeling about things that are happening in the world. Where like that used to be Twitter, and that doesn’t always feel safe enough. Or sometimes it’s not even about safety. It’s like, sometimes that just feels too loud. KL Yeah. Well [quiet sigh] my therapist what says that what we’re doing is a gift. So. I just want to share that [laughing] with you. SWB Oh my god. If anybody listening has not listened to the episode where we interviewed Katel’s therapist, it is so good. Talk about a gift. Like that—that was a gift. KL That was really wonderful. JL And if anyone listening has not subscribed to our newsletter yet, you definitely should because it’s full of more little gifts. SWB If you aren’t subscribing to our newsletter, we started it about a month ago and we are doing it every other week. We have, like, super-intimate letters from us about things happening in our lives, plus a whole bunch of links and things that we love. And it is called, maybe fittingly, I Love That [laughter]. So if you go to noyougoshow.com/ilovethat, you can subscribe and you can also check out the back issues [music fades in, plays alone for four seconds, fades out]. [9:02] Sponsors SWB [Ad spot] Before we get to our interview with Lilly, we’ve got a couple awesome folks to tell you about. The first is Harvest. Harvest makes software to help you track your time, manage your projects, and get paid. It’s super easy to use on the web or via the app, and it’s made my work life way easier over the years. I’ve seriously been a customer since 2011. I can barely remember 2011. Harvest does all kinds of stuff, including integrate with other tools you love like Basecamp, Slack, and Trello. You can also send and manage invoices right from your Harvest account, and even take online payments. Try it for free at getharvest.com and get 50 percent off your first paid month with the code noyougo. That’s getharvest.com, offer code: noyougo. JL [Ad spot] We’d also like to take a moment and thank our friends at WordPress. WordPress has been a supporter of NYG since the start, and we’re big fans of theirs too. After all, it’s how we run our website, noyougoshow.com. We trust WordPress because it’s super easy to set up and customize, but it’s also really powerful. For example, we added plugins to host our podcast, and also gather sign-ups for our newsletter. You can even set up a ‘buy’ button or add an online store. Plans start at just four dollars a month, so what are you waiting for? Start building your website today. Go to wordpress.com/noyougo for 15 percent off any new plan purchase. That’s wordpress.com/noyougo for 15 percent off your brand new website [music fades in, plays alone for three seconds, fades out]. Interview: Lilly Chin JL Lilly Chin is a graduate student at MIT working towards a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Her technical research interests are in robotics hardware design. She studies how old and new forms of media collide, chiefly in video games, film, and internet culture. You might recognize her name, as Lilly was also the 2017 College Jeopardy Tournament champion! And she even created a meme while doing so. Welcome to No, You Go, Lilly. Lilly Chin Yeah, it’s great to be here. JL Oh so we’re super excited that you’re here. We’re big fans of Jeopardy both at my house and at work [Lilly chuckles]. I have to tell you that we followed the College Tournament really intently, and we were definitely all rooting for you when you were on. LC Thanks [laughs]. JL [Laughs] We had this joke that I was going to miss who won because the final day of the tournament was also actually my son’s due date. LC Oh! Oh! Oh. [Laughs]. JL And uh, sure enough, I went into labor that morning. At one point during labor, I think I definitely said to my husband and doula, “I wonder who won College Jeopardy.” [Laughter] We were very stoked the next week to find out that it was you. [11:29] LC Oh thanks [laughs]. JL [Laughs] So what got you interested in being on Jeopardy? LC The RA from my dorm, actually, he had been on Jeopardy the summer before and we had all like made viewing parties and gone to see him. So when it came time for the test to be taken, he was like, “Oh, you all should just take it and see how you do.” And so it actually took a couple of tries before I was on the show, but then, yeah, my second time I tried out I got on. So. JL Nice! That’s awesome. What—what’s the audition process like? LC So it’s pretty cool. The first round is just this online test and it’s just really quick-fire, just asking you trivia questions. And if you do well enough on that, they invite you to an audition, which is in person. And the producers themselves definitely have a ton of energy because at the end of the day, Jeopardy’s a TV show. So they want to make sure that you’re really excited, that you have some sort of stage presence, and that, like, you know, you’re actually the person who took the exam since it’s all online. JL Hmm. Yes [laughs]. Were you nervous going into that? LC I was very nervous the first time, but the second time I actually was thinking like, “Oh, I have to go all the way to New York. It’s kind of a pain,” and I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to go. But I had a lot of fun, so I ended up just going. And I think being more relaxed the second time around helped me out, like, be more natural in front of the camera. JL When did—do you find out right away if you’re going to be on? LC Oh no, so for the tournament you actually have to wait for like a month or so. I had forgotten actually when I got the call that I was going to be on, and for adult Jeopardy you actually have to wait. You’re in the contestant pool for like a year and a half before, so you’re just waiting there. JL Wow! [Yeah] So when you found out and then you went to the show, what was the energy like on set there? LC That’s really interesting. because it’s—like you have 15 people that definitely don’t know each other just sort of randomly in this place. And the thing I was struck by was that the set was actually quite large, right? Like you’re so used to seeing it on the TV just like cutting from the clues to the contestants and back again, but like actually seeing it as a space that you inhabit, it was really interesting. I guess also the energy is [stammers] it’s just the same thing of like, oh I understand, all of these contestant producers are really trying to hype you up and have you really excited. And so at the end of the first day, I just immediately went to bed. I didn’t even have dinner or anything. Just like, conked out, because I was just so exhausted from being that high-energy. Yeah the next couple of times I went on the show actually it was a lot more comfortable, because I knew how sort of the filming schedule works. But it’s a very tiring experience. [13:46] JL How did you prepare for being on the show? LC So I did trivia in high school, so like Quiz Bowl and those things. So I had most of my trivia knowledge from there. But I would say like the one month before the show it was like learning about betting strategy, reading up of what the common questions are. I don’t think I did as much preparation as other people did, but definitely looking into betting strategy was a big one. JL I feel like it’s such a wide variety—like, you never really know. I mean there’s like some repeats on Jeopardy all the time in like topics but it’s like, how could you possibly narrow it all down? LC Yeah, I mean, it’s a funny thing, right? Because it’d still a TV show, so you need to have the answers be things that people at home will be like, “Oh! I’ve heard of this before.” So you can’t have it too obscure. I—I remember one thing funny though is that the popular culture is definitely like, right, like I’m a 2000s kid and so I think one of the things was like ’80s and ‘90s TV shows, and I was like, “Well, I know I’m not going to do well in this.” [laughter] Yeah. JL I know I think—my co-workers and I always watch that, and that’s, like, definitely our alley so [laughter]. So we mentioned a bit in the intro that you are also the creator of a meme, which happened during Final Jeopardy. Can you tell us that story? LC So I had seen like people give funny Final Jeopardy answers in the past. So I decided beforehand that, oh if I ever have a chance to do a lock game, like a game where I would win no matter what, I would put some funny answer down. And I decided to do “dank memes,” but then I was like, oh that’s probably not PG enough for Jeopardy, so I decided “spicy memes.” And then on the Final Jeopardy thing it turned out it was a “who is” question, so then I said, “Who is the spiciest memelord?” And got Alex Trebek to say it on national television [laughter]. [15:26] KL That’s amazing. LC Yeah. JL So it was not planned? LC I knew that like if I had the chance, I definitely wanted to say it, but it was also not planned for how viral of a reaction was gotten. Like it turned out—I was just thinking about my friends. Like, “we watch memes all the time at home, they’ll like it.” And then it turned out the internet also [laughs] really likes memes. So I did not plan for that at all. Yeah. JL Right. Yeah. How has that—how has that been? LC So I’ve been actually thinking about writing more academically about this experience, but this idea of the sudden burst of fame—like I was on the front page of Reddit twice, there’s like a million views on that video, and then it suddenly has a spike and then this long tail of just there’s still this ambient fame, especially since I’m still at MIT for graduate school where people, especially other students, will recognize me. But, you know, just the other day I was in the North End and got recognized on the street, and it’s not something I’m expecting. And this idea of like, you know, this sudden burst of fame. Like going up and then going down again and then suddenly like, “Oh reruns are happening, I’m getting a lot more Facebook messages from randos.” It’s sort of interesting, and it’s also interesting to be known more for Jeopardy than for my research, which is something I’m more excited about, I guess. But at the same time, the fame that I’ve gotten from Jeopardy might’ve helped me in terms of like recognition for my own research, right? Like whenever my advisor introduces me to someone else from a different lab, she’s like, “Oh do you know that this is the [laughing] Jeopardy winner?” [Laughter] So that’s an interesting balance. Yeah. JL You’ve even taught a class about this, right? At MIT? LC Yeah. So there’s an educational studies program where MIT undergrads and grad students can teach high school and middle school students. And so this was related with the comparative media studies part, where I really enjoy sort of showing that like it’s not just like analyzing books or film, like you can actually do all of these cool analyses of contemporary media culture. So that’s what I was trying to do was take my current case example and being like, “Look: here’s how these media analysis techniques can really help you understand what’s going on in your life, even if it’s something as weird as like national television.” [17:34] JL I mean have your views changed a lot about what it’s like to be a public figure? LC Yeah. I think I’m more confused—I get more and more confused about why people want to be famous. Like when I’m doing my Twitch streaming, I think it’s interesting that there’s always like these people who are like, “Oh I want to make it big,” and there’s some crazy statistic about one in three British children want to be a YouTube star when they grow up [laughter][oh]. Yeah it’s because I mean that’s what you’re growing up with, and that’s what you’re seeing as your content. It’s not like TV or movies as much anymore. It’s like, “Oh, I see these kids making videos on YouTube.” And I’m sort of like wondering why people want the fame, because like I kind of get it, right? Like I want my research to have exposure because then more people are thinking about my ideas and I think I really appreciate that. but then at the same time it’s like there’s so much attention to your life. Also like the harassment part of it, and it’s a weird public/private divide that I’m not sure people know fully what they’re getting into when they sign up for this. And some people enjoy being like a figure of controversy, right? Like Kanye West and Donald Trump come to mind, where it doesn’t matter what the press is but as long as people are talking about you, it sort of continues like some gratification. JL Right. I mean there’s—I mean you talked about being on the front page of Reddit and there’s also a Jeopardy community subreddit, and how does it feel to, like, look at people talking about you? LC I was worried at first that there was going to be—about the internet hate. And there’s a Woman of Jeopardy Facebook group where people sort of like commiserate about the experience. Yeah there’s a really good Vice article that’s called like, “Big Tits for $600,” and it’s just sort of like a very good compilation and just sort of talking about the experience of being a woman on national television and sort of what that means. So I was—I was a little bit nervous about that, because I had read these stories before, but when it came down to it and I saw what people were writing, it just sort of seemed so petty that people were coming up with these impressions of me after 20 minutes of national television. I was actually more taken aback the second time I went around for the Tournament of Champions where people were actually extremely nice and just sort of doing analysis of the game and less about me because I had braced myself for all of this verbal abuse, and then when it wasn’t there and people were just really kind it’s like, “Oh she tried really hard,” it was really not what I expected and sort of threw me off guard. JL For those who don’t know, on Reddit you can like you have like a little identifier that says that you were a contestant on the show to prove that it’s you. And I’ve seen like a couple of people definitely get into the threads with other people and reply to some of it, and I feel like a lot of is positive but then, you know, as you mentioned, like with women I’ll see a lot of comments like, “Oh her—” Not about you, about like other contestants that will be like, “Oh I hated her! Her voice was so annoying.” And it’s like wow! [Chuckles] People are harsh. [20:19] LC Yeah it’s just also like… in some sense of being like a female figure like in the—in the spotlight, it sort of puts you up. Like we’re so used to thinking about women in terms of their outward appearance that even when it’s on a very academic game like Jeopardy, people are still defaulting to thinking of it, like, as an object of attraction or something. JL You’ve talked about, you know, you have an interest in the “fight to maintain one’s identity and narrative in a hyper-mediated network culture.” [Mm hmm] Can you describe a bit what that means? LC What I found really is that … usually you have some control over your own identity. It’s very closely tied to you. Obviously you can’t control everything about what people think about but you, you know, you talk to people it forms an identity. But what happened is that with Jeopardy there was this very immediate division between myself and my image, right? So like millions of people saw me saying, “Who is the spiciest memelord?” on national television and so some people—so some people are trying to co-opt this as like, “Oh look! It’s a meme culture.” And then other people are like—Jeopardy itself is trying to co-opt this in saying like, “We need to target the 18 to 35 age demographic for advertisements and this is like, you know, a cool kid.” So they kind of go over and it’s like, “How do you do fellow kids?” And my friends from high school when they were like, “Why—why are you on my Instagram feed?” And I was like, “What?” And it turns out that they had used my image to advertise on Instagram to try to encourage more people to apply for the college test. Which I think is crazy like sure,  yeah, I signed off all my rights, but in some sense, right? Like their curation of my image is no longer outside my control. I’m like fighting against, you know, Jeopardy, I’m fighting against 4Chan, I’m fighting against all of these forces about who gets to control my image. So it becomes an interesting thing, because I think this happens on some level to everybody, right? There was a good article talking about how Snapchat is dying and this idea that even on Facebook, even on Twitter, all of these things were cultivating our own personal brand of how we want to come up with. That everything is now sort of a online interactive CV, and there’s not really a chance for you to be yourself because you’re worried about how it’s going to be taken either way. So not everyone has this experience of, like, “suddenly national television is taking my image and running with it,” but we’re always sort of trying to deal with this idea that now that everything’s on the internet, there’s so many different forces that you’re really trying to curate something, and is it even possible anymore? [22:47] JL Do you think it’s possible? LC I think in some sense you have to accept that like you no longer have control of your image which [chuckles] is—which is kind of like what I’m doing. But at the same time, so this is coming from a book I read from Jon Ronson, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. It’s this idea where individual people have to sort of be their own PR firm. That like you have to do, like, this brand curation. I think it is possible, but it becomes a lot more effort and you sort of have to understand what you’re doing, right? There’s a lot of talk about the right to be forgotten, because it’s like, oh kids don’t understand what they’re doing and you might say something dumb on the internet. I don’t think we ever had the right to be forgotten, like within your community—it’s the classic like, you know, small town, scarlet letter, everybody knows what you did wrong—but I think encouraging more people to understand how these forces happen and how to better protect yourself, I think that’s sort of the best you can do. JL I do a lot of public speaking in the web field and I remember like the first time that I got back from a conference and the conference had posted pictures of me, and of course I’m, like, in mid-word so my face is all distorted, and it’s just like, I’m like, “Oh my god, that’s awful!” But I was like, “Hey, I guess I made it.” [Laughter] And I remember now because I have like, you know, people will be like, “Hey, can you take a picture?” And then they’ll like, you’ll take a picture of them and they’ll want to see the picture to like see if it’s ok [yeah] and I don’t—that doesn’t happen to me anymore. Like I’ve just given up on that battle [right][chuckles], because I think there’s so many bad pictures of me on the internet. But I did a talk one time for a Girl Develop It group here which was like sort of trying to encourage more people to get into public speaking and it was just sort of like, you know, “What’s the worst that could happen?” And I went through and showed highlights of all the terrible pictures of me on the internet and it just sort of was like one of those, “Well, like really what is the worst-case scenario of this?” And sort of, “Is it that bad in protecting yourself, like maybe against the things that are really bad? Not things like, ‘Oh here’s an unflattering image of me’.” LC For public speaking, you go out there and you know really clearly that, “Oh I’m going to put out a face and I’m going to present myself and so I should prepare myself for, you know, being judged by other people.” But now with the internet, it’s less clear that really like anything that you do, like, it could be subject to like people seeing it and people making judgements of it. There was a famous case, which is Justine Sacco who made a tweet that was like, “Oh I’m going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding, I’m white.” [Oh yes] Yeah. JL Before she got on a plane, right? LC Right. [25:15] JL And then she got off the plane and there was an obvious amount of backlash, yeah. LC And but the thing was, is that she only had like 200 followers before that, and so she probably thought, like, “Oh I’m just going to make this like off-color joke to like my 200 friends,” and then so what she thought was a private transaction actually blew up into like a huge like, you know, trending on Twitter like number-one thing. And I think that’s really the idea that I’m trying to get at is that it’s less clear what your private and public actions should be. So you sort of overprotectively try to curate everything. And then you sort of, like you were saying about the pictures, it’s almost impossible to do that. JL Right. So you know all of this, like you know all of the potential [laughs] for repercussions of being on the internet and what can happen. But that said, like, you are still like I think sort of embracing this public figure. So, as you mentioned before, you have a Twitch stream, right? LC Yeah. JL Tell us a little bit more about that. Like, what makes you stream? And what sort of things are you streaming? LC So I stream on Twitch, and Twitch is primarily for video games, and so I started streaming because one: I had the Jeopardy fame and I was like, “Oh, this would be a good platform to jump off on,” and two: a lot of my friends stream speed runs, which are trying to play video games super fast and I was like, oh, as a media scholar, I don’t understand why they do it so the easiest way to learn would be to do it myself. And it started off from this academic interest and then it turned into, I really appreciate the community. There are a couple of people from Scandinavia who like tune into me like super regularly, even though it’s like 3 am in Sweden time. And I find myself that like I’m putting on this like show for them, that I enjoy talking to them. I enjoy like, you know, discussing the video games, or like what’s going on in my life. And that’s sort of an interesting feeling, like it’s gone beyond just like, “Oh I want to put my ideas out there,” and it’s to, “I want to talk to these like two or three people,” and then I make more friends and it’s quite nice. JL It’s again that balance, right? Like here’s a potentially like field that we’re like opening ourselves to all this potential negativity, but you keep finding really positive things. [27:20] LC Because in some sense the reason why it is still [chuckles] a positive experience is because I have like, you know, ten people who watch me regularly on a twice-a-week basis, right? And similarly I have sort of private I guess IRC, you know, like internet chat channels that I do with my friends, and in some sense like the only reason that these are still nice is because they’re public, but they’re still private in a way. And sort of finding these spaces on like an increasingly networked world is difficult. In the past it used to be that you would be in these local communities, right? Like, “Oh, I live in the Cambridge area so I’ll like talk to all of the people in Cambridge and find similar things,” but now in some sense we’re creating local communities but on the internet. So it’s no longer local geographically but it’s local in terms of interests or maybe like respect for each other and things like that. JL Like you were you saying, you know, you just jumped into streaming because you wanted to learn more about, which is just so neat like to just like, “Ok. I’ve got an interest in something. I’m just going to do it,” is that generally how you live your life? LC Yeah. I definitely do things because like, “Oh, it’ll be a lot of fun.” Or like, “It’ll be a good story out of it.” The whole thing about doing the spiciest memelord was definitely like, “I’ll get a good story out of this,” or like, you know, even trying out for Jeopardy in the first place. JL I think that’s like such a neat idea. You know, I was reading a bit on your Reddit AMA, you had said, “One of my guiding principles for whether I’m wavering between whether or not I should do something is, will I get a good story out of it?” LC Yeah [laughing] exactly. JL This year the College Jeopardy Tournament of 2018 just happened and you also offered advice to the folks taking part in it. And you’ve also been an MIT Women in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science mentor. And worked with Girls Who Code. You are a mentor extraordinaire! LC Oh. I don’t know. It’s just like, I have advice and, like, I appreciate all the people who gave me advice. So it makes sense to just sort of give back because I can. Yeah, I don’t know, I thought it was interesting because recently someone came up to me and was like, “Hey, do you want to be part of my admissions consulting group, where like, you know, parents pay a lot of money and you, like, review essays and stuff like that?” And it just felt really bad like because—because on one level, right, I enjoy doing this work and like it would be nice to get paid for it. But on the other hand, it felt like contributing to these systems of like people not getting the mentorship that they need just because they don’t have the right networks or they don’t have a ton of cash, and it feels like the right thing to do is to—is to give back in whatever ways you can. Like oftentimes I feel like I’m not giving as much as I could. I was a MedLink in the dorm system, which basically like we’re students and we live in a dorm and we have basic first aid training. And we also know about all the medical resources on campus. So if people are having relationship troubles we can point them to mental health or, you know, if they got a cut we have band-aids and things. And I think that was one of like most rewarding experiences because it’s not just that, “Oh like I want to help people because like it boosts a resume,” or something like that. It’s just that people are—people are having trouble and you want to help them out how you can. I guess like I don’t see… I feel like I could do more for mentorship like because like, as you’re saying, like I’m doing a lot of different things, but at the same time I feel like being there and at least like reminding people that there is somebody who cares is important. [30:31] JL Right. It’s really neat so I mean you find it rewarding, I’m assuming. LC Yeah. Like I said I have a sort of insecurities about, am I actually doing enough to help people? Because when you’re doing so many things, like, is it on a superficial level or not? That’s why—that’s why I was a little—I was a little like taken aback when you were like, “Oh you’re a mentor extraordinaire.” Because on some level it’s just giving advice to people because you’ve been through these experiences and, you know, they haven’t. Even the older grad students when I’m freaking out about things and they’re just being like, “Yeah I freaked out about this too,” it’s sort of comforting [chuckles]. JL So what’s next? What has you super excited? LC I’m really excited about my research, especially now that it’s summertime because I don’t have—sort of going from undergrad to grad school is this transition away from other people are setting the curriculum, and like telling you what to learn, to I’m setting my own path and like my own research. So I’m working in soft robotics. So usually when you think of a robot it’s this hard metal skeleton, but soft robots is this thing, “Hey! What if we make robots out of rubber or silicone, like soft materials, so that they’re safer around people and they can pick up squishy things?” So I’ve been working on, how do we make these soft robots work? How do they grab things? I’m also really excited about sort of this Jeopardy paper that I’m doing: how do we think about fame and identity using myself as a case study, but sort of broadening it to other people. And then finally, I guess, the combination of these two interests is as robots are becoming more and more commonplace, as algorithms and big data are sort of changing the way we approach things, how can we have people still be like comfortable with this—with these new algorithms and things? Like it’s more than just like, “If I have the robot from the Jetson’s show up like can I interact with it?” It’s more on a fundamental level of when I say “AI” most people don’t know what this means. And it’s actually pretty understandable but we need to stop thinking about scientists as like, you know, these like mad scientists who are doing whatever they want in their lab coats and more of something approachable, especially as the future is heading towards that direction. [32:15] JL We’ve talked a little bit before with one of our previous guests, Alison, about this idea of what the scientist—the white man in the white lab coat. LC [Laughing] Yeah exactly. JL [Laughs] The crazy hair. And I think like generally, you know, you start talking about robots and generally there’s like the, either like, “I am intimidated by that subject,” or like, Skynet questions I think starts being thrown out. LC Yeah. I think, especially for my research, right? So soft robotics, it’s intentionally for like, you know, being around humans instead of not being in a factory somewhere, and I remember someone—there was a conversation about like, what does the future of work look like? And they were like, “Oh! You know, service jobs will be ok because who wants a robot to take care of grandma?” And I was like raising my hand, I was like, “Actually this is literally my [laughing] research!” And so on some level, I really want to tell people the thinking behind it of like the direction because I can’t predict the future of what research is going to be like, but to reduce the fear of like, “What does AI mean? What does deep learning mean?” I think would help people understand like, ok, like one: this is a future that I can understand; and two: this is a future where I can actually belong in. JL So, what are you telling people? LC So one thing that I need to keep remembering is that when I am not in MIT, and everyone’s working on like robots and drones and what have you, that like most people when they hear “robots” they’re like, “Woah! Like you must be really smart!” And I’m like, “Wait, no, I’m not. I’m not that smart.” And it’s just like—it’s just like, you know, you know how to build things, you know how to build things with Legos and stuff like that and when also when people hear “algorithms” they think of like ones and zeros flying everywhere, but at the end of the day an algorithm is just a set of instructions, you know. When you follow a recipe you’re already following an algorithm of some sort. So I think like, you know, it’s the same thing of like being able to talk about your experiences and sort of destigmatizing things whether it’s like, you know, “Math is hard,” or like, “Algorithms are mysterious black boxes.” I think just explaining things and, you know, being patient. I mean I think that people are going to realize at some point that robots are just a tool, right? And that like you still need to remember that like tools are for humanity. [34:23] JL Lilly, before you go, where will the next place be that we see you? LC Hopefully on, like, the cover of the New York Times for some cool robot research. KL Yes! Also you’re welcome back here anytime. JL Definitely! LC Oh, thank you! [Laughs] JL Please let us know how the soft robotics are going. And how we can make sure to [Katel laughs] welcome our new overlords. LC All right [chuckles]. JL So. KL Awesome. Thank you so much for being with us. LC Yeah, thanks for interviewing me [music fades in, plays alone for two seconds, fades out]. KL So this week I want to say a “fuck yeah” to Pride Month, because June is Pride Month and I’m—that’s awesome. It’s also my birthday. Just PS. Just letting you know. And, I don’t know, this got me thinking about some of the folks that I follow on Instagram, and one of them is a brand called Wild Fang, and I really love them because they like they really walk the walk. They’re—they—they sort of say they’re not just a brand, they’re a band. And I—I love that because they’re very focused on the people who buy their clothing, and their very feminist, and they like—you can see that in everything that they do, including the fact that they give a lot of money that they raise to charity. And this month a percentage of their proceeds is going to The Trevor Project, which is the world’s largest non-profit organization focused on suicide prevention and crisis intervention among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning youth, which is fucking amazing. So this just got me thinking and we sort of started talking a little bit about who we’re shopping and brands that we’re supporting and I think it just led us to talking about like paying attention to that a little bit more. [36:32] SWB Yeah. One of the things that I’ve really been noticing is just, it feels like there’s a lot more options all of a sudden for brands that I can support that are doing things that are important to me or that are offering products that are like just more inclusive and also just better suited to like me personally. And it seems like a big sea change that’s happening just in the last couple of years. Like for example I know a lot of folks go absolutely wild for Everlane, and one of the things Everlane does is like, they do luxury basics is their market. Luxury basics like reasonably priced or something. I don’t think that’s their actual tagline. And one of the things that they do is they tell you exactly how much of that money was spent on paying the garment workers, how much of it was spent on shipping, how much of it they get as profit, and so it’s really clear exactly where that money is going, and I think that that is, you know, that’s like one example of a way that they’re kind of trying to set some new standards. I’m really excited to see organizations that are like making cool shit with a good cause in mind, making cool shit that is going to serve a wider range of people, just making cool shit while throwing away some of the like bad practices of retail industry. KL Another place that I have bought a couple of things from which is just like a fun clothing shop that does like t-shirts and sweatshirts. It’s actually… I’m wearing this sweatshirt in my photo on the website and it says, “Smile,” and it has like a possum and it just has, “Smile,” is crossed out and it says, “Nope.” Which I fucking love. It’s like my favorite sweatshirt, and it’s by a company called Culture Flock, and they are a company that, quoting them, “believes in equality for all, being kind to others, and protecting the planet, and having fun every day.” And I love that because it’s very simple, but they’re also—we’ve talked about this on the show a couple of times, about like place and that you can do really fucking cool things in like a lot of different places—and they’re based in Springfield, Missouri, which I think is super cool. JL I’ve also been trying to remember to shop local. And trying to pick up things at like places nearby where I live, because just like people in Springfield, Missouri, there’s places everywhere that have a lot of—a lot of local, great shops near there. So I’ve been trying to remember to do that instead of doing my very easy and convenient ordering that I do sometimes, sometimes I’ll go down the street to get the baby shampoo that I need instead of ordering that and getting it in five days. KL Totally. It also like feels really good when you can see the person who is either, you know, either owns the shop where they’ve obviously done a lot of thinking about what they’re stocking there or, you know, they’ve even made it. It’s very cool to buy something directly from that person. JL Totally. [38:44] SWB I just really like the way that we are having a lot more conversations, at least like in the circles that I’m in and I think like in the circles that maybe a lot of our listeners are in, about sort of what we’re buying and where it’s from, and why we’re buying it, and it’s not to say that I’ve stopped all like bad impulse buys when it comes to, like, t-shirts that I think I’m going to love and then I don’t love or whatever. But it really has made me think a little bit more carefully about the way that I think about things like fashion, or the way that I think about like who and what I’m supporting. But yeah! I’m like really excited to see just a lot more options and a more stuff that I can feel better about and not just feel like I’m, you know, just spending money on fast fashion. So I guess I would say, fuck yeah to having way more options when it comes to places we could shop locally, places we could shop online, and maybe an even bigger fuck yeah to the fact that now I know what to get Katel for her birthday, which is definitely going to come from Wild Fang. KL Yesssssss. Fuck yeah! That’s it for this week’s episode of No, You Go, the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. NYG is recorded in our home city of Philadelphia, and produced by Steph Colbourn. Our theme music is by The Diaphone. Thanks to Lilly Chin for being our guest today. If you like what you’ve been hearing, please make sure to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcast. Aaaand subscribe to our newsletter! Your support helps us spread the word, and we love that. We’ll be back next week with another great guest [music fades in, plays alone for 34 seconds, fades out to end].

Aidan and Noah go through the BPRundown, highlighting and unpacking articles by Joe Hinton, Simran Nayak, and Nathaniel Pettit until (11:40). The hosts first welcome Erika Undeland to talk trendy Communist imagery (11:50). Tal Frieden comes on the show to plug the Media Team's new Op-Doc series on the refugee crisis (19:02), and Dhruv Gaur, celebrated College Jeopardy champion, sheds light on India's invisible middle class (25:35). This is our last episode of the semester - stay tuned for brand new installments in Fall 2018. Thank you for listening to our first "season" of BPRadio! Erika: http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2018/03/buyingideology/ Tal: http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2018/04/derveni-theres-no-help/ Dhruv: http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2018/04/indias-invisible-middle-class/ Rundown: Joe: http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2018/04/battle-trenton-2-0-cannabis-legalization-racial-justice/ Simran: http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2018/04/stuck-middle-nepals-role-china-india-rivalry/ Nathaniel: http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2018/03/trump-administration-failing-family-farmers/

We made it to Episode 2—and hey, so did you! High five! This week, we’re all about TIME: how we make it, how we use it, and how we think about it. We’re also joined by our very first guest, Eileen Webb, who straight-up blew our minds with her take on making time on your own terms. Seriously, it’s . Just listen already. > Why should my work get all of my best brain? > —Eileen Webb, founder of Webmeadow Here’s what we cover. (Yep, there’s a full transcript below, too!) Show notes First things first: is it time for for lunch yet? We think so (we’ve been thinking about snacks since 10:15). We start out with a segment on reclaiming lunchtime for, well, whatever you want: Jenn tells us how she convinced her coworkers that watching Jeopardy at work is healthy. (We’re totally sold.) Katel sits down for a fancy meal for one. Sara heads out for a midday run, meetings be damned. Next, NYG sits down with web strategist-slash-farmer Eileen Webb for an interview that’s sure to stick with all of us for quite some time. We talk about: How Eileen and her partner went from burnouts in the first dot-com boom to running a bakery to finding their niche doing digital strategy from their home in northern New Hampshire. Why morning meetings don’t work for Eileen’s brain, and how she avoids them. Why Eileen trades the 9-to-5 for a sunrise hike every Tuesday—and never once feels guilty about it. How to stop letting your calendar (and other people’s bullshit requests) run your life. Also, pocket bunnies (no, not those kind). Follow Eileen on Twitter, or hire her at webmeadow.com. Also in this episode: America’s Favorite Quiz Show® (and don’t you dare tell Jenn otherwise) The big-ass boats (no seriously there are so many) at the Philly Navy Yard New Year’s Liberations from Cate Huston, Ellen Pao, Karolina Szczur, and Erica Joy And of course, we profess our undying love for those ’90s Noxzema girl ads Thanks to our friends The Diaphone for the use of our theme song, Maths, off the album of the same name.  _This episode is brought to you by CodePen—a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases, and find inspiration. _ Transcript JENN LUKAS: Today’s show is brought to you by CodePen. CodePen is a place to write and share front-end code. You can try out new technologies, learn new things by forking other projects, and show off your own awesome work. Your profile on CodePen is like your front-end development portfolio. Learn more and create your own Pens at codepen.io. That’s c-o-d-e-p-e-n dot i-o. JL: Welcome to No, You Go, the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. I’m Jenn Lukas. KATEL LEDÛ: I’m Katel LeDû. SARA WACHTER-BOETTCHER: And I’m Sara Wachter-Boettcher. Today on No, You Go we’re talking about time. How do you make time for things you want to do while keeping all the things you have to do in check? We’ll explore making—and breaking—routines and habits, and pull apart the politics behind how we spend our time. And we’re really excited because today we’ll be joined by Eileen Webb, who’s here to talk to us about things like sunrise hikes, why she doesn’t book meetings in the mornings—and, oh yeah, running a consulting company from a farm in rural New Hampshire that runs on solar energy. But first on the agenda: I’d like to take Lunchtime with Jenn Lukas for $500, Alex. [Intro music] JL: There was one night that we were staying late working on something and my whole joke was, “I gotta get home in time to watch Jeopardy. And someone was like, “oh, you know we could stream it.” We streamed Jeopardy while eating dinner together as a group while we were working hard to finish a project. And it sounds a little silly but it was, like, really awesome to take a moment while we were trying to meet a deadline. But then we stopped to all eat dinner together while watching Jeopardy, which is probably the greatest game show of all time. And I don’t say that lightly, because I’m like really into The Price is Right. So it just became a little bit known about how much I like Jeopardy at work. And we would talk a lot about it. And that got other people—other big Jeopardy fans would come out of the woodwork and start telling me about how much they loved Jeopardy. The Jeopardy thing just sort of continued. Some of us would come in the next day and be like, oh, did you see Jeopardy last night? And we would talk about Jeopardy. Someone made me an Alex Trebek Slack icon, you know, the usual. SWB: What do you call a Jeopardy—are you, like, a Jeop-head? Like what do you call that? JL: I do not care for that! KL: Did you all end up playing that first night? Were you, like, playing along? JL: Yeah we are all for the yell out the answers. There’s no, like, “don’t say the answers.” And no one says “what is.” Actually, someone says “what is” now, but to be fair, we have a new coworker at work, and he was on College Jeopardy. KL: Whoa. JL: Yeah, legit. Anyway so this kept going. And then like once the weather turned cold, we would—when it comes down to lunchtime, we would eat lunch outside a lot. We have a really great outdoor setup down at our campus—and, oh, I hate the word campus—laughs—down at our workspace. Anyway, once the weather got cold, we still wanted to do things together, but it got a little weird because you don’t always want to eat in the cafeteria, so sometimes people bring lunch back to their desk. And we actually just renovated our office space, and we have this great pod setup. So we started doing Jeopardy lunch where we would just pull it up on the TV. And then people would start hearing the theme song, and they’d be like, “You guys are watching Jeopardy?” And we’d be like, “Yeah, we’re watching Jeopardy.” KL: Get on in here! JL: Right? Exactly. So it just started being a thing. Like, “Hey, are we going to watch Jeopardy today?” And it was like, “Yeah, we’re all going to grab lunch now. So we’d go grab lunch together, bring it back, and now we watch Jeopardy. And we have a little Slack channel, so we can let people know when it’s starting. Though, we have a very open building, so it’s pretty obvious when Jeopardy is starting. [Laughter] SWB: How many people come and gather and watch Jeopardy at lunch now? JL: I’d say it’s anywhere between like 5 and 10, but a variety. KL: That’s a good group. JL: So like, there’s a rotating group of I’d say 15 or 20 people. SWB: When you started doing this, was it ever difficult to feel like this was a good use of your time, or feel like you should be back at your desk instead of taking the time away to watch the show? JL: Yeah, totally. And not to mention, our desks are right there. You can see it. In fact, someone made a quote-unquote joke one time that was like… I was like, “Hey, wanna watch Jeopardy?” and they were like, “No, I have work to do.” And I was like, “Yeah, but this is lunch!” KL: Yeah, like, remember that? JL: You know, they have these amazing studies where, like, you can only focus on things for such a length of time. There’s this interesting thing, it’s every 10 minutes that you have to stop what you’re doing for a minute to digest what you’ve done and get back at what you’re doing. So we’re talking about four hours at this point. And I think at that point it’s really important to stop for a minute, take a break, eat lunch, watch a Jeopardy or whatever your thing is, and then get back to what you’re doing. And I think you start fresh. I think that’s how you avoid daily burnout. SWB: Yeah, you know when you were talking about Jeopardy lunch, I think a lot about some of the pressures that I’ve seen in offices around constantly looking like you’re busy, or looking like you’re working. I’ve realized that much of that is a show, that people who—you know, you feel pressure to constantly look like you’re working, so you eat lunch at your desk. People who do that, they’re not actually more productive, and they’re probably more miserable, than if you just took a real break and sat your ass down somewhere and did something that was not work and was not intended to look like work and was not pretending to be work. [5:00] JL: Yes. Ugh, yes. [Laughs] It’s funny, they have all these browser extensions to stop you from looking at certain sites while you work. And it’s so much easier to do that if you are focused, and then you take that official break. SWB: I think a lot about the conversations we have about time, and how we get really focused on making sure you carve out time to do big things. People will write about how, you know, “Oh, I wrote my book by sitting down every morning between 6 and 8am and writing 1500 words for two months, and that’s how I wrote this book.” That seems like a miserable way to write a book to me, personally, but I think that moreover, so many of those conversations are just about how do we do big things. But what we’re talking about here is much more around how do we make time for things that seem small, but have a much greater impact on our wellness and on our psyche and on our ability to have boundaries. JL: Down where I work, we work at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia, which is in South-South Philly, you can’t go any further, it’s surrounded by the river. There are some really neat areas to walk in. I know people who will just walk down by the river and look at the old ships during lunch break, too. And so, there’s all sorts of like—you really take a lunch. Eat your lunch, get some air, and do something that clears your mind to give you a good second half of the day. SWB: Katel, what do you do for lunch? KL: Oh, gosh, well, sometimes, I do have to admit, sometimes I will eat something very hurriedly over the sink so I don’t get any dishes dirty. It’s very efficient, and it’s very sad. I was actually just thinking, one of my absolute favorite things is when I am traveling whether it’s for work, or I am out somewhere and I just happen to be on my own, sometimes i will go and just have a really fancy lunch by myself somewhere, and I’ll just get something extravagant, just because I can. Or something that’s like, oh I should save that for dinner, or whatever. And sometimes for me, just having that, even if it’s not a two-hour thing, it’s really nice to kind of like, sit with yourself. SWB: I don’t love going out to lunch most of the time. Like Katel said, I love going out to a fancy lunch every now and again, but for the most part, I prefer to eat home foods for lunch. I like to make a sandwich or assemble leftovers or put together a salad, and that’s fine. But what I’ve found is really important for me is to get out during the middle of the day, and I find that that’s my favorite time to go to the gym or go for a run. Something I have been prioritizing more and more is making sure that that happens, and that happens before it’s super late in the day. Because I work from home, and because I tend to have a fair amount of autonomy over my schedule—I mean, I have meetings and things, but they’re meetings that I agreed to set—I can kind of, you know, always fit it in where I want, in theory. But time slips away so easily. So it’s like, you have a couple meetings, you do a little work. All of a sudden you’re really hungry, so you eat something. Well, can’t go running right after you eat something. So now I get back involved in some work and some meetings, and suddenly it’s 5pm. And while I can still go for a run then, what I have found for myself is that making sure I get the time to go out sometime more in the middle of the day, I am doing something that is totally distinct from work, and that forces my brain out of the work zone, and I end up having an overall better day, a more pleasant day. And so I really have been trying to prioritize that, and prioritize it on top of things that seem more important in the short term, but I’ve realized in the long run aren’t. KL: That’s one of the things I’ve struggled with the most not working in like an office or a structured environment. Because my time is my own—and that’s really great, and I am very grateful for that—I also don’t have any accountability to anyone to be like, okay, I gotta go take a break, and this is going to help me be more productive in the long run. I don’t know, I am just thinking back to when I was starting out in my career, and maybe I didn’t have as much time or flexibility, or didn’t feel quite as much like I could take a break, I think, like, conversely, removing myself from the office and actually like—even if I wasn’t going out and like buying a nice meal—I would just go eat lunch somewhere else so I would feel like, okay, I wasn’t sitting at my desk and I wasn’t being judged, but I am taking time for myself. JL: Yeah, that’s so important. I can only imagine. I mean I luckily sometimes have someone who sits next to me and says, “hey, you gonna go get lunch?” KL: Yeah, it’s like, hey, are you just going to sit there all day? JL: You need a lunch app that rings, that’s like “hey!” SWB: Well you know, this whole conversation about reclaiming lunchtime and taking time for yourself, it makes me extremely excited to introduce our guest for today. Katel and I had the chance to sit down with Eileen Webb. [10:00] Eileen is somebody I’ve known for years, and she’s always the person I turn to when I want someone to give me some good advice and some thoughtful ideas about how to look at my time differently, and how to make sure that I’m creating space in my life and habits in my life that are going to give me some sustenance and some perspective and not burn me out. [Musical interlude] JL: CodePen’s a powerful tool that allows designers and developers to write code—like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—directly in a browser, and see the results right as you build. Whether you’re new to front-end code or have been writing it for years, it’s the perfect place to learn front-end programming languages. You can show off what you create, build test cases, and get help on tricky problems. Not to mention, you can find inspiration browsing all the awesome pens that other people are out there making. It’s a great community that I love being a part of. Whenever I have a new idea and want to get right to making it happen, I open up a CodePen and just start coding. I can skip all the things that are roadblocks for me—like setting up environments and getting hosting—and just get right to the projects I want to create. CodePen has so many cool things to explore, like CodePen Pro and Projects. Sign up today and get started by visiting codepen.io/hello. [Musical interlude] Interview **: ** Eileen Webb SWB: I’m excited to introduce all of you to Eileen Webb. Eileen is a friend of mine, and she’s also the director of strategy and livestock—no, seriously, livestock—at Webmeadow, a solar-powered web consulting company in New Hampshire. When she’s not tending her chickens or Instagramming her bunnies, she’s helping progressive organizations with their digital and content strategy, giving talks at lots of different tech conferences, and she’s teaching workshops (sometimes even with me!). Eileen, welcome to No, You Go. EW: Hello Sara, hello Katel. KL: Hi! SWB: I am so happy we could interview you nice and early, because I feel like you have so much insight into making a working life work for you, and getting comfortable with the idea of that not looking like everybody else’s, that I think people are going to really love. EW: My life is definitely not looking like other people’s. [Laughter] SWB: Yeah, so I would love to start out talking about that. I know that you live in northern New Hampshire, you don’t live where a lot of us would imagine an ambitious tech professional would live. Can you tell us a bit about what your day to day looks like? EW: Sure I live on a small farm. And so a lot of my day to day actually revolves around animals and livestock and like, in the right season, vegetables and growing things. But right now, the depths of winter, so it mostly involves bringing thawed water to animals in the cold temperatures. A lot of my day honestly is animal focused. And then I come inside where it is warm and I sit at my computer talk to clients all day. Because of the kind of work that I do, I do a lot of work that is people-focused. I work with a lot of teams and I work with teams to figure out how they are going to do things with their teams moving forward, and sort of how to change their internal processes. And so I spend some time making documents and working in spreadsheets and looking at websites, a lot of time talking with teams and talking with people about how to make their workdays better. SWB: So how did you end up building that kind of working life? What led you to have a web consulting company that is also on a small farm in northern New Hampshire? EW: My partner and I both worked in Silicon Valley in the ___ era, so in the first dot-com boom. And it was very, I don’t know, dot-commy? It was very busy, and long hours, and, you know, working for sort of Wall Street bros. SWB: Mmmmmmhmmmm EW: Yeah, I know. Wall Street bros. Yay. When we left that, we—so, my mom grew up in northern New Hampshire, so we actually moved to my great-grandparents’ farmhouse, which was still in my family. And for a while we ran a bakery, because we didn’t want to do computer stuff anymore. But there comes a point when you can only make so much money off of baking bread, and if you want to make more money, you have to just like literally scale up and bake twice as much bread. Or you can build someone a website and get paid so much more money than baking some bread. So we went back to doing website stuff. And I have a background in backend development, so I did a lot of server-side stuff and sysadmin kinds of things, and like programming of content management systems. And my partner is a front-end developer, so he would do the CSS and the HTML and the sort of performance-dev stuff. So we built lots and lots of websites for people. And then because I don’t like working that much— SWB: Oh, we’re going to dig into that a bit further in a minute. EW: I don’t like doing work that people won’t use, and so it got to a point where, when people would ask me, “Oh, will you build me a blog section on this site?” I’d be like, “Why? Prove to me that you need it. Prove to me that you have the internal capacity to fill a blog on a regular basis.” And sort of that type of attitude ended up spilling over into full-time strategic work. [15:00] I started out doing strategic work because I didn’t want to build things that people weren’t going to use, and then even when I graduated to the point of having other people build the thing, I still really like asking all the questions: what do you need? Why do you think you need it? How can we demonstrate that this is true or not true? And so I ended up being a strategist all the time. And because I’m self-scheduled, I was also able to weave in all this animal stuff and all this lifestyle stuff, like living out in the woods and going hiking and all that kind of stuff. SWB: Yeah, tell us about that. Tell us about your going hiking. EW: I want to be careful because when I say hiking, a lot of people really picture, like, backpacking. And I am, if nothing, just the worst pack mule in the entire world. I hate wearing backpacks. I hate carrying things because it’s a lot of work. And so when I say hiking, it’s more like walking, it just happens to be that I live in the woods in the mountains. So it’s walking, but in trees [laughter]. So I do a lot of walking and hiking. My partner and I, we take off every Tuesday morning, and we have for more than a decade at this point. We take every Tuesday morning and we go out into the world. This time of year we go snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. Other times of the year we go kayaking or we mostly do walking, because it’s obviously the easiest thing in all seasons. And it’s a really important piece of our physical self-care, and also our mental self-care, in giving ourselves space to work with our clients, and to give ourselves to someone else for so much of our work we. It’s a little bit of time we take back for ourselves. KL: That’s so cool. I just gotta say that. SWB: Yeah, I love this. And it’s one of the reasons that I really wanted to talk with you. Not just because of the hiking, but the concept behind it of taking that time consistently and prioritizing it. I think I’ve talked with you about this before, where I’m like, okay, I would like to do more of that, and figure out, how do I systematize that into my schedule, because I don’t think I give myself enough of that. And so I am really curious, how did you and your partner make that a priority, and what are the habits or routines that you have that enable you to keep that time protected? EW: I am a huge huge fan of…I don’t remember if it’s called time-blocking or time-boxing. That’s how you can tell what a big fan I am of it. [Laughter] If I block stuff off on my calendar…like, my calendar, if I click over to my calendar right now, On Tuesday morning, it just has a big block of time, that is a recurring block of time every week, that says “Tuesday Adventure.” And so when I am going to schedule things, when I am looking at when people want to have calls and things like that, it is already blocked off. And like, even though it is just blocked by me, right, it’s not like there’s an invitation with lots of other people on it, literally having that visual block in my calendar graphics really helps me remember that that is what I am supposed to be doing on Tuesday mornings. I do that with all my calendar stuff. My Thursday mornings are blocked off for what I call “work selfies,” which right now is usually a writing project, but sometimes is like taking a class in git, or whatever random thing I want to do. And I like to block things off. I usually try to keep my mornings free for intense brain work, and then my afternoons are calls and meetings, just because that’s how my brain works best. So like, building the structure in is really important for me. I have this friend, Krista Scott Dixon, she’s like a personal trainer and nutrition coach and stuff. And she talks about how willpower is what we use to not punch our boss and to not pull our pants down in the middle of the supermarket, and that willpower is an overtaxed resource. You cannot depend on willpower to do things like make good food choices and decide to go to the gym, because your willpower is just, like, out most times of your day. And so instead of relying on willpower to remember to do those things, it’s all about relying on structure, and setting up structures that make it so that you’d have to have willpower to overcome the structure. So you set up the structure in a time when you’re calm and making good prioritized decisions, and you sort of build the shape of a day and the shape of a week that supports whatever your goals are. SWB: So I need to sit down, have a protein-laden snack, take a deep breath, light a candle, and then structure my day or my week. EW: Yeah. KL: I love that. EW: This works for me because of the way my brain works. I am really good at following structures I set up for myself. I don’t get tempted away. Just sort of awareness of the stuff is the most important thing for me—awareness of, like, of this is what this timeblock is for is enough for me to be like, well, I guess past me said this is what Tuesdays are for. [20:00] Obviously that wouldn’t work for everyone. But for me, just setting up the structure makes it pretty easy to stick with it. SWB: It kinda seems like there’s a certain faith in yourself you have to have to make that work, right? You’re trusting that past you made a good choice and not a bad choice, and not second-guessing that. EW: Yes. KL: I think it’s also, like, just feeling accountable to something, and if that’s a framework, I feel like that makes so much sense. I’m a really visual person, too, and I feel like looking at a calendar that has blocks reserved for things that I’m doing, seems like a no-brainer. When I went from regular office job to being solo and working remotely, that went away. And I feel like I need to re-institute some of that. SWB: You know there are people who talk about their calendars as being basically slots to be filled. Their calendar will literally have meeting after meeting stacked up on it, and it’ll have one 30-minute block at 12:30 and somebody will come book that. And that mode that people get into, or that their corporate culture almost forces them into, or at a minimum sort of encourages, is one that’s very much, you’re in a reactive mode all of the time. It’s like your calendar is a thing being done to you. And then there’s those people who treat their calendar as more like something that they have ownership of, and they create slots for meetings and they say, okay, this is when I’m available to meet. It’s a more proactive way of looking at it— of saying, I need to reserve parts of my day for things that are not just requests of me, but are the priorities that I set up for myself. I’m the best judge of my own priorities; I can’t have 7,000 people making requests of me. EW: I think there’s also something around the idea that—I think that we all are pretty aware that we work differently at different times of day. Like, I know that for myself, morning time is when I can do deep brain work. It’s when I can do synthesis, and analysis, and sort of like, deep focus. Where, anything after lunch is like, I can still do work, but I can’t write essays—I’m good for meetings. I’m real good at scheduling calls in the afternoon. But I can’t do deep, intense, sort of, focussed work, because it’s just not how my brain chemistry works. And so if you know that about yourself and if you have been working, you know, long enough that you recognize those patterns in yourself and you pay attention to them—making sure you use the right parts of the day, doing the right kinds of things. Sometimes people will ask me to do meeting in the morning and every once in a while, I’ll say yes, but I’m really reluctant to. Because I know that I could do meetings in the afternoons and that would be great, but if I do a meeting in the morning, I’ve basically lost my morning for doing focused work. SWB: That’s something I really wanted to ask a little more about. You said that blocking off time is often enough for you and that’s enough of a reminder to yourself. But I’m curious: when you get those requests and when they’re from someone who’s insistent that they don’t have any other time or it seems important—how do you push back against that or how do you evaluate those things and make a decision about whether you’re going to, you know, sacrifice the schedule that you were going to have for something—or that you’re not going to? How do you process that and make sure that you don’t end up consistently setting the time aside and then not giving yourself that time? EW: So I think a lot of that comes back to the idea of sort of having faith in yourself. And I am so fortunate as a consultant to be able to control my own time and other people can’t see my calendar. So if I say I’m not available before Tuesday at 1:00 PM, no one has any reason—I mean now, if they listen to this podcast, great, now they know! [Laughter] EW: But, no one has any reason to question my calendar, right? Like, they want to meet with me and I will give them some number of times. You know, I’ll say I’m available this chunk of time and this chunk of time. And so that’s one thing—is literally being in control of my own calendar and believing that I have the right to manage my own time. And the other piece of this for me, is that mornings are when I do my best work. And I was telling a friend about this a couple months back, and she said, “Well but you go out hiking on Tuesday mornings. Have tried doing your hiking in the afternoon instead?” And I just had like, an off-the-cuff response of, “Why should my work get all of my best brain?” KL: Yeah! EW: It was what my dad would call like, a throwaway comment, but I started thinking about it after I had said it, and realized that’s actually core to the way I manage my time. If you wait until you’re running on fumes before you do any sort of self care, the kinds of self care you can do are super limited. If you wait until a Friday night for the first time for you to like, take time to let your brain rest, pretty much all you’re going to be able to do is sit on the couch and watch Netflix. [25:00] SWB: You don’t know my life! [Laughter] EW: Sitting on the couch and watching Netflix is a glorious joy that we should all partake in as much as we can. But if that’s the only thing you can do, it’s sort of not giving yourself a full range of nutrition of what it is your body needs, and your brain needs, to sort of heal and take care of itself—and keep you in your best prime. So I think a lot about—I mean I used to think about this a lot and now it’s super second-nature, I’ve just ingrained it. That, I’ve set up this schedule to make it so that I am able to do my job. To make it so that I am able to work with clients well, and I am able to take on contracts and sort of manage these hairy people problems. And just sort of deal with everything that running a business entails. If I shortchange the structure that I set up to keep myself safe and healthy, I’m limiting my sustainability as a person with a career. SWB: And you know, I know everybody has different capacities, and everybody has different blends of types of work—and amount of work versus other stuff going on in their lives—that’s sort of an optimal blend for them. But I love this idea that, I think is true for everybody—there is a way of doing work that is sustainable and that is giving you energy. And there is a way of working that is just chew right through you. And, for me, I know it’s been hard to give myself the gift of setting some of those limits because I feel both kind of a constant drive professionally—but also I guess I just really love doing stuff. I’ve realized something about myself. I used to think that to have work down time, what I should be doing is “relaxing.” And what I realized is that I don’t actually enjoy relaxing. Like, I like a spa day every now and again, for sure. But I do not like to hang out all day on a weekend day and like, binge watch a show. I don’t enjoy that at all—I hate it. And for me, I need to do non-work things—like you mentioned going hiking. I need to be doing something active, whether that’s intellectually active or physically active, I need to be doing something active in order to feel like I’m having an enjoyable and sort of, satisfying time. But that I need to give myself over to those activities and not let work bleed into them. I have a big habit of doing the like, work-cation, where I go somewhere for a conference or something and then I tack on a little bit of vacation time. And that’s fine, because I get to see new places that way, and it’s amazing. It’s an incredible thing I’ve been able to do. But I cannot confuse that with an actual vacation, where I went to a place with the intention of not working. KL: Right, and exploring it and seeing new things and actually taking it in, instead of being like, I have this break, where I can go and take a twenty minute walk and maybe see something while I’m trying to… SWB: Or even taking a day or two at the end of a business trip is still hard, you know. I think something you said, Eileen, that i’m going to be thinking about for a long time, is why should work get the benefit of all of my best brain time. KL I love that. SWB: So like, being able to go on a trip and saying, okay, I’m only going on this trip for personal enrichment, so I’m going to give my best brain time to enjoying being in this place. I’m not going to use it all up at the conference before I get to see anything. I really love that concept and I think I’m going to be thinking about that for a while. You have this schedule that’s really closely intertwined with your partner’s schedule. Where you take these hikes together, and you used to work on a lot of projects together. But he’s recently been working in more of a full time capacity versus working directly with you on projects, right? EW: Yes. SWB: How has that shift gone? EW: It has been a really interesting shift. One thing is like, some of the things we just literally time-shifted. Like, we used to do Tuesday morning hikes that ended around lunch time. And now we do Tuesday mornings that end at like, 10:00am. So he’s not starting significantly later than he would otherwise. It means we have to get up earlier and leave the house earlier. And this time of year, the sun doesn’t even rise until like 7:30 or something. But I’ve always wanted to do sunrise hikes, and I don’t—I am not good at getting up early in the morning, it is not one of my strong points. And so I’ve never done sunrise hikes because I’m just too sleepy for that. And so now, we actually sort of have a need to do them because this is where they fit in the day. And so that is sort of a fun thing. Some of the stuff is the same but in shifting it, we found new places to explore. It’s a little bit like—it makes me think of design constraints are what make artists sort of have their most interesting insights and creative bursts. Because there are like little constraints to work within. So now some of the scheduling constraints have made us find—like we found some more trails that are closer to home. [30:00] Because we live in the mountains, which is great, and there are trails everywhere. But it usually takes us a good solid thirty or forty minutes of driving to get to a trailhead. And if you only have two and a half hours total, like, that’s a lot of time eaten up driving. So we’ve finding a lot of more local trails. And these are not really marked trails. They’re not in guide books, right? They’re much more like a trail across someone’s land that is posted that people can walk here and that’s safe and fine and legal and everything. But you have to sort of search them out. So it’s been fun; it’s been a new set of explorations. One of the reasons that both he and I pay attention to this stuff a lot, is that we both he have chronic health conditions that preclude us from overworking. You were saying earlier, like, “How do you make sure that you respect the time that you set aside for yourself?” And a great way to do that is if your body just shuts down if you stop respecting that time. That will learn you up really quickly. So both of us are in a position if we do do too much work, and if we do over-stress ourselves, our bodies will just react very strongly and in ways that are not pleasant. And so even with him doing more regular work and more sort of full time work, we are finding ways to make sure that we’re preserving what keeps us healthy. SWB: You know, I think about the number of people I know who are managing a chronic condition and it’s a lot. But I also think that all of us are managing health in general and that’s probably something that we all need to be better keeping in mind. Regardless of whether we have a specific diagnosis or not. We are fragile little human people, and, right? KL: Yeah I think we’re all dealing with just, the state of things, especially in the last year, eighteen months. SWB: Oh boy, are we! KL: And I feel like you don’t think of that as a condition or a thing you’d need to pay attention to or factor into how you plan your days or how you work or how you spend time with people, but it absolutely is. And I think just your point about being aware is just such a good one. EW: There’s a phrase I really love in the disability rights community that people who are not currently disabled are are just temporarily able-bodied. For some people it’s very temporary. And for some people it’s like, maybe you’re getting a month of able-bodiedness, and some people are going to have years of able-bodiedness. But for the most part, like, it’s a pretty universal thing that at some point you will not be able-bodies anymore. So making the most of preserving that while you can and doing what you can to make sure that you’re not contributing to your own pain or your own exhaustion, is really important. KL: Yeah, wow. SWB: Yeah. This stuff is just gonna be so valuable for people to hear and get their—to get a little tiny Eileen in their head, whenever they’re looking at their calendar and making decisions. KL: [Laughs] Are you doing career, life coaching? EW: Yeah, I train the rabbits. One rabbit per person—it’s a pocket rabbit for like, a good two months until it becomes not a pocket rabbit anymore. KL: Yes! Let’s do that! SWB: Katel would really like a pocket rabbit. KL: I kind of want to go back to the beginning. Something that you were saying about not wanting to build things for people that they didn’t use. To me, when you started also talking about how you got to be living on this farm and how that was a family thing—I think just the idea of farm life, you know, whatever you might imagine that to be. You kind of do what really needs to be done and you don’t do anything extraneous. I can see all of that really syncing up and I imagine that that impacted the way you approach work and the way you do things. I don’t know if you felt that way. EW: Yeah, no, that’s definitely true. I think it’s less pointed and and more underlying deep understandings. Even just things like when the season changes. When it’s fall turning into winter, there’s a whole bunch of things you need to do before the ground freezes—like you can’t move fence posts once the ground has frozen. And you can’t sort of like, rearrange things. When the first frost comes, you need to pick all the tomatoes, today, because tomorrow they will be ruined. And so you abandon whatever other project you were kind of thinking about doing because this project now has the highest priority. And I don’t feel like I have any super direct lessons from that, but just as a sort of philosophy, like, what’s the most important thing to do right now? Let’s make sure we get that done first before we fritter off doing other things that might be more fun—but five days from now we’re going to be really said we did it in the wrong order. KL: Yeah. SWB: Well, it just seems like it totally connects you to a timescale and a rhythm that is outside of what most people would associate with their work—people who aren’t working on farms. I think it’s maybe a good reminder that there are many other ways of looking at the day, than like, through the lens of an iCalendar. KL: Yeah. EW: Yes. There’s also a whole bunch of like, farm interaction stuff. If you try to have one kind of animal in by itself—like if you just have chickens. It doesn’t work as well as if you have chickens and pigs. [35:00] And if you’re like, raising vegetables, you want something that’s gonna eat all the scraps from your vegetables. Rabbits will eat all of the kale scraps that we don’t eat. And there’s something really sort of neat and foundational in the way that all the waste from one thing feeds another thing. Like, I don’t really feel bad if I end up throwing out food—not like, huge amounts of food—but when there’s food that’s done, it just goes in the compost. And then the compost turns into garden dirt, and then I grow more food with it next year. There’s something very soothing in that, and there’s something sort of nice in finding the place where what feels like waste, can actually be turned into fodder for something else. SWB: Well, that’s yet another amazing metaphor that I think will stick with me. Ok, we have time for one last question. What is the most rewarding thing that you spent time doing this week? EW: Ok, so it was -26º F at my house last Tuesday; it was very cold. And we were like, what are we gonna do? Like, it’s freezing and we can’t go outside and we were feeling sort of stir-crazy. And so I took some really thick, warm fleece, and I made like a sweatshirt that has a cowl neck so you can put your entire head inside this sort of scuba neck. It’s like living inside a fluff. SWB: GO ON… EW: And it has a kangaroo pocket, so you put your hands in the warm belly space—it was just very, like, cozy. And I was very grateful to have the skills but also the machines in my house to let me make that clothing and have it be really warm and fuzzy. And I put it on and I’m like, I’m not taking this off for, like, three days. It’s perfect. KL: That’s awesome. I really picturing this thing, too. SWB: Yeah, I love it so much. Well, Eileen, it has been amazing to chat with you. I’m so happy that we could get the time to share with other people how you make time in your life. Where can people find you online? EW: People can find me primarily on Twitter @webmeadow. I’m also at webmeadow.com, but that’s just like a static website. Twitter is a good place for me because it’s full of pictures of animals and also snarky comments. SWB: Well, that is one of my favorite combos. KL: Yes. SWB: Alright, thank you Eileen! EW: Thanks for having me. Fuck Yeah of the Week KL: You know when your friend gets promoted, or they launch their new portfolio, or they finally meet someone who just gets them—and you’re totally pumped for them? That’s our next segment. The Fuck Yeah of the Week: where we get super excited about someone or something that’s just been killing it lately. So, who’s our Fuck Yeah of the Week? SWB: Well, our Fuck Yeah of the Week this week, is 2018 liberations. Let me tell you about what that is. So Cate Huston, who’s the mobile engineering lead at Automattic—the people who make WordPress by the way—she wrote this blog post a the beginning of the year where she said, “I hate new year’s resolutions. Not because I don’t believe in goals or working on myself, or the new year as a time to reflect and adjust. But because I’m tired of focusing on the ways I’m inadequate and need to do better. I hate seeing my friend worry about what they need to do better. Especially right now, when the world is selling so many of us short.” I love this sentiment. That new year’s resolutions can be great but they can also be problematic if they’re just reinforcing ideas that you’re just not good enough. So, a few of Cate’s 2018 liberations were things like, “Doing things because I’m flattered to be asked at all.” For example, being a token woman on a panel, and saying yes just because she felt flattered invited. Nope! She’s not doing it anymore. Apologizing for her achievements was another one. That’s definitely something I’ve heard myself doing before. Where, you know, I’ll play down the fact that I’ve, I don’t know, written three books, or run my own business for half a dozen years. Like, those things are pretty cool, and I want to be excited about them. So I’m really happy to have found 2018 liberations and especially excited because all these other cool women started chiming in. Here are a couple more examples that I think you all are really going like, that have come out in the past couple weeks. One is from Ellen Pao. She said that she was going to stop spotlighting people who don’t pay it forward. “I try to use my voice to highlight the great work of others with the hope that they will shine their light on even more others. But some people hold all the light for themselves,” she wrote. She said that in 2018, she wants to “shine more light on people who deserve more attention but are systematically neglected.” And then there’s Karolina Szczur. She said that she was going to liberate herself from white feminism. “If feminism, allyship, or what-have-you isn’t intersectional and going beyond binary gender, there’s work to be done,” she wrote. “Feminism and allyship aren’t fashionable lifestyle choices.” Or this one from Erica Joy—she said, “assuming best intentions and similar pieces of advice that require I minimize experiences that are painful.” She says she’s done with that. So, ladies, what are your liberations for 2018? [40:00] KL: I love this too, and it’s such a good question. I feel like at liberations versus resolutions, it’s like, just so much more positive. In fact, I went to therapy earlier today, and I told my therapist all about it and she was super excited. So I felt like reaffirming in itself. And you know, that really just made me think about putting a focus on self care and self-betterment, and just not being worried—that it’s ok to put that first. SWB: First off, like, shoutout for therapy. KL: YES. SWB: Therapy’s cool. KL: Hands up! SWB: People who go to therapy are great. Finding a good therapist is amazing. One of the things that I also love about what you’re saying, is that you’re talking about self care in the way that I really think it’s meant to be, right? Like, sometimes you see hashtag selfcare, and that’s nothing but buying yourself something expensive. And we’ve all bought ourselves something—ok, I bought some fancy face cream, hashtag self care. Bu that’s not actually really nurturing or nourishing yourself. That’s a pretty shallow moment in time that feels nice, but what you’re really talking about is like, making sure you’re getting what you really need in life, and getting the support from others and having somebody to talk to. Those kinds of things are such a deeper level, that we need to be able to talk about distinct from like, I bought some cool earrings ’cause I was sad. KL: Yeah, I want to let go of feeling shy about talking about that stuff. And, ultimately, let go of feeling shy in general, because I feel like I’m shy about things I should not be. And I don’t know, I think that’s a good place to start. SWB: Fuck yeah! JL: I love face cream! [Laughter] JL: One of the things I actually love about face cream, almost, is the same way I love my Fuck Yeah wine glasses—is that, like, I feel so rushed all the time. And my daily beauty routine, when I stop and have that moment—and of course it doesn’t matter if it’s a $5 face cream or $100 face cream—I just like that moment that stops and says, this moment’s about me. Yeah, I really like that. SWB: Totally! KL: You feel like you’re in the commercial… [Laughter] KL: And you’re like, you have the towel on your head, and you’re like, “yes, Noxzema clean!” [Laughter] JL: Yes! This moment—Rebecca Gayheart! She was the best, the Noxzema girl! KL: Right! Oh gosh. SWB: But it’s not just the like, face cream, right? It’s not really about the product, it’s about the time. KL: It’s the moment. SWB: And like that little bit of something for you. I like to pause and remember that because its’ ok to, like I said, buy myself a pair of earrings when I feel sad. Ok, I’ve been there, I’ve done that. Like, I’m not saying that that’s necessarily a bad thing to do. But you’re not really liberating yourself from shit that way. Like, that’s not really the answer here. I think my 2018 liberation is that I want to liberate myself from worrying about how I’m going to be perceived all the time, and just trying to exist a little bit more. One of the things that I’ve noticed about myself, is that as I’ve put myself out there professionally more, it means things like speaking, right? You have to get up on stage in front of people. Writing books—you have your name on this thing and it’s out there in the world, and like, people read it and they have opinions and feelings about it, and they talk about it. And all of that feels so personal. And I think it’s important to look at feedback from people—that has useful things in it and it’s going to help me become a better speaker, or writer, or whatever. But, it is not useful for me to internalize that as some kind of reflection of myself. Or that like, if somebody didn’t like my book, I am a bad person and should feel bad. And that’s really easy for me to do. I found myself doing it a lot. And so I’m really trying to allow some emotional distance and be like, you know, I wrote a book. That book is gonna be liked by some people and not by others. I cannot actually change anything in it at this point. It is on paper, in stores, like I can’t do shit about it if somebody doesn’t like it. So, I can let it go. And to also be like, yeah, it was a book or it was a talk, it was a podcast episode—it was what it was. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Like, there are a lot of books out there. None of them are perfect. Some of them are better than others, and mine will be valuable to some people. It is not the end of the world and it is certainly not the end of me if there’s negativity that somebody has about it. So, that is definitely something that I want to liberate myself from. I suspect it’ll be a year long process, and probably longer than a year. But, you know, hold me accountable to that this year. JL: I love that. I will definitely—I think both of us can hold you accountable. Because you’re a badass. Your book is great. KL: It’s fucking great. JL: And I can totally imagine—and we’ve talked about this—and I totally get that. Because no one–there can be a hundred people that will be like, “I loved your book,” and then one person says something shitty. KL: Right. JL: And then you’re like, I can’t stop thinking about that one shitty thing that person said. Which is so unfair, because your book’s amazing. KL: Yeah. SWB: And it’s also imperfect, right? Like, of course it is—all books are, right? Like, all things are—all things are imperfect, so being able to just be like, yeah. I wrote the best thing I could, during the time I had, with the knowledge I had at that time, and the constraints I had at that time. That is what I was able to produce and put into the world, and here we are. [45:00] JL: Fuck yeah. SWB: Fuck yeah. KL: Fuck yeah. JL: So, my 2018 liberation, I’ve decided, is to stop caring about what other people think about how I feed my child. On one hand, you have people who have very strong opinions about breastfeeding and how long you should breastfeed your child. And if you breastfeed your child for a shorter duration than what they deem “okay,” then you get a lot of judgment. And then on the other hand, I have a lot of judgement for the amount of time that I need to take to breastfeed or to pump and to work that into my schedule for people that want me to do other things besides provide that for my child. So this year, I want to not care about what other people think about how long I do or do not continue to provide breast milk for my child. KL: I love that. SWB: So, 2018 liberations—I’ve been so excited about these ever since Cate posted about hers at the beginning of the month. Even though we’re a few weeks into the year now, if you have not come up with a liberation for the year yet, I recommend it, because let me tell you, it feels great. JL: Also, liberate yourself from having to do it right at January 1st. You can liberate yourself anytime. KL: That’s right! Oh my god, do it tomorrow. Do it on February 1st! SWB: Come up with a new one every week! KL: Yeah! [Laughter] [Musical interlude] KL: That’s it for this week’s episode of No, You Go, the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. NYG is recorded in our home city of Philadelphia, and our theme music is by The Diaphone. Thanks to Eileen Webb for being our guest today. We’ll be back next week with another episode. [Outro music]

It's time to go back to the classroom and dorms with the Exit 50A Podcast. Derek, Kaz, & Rob return for the "Back to School" special. They discuss America's biggest party schools and even the schools that like to study a little too much. Also, you'll get news on the Colin Kaepernick flag controversy, Anthony Weiner's newest sexting scandal, Lena Dunham, Odell Beckham Jr., Donald Trump, and much more. Then, the latest version of "Off the Exit" features the debut of College Jeopardy - a look at the issues concerning college students. FOLLOW ON TWITTER: @Exit50APodcast INSTAGRAM: Exit50APodcast FACEBOOK: facebook.com/exit50apodcast