Podcast appearances and mentions of Hilton Als

As a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, Hilton Als's essays and profiles of figures like Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, and Richard Pryor have redefined cultural criticism, blending autobiography with literary and social commentary. Als is also a curator. His latest gallery exhibition is The Writing's on the Wall: Language and Silence in the Visual Arts, at the Hill Art Foundation in New York. The exhibit brings together the works of 32 artists across a range of media to examine how artists embrace silence. The show asked a powerful question: What do words — and their absence — look like? The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer spoke with Tonya Mosley. Also, Ken Tucker reviews new music from Lucy Dacus and Jeffrey Lewis.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

As a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, Hilton Als's essays and profiles of figures like Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, and Richard Pryor have redefined cultural criticism, blending autobiography with literary and social commentary. Als is also a curator. His latest gallery exhibition is The Writing's on the Wall: Language and Silence in the Visual Arts, at the Hill Art Foundation in New York. The exhibit brings together the works of 32 artists across a range of media to examine how artists embrace silence. The show asked a powerful question: What do words — and their absence — look like? The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer spoke with Tonya Mosley. Also, Ken Tucker reviews new music from Lucy Dacus and Jeffrey Lewis.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Candle-extinguishing butts, 3am afterparties, collections of seamen (and semen)--this dishy tour of Langston Hughes's love life will leave you gagging with the gays.Please Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Pretty Please.....Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.SHOW NOTES:Watch Hughes recite his poem, "The Weary Blues" to jazz accompaniment on tv in 1958.You can check out troves of Hughes's poetry here, here, and here. Read Langston Hughes's poem "Café: 3AM"Listen to Hughes read "Harlem." Langston Hughes's first memoir, The Big Sea, about his seafaring travels--including upon the West Hesseltine where he said he had that fateful encounter with a sailor--can be found here.  It includes  the essay "Spectacles in Color" in which Hughes describes queer ballroom scene and Countee Cullen's wedding  to Yolanda Du Bois (with Harold Jackson, his boyfriend, serving as best man).Faith Berry's biography of Hughes is Before and Beyond Harlem. Her papers are at the Library of Congress.Read more about Arnold Ampersad's biography of Hughes:Volume 1 (which covers 1902-1940 and does have a snazzy subtitle: I, Too, Sing America).Volume 2 (which covers 1941-death and also has a snazzy subtitle: I Dream a World).Other receipts for the episode can be found in the following essays and scholarship:Hilton Als, "The Elusive Langston Hughes" (The New Yorker, 2015)Juda Bennett, "Multiple Passings and the Double Death of Langston Hughes" (Biography, vol 23.4, 2000).Link through Project Muse.Andrew Donnelly, "Langston Hughes on the DL" (College Literature, Volume 44, Number 1, Winter 2017). Link through Project Muse.Mason Stokes, "Strange Fruits: Rethinking the Gay Twenties" (Transition , 2002, No. 92). Link through JSTOR.Shane Vogel, "Closing Time: Langston Hughes and the Poetics of Harlem Nightlife," in Criticism (Vol 48.3, 2006). Link through Project Muse.Jennifer Wilson, "Queer Harlem, Queer Tashkent" (Slavic Review , FALL 2017). Link through JSTOR.Finally, visit Ann Patchett's bookstore online here: https://www.parnassusbooks.net/

The queens get all Brenda on that Brenda, you Brenda? Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.SHOW NOTES:Read more about Brenda Coultas here. Watch Coultas read with Alice Notley here (1 hour). And read this conversation between Coultas and Stacy Szymaszek. Watch the best of Brenda Walsh's outfits from Season 3 of Beverly Hills, 90210You can find Brenda Hillman's website here. Hear her read “Species Prepare to Exist After Money." Read Jesse Nathan's conversation with Hillman (in his “Short Conversations with Poets” series) here in McSweeney's Internet Tendency. Follow Brenda K. Starr on Instagram @officialbrendakstarr. Watch Mariah Carey recall singing backup with Starr here. And here is Mariah's official video for “I Still Believe” (covering BKS).Visit Brenda Shaughnessy's website. Hear her read from her newest book, Tanya. And read Hilton Als's essay, “Brenda Shaughnessy's Ferocious Mother Poems” in the New Yorker here.Watch Brenda Blethyn get humped by her dog during a This Morning television interview.For the craziest trip, visit Brenda Walsh Ministries online at https://brendawalsh.com  

In this episode, I talk with author and novelist about his recent hybrid memoir and cultural exploration, Always Crashing in the Same Car. We discuss his fascination with figures who faced creative crises in Hollywood, from F. Scott Fitzgerald, filmmaker Hal Ashby or musician Warren Zevon to more overlooked but similarly brilliant figures like Carole Eastman, the screenwriter of the 1970s classic Five Easy Pieces.We also explore the realities of growing up in LA, including being “celebrity-adjacent.” That's perhaps best illustrated by the time Marlon Brando left an incredible monologue in the form of a voicemail. We do a deep dive into the attraction of hybrid memoir for fiction writer, Matthew's approach to research, and whether it's possible any longer to be a middle-class creative in Hollywood.--------------------------“All of those kind of impulses fused in me, and eventually, and I sort of realized, like, oh, this is what I want to write. I want to write a book that's a memoir that isn't about me, or a memoir that's only kind of, you know, partly about me.”--------------------------Key Takeaways* Always Crashing In the Same Car pays homage to figures who've faced both genius and marginalization in Hollywood, including Thomas McGuane, Renata Adler, Carole Eastman, Eleanor Perry, Hal Ashby, Michael Cimino, Warren Zevon & more. The book is about “those who failed, faltered, and whose triumphs are punctuated by flops...”* Matthew shares his fascination with Carol Eastman, best known for Five Easy Pieces. He was deeply touched by her prose writings, comparing her to poets like Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens.* The book and the interview also delves more deeply into women's contributions to Hollywood, focusing on other overlooked talents like Eleanor Perry and Elaine May. Matthew reflects on his mother, a one-time screenwriter, and how her generation had less opportunity to develop their skills.* Why a hybrid memoir? Matthew was reading, and inspired by, writers like Hilton Als, Heidi Julavits, and Olivia Laing. He wanted to create a narrative that wasn't limited to—or rather moved beyond—the self, weaving together cultural criticism about Hollywood and creative crises.* We talk a lot about voice, which Matthew says is crucial for him to discover early on. “Once I can locate the voice for any piece of writing... I have it in the pocket,” he says. The narrator of this book blends personal reflections with a noir quality, he says.* Matthew sees himself as a novelist at heart. He considers the narrative tools of a novelist indispensable, even when writing memoirs and cultural critiques: “I am fundamentally a novelist….I think that's part of being a fiction writer or novelist is, you know, anything that you write is a kind of criticism in code. You're always responding to other texts.”* Matthew begins by explaining his unique research style: "I'm kind of ravenous and a little deranged about it…” His research process involves intuitive dives, like a two-day blitz through Carol Eastman's archives.* The discussion also touched on Matthew's upbringing with a mom who was a one-time screenwriter and who crossed the picket line during one writer's strike, and his father, who had modest beginnings but went on to become a famous Hollywood “superagent” representing Marlon Brando, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren & many others.* At the same time, Matthew explores misconceptions around Hollywood glitz, addressing the middle-class reality of many involved in the film industry. For a long-time, Hollywood could support such middle-class creatives, Matthew contends, something that is no longer really possible.* Addressing the evolution of the entertainment industry, Matthew notes the shift towards debt servicing, influenced by corporate acquisitions. This financial pragmatism often overrides the creative impulse, squeezing the middle class out.* Another takeaway? The creative world, especially in Hollywood, is fraught with periods of drift and struggle. In one sense, Always Crashing In the Same Car is a love letter to that state of things.--------------------------"I still kind of think of [Always Crashing…] as being secretly a novel. Not because it's full of made up s**t…but because I think sometimes our idea of what a novel is is pretty limited. You know, there's no reason why a novel can't be, like, 98% fact."--------------------------About Matthew SpecktorMatthew Specktor's books include the novels That Summertime Sound and American Dream Machine, which was long-listed for the Folio Prize; the memoir-in-criticism Always Crashing in The Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California, and The Golden Hour, forthcoming from Ecco Press. Born in Los Angeles, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College in 2009. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, The Paris Review, Tin House, Black Clock, and numerous other periodicals and anthologies. He is a founding editor of the Los Angles Review of Books.Resources:Books by Matthew Specktor:* Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California* American Dream Machine* That Summertime Sound* Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz, introduction by Matthew SpecktorReferenced on this episode:* The Women, by Hilton Als* Low, by David Bowie* The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, The Last Tycoon, The Pat Hobby Stories, and The Crack-Up, by F. Scott Fitzgerald* F. Scott Fitzgerald on Writing, edited by Larry W. Phillips* The Folded Clock: A Diary, by Heidi Julavits* The Lonely City, by Olivia Laing* 300 Arguments, by Sarah Manguso* “Bombast: Carole Eastman,” by Nick Pinkerton* “The Life and Death of Hollywood,” by Daniel Bessner, Harper's, May 2024.CreditsThis episode was produced by Magpie Audio Productions. Theme music  is "The Stone Mansion" by BlueDot Productions. Get full access to The Book I Want to Write at bookiwanttowrite.substack.com/subscribe

Our guest today is Angela Davis, one of the world's most important voices for justice. The philosopher and activist came to prominence in the 1960s. Six decades later, Davis is still on the front lines fighting for equality and freedom on a range of issues from prison abolition to racial justice to gender rights. On March 20, 2024, the iconic activist and scholar came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk about her new book "Abolition, Volume 1" with Hilton Als, New Yorker staff writer and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

As we say goodbye to 2023, a collection of passages from some of our favorite episodes of the year. Featuring journalist and podcast host Sam Sanders on the stories of the summer (4:10), director and actor Natasha Lyonne on being a child actor in New York City (18:42), the Stanley Kubrick film that propelled Tom Hanks into performing (28:55), critic Hilton Als on the late Joan Didion (41:45), novelist Zadie Smith on the politics of writing (52:15), and to close, a tribute to the late Norman Lear (1:15:00). For questions, comments, or to join our mailing list, reach me at sf@talkeasypod.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I couldn't be more excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most renowned writers, curators, critics, and cultural commentators in the world right now… Hilton Als! A Pulitzer prize winner, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the theatre critic at the New Yorker, where he has been writing since 1994, Als is also the author of numerous books – from White Girls (a collection of 13 literary essays, exploring race, gender, interpersonal relationships) to more recently, My Pinup, an intimate study on his friendship with Prince. He is a teaching professor at Berkeley, and has held previous posts at Columbia, Yale, and more. Als has been one of my favourite writers, and curators, on art since I can remember. He writes in a manner that is intimate, with emotion and rigour, infusing it with stories from his upbringing in Crown Heights in Brooklyn to ones with more complex family dynamics. And there is a humanity at the centre of it: whether it's his ability to make us see artists as people – with their struggles, desires, needs and complexities – or his belief that we can all be artists too. Often tracing the city of New York through images and words, he unearths stories that were often cast out from mainstream institutions but feel so pertinent for the world today. From Alice Neel to Diane Arbus, whose work and subject he treats with such empathy, not only can he transport us to the exact street where Arbus took that picture, or to Neel's 108th street apartment, but writes so acutely on the mediums they used. On photography vs painting he has said: The former takes life as it comes, in an instant, but can be described as a series of selective moments. Painting, on the other hand, has time on its side, the better to know, delve, and express what it's like for two people to sit in a room, observing one another while talking or not talking about the world. And it is the latter that I still remember experiencing, being a gallery assistant in my early 20s at Victoria Miro, at the time of one of his many brilliant curated exhibitions – Alice Neel, Uptown – when I saw the whole world walk in, recognise themselves and feel seen and celebrated – which, I think, is the best outcome an exhibition can have… In this episode we discuss the power of language and the importance of sharing it; Hilton's introductions to art; his early days as a photo-editor that informed him as a curator; and his takes on Diane Arbus and Alice Neel. HILTON'S WRITING + CURATING: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308056/white-girls-by-als-hilton/9780141987293 https://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2022/joan-didion-what-she-means https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2019/god-made-my-face-collective-portrait-james-baldwin https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/26/alice-neels-portraits-of-difference https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2017/alice-neel-uptown-curated-hilton-als https://www.davidzwirnerbooks.com/product/alice-neel-uptown -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 244, my conversation with Pulitzer Prize winner Hilton Als. This episode first aired on January 19, 2014. Als's most recent book is a memoir called Pin-Up. He became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1994, a theater critic in 2002, and chief theater critic in 2013. His other books include The Women and White Girls, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram  TikTok Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, our guest is poet Natalie Diaz in conversation with essayist and author Hilton Als.  Natalie Diaz is an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian community and is the director of the Fort Mojave Language Recovery Program, where she works with the last remaining speakers of the Mojave language. Language and loss are explored throughout Diaz's poetry, in collections including When My Brother Was an Aztec and Postcolonial Love Poem, which won her the Pulitzer Prize. Hilton Als is another writer whose work explores American identity, in theater reviews, articles, and essays for The New Yorker, where he's contributed since 1989. Als received the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism, “for bold and original reviews that strove to put stage dramas within a real-world cultural context.”  His writing explores race, sexuality, class, art, and American identity provocatively, exploding the boundaries of the genre in which it is contained.  His most recent book is a memoir, My Pinup. On February 9, 2023, Natalie Diaz and Hilton Als came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an onstage conversation, during which Diaz read from her work.

Welcome to Heilman & Haver - Episode 77.  We hope you enjoy the show! Please join the conversation - email us with thoughts and ideas and connect with the show on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and at heilmanandhaver.com. IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Sam Wasson Joining us for Episode 77 is "one of the great chroniclers of Hollywood lore" according to Janet Maslin of The New York Times, and "a fabulous social historian" and sleuth in the eyes of Hilton Als of The New Yorker.  Sam Wasson is the author of six books on film, including The New York Times bestsellers Fifth Avenue, 5AM: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman; The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood; and Fosse.  An L.A. native, Sam studied Film at Wesleyan University and at the USC School of Cinematic Arts before publishing his first book, A Splurch in the Kisser: The Movies of Blake Edwards and in addition to his work as an author and publisher, Wasson has written for numerous publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker, and has won three Los Angeles Press Club Journalism Awards. He's served as a consultant for The National Comedy Center in New York and The Film Society of Lincoln Center, was a Visiting Professor of Film at Wesleyan University and Emerson College and, as a panelist and lecturer has appeared all over the world. In 2020, Wasson and producer Brandon Millan founded Felix Farmer Press to publish necessary books on the art, business, culture and history of the Hollywood film. His latest book Hollywood: The Oral History - co-authored with renowned film scholar and educator Jeanine Basinger - was released last year and called “Hollywood's ultimate oral history” by The New Yorker, and “majestic” by The Los Angeles Review of Books.  Wasson's biography of Francis Ford Coppola's real-life dream studio, American Zoetrope, The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story, will be published by HarperCollins this December.  You can find Sam online at www.samwasson.com and he joined us from his home in Laurel Canyon.

Today, I interview George McCalman who has always found solace in his art, which has served as a safe haven for him to freely express his thoughts and feelings. Against all odds, he rose. An African American in a white neighborhood, he defied discrimination. With creativity as his weapon, he forged his path to self-discovery.McCalman is an artist and creative director based in San Francisco. He is known for his design studio, McCalman Co., which collaborates with a diverse range of cultural clients. George is also a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, where he documents Bay Area culture in his observed and first-person columns. His first book, "Illustrated Black History: Honoring The Iconic and Unseen," was published in 2022.George's journey has not been without its struggles, having experienced the challenges of finding his voice and identity as an artist. Growing up in Grenada and later moving to New York City, George had to navigate being a young boy in a new educational system and culture. However, his introspective nature, sensitivity, and keen observations of the world around him shaped his perspective and artistic talents. With the influence of his mother and grandmother, George discovered his love for art and storytelling at a young age. Despite initially doubting his identity as an artist, he eventually embraced it and found his voice through the creation of meaningful illustrations. George's artistic journey has been marked by a pivotal moment in Mexico City, where he realized that he could merge his roles as an artist and art director. Since then, he has dedicated himself to both disciplines, continuing to explore and celebrate the stories and histories of marginalized voices in America through his art.Join us as we delve into the world of George McCalman, witnessing the profound impact of his artistry, and discovering the resilience and determination that have propelled him on this extraordinary journey. Prepare to be captivated by his unique vision, as we explore how one individual's struggle can become an unyielding source of inspiration for us all.__________________Educated as a fine art painter with a focus on philosophy, McCalman defines himself as an artist and creative director. In practice, that means he illustrates, designs, and writes about the complex concepts he explores in his work.Other than being an artist, he is a creative director and Co-Principal of McCalman.Co. His background in the editorial world is a foundation of his storytelling, and his fine art practice has reframed his perspective on the importance of design. A culture columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, McCalman's first book Illustrated Black History: Honoring the Iconic and the Unseen won the 2023 NAACP Award for Outstanding Literary Work as well as profound accolades by The New Yorker's Hilton Als, NPR, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Fast Company and many others.__________________Find George here:https://www.mccalman.co/https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-mccalman-7b705a5/https://www.facebook.com/mccalman.cohttps://www.instagram.com/george.mccalman/ https://www.harpercollins.com/products/illustrated-black-history-george-mccalman?variant=39981632782370Support the showI'm Dr. Doreen Downing and I help people find their voice so they can speak without fear. Get the Free 7-Step Guide to Fearless Speaking https://www.doreen7steps.com​.

Janet Mock first heard the word “māhū,” a Native Hawaiian word for people who exist outside the male-female binary, when she was twelve. She had just moved back to Oahu, where she was born, from Texas, and, by that point, Mock knew that the gender she presented as didn't feel right. “I don't like to say the word ‘trapped,' ” Mock tells The New Yorker's Hilton Als. “But I was feeling very, very tightly contained in my body.”  Eventually, Mock left Hawaii for New York, where she worked as an editor for People magazine. “[Everyone was] bigger and louder and smarter and bolder than me,” she tells Als. “So, in that sense, I could kind of blend in.” After working at People for five years, she came out publicly as trans; since then, she has emerged as a leading voice on trans issues. She's written two books, produced a documentary, and signed a deal with Netflix. In 2018, she became the first trans woman of color to be hired as a writer on a TV series—Ryan Murphy's FX series “Pose,” which just concluded its final season. This story originally aired January 4, 2019

This week, our guest is poet Natalie Diaz in conversation with essayist and author Hilton Als.  Natalie Diaz is an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian community and is the director of the Fort Mojave Language Recovery Program, where she works with the last remaining speakers of the Mojave language. Language and loss are explored throughout Diaz's poetry, in collections including When My Brother Was an Aztec and Postcolonial Love Poem, which won her the Pulitzer Prize. Hilton Als is another writer whose work explores American identity, in theater reviews, articles, and essays for The New Yorker, where he's contributed since 1989. Als received the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism, “for bold and original reviews that strove to put stage dramas within a real-world cultural context.”  His writing explores race, sexuality, class, art, and American identity provocatively, exploding the boundaries of the genre in which it is contained.  His most recent book is a memoir, My Pinup. On February 9, 2023, Natalie Diaz and Hilton Als came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an onstage conversation, during which Diaz read from her work.

Today, we're joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and critic Hilton Als! To begin, we unpack his approach to writing profiles (5:50), inspired by the words of photographer Diane Arbus (6:10), and how he captured Prince in a new, two-part memoir entitled My Pinup (7:55). Then, Als reflects on his upbringing in Brownsville, Brooklyn (10:25), a timely passage from his 2020 essay "Homecoming" (14:40), and formative works by writers Adrienne Kennedy (20:58) and the late Joan Didion (27:05). On the back-half, we discuss the interplay of memory and writing (36:38), Hilton's writing routine (40:55), his sources of hope today (44:30), and to close, a dialogue from Jean Rhys' unfinished autobiography Smile Please (48:25).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In honor of the passing of the great Burt Bacharach, this premium episode of the podcast from July 29, 2021 has been unlocked. There are dozens of exclusive episodes of Junk Filter available to patrons of the podcast; you can sign up at patreon.com/junkfilter Toronto-based musician Marker Starling returns to the podcast for an extensive conversation about the life and career of Burt Bacharach, one of the greatest American musicians. His songbook with lyricist Hal David is a monumental catalogue of pop music, and their longtime partnership with singer Dionne Warwick produced dozens of standards, many written specifically for her voice. We discuss the highs and lows of their work together: smashing the colour barrier between pop and r&b, their innovative song structures, their chart hits and deep cuts, and the disastrous movie musical Lost Horizon (1973) that led to the end of their partnership. Follow Marker Starling on Twitter Bacharach rehearsing with Dionne Warwick on the song "Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets" for a 1970 TV special Bacharach working with a children's choir from the Lost Horizon TV Special Burt Bacharach and Angie Dickinson - commercial for Martini & Rossi "Walk On By" - Dionne Warwick performing live on Belgian television, 1964 "Hasbrooke Heights" - Burt Bacharach "Make It Easy on Yourself" - Dionne Warwick, from Frost Weekly, 1973 "Close To You" by Hilton Als, for The New Yorker, December 8, 2013: Veda Hille - Plants (2001) Nicholas Krgovich - Plants (2021)

Many on the right blame “wokeness” for all of America's ills—everything from deadly mass shootings to lower military recruitment. Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, recently signed a so-called Stop WOKE Act into law, and made the issue the center of his midterm victory speech. In Washington, there has been talk in the House of forming an “anti-woke caucus.” “I think ‘woke' is a very interesting term right now, because I think it's an unusable word—although it is used all the time—because it doesn't actually mean anything,” the linguist and lexicographer Tony Thorne, the author of “Dictionary of Contemporary Slang,” tells David Remnick.  Plus, the poet Robin Coste Lewis talks with the staff writer Hilton Als about how suffering a traumatic brian injury led her to a career in poetry. Her most recent book, “To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness,” was published last month.

https://www.hypeplustv.com - Jerrod Carmichael appears to have upset several people with his jokes at this year's Golden Globes. Famed critic and writer Hilton Als would pen a message on Instagram suggesting that Carmichael's homosexuality doesn't;'t give him the right to lack empathy. Pierre and Capone weigh-in with Symphony Thompson on our first episode of the new year. Instagram: @ComedyHype & Twitter: @ComedyHype_

Kate Wolf speaks with the writer and psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster about her most recent book Disorganisation and Sex, which collects a decade's worth of Webster's essays on themes such as desire, pleasure, fantasy, and the unconscious, and the often uneasy relationships we have with them in our everyday lives. Sex, Webster writes, is sometimes felt as a curse, not a cure—and by extension its disorganizing force is both highly guarded and legislated against (as it was recently with the overturning of Roe vs Wade). In her writing and clinical work, Webster sees the role of the psychoanalyst as someone “who takes on the burden of disorganisation and tries, at all costs, to do something other than make it go away,” leaving room for its revelatory potential and power to change us. Also, Hilton Als, author of My Pinup, returns to recommend Henry Green's Party Going.

Kate Wolf speaks with the writer and psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster about her most recent book Disorganisation and Sex, which collects a decade's worth of Webster's essays on themes such as desire, pleasure, fantasy, and the unconscious, and the often uneasy relationships we have with them in our everyday lives. Sex, Webster writes, is sometimes felt as a curse, not a cure—and by extension its disorganizing force is both highly guarded and legislated against (as it was recently with the overturning of Roe vs Wade). In her writing and clinical work, Webster sees the role of the psychoanalyst as someone “who takes on the burden of disorganisation and tries, at all costs, to do something other than make it go away,” leaving room for its revelatory potential and power to change us. Also, Hilton Als, author of My Pinup, returns to recommend Henry Green's Party Going.

Hilton Als, joins Eric Newman to discuss his new book, My Pinup, a hybrid memoir-essay that explores questions of race, desire, and autonomy through an intense and intimate focus on Hilton's relationship with and to polymath musician and sexual dynamo Prince.  By looking at Prince as a subject of queer desire and being and at his recording career as a study in the struggle between Black excellence and white corporate control, MY PINUP probes the simultaneous allure of Black queer aesthetics and its disavowal in the hostile terrains of the music industry and American culture. The memoir/essay offers us a chance to remember and get close to the Prince that was, and to mourn the Prince that could have been.  Also, Dionne Irving, author of The Islands, returns to recommend A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib.

Hilton Als, joins Eric Newman to discuss his new book, My Pinup, a hybrid memoir-essay that explores questions of race, desire, and autonomy through an intense and intimate focus on Hilton's relationship with and to polymath musician and sexual dynamo Prince. By looking at Prince as a subject of queer desire and being and at his recording career as a study in the struggle between Black excellence and white corporate control, MY PINUP probes the simultaneous allure of Black queer aesthetics and its disavowal in the hostile terrains of the music industry and American culture. The memoir/essay offers us a chance to remember and get close to the Prince that was, and to mourn the Prince that could have been. Also, Dionne Irving, author of The Islands, returns to recommend A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib.

Our hosts discuss their free read book picks! Frank read We Spread by Iain Reid and Crystal read My Pinup by Hilton Als. 

Episode No. 576 features photographer Anthony Barboza and curator Maika Pollack. "Eye Dreaming," a monograph spanning Barboza's sixty-year career was just published by Getty Publications. The book comes out just as the two-year, four-venue exhibition "Working Together: Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop," an exhibition which presented Barboza as a major and instigating figure in Kamoinge, concluded. "Eye Dreaming" features Barboza's 1960s addresses of the condition of the United States, his portraits of major figures in the humanities, sport, and entertainment, his photographs of jazz musicians, street photography, fashion photography, examples of his editorial, album cover and advertising work, and more. The book features contributions from Aaron Bryant, Mazie M. Harris and Hilton Als. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $40. Pollack discusses "Tadashi Sato: Atomic Abstraction in the Fiftieth State, 1954-63" at the John Young Museum of Art at the University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa. The exhibition examines the first decade of Sato's car. Sato, melded New York-informed engagements with modernism with influences from nature to become one of the most significant Hawaiʻi-born painters of the twentieth century. This is the first major exhibition of Sato's work in over two decades. It also includes work by several of his Hawaiʻian colleagues and reveals how they helped create space for artists and public art in what was then the new state of Hawaiʻi. It is on view through December 11. Instagram: Maika Pollack, Tyler Green.

"Joan Didion: What She Means" is an art exhibition now on view at UCLA's Hammer Museum; it renders the great writer's life and work through the creations of nearly 50 artists, including Betye Saar, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Maren Hassinger, and Ed Ruscha.

Well before Joan Didion's death in December 2021, acclaimed writer and New Yorker magazine contributor Hilton Als was hard at work on a show for LA's Hammer Museum. But how can one exhibition grapple with Didion's big, uniquely American life? This episode explores that and much more. “Joan Didion: What She Means” runs through February 19, 2023.

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview one of the most renowned photographers working in the world right now, Catherine Opie! A photographer of portraits of people, landscapes, the urban environment and American society, Opie uses the tool of the camera to explore sexual and cultural identity. First picking up a camera aged nine, it was in the 1990s that she began to gain recognition for her studio portraits of gay and transgender communities who appear painterly and defiant, powerful and regal. Travelling across the world, and in particular different areas of North America, Opie has documented masculinity through high school footballers; politics and culture through her images of the 2008 presidential election; the landscape through images of sparse urban environments; and memorial through images of house belongings once owned by Elizabeth Taylor. Linked by notions of complexity, community, visibility and empathy, Opie's photographs tell a story about the society in which we live. Speaking about her work she has said, “From early on, I wanted to create a language that showed how complex the idea of community really is, how we categorize who we are as human beings in relation to places we live.” Born in Ohio, and now based in Los Angeles, where she is a professor of photography and the chair of the UCLA department of art, Opie has exhibited in the world's most prestigious museums, from MOCA Los Angeles to the Guggenheim in New York, and at the Whitney Biennial and many more. But the reason why we are speaking with Opie today is because this summer she opened a solo show at Thomas Dane Gallery in London – To What We Think We Remember. Taking its title from a Joan Didion quote, this exhibition focuses on community, collective responsibility and how to move forward while faced with the potentially devastating challenges of climate change, and the erasure of personal and political freedoms. -- LINKS: Thomas Dane show: https://www.thomasdanegallery.com/exhibitions/268/ New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/catherine-opie-all-american-subversive New York Times 2021: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/18/arts/design/catherine-opie-photography-monograph.html Art review: https://artreview.com/catherine-opie/ Opie essay for CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/catherine-opie-beauty/index.html Hilton Als 2021: https://www.regenprojects.com/attachment/en/54522d19cfaf3430698b4568/Press/610b3b9460b7b53c1b733db9 i–D: https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/g5gvk7/catherine-opie-interview-2021-life-in-photos New York Times 2019: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/t-magazine/catherine-opie.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article -- Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/ -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY CHRISTIES: www.christies.com

My Pinup: A Paean to Prince by Hilton Als by Poets & Writers

Without the profound connection between these two artists, would the world ever have gotten I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings? Starring: Christina Elmore as Maya Angelou and Larry Powell as James Baldwin. Also starring Angelica Chéri as Lorraine Hansberry. Source List:James Baldwin: A Biography, By David Adams LeemingThe Three Mothers, by Anna Malaika TubbsNotes of a Native Son, by James BaldwinAt 80, Maya Angelou Reflects on a ‘Glorious' Life, NPR, 2008The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou, Compilation copyright 2004 by Random House, Inc.Conversations With a Native SonJames Baldwin Biographical Timeline, American Masters, PBSMaya Angelou, World History ProjectJames Baldwin's Sexuality: Complex and Influential, NBC News“James Baldwin on Langston Hughes”,  The Langston Hughes Review, James Baldwin and Clayton Riley “Talking Back to Maya Angelou”, by Hilton Als, The New Yorker“Songbird”, by Hilton Als, The New Yorker“A Brother's Love”, by Maya Angelou“James Baldwin Denounced Richard Wright's ‘Native Son' as a ‘Protest Novel,' Was he Right?” by Ayana Mathis and Pankaj Mishra, The New York Times“After a 30 Year Absence, the Controversial ‘Porgy and Bess' is Returning to the Met Opera”, by Brigit Katz, Smithsonian Magazine“Published More Than 50 Years Ago, ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings' Launched a Revolution”, by Veronica Chambers, Smithsonian Magazine“On the Horizon: On Catfish Row”, by James Baldwin“James Baldwin: Great Writers of the 20th Century” “An Introduction to James Baldwin”, National Museum of African American History & Culture“‘The Blacks,' Landmark Off-Broadway Show, Gets 42nd Anniversary Staging, Jan 31”, by Robert Simonson, Playbill “Do the White Thing”, by Brian Logan“James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket”, American Masters, PBS“James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction”, by Jordan Elgrably“The American Dream and the American Negro”, by James Baldwin“The History That James Baldwin Wanted America to See”, by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.“Lost and ... Found?: James Baldwin's Script and Spike Lee's ‘Malcolm X.'” by D. Quentin Miller, African American Review

In this 2011 episode from The Vault, Hilton Als reads from, and discusses, His Sister, Her Monologue, a novella he published in Mcsweeney's #35. Als is a staff writer at the New Yorker, and his theater criticism was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2017. He is the author of two books. The Women, published in 1996., and White Girls, which came out in 2014. "A Pryor Love," His New Yorker profile of Richard Pryor appeared in 1999. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

In this 2011 episode from The Vault, Hilton Als reads from, and discusses, His Sister, Her Monologue, a novella he published in Mcsweeney's #35. Als is a staff writer at the New Yorker, and his theater criticism was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2017. He is the author of two books. The Women, published in 1996., and White Girls, which came out in 2014. "A Pryor Love," His New Yorker profile of Richard Pryor appeared in 1999. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this 2011 episode from The Vault, Hilton Als reads from, and discusses, His Sister, Her Monologue, a novella he published in Mcsweeney's #35. Als is a staff writer at the New Yorker, and his theater criticism was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2017. He is the author of two books. The Women, published in 1996., and White Girls, which came out in 2014. "A Pryor Love," His New Yorker profile of Richard Pryor appeared in 1999. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this 2011 episode from The Vault, Hilton Als reads from, and discusses, His Sister, Her Monologue, a novella he published in Mcsweeney's #35. Als is a staff writer at the New Yorker, and his theater criticism was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2017. He is the author of two books. The Women, published in 1996., and White Girls, which came out in 2014. "A Pryor Love," His New Yorker profile of Richard Pryor appeared in 1999. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Frank Walter's rarely seen work is being exhibited at David Zwirner Gallery on the Upper East Side of Manhattan until July 29th. He was an agriculture expert from the island of Antigua in the Caribbean. After a multi-year sojourn in Europe, Walter returned to Antigua where he spent the rest of his life making art. Few saw these works until the 2017 Venice Biennale. There Walter was featured at the first ever pavilion for Antigua and Barbuda. Hilton Als is a writer for the New Yorker. He is also a frequent curator of art exhibitions. Als happened to be in Venice in 2017 and came upon Walter's work by chance. In this podcast, we talk about Frank Walter and his art. We also discuss Hilton Als's career as a curator. He was involved in the seminal Black Male show staged at the Whitney in 1994. Since then he has put on shows for Victoria Miro Gallery, David Zwirner and the Yale Center for British Art. Als next show is an exhibition on the life and work of Joan Didion. It will be the latest in a number of innovative shows he has created around literary figures. In these shows, he has found a new way to present ideas in gallery spaces.

A l'aube du procès Johnny Depp - Amber Heard, Quoi de Meuf se penche sur la question du traitement des violences sexistes et sexuelles. Nos chroniqueuses y interrogent les dysfonctionnements de la justice et nous expliquent comment la culture du viol et les procès en diffamation participent à la riposte des agresseurs présumés. Quel constat pouvons-nous faire du traitement actuel des violences sexistes et sexuelles ? Pourquoi la justice française dysfonctionne t-elle tant ? Pourquoi si peu de victimes portent-elles plainte ? Faut-il inclure la notion de féminicide dans la loi ? A l'international, quels exemples la France peut-elle suivre pour mieux prendre en charge ses victimes ?Clémentine Gallot et Pauline Verduzier décortiquent ces points et vous en parlent dans ce nouvel épisode de Quoi de Meuf. Quoi de Meuf est une émission de Nouvelles Écoutes. Rédaction en chef : Clémentine Gallot. Journaliste chroniqueuse : Pauline Verduzier. Mixage et montage : Laurie Galligani. Prise de son : Thibault Delage et Adrien Beccaria à l'Arrière boutique. Générique réalisé par Aurore Mahieu. Réalisation et coordination : Cassandra de Carvalho et Mathilde Jonin. Références entendues dans l'épisode :L'appel de 3 000 magistrats et d'une centaine de greffiers : « Nous ne voulons plus d'une justice qui n'écoute pas et qui chronomètre tout » dans le Monde. (2021)Justice en grève : les raisons de la mobilisation historique des magistrats par Hakim Mokadem pour Marianne. (2021) Violences conjugales : la justice fait son mea culpa dans un rapport par Marie Quenet pour le Journal du Dimanche. (2019)Des juges s'en vont par Benoist Hurel pour la revue Délibérée de Médiapart. (2021) Les juges démissionnent d'Eva Goron et Amélie Bertholet-Yengo réalisé par Yaël Mandelbaum. (2022)La plainte en diffamation est-elle devenue un outil de pression? par Nina Bailly pour Slate. (2022)Amber Heard: I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change par Amber Heard. (2018)Jamais je n'ai prononcé son nom, ça me file des haut-le-cœur pour Slate. (2020)Violences sexuelles : faut-il, comme en Espagne, ajouter la notion de consentement dans la loi ? par Mathilde Sallé de Chou pour Positivr. (2022) Faute de preuves : Enquête sur la justice face aux révélations #MeToo de Marine Turchi. (2021)Condamner le féminicide sans le nommer de Catherine Marie. (2020)Violences conjugales : les dysfonctionnements des bracelets anti-rapprochement de Plana Radenovic pour le JDD. (2022) Violences conjugales : pourquoi certaines femmes refusent le bracelet anti-rapprochement de Pierre Bienvault pour la Croix. (2022)Enfants maltraités : les pédopsys sous pression de Leila Djitli réalisé par Emmanuel Geoffroy pour France Culture. (2022)En 2017, on dissuade encore des victimes de viol de déposer plainte par Pauline Verduzier pour Slate. (2017)Des féminicides qui auraient pu être évités par Laurène Daycard pour Mediapart. (2019)Violences conjugales : 80% des plaintes classées sans suite par P. Coiffard pour franceinfo. (2021)En finir avec la culture du viol de Noémie Renard. (2018)Les viols aux assises : regard sur un mouvement de judiciarisation de Véronique Le Goaziou. (2012)Est-ce que "seulement 1% des viols sont condamnés", comme l'affirme Sandrine Rousseau ? par Caroline Quevrain pour TF1. (2022)Relation sexuelle à 11 ans: le parquet de Pontoise ne poursuit pas pour viol de Michaël Hajdenberg pour Mediapart. (2017)Le conseil de l'Europe épingle la France sur sa définition du viol par Valérie Cantié et l'AFP pour France Inter.En finir avec les violences sexistes et sexuelles : Manuel d'action de Caroline de Haas. (2021) 12 hommes en colère de Sidney Lumet. (1957)Inventing Anna de Shonda Rhimes. (2022)13 Reasons Why de Brian Yorkey. (2017-2020) Ally McBeal de David E. Kelley. (1997-2002)The Good Wife de Robert King (III). (2009-2016)The Good Fight de Phil Alden Robinson, Michelle King, Robert King (III). (2017)Les Choses Humaines de Yvan Attal. (2021)Mare of Easttown de Brad Ingelsby. (2021)Gaze n°4. (2022)White girls de Hilton Als. (2022)Quoi de Meuf est une émission de Nouvelles Écoutes. Rédaction en chef : Clémentine Gallot. Journaliste chroniqueuse : Pauline Verduzier. Mixage et montage : Laurie Galligani. Prise de son Adrien Beccaria e à l'Arrière boutique. Générique réalisé par Aurore Mahieu. Réalisation et coordination : Cassandra de Carvalho et Mathilde Jonin. Vous pouvez consulter notre politique de confidentialité sur https://art19.com/privacy ainsi que la notice de confidentialité de la Californie sur https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Michael R. Jackson's Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical “A Strange Loop” features a Black queer writer named Usher, who works as an usher, struggling to write a musical about a Black queer writer. Jackson's work tackles the terror of the blank page alongside the terrors of the dating scene, and it speaks in frank and heartbreaking terms about Usher's attempt to navigate gay life among Black and white partners. Hilton Als talked with Jackson about how he found inspiration in his own experience seeking identity and community. “I started writing the original monologue—building a sort of life raft for myself—to understand myself,” Jackson said. “It wasn't until I got to a place of understanding that in my life I was caught up in a loop of self-hatred, that I could see what Usher's problem was, and therefore what the structure of the piece was that would lead him out of that and into a better place.”   “A Strange Loop” is playing now at the Lyceum Theatre, on Broadway.

In this Raw Rerun, it's all about the hacks—and the screenplay. It's Part 2 of our chat with screenwriter/author Monica Corcoran Harel!HERE'S WHAT WE DISCUSSED WITH MONICA IN PART 2:Invisibility  Paulina PorizkovaOuter vs. inner imageA female magazine that moved the needle Monica's top beauty hacks How Monica pops a browHer husband got lucky, thanks to a brow gel pickupMonica's top wellness hackStrolling with a wine glassThe power of a made bedA morning power tripA humanity hackCompeting with womenThere's enough to go aroundWomen lifting women Confrontation Monica's Netflix screenplayHollywood's eyeing 50+ women, finallyLINKS TO RESOURCES DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:Pretty RipeTeen VogueKosas Air Brow gelRevlon One-Step Hair Dryer and VolumizerAmy Baer's Landline PicturesWriting partner Jordan Roter StodelOTHER RESOURCES THAT MONICA LOVES :Kosas Air Brow GelSally Hansen Airbrush LegsLevi's Ribcage Bootcut jeansCharlotte Stone clogs and sandals. On Instagram: Garancedore, comedian Amy Sedaris, art historian/cultural critic Hilton Als. Others:  Nicole Byer and comedyfortheinternet, plus DailyMail.com(trying to give it up!)CONNECT WITH RAW FEMALE

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in.Today, I'm talking to Andrea Hernandez, the oracle behind the newsletter Snaxshot, which explores food and beverage trends with humor, broad insight, and gorgeous graphics. Nothing about the conversation went according to plan. I had to reschedule because of Puerto Rico's archipelago-wide blackout, my usual recording software wasn't loading, my laptop and Andrea's AirPods were dying, and we went totally off the prepared script to discuss the limits of tech that doesn't cross borders, having to be self-motivated as independent workers, adaptogens, commodification of culture, and much more. Alicia: Hi, Andrea. How are you?Andrea: I'm good. I'm actually doing good. [Laughter.] Thanks for asking me, how about you?Alicia: I'm good. I'm good. I know, you've had some power problems lately.Andrea: I was honestly, yesterday, I was like, Oh, God, because yesterday, I woke up with no electricity. And then at night, the power went out too. And I'm like, I don't know if we're gonna be able to do this. I was gonna have to— I don't know if tomorrow will be okay. But thank God, there's been no issues. I don’t wanna jinx myself. [Laughs.]Alicia: Right. Well, yeah, we rescheduled this because there was a blackout in Puerto Rico and then there have also been problems in a lot of other places as well. It's interesting, because someone messaged me in the Pacific Northwest, in Oregon, and was like, “We're having bad weather, I don't know if the power is going to hold.”And I feel like this is something that's underestimated and that's not as discussed, I think, because people in New York and LA don't have these problems right now, you know, and so I did want to talk to you about that, about how do you get your work done, and how do you keep your kind of resolve because also, as independent writers—as I know, of course—we are self-motivated completely with kind of, these unpredictable issues that happen. Andrea: Yeah, it really sucks at times when, at night, because it's like, well, I don't really have anywhere else to go. My phone has been sort of like what I default to, which is, like, so funny that you put yourselves in these positions, like I've literally, like, learned to do like, writing on Substack on my phone, which is like the most tedious thing—I wish they would like improve upon that experience. But I'm also, you know, before my laptop battery died, I will literally use my phone as a hotspot, for whatever, [how long] it can last. But yeah, I think—it's just so funny, because I talk to a lot of people from literally all over the world, people from Sydney and London and all these places. [And] they are always surprised. They're like, Wait, like, you're in Honduras? And I'm like, yeah, and they're just like, so shocked. They can't believe that someone from an unknown hub could be putting out work that's recognized in their places. So I think, to me, it's like, you mentioned something, like the self-motivation. It's so true. I talk to people, constantly, that there's no hack. You need to get the work done. Nobody else is doing it for us; we don't have a team so that we can default to—it's on you. So you have to figure it out, and I think growing up, my parents taught me that sort of resiliency of, you have to figure it out. Like, there's no backup. So, you have to…there's a saying, it's called the “the law of the wittiest,” “la ley del mas vivo” in Spanish, which is like you just have to be streetwise and figure out, Okay, this isn't working, let's try to figure out which angle to work at, whatever. And so I think that's my approach to everything. And I again, we’ve got no power—okay, cool, my phone. Like, there's no, Oh, you know what, let me just, I'll nap and see if something happens. [Laughter.] Especially growing up in countries where you don't have infrastructures to depend on. Like, you can’t depend on your government; you can’t depend on the infrastructures. Even growing up in a politically unstable country has taught me I can't even rely on there being peace. There's gonna be unsettling things that happen and you kind of just have to figure out how to work it out. And also the emotional toll that these things take on you. I think I addressed this last week. I feel like I've internalized these things, but the reality is, it f***s with you. It’s like s**t, you know, I am not really competing, because I don't see myself and I'm like competing with mass mediums, whatever, because I'm like, kind of the antithesis of that. But I'm like, yo, there's so many people with so many resources out and I have to figure out how to,  on top of all the s**t that I have going on, like, Oh, f**k, I don't have like electricity, so does that mean that I get to miss out on publishing this on time or whatever. And I think it's something that's not really talked about because a lot of the main publications or people who get clout or—it's so funny when people send me examples of like, Oh, look at how these people are using Substack and yo, I don't even have the ability to paywall Substack, a lot of people don't even know that: having Stripe is a privilege in itself. And I've been very vocal about how it's frustrating; it does take at times, an emotional toll, but it's not like I can be crying and just sitting down, being like, Oh, look at how unfair life is like no, it's like, you have to work with what you got. So, yeah, I mean, that was a long-winded answer to your question. But yeah.Alicia: And how do you deal with—because I mean, we'll get to obviously, my normal questions and everything—but how do you deal with people probably assuming you do have a team, right? And people assuming that you have all these resources? It's an interesting space to be in, because as you said, you can't even paywall your Substack because of their weird national borders that they maintain—Andrea: Yeah, I don't even get it. I'm like, Why the hell do you tie your platform to just one thing? It feels like excluding the majority of the people. It's a f*****g paradox: You're supposed to be an equalizing career, whatever, but it's not really true. But yeah, it's so crazy, that at the same time validating, I literally had people say, I thought you were a team of 20. Like, I thought you were an actual publication. Like, there's no way that you could be doing all this, like as a one-person team, like, I had people telling me like, I can't believe that—I refuse to believe that, because it's not possible. And the funniest thing that happened to me was at this conference Expo West that I got a free press pass to, and I was going to be a speaker at a panel there. So I was there and I was walking and I remember someone coming up to me like, Oh my god, you work for Snaxshot? What part of Snaxshot do you work at? And I was like, That's so funny. I even joked that I should have brought all these different changes, like clothing changes. And I could have dressed up like different people…When you have a fire lit up under your ass, you have to wear all these different hats because it's your default mode. And I think to me, it's just been extremely validating that you think, like that people think that this is, like the work is so—that I have value and that it’s got that much quality, that people assume that there's more people behind it.But at the same time, I want to highlight just how much respect I have for people who have to do everything themselves because they don't have the resources. And also they have to deal with, on top of being underresourced like that, they have to deal with like f*****g infrastructural problems. To me, those people are like: mad respect. Who gives a s**t, you know, if you're, like, in The New York Times, whatever…like that, to me is like, okay, cool. They are a f*****g corporation, whatever. But like, I'm more about mad respect for the people who have to be doing their work on top of all these other things that serve as obstacles. So I don't know, I feel like I love to tell people like, Yo, if I could do this with the bare minimum, and on top of that, f*****g things like not having electricity, what's stopping you from doing it, dude? Like, seriously, especially Americans—like just f*****g go and do it. And I talked to Gen Z a lot about that, because I'm like, Stop letting people tell you that you have to be struggling and working without pay to get yourself somewhere and that they have to give you permission to make your space in this world. And, I think that I have also been able to prove that as someone who's living outside of a usual hub of where like, you know, media is a thing. And to show people like, I've scratched my way in dude. Yeah, it's possible, so anyways—Alicia: But I love it because you're such a success story for—and like you're saying, there are so many limitations that I think we have to be talking about when we're talking about, to use that construction, these new ways of ‘supposedly’ equalizing the field. Because you know, Substack gives itself a lot of credit. We're on Substack platform; Substack is paying for this podcast to be edited. But, Substack is using a payment processor exclusively that isn't available to everyone.And you know, for me, of course, Substack has been such a great opportunity for me to make my career, basically. But at the same time, you know, I'm aware that because of that, I think more people should have access to that around the world, too, because also considering you're going to be able to make money from currencies that might be valued more highly, for whatever reason, than your local currency. And you'll be able to really like…do something, you know, for yourself in a way that—that's what this should be about. It shouldn't be about the same people in the same places being able to continue to make money.Angela: And I'm not gonna lie, I feel like Substack is lending itself to perpetuating that, more than the other way around. I love your story, I feel like to me, and I keep saying now, I feel like, you were also sort of an inspiration of, whoa, this person is literally breaking through from like, the established sort of ‘circle jerk’ of same things. It's true. And, you know, I feel like I love to be able to see that happening, and that I can see people that I want to sort of emulate sort of the same thing, where it's like, when I start, it's natural. And I remember, I don't want it to be the same, Oh, people are pitching to me. And they think that they can flood in and, you know, whatever. I have actively remained with that sense of like—I don't do sponsorships, I don't do advertising, because I'm like, How do I break this model? And how do I even, if it's hard, how do I test it to keep some sort of—how does it look like community validating a medium? How does it look like when I'm actually able to speak freely, without having some sort of conflict of interest, or whatever, or feeling that I have to censor myself? And I had publications come to me and ask me, like, Why don’t you pitch for us? We're talking like really big ones—I'm not gonna say names. But I've literally been like, after they've talked me through the process of pitching and the editing, by the time that you're done with it, that's not me. You literally trickled away the authenticity from me. So it's not valuable to me, and I have had some sort of—I don't know, for some reason, the younger generation, really loves to read Snaxshot. And I have literally 17-year-olds, coming to me, and college students, whatever. And I have had publications tell me, we want to bring you in, and we want you to pitch stories, whatever, because we want to see if we can draw that younger audience. And I'm like, Yo, you can't buy that s**t; it has to be like an authentic thing. And if you can't, if you have to continuously be extracting that and like, how do I keep getting more from you, without giving in return? You're not gonna make it with this new generation, because this new generation is all about more of, Let's level here. Yeah, you know, we call the b******t—Yeah, it's been very interesting to see how Substack emerged as a creator thing, but no hate, no disrespect. But all the people I mean, I subscribe to the emails and all the stuff that I get, it's like—this person was a New York Times food reporter and now it's like, Oh, the food coverage, whatever, this person is coming from, then it's the same people who already had the platforms in the first place. So you know, Substack, obviously, I'm on that platform. Because, you know, it's easy and convenient for me, unfortunately, you know, obviously I had to find loopholes around trying to find ways to monetize it. But yeah, I feel like I would love to see more people, more success stories from people who weren't already in this industry in the first place.Alicia: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, and it's really interesting to me how self-perpetuating those things are, and like you're saying, maybe we're gonna see a change in that from the younger generation. You know, what are you—because I love that you're very in tune with what people want, obviously, that's your whole job. And also seeing these patterns and these trends in a way that isn't tacky. Like that isn't like, it's not like these, you know, press releases I get where it's like, This is gonna be the flavor of the year because McCormick says so, but you really have your finger on the pulse in a real way. And what are you seeing? Are you seeing that, you're saying this—that people are getting back into maybe wanting to see that kind of homegrown authentic, maybe weird—And I was thinking about this because I was reading an interview with Hilton Als, the writer from The New Yorker, on Dirt, which is another great newsletter, and it was about his Instagram and how it's like very old school in that he'd kind of just post whatever—he doesn't think about the algorithm. He posts kind of any image he wants to, long caption, short captions, not thinking of it. And he said, you know, the culture was different at a different time. And when I was growing up, you know, I read magazines to find out about things I didn’t know yet. And I feel like now, a lot of the cultural tide and the coverage has turned to be about telling people what they already know. And like, you can't write about things that are an unknown quantity. And so how do you approach this?Andrea: Oh my god. You hit it like—this—just like, yes. Because I had this on my mind because Taylor Lorenz, I also love the way that she basically made her own beat. She wrote about that, she's like, Journalism should not be about telling people what they already know. It should be about the stories that don't want to get—like that people don't want you to know. And I was like, That's it, dude! Because I literally [wrote] about this. I'm like, Why are we regurgitating the same s**t? I think that's why the appeal of it: well, no one's saying this and I appreciate the ability to be able to do so because it is important. So one of the latest issues that I wrote was on how I believe that Expo West and all these fancy food conferences are actually a way of gatekeeping diverse founders, because they're so expensive. And you know, the majority of them, who the fuckcan afford $20,000 for the starting cost of a booth, you know? And so I wrote about this, and I just really let it out. And I was like, Dude, no one goes there to see—you cannot go predict what's coming up next there. Why? Because it's f*****g gatekeeping to like, people who already have the means for it. And I wrote about, and the title’s called, “This Could Be a Future,” because I'm like, our future should look diverse. Not the same f*****g people who just—the ex-CMO of Pepsi went and launched a f*****g snackbar, like, that's not the future. It shouldn't be. And so you know, I wrote this really just heartfelt, like my experiences. And I was like, no disrespect, you know, but to be honest, it felt like these conferences are losing the relevancy, whatever, especially amongst the younger generation. And one of the reasons why is because they don't see themselves reflected and represented, which makes sense. So, I wrote about that and every other Medium piece was “Five Trends That I Saw At Expo West!” [Laughter] Dude like, by the time that people can afford $20,000 worth of a booth, these companies already have venture money; they're already in Whole Foods—it's not a f*****g trend. You can't go and say… So I just got kind of pissed. That's just you regurgitating the f*****g obvious. And so like, yeah, I 100 percent think that you hit the nail on the head right now. It's like, we lost the ability, one, to think, the ability to say so like, these publications can't say s**t because they're so constricted with ad money, whatever. I do love how Dirt has used that web3 dynamic to improve upon, how do you go about financially sustaining media? Like, you know, a media that's different. That's not archaic [or] tied to engagement and views or whatever. So yeah, I think what you said is so f*****g important. I'm glad we brought this up. Because yeah…Alicia: Well, I mean, to get to Web3, too, because I wanted to talk to you about this, because of course, people are very, you know, make a mocker. I make fun of it too and I'm skeptical, of course. But there are people like Daisy Alioto from Dirt, like you, who are talking about Web3 in positive terms. And I'm like, I think I'm definitely missing something if smart people are saying this… But I want to hear from you about what's going on, basically.Andrea: Yeah, no, no, no, no. Skepticism is necessary in all things, by the way.  And when I wrote the piece about it, I was like, We do need necessary—it does have its necessary criticism. It does. 100 percent. I'm not your crypto bro about to shill you into some f*****g like, you know, like scam or whatever. So, literally, the thing is that you have to see this less about the hype. Web3 is not McDonald's putting outa f*****g NFT of their McRib. Like, who the f**k wants that, right? To me, Web3 is about, how does this dynamic improve upon, or even better, disrupt whatever it's trying to be used for? I'll give you—I guess I will say the rise of the DAO activism, like, why don't we take community and add economics into it in a way that's more transparent? And it's not tied to red tape, right? Because like, you go and try to open a bank account, like all the stuff that you have to give, whatever. So, to me that's one reason why this type of organization makes sense in the first place, right? Then second, I've seen people use this application in a way that's trying to go against, you know, the structures in place that continue to prey upon—I'll give you an example: Farmers Market-verse. At first your like, what the f**k is this? There's like farmers and whatever and you think like, just some sort of like, you know, another JPEG scam, whatever. But the reality is, like the thesis behind this, it's a bunch of small farmers who said, We'll use the capital we make from these NFTs that we're selling, and we have our own treasury, and they take some to mitigate the cost of running the organization. And the main idea behind it is to put a battle against ‘big agriculture.’ And so they are using that dynamic to empower themselves economic-wise. And, you know, really be more of like: Okay, we are aware of the collective and how do we help each other out? And it's not also tied to anything that's local.And so, you know, I spent some time in their Discord. And I really loved it, because you can tell that there's that intentionality of like, help thy neighbor, right? They have, they choose, they do voting, and they choose, I think, each month or I don't know what the dynamic is now, but they choose, who do we help? Like, whose farm needs help? Like what organizations that are really trying to help our mission, can we benefit… It's like, literally an online farmers’ market and like, they post about what they're doing or whatever. And to me when I see that I'm like, that's the beauty of it. Austin Robey, one of the founders of Dinner DAO, which is like this dinner club that's Web3, he wrote about how DAOs and co-ops have similarities and what they can learn from each other, it's an incredible piece—highly recommend it. And then even Dinner DAO, which is a supper club that meets like this sort of dynamic. I love the idea of like, dude, we’re taking something that's very simple, but we're making it, we're improving upon it. So like, they're launching their second season soon. And what it entails is that you buy sort of the membership as an NFT. And it comes with, you get assigned a table, a group of people, and you get an allocated amount, and you can use that in however you want. Whether your group wants to use it all in one f*****g fancy restaurant, or you guys want to have like multiple meetups, whatever—that's pretty cool. You know, and you don't have to be worrying about whose card is going to be used, whatever—it's more about, like we’re doing this, and we're exploring the concept of what it looks like to use this dynamic to have an experience of community around food. There's another example, Friends with Benefits, which is the most well-known crypto-community that has been profiled now by The New York Times and all these other publications—and I'm part of it. I was graciously donated a membership, because I obviously could not afford it. But the community came together, a couple of people from the community came together and they donated whatever was needed for me to be part of it, which I greatly appreciate. And I have experienced their events and stuff and so, firsthand. And the latest proposal that they have as a collective is to buy and restore this like Chinatown, LA restaurant, and they want to convert it to a venue, whatever, but they want to use all the funds, or the stuff that they gained from that, not just to use within the community, but to properly restore something that's a historical place in downtown LA. You know, like those kinds of things, to me, they serve as a—look what we can do without all the red tape of having to subscribe as an organization, and everything can be traceable through the blockchain, which is basically receipts that can be viewed by everybody that has access to the internet. And, you know, there's another one, a guy that works in the spirits industry in LA, who's coming up with a project that is going to help bartenders in general to be able to, like pursue their passion and whatever else or you know, they're wanting to develop, and it's going to be sort of its own fun, but it's going to be tied to a physical spirits bottle. I 100 percent agree that there's a lot of skeptics, like the fact that you are spending half a million dollars on a f*****g JPEG. Well, that's ridiculous. I'm more bullish on the things that are really being disrupted, that are giving me a better hope of—we don't have to be like, strapped again to Stripe; Web3, crypto helps that in so many more ways, where it's like, the regulation isn't as tight. So like, look at Dirt, they're exploring how to make a medium that is not dependent on advertising revenue, whatever, that's more in pro of whatever the community is wanting. Do I believe it's gonna be a solution to everything? No, but I think it's an improvement and an exploration of what does it look like when we don't subscribe to archaic structures? Right, that we know that they're decaying, right? And people think for example that Twitter is the one to blame for a horrible attention span or fear-mongering, whatever. Yeah, well, I studied communications; I can tell you the history of 24/7 news, like it was not about keeping people informed. It was about, How do we share more f*****g ads on TV? Oh, we keep the news going the entire f*****g day. I feel like we just have to be a lot more like, conscientious, it's not going to be like one day everything solved. But I am very in pro ‘if this is giving me the ability to see what lies beyond having to succumb to these structures that are so predatory, then f**k it, dude,’ what else are you gonna—what else can we do? You know, like—Alicia: Exactly, and that makes sense. And it's interesting, because I think this is a way I'm starting to think about things a little differently, too. Where it's like, just because the narrative tends to be that one thing is going to solve every problem that we have as a society doesn't mean that we have to think of it that way. You know, because I was on a panel last week with like, a grass-fed beef rancher, and lab meat—Isha Datar from New Harvest and other folks who are working, you know, to try and fix the way people eat meat in the United States, basically. And I, you know, I came away from it, thinking, you know, Why am I always taking such a hard line about these things, when maybe what we do need is to just stop pretending there's a silver bullet for climate change, and for our relationship to meat and say, let's use a combination of approaches to solve for this problem? It’s like, let's not just, you know, we don't have to say lab meat is the answer, because it's not because of scale, because of still using energy that's fossil fuel intensive, because of—maybe people aren't going to want to eat it, for all sorts of reasons. And also there’s still ethical issues in terms of how they even take cells from the animals. Like, they have to kill calves. And so and then, maybe, you know, protein cakes, like Impossible Burger and Beyond Meatm are part of a solution, and those SIMULATE chicken nuggets—maybe they're part of a solution, and maybe grass-fed beef as part of a solution. And maybe, you know, heritage pork and all of these things are part of a solution. Maybe these all work together to get us to a place where we stop killing the planet. And you know, and stop overconsuming.Andrea: I think it's very important, too, to say, why are we also punishing sustainable cultures, and cultures who have historically worked with using every ingredient in the animal, you know, even kosher, which is like, supposedly like a more ethical way of making sure the animal doesn't suffer. And like, why are we casting upon these people, and in the same way…God, you're gonna love this. There's a newsletter called Goula, which is a lot of Latin American writers that are chefs and all these different backgrounds in the food industry. And I read an issue where this guy who's a chef, is talking about his experience in Oaxaca, the mushroom festival. And why I'm bringing this up is because he talks about how the Mixtec is the culture there, they don't call it hallucinogenic. They're like, this does not cause hallucinogens. We don't believe that, we believe that it amplifies your vision. So he talks about like, how are we so [hypocritical] with drugs, we don't even understand, like, the relationship to psychedelics in the Mixtec culture, Aztec culture, stems I don’t know, like thousands of years. It's literally in the Códices, like the Aztec Códices, which is basically hieroglyphics or the codes that they used to use—he talks about that we are trying to frame something that we don't understand, with lack of understanding. And so I think that the same happens with meat, right? Where it's like, I'm blaming, and I'm punishing a collective when it's—the reality is the meat industry complex is, what, like four or five businesses? So it's like, the same way that the whole carbon footprint came about as an advertising campaign for Procter & Gamble, to sort of put the blame on the consumer and not really focus on the negative externalities of this f*****g corporation that owns what, hundreds, if not thousands of brands that contribute to that, that I think that dynamic, we don't explore it as much. And I try to bring attention to it just from my background, working in marketing, and having gone to school to study that and study communications and the history of it, and no one's talking about specifically in the U.S., like, how the deregulation of children's advertising in the mid—’80s affected millennials and our overconsumption culture. No one talks about these things as the core root. It's more about like, I have to adapt and you know, buy expensive s**t because I'm bettering the planet. And it’s like inaccessible to the majority of people, you know? Yeah, you're going to Erewhon and you're feeling good about yourself, but who the hell can f*****g buy like a $25 shake, right? Or like now you're going to like McDonald's and you're getting yourself like an Impossible, or Beyond Meat—what, so like, it's vegan, and it's ethical because it’s no animal harmed, but what about the exploitation of the worker? Like, does that make you feel good? Or is that like, do you know?So I feel like you said, there is no like black or white, it's very much about a gray area. And I think that we're, we're losing each other and fighting in trenches, when we should be bridging further and further toward the solution. And so I think what you said is 100%, where it's at, it's like, there's no one solution for it. Parts of the solution—yes. But at the same time, I would want for us to start sort of peeling back the b******t of these narratives. You know, like, what does it mean that Amazon's plant-based patty— it’s not going to save the world like, yeah, it also has to be like, very much like skeptical that that's going to be what solves our problem. Alicia: Yeah. No, absolutely. Well, to start the interview the way I usually do, now that we've talked for like half an hour, but [Laughs] can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? Andrea: Oh, yeah, well, I mean, I'm still in my city, Santa Pedro Sula, Honduras. I grew up eating beans, rice, plantains—lots of plantains, the sweet kind, more than the other though. As I grew older, I did [get] a knack more for the salty plantains. But I grew up very close to my grandmother, very close to her and seeing her cook. One of my favorite memories is watching her pick out the beans, big plants, and the little rocks. She would go to the market every Saturday, she would bring us crabs, fishes and stuff; she’d make crab soup. She's from Nicaragua originally, but she came after the Civil War. And she had a lot of connection with food; she was the sole provider. She was not really divorced, but she ended up after the war, like her husband left them, her and my mom and my aunt. And so they were in Honduras; she was a sole provider, so she was basically the one who did everything, so she did all the meals, etc. And she was living with us when I was growing up and I loved just sitting—it was a kind of a meditative thing. Like you're just sitting there, you're picking apart a little bean. And also undoing the kernels of the corn. And I love when she would bring the corn becauseI didn't know this but maize  has different colors and stuff like that. I was like, Wow, you look at all the movies and stuff, especially when you're growing up with only American channels because we don't even have, you know, TV shows of our own, and you grew up with the yellow one. Like you see that everywhere now we'd just be like, Wow, the corn is white and purple? And like all these different weird mashes of color. And so yeah, you're picking up these little things. And also, she would bring them to a molino—I don't know how to say it, like a mill? And I was like, That's so f*****g cool. Like, it would come in a powder. And she would also do, I don't know what it's called, but it's also like a corn-based drink, but the powder is made to use the drink. But she, yeah, so I grew up seeing the way that she prepared food and just taking a lot of like, even how to make the tortillas and stuff like that, and a lot of her, even remedies that she grew up with, for cramps, or tummy aches, whatever. Like, I don't know, I was very much, grew up close to that. So that's sort of how I came to be very interested in doing my own things. And, you know, I grew up with a lot of seafood for sure. Because my city is 30 minutes from the coast. We would go to the beach and have fish and—to me, it was never, because you're growing up and I would go to the market, too, on Sundays with my mom and she would be like, go, and I was the shyest person, she’d be like, here's money, go barter with the tortilla lady and make sure she doesn't charge us more than that. Because, you know, we didn't grow up rich; we were four kids. My mom was like, you know, always very much trying to save costs, whatever. And I love that she taught me how to barter when I was a kid. And I think that's one of the skills that I appreciate so much from her, but I remember going to the market and seeing these kids do tortillas, whatever, and then stuffing them here and there's people with half an avocado open, like trying to show you all their vegetables and fruits and stuff. And like all the fruits are laid out on newspapers, whatever, that's still here, that's still happening—No, I don’t know. I just feel like I was very lucky, in a sense, even though, you know, I grew up with a lot of different things in Honduras that weren't that nice, to be able to experience that sort of connection to the people who were making the food that I'm ingesting, that I'm putting into my body. And it's such a sacred experience that we don't really think about, that's literally the pillar of our lives—putting food in our bodies, without that process...And I think that to me, when I think about whether or not I subscribe to the idea of veganism—I get it, I understand it. It's horrible. It's horrific. The fact that you know that the mass industrial complex of this has created this monstrosity, but at the same time, when I grew up, it was more about, you knew the person that was giving you the crabs, and it was much more sustainable. But that was obviously when I was growing up. Yeah, I feel like I grew up very much experiencing sort of an array of flavors, obviously very acidic. Citric has always been where I gravitate towards. Spice. And yeah, I'm very thankful that I was able to come up with that, because I was never a sweets person. I was like, Oh, my God, we have a word for—it’s called empalagado, when you had too much sweet and you just feel super sick, you're like, Ah, I can't. And so I don't know. I think I was born in the perfect place. I have a theory that I used to be an iguana in a past life, because I thrive on sunlight. I have to have sun.And so I think I grew up where I was meant to, and it also gave me a really rounded experience of what it's like to live in two worlds, especially as a bilingual person, where it's like, one language gives you an access to a different dimension, you know. It's like, whoa, as a writer—I don’t consider myself a writer, I consider myself a professional s**t-poster—but that my voice has a lot more, hits a lot more in this language than, you know, if I were to speak in Spanish. Unfortunately, that's just the dynamic that we live in. And I have been [advocating] about, like, why do we do this in the first place as a person living in a country where this language isn't needed? But you know, it gives you access to see, and I think that it has given me—this is tying it back to Snaxshot, why I have been able to pick up on stuff. Whereas U.S. people are very myopic as in, we're centric to ourselves beyond anything else, that I'm like, Well, this is all happening in all these different places. Let's see, you know, how, if this is playing out in the UK, is this playing out in Australia, is this playing out in Latin [America]? And then that's sort of how that seer, oracle, premonition kind of thing. Well, it's just paying attention to what's happening around you. Yeah, so I guess, you know, I grew up with an array of, I guess, Latin American…Mesoamerican, I would say, inspired flavors. Coastal, too. Alicia: And so how did you get so into snacks? Where did the—where did the snacks start to come in for you?Andrea: Yeah, I would say that, since I do have friends that live in the U.S., I had been seeing—and again, because I can see two different sides of it. I’m like, Wait, like, why is ginger being made into this all-in salve—you know that you can just boil the ginger, right? All you have to do is like, peel it and put it in water and heat it up.And so yeah, so I feel like I don't know. I feel like after seeing things like “Meditiation in a Can” and stuff like that, I just—because of my background, again, marketing, knowing what goes behind building brands, that I was just like, it feels like we're going through something and I want to know where it's coming from. But at the same time, I wanted to see if it's happening somewhere else. And so I don't know, it just [became] all about—I remember doing Twitter threads at first and people would be like, Whoa, I would love to learn more about this. And s**t, I may have landed on something. But yeah, it was more about getting sort of like, am I being catfished by brands? And if so, who was writing about this? And so, I don't know, it started off of that. And it felt like we entered sort of like a parody state, where it's like, I have to label water again, like thank you for letting me know I'm not sucking on bone broth. F*****g marketing, right? I don't know, I just wanted to use sort of that parody. And that's where the persona the SnaxBoi comes to be, which is the Erewhon meets F**k Boy persona, where it's like, you know, that person that spends too much time in the beverage aisle, spending so much money deciding between CBD and Nootropic, or THC adaptogens, like, Bro, like, you should be doing the same, but in therapy. [Laughs.] These are not solutions for your problems... But so yeah, I just wanted to talk about what I was seeing and, you know, making space for us to talk about, what is an adaptogen? You know, what's the idea behind them? Is that a novel thing? Why is it being attributed to f*****g Gwenny ‘Goop’ Paltrow instead of talking about how it’s been used by so many different cultures for centuries and thousands of years. Why is it that we're white-washing all of [these things]? And we're not understanding that we're trying to get back to our roots, that we're doing it in a way where it's the commodification of knowledge that's inherently human and that's been used by so many different cultures across the history of the world. I don't know, it just felt like the conversation was very much skewing towards the ‘Gwenny Goops,’ instead of, let's figure out where this is coming from.Alicia: Yeah, there's so much, and I found this out, because when Eater gave me [an] assignment—I wrote about wellness drinks a couple of years ago, and they gave me this assignment; it wasn't really my idea. But I saw these new drinks, the new adaptogenic drinks as kind of a commodification of these older techniques, like you're saying. We used to love kombucha, and like fire cider and like these other things that anyone can make in their house. And then now we're like, No, you need this specific blend of adaptogens. And then I talked to an herbalist for that. And it's always stuck with me, I talked to an herbalist who is like, You can't willy nilly give people these things. They are powerful, and they will have an effect, but they might not have the right effect. You want to know what you're putting in your body when you're using, you know, herbs that have had real purpose and you want to work with someone who knows what they're doing and to get it to you. And so, I love that you do criticize this kind of vision of the world, but then you also come at it with such love and appreciation too.Andrea: Yeah, because you know what, I like to be bridging that there is a reason and validity behind this. Just because scientists told you that psychedelics were like—you know, because I think about that. I think about that a lot, Why is it—and I wrote about this in my psychedelic issue, I was very skeptical—I was like, I'm skeptical that they're pushing for deregulation while there are big silos, that I call it, like all these corporations now set to gain from the deregulation of psychedelics. So you're telling me that something, not for what, half a century now, you've been telling me that is bad. Now that it's convenient to you guys, where we have Peter Thiel trying to patent like guided trips, like, f**k off dude. Like no. And so to me, it's more about like, Guys, of course, there's validity around adaptogens. But when it's been thrown [around] like a marketing buzzword where it's like adaptogen this, adaptogen that, where I joke that it's not really functional that doesn't come from La Fonction in France then it’s BS, you know, and it's a detriment to the movement in the same way that cannabis has experienced that backlash with the term ‘CBD’ where it's become devoid of meaning. We did the same thing with ‘organic.' I think to me, it's more about like, how do I do this a service and pro, where it's like, I am trying to parse through the BS, but because there is validity. I think that we also have to mention about the appropriation of where this is coming from, like the fact that everybody's making Oaxaca like a f*****g Mezcal Sonoma—nobody's talking about that! Instead, you're seeing the brands be like, Ooh, come stay at this luxury $1,000 new hotel in Oaxaca, whatever. And it’s like, what the f**k, $1,000 a night in f*****g—I'm sorry, what?Seeing like brands be too comfortable using ethnic aesthetics, like, I got blocked by Kendall Jenner. I guess that's my claim to fame, because I called her out. I'm like, is she brownfacing? Why is she wearing braids? Why is she wearing a poncho? Why is she on a f*****g, like, horse through agave fields, you're not fooling me—I know exactly what you're doing. And, you know, playing upon these aesthetics in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable, that it's normalized, right? Like, that's not okay. And I think that there are some people like Yola Jimenez from YOLA Mezcal, who are doing it in ways where it’s like, she's not even having to hone in on like, Mexican aesthetics, that you know—that's where she's from. Instead, she's using this rise and popularity of mezcal to empower women in a region where women get screwed over. There's a lot of femicides that [are happening]—that to me is, that's how you do it. And if someone can do it, the same way that you know, Tony's Chocolate came out and said, like, Ooh, yes, it's only one percentage of child slavery—but it's good because then we can point it out, and it's like, F**k you, dude. Like, there's literally brands right now—there's a brand called Cuna de Piedra in Mexico, based in Monterrey. They work with Indigenous communities that have used the cacao practices that stem thousands of years. Like if they can be like intentional about forcing their s**t. There's another one based in the U.S. called Sonhab—she worked with the Bribri community in Costa Rica. If small brands with lesser resources than you can do it, then f**k you, dude, and your narrative that you’re trying to do some, like sort of service, you know, for the betterment of the world. So, I don't know. I feel like not just to be incendiary, but it's more about, can we just be having a conversation where it's like, I get it—PR dude, that's a huge thing, but just let me critical think like: Did we not make almond milk unsustainable and you're trying to tell them that 100,000 different plant-based brands are gonna be how we get ourselves out of f*****g extinction? I don't know, man, I would be a little skeptical. [Laughs.]Alicia: Well, thank you so much, Andrea, for taking the time today to chat. This has been great.Andrea: Thank you for thinking about me. And yeah, let me know when we can have a part two, I know we kind of like, went all over the place. But you know, it's a good time. You know, I love—I love when it flows. But thank you so much, Alicia. And thank you so much for the work that you do. You're also helping pave the way for people like me to also, you know, hone in on their own space. So, I appreciate you so much for that.  Alicia: Aw, thank you. Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

In this Raw Rerun, Kris & Allie sit down with screenwriter, journalist and best-selling author Monica Corcoran Harel, the founder of the weekly Pretty Ripe newsletter. Netflix just purchased her feature film screenplay, a byproduct of the spark she found in reinvention. Part 1 of a 2-part series. HERE'S WHAT WE DISCUSSED WITH MONICA:The culture of keeping up appearancesCrazy kid's parties in Los Angeles, 'copters included!The gratitude for having a daughter at 42 Juicy and vibrantMothers and their obsessionsAging positively and the gifts we getMenopause is a buzzword in Silicon ValleyA slight detour on men's ballsGals and waxing: the politicizing of pubic hairNormalizing body hair with the LadyistA "firing" sparks a reinvention in midlife: the start of something goodHer fun screenplay that Netflix purchasedThe power of 50+ women entrepreneursLoving the middle of everythingConfidence, contacts, and capital were the keys to her pivotDon't overthink things and start smallLINKS TO RESOURCES DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:The Pretty Ripe newsletterMonica's New York Times piecesGennev menopause platformAlan Cumming talking about scrotal lifting on the Nancy podcastThe Ladyist (Ashley Armitage) on InstagramOTHER RESOURCES THAT MONICA LOVES :Kosas Air Brow GelSally Hansen Airbrush LegsLevi's Ribcage Bootcut jeansCharlotte Stone clogs and sandals. On Instagram: Garancedore, comedian Amy Sedaris, art historian/cultural critic Hilton Als. Others:  Nicole Byer and comedyfortheinternet, plus DailyMail.com (trying to give it up!)CONNECT WITH RAW FEMALE

Painter Celia Paul rejoins the show for the US debut of her new book, Letters To Gwen John (NYRB). We talk about how Celia found herself through corresponding with the late artist (d. 1938), the parallels between her life and Gwen's, especially their respective relationships with Lucian Freud and Rodin, the notion of aesthetic solitude and artistic sacrifices and the loneliness of pandemic life, why men aren't great at sitting for artists, her new exhibition, Memory & Desire (Victoria Miro Gallery), how Hilton Als got her to finally come to America and how much she enjoyed Santa Monica, the ambiguity of her previous memoir, Self-Portrait, what letters and paintings have in common, and more. More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

The celebrated artist on the role of art criticism today, and how she probes and ultimately goes beyond the limitations of her painting in her other practice as a writer. This episode with Sillman, who in 2020 published Faux Pas, a new collection of her writings, is guest-hosted by Jarrett Earnest, and is the last of his three-part miniseries on serious artists who are also serious writers.  Amy Sillman: Faux Pas is available here. Her work will be featured in the 2022 Venice Biennale, and was recently on view in Toni Morrison's Black Book, an exhibition curated by Hilton Als at David Zwirner's 19th Street gallery in New York.

In this bonus episode of Critical Reads, we will be discussing Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America by James Allen. With essays by Hilton Als, John Lewis, and Leon F. Litwack. Here's a brief summary of the book courtesy of the publisher: "The Tuskegee Institute records the lynching of 3,436 blacks between 1882 and 1950. This is probably a small percentage of these murders, which were seldom reported, and led to the creation of the NAACP in 1909, an organization dedicated to passing federal anti-lynching laws. Through all this terror and carnage someone -- many times a professional photographer -- carried a camera and took pictures of the events. These lynching photographs were often made into postcards and sold as souvenirs to the crowds in attendance. These images are some of photography's most brutal, surviving to this day so that we may now look back on the terrorism unleashed on America's African-American community and perhaps know our history and ourselves better. The almost one hundred images reproduced here are a testament to the camera's ability to make us remember what we often choose to forget. " This week's "Musings of Tired Black Social Worker" segment topic is  'Racism isn't a touchy subject if you're not a racist' from an Instagram post by @wearthepeace. To purchase the book, visit: Without Sanctuary via Twin Palms Publishers Other sources mentioned in this episode include: 3 Ways to End the School to Prison Pipeline for Good by Rehabilitation Enables Dreams (RED) Being Antiracist by the National Museum of African American History and Culture The School to Prison Pipeline: The Issue, the Solution, and Guiding Principles to Consider by Rehabilitation Enables Dreams (RED) Frequently Asked Questions about Lynching by withoutsanctuary.com To check out the CR podcast content calendar, visit: https://soulsessionswithneph.com/critical-reads-podcast To find out more about me or to consume more of my content, visit soulsessionswithneph.com. You can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook using the handle @soulsessionswithneph, or email me at connect@soulsessionswithneph.com. Thank you again for your time and support! 

Following his death in January he's been described as many things — trailblazer, genius, iconic force — but there's one label which is perhaps most apt. The Only One, coined by New Yorker critic Hilton Als in the 1990s, because for many years André Leon Talley was the only Black man in a very white industry. Pulitzer Prize winning fashion writer for the Washington Post Robin Givhan discusses the legacy of Talley and why there'll never be another like him.

The activist and author Angela Davis and the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and curator Hilton Als in conversation about one of their favorite subjects and dearest friends: Toni Morrison. Early on in her career, Morrison worked as a kind of activist editor at Random House, where she helped change the landscape of publishing—including her effort to bring Davis's landmark political autobiography to the public in 1974. (It was just republished in its third edition.) Recently, Als curated Toni Morrison's Black Book at David Zwirner's 19th Street gallery in New York, a group exhibition that draws astonishing connections between Morrison's life and words and works by Beverly Buchanan, Robert Gober, Julie Mehretu, Kerry James Marshall, and many more.  Toni Morrison's Black Book, curated by Hilton Als, is on view through February 26, 2022.  Angela Davis: An Autobiography was republished in its third edition in January 2022, featuring an expansive new introduction by the author.

Hilton Als is, and has been, an invaluable contributor to American cultural life for decades. Join this Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, artist, writer and curator as he lifts up and takes a different look at what he considers marginalized classics of the 20th Century. Until now. PART 1: Portrait of Jason Shirley Clarke's Portrait of Jason was a groundbreaking work of cinema verité when it was released in 1967. Captured over a single evening, the portrayal of gay African-American hustler and aspiring cabaret performer Jason Holliday interrogated race, class and sexuality in ways that were and still are ahead of its time. Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, artist, writer and curator Hilton Als has adapted the film into an audio drama that captures the intimacy, vulnerability and rawness of the original piece while probing power and the price of storytelling itself. Join NYTW for an intimate evening with Jason along with Hilton's unique commentary and analysis. Full transcript available at https://www.nytw.org/transcript-portrait-of-jason/

Shirley Clarke's Portrait of Jason was a groundbreaking work of cinema verité when it was released in 1967. Captured over a single evening, the portrayal of gay African-American hustler and aspiring cabaret performer Jason Holliday interrogated race, class and sexuality in ways that were and still are ahead of its time. Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, artist, writer and curator Hilton Als has adapted the film into an audio drama that captures the intimacy, vulnerability and rawness of the original piece while probing power and the price of storytelling itself. Join NYTW for an intimate evening with Jason along with Hilton's unique commentary and analysis.

Jenn Shapland's My Autobiography of Carson McCullers (Tin House Books, 2020) is a fascinating cross-genre book that combines elements of traditional biography with Shapland's own personal narrative of researching McCullers and discovering the many ways her life and McCullers' mirror each other. McCullers was a lesbian, but many of her biographers have shied away from this aspect of her life, referring to her partners as "friends" or "obsessions." Shapland's book is a bold work of historical reclamation, insisting we view McCullers as a queer writer and drawing attention to previously-obscured elements of queerness in her work. It is also a portrait of a vibrant queer community existing beneath the placid surface of mid-century America: Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Gypsy Rose Lee, and W.H. Auden all make memorable appearances in its pages. My Autobiography of Carson McCullers is a must-read for fans of McCullers, but it will also be of interest to fans of cross-genre writers like Maggie Nelson, Eileen Myles, and Hilton Als. Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anna Chancellor stars in the new TV adaptation of Agatha Christie's murder mystery Ordeal By Innocence this weekend, in which she plays Rachel Argyll, heiress, philanthropist and mother of five adopted children found murdered on Christmas Eve. Samira talks to the actress, who is well-known for her roles in Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Hour, Spooks and Mapp & Lucia. Harshdeep Kaur, the popular Indian playback singer known for her Bollywood Hindi, Punjabi and Sufi songs, performs live. Popularly known as the 'Queen of Sufi', she'll be performing her soulful Sufi renditions alongside a range of more modern Bollywood classics at the Barbican in London this week.American theatre critic Hilton Als won the Pulitzer Prize last year for his theatre reviews which the judges said puts drama 'within a real-world cultural context, particularly the shifting landscape of gender, sexuality and race.' He talks about White Girls, his new collection of essays, which blurs the line between criticism and memoir, fiction and nonfiction. Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald.

In search of some nostalgic holiday cheer, V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell climb in the way back machine and time travel to 1997 with critic and editor Oscar Villalon and novelist Curtis Sittenfeld. Oscar rounds up the books that won prizes twenty years ago, the books that remain relevant, and explains why these books aren't always the same. Curtis talks to us about Monica Lewinsky, Esquire, The Prairie Wife, Sex and the City and the very literary politics of 1997. PLUS an *exclusive* preview of her novel-in-progress about a Hillary Rodham who never becomes a Clinton. Readings (Fiction): Underworld by Don DeLillo; You Think It, I'll Say It, by Curtis Sittenfeld; The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy; American Pastoral by Phillip Roth; Paradise by Toni Morrison; Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser; The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald; The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White; Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier; Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling. Readings (Nonfiction): Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt; The Commissar Vanishes: the Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia by David King; The Rape of Nanking: the Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang; The Women by Hilton Als; Sex and the City by Candice Bushnell. In the Stacks will be back in two weeks. Happy Holidays! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hilton Als' first book in 14 years is a series of essays that defy easy categorization. His "white girls" are neither necessarily girls nor white….