Delighted that the PCHH daily era kicks off today with @craftingmystyle and @JoelleMonique talking about Justin Simien's BAD HAIR. Now in your feeds!
I cannot tell you how satisfying I have found it -- perhaps surprisingly? -- to take this project that I have poured so much of myself into for ten years and make myself less important to it. It's the thing that has made me feel the most creatively and editorially successful.
It's very nice -- very enjoyable, very lucky -- to be able to make something that feels like it needs you to survive. But it's way better to feel like you've made something that *doesn't* need you to survive.
I'm super proud of helping create a space for myself, but the most meaningful thing I've been able to do is recede a little bit within it so that other people can be in it more. I wasn't sure how this transformation of the show was going to feel, but it's actually awesome.
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Not glad to see some of the people who should be encouraging people to be patient trying to draw conclusions about how the election is going by speculating about early votes that haven't even been opened or counted yet.
This is the thing everybody said it was dangerous to do; they're all doing it anyway.
"Based on where the people live who submitted these sealed envelopes, who's winning?" Seriously, shut up.
There are a *lot* of things that are good to keep in mind right now, but one is that the confidence with which people announce what's going to happen over the next, say, two weeks is unrelated (or possibly inversely related) to how much they know what they're talking about.
There's a lot of predicting as anxiety management, either "everything will be fine" anxiety management or doomsaying "I'm preparing myself for my dreaded outcome by predicting it" anxiety management.
There are a lot of people trying to get out ahead of any chance they'll look silly later by predicting things that don't actually seem likely.
Everybody has to make their own decisions about what's safe. I get that. But sneering at people "hiding in their basements" because they're trying to be careful makes me want to scream. All over the country and the world, people are giving up so much.
They're manifesting in many cases *decades and decades* of love by tolerating agonizing separations so they don't place anyone they love at risk of dying in pain and alone and scared. This is not *hiding*. It's *enduring*.
If you think X or Y or Z precaution is excessive in a particular situation, so be it. But this mockery -- mockery! -- of families who are not in basements but on the phone and on video chat and looking at each other through windows, it's just appalling.
Oh, it's #InternationalPodcastDay? Well. Thank you to my standbys, the ones I listen to for company, sometimes over and over: #jjho and @awt90210. Thanks to my latest passion, 13 Minutes To The Moon.
Thanks to Another Round, which opened up the possibilities of podcasting for so many people, me included. Thanks to All Songs Considered, without which our show might not exist. Thanks to Bullseye, which is letting me learn to interview people.
Thanks to Serial for helping so many of us stop having to explain what podcasts are. Thanks to the Poscast, the only show that should be that long. Thanks to all the NPR podcasts that have graciously worked with us internally and inspired us constantly.
One thing I always notice about debate analysis is that commentary often talks about who won, who lost, who was "effective," without filling in the obvious gap -- effective at what? What are you assuming "winning" is?
Because let's say someone goes into a restaurant and starts yelling at the staff. Insults them, berates them, and makes them feel like garbage -- and they remain calm and don't really talk back. The person leaves, feeling invigorated and very "I guess I told THEM."
Is that effective? Well, it's effective at making the person doing it feel good, and even at making the staff annoyed. It might even make them feel helpless. But if you flip it around and assume the audience is the restaurant manager or the other diners, who won?