The Active Voice

Aug 14 2024 28 ep. 52 mins 16

The Active Voice Podcast artwork

The internet is conditioning our minds and influencing the global consciousness in ways that we are only beginning to understand – and writers are on the front lines. In The Active Voice, Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie talks to great writers about how they are reckoning with the challenges of the social media moment, how they find the space for themselves to create great literature and journalism despite the noise, and how to make a living amid the economic volatility of the 2020s.

read.substack.com

Arts Society & Culture

Copy RSS

Subscribe on Podcast Addict

Michael Easter wants you to take the stairs

Aug 14 2024 47 mins

Michael Easter is a bestselling author, journalist, and professor whose work explores how we can leverage modern science and evolutionary wisdom to perform better and live healthier. Through his Substack, Two Percent with Michael Easter, he offers readers insights to help them ignore the noise and focus on research-backed tips for a happier, healthier life. Michael’s reach is vas

Nate Silver on the edge

Jul 18 2024 59 mins

Chris here, Co-founder and CEO of Substack. I’m sharing a conversation with Nate Silver that I just published on my Substack.is a man of many talents. He’s been a baseball analyst, a blogger, a legendary election forecaster, and founder of 538. He’s worked in media at the Times, ABC, and ESPN. He’s a professional poker player, and a bestselling author. I was introduced to h

The Active Voice: E. Jean Carroll, Mary Trump and Jen Taub are bringing serialization into the mainstream

Jul 27 2023 41 mins

Today’s episode is guest-hosted by Sarah Fay, creative writing professor at Northwestern University, former interviewer at The Paris Review, devoted serializer, and lover of all things Substack. Her Substack Writers at Work helps creative writers use Substack to bolster their careers, including how to serialize their writing. She’s currently serializing her new memoir Cured on

The Active Voice: Taylor Lorenz still believes in the internet

Jul 13 2023 68 mins

Taylor Lorenz, a tech culture reporter for the Washington Post, has been both observer and participant in an internet culture that has been emerging since the early 2010s, a period of history that has seen the rise of massive social media platforms, the decay of traditional media, and the increasing power of online influencers. That culture can be delightful and enriching, and it c

The Active Voice: Richard Hanania is seeking ‘enlightened centrism’

Jun 23 2023 44 mins

Even among politics and media junkies, few people had heard the name Richard Hanania before 2020. But then, as the pandemic intensified online tribalism, the political scientist emerged with a provocative analysis that carried the headline “Why Is Everything Liberal?” The piece, which explores why almost every major institution in the U.S. leans left, did the rounds on Twitter,

The Active Voice: Nadia Bolz-Weber is preaching to break your heart

Jun 08 2023 32 mins

At a dinner party Substack hosted in San Francisco last week, I found myself sitting next to Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired magazine and former publisher of the Whole Earth Review. We were talking about the capital of the world. It no longer felt that New York was it, I was telling him, though it had not been replaced by another physical city either. Rather, th

The Active Voice: Suleika Jaouad and Yung Pueblo are creating to live

May 25 2023 41 mins

Both Suleika Jaouad and Diego Perez, who writes as Yung Pueblo, arrived at writing through adversity. Writing became a way of life when each was faced with death, a healing mechanism that became a craft.When they met for the first time in person at our headquarters in San Francisco, they greeted each other with the enthusiasm of old friends reuniting. They fell into conversation wi

The Active Voice: Ted Gioia and Mike Solana are fighting from the fringes

May 11 2023 49 mins

At first glance, Mike Solana and Ted Gioia might not seem to have much in common. Mike, the publisher of the newsletter Pirate Wires, is very much a child of the internet, a strong proponent of the tech industry and scientific progress, with a career in venture capital (working in marketing) after a brief stint in book publishing. Ted, who writes The Honest Broker and has been a gu

The Active Voice: Robert Reich is pressing the reveal key for society

Apr 27 2023 58 mins

I met Robert Reich in his overstuffed corner office on U.C. Berkeley’s campus, housed in what looked to me like a midcentury villa that could double as a restaurant that sells speciality bratwurst. I was shown into Reich’s office by Heather Lofthouse, his collaborator and media partner, who pointed out a mahogany armchair by the window, just past some boxes overflowing with boo

The Active Voice: Ethan Strauss is jumping off a high diving board

Apr 13 2023 83 mins

When he’s about to hit publish on a take that he knows will catch some heat, Ethan Strauss feels like he is about to step off a high diving board. He’s scared, but he knows he will do it anyway. “That, to me, feels good,” he says. “The entirety of the process and that particular catharsis feels good.” Ethan writes about the intersection of sport and culture—especially