Hello lovelies!
I know I’ve been remiss about newslettering but I’ve been super busy making a podcast! I’m doing it with my dear friends, Tasha and Alexis, and it’s weird and wonderful.
The thing about writing is it’s entirely solitary. Sure, I brainstorm with people sometimes, and (if I’m lucky) at some point my agent or an editor comes in. But the bulk of writing is sitting alone and tapping away at a keyboard.
Which has made me super curious about collaboration. I’ve loved the ideas of writers rooms for screenplays—it’s a fantasy of mine to riff on another person’s ideas and to see where ideas can go when they get to trampoline off a bunch of brains.
And that’s why I was so excited to work on this podcast. The idea was just that—let’s make something together. But, because we’re us, neither Tasha or I wanted to make anything we’d seen before. We wanted to talk about stuff we were super interested in—but not from a place of expertise. We wanted to learn with our audience, and to talk about Big Stuff in a way that was accessible and vulnerable and imperfect. We wanted to erase the fourth wall between “expert” and audience, and put us all in the same metaphorical boat, rowing along together towards, hopefully, a tiny scrap of enlightenment.
So we decided to immerse ourselves in the dicksand. It’s a fun way of saying patriarchy, but we think of it more generally—it’s a way of talking about all the systemic -isms that pervade our lives. Sure, we’ll never be entirely free of -isms, but we can at least become more aware of the ones pulling our strings in our own lives.
For example, our first season is about ANGER. This is a fundamental human emotion. Every human being on the planet has a brain that’s coded for anger. And yet, we were all taught to have a very different relationship to anger depending on our race, class, gender, etc. As someone raised female in a capitalist, patriarchal, white-supremacist culture, I was taught to equate anger with aggression, and that anything “aggressive” is masculine and therefor “unattractive” for females. I was also taught to weaponize my anger by crying when I’m angry. And mostly I was taught not to listen to my anger, which meant cutting myself off from an important early-warning system.
This is what I learned this season, and it’s been amazing. Kinda life changing! But it’s also been fun. We laugh about this stuff—it’s the dicksand!—because laughter is also a form of power.
Anyway, I’d love for you to listen, if you have the chance. Our website is here, and you can find us on Apple, here.
We also have an insta, and we’d love your support on Patreon, if you’re so inclined. It’ll keep the lights on. Finally, if you have something to sell, you can place an ad with us, here.
Our last episode of this season is coming out on Monday and then we’ll be working for about a month on the next season, which I’m SO excited about. It’s on Perfection, a topic near (and not so dear) to my heart, as a recovering Type-A lunatic. ;)
If you do listen to the podcast, we’d love to hear from you on the neckline! It’s our voicemail, and (as you can hear) we often feature voicemails on the show. We’d love to do an interstitial episode following up on anger and we’d also LOVE pre-recording thoughts from our audience on the topic of perfection. So please call if:
you have thoughts on anger!
you did one of our experiments in your own time and want to report back!
you have thoughts on perfection!
We’d love to hear from you. And I’d love to hear from you, here, if you listened to the podcast and have any notes/thoughts/comments. Thank you for indulging us and for listening and for being you. xoxoxoxoxoxo
How exciting Nicole! I can't wait to listen. xoxo