A SXSW Guide to Surviving the Nerdpocalypse
A compendium of what I've learned in my twenty-five years navigating SXSW Interactive, the greatest show on earth.
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Review: A Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman's book begins with the grumpy old man trope. But, if you hang around past the first few chapters, you'll find a story about community, history, and kindness.
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Review: Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
As a long-time fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald, I was long overdue to learn about his life through different eyes. Therese Anne Fowler's Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald was a heartbreaking tale that traced the Fitzgerald's slow decent into misery as F. Scott chased his white whale: literary fame and respect.
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Review: Janelle Brown's Fiction (Three Books + Counting)
My old friend Janelle Brown left journalism (we worked in San Francisco during the Dotcom Boom + Bust) and took up writing books about our generation in a post GenX world.
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Review: Elizabeth Wurtzel, Our #GenX Writer
Elizabeth Wurtzel's books helped explain and then define—as much as anyone could—who GenX was in the nineties.
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Review: Old Man's War (The Series)
John Scalzi's OLD MAN'S WAR series takes you into a world where humans are competing with aliens to colonize our galaxy.
Read More ›Elizabeth Wurtzel: She Was Our Rock God Writer
Elizabeth Wurtzel was—and forever will be—our GenX Rock God Writer.
Read More ›Episode 39: Remembering Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel passed away on January 7, 2020. She was one of the voices of GenerationX, a proud feminist, and a god damned force of nature. She was also the first author I met. She was—and will always be—our "rock god!"
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Episode 38: Julia Scheeres
My friend and former Wired.com colleague Julia Scheeres has written two best sellers. But her story will blow you away. It’s the story of bravery and perseverance.
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GenX, That Damned Newsweek Editorial, George Michael, and the Twitter Hellscape
In 1993, Newsweek labeled GenX as the "The Whiny Generation." We've been not giving a shit about that since. Also—George Michael is pretty great.
Read More ›Episode 37: Woody Lewis
My friend for nearly twenty years, author Woody Lewis and I sat down for the first time to talk about his book, his membership in the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), meeting and playing drums with Jimi Hendrix, his family’s relationship to Sally Hemings, and the struggle with writing about being black in America.
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Review: The Last Days of August (Audible Original)
Jon Ronson came to the story thinking it was about one thing (cyberbullying), but quickly found the threads took him elsewhere (mental health in the porn industry).
Read More ›Episode 36: Evan Ratliff
Evan Ratliff is a two-time National Magazine Award finalist, the co-founder of the Atavist publishing platform, the editor-in-chief of The Atavist Magazine, and the author of The Mastermind: Drugs, Empire, Murder, Betrayal.
Read More ›Review: Christmas Eve, 1914 (Audible Original)
The audio play is short, just seventy-three minutes, but that’s more than enough time to take you on a melancholy trip through the hours leading up to the impromptu Christmas Eve truce in World War I.
Read More ›Review: The Man on the Mountaintop (An Audible Original Drama)
The play is a series of parables told through the stories of people who are waiting in a long line to meet with Joe, the Holy Man, who lives in a hermitage at the top of a mountain.
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GenX Tribe: Breaking Bones and Other Stories of Walking it Off
GenXers grew up breaking bones, having accidents, and dealing with mayhem—and many times going to the doctor was the LAST thing we did. So—share your story of GenX Catastrophes!
Read More ›Review: The View from Flyover Country
This is less a view of flyover country and more a response to flare-ups in flyover country. Still, I sat down and read the book in one sitting because it's smart, well-written, on point, and unapologetic. I dig that.
Read More ›Review: Alien: Out of the Shadows
While the story doesn't really add much to the Alien universe—it really is a mash-up of the two movies—it's still fun as hell to be back with Ripley (although she feels a little less feminist badass in the book, but not offensively so).
Read More ›Review: Sapiens: A Brief History of Human Kind
The book chronicles the rise of Homo sapiens from our earliest days on through the very near future, gently walking the reader through the complex issues of empire building, the development of cultures, and the ethical examinations of what it means to even be human.
Read More ›Review: It Didn't Start with You
The book was okay, but not great. I was a technology journalist (Wired, MIT's Technology Review) so I'm reluctant to recommend books that get the science not exactly right.
Read More ›Episode 35: Danielle Sepulveres
Author, actress, and Tweeter extraordinaire, Danielle Supulveres‘ memoir Losing It chronicles the medical, emotional, and physical toll that comes from falling in love with the wrong person—and not trusting you own instincts.
Read More ›Episode 34: Keri Leigh Merritt
Historian Keri Leigh Merritt's book Masterless Men explains the how the social and economic fabric of the “white working class” came to be—and what it means for America.
Read More ›(Bonus) Episode 33: George Carlin (aka, the one that started it all)
In 2001, I interviewed comedian George Carlin for my streaming audio show on Wired.com. That show was the genesis of The Downtown Writers Jam Podcast.
Read More ›Episode 32: Vikki Tobak
Vikki Tobak left Detroit for New York City and found herself at the center of the nascent hip-hop scene in 1991. Her new book Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop will change the way you think and talk about the music that shook up America.
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