Version 1

Emmanuel Dzotsi (@newsmanual_) is an award-winning journalist, podcast host, and producer for This American Life. He’s reported stories on everything from backroom deals for political power, the strange phenomenon of white people sending Black folks venmo payments as reparations, to vast money-making phone scams hidden in plain sight. He co-hosted the third season of Serial and the popular podcast...

Miles is the founder of The Tea Stand, a community project which serves free tea at public parks, food distributions, and local events around Brooklyn. With The Tea Stand, Miles seeks to create spaces for folks to connect with themselves, one another, and the natural world. On this episode, we discuss switching careers to be more in alignment with your values, growing a community, sustainability i...

Laura Lorena Barbosa is an accomplished TV/film producer with over 12 years of experience at networks such as NBC News, Telemundo, CNN, and Al Jazeera. As the founder of The Creative Power Agency, Laura inspires others to reclaim their creative potential, crafting narratives that foster inclusivity and illuminate the beauty of humanity. We discuss hustling through journalism school at Penn State,...

Rachel is a career & travel expert, and the founder of Rachel Off Duty – a website for ambitious women seeking more adventurous lives. Based in Los Angeles but often workcationing around the globe, Rachel also works as a Travel Storytelling Consultant in the advertising space. We talk about finding fulfillment outside of corporate America, creating your own metrics for success, changing corpor...

Eva Reign is a Peabody and GLAAD Award-winning Brooklyn-based actress, writer and artist from St. Louis, Missouri. She is the star of Billy Porter’s directorial debut Anything’s Possible from Amazon Studios and MGM’s Orion Pictures. Her writing has appeared in Vogue, Vice, Them, The Cut, Byrdie, PAPER and Highsnobiety. On this episode, we chat about Eva’s creative process in getting ready for her...

Alice Lemee is a self-taught writer who left her budding career in the music industry to pursue writing full time. She’s a writing coach and newsletter ghostwriter for seven-figure business owners, award-winning YouTubers, and TV anchors. We talk about making changes to be happier – whether that’s changing careers or changing services within her writing career, the advantages of being self-taught,...

Ryan Herrera is a creative writer who is pursuing his Masters in Writing at Johns Hopkins, and works in ad tech for his 9-5. He has experience writing across a wide variety of genres including fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, screenwriting, humor writing, and journalism. He hopes to start writing his first novel upon graduating in 2026. We talk about how he makes time for creative writing whi...

Patrick Thomas writes about agriculture and the food industry for The Wall Street Journal. He covers meatpacking companies, supermarkets and how American food is grown. He joined the Journal in 2018 writing about corporate breaking news and is a native of Omaha, Nebraska. He joins this episode of Version 1 to talk about what makes business journalism creative, how running leads to breakthroughs an...

Eva Recinos (@evaiswriting) is an arts and culture journalist and creative non-fiction writer based in Los Angeles. She is the creator of Notes from Eva, a free monthly newsletter featuring opportunities for creatives. In this week’s episode, we talk about how she got her start freelance writing, how her career took a turn when she was rejected from a fiction workshop, and what structures help kee...

John Guilyard (@mynameisgilly) is a multitalented artist and UX designer at Google. He shares how failure plays a role in his creative process, not getting into his university’s art program, imposter syndrome, and the role of AI in art. Subscribe to Version 1's substack: version1podcast.substack.com/ Follow Version 1 on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/version1podcast/ Support the show: buymea...