The Daily Whatever

Thank you Jason Dyer , Alexandra Porter , Anthony Burke , April K Wilson , Becky Martinek , Beth Cruz , Beth Plank , BiffBiff BJ Roberts , bluePNWcats , Brandon Ellrich , Mariellen , Carissa Rogers , Carol Duffy , Cat , CatherineC , Celice Carlough , OldHenCharlie , Cheryl , Christine Balint , Charles , Craig Nixon , Craig Pulliam , Dale Scaringi , Dana DuBois , dani clark , Dan Thornton , Dar Gfr...

There are many things I’ve gotten wrong in my life, but friends ain’t one of them. I am lucky and blessed to have several women whom I have known for years that I consider to be best friends. Today I was lucky enough to be on a Substack Live with two of them! Char Sundust joined me to cover for Dana DuBois , who, it turns out, completed her top secret mission early. Char and I started talking abou...

Dana DuBois and I were absolutely delighted to have Sacha Cohen from A Good Vintage on the show today, it soon became clear that if we lived closer, we’d be hanging out with her over long, lazy apéro afternoons! Sacha and her husband Jason are not expats—yet! They are taking slow and easy moves towards an expat life. The remarkably clever thing about this approach is that they get to live in vario...

Sometimes our freeform days are the most fun; often they have some of the biggest news. Today was both, and a whole helping of kick in the pants, too. We started by debating the meaning of Trump’s on camera “fuck” at Israel and Iran. Is the world’s best negotiator all out of non-swear words? Furthermore—what is happening? Why is all of this unfolding the way it is, and why does it seem so…strange?...

I spent the past two days in a whirlwind of travel—like literal planes, trains, and automobiles—getting my child off to a pre-college camp and then driving all the way down the shaft of Florida to visit family. Disconnecting for a couple days can feel restorative. But in my hours offline, the US somehow managed to get embroiled in war. Because that’s where we are now as a country. And while the ne...

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Whew, that was fun! A huge, giant The Daily Whatever thanks to Karen Marie Shelton and Robin Wilding who helped me steer this ship while Dana DuBois is away on her top secret mission to dismantle the Iranian nuclear weapons program! Karen, Robin, and I had a fabbo time sharing the GOOD NEWS that is out there in the world, if only you look for it. We had so much good news, we did like seven rounds...

I always knew this day would come. As many of you know, I’m a west-coaster and a night owl. So a 7am daily podcast requires discipline as well as a loud alarm. Guess which one I forgot to set this morning? It was a delight to realize how much concern you all had for me—so many messages!—and a relief my amazing guests Walter Rhein and Frederic Poag were such good sports about it all. We still had a...

Chat, who amongst us hasn’t had a moment where they’ve thought “You know, fuck this America shit. I’m going to sell my things and move my husband and adorable daughter to quasi-rural France and ride this shit out while drinking some lovely wine with a nice baguette and brie.”? I have! Many times! And I don’t even HAVE a husband and an adorable daughter! But Rich Kagan does, and he and his family h...

Huge thanks to everyone who tuned in for our Live chat with Steve Uppendahl today! It was a blast to talk about parenting teen daughters and traveling internationally to take them to see Taylor Swift—as well as the impact Taylor has had on them (and us). Here are links to the stories: Steve’s story is on Medium so the link won’t unfurl, but you can find it here . To the Whatevers— BiffBiff , Brand...

It’s not everyday you get to connect with an old friend from highs school, but today we were lucky enough to do just that. Dana DuBois and I went to school with our guest, Gen-X Crisis with Robert Guess , and it was excellent to reconnect. We started off reviewing some breaking news: Trump* left the G7 early for mysterious reasons, up to and including the possibility of a wider war with Iran. Addi...

Keeping this writeup short, Chat! It was a jam-packed episode, with so much to cover from the weekend. We talked about the assassination of MN lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the attempted assassination of State Senator of John Hoffman and his wife—and the sheer lack of surprise that the gunman was a disgruntled MAGA fool. The No Kings protests were huge, and Trump’s parade was bust....

I went into this No Kings Day with huge apprehensions—with just cause. We had a president itching to pull the trigger on the Insurrection Act, a baltallion in Washington DC for his “I’m a Big Boy” military parade, millions gathering for protests, the National Guard deployed in multiple states, the Marines in Los Angeles, and Israel and Iran lobbing weapons at one another. Then we awoke to news of...

Thank you Amy Beeman , Andrew , Stephanie Beauvais , Beth Cruz , BiffBiff , Brandon Ellrich , Callie🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇱🇲🇽 , Carolina Baffigo , Cat , Cecily Wilson , OldHenCharlie , Chris Esko , Claire at Backpacking Bella , Random_Crow , Craig Nixon , Dale Scaringi , Damon Kenner , Eileen Dougharty , Everett Taasevigen , Füsun Aydın , GenXcellent , Greg , Sarah , Ira Krakow , Jeremy George , Jon Michael Ahrens...

Chat, we had so much fun with Liz LaPoint from GenXcellent today! It totally smelled like teen spirit up in the joint, full on Marsha! Marsha! Marsha! meets the Tarantula Tiki God episode times infinity +1. What am I saying? GenXy meets GenXcellent was a kick in the pants! A house on fire! By the end of the hour we all agreed that there wasn’t enough time, and that we could have kept going, well,...

Lawrence Winnerman and I knew we wanted to host a pre-Father’s Day Live where we shared stories about our dads. We decided we needed to bring on an amazing father as our guest—and The Opinionated Ogre was a top choice. So we asked him. He replied yes, and then shared a link. “You might want to read my story first…” he told us. And… whoa. After reading it, we knew he was the only possible guest for...

It’s no secret that Dana DuBois and I are fans of Füsun Aydın . What’s not to love? She’s smart, funny, and has a rapier wit so scathing and funny that you have to laugh, even if it’s impaling you. But what brought us together to begin with—and what keeps us enraptured—is her writing. Füsun has announced an ambitious plan to write and publish her first memoir on Substack—an autobiography of her fi...

Thanks to our amazing The Whatevers crew for another fun day in the chats, even as we were discussing serious topics. We covered both of my recent articles about the situation in LA: and We’re keeping a watchful eye, and hoping for peace and healing for everyone in LA. Fuck Trump! Thank you Barbara , BiffBiff , Brandon Ellrich , Callie🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇱🇲🇽 , Cat , Craig Nixon , Damon Kenner , Dana DuBois , Füs...

We here at The Daily Whatever try to run a tight ship, with planning and production values and whatnot, but sometimes things don’t go according to plan—a lesson we’ve learned a lot this week! Today, Dana DuBois was going to ask me about the story I was supposed to have just published—but I collapsed into bed at 8:30pm last night, and never got to finish it. The joys of working two jobs, and co-hos...

Fans of The Daily Whatever know Lawrence Winnerman and I are huge fans of The Opinionated Ogre . His impassioned, swear-filled political rants are the antidote to the legacy media that we all need in these fascist regime times. So when the Ogre himself agreed to come on our humble podcast, we knew how to show up... …as sock puppets, of course. Turns out, talking about the fucked-up news of the wee...

Melissa Corrigan, she/her and her publication CounterStory Media are on a mission: to use storytelling to change the world—and people’s votes. Melissa is multi-hyphenate as a writer and podcaster: A veteran. An adoptee. A mom of a trans son. Her voice is powerful and she’s not shy about raising it, especially to champion for others. In short: she’s spectacular. Having her on the podcast was such a...

I was so excited to discuss today’s topic. I made an outline and a plan. And you know what happens when you make plans…? Yeah. Today Lawrence Winnerman and I demonstrated our GenX resilience, as we dealt with repeated fuck-ups for the first 15 minutes of the podcast—starting with when I stepped in the dog mess my darling dog left under my desk during the night, continuing with Lawrence power going...

Attention, students! School is in session, the library is open, and it is Time. 👏 To. 👏Learn. 👏 Queer. 👏 Herstory. 👏 Periodt. 👏 Wendy🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🌈 the Druid joined Dana DuBois and lil’ ol’ me ( Lawrence Winnerman ) for the first of what we hope are many sessions of schoolwerk. First of all, Wendy is the owner of ThistleAndMoss.com , a Substack dedicated to—an amazing combo of things: Queernes...

Happy Monday, and more importantly, Happy start of Pride Month! It’s a challenging time for Pride. I have my apprehensions the US will remain a relatively safe place to gather and celebrate Pride. I hope I’m wrong, Today I perused LinkedIn ahead of the podcast and checked for the rainbow logos we’ve all grown so accustomed to in June. And I saw literally none. Wait, I take that back. Grindr has a...

Saturdays tend to be pretty chill here at The Daily Whatever (unlike weekdays when we’re super locked-down and professional). We wanted today to feel like a gathering of friends. So we put it out there to our community of regular “Whatevers”—those who frequent the podcast—that everyone was welcome to come online to say hello, and tell us what they’re into and how they came to find us. Unsurprising...