The Daily Whatever

What an amazing treat! Mr. Troy Ford stole the show at The Daily Whatever today as we ramped up for our fave day of the week: Fucked-up Friday! Troy, we could not have had more fun with you, and thank you for joining us! Please come back soon! We kicked off by talking about Troy’s book release—out on June 3rd! I’ve pre-ordered my copy , and I hope you’ll get yours, too! It sounds fun and poignant...

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We had such a blast chatting with our new gay bae Brandon Ellrich! We covered a range of topics ranging from challenging fathers and families of origins, early iconic queer characters in film, and Brandon’s forthcoming Pride tour throughout the midwest. We’re hoping he and Lawrence Winnerman can meet IRL, so stayed tuned into June to find out—Kansas City may never be the same. Huge thanks to Füsun...

There’s no business like show business, amirite? And what a show we had today! Thanks to the always loquacious and irresistable Frederic Poag whose wild hair presaged a wild time talking about dating, sex, desire, and a whole lotta nonsense! If it ain’t clear, Frederic is ALWAYS welcome to talk to us, and when the topic is as spicy as today—well, we might just have to make that a thing! “The GenX...

Welp, that was a blast! It’s the holiday weekend, so I’m gonna keep this short. When you’ve been best friends for over 40 years, turns out you’ve got a lot of goods to share about each other during an “ask us anything.” What questions did we answer? You’re gonna have to listen and find out. Thank you John Pearce , Cat , Peter William Murphy , Lahboss , Karen Marie Shelton , Robin Wilding , The One...

Every Friday, The Daily Whatever hosts “Fucked-up Friday,” where we invite a guest to join us and discuss the news from the previous week. Or specifically—we each share what we thought was the most fucked-up news of the week, and we make the case for why it’s the most fucked up of all. And then our live audience votes for which story was, indeed, the most fucked-up. This week, we were delighted to...

In the days following the election, as I grappled with the enormity of what Trump 2.0 would mean, I had a personal struggle as well: what to do with Pink Hair & Pronouns , my publication for parents and caregivers of trans and nonbinary kids? I researched the risks by reading Project 2025. I reached out to the CEO of Medium to ask him about guardrails and protections. And in the end, I realized—it...

Patrick B. Stewart is a writer and publisher and a Taoist/Daoist. When he joined us on The Daily Whatever last week , he dropped a big truth bomb—that Medium stopped giving writers access to the email addresses of their new subscribers, moving forward. And as we GenXers do—he researched. He aligned with his values. And he pivoted—away from Medium, removing his The Taoist Online publication. He pla...

We’d say Happy Monday, but really, it’s a bit of a rough morning. Dana DuBois and I are both feeling varying shades of sadness and anger. The news about President Biden is hitting a lot of us hard, and we’re trying to wrap that into the overall narrative about his cognitive decline occurring earlier than we knew, and the general state of the world under Trump 2.0. The truth is—I wrote my article a...

Today we had the joy of hosting Char Sundust of Spirit Sanctuary on The Daily Whatever , for a soulful and deep conversation about writing and safety and showing up with our words in the world. Char read her award-winning poem I Want to Move Things with My Mind We had the best time—a fun reunion of Seattle friends and writers. Yay! We love sharing the love of Substack on Sundays, and here’s who we...

It was just Dana DuBois and Lawrence Winnerman today on The Daily Whatever , talking about the stuff we usually talk about. In this case, it was discussing our latest articles—Dana on her dating debacle, and mine comparing and contrasting the articles on GenX from the Economist and Vogue: In classic The Daily Whatever fashion, we had a wide ranging conversation that ended up with the idea that we...

It’s always an amazing day when Frederic Poag joins your Live. Even when it’s Friday, so it’s time to talk about the fucked-up news of the week. For those of you new to GenXy , each Friday we invite a guest to join us—and all three of us present our pick for most fucked-up news story of the week. Here were our respective picks: * Frederic: Kristi Noem Wants Migrants to Compete for Citizenship on N...

Well, that was something, wasn’t it? Friend of the Pod, Untrickled by Michelle Teheux , was booked to speak with us, but her pup, Mr. Joe needed an X-Ray, and so, of course, she had to attend to that. We’re all sending good vibes, Michelle! Let us know how Mr. Joe is doing, please and dogspeed for healing wishes. Another Friend of the Pod, Robin Wilding , volunteered to jump in and THANK GOD she d...

For the love of all that is holy, Substack, save the chat with the video! As usual we had a rollicking sidebar in the chat with many of our favorite people, who all helped me give a warm welcome to the inimitable Amy Fallon from Bring The A-Game ! Thanks, Amy for being such a great sport, and for being willing to hold court with me to talk about journalism, politics, comedy, the death of print med...

Our huge thanks to Peter William Murphy of The Exile Files for joining us this morning on The Daily Whatever ! He was so kind and willing to share with us his writing process and we had a lively conversation of everything from inspiration to editing. As usual, our chat was off the hook, and apparently Henrik Hageland of Fragments of a Northern Mind baked a cake while listening to us. Thanks to eve...

Fellow Medium mourners, Thank you all for joining me and sharing your memories both fond and frustrating of what Medium has meant to you—with extra special huge thanks to Walter Rhein and Patrick B. Stewart for being such incredible guests. This was exactly the cathartic moment I was hoping for. We shared our stories, our joys, our laments, all of it. We have loved Medium. We continue to love Medi...

What an absolute delight to welcome Robin Wilding of Wilding Out onto The Daily Whatever this morning/ afternoon! We had a great conversation with her about a multitude of things, and we got to shout out that our little Substack venture here is only two months old, and The Daily Whatever is really only two weeks old. CONFIDENTIAL TO ROBIN: Next time we have you on, we’ll do a better job of preppin...

We were so excited to welcome Ben Ulansey from The Gen Z Report to The Daily Whatever this morning! Ben is an amazing writer, with opinions on everything from politics to popular culture, which means he’s a great add to the genXy fam. He may be two generations removed from us, but clearly, he’s one of us in spirit and vibe. We mean that in a GOOD way, Ben! 😜 Today was Fucked-Up Friday, and as per...

One of the great things about having a daily podcast with your bestie, Dana DuBois , is that you get to focus entire episodes on featuring each other’s writing! Yesterday we spoke about Dana’s piece on her lifetime love affair with the band The Cure , and today we dug into the nuts and bolts of my latest spec-fic piece, The Book of Deek. Dana is a great interviewer, and so we dug into everything f...

Today we discussed one of my favorite stories I’ve written, about one of my very favorite bands of all time: The Cure. 🖤🖤🖤 I adore music memoir. For a music super fan like me, observing how songs have intertwined themselves into my lived experiences and using them as a narrative arc to tie a story together is a thrill. This is especially true as we age, and have the perspective of decades worth...

There are rare peak moments in life, and rarer still that we get to recognize we’re having one while we’re in it. Today we had the chance to speak with Füsun Aydın about writing, and her Substack, Letters from a Prostitute by Füsun Aydın ; this was one of those moments for me, for sure. Please come take a listen to our wide-ranging conversation. Dana DuBois and I had the chance to talk to Füsun ab...

Huge thanks to Karen Marie Shelton for joining us on The Daily Whatever! I believe Karen is the one-and-only person who’s attended every single The Daily Whatever podcasts, so it was a thrill and an honor to have her on. The fact that we spent most of the hour talking about our cats? That was a bonus. I was so inspired, I posted this for you, Karen: If anyone has photos or stories about their cats...

Happy Sunday, friends! Today Lawrence Winnerman and I had a great conversation about this story I wrote about demisexuality: But really, it was a conversation about much more, including... * When does something cross over from being a modifier to an identity? * Do neo-identities like demisexual belong on the LGBTQ+ continuum, or are they taking up space where they don’t belong? * Is identity immut...

As Robin Wilding said, today’s The Daily Whatever felt like catching up with our besties. We talked about Lawrence’s long and winding road back to employment, as after ten months and 700 interviews, he got not one but TWO job offers this week. What a thrill! But in true GenX multi-hyphenate fashion, that’s not all the work he’s got. He’s also a writer and podcaster here on Substack, of course. He’...

Thank you Walter Rhein , Debra Groves Harman , Polly Walker Blakemore , Karen Marie Shelton , Lahboss and so many others for tuning into The Daily Whatever: Fucked-Up Friday with Lawrence Winnerman and Dana DuBois featuring our guest Kevin Alexander ! Y’all! I (Lawrence) got a job! Huzzah! Also, I’m planning a new side hustle as Santa Claus. Read Santa Lawrence’s origin story here: Today we had a...