The Daily Whatever

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...

What a blast we had, hosting the delightful Walter Rhein and nerding out about all things writing. I’m going to keep this one short and sweet so we can send the video live straight away. Have a listen to learn about our respective writing styles. The TL;DR is: * Walter favors a rapid-fire write and publish approach. * Dana favors a “stew for hours in memoir dust” approach. * Lawrence has a nonbina...

Thank you Karen Marie Shelton , techwriter35 , Sarah , Obladioblada , and many others for tuning into my live video with Dana DuBois ! Join us tomorrow for “Writers on Writing with Walter Rhein” for The Daily Whatever ! Get full access to The Daily Whatever Show at www.thedailywhatevershow.com/subscribe

First of all, CONGRATS to Canada and the Liberals and Mark Carney! The liberals will form a minority government (meaning they don’t outright have 172 seats to form a majority government; they’ll need a junior party to team up with.) AND, Pierre Poilievre has lost his seat. The power of Trump—to kill everything he touches, again! Brace yourselves, word on the street is that Carney has a bigger tari...

Today was a groggy Monday morning Live, but we still had a blast. Why were we groggy? Well, I am trying to adjust my circadian rhythms to adjust to this daily 7am podcast. Good thing I love it so much, it’s like a jolt of energy that sustains me through my day. Lawrence? He was up half the night battling with Descript, trying to make our pre-recorded podcast with Jonathan Small work. It appears De...

Figuring out job/work/career these days during the Great Career Meltdown feels a little like trying to find a clean bathroom at a music festival — chaotic, unpredictable, and occasionally miraculous. Gen X sits right in the middle of it all, caught between the Boomers' "stay at one job forever" mindset and the Millennials and Gen Z who basically invented side hustles as a lifestyle. Listen as Lawr...

Now this was a lively Live, wasn’t it? Lawrence Winnerman and I hosted Jonathan Small on the weekly GenXy recorded podcast (going live tomorrow), and we had so much fun, we decided to continue to conversation Live. We were joined by about 30 of our favorite Substack pals as we explored the quintessential GenX anthems. Some songs and artists we discussed: the Beastie Boys (“Fight for Your Right” ve...

Yesterday’s Fucked-up Friday podcast was a bit grim. So today we wanted to talk uplifting news—and Substack’s own Jennie Young and her Burned Haystack Dating Method delivered that with a massive #Bumblegate win. The Burned Haystack Dating Method (BHDM) is a feminist dating methodology that teaches women to recognize harmful rhetorical patterns —things like “ disciplinary/directive ,” “ I’m the pri...