Reading time: 2.15 532 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, George Saunders calls it The Gulp: “the exciting but harrowing period in the publication of a book when, with the writing all done… the waiting-to-see begins. Will people read it? Will they like it?” Before they start, everyone thinks that writing the book is the hardest part. And it is hard. But that’s nothing compared to the moment when you strip yourself naked, cover yourself in maple syrup, and offer yourself up to...
2 days ago • 3 min read
Reading time: 3.14 766 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Halfway up Cader Idris, I ran out of everything: energy, patience, my breakfast, and the ability to form any coherent thoughts to solve the problem in front of me. The problem was that I hadn’t eaten enough breakfast and I hadn’t brought enough proper food and I really hadn’t thought the whole thing through. Good job my base level of fitness was high, ey? I stopped for a moment and considered: I could turn around and go...
3 days ago • 3 min read
Reading time: 1.11 281 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, I step onto the beach with my board and pause. I can hear the sea, just… but I can’t see it; there’s too much fog. By a large driftwood log, I set up my little camp and warm up, watching shadowy figures emerge from the mist, boards under their arms. Their laughter drifts over my skin. Early surfers on their way for breakfast and the rest of their day. Mine’s just beginning. As soon as I pass the breakers, I’m alone with...
4 days ago • 1 min read
Reading time: 3.03 723 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, “What would make it possible?” When John Aaron, NASA engineer in mission control, worked on the Apollo 13 mission, he found himself sliding into despair. The oxygen tank had exploded. The crew were running out of air and time. The command module had to be shut down. And the ship was on its way back from slingshotting around the Moon. They were surviving in Aquarius, the lunar module, which was never designed as a...
8 days ago • 3 min read
Reading time: 2.36 615 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, “OPTIMIZE YOUR SLEEP!!!” screamed the subject line and my toes curled so hard they snapped off and flew into orbit, escaped the Earth’s gravity, and were last seen belting past the moons of Jupiter. Together with my final nerve. I don’t want to optimise my fucking sleep. I don’t want some stunted little techbro getting involved with my life even when I’m UNCONSCIOUS. I want to sit on lush green grass in the dappled shade...
9 days ago • 3 min read
Reading time: 6.14 1,482 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, One technology, two futures — and how we’re letting the wrong one win… Imagine putting your head into a box which has six speakers in it. From each speaker comes a different noise: several conversations, music, cutlery clinking, traffic sounds, laughter, footsteps, a dog barking, a child crying. All at full volume. Someone taps you on the shoulder and you turn to listen. You can see their mouth moving but they could be...
10 days ago • 6 min read
Reading time: 2.05 492 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, I look at my smart watch, calves burning. No, not burning; on the verge of popping. Red hot, bulging, glowing like a cartoon police light and threatening to burst all over the track, leaving a sticky trail of goo in my wake. My calves are now, in my imagination, the most sculpted muscular appendages on the face of the Earth. Michaelangelo would have gladly created a statue of them in marble to sit alongside David. In...
11 days ago • 2 min read
Reading time: 4.48 1,140 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, “What will 85-year-old me say about what I’m doing now?” Tamu Thomas’s question to us yesterday, at Laura Brunton’s Ignited Woman event. So I picture myself: grey hair, still in space buns. More wrinkles that get really deep when I smile, and I smile a lot, I hope. Still wearing bright orange sneakers, leopard-print jeans, and a mustard-yellow jumper. Still standing and shouting about using your voice. Especially if...
15 days ago • 5 min read
Reading time: 1.38 385 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Emperor Nero might have had a point. Look, yes, he might have been the very first inspiration for the antichrist. And, yes, he was probably one of the worst people to ever be in charge of anything at all given his penchant for cruelty, suffering, murdering the women in his life and according to primary sources and a pretty famous statue, he did in fact have a neckbeard. Stick with me though because the thing most people...
16 days ago • 2 min read