Numlock Unlocked for the long weekend!
Hello! We’re off today in observance of Juneteenth.
I’ve unlocked these Numlock Sunday interviews for the next two weeks so you can enjoy some reading all the way through the long Fourth of July weekend, and you can check out what you’re missing if you’re not a paid subscriber.
Numlock’s eight years old (crazy!) and we haven’t increased the price at all in that time (I’m a terrible businessman!), so thanks to the constant drip of currency inflation, technically every day is the best day to subscribe to Numlock. To sweeten the deal for this year’s anniversary sale, if you get an annual subscription today, saving me a bunch of processing fees, I’m offering an extra $10 off for the first year.
Here’s several of my favorite interviews from the past few months, now unlocked for you!
Numlock Sunday: Sarah Amos on Tough Cookie
I spoke to Sarah Amos, who produced and hosted the podcast Tough Cookie from Vanity Fair. The show is excellent; it’s a personal story exploring the chaotic life of Sarah’s father, Wally Amos, who created the Famous Amos company of cookies and built it into a nationally renowned brand. The story doesn’t stop there, though, and talks about Wally’s troubles operating the brand, the lack of wealth that followed its sale and the years he spent reckoning with the vast gulf between “famous” and “rich.”
Numlock Sunday: Christian Elliott on how Alaska is falling to pieces
I spoke with Christian Elliott, who is out with a great new article called "Lessons of a Landslide Detective" in National Geographic all about the glacial collapse, Alaskan landslides and the detective-geologist trying to save the state.
Numlock Sunday: Keezy Young talks Hello, Sunshine
Hello, Sunshine was one of my favorite books of last year: Young’s got a phenomenal artistic style, and the graphic novel was a clever and immersive mystery that I'm still thinking about months later.
Numlock Sunday: Amanda Sakuma on the chaos and madness of women's clothing sizing
I spoke to Amanda Sakuma, who wrote Fit 4 a Teen for The Pudding, which is about “the inter-generational struggle to find clothes that fit more than a tiny portion of women.” As is always the case with stories from The Pudding, the interactive charts in this thing are just superb and eye-opening. And just to get out ahead, you should absolutely click through and check it out. We spoke about the data collection that went into this project and what you can learn from making your own garments.
Numlock Sunday: Manny Fidel on Colored People Time: A Case for Casual Rebellion
The book is an insightful and page-turning collection of essays contemplating time, how time feels different at different moments in our lives, in different places and between different people. It’s a really delightful book, and I enjoyed it a whole lot.
Numlock Sunday: Derek V. Song talks Fantasy High
I spoke to Derek V. Song, who is the writer of the Fantasy High comic on Webtoon. Originally a web series from Dropout, Derek is adapting the John Hughes-meets-Dungeons & Dragons tabletop RPG series into the scrolling comic style on Webtoon. I find this super fascinating; both “a TTRPG webvideo series” and “a scrolling Webtoon comic” didn’t exist in the U.S. as recently as 10 years ago, and the intersection is a deeply interesting and rather popular one. I also, cards on the table, just really dig this comic.