Freakshow

Welcome to World of Wonder, the Hollywood production company that celebrates “outsiders, 16th-minute celebrities, conspiracy theorists, penis puppeteers, dictators, street hustlers, porn stars, hackers, homicidal club kids, gender deviants, furries, plushies, and Tori Spelling.”

Broken Promise

On the meeting of shaggy-haired American ping pong ace Glenn Cowan and Chinese master Zhuang Zedong (who died this week), and how their fleeting friendship thawed relations between the twon nations during the U.S. team’s historic 1971 tour of China.

Joel Lovell, deputy editor of The New York Times Magazine, interviewed live at the University of Pittsburgh.

"I think if you can make a writer feel like it's okay to not know what they're doing—they don't really know exactly what their story is, they're a little lost in their material—that's a fine place to be. If you can sort of talk it through, if you can minimize their anxiety a little bit, then I think you've done most of your job. After that it's just looking at the words and just figuring out which ones work."

Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode!

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