Recode Decode: Jessica Weisberg traces the history of advice in ‘Asking for a Friend’

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Vox Media Podcast Network

Technology, Business

4.2 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2018

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Writer and audio producer Jessica Weisberg talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about her new book, “Asking for a Friend: Three Centuries of Advice on Life, Love, Money, and Other Burning Questions from a Nation Obsessed.” Starting in 1690s London, Weisberg examines how advice became a cultural force in America, and how professional advice-givers presaged the internet by creating the first platform for people to ask difficult questions anonymously. She discusses Ben Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanack,” which made earnest advice more palatable through comedy; the bitter rivalry between twin sisters who both became advice columnists, using the pen names “Ann Landers” and “Dear Abby”; and how the once-strict views of parenting guru Benjamin Spock and other columnists mellowed over their long careers. Weisberg says Google and other internet forums are the new advice-givers for millions of people, and questions whether any one writer today could be as widely read and trusted as these predecessors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Cara Swisher, editor at Large at Recode.
0:03.4	You may know me as someone who loves giving free advice, especially to people who don't
0:07.5	ask for it, but in my spare time I talk tech and you're listening to Recode Decode from
0:11.7	the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:14.7	Today in the red chair is Jessica Weisberg, an award-winning writer whose new book is
0:19.6	called, Asking for a Friend.
0:21.5	It's a tour of three centuries of advice givers who have made their names and sometimes
0:25.9	are fortunes by telling Americans what to do.
0:29.2	She also works at Gimlett Media and previously was a producer at Vice News tonight and on
0:33.6	the hit podcast, Serial, we have a lot to talk about Jessica.
0:36.8	Welcome to Recode Decode.
0:38.1	Thank you so much.
0:39.1	What an interesting career you've had.
0:40.1	Why don't you go through that because we always ask about people's careers and how they
0:43.3	got to where they got.
0:44.3	So I want to understand how you got to your advice giving book, essentially.
0:48.0	Sure.
0:49.0	So my advice giving book, the way it started was I was at the New Yorker a number of years
0:55.4	ago.
0:56.4	You were writing?
0:57.4	The fact checker and I was writing a lot for the website and I was also writing this
1:00.6	sort of anonymous book reviews in the back of the book.
	...

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