Steve Almond

The One You Feed

Eric Zimmer

Education, Self-improvement, Religion & Spirituality, Health & Fitness, Buddhism, Mental Health

4.6 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2015

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week we talk to Steve Almond about the good and bad in all of us

Steve Almond spent seven years as a newspaper reporter in Texas and Florida before writing his first book, the story collection My Life in Heavy Metal. His books, Candyfreak, and Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life: A Book by and for the Fanatics Among Us were New York Times Bestsellers. His short fiction has been included in The Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and his collection, God Bless America, won the Paterson Prize for Fiction. Almond writes commentary and journalism regularly for The New York Times Magazine and The Boston Globe. A former sports reporter and play-by-play man, his latst book is called Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto.
He is also the co host of the popular Dear Sugar podcast that he co-hosts with Cheryl Strayed.

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In This Interview Steve and I Discuss...

The beginnings of the Dear Sugar column
Being funny and poignant at the same time
What makes good writing
How to make an advice column good
The culture of treating everything like a joke or with irony
Kurt Vonnegut
Language, storytelling and humor as a way to fight of despair
The declining American culture
The One You Feed parable
The two stories that we are constantly telling the world
How the two wolves keep fighting all our lives
The flattening out of character in American discourse
How we all contain great and terrible qualities
How our culture makes a god out of convenience

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Transcript

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0:00.0	All human beings contain this maddening combination of beautiful blessed impulses and behaviors
0:06.4	and thoughts and absolutely cursed selfish curtailed awfulness.
0:19.4	Welcome to the One You Feed.
0:21.4	Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
0:26.0	Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true, and yet for many of us
0:33.0	our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear.
0:40.5	We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our
0:45.9	spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
0:52.0	and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
0:57.4	themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
1:14.2	In the 70s, the warehouse took over Chicago Nightlife and the club's DJ would go on to make history.
1:20.9	Frankie may sure that you felt it in your soul.
1:24.2	Learn more about the rise of house music on the history of the world's greatest nightclubs,
1:29.5	a 12-part podcast about the iconic venues and people that revolutionize how we party.
1:35.8	Listen to the history of the world's greatest nightclubs on the iHeartRadio app,
1:39.8	Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:44.4	Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Steve Almond. Steve spent several years as a
1:49.8	newspaper reporter in Texas and Florida before writing his first book, The Story Collection,
1:54.8	My Life and Heavy Metal. His books Candy Freak and Rock and Roll will save your life were both New
2:00.4	York Times bestsellers. Almond writes commentary and journalism regularly for The New York Times
2:05.6	magazine and the Boston Globe. He is also the co-host of the popular Dear Sugar podcast that he
2:11.6	co-hosts with Cheryl Strade. His latest book is called Against Football. One fan's reluctant manifesto.
	...

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