Working: How to Be Both a Critic and a Creator

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Tv & Film, Arts, Music

4.2 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2024

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, host Ronald Young Jr. talks to Linda Holmes, host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast and author of two novels: Evvie Drake Starts Over and Flying Solo. In the interview, Linda explains how she started her career practicing law in Minnesota before she pivoted to TV criticism. She also talks about how NPR came to take pop culture seriously, how her work as a critic informs her writing (and vice versa), and how she has gotten much better at coming up with titles for her novels. After the interview, Ronald and co-host Isaac Butler talk about how they handle criticism of their work. In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Linda discusses her favorite TV show and one of her main philosophies when it comes to pop culture criticism. Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675. Podcast production by Cameron Drews. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you’ll also be supporting the work we do here on Working. Sign up now at slate.com/workingplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	One of the things that's interesting is that a lot of times people assume that critics don't have any experience being
0:13.8	criticized.
0:14.8	Yeah.
0:15.8	I have been a lady on the internet since about 2001.
0:19.3	So I am not a stranger to people telling me that I am incompetent stupid I'm not laughing that is awful but listen it is funny in a way
0:30.0	Welcome back to working I'm your host Isaac Butler.
0:33.0	And I'm your other host, Ronald Young Jr.
0:35.5	Hey, hey Ronald, who did we just hear at the top of the show?
0:40.0	That was Linda Holmes, who is an NPR correspondent, host of Pop Culture Happy Hour, and a writer of novels.
0:48.0	And I consider her a friend.
0:50.0	Oh, that's amazing. And why did you want to speak to her right now?
0:53.0	So I feel like in a lot of ways I have like created this niche of myself on the working
0:57.8	podcast as the job pivot correspondent. So I like talking to people who did another boring job and then went into doing something
1:05.6	creative and I had always known about Linda's job pivot. It's very interesting, but this was my opportunity to actually talk to her and she's actually
1:15.2	working on her third novel right now, which I feel like brings a lot of her
1:19.5	previous work altogether in a very interesting way so I'm excited for this
1:23.2	conversation. That's amazing I should say I'm very familiar with Linda's work I've been
1:27.1	reading and listening to her for a long time so I'm very excited to get to this
1:31.3	conversation for a lot of people sort of of our generation,
1:35.8	we first became familiar with her work
1:38.0	through television without pity.
1:40.4	Just for our listeners who might not be familiar with it,
	...

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