Words That Matter

Nan Ransohoff: Finding Things Out, Double Life, Matriarch, Inputs, Evil, the Beatles

Nan leads Stripe Climate and founded Frontier, a $1B+ advance market commitment for permanent carbon removal. Please enjoy these works and words that…

Apr 3 • Ben Springwater and Nan Ransohoff

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March 2026

Read Something Wonderful: Self-Respect, Fast, Diamond, Elephants, Sweat, Stay in the Game

Welcome to a new issue of Words That Matter! This week, in lieu of a guest curator, we’re sharing ten gems pulled at random from Read Something…

Mar 28 • Ben Springwater

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4

Nabeel Qureshi: Iliad, Context, Dead, Fake Thinking, Be Specific

Welcome to a new issue of Words That Matter! Each week, we invite a guest curator to share the reading that matters most to them.

Mar 21 • Ben Springwater and Nabeel S. Qureshi

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Sari Azout: Mother, Where Do You Stand, Third Chair, Crazy, Nirvana

Welcome to a new issue of Words That Matter! Each week, we invite a guest curator to share the reading that matters most to them.

Mar 7 • Ben Springwater and Sari Azout

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February 2026

Rohit Krishnan: Strange Loops, Exit and Voice, Tlön, Pratchett, How Life Works

Welcome to a new issue of Words That Matter! Each week, we invite a guest curator to share the reading that matters most to them.

Feb 28 • Ben Springwater and Rohit Krishnan

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Jasmine Sun: Ender, Counterculture, Charisma, Sontag, If You Do Everything

Welcome to a new issue of Words That Matter! Each week, we invite a guest curator to share the reading that matters most to them.

Feb 16 • Ben Springwater and Jasmine Sun

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June 2024

Ava: Raymond Carver, Rachel Cusk, Brontës, Glass Essay, Dear Sugar

Ava writes Bookbear Express, a Substack about psychology, relationships, and living with intensity that she's been publishing since 2019 (it’s the only…

Jun 15, 2024 • Ben Springwater

3

Henrik Karlsson: Love Stories, A Child's Plaything, Understory, Knausgaard, Bliss

Henrik writes Escaping Flatland, a Substack about relationships, thinking, and agency with over 45,000 subscribers. Before becoming a writer, he worked…

Jun 9, 2024 • Ben Springwater

3

April 2024

Adam Mastroianni: Scientific Virtues, Three Kingdoms, Historical Change, Are You Serious, Missing Hit

Adam earned his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard and was a postdoc at Columbia Business School, where he studied how people perceive and misperceive…

Apr 13, 2024 • Ben Springwater

3

Sam Bowman: Common Knowledge, Recycling, Nuclear Power, Albion's Seed, Narrative Violations

Sam is Head of Publishing at Stripe Press and a founding editor of Works in Progress magazine. He has also been director of competition policy at the…

Apr 7, 2024 • Ben Springwater

1

March 2024

Steph Smith: Untranslatable Word, A Digit, A Tweet, Dictionary Upgrade, A Deck

Steph currently leads growth at Groq and previously hosted the a16z podcast. She led Trends at The Hustle before its acquisition by HubSpot, wrote Doing…

Mar 31, 2024 • Ben Springwater

2

Leslie Berlin: Enlarged Heart, Better Documents, Ways of Seeing, Manifestos

Leslie is the preeminent historian of Silicon Valley. She is the founding executive director of the Steve Jobs Archive, chair of the advisory group for…

Mar 23, 2024 • Ben Springwater

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