Words That Matter

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

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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

1

Shreeda Segan: On Becoming a Person, Pandemic Time, Timeless Way, Good Old Neon, Zero-Knowledge Proofs

Shreeda is an Austin-based writer who has profiled tech's most interesting figures for Mercury's Meridian magazine and Roots of Progress. She's been…

Mar 9, 2024 • Ben Springwater

2

Julian Weisser: Robert Noyce, Kentucky Derby, Levels, Dog Longevity, Arnold Schwarzenegger

Julian is the founder of Solo Founders, a program backing the world's best solo builders. Previously, he co-founded On Deck, which helped over 1,000…

Mar 2, 2024 • Ben Springwater

1

February 2024

Erik Torenberg: Paper Tigers, Finding Purpose, Circling, Opposite of Loneliness, Ladybird

Erik has built some of the most valuable networks in tech over the past decade: he was the first employee at Product Hunt, co-founded Village Global…

Feb 25, 2024 • Ben Springwater

1

Patricia Mou: Self-Respect, Living Like Weasels, Ideas Are Alive, De-Bog Yourself, In Praise of Shadows

Patricia is co-founder of The Commons, a "fourth space" in San Francisco dedicated to open-ended curiosity and collective flourishing. She also curates…

Feb 3, 2024 • Ben Springwater

January 2024

Anna Gát: Hume's Midlife Crisis, Resilience, Breaking Points, Right to Sex, Royal Bodies

Anna is the founder and CEO of Interintellect, a platform reviving French salon culture for the digital age. Since 2019, Interintellect has hosted…

Jan 28, 2024 • Ben Springwater

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