Unorthodox Weekly Newsletter
Since January 2023, I’ve been writing the Unorthodox podcast’s weekly newsletter, full of bonus reporting, team Q+As, and the occasional philippic. Some examples:
Reader Testimonials
“Next stop, Colbert. I’m not kidding.”
“Thank you for this! Such a treat.”
“The Cuban sandwich may get you some hate mail.”
Robert Zirpolo’s Flying Machine
A profile of a hot air balloonist in the New Journal.
“Perched in his wicker basket, Zirpolo reaches up toward an oxidized metal burner and flicks open its blast valve. Liquid propane shoots from fuel tanks nestled near his knees, through thick black tubes wrapped around arched bamboo rods, and into the burner’s vaporizing coils. A jet of dragon’s breath erupts into the October air, burning blue, white, and orange-yellow as it smothers the surrounding area in soupy heat.”
In the Bell Tower
Hanging out with Yale’s premier carillonneur.
“Milo lowers a single fist, then another. A heavy groan from above, then another. His coal country melody plods along, sad and slow, each deliberate peal slinking in through the windows and sagging in the September heat. We’re skimming a West Virginia creek waiting for a flood. Milo does not miss a note.”
Cities and Structures
Tablet - “The Flavor of Jewish Seattle”
New Journal - “The City Builder”
Midstory - “Waiting for Toledo’s Tomorrow”
“Crammed into just seven stories, Rudolph Hall’s thirty-nine different levels come to my mind as disparate fragments, united only by omnipresent concrete walls, arbitrary plaster casts of ancient sculptures, and paprika, the searing orange hue splashed on carpets and benches in almost every room.”
