Welcome, new subscribers! And happy 100th issue of
to all of you misfits and unlikely optimists who are part of our crew! To those of you who've been there with me since the very beginning—I’m sending you all a special shout out. Thank you, thank you, thank you.For today’s issue, I wanted to pause from our usual Something To Read, Something To Listen To, and Something To Hold On To and take a moment to reflect on the ride here.
When I started this newsletter, we were in month five of the pandemic(!) and the streets were filled with protest. It was July 2020 and I was feeling weird.
On one hand, my introvert self was reveling in the relief of working from home, baking bread, and watching re-runs of Lost with my wife, kid, and dog on the couch after years of running around for work events/baseball drop offs/board meetings/parenting meetups/etc/etc/etc that I never paused long enough to realize had taken over every spare moment of my life.
On the other hand though, the world was on fire, and I was eager to get out into the thick of it and hug my lesbian book club buddies IRL again.
I wanted to stay home forever. I wanted to go anywhere at all as long as I was outside of the walls of my home.
I fantasy-scrolled Redfin for wifi-ready getaways next to the sea instead, and then finally I found another, more reasonable solution: I started this newsletter.
Throwing a “target audience” to the wind, I started gathering up all the stories that made me feel big things and I sent them out into the world every Thursday. In newsletter land, this is a terrible approach. The more niche, the better, is the oft-repeated advice.
A newsletter for people who eat like bunnies?
is here for you. Curious about branding and aesthetic innovation? is what you’re looking for. Interested in taking down Family Court? I've got you with The Unwed Mother Agenda.And while I love these very specific newsletters, before I started UMA, I just couldn’t stick to one thing because my own reading, listening, and holding on is, frankly, all over the place. As a result, ROCK PAPER RADIO never really knew if it would find an audience at all.
And yet. And yet! Here you all are—HUNDREDS OF YOU—misfits and unlikely optimists from all over the globe who, like me, are also into public radio features about skateboarders next to stories of larvae covered with rubies! What a shock—what a relief, really—to have found all of you.
Because here’s the thing—it’s incredibly powerful to find out your weirdness matches up in any small way with somebody else’s weirdness. You love this random story?! I love this random story too.
Every time you all open RPR, click on those links, or send me a quick note to say something about what I sent out into the abyss made you pause or LOL, I’m reminded that the world is filled with people who feel weird sometimes too.
People who like sad stories with hopeful endings. People who are into art that makes the political personal. People idling in their driveways, thanking the public media gods for radio. People, like me, who are good with feeling mismatched a lot of the time, but who still like occasional reminders that most people are mostly good.
So. That’s all to say that I’m so grateful you all are here and that so many of you have been there the whole time—through all 100 issues of
, the launch of our outsider podcast, and the birth of my series on Family Court that comes right from my guts—and I see and appreciate every one of you, old friends and new.So before I wrap up and say, here’s the next 100!, let’s take a walk down memory lane. Here are some of the RPR issues that you all clicked, and shared, and clicked again:
Issue 61, Rolled in Jewels (skateboarders, the most devastating book I’ve ever read, ruby-covered insects)
Issue 1, “Is that white guy looking at me strangely?” Grocery shopping and hope in the era of Kung Flu (my old Chinese dad, Black summertime boyhood, immortal jellyfish)
Issue 50, Perks of Being an Outsider Stuck Indoors (neighbor spying, a literary haunted house, cities and memory)
Issue 94, Peace and Absurdity (Odd One In, a pink city, the Buddhist Bug)
Issue 59, Rest is Rebellion (an intestinal parasite, Guatemala’s single mom drug lord, a human cocoon)
Issue 7, Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing (Rachel Dolezal 2.0, a cartwheeling tiger, a “robust and lively” baby)
Didn’t find your fave issue here? You can find our entire RPR archive here.
And that’s a wrap on issue 100, friends! Thanks for reading, listening, and holding on for the past nearly three years. I’m grateful to be part of this misfit crew with all of you. Here’s to the next 100!
Next week is spring break in our house, so look for me back in your inbox in a couple of weeks. 🧡
K.