Episode 127: Fear and Longing

This week, Jessica and Michael talk about Fiona Apple’s latest album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, and her radical honesty. Jessica says,

There's a kind of tradition in art making to have the suffering that comes out of the work be an expression of the suffering we all feel. And yet suffering is an intensely personal experience.

Also mentioned this week:

Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker, Fiona Apple’s Art of Radical Sensitivity
Soraya Roberts, Longreads, What Happens If I Don’t Like Fiona Apple?
Mean Girls, “Stop trying to make fetch happen”
Bumper: Democracy Now, Fiona Apple on "making people feel free" through music
Bumper: Phoebe Bridgers performs "Scott Street" (Live on Sound Opinions)
Hrishi Hirway, creator of podcast, Song Exploder
Mike Errico’s playlists of last album songs: Volume 1; Volume 2
James Francis O’Brien, DESIGN BY ACCIDENT
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
Bumper: Clip from That Mitchell & Webb Look, The Quiz Broadcast (may be other examples with better sound)
That Mitchell and Webb Look, The Quiz Broadcast
Princeton, Shakespeare and Co. project; examples: Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Simone de Beauvoir
Alison Flood, The Guardian, Legendary Paris bookshop reveals reading habits of illustrious clientele

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Michael Bierut studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati, and has been a partner in the New York office of Pentagram since 1990. Michael is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art.

Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer. A former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Eye and Communications Arts magazine, she is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame. Jessica received both her BA and MFA from Yale University where she has taught since 1994. In 2013, she won the AIGA medal.

More from Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand

Episode 126: Screens and Dreams
Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration; Unorthodox; My Brilliant Friend; The Affair; Anil Dash on the dangers of social media; Anna Wiener on Silicon Valley; quarantine dreams

Episode 125: Zoom Aesthetics
Zoom aesthetics and COVID-19; Kyle Chayka on minimalism; Deborah Berke on shared spaces; Jessica Salfia’s poem “The First Lines of Emails I’ve Received While Quarantining”; Megan O’Grady on artistic recluses

Episode 124: That Thing You Do
Making art and design during the COVID-19 pandemic; Christoph Niemann and Daniella Zalcman; Adam Schlesinger; spec scripts for Larry David

Episode 123: Closing Doors, Opening Doors
Looking at COVID=19: Flattening the curve, Washington Post designers Harry Stevens on visualizing social distancing, Alissa Walker on how dots are people, Stephen Sondheim at 90

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