{"id":12965,"date":"2020-03-22T20:12:10","date_gmt":"2020-03-23T00:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=12965"},"modified":"2020-03-22T20:12:13","modified_gmt":"2020-03-23T00:12:13","slug":"episode-367-whitney-matheson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-367-whitney-matheson","title":{"rendered":"Episode 367 – Whitney Matheson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 367:
\nWhitney Matheson<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/virtualmemories\/Episode_367_-_Whitney_Matheson.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

“Music, film, TV, books: those are the things that tell you when you’re a kid that there’s a world out there.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>It’s the end of the world as we know it, and we feel fine! A few weeks before the COVID-19 lockdowns began, pop culture writer and REM maniac Whitney Matheson<\/a> joined the show to talk about how she managed to blaze her own journalistic trail by writing about the music, movies, TV and books that she loved. We get into how pop culture writing and blogging have changed since she launched Pop Candy<\/a> at USA Today<\/em> in 1999, why she left NYC and why she had to come back, the importance of having great content on her Patreon<\/a>, what it’s like being defined by work in her early 20s, how a post about a KFC sandwich remains her most-read piece, and how she has to do triage to figure out what to keep up with. We also get into her upcoming kid’s book about the Loch Ness monster, her most recent celebrity freakout, how she taught interviewing skills to students who are unused to talking on the phone, the importance of having a career plan (and trying to stick to it), and how parenthood introduced her to a different world of pop. Oh, and because she’s all about lists, we find out her top three American rock bands (including REM, of course). Give it a listen!<\/a> And go support Whitney via Patreon<\/a>!<\/p>\n

“I just wrote about the things that I loved, and the things that I loved happened to be very different from what was being covered in a very large, mainstream publication.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n