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On Walt Whitman & Making Hopeful Art at a Time Like This

On Walt Whitman & Making Hopeful Art at a Time Like This

Soul Gum vor 1 Jahr

0:00

41:57

I’m thinking of someone. Guess who? They’re a trailblazing
artist. LGBTQ-adjacent. A Gemini from Long Island. An artist
trying to make sense of rapid technological change and political
division. No, not Lady Gaga. Not RuPaul. Not Frank Ocean. Think
older. Centuries older. Today we’re talking about the great
American poet, Walt Whitman.

Walt Whitman was born in 1819, but his world feels eerily
familiar. His New York was reeling from technological change and
caught in a web of political division. Sound familiar? In this
episode, we explore Whitman’s life—from his roots as a Brooklyn
typesetter to his rise as the great American poet. We’ll unpack
his most famous work, Leaves of Grass, and the ideas in it that
scandalized entire towns. We’ll talk about the beauty of
contradiction, the divinity of the mundane, and the radical
interconnectedness of all things. We’ll ask: what does it mean to
write about hope and unity at a Time Like This? If you’re
questioning how your art (or your heart) fits into a collapsing
society, this episode is for you.

EPISODE OUTLINE

00:00 Intro

02:56 Life Update: Tour! USA Today Bestseller! Bali?

05:32 Walt Whitman: a Long Island Gemini

06:03 1800s NY: Nationalism, populism, manifest destiny

07:52 Sound familiar?

09:02 Walt Whitman’s early life

10:11 Walt Whitman, the reluctant teacher

11:05 Walt Whitman, the starving artist

12:27 Walt Whitman does a social media detox

13:00 Walt Whitman emerges with a first draft

13:14 Leaves of Grass: not like other girls

14:00 1855 Walt Whitman is giving Woodstock

14:14 Publication expert level: just like us

14:44 Walt Whitman gets left on read

14:48 Enter: Ralph Waldo Emerson

15:54 Walt Whitman is his own cheerleader

17:47 Walt Whitman is as petty as the rest of us

18:22 Leaves of Grass starts to get legs

18:41 Leaves of Grass gets smuttier

18:57 Walt Whitman is not an angel

21:02 The Civil War changes everything

22:21 Leaves of Grass, an OG banned book

23:01 Walt Whitman’s legacy

24:03 Walt Whitman quotes that will change your brain chemistry

24:18 1. “Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you”

25:07 My ego nap

25:59 2. “I am large, I contain multitudes”

26:39 The categorification of the human experience

27:10 you are not a cottagecore coastal grandma clean girl mob
wife u are a spiritual being having a human experience

28:48 3. “The smallest sprout shows there really is no death”

31:09 4. “Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?”

EPISODE LINKS

• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

• Stuff You Missed in History Class episode

• Comedy by Bo Burnham

• My Writer’s Digest article on writing about hope

MY LINKS

• MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now

⁠⁠⁠⁠• Get a signed copy of MAKE BELIEVE from
Blue Willow Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• Let’s hang on tour!!

⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠Join me in Bali June 1-7!
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⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠Find me @thedailyvictorian on
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