Version 1

Jack McGuire is a songwriter, composer, and sound designer who produces music under the names Wet Hands, Ranch Hands, and FCTRYDRM. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music (2018) and is originally from Ohio. Jack has worked on many different interdisciplinary projects ranging from live scoring new dance pieces, film scores, and immersive theatre. His work has been performed all over the world, from Lincoln Center in New Y...

Claire Akkan (@​​claire.akkan) is a writer and designer based in New York. Claire has a background as a venture capital chief of staff and brand strategist. She is a Fulbright scholar and graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Russian & Eastern European Studies and a B.A. in Humanities. She writes the Substack award-winning newsletter Cappuccino Thoughts and runs a sustainable luxury bag brand (@claireakkan.bags). In thi...

Anjali Sundaram (@cooking.4.1) is an NYC-based food writer and recipe developer, focusing on tips and methods for the solo chef. She loves to discover new flavor combinations and push the boundaries of home cooking, using her years of writing and videography experience to inspire people to love cooking for themselves. In this episode, we dig into how Anjali started cooking and developing her own recipes abroad, how she experiments ...

Emmanuel Dzotsi (@newsmanual_) is an award-winning journalist, podcast host, and producer for This American Life. He’s reported stories on everything from backroom deals for political power, the strange phenomenon of white people sending Black folks venmo payments as reparations, to vast money-making phone scams hidden in plain sight. He co-hosted the third season of Serial and the popular podcast about the internet, Reply All. In ...

Miles is the founder of The Tea Stand, a community project which serves free tea at public parks, food distributions, and local events around Brooklyn. With The Tea Stand, Miles seeks to create spaces for folks to connect with themselves, one another, and the natural world. On this episode, we discuss switching careers to be more in alignment with your values, growing a community, sustainability in keeping The Tea Stand going, the ...

Laura Lorena Barbosa is an accomplished TV/film producer with over 12 years of experience at networks such as NBC News, Telemundo, CNN, and Al Jazeera. As the founder of The Creative Power Agency, Laura inspires others to reclaim their creative potential, crafting narratives that foster inclusivity and illuminate the beauty of humanity. We discuss hustling through journalism school at Penn State, how her background being an immigra...

Rachel is a career & travel expert, and the founder of Rachel Off Duty – a website for ambitious women seeking more adventurous lives. Based in Los Angeles but often workcationing around the globe, Rachel also works as a Travel Storytelling Consultant in the advertising space. We talk about finding fulfillment outside of corporate America, creating your own metrics for success, changing corporate culture, where she is most prod...

Eva Reign is a Peabody and GLAAD Award-winning Brooklyn-based actress, writer and artist from St. Louis, Missouri. She is the star of Billy Porter’s directorial debut Anything’s Possible from Amazon Studios and MGM’s Orion Pictures. Her writing has appeared in Vogue, Vice, Them, The Cut, Byrdie, PAPER and Highsnobiety. On this episode, we chat about Eva’s creative process in getting ready for her role of Kelsa in Anything’s Possibl...

Alice Lemee is a self-taught writer who left her budding career in the music industry to pursue writing full time. She’s a writing coach and newsletter ghostwriter for seven-figure business owners, award-winning YouTubers, and TV anchors. We talk about making changes to be happier – whether that’s changing careers or changing services within her writing career, the advantages of being self-taught, how she gets past writer’s block, ...

Ryan Herrera is a creative writer who is pursuing his Masters in Writing at Johns Hopkins, and works in ad tech for his 9-5. He has experience writing across a wide variety of genres including fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, screenwriting, humor writing, and journalism. He hopes to start writing his first novel upon graduating in 2026. We talk about how he makes time for creative writing while working full-time in advertising...

Patrick Thomas writes about agriculture and the food industry for The Wall Street Journal. He covers meatpacking companies, supermarkets and how American food is grown. He joined the Journal in 2018 writing about corporate breaking news and is a native of Omaha, Nebraska. He joins this episode of Version 1 to talk about what makes business journalism creative, how running leads to breakthroughs and how he takes hundreds of pages of...

Eva Recinos (@evaiswriting) is an arts and culture journalist and creative non-fiction writer based in Los Angeles. She is the creator of Notes from Eva, a free monthly newsletter featuring opportunities for creatives. In this week’s episode, we talk about how she got her start freelance writing, how her career took a turn when she was rejected from a fiction workshop, and what structures help keep her creative and accountable. 

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