Live the Dash

"Over and over the narratives that we commit to will crash...so how do we move on in a way that is a bit more crash-proof?" DiCo is a Speech & Debate coach and history teacher at Stuyvesant High School. He graduated from the school in '03 and from Yale in '07. He also founded Brooklyn Debate League, a Speech & Debate nonprofit, featured on Humans of New York. We talked about processing trauma and identity through public speaking, letting go of the need to be the smartest to start crushing it, and not giving up on trust when things change. Also, Lin-Manuel Miranda, living in the borderlands, and speaking up. Things mentioned: Brooklyn Debate League "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire Rabbi Benay Lappe's TED Talk Gloria E. Anzaldúa "The Talent Code" by Daniel Coyle Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach Lin-Manuel Miranda The West Wing

"Hey you, remember what you love!" One day in late March I sat down with Cyrus Cursetjee to talk about his passion for violin, table tennis, and computer science, how he would distribute apples in his classes and how grateful he is for his mother teaching him Spanish. (My favorite moment of the episode is when I convince him to call her and tell her...) Cyrus Cursetjee is a senior at Stuyvesant High School and an incoming freshman at Yale. Thank you for listening!

"The space for perfectionism is in the last 10% of the project, not the first 40%" This episode is a second installment with Bill Wrigley, a visual arts teacher at Stuyvesant High School, and this time we talked more about impostor syndrome, Mr. Wrigley’s lukewarm coffee metaphor for the way we make art and live our lives, as well as broader takes on education, self-sabotage, politics, not having space to cry, and Wes Anderson movies. Things mentioned: Adam Ellis "If you go for it, you'll live" Marcel Duchamp's Fountain Kazimir Malevich's Black Square James Brown "I want to thank you" pier in Lower Manhattan (we see it from our school's windows) Jimmy Carter Overton window Actor David Thewlis Wes Anderson's film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

"We need to take a collective deep breath and realize not everyone is out to get us" I sat down with my friend and classmate Anjini Katari to talk about how none of us actually have it all together, and how that's okay, too. Things mentioned: Studio 666 "Something Bright, Then Holes" by Maggie Nelson TKS "Six of Crows" by Leigh Bardugo "Arc of a Scythe" by Neal Shushterman

Bill Wrigley is a visual arts teacher at Stuyvesant High School. We talked about his Columbia grad school thesis on Richard Serra, the nature of creative talent, electronic music, Andy Warhol, being chased by the Italian military police after too many espressos, and studying painting at Pratt Institute in the 90s. “There’s a saying in my home county-- you move to Boston to find yourself and to New York to lose yourself” Bill Wrigley's website: https://www.likethegum.com Things mentioned: Movie about Jean-Michel Basquiat I Shot Andy Warhol From A to B and Back Again book 4 hour documentary on Warhol (Youtube) Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe Richard Serra's The Matter of Time and Torqued Ellipse James Turrell "Subsequent Performances" by Jonathan Miller The Creative Act, a lecture by Marcel Duchamp Music mentioned: "Let's Go" by The Reducers Techno Animal John Cage Gogol Bordello Dresden Dolls Autechre's "Gantz Graf" Portishead Thelonious Monk David Bowie's album "Low" Brian Eno's "Music for Films" Surf Guitar Iggy Pop's theme for Repo Man

How to not lose yourself in the rigor of high-pressure academics? Jeffrey Wan ('15) is a physics teacher at Stuyvesant High School. We talked about how he manages to be both casual and professional at the same time, his own experience with learning physics, the comfort of soul-crushing academic workload, making decisions, teaching science, and finding aliveness everywhere. "The same mercy, grace and generosity you extend to others, I’ll ask you to extend to yourselves" Things mentioned: John Dewey Mister Rogers David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech Ping Pong the Animation "Excellent Sheep" by William Deresiewicz (book on college admissions) "The Savage Detectives" by Roberto Bolaño "Cloud Atlas: A Novel" by David Mitchell "The Shame of the Nation" by Jonathan Kozol "Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Inquiry Into Science Education" by Richard N. Steinberg Mindsweeper

For the first episode, I shared the floor and the mic with Sarah Cheyney. Sarah is a senior at Stuyvesant High School, and I've seen her juggle what seems to be a gazillion of responsibilities with a level of self-trust and grace I've found incredibly refreshing, so we talked about that, and the value of a decentralized social life, spirituality and advice on college applications. Things mentioned: The Help Movie Thich Nhat Hanh (NYTimes) Logo by Julia Shen Intro music by Zavtrakkusto