I have been writing a special Tuesday newsletter for paid subscribers for five years now, which means there’s a bunch of really good stuff just kind of hiding in the archives over there. I’ve tagged a lot of of it on the newsletter homepage in categories like “notebooks,” “mixtapes,” “tutorials,” “zines,” “typewriter interviews,” etc. But […]

Last week’s newsletter began: An out-of-town developer tore a house down at the end of my street and cut down every single tree on the lot. As I watched the big T-Rex excavator claw down the walls, a thought ran through my head: If it can be built, it can be torn down. True of […]

This was not entirely pre-planned, but: it turns out I’m publishing a typewriter interview with a cartoonist every week of October, and I just now realized they’re all contributors to The New Yorker. The first two are Roz Chast and Paul Noth! (Can you guess the other two?)

Curators Jenny Robb and Caitlin McGurk took me on a 45-minute guided tour of one of my favorite places: the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum on the OSU campus in Columbus, Ohio. Really fun. Watch the video.

In last Friday’s newsletter, I wrote about helping my sixth grader with homework: I’ve been inspired lately by how many people I admire have moved to an analog notebook-based method of teaching. I really believe that in 2026 plain ol’ paper and pencil is the killer app. For example, my 6th grader needed to memorize […]

The latest typewriter interview is with artist Roman Muradov.

We are rewatching The Good Place, a sitcom that ran during the first Trump administration, this time with our tweens. It’s a show about moral philsophy and what it means to be a good person, but it’s also a show about the absurdity of quantifying and scoring systems. (It’s made me want to re-read my […]

“Still Summer” is a mixtape full of jazz and electronic music that evokes the kind of autumn wind and crunchy leaves that I pine for here in Texas when the fall equinox hits and it’s still 99 degrees outside: I started the tape with the working title “See you in the fall,” which is a […]

The latest typewriter interview is with artist Esther Pearl Watson. (I can’t believe I’ve published 30 of these things!)

My last two Friday newsletters have referenced the late summer misery of September. (See: “The cruelest month.”) From “The Birds are in misery”: It is so miserable in Texas right now that I’ve taken to reciting Werner Herzog’smonologue from Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams: “The trees here are in misery and the birds are in […]

My latest typewriter interviews are with two cartoonists — one is a fully-drawn and pithy eye feast from Adam Koford, and the other a surprisingly wordy meal from Kevin Huizenga:

I used a quote from Patrick O’Brian’s Post Captain to start my letter, “No urge to be doing”: “There are days… when one sees as though one had been blind the rest of one’s life. Such clarity – perfection in everything, not merely in the extraordinary. One lives in the very present moment; lives intently. […]

A near-Herculean feat of transcription, if I do say so! Read it here.

“Fogust Groove” is a mixtape I made of a bunch of yacht rock and blue-eyed soul I played for my kids while we were driving around the coast of California last week: I first heard these songs as a kid listening to my mom’s car radio tuned to “Sunny 95” (94.7 FM) out of Columbus, […]

An author is never more vulnerable than when they have a book coming out, so I’ll often reach out to their publicists and snag them for an interview. In this case, the publicist reached out to me, and I’m very glad she did, because I’ve been a fan of Julia’s for a long time, and […]

See my letter, “Inside the man is a teenager.”

Artist and filmmaker Erik Winkowski’s “Zinemail No. 1” and “Zinemail No. 2” (and now “Zinemail No. 3”) are some of the most interesting uses of the Substack platform I’ve ever seen, so I asked him if he’d do a typewriter interview. It’s wonderful.

A blackout I put at the top of my letter, “Summer Catch-up.” I haven’t done these in a while. Takes a bit to get back into them.

My latest typewriter interview is with cartoonist James Kochalka. It’s fun and light and exactly like his comics. James has long been an inspiration to me — in the P.S. I mention that James’ sketchbook comic American Elf was on my list of 7 books that helped me learn from my kids. I learned from […]

I’ve been trying to go about the summer Friday newsletters with a sense of lightness, the way I make a collage out of scraps in my drawer — I pull out what I’ve saved, push it around until it makes sense (or nonsense), and glue it down. (Hit send.) Last Friday’s letter was called “The […]

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of getting to chat about Don’t Call It Art with art coach Beth Pickens. I started off the conversation by describing the dream I had after seeing Bob Dylan live: You can watch the whole thing here.

My most recent typewriter interview — a big hit with readers! — is with author and illustrator Mark Haddon, who said it was the most enjoyable interview he’s ever done and bestowed upon me my new title, “Prince of Analogue.”

Phillip Maciak: There is something absurd about hearing a character in a movie utter the title of the movie they’re in out loud. It’s a moment that can be played for laughs, but it’s just as hard not to smirk when a film that takes itself seriously calls itself by its own name. Many filmmakers […]

I found this diary comic from (checks notes) five years ago. In last Friday’s newsletter, I wrote: In the “Who’s having fun?” section of Don’t Call It Art, I quote Ed Emberley saying, “I am determined to have fun doing my work… if I’m enjoying myself then that feeling is passed on to the reader.” […]

“It’s very difficult to be very lazy. It takes a lot of imagination to do nothing and you have to be sufficiently self-confident not to have a bad conscience. You have to have a taste for life, so that every minute is complete in itself and so you don’t have to keep saying ‘I’ve done […]

Here’s a new mixtape, which was really inspired by me being depressed and watching Deerhunter do “Nothing Ever Happened” live in 2011 and getting really obsessed with the late Josh Fauver’s short scale bass. (The title comes from one of my favorite Bob Pollard lyrics: “I climb up on the house / weep to water […]

The latest typewriter interview is with violinist and author Vijay Gupta. A reader said he wished I’d included audio of the musical notation, but I think it’s a nice little treat for those of us who’ve spent years learning to read music. Walk yourself over to your instrument and check them out for yourself!

Mark Haddon let it slip on his Instagram that he’s working on a typewriter interview for me: before i even get started i need to celebrate the questions which are a) some of the best i’ve ever been asked (swipe for a selection) b) arrive *in the post* and c) come with a fabulous hand-made […]

Jennifer Daniel did not accept the analog constraints of the typewriter interview, and that’s what made this one extra great.

Every Friday night around 5PM, before I’m about to make our pizza night martinis, I turn on KUTX and listen to “Old School Dance Party” — the “Happy Feet Dance Party with ever-lovin’ John E. Dee playing the music that got you in trouble.”  (More recently, Confucius Jones has been taking over as host.) One […]