The Blog
Field notes from wider orbits.
Essays, show-note deep dives, and transcripts lightly edited for the page. Written by Tracey Halvorsen.
Show note
Jul 2026 · 5 min read
Going quiet is also a message
Carol Keese on why institutional silence in a hard moment says the one thing you cannot afford to say.
Studio note
Jul 2026 · 4 min read
Why it’s called Escape Velocity
The name comes from astrophysics: the speed an object must reach to break free from a planet’s gravitational pull. Here’s why that’s the right metaphor for creative work.
Show note
Mar 2026 · 6 min read
The Hemingway test, and the word that means nothing
Two exercises from episode 27 with Dayana Kibilds: one that shows you how hard your pages are to read, and one that shows you how little they say.
Essay
Mar 2026 · 5 min read
Why decoration is the last thing we should hand to machines
From the DEEO conversation: art, AI, and the impulse to make a thing more beautiful than it needs to be.
Essay
Feb 2026 · 8 min read
Designers (should) run the world
A short re-visit of the closing session from the 2017 UCDA Design Conference, nine years later.
Essay
Jan 2026 · 5 min read
The portfolio career, defended
Sabrina Depestre made a point on episode 25 that deserves its own piece. Side projects are not a distraction. They are the engine.
Essay
Nov 2025 · 7 min read
When the map of your life dissolves
Richard Banfield and Devon McDonald on what actually happens in the middle, and why most self-help cannot help.
Essay
Jul 2026 · 6 min read
The morning I woke up viral
In 2014 I published something about my city, shared it twice, and went to bed. What I learned has almost nothing to do with what I wrote.
From the archive
Jul 2026 · 9 min read
Your content is slowly killing your readers
The 2014 essay that rewrote a NASA headline, and got me invited to Goddard to make the case in person. Republished, because none of it has aged.