This interview is with Jessica Weisberg.

Jessica Weisberg is an award-winning writer and producer. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times, Harper’s, and Atavist, among other publications, and been nominated for a National Magazine Award. She ran the features unit at Vice News Tonight on HBO, for which she was nominated for an Emmy, and is a senior producer at Serial Podcast.  

Her first book, Asking for a Friend, came out in 2018.

I read it last year and I LOVED it. The book is about advice givers – people who have offered up advice to others throughout time.

Some examples of prominent advice givers featuring in her work are:

• Dale Carnegie who wrote, How to Win Friends and Influence People
• Cheryl Strayed, author of Dear Sugar
• Dear Abby, a popular newspaper column in 1950’s
• Life coach Martha Back

The books is so interesting, as is Jessica. We talk about a bunch of stuff including the fact that her intention for the book was to take advice givers seriously. She also makes a comment that in the advice giving world – and I’d say in the modern incarnation, the self industry at large too – that there is a very thin line between satire and earnestness. Now I’ve seen that, I can’t un-see it!

Jessica’s favourite quote or mantra:

You can love anyone as long as you hear their story.