So, Gabriel Kahane and I did a thing. Earlier this week, we hoped on Substack Live — he from his music studio in Portland, Oregon, me from a home office just outside of Philly — for a talk we called Honest Songcraft in the Slop Era. It was, as we’d hoped, a far-ranging yet focused conversation about creative practice, productive friction, and the way we’re all making do at a moment of peak precarity. It was also, as I knew it would be, a lot of fun.