While there were many great podcasts released in 2023, no one will remember the year as a good one for the people who make podcasts. There were far too many layoffs and cancellations including a show dear to our radio hearts at Transom, Heavyweight, hosted by Jonathan Goldstein. In honor of the show and Jonathan’s remarkable writing, Rob revisits his chat with Jonathan where they talked about process, fonts, and a writing maneuver they jokingly dubbed “The Goldstein.”
~ from https://transom.org/2021/goldstein-on-writing/ or search “goldstein” in the Sound School podcast.
In this conversation, what stands out isn’t just the discussion of writing craft, but the attention paid to emotional tone, rhythm, and narrative restraint. There’s an honesty to how the process is described—how choices get made not from formulas, but from a need to get something just right, to frame a character with affection without tipping into caricature, or to land a sentence that echoes something heard twenty minutes earlier. It’s a kind of storytelling that trusts the audience to notice, to feel the weight of a well-placed line or the timing of a quiet reveal. That balance—between structure and spontaneity, between polish and vulnerability—is rare to hear spoken about so plainly.
At the same time, the broader backdrop offers a quiet provocation. Not in the form of critique or complaint, but in the way values surface in what is chosen to be remembered, celebrated, or mourned. Shows like Heavyweight aren’t discussed here as commodities or metrics, but as examples of something slower, more humane, and deeply worth preserving. There’s no nostalgia in the way the past is revisited—just a call to notice what kind of work feels meaningful, and what might be worth continuing even when the incentives no longer line up.
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