Phone Stories – Pop-Up Magazine
Phone Stories

For a good time, call 415-529-6057

Every other Sunday, Pop-Up Magazine will release a new, very short story for a specific moment of your life. When you’re making coffee. Or when you’re looking up into the night sky. Or when you’re waiting in a line.

Episode 18

Call 415-529-6057 when you're leaving home..

Maeve Higgins is an Irish comedian, writer, and podcaster based in New York. She hosts the podcast Maeve in America, featuring first-person stories of immigration. She also co-hosts Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk on National Geographic. She is writing a book of funny essays for Penguin, due for publication in late 2017.

We’ll be calling more of our favorite artists, comedians, writers, thinkers, and others who have a story to share with you.

Follow Pop-Up Magazine for a new prompt and story every two weeks.

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Archives

Episode 17

When you're in total silence

Negin Farsad is the author of How to Make White People Laugh, the host of the Fake the Nation podcast on Earwolf, and the director of feature films The Muslims Are Coming! and 3rd Street Blackout. She has also given a TED Talk on social-justice comedy, was named one of the 50 Funniest Women by the Huffington Post and one of the 10 Best Feminist Comics by Paper Magazine.

Episode 16

When you’re thinking about getting a tattoo

Isaac Fitzgerald is the editor of BuzzFeed Books and co-author of Knives & Ink and Pen & Ink.

Episode 15

When you’re writing something down

Anne Trubek is the author of The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, MIT Technology Review, Smithsonian, Slate, Salon, Belt and other publications. She is the founder and director of Belt Publishing and was a tenured professor at Oberlin College from 1997-2015.

Episode 14

When you’re staring into space

David Pescovitz is a writer and journalist best known for his work on science, technology and Internet culture. He is also a co-editor of Boing Boing and a research director with the Institute for the Future. He is co-founder of Ozma Records, which plans to reissue NASA’s original Voyager Golden Record on vinyl.

Episode 13

When you’re about to wash your hands

Ed Yong is a science writer for The Atlantic and the author of The New York Times bestseller I CONTAIN MULTITUDES, about the amazing partnerships between microbes and animals. His writing has appeared in National Geographic, The New Yorker, Wired, The New York Times, Nature, New Scientist, Scientific American, and more.

Episode 12

When you’re tidying up

Amy Sedaris is an actor, author, and comedian based in New York. Her most recent film, Ghost Team, was released in August of this year. You can also hear Amy in the Netflix animated series BoJack Horseman.

Episode 11

When you’re watching the Olympics

Latif Nasser is the director of research at Radiolab, where he has reported on such disparate topics as culture-bound illnesses, snowflake photography, sinking islands and 16th-century automata. Thanks this week to Bill Mallon, Tony Bijkerk, and Carl Posey.

Episode 10

When you’re standing in line

Jen Kober is a comedian based in Los Angeles who blends stand-up, story telling, and improvised rock-n-roll comedy. She regularly appears on NPR’s Snap Judgment Live, as well as The Mindy Project, Real Husbands of Hollywood, The Middle, and Franklin & Bash.

Episode 9

When you’re on public transit

Baratunde Thurston is a futurist comedian, writer, and cultural critic. He helped re-launch The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, co-founded Cultivated Wit and the About Race podcast, and wrote The New York Times bestseller ​How To Be Black​. Baratunde is a public speaker, television personality, and thought leader who has contributed to Fast Company, TED, the MIT Media Lab, and The Onion.

Episode 8

When you’re in the bathroom

Tracey Helton Mitchell is a recovering addict and author of The Big Fix: Hope After Heroin. She’s contributed to CNN, The Daily Beast, and The New York Times. Tracey has a masters in public administration and is a certified addiction specialist. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and three children.

Episode 7

When you’re at home

Giovanni Nieves is a hairstylist and a drag performer in East Orlando.

Episode 6

With a pen and paper in hand

Kate Bingaman-Burt is an illustrator and educator. Her work orbits around the objects in our lives: the things we buy, the things we discard, and the collectivity and social interaction that can arise from cycles of consumption. Via illustrations, daily documentation, publications, events, large-scale participatory projects,client work, and a full-time role as educator, Kate’s work invites a dialogue about contemporary forms of exchange.

Episode 5

When you’re looking at the night sky

Natalie Batalha is an astrophysicist at the NASA Ames Research Center and the Mission Scientist for the Kepler Mission, a space observatory launched by NASA to discover Earth-size planets orbiting other stars.

Episode 4

When you’re getting ready to go out

Peggy Orenstein is the author of The New York Times bestseller Girls & Sex, which offers a clear-eyed picture of the new sexual landscape girls face in the post-princess stage—high school through college—and reveals how they are negotiating it. Her previous books include Cinderella Ate My Daughter and Waiting for Daisy, a memoir.

Episode 3

When you’re in the dark

Watani Stiner is a writer and activist, who was incarcerated in 1969 for life after a shootout on the UCLA campus. He writes for the San Quentin News and is working on a memoir.

Episode 2

When you’re looking in the mirror

Aparna Nancherla is a comedian and writer based in New York City. She has made appearances on Conan, Comedy Central, and NPR, and written for Late Night with Seth Meyers, as well as Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. Her Twitter feed was named one of the Top 140 Twitter feeds of 2014 by Time magazine.

Episode 1

When you’re getting dressed

Mary Roach is the bestselling author of Stiff, Gulp, Bonk, and Packing for Mars. Her new book, Grunt, tackles the science behind a soldier’s most challenging adversaries — panic, exhaustion, heat, and noise.