Episode 169: Bust Out the Bone Folder

Paper is paper, right? Well, only if you think that pencils are pencils. In this week’s episode, your hosts talk about Unicorn Paper — that special formulation that works well with both pencils and fountain pens. Plus: we discuss our LEAST favorite pencil, and Tim makes us write with them all week to discuss in our next episode.

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Episode 168: Bring Us Your Weird

This week, we are down one pencil podcaster and up one pen superpodcaster. Brad Dowdy of the Pen Addict joins us to tie up our trio while Andy is away for the week. ZINES! Ever since Ed Kemp launched Pencil of the Week a few years ago and, especially, since he was a guest on this podcast’s Episode 150, zines have been blowing up among stationery content creators and consumers. In this episode, Brad, Tim and Johnny chat about the connection between zines and stationery and the role that these self-published gems play in the larger stationery community.

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Episode 167: Sadsplaining to Johnny

Join us for a chat about the pencils that we each used during elementary school. With a 9 year age gap between our hosts, coming during the crucial years of a trade agreement with China and the onset of the shrinking of the American pencil industry, we’re sure to have a variety of pencils to talk about! Plus: Olympics, new Field Notes, and many, many green ink samples.

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Episode 166: Vacu-Sharp (Patent Pending)

Well, we inadvertently took a summer break so after a month off, we’re back to talk through our collected Fresh Points: from the new Blackwing 64 to an update from Tim about how it’s going with his new electric sharpener.

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Episode 164: They Had to Math That

Tonight, we’re celebrating Field Notes’s fiftieth Colors edition — uh, Fifty — with a pocket notebook retrospective: How did we first encounter Field Notes? What’s our favorite editions for aesthetics? Color? Writing experience? Plus: an amazing new sampler pack from Musgrave.

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Episode 163: Fresh Points of Guinness

Today we’re keeping it simple with just a Fresh Points episode, covering everything from Blackwing’s rerelease of a pencil they’re still selling, Bob Dylan’s pocket notebooks, pencil t-shirts, and a bevy of recommendations for what Andy should pick up after he finishes his current notebook.

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Episode 161: Ecstatic Høvel Talk

Andy and Tim have wrested control of the show back away from the devious (yet iconic) duo of Johnny and Charlotte, and we’re talking once again to Noah Bier from Makers Cabinet about their brand new Kickstarter project, a pencil extender called The Ferrule.

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Episode 160: Pencil Ain't Forever

You might notice something…strange about this week’s podcast. Do not adjust your podcatcher. What you are hearing is happening in Real Life and in Real Time.

YOUR PODCAST HAS BEEN USURPED.

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Episode 159: Blackwing 100!

Since our recording schedule and the Blackwing and Field Notes quarterly release schedule didn’t line up, we’re keeping it short today to talk about fresh points: zines, old city street guides, and an exciting announcement about the 8th issue of Plumbago Magazine.

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Episode 157: Correct Me if You're Wrong

Sometimes there are pencils that you almost love. Almost. Something holds you back, and you just can’t get these pencils to work out for you. Tonight, we examine the pencils that almost make it to our best-of lists but which we nonetheless loathe.

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