After a slightly longer than intended unplanned break, we are back with a quick chat on our continual and mildly obsessive fascination with the intersection between habits and technology.

What is it to be a functioning Modern Adult who has to figure out the tools to achieve and cope with everything that means?

Why do we feel such a nostalgic pull for the past and how we used to do things?

Is it the tools themselves that were somehow better than we remember?

Did we leave some things behind that we shouldn’t have?

From this barrage of questions, an experiment emerged. We would try to wind the clock back a decade, with less iPad + Apple Pencil and more Paper and Pen, less streaming, more mp3’s, less computational photography, and more digital photography. So not quite exclusively analog but a little less 2020s.

So have a listen and find out how our little experiment went and tell us what would your own experiment in “analog” be like.

For this slightly behind-schedule fourth episode, we dive into those stories we tell about ourselves, find some interesting similarities, and explore how we both coped with our unconventional childhoods. We hope you’ll join us in this conversation.

This is an edited version of our hour-long conversation on Twitter.

The satisfying click of opening a flip phone.

The seemingly limitless possibilities of “Surfing the web.”

The sense of triumph after burning a perfect mix on a CD for someone

or the joy of a carefully curated iPod with its astonishing 1000 songs in your pocket.

Welcome to this third episode of The Twelve Inquiries, where we explore our nostalgia for technology that has come, gone, or sometimes just evolved to something else entirely. We remain gleeful early adopters, exploring software, new hardware, and the occasional unforeseen impact it has on ourselves. Yet, we just as easily fondly remember trips to Blockbuster video and taping songs off the radio.

So join us in remembering when blogging was cool before it became uncool and then cool again. Before self-portraits became selfies and doom scrolling was a thing. Tell us what technology you miss the most – either in the comment section below or by writing to us at info@12inquiries.com.

We will also be hosting a Twitter Space on October 6 at 11 a.m. CST, joined by Sara M. Watson, a brilliant technology critic whose writing appears in publications like The Atlantic, Wired, Business Insider, and The Washington Post, along with Grafton Tanner, author of “The Hours Have Lost Their Clock: The Politics of Nostalgia.”

I kind of feel like we're at a bit of an inflection point. Women are now unwilling to settle for less than all of the things that we were forced to become in our own upbringings, which is being emotionally available, being able to name your feelings and communicate them.

I sent around an article to the group that was in psychology today about the rise of single, lonely men. And part of it is just about how women aren't gonna date down anymore.

And I think we really do a disservice in the way that we have raised men and now they're just starting to figure out that they have to do something a little bit differently because it's not gonna work the same and women don't have the same reasons to partner anymore. You know, we're, more able to be alone if that's easier, as I think it is in many cases.

I mean, I didn't see my dad cry until my grandmother's funeral, which was just like five years ago. I grew up in a household where you're waiting for your dad to come home and you don't know what kind of mood he's gonna be in and he’s just silently repressing all of his feelings: the anger, the sadness.

One of the biggest themes that I've seen is that we have intellectually gotten past sexism like, of course, women are equal, got it. But that will betray all kinds of really harmful things that we still do. We don't have a lot of men, certainly not in our political field, for instance, speaking about what it really is to be a man of integrity.

I do feel like there are these masculine traits and then there are these “toxic masculine” traits. And sometimes things get lost in the shuffle. I think being “strong” is a masculine trait and I think that it's a positive trait. When I think of “being strong,” I think about how I would've wanted the men in my life to be strong for me. And what that would've looked like is: more stepping up, more functioning. I have had to be highly functioning or over-functioning because, you know, the men in my life have not functioned at all.

Thanks for the kind comments and questions that many of you shared after listening to the last episode about how the two of us shaped our gender identities while not quite fitting in with the late 1990s ideas about masculinity. Most of our conversation looked back at the past, and we didn’t focus as much on where masculinity might go in the future and how to get there.

Fortunately, this coming Thursday, August 25 at 7 pm ET we have a great lineup of special guests for a conversation on Twitter Spaces about what we still need to do to evolve masculinity — and how we might go about it.

Mischa Byruck is an activist and men’s coach who supports men to live with integrity.

Marsha Olson directs a philanthropic initiative in Los Angeles to support under-resourced entrepreneurs. She's in training to become a marriage and family therapist. 

Revaz Ardesher is a humanities teacher in Oakland, California.

We hope that you’ll join us for an hour-long conversation about how our social norms of masculinity affect sex, friendships, how we deal with conflict — and what we can do to make masculinity better for men and women.

You can set a reminder on Twitter. Hope to see you there!

Welcome to the second of the twelve inquiries! Each month we choose a topic, share a podcast, and then host a conversation with friends on Twitter Spaces. You can learn more about us and the project at our welcome post.

This month’s episode is undeniably more personal and vulnerable than last month’s hot takes about the last and next 15 years of Twitter. In this episode, we discuss our struggles growing up to win the affection of women and the respect of men. We revisit the movie Fight Club more than 20 years after its release. And we consider the challenge of crafting a positive vision of masculinity that young people today can aspire to without shame.

As always, we would love to hear your thoughts – either in the comment section below or by writing to us at info@12inquiries.com. And we hope that you’ll join us in a couple of weeks for a Twitter Spaces discussion with some special guests to discuss how social norms of masculinity affect sex, friendships and how we deal with conflict. Thanks for sharing some time with us.

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Lena shares how Twitter became a space for visiting friends and an outlet for her “cursed thoughts,” and Emily reminded us that not that long ago, conventional wisdom said Twitter was going to bring democracy to the WORLD. 

These inquiries are ultimately an excuse to talk about the things we find fascinating. We invite you to join the conversations, chime in on Twitter, comment on this post, and tell us what YOU find delightful and/or maddening about Twitter.

We’ll be dropping our second inquiry shortly, where we open up about how our personal view on masculinity has evolved from the late 90s through the present.

*We hosted this Twitter space live on July 28th, 2022, and this recording is a condensed version. 

There has been a lot of speculation about how Twitter will change if Elon Musk takes over. But how has Twitter changed already? And how has it changed us? Earlier this year — before all the Musk madness — we celebrated our 15-year Twitter anniversaries. In this episode, we discuss the highs, lows, and lolz of adulting on Twitter. And we share some of our hopes for how the platform evolves in the future.

Surely, we’ll look back on our first podcast episode with the same level of cringe as looking back on our first tweets — which is why we could use your feedback! Let us know what you think and please join us on Twitter Spaces to share your thoughts about Twitter and what it could become.

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A couple of lines about us. We were both born in 1980. Luis has lived his life split between Mexico and the United States. David has lived most of his life in the United States and some in Mexico. We met in 2010 at a rooftop party in Mexico City, where we fell into an hours-long conversation about culture, technology, history, design, politics, and the meaning of life that has never really stopped.

Luis studied film and is the co-founder and creative director of More Starch, a boutique creative studio in Mexico City. David studied political science and is a program officer at the Hewlett Foundation, a grantmaking foundation in California.

As we’ve learned more about each other over the past decade, we’ve come to recognize and appreciate our differences. What unites us is a common curiosity. We’re much more interested in learning from one another than arguing about who’s right.

The Inquiries

So what will we talk about? Here’s a preview of the conversations we’ll have over the next three months:

1. 15 Years on Twitter: How has Twitter changed over the past 15 years and how has it changed us? Also, how should we spend the next 15 years on Twitter? Or, should we?

2. Evolving Masculinity: What was it like to grow up with a 1990s culture of masculinity? How has it evolved? And what is our role in continuing its evolution?

3. Techno-stalgia: What does our nostalgia for the technologies of the past say about our relationship with the technologies of today? How do we navigate the tradeoffs between convenience and intention? And what are the technologies of today that we’ll be nostalgic for in the future?

The Format

Each conversation will take place over a month. We’ll publish an introductory newsletter and podcast episode the first week. During the second week, we’ll host a live conversation on Twitter Spaces with guests. On the third week, we’ll publish a short recap of what we learned, and respond to questions and comments we receive. During the fourth week, we rest. Well, really, we prepare for the next month’s inquiry.

Really? Another podcast?

Yes, we know, there’s a bit of a, shall we say, renaissance of buddy podcasts.

We think it’s great. Ever since we started this project, our conversations have become more meaningful. Our reading has become more deliberate. At first, we wondered if we’d manage to come up with 12 topics. Soon, we came up with a growing list of more than 20 that we are struggling to narrow down.

We’ll begin in July with our first conversation about the highs and lows of having spent 15 years on Twitter. Please join us by subscribing to the newsletter and look out for our first episode to land next month.

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