Welcome to Five Things I’ve Learned on Substack.
Five Things I’ve Learned brings you the essential lessons, ideas, and experiences of a lifetime from the artists, writers, musicians, and thinkers we admire most. Every Five Things I’ve Learned session is a handmade, personal class.
This Substack gives you glimpses into our library of 140 archived classes. We make it easy for you to access on-demand sessions from creative artists and thinkers like acclaimed author Isabel Allende, Pulitzer-Prize-winning Jerry Saltz, Grammy winning Joe Henry, National Book Award winning Phil Klay, Academy-Award-winning director Alexander Payne, Guggenheim fellows Camille Dungy and Aaron Dworkin, and more.
We love Substack! We’re so pleased to be part of a community that values writers—and creative people of all types—as much as we do. Substack writers have delivered some of our favorite Five Things I’ve Learned classes.
All Five Things I’ve Learned subscribers get these Substack Essentials:
Coming Soon: Exclusive access to one Five Things I’ve Learned class each month — right in your inbox. You’ll receive free on-demand access to Five Things I’ve Learned classes from some of Substack’s best writers.
Substack writers who’ve joined Five Things I’ve Learned include:
Cara Black on crafting a sense of place,
Sari Botton on aging,
Myisha Cherry on the social uses of anger,
Mason Currey on the creative process,
Janine di Giovanni on moral injury, and narrative nonfiction,
Liza Donnelly on creativity,
Benjamin Dreyer on being your own best editor,
Joseph Fasano on the craft and magic of poetry,
Grant Faulkner on brevity, and on writing with vulnerability,
Sarah Fay on writing illness,
Adam Gopnik on writing memoir,
Eddie Glaude Jr on America’s past, and its urgent lessons for today,
Will Hermes on writing about music and musicians,
Jane Hirshfield on poems, as fields of discovery,
Ann Hood on finding the story growing in your heart,
Pico Iyer on the art of stillness,
Steven Johnson on where creativity comes from,
Laurie R King on how characters come to life, and mystery novels,
Carol Kino on the forgotten heroines of American feminism,
Scott Klug on America - by talking to Americans lost in the middle,
Stephanie Land on writing from the margins of America,
Julie Lythcott-Haims on making love work,
Rebecca Makkai on getting unstuck,
Megan Matson in conversation with Stuart Stevens, Beto O’Rourke, and Trygve Olson on America and democracy,
Jennifer Mercieca on communication and democracy,
Allison Moorer on the demands of memoir,
Beto O'Rourke on America - and our common ground,
Trygve Olson on America - and the enduring example of our democracy,
Susan Orlean on finding the perfect story,
Peter Orner on prose momentum, the art of re-reading, and messing with the truth (in order to lie),
Holly Lynn Payne on the power of page one,
Andrew Penn, MS, PMHNP on psychedlic assisted therapy,
Maya C. Popa on poetic form,
Donald J. Robertson on ancient wisdom for modern anxiety,
Ingrid Rojas Contreras on creativity by writing through crisis,
Maurice Carlos Ruffin on publishing his first book,
Michael Ruhlman on writing, by writing about food,
Greg Sandow on the death of classical music,
Michael Shapiro on the art of the interview,
Maggie Smith on creativity during times of upheaval,
Matthew Specktor on writing the self in memoir and fiction,
Stuart Stevens on America - and the forces driving democracy to autocracy,
Danté Stewart on the power of narrative,
Laurie Stone on how to write a seductive sentence,
Matt Strain on getting started with A.I. - for real people,
Cheryl Strayed on nurturing your artistic life,
Amber Tamblyn on harnessing emotion in the service of powerful art,
Robert Thurman on wisdom, bliss and openness,
Alexander Vindman on the war in Ukraine,
Brooke Warner on how creative women thrive,
Alissa Wilkinson on the power and peril of mythmaking, from Joan Didion,
Rick Wilson on saving democracy,
Matthew Zapruder on honoring family as a source of creativity, and
Larissa Zimberoff on how technology is reshaping our food.
$10 off your first class. Choose from our extensive library of classes on everything from creativity and motherhood to the upside of aging to finishing your book to psychedelic science. Visit myfivethings.com, and type SUBSTACK10 in the Discount Code field as you make your purchase.
Updates and announcements. Newsletter announcements about upcoming live classes—including upcoming sessions from Substack writers. You’ll also be among the first to know about upcoming classes, series, and other Substack-only things.
Free access to special classes and conversation focused on America and the values we share. We think this is important. And we hope that you do, too. Check out Five Things I’ve Learned about America, right here.
How it works.
Like Substack, Five Things I’ve Learned sessions deliver immediate revenue to class hosts. We believe doing so is another important way that people with something worth sharing can get fairly compensated for their ideas and experience.
Each 90-minute class is available live for $40; a ticket for each live two-hour class is $60. Visit myfivethings.com to discover the great line up of live, online classes coming soon.
See something you like? Try out our new Multi Pass. It’s a great way to catch up on your dhoice of 140 great classes from people we admire, any time you like.
Try one of our favorite classes with our compliments.
You can also get a sense of how great – and how different – each Five Things I’ve Learned class can be by viewing three of favorites with our compliments – National Book Award Winner Phil Klay’s Five Things I’ve Learned Thinking and Writing about Censorship, Pulitzer Prize Winner Jerry Saltz’s Five Things I’ve Learned about Where Art and the Art World Are Right Now, and Adobe Research Lab veteran Matt Strain’s Five Things I’ve Learned about Getting Started with A.I. – for Real People.
View personal video invitations to these classes — and to every class – at myfivethings.com.
Check out our FAQ for more
Want to know more? Check out our FAQ.
Or send a note to Hello@myfivethings.com. We’d love to hear from you.
