Lately, I’ve been on a big Russian literature kick. I read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace for the first time a couple of months ago, and I’m working my way through some Dostoyevsky right now. There seems to be something magnetic about Russian literature; it stands apart from other genres in a way that’s difficult to describe. I find the genre intensely relatable yet foreign enough to provide a novel perspective on human nature. The stories are gripping, with just enough romance to give them a patina of tragedy. They are full of timeless moral dilemmas and social quandaries that remain pertinent across time and space, despite the innumerable cultural divides that exist between 19th-century Russia and 21st-century America. I credit the timelessness of the Russian greats to the fact that their writing is rooted in and constructed around the humanness of their stories. At the end of the day, the plots rely only nominally on time and place and substantively on people and relationships—the setting is merely a catalyst for the social entanglements that are so distinct in Russian literature.

In 2021, Twitch streamer and content creator Steven Flavall, aka Jorbs, spoke with John Brown  students at length about creating and maintaining a brand. Two years later, Flavall is publishing a book on the underbelly of content creation. In his memoir, Before We Go Live, he delves deeply into some of the traumatic experiences he and his coworkers have faced during their time in content creation.