Live the Dash

Nika Raiffe

"When your eulogy is being read With your life's actions to rehash Would you be proud of the things they say About how you spent your dash?" I hope to invigorate you to live your dash to the fullest by sharing the mic with friends, mentors, and just really cool people I didn't know how to reach out to before, but now have a pretty good reason to indeed reach out to for conversations about vulnerability, spontaneity, and what it means to be a decent human being in this mad extravagant world.

Episodes

  1. 12/12/2023

    DiCo on the Power of Speech & Debate, Brooklyn Debate League, and Finding Trust When Things Change

    "Over and over the narratives that we commit to will crash...so how do we move on in a way that is a bit more crash-proof?" DiCo is a Speech & Debate coach and history teacher at Stuyvesant High School. He graduated from the school in '03 and from Yale in '07. He also founded Brooklyn Debate League, a Speech & Debate nonprofit, featured on Humans of New York. We talked about processing trauma and identity through public speaking, letting go of the need to be the smartest to start crushing it, and not giving up on trust when things change. Also, Lin-Manuel Miranda, living in the borderlands, and speaking up. Things mentioned: Brooklyn Debate League "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire Rabbi Benay Lappe's TED Talk Gloria E. Anzaldúa "The Talent Code" by Daniel Coyle Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach Lin-Manuel Miranda The West Wing

    59 min

  2. 12/12/2023

    Cyrus Cursetjee on Learning to Love Violin, Spanish, and Practicing with Intention

    "Hey you, remember what you love!" One day in late March I sat down with Cyrus Cursetjee to talk about his passion for violin, table tennis, and computer science, how he would distribute apples in his classes and how grateful he is for his mother teaching him Spanish. (My favorite moment of the episode is when I convince him to call her and tell her...) Cyrus Cursetjee is a senior at Stuyvesant High School and an incoming freshman at Yale. Thank you for listening!

    54 min

  3. 12/12/2023

    Bill Wrigley (pt. 2) on Impostor Syndrome, Teaching Art in a Stem School, and Parallels Between Coffee and Life

    "The space for perfectionism is in the last 10% of the project, not the first 40%" This episode is a second installment with Bill Wrigley, a visual arts teacher at Stuyvesant High School, and this time we talked more about impostor syndrome, Mr. Wrigley’s lukewarm coffee metaphor for the way we make art and live our lives, as well as broader takes on education, self-sabotage, politics, not having space to cry, and Wes Anderson movies. Things mentioned: Adam Ellis "If you go for it, you'll live" Marcel Duchamp's Fountain Kazimir Malevich's Black Square James Brown "I want to thank you" pier in Lower Manhattan (we see it from our school's windows) Jimmy Carter Overton window Actor David Thewlis Wes Anderson's film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

    1h 4m

  4. 12/12/2023

    Anjini Katari on Being Okay with Not Being Okay, Memes, and Patience

    "We need to take a collective deep breath and realize not everyone is out to get us" I sat down with my friend and classmate Anjini Katari to talk about how none of us actually have it all together, and how that's okay, too. Things mentioned: Studio 666 "Something Bright, Then Holes" by Maggie Nelson TKS "Six of Crows" by Leigh Bardugo "Arc of a Scythe" by Neal Shushterman

    45 min

  5. 12/12/2023

    Bill Wrigley (pt. 1) on Telling Lou Reed It's the Wrong Decade, Art School in NYC and Richard Serra

    Bill Wrigley is a visual arts teacher at Stuyvesant High School. We talked about his Columbia grad school thesis on Richard Serra, the nature of creative talent, electronic music, Andy Warhol, being chased by the Italian military police after too many espressos, and studying painting at Pratt Institute in the 90s. “There’s a saying in my home county-- you move to Boston to find yourself and to New York to lose yourself” Bill Wrigley's website: https://www.likethegum.com Things mentioned: Movie about Jean-Michel Basquiat I Shot Andy Warhol From A to B and Back Again book 4 hour documentary on Warhol (Youtube) Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe Richard Serra's The Matter of Time and Torqued Ellipse James Turrell "Subsequent Performances" by Jonathan Miller The Creative Act, a lecture by Marcel Duchamp Music mentioned: "Let's Go" by The Reducers Techno Animal John Cage Gogol Bordello Dresden Dolls Autechre's "Gantz Graf" Portishead Thelonious Monk David Bowie's album "Low" Brian Eno's "Music for Films" Surf Guitar Iggy Pop's theme for Repo Man

    1h 16m

  6. 12/12/2023

    Jeffrey Wan: "I Fear Some of You Have Forgotten What Joy Is"

    How to not lose yourself in the rigor of high-pressure academics? Jeffrey Wan ('15) is a physics teacher at Stuyvesant High School. We talked about how he manages to be both casual and professional at the same time, his own experience with learning physics, the comfort of soul-crushing academic workload, making decisions, teaching science, and finding aliveness everywhere. "The same mercy, grace and generosity you extend to others, I’ll ask you to extend to yourselves" Things mentioned: John Dewey Mister Rogers David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech Ping Pong the Animation "Excellent Sheep" by William Deresiewicz (book on college admissions) "The Savage Detectives" by Roberto Bolaño "Cloud Atlas: A Novel" by David Mitchell "The Shame of the Nation" by Jonathan Kozol "Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Inquiry Into Science Education" by Richard N. Steinberg Mindsweeper

    1 hr
  7. Sarah Cheyney: "How Can I Trust Myself When I Make Mistakes?"

    12/12/2023

    Sarah Cheyney: "How Can I Trust Myself When I Make Mistakes?"

    For the first episode, I shared the floor and the mic with Sarah Cheyney. Sarah is a senior at Stuyvesant High School, and I've seen her juggle what seems to be a gazillion of responsibilities with a level of self-trust and grace I've found incredibly refreshing, so we talked about that, and the value of a decentralized social life, spirituality and advice on college applications. Things mentioned: The Help Movie Thich Nhat Hanh (NYTimes) Logo by Julia Shen Intro music by Zavtrakkusto

    37 min
  • 7 Episodes

About

"When your eulogy is being read With your life's actions to rehash Would you be proud of the things they say About how you spent your dash?" I hope to invigorate you to live your dash to the fullest by sharing the mic with friends, mentors, and just really cool people I didn't know how to reach out to before, but now have a pretty good reason to indeed reach out to for conversations about vulnerability, spontaneity, and what it means to be a decent human being in this mad extravagant world.

Information

  • Creator
    Nika Raiffe
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2023
  • Episodes
    7
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Nika Raiffe
  • Show Website
    Live the Dash