Take Note

Yoseka Stationery, Brooklyn

Ohto Fude pen

Hitotoki ring notebook

Maruman Spiral Note notebook

Best of the Best Show

The Atlantic: The Unfinished Revolution

The New Yorker: Who is Your Favorite American

The Battles of Saratoga

Field Notes Foiled Again

Penco Glider Pen

Sharpie S-Gel

Anvil Card En Queso Emergecy

Cafe Writer Nanami

Kokuyo Campus Notebook

Alan Rickman's diaries

T-shirts, tats, and bumpers stickers are the currency of the realm; Adam observes a fellow named Dennis making the most of his notebook space; and we talk the new Field Notes Explore American series.

leuchterm bullet journal pocket notebook

john dickerson: the most important job in the world

field notes: explore america

printmaker dave bull

Pilot Fine Liner

Pentel Brush Sign Pen

Pilot Razor Point II

Pentel Mattehop

Field Notes Hatch Print Edition

Joshua Beckman

A Book Relevant to Our Interests

It’s the busy season. Some whaddya gots lead naturally into a discussion of free writing and half-conscious writing, and we discuss There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. 

In Our Time podcast

Music Box Theatre Chicago

Clairefontaine My Essential notebook

There is No Antimemetics Division by qntm

They Do Not Always Remember by William Burroughs

DoodleBob

Greenlights Journal

Last Tango in Brooklyn

Don DeLillo Secret Hockey Novel

What We Can Learn from Writing in Journals

Trader Joe's Blueberry Lemonade Sparkling Water

Nanami Seven Seas Journal

Train Dreams in The Paris Review, Summer 2002

"Dirty Work" by Steely Dan

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Steinbeck stage

The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place

Opinel knives

Leonard Cohen on Austin City Limits

The War Room

There is No Antimimetics Division [Book Club!]

Support us on Patreon (Thank you!)

CW&T Mechanical Pencil

Field Notes Expedition Edition

BBC Start the Week - Fun and Games

Brick

James Acaster

Piranesi - Don't read the blurb

Winter fashion influencer chat moves to beanie logo placement before travel to the armory, the library, and the horizontal pocket notebook.

 A Truce That is Not Peace by Miriam Toews

The Hitch by Sara Levine

Field Notes 1943

Save It For Next Year

TWSBI Obsidian

Balograf Swedish Pen

Stalogy Low-Viscosity Pen

Clairefontaine My Essentials

Clairefontaine Triomphe Notepad

Blackwing Independent Bookstore

Kaweco Sport

Field Notes National Park

A Fairytale of Take Note.

Kakou Collective

Start the Week

Oliver Sacks in the New Yorker

Odd Lots: pizza place

Shot By Cheney

Field Notes Fall Flowers

Hatch Show Print Store

The Lowdown

Tim Wasem of the venerable Erasable Podcast to discussion, among other things, Jeff Tweedy’s new solo triple album, “Twilight Override.”

Transcendence for Beginners by Clare Carlisle

Field Notes Vintage

Anvil Cards, Houston, TX

Paper & Pencil Chicago

https://www.erasable.us/episode/230

Twilight Overdrive by Jeff Tweedy

Several Short Sentences on Writing

Verlyn Klinkenborg Octpus

Lauren Collins Uniqlo

Adventure Time “Thank You”

Clear the Field Podcast

Bob Dylan East Troy Wisconsin September 2025

Jeff Tweedy Twilight Override

“Pecan Pie” Golden Smog “Posterity is Vulgar” NYRB

The Unfinished Harold Hughes by Richard Ayoade

Do men like beef jerky? No more letters in Denmark. Watching people buy a weird amount of Monster/Red Bull from the Costco returns line. There’s nothing more punk than a public library. We explore how to be a curious conversationalist and engage in an expanded discussion of using a daily worksheet to help in focusing on what’s important at work. 

No more letters in Denmark

Tom Sachs

Austin Kleon

Do men like beef jerky? No more letters in Denmark. Watching people buy a weird amount of Monster/Red Bull from the Costco returns line. There’s nothing more punk than a public library. We explore how to be a curious conversationalist and engage in an expanded discussion of using a daily worksheet to help in focusing on what’s important at work. 

No more letters in Denmark

Tom Sachs

Austin Kleon

Merlin Bird ID

Deja Blue is not new. Founded 1996.

Alpine Cowboys Baseball

Rangra Theatre, Alpine, TX

Bohuslav Martinů's Symphony No. 5

Good Postage North Carolina

Midori Traveler's Notebook Passport

Cavallini & Co.

Inprint Houston

Paris Express

How to Make Money in New York City Selling Pizza

Ryan joins us before the next decasode as we delve into three stories from the New Yorker’s Fiction issue (our 6th time doing it!). Alongside your regularly scheduled whaddya gots and summer beverages. A bit of saucy language…

New Yorker Fiction issue (July 7-14, 2025)

Happi THC seltzer

An article on The Phoenecian Scheme and Wes Anderson's "late style"

Christiana Amanpour and Wes Anderson

The Big Picture with Wes Anderson

Keith Botsford

The Music Box Theatre

Field Notes Film Festival

Coastal (Field Notes)

Heavy Duty (Field Notes)

Birds and Trees of North America (Field Notes)

Harvest (Field Notes)

United States of Letter Press (Field Notes)

Polar Seltzer Ginger Lime Mule

A bunny-based gambling game to spice up your marriage, scenes from Las Vegas, balloon stories, a discussion of justice, and how we notebook, or want to notebook, while we travel. Plus the latest Summer Beverage Series.

Bryan Cox McDonald’s

Kunisawa

Support Take Note on Patreon (thank you!)

- Skunk Hour by Robert Lowell

- Bill Murray NYT Interview

- Scion xB 2004

- Any Person Is the Only Self by Elisa Gabbert

- Normal Distance by Elisa Gabbert

Ted and Adam each traveled, on their own, to New York. They talk filmgoing in the city, note-taking in the city, clock-watching in the city, etc. Program note: I couldn’t get the Uniball One Gel P pen refill to work and said as much. Soon after recording, I got it to work. It’s awesome.

Wilco

Sturgill Simpson

Pete Doherty on Tommy Tiernan’s show

The Clock at MoMA

Field Notes movie night

AS Hamrah

John McPhee

Nat Geo '94 on Walt Whitman

Sara Levine's Substack

Adam beams in from a room near the lobby of a Grand Cayman hotel room to discuss what we’ve been jotting in our notebooks, app boredom, school dropoff chaos, and book recommendations. And in a new feature, Radio Take Note, we offer up two songs that are worth sharing. 

Book recommendations

A Gentleman in Moscow

Belcanto

My Brilliant Friend

Lonesome Dove

The Adult

All the Light We Cannot See

Angie McMahon

Sprints

Field Notes "The Chicago Look" Edition

Colt Bowden Sign Painting Books

Penchetta Pen and Knife Store

Profolio Oasis Notebook

Ted steps in it when comparing a local celebration to Mardi Gras, plus some impromptu haiku, real rodeo cowboy names, and notes from the baseball tournament. And a leading question: what pen is most like a pencil? 

Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo

Uni Jetstream Edge

Pentel sign pen

Project 3.18’s Spring Training Story

Adam's Notebooks

Just Tell Me Who It Was by John Cheever

Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

Jamelle Bouie favorite film genres

Annhiliation by Jeff VanderMeer

The Acid House by Irvine Welsh

Pablo Delcan

The Imperfectionist (Oliver Burkeman)

The Secret Pentagon War Game…

It’s baseball season! To commemorate this happy time of year, Ted made an audio recording of an essay that he wrote in 2014 for a collection called “The Who, the What, and the When” put together by Julia Rothman, Jenny Volvovski, and Matt LaMothe on the theme of historical sidekicks. Adam also contributed, as did Dan Kugler (underground legend for his work co-hosing the Slackers episode) and lots of other cool folks.

In Ted’s essay, he shares a vignette about Hiroshi Arakawa, the hitting coach of Japanese baseball legend Sadaharu Oh. Every short essay is accompanied by a sta...

Notes from between 1606 and 1607, the beauty of alternate takes, using notebooks to refine ideas, and why the pencil is a Zen object. 

Caravaggio essay, NYRB

Wilco, A Ghost is Born box set

Kafka’s Diaries

zen

DDC x FN Turquoise Tribute

At the Existensialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell

Inside the Fight Against a Los Angeles Inferno

Jokermen

Turkey and the Wolf

Casamento's

Midori Grain Memo Pad

The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper 

Ryan joins us as we prep for the big game with our talk of oyster restaurants, middle school recitals, and Adam’s approach to a “logbook” to track movies watched, stories read, etc.

Oysters in the New York Times

Bakewell’s book on existentialism

MJ Lenderman

You Must Remember This podcast

Patreon page (thanks for your support!)

In this episode we share notes from a Texas snowstorm, journals from the olden days spark creative, a dream journaling update, a new segment, and discuss the new work from John McPhee in the New Yorker. We also announce the new book we’ll read together and discuss. Please enjoy!

Stationerdy notebook from Dapper Notes

Ohto sharp pencil

Tabula Rasa Volume Five by John McPhee

Take Note book club, The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper

The Theme

Northwestern University Media Library

Today's Number Is…

Peggy Guggenheim Museum Shop

Easy Everything Internet Cafe

Rushmore

A Complete Unknown

Joan Baez Tax Debt

It’s 2025, we look at some year-starting notebooks, discuss how one might use the Notes app with paper notebooks, and share our slate of waddya gots. Ted’s audio changes a few minutes in, sorry about that!

On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle

Octavia Books, New Orleans

Flights by olga tokarczuk

Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

Rose Matafeo

Lamy Hardcover notebook with Lamy ruling

Doane paper

Standard Memorandum 2025 by Word. and designed by Jon Contino

Take Note...

In the last episode of 2024, we haphazardly bring the heat, rambling from one topic to the next. We range across used bookstores, endurance in art, a notebook of the week, and a exegesis on Sirius radio.

Becker’s Books

John K King Books, Detroit

Larry McMurtry: A Life by Tracy Daugherty

BookedUP AC, originally Booked Up, Larry McMurtry’s bookstore in Archer City, Texas

White Lines notebooks

The Work of Art by Adam Moss

Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour

Take Note Patreo

Enter the Wizard

B&N Villain NYT 2022

B&N Back NYT 2023

B&N Back NYT Also 2023

Mainstreet Books Davidson

Vectors by James Richardson 

Glorious Exploits

Field Notes Vintage Edition

Boston General Store 

Take Note Patreon

We spend some time discussing writer Oliver Burkeman’s thoughts on time and tasks, but not before covering wood chipping wisdom, baked waiters, salsa spiciness, and fast food divorce.

Oliver Burkeman

Solemn Oath Field Notes

Papier Tigre

The Unfinished Notebook podcast

Staedtler Lumograph Pencils

Beer recommendations

Pentel Calme

General’s Color-Tex Pencil

Tombow ABT Pens

Tombow Unions Hat

Complicated Halloween party scenarios, track meets, notebook use cases, doing a little better every day: it’s all here this week.

The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk

Clairefontaine

John Cheever stories

Daily Stoic

patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/takenote

email us: takenotecentral@gmail.com 

homepage: takenote.space

Jeremy Strong on Fresh Air

Jeremy Strong on WTF

Victory Brewing Company

Keep Honking I Also Am A Goose Bumper Sticker

The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk

The Birds and Trees of North America Field Notes

Claire Fontaine Classic Spiral

Rhodia Sewn Spine Rhodiarama Notebooks

Spiral Decomposition Notebook