Every week on The Rushfield Lunch, I have a live and unfiltered conversation with the most important thought leaders in this industry — people like Lena Dunham, Priyanka Mattoo, Franklin Leonard and several other elite industry minds. (Check out the complete list of my lunch guests here.)
Today, it brings me great pleasure to welcome Joshuah Bearman to my virtual table. A writer and producer, Joshuah started his career in journalism and has written for publications including Wired, New York, The New York Times Magazine and The Believer. Joshuah reported the Wired story that became the Oscar-winning movie Argo and several other notable works, including a recent first-person account for New York about the devastation in his hometown of Altadena after the wildfires earlier this year.
“Altadena embodied that durable civic optimism. A place where middle-class America was not a fantasy, where a teacher’s salary really could get you your own yard and a lemon tree,” Joshuah, who moved to Altadena in the ’80s, writes in the piece. “Our childhood was exploratory, not preparatory. We were not brands-in-progress. We were just kids.”
Reflecting on that passage this week, he notes how the fires began on Jan. 7, and then the inauguration of President Trump was mere weeks later. “I was like, ‘Hmm, these things are symbolically related, because Altadena had survived in that form, as this kind of multi-ethnic, multi-generational, middle-class Mayberry,” Joshuah tells me.
In our conversation, he explains what’s ahead for the region, and we discuss his career in the industry, including his role as the co-founder of Epic, a production and publishing company that serves as a de facto pipeline for reported print and digital features to become film and television adaptations. It’s a great conversation with a fellow like-minded Gen X-er, and I hope you enjoy it!
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