Who are you, and what do you do?
My name is Ryan Broderick. I publish the award-winning newsletter Garbage Day, which is about web culture and technology. Outside of that I freelance for outlets such as The Verge, Fast Company, and Foreign Policy. I also host a podcast called The Content Mines and I organize live events with a group called Digital Void. Basically everything I do is sorta-kinda about web culture and digital literacy. Which, when I started working on this stuff more than a decade ago, felt kind of silly, but now it feels like the biggest issue of our time. Which is a weird feeling.
What hardware do you use?
I use a MacBook Pro, an iPhone 12 Pro, an iPad Mini, a Scarlett Solo audio interface, a SM7B microphone, and a trusty pair of Audio Technica ATH-M50X headphones. I travel a lot. My girlfriend lives in Sao Paulo, I do live events all over the country, and I've been going to a lot of international tech conferences lately to try and make up for lost time during the height of COVID. So most of my hardware is compact and easy to throw in a bag. I recently picked up a Sony a6400 camera, which I keep meaning to sit down and start actually filming stuff with, but I'm a one-man operation, so it takes a while to add a new gizmo. I score the music for my podcast and my YouTube videos and I usually travel with a Launchpad Pro Mk3 and a Launch Control XL. They're both super versatile. I also have an eBag Mother Lode travel backpack and a Topo Designs Rover Pack which I love because I have a serious addiction to buying new backpacks.
And what software?
I write everything on Google Docs and I use Chrome to sync my web browsing across devices. I use Pocket for bookmarking longform articles, Feedly for RSS, and I have a very robust Reddit app. I also spend most of my day on Discord. I use Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere fairly regularly. And most of my audio recording is done in Reaper. I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a cheap, lightweight, but powerful DAW. I make most of my music in Ableton though. I also recently started experimenting with Beatmaker 3 on my iPad. I'm trying to get better at sketching ideas creatively on the go.
What would be your dream setup?
I've been a digital nomad, I guess you'd call it, for a while now. And I love the flexibility and the fact that I can move around easily, but I have begun to fantasize about a real studio space with more and more frequency. I sort of hate having to dig stuff out of a bag when I need to do something. So I think it might be time to really invest into a space to just make stuff, but I keep putting it off. I watch a lot of YouTube videos and really just kind of stare at the different spaces people are vlogging from. But I also know that if I did set up some kind of studio, I'd probably just get itchy to go leave and do something else. It's a real catch-22!