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Email newsletters are a bit like the vinyl records of online communication. They were already around long before social media, before blogs, even before web browsers. They never really went away, but recently they suddenly because popular again. I subscribe to a number of them, some for longer than others. Here’s a peek at what’s in my inbox, and maybe some suggestions for newsletters you might like as well. None of this is sponsored, but some of these are mine or my friends’ newsletters. If you like this blog, you’ll like these newsletters, though! (Titles link to signup locations, except for the first suggestion.)
- Musician newsletters. Take this as a general suggestion to subscribe to musicians you’d like to receive updates from. I don’t know what you like so I can’t be very specific. But they’re usually sparse, and you only get sent emails about tour dates and new albums, and you probably want to hear about that if it’s music you like.
- Ken Jennings’ Tuesday Trivia. (Email subscription link is in sidebar of his blog.) I’ve been subscribed to this forever. It’s a bare bones text email that comes every Tuesday, and it’s essentially a long-running trivia game. Seven questions each week, of which I usually only know the answer to three or four of them. The answers are included in the following week’s email. I have learned so many random facts thanks to this newsletter.
- The Ed’s Up. Ed Yong’s weekly newsletter with excerpts of (and links to) his own science writing at The Atlantic, as well as links to the best articles and blog posts Ed found that week. He reads a lot, and his newsletter is a great filter if you want science content but don’t know where to start or don’t have time to read everything.
- Morning Coffee Newsletter. This is a newsletter from FreelanceWriting.com that sends out writing tips and a selection of freelance writing gigs every day. It’s been going since 1998!
- Are you Scicurious? Relatively new newsletter from Scicurious, who has been blogging and tweeting about science for years before bringing her words to your email inbox. For this newsletter, she collaborates with cartoonist JoAnna Wendell to bring a weekly comic based on science news, and she also recommends a “sound of the week”, which can be music, podcasts or anything else you can listen to.
- Super chill all the time. I’ve known Kat Angus since she was sarcastically blogging and school-newspaper-ing her way through university, before she became a Professional Writing Lady at BuzzFeed Canada (that’s probably her official job title). If you like funny, witty and personal observations interspersed with pop culture references, you’ll like this newsletter.
- Brain Pickings. Maria Popova writes about philosophy, creativity, science, writing and lots of other interesting things. Brain Pickings is the weekly newsletter with digests of the content on her website.
- The Transforming Genetic Medicine Initiative Newsletter. This is a newsletter I manage for work. It sends out an email whenever new content is live on the TGMI website. The topic is all about genetic medicine, addressing issues that affect anyone working on any aspect of that field (from bioinformatics to patient care!).
- Musicians & Scientists Quarterly. And this is my own newsletter! Unlike most of the other ones, it only comes out four times per year. When it does, it’s always super interesting, because I’ve been saving content for three months and you only get the very best! It’s all about the overlap between musicians and scientists, and includes music made by scientists, news about musicians working together with scientists, some of my own writing, and links to music/science news found on the web. The next issue will be out in May, so sign up now to make sure you don’t miss that.
