Journalist and essayist David Giffels has written for the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Grantland, and Redbook among others. His most recent book is The Hard Way on Purpose, a collection of essays about growing up near Akron and Cleveland, an area he sees as embodying a sense of place, but “a weird, surreal place,” The Rust Belt.

We discussed The Rust Belt, shared stories of destroyed places of our youth (his in Cleveland, mine in Toledo), and ended with a look at his experiences writing for Bevis and Butthead and a book on Devo.