Today we’re trying something a little different with our “What I Can’t Live Without” column. Instead of interviewing a celebrity as we normally do, we’ve invited Amanda Dobbins — co-host of the podcasts The Big Picture and Jam Session, and an unabashed Strategist superfan — to write her very own list. When we read in her Substack just how much she wanted to do it, we couldn’t help ourselves. Plus she’s got great taste.
For most of my adult life, my longest-held career goal was to work at New York Magazine — a dream that came true from 2009 to 2014. I learned almost everything I know at New York: light HTML, what to do at a Rachel Comey sample sale, the best place for lunch near Varick Street (Mooncake Foods, we miss you!), and that the best journalism is both rigorously researched and specific to the point of oddity. Put another way: The best journalism is the Strategist. I’m such a die-hard fan that in 2021, I started a special file in my Notes app dedicated to the products I would include should I ever achieve my second longest-held career goal: writing this very column. The note has changed through the years; a lot more baby products in 2022–24, when I was in the business of birthing those, and the beauty products have evolved as I’ve journeyed deeper into the world of video podcasting. (I’m 42, please help.) When I finally got the call to contribute — after some truly shameless Substack fishing — I had to edit the longlist dramatically for both space and, as my other journalism hero Tina Brown likes to say, “the mix.” I’ve tried to include a range of categories here: home, food, fashion, beauty, kid, and brain. I also made the controversial decision to exclude every single product I discovered from the Strategist, which meant saying “good-bye” to these scrubby washcloths (the only product that works on keratosis pilaris, in my experience), Dazzle Dry Red Chili nail polish (perfect, wearing it right now), this parachute beach blanket (recommended by my very own sister-in-law, though I do not endorse the Shibumi and Ruthie Baron knows this), and the Saie SuperSuede Radiant Talc-Free Baked Powder Blush in Ciao (recommended by Hunter Schafer via Rio Viera-Newton, another Strategist hero). We’re left with 11 products, which I hope the editors like enough to ask me back for “What I (Still) Can’t Live Without.”
