The Reader: Uli Beutter Cohen

Shownotes

In December 2013, artist Uli Beutter Cohen asked a young woman on the Q train what she was reading, and if she was ok to have her picture taken.

It had caught Uli's attention that New York City was a place where more people would read on the subway than anywhere else – always with a special sense of pride, and many emotions.

Uli posted the picture of the women – a young dancer – reading “Catching Fire” on Instagram, on a new account she called Subway Book Review. The caption read >"I liked the first two movies and wanted to read the book. I like post-apocalyptic books”.

Today, the Subway Book Review is a global community and social media phenomenon, portrayed all the way from the BBC to Glamour to DER SPIEGEL.

In episode 3 of the Wunderbar Together podcast, Uli shares how growing up in Germany shaped her, how moving to Portland, OR, turned her into a young entrepreneur, and how she built Subway Book Review into a platform with hundreds of thousands of followers. In our update call at the very end, she shares her radical reinvention in the current crisis.

The Wunderbar Together podcast is hosted by Felix Zeltner and produced by Peter Tooke. It is inspired and partly funded by Wunderbar Together 2018/19, the Year of German-American Friendship. Find out all about it at wunderbartogether.org.