I can pinpoint exactly when November became a difficult, thorny month for me and yet despite this, its continued ability to knock me on my ass still takes me by surprise. As I mentioned last time, I am not adverse to the tail-end of a year- even though months 11 and 12 are actively challenging- but November always feels especially tedious. I am always glad when it is over.

One of my intentions for the New Year is to be less melancholic and more pragmatic; optimistic instead of increasingly nihilistic, especially in what I’m sharing (or not sharing) via any attempts to write. This in and of itself feels like setting myself up to fail, but it is something I want to actively hold myself accountable for and broadcasting it here feels like the first step. If you catch me using this newsletter as nothing but a holistic brain dump next year, be sure to call me out. Tell me to write about movies instead.

I think I find it easy to overshare in text form because I have always blogged; I began writing online when I was 13, which means two-thirds of my life has now been spent (over)sharing every inner thought I have digitally in some capacity. It’s deranged to have to contemplate this. My most deplorable millennial trait is wistfully talking about “the old internet” like some y2k old timer, but I do long for a time when websites were functional, when going online felt like a potential path to discovery, and not an exercise in seeing how quickly you can come across a litany of hate speech or scroll past fourteen videos of someone getting their head blown off from fourteen different angles. I think being tethered to online digital spaces is actively bad for the soul; I know it has been detrimental to my own capacity to think and engage.

As well as brains, I have been thinking a lot about bodies. Not just my own; other peoples, and mine in relation to those. Candidly, I am never not worrying about what my body is doing; I think anyone with a chronic illness can relate to that. I have been thinking a lot about bodies because- for the first time in a while- I am increasingly aware that lots of bodies don’t look the same anymore, and that whatever attempt we had at encouraging “body positivity” culturally has seemingly been thrown out of the window. It’s very odd to be sailing through another bout of emaciated propaganda, thinness bound up with ~wellbeing~, perfection and the notion that just doing pilates and upping your protein intake can explain why everyone now looks three stone lighter. It isn’t my business, but it is making me feel like shit, and it does feel tethered to the wider political shift taking place right now. It was troubling to grow up through the 2000s, when diet culture was rife; I wince looking back at photos of celebrities we were conditioned to believe were “fat”, when it was simply that they were “normal”. If you managed to come out the other side of this without some kind of skewed perspective on your own flesh prison: congrats! Tell me how that is.

Not a day now passes where I don’t want to yeet my phone into the nearest bin to avoid a cacophony of this type of programming. It’s gauche to discuss any of it, I know, but I find it psychically troubling especially around the holidays. The way we occupy online spaces is performative, always has been performative, regardless of whether we’re famous or not; I have involved myself in performance, curation, sharing to garner a reaction. I have literally today posted a self-indulgent photo of myself on IG stories. I know full well that nothing is ever what it seems. But it’s weird, man! Does nobody else think it’s weird?

Merry Christmas, I guess. Here’s to not wasting hours on my phone in 2026.

(In November, I listened to 47 podcasts, watched 20 episodes of television, 14 films and listened to music by 134 different artists)

Five for November 2025:

• Film:

A few things I liked but in retrospect- after a month of stewing- maybe didn’t love as much as I’d initially thought: the new Yorgos (Bugonia), the new Lynne Ramsay (Die My Love). I finally watched Roofman, which was far more enjoyable than the trailer had lead me to believe (let Channing do physical comedy again!) and one of Richard Linklater’s new releases, Blue Moon, which I had zero expectations for but loved as an exercise in showcasing just why Ethan Hawke is so great (I’ve BEEN saying!). My favourite November release was Pillion, the Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling film about bikers and BDSM in the British suburbs. Far more tender than I’d envisaged, it has one of my favourite visual gags of the year: a brilliant use of Karl Ove Knausgård’s ‘My Struggle’.

• TV:

I really, really love Tim Robinson so I inevitably had a great time with the first season of his HBO dramedy, The Chair Company. I understand the aversion to his comedic stylings, but I am very into the surrealist loud noise of it all and felt like this show in particular balanced all of the things I like about both I Think You Should Leave and his other collaborations with writing partner Zach Kanin, another SNL alum. It’s so fucking weird, and I still have very little idea what was going on and yet: 5 stars.

• Music:

Saw the Springsteen film, and had a solid week of absolutely overplaying any and all of the Boss’s albums but especially ‘Nebraska’ and ‘Born to Run’. Rosalia’s new LP ‘Lux’ was as great as I’d hoped it would be, an artist whose musicianship truly continues to amaze me. Last year I fell into a deep Chat Pile hole, and I think ‘In the Earth Again’- their joint effort with guitarist Hayden Pedigo- is one of this year’s best, and one of this year’s biggest surprises given my initial skepticism when the project was announced. The final song, ‘A Tear For Lucas’ is an absolute gutpuncher.

• Podcasts:

“Satanic Panic” podcasts are few and far between at this stage, but CBC’s The Devil You Know was a genuinely insightful look at a variety of lives impacted by the hysteria felt worldwide in the 80s and 90s. I really enjoyed Sarah Marshall’s take on it and would implore anyone to give the series a go, even if you think it’s been covered to death elsewhere. It would also be remiss of me to not mention the episode of the excellent Chekhov’s Whatever I appeared on, in which Meg and I discussed Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation of Frankenstein. I had a very lovely time sharing my Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi specific thoughts, and would love if you gave it a listen.

• Reading:

I finally finished a book(!)- Mark Ronson’s autobiog Night People, in which he recounts his rise up the ranks of DJing in NYC in the 90s and early 2000s. Given how frequently I shared photos of Ronson on my blog to illustrate my belief that he was one of the hottest man alive (still is?), I obviously adored it (& the playlist that goes with it).

Toward the end of October, I saw someone say that sometimes, Halloween is three weeks long and that sometimes there is NO Halloween at all. I did not feel spooky this year; I can’t place why or how it didn’t happen, but despite having firm plans in the diary (a night out with all my favourite people), the 31st rolled around and just felt like any other day. Even carving my pumpkin elicited no emotional response, the crude face I’d hacked into the small orange gourd staring back at me like an ugly haunted tchotchke (I knew I shouldn’t have deviated away from my usual Jack Skellington design). The day before, I came home from work early, watched Practical Magic for the first time and cried, partially because of the film and partially because not feeling festive in the build up to All Hallows Eve felt like a personal affront, one of the worst things that could ever happen. I am not a Christmas person. I am a Halloween person.

Last month’s newsletter was delayed because I tried (and failed) to write about Paul Thomas Anderson, an impossible task that I still feel ill-equipped to tackle. Maybe that draft will come before the end of the year, but it’ll surprise no one to hear that One Battle After Another currently sits high in my best of 2025 list, a film I’ve seen twice and haven’t stopped thinking about.

I pre-gamed my Halloween Friday night out by watching It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, my laptop propped up beside me as I readied myself to leave the house. Linus van Pelt has always been my favourite Peanuts character, in part because of his attachment to a safety blanket (relatable) and because of his unwavering levels of sincerity regarding the existence of pumpkins in the world. It’s hard to not care deeply about a boy who cares deeply, about Halloween and everything else.

My costume for the evening was Harry Dean Stanton’s character, Brett, from Alien (1979), one of my true style heroes with a wardrobe so close to my own that I only had to buy a Hawaiian shirt and a Nostromo patch to add to a baseball cap. My boyfriend went as Travis in Paris, Texas, our quest to find a suit in a charity shop almost bringing us both to breaking point. I liked that it was a couples costume, but not; I like fancy dress even if my outfits always seem to require explanation despite feeling obvious to me. Harry Dean Stanton felt obvious, but maybe not after all.

I like the magic of Halloween because it signals the shift of seasons; I like the colours, I like that it gets darker. I like the excuse to feel slightly maudlin about the year being on a downward spiral toward being over. I do not like Christmas; it’s too much pressure, too bound up in joy and goodwill. I think being a Halloween person is admittedly embarrassing, but I think most things are embarrassing, and that’s fine. I am cringe but I am free etc.

This is newsletter number 30; the last milestone (#20) happened during year two of the pandemic, in case you’re wondering how long it’s taken me to reach this point. It’s been a full twelve months since I restarted this thing in an attempt to both kick-start my own creative juices, and unpack the danger of overconsuming media as a person whose entire personality revolves around consuming media. I am still not reading properly; I still watch in real time- an almost out of body experience- as I rotate between the same 5 apps, refreshing, scrolling, liking, and screenshotting. I still don’t know if any of it feels fun again, but I have really enjoyed having an excuse to try and explain whatever emotional response I’m having to the things I’m shoving in front of my eyeballs. If you’ve ever read or said something nice about anything I’ve ever written as a result, please know I am earnestly, truthfully grateful in the way that Linus is, sitting in the pumpkin patch, keeping the faith.

(In September & October, I listened to 67 podcasts, watched 68 episodes of television, 21 films and listened to music by 151 different artists)

Five for September and October 2025:

• Film:

I spent most of September rewatching PTA movies in advance of his newest, the aforementioned One Battle After Another. Discoursed to death at this stage, I have very little to add beyond thinking it was very enjoyable, not without flaws but everything I wanted it to be. Robert Redford died, so I watched Sneakers and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (the former more enjoyable than the latter, even if the sheer sexual chemistry between Redford and Newman basically sweated off the screen). I saw Kurosawa’s Cure (1997) for the first time at a rep screening my local Picturehouse hosted. Unsettling in ways I hadn’t envisaged, lingering with me for days after as I tried to fathom what was going on. After the Hunt looked nice but felt narratively confounding; Michael Stuhlbarg, your back must hurt from carrying the full weight of this thing.

• TV:

In September- against my better judgement- I began Netflix’s House of Guinness, a Steven Knight-helmed dramatisation of the family behind Ireland’s biggest beverage export. It’s prestige brain rot, channelling much of the same energy as Knight’s Peaky Blinders (loud cuts, anachronistic music, swearing, sex), but even though the overuse of both Kneecap and Fontaines DC began to grate on me toward the end…I enjoyed it? It’s silly, but it also stars both Anthony Boyle and James Norton.

• Music:

The legacy of Caught Stealing- a film which, though fun, I do not think is very good!- runs strong in my household because as well as revisiting Action Bronson’s ‘Blue Chips 7000’, I have not stopped listening to Bad Bunny’s most recent record, ‘DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS’. It’s very good! All summer my TikTok FYP was littered with videos from his residency in Puerto Rico, which absolutely encouraged my interest in his music and proves that exposure therapy absolutely works.

• Podcasts:

Hell in Heaven- a co-production of Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts- charts the mystery surrounding the death of John Bender, a Wall Street broker who moved to the jungle in Costa Rica with his wife Ann in search of paradise and a better life for them both. It’s deeply compelling, charting the couple’s collective descent into mania as they isolate themselves further and further from the world around them.

• Reading:

My recommendations here are still limited to long reads I’ve managed to fit in (imagine if I finish another book this side of 2026), and to that end: I have unfortunately not stopped thinking about the gooning piece in Harper’s. It is as good and as weird as you’ve heard.

Nostalgia is a weapon.

I know that because it’s one that is constantly being used against me. I am- and have been for at least the last decade- stuck in a perpetual cycle of reabsorbing culture I have already experienced years prior; I can’t stop thinking about it, I can’t stop writing about it. If you’ve been reading this newsletter long enough, you’ll notice this isn’t the concept’s first rodeo.

There’s a moment in Mad Men in which Don Draper neatly unpacks its power over us all:

‘Nostalgia- it’s delicate but potent [...]; in Greek nostalgia literally means the pain from an old wound. It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. In musician and actor Carrie Brownstein’s 2015 memoir, she talks about it at length, a passage I find so moving that I come back to it time and time again (an act of nostalgia itself):

Nostalgia is so certain: the sense of familiarity it instils makes us feel like we know ourselves, like we've lived. To get a sense that we have already journeyed through something- survived it, experienced it—is often so much easier and less messy than the task of currently living through something. Though hard to grasp, nostalgia is elating to bask in —temporarily restoring color to the past. It creates a sense memory that momentarily simulates context. Nostalgia is recall without the criticism of the present day, all the good parts, memory without the pain.

Finally, nostalgia asks so little of us, just to be noticed and revisited; it doesn't require the difficult task of negotiation, the heartache and uncertainty that the present does.

The ouroboros nature of culture is something I find continually fascinating, not just because of my own propensity to concern myself with these things from the past, but because of what I think it says about us as people. The Brownstein quote I think captures it so succinctly, the idea that engaging with something we’ve already experienced is more manageable than tackling the present day. It IS elating to bask in a trip down memory lane; to feel youthful, idealistic, care-free.

I’ve been thinking about the weaponisation of nostalgia, because I’ve fallen victim to it twice in the last month; first- despite my assertion that I ought not to spend anymore money, especially on things that aren’t urgent necessities- I fought in the ticket queue trenches and acquired tickets to see My Chemical Romance in London next summer. I am not going to tell you how expensive the price of admission was, but I will tell you that I worked out it was a 576% increase on what I paid the first time I saw them, back in 2005. Even with two decades worth of inflation: that’s insane. I often lament that ticket pricing is out of control but I also give in to it on a regular basis, especially for bigger legacy acts. The fact that my recent Nine Inch Nails ticket was under £100 felt like a miracle, though that in and of itself I think is indicative of what I’m discovering the older I get: that I have become my parents, paying over the odds to relive their musical past, except my past has roots in subculture which is why it feels even more insulting (sorry to both The Rolling Stones and The Who- neither of whom are 2000s punk or emo bands).

There’s a scene in the recent amazon prime series Overcompensating, where Benny’s older sister returns to their childhood town and ends up at karaoke, drunkenly singing ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ in a local bar. Those opening piano notes unleash her inner teenager; the person she used to be before adulthood came calling. Exposure to social media vignettes from the North American leg of the ‘Long Live the Black Parade’ tour were what sealed the deal for me; I’d missed out on MCR’s last UK jaunt in 2022, and seeing videos of the current tour’s outlandish theatrical staging gave me fomo like never before. I had to make sure that I secured the goods for my friends and I. I owed it to both them, and my 15 year old self, who wasted too much time on MCR message boards and only bought their first album because it was produced by Geoff from Thursday.

The money-making industry surrounding nostalgia seems to only grow year on year, and we all keep buying in. Think of the amount of bands reforming to cash-in on such a market. There are entire festivals dedicated to people my age who have disposable incomes and want to relive their adolescence. I look at the line-up for any of those things and realise it’s usually everyone I ever cared about two decades ago. Most of them are now in their 40s, 50s, even 60s.

Within a few days of battling Ticketmaster, I found myself in a local venue in which I’d spent many hours as a teenager, watching one of those very legacy acts: The Get Up Kids, at the tail-end of the UK and European leg of their ‘Something to Write Home About’ 25th(!) anniversary tour. It’s a hilarious sentence to write but: it was me who skewed on the younger end of this crowd, which was predominantly made up of those who’d been in their mid to late teens when the record was first released back in 1999. This isn’t the first album-memorial show I’ve attended by any means, but like all the others it was oddly heartening to find yourself in a place surrounded by other people all seeking to relive a very specific moment in time.

Nostalgia is recall without the criticism of the present day, all the good parts, memory without the pain.

The first time I heard The Get Up Kids was on a CD-R burnt for me by someone a few years ahead of me in school. During the show, I caught a glance of her across the room and while I didn’t muster the energy to go and say hello for the first time in almost two decades, I did think it was funny to be back in the same place again, chasing the dragon of our youth. Not everyone present was (still) an overt subculture freak like me either; there were so many functional adults, people I’ve probably sat in formal meetings with, people who probably have houses and children and highly important jobs. There was a woman standing next to us in her 40s, singing along to every word of every song, occasionally glancing back to her very normal husband, a look of sheer joy across her face. It’s funny to think of The Get Up Kids being a point of sentiment and wistfulness in the same way that, say, Bryan Adams is for my mum- but I guess they are now, because we too are old. Life comes at you fast. Nostalgia is a weapon.

(In August I listened to 46 podcasts, watched 20 episodes of television, 18 films and listened to music by 108 different artists)

Five for August 2025:

• Film:

We won’t unpack why, but at the start of August I finally watched all of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws for the first time(!) It’s a good movie, huh? I am a big Roy Scheider-head, so it’s funny that I’d never made it all the way through. My biggest takeaway was: why do I dress exactly like Hooper??

Weapons was fun, Materialists was awful; Together has only amplified my deep desire to spend time with Dave Franco (what the trailer doesn’t tell you is that he’s wearing a beanie hat!). Is it embarrassing to admit that the thing I was looking forward to most this summer was Akiva Schaffer’s reboot of The Naked Gun? I had a great time with it! Caught Stealing is fun if you love three specific things: Austin Butler, and baseball (go Giants!), and the music of 1998 (let’s ignore the anachronistic use of Idles).

The best thing I saw last month was Eva Victor’s first directorial feature, Sorry, Baby, in which they play a young college professor called Agnes to whom something bad happened- and how she does (or doesn’t) move on from it. I went into this with no expectations and found myself very moved; it’s beautiful to look at, a New England fall and winter offering a stark background for everything to unfold in front of. I really liked the use of Eva’s house, how it becomes a safe haven and a constant for her throughout everything (“Safe! safe! safe!" the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart”- this Virginia Woolf line echoed for me; apt given Agnes’ role in the Lit department). Victor is paired brilliantly with Naomi Ackie, who plays their best friend Lydie, and the two of them capture well the ups and downs of negotiating a close friendship over time, particularly one bound up in trauma. I oddly thought of Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy at times, not because they totally align thematically, but because they both look at this type of evolution in the same quiet and affecting way.

• TV:

All my quiz shows returned this month (Only Connect, University Challenge). I can’t lie: that’s where my focus has been.

• Music:

Ethel Cain released a new record, ‘Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You’, which I’ve listened to less than I care to admit given that I’m seeing her live in four weeks time. Mac DeMarco’s ‘Guitar’ came at the tail-end of summer, when really I’d have loved it to get me through the warmest, most lethargic parts of the year. Alex G released his tenth(!) studio album ‘Headlights’ in July, but I overlooked it until last month which was foolish because it is- of course- a real doozy of a record.

• Podcasts:

Late to the party (it came out in 2023), but I spent a few days at the beginning of August binging my way through Tortoise Media’s Hoaxed, which investigates the case of the Hampstead Hoax, where two children accused an entire North London community of satanic ritual abuse. It’s a fascinating look at the proliferation of conspiracy theories, how they’re often exploited by those wishing to peddle their agenda, and the impact this has on so many for years after.

• Reading:

Books? What are those? In lieu of any novel recommendations, here is an article from The Cut which I haven’t stopped thinking about since I read it a few days ago. Cheating, really, because it came out at the start of this month, but: ‘The Forever-35 Face’ by Bridget Read.

Google the name ‘John Carter’ and you’re immediately presented with a slew of information and images about the notorious 2012 Disney flop starring my guy and Friday Night Lights alum, Taylor Kitsch. John Carter in this context is a character created by novelist Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1911, a civil war veteran who is transported through time to a fictionalized version of Mars, where he battles mythological beasts and alien foes.

John Carter is also the name of an actor who starred in Badlands and Scarface, a jazz musician who produced a five-LP concept album entitled 'Roots and Folklore', a US senate candidate from Nevada who is also the son of President Jimmy Carter, and it’s the birth name of Ben-Hur himself, Charlton Heston.

John Carter to me, however, will always be a fictional doctor at County General in Chicago, whose journey from third-year med student to attending physician spanned eleven seasons of the NBC medical drama ER, one of the only characters who appeared in both the pilot in 1996 and the season finale in 2009. For almost thirty (lol) years, the actor who plays him- Noah Wyle- has been burnt into my brain as this John Carter; he will always be John Carter. When he appears in anything else, he is always John Carter; even in Donnie Darko, where he plays a science teacher, even in The Librarians where (as the title suggests) he plays a librarian. I see him and think: that’s John Truman Carter III, he's from a very wealthy family, but hates talking about his inherited legacy. When he first arrives at the hospital, he's assigned to Doctor Benton, but Mark Greene takes him under his wing. Season six alters the trajectory of his life significantly; he eventually dates Abby Lockhart! He moves to and from Africa!

I do not remember the first time I watched ER, but I do remember realizing that I was in love with Carter, in as much as you can be when you’re ten years old, watching a television show not aimed at your demographic. The theme song still rattles round my head on a regular basis; I remember begging to be allowed to stay up and watch the show with my mum, an avid fan (I have definitely watched hours through the banister on the stairs). Every so often, I will experience a deep desire to rewatch the whole thing from the start, though the prospect of fifteen seasons and 331 episodes seems insurmountable when you have a full-time job and so many other things to fill your time with.

At the start of the year, when all my favourite podcasts began to cover HBO Max’s The Pitt, I tuned out, fearful of spoilers and annoyed that I wasn’t able to watch. There was no UK air date on the horizon, a common occurrence which seems to happen with increasing regularity. I tweeted nowTV’s official accounts, asking when- given their partnership with HBO- it was likely to arrive on our shores. “We’re not sure, but soon, haha” was the response I was frequently given, and so- after half a year of weighing up the effort- I caved, utilised a trusty VPN and accessed the show nefariously, bored of everything else we were watching, knowing full well in my heart that the questionable legalities would be worth it.

Noah Wyle is now both Dr John Carter and Dr Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, an attending physician at Pittsburgh trauma medical hospital, nicknamed ~The Pitt~ due to the gruelling nature of both the workload and the patients. This was a mental shift which it only took two or so episodes for me to get my head around. It's the duality of man, except in this scenario both sides are selfless but traumatised doctors, determined to sacrifice their own wellbeing for the sake of their teams and those they treat. Despite being an entirely new-to-me show, watching The Pitt felt like putting on a familiar jacket you’d forgotten about, like coming into a room full of friends you’ve not seen in a while and can’t wait to catch up with.

The similarities with ER are obvious, inevitable, and currently the subject of a lawsuit between the estate of Michael Crichton and Warner Bros, who produces the show. What I loved about The Pitt was what I loved about ER; it’s full of well-rounded, compelling characters with whom you instantly connect and care about. Dr Robby feels real because of the baggage Noah Wyle brings with him as John Carter, but also because those decades of experience have enabled him to realistically portray a medical professional (as fans of the show who also work in healthcare have enthusiastically confirmed online). On a personal level, Wyle has been involved in a lot of healthcare related activism; he's visited refugee camps overseas and been involved in health PSAs within the U.S. In 2012, he was arrested for protesting against cuts to Medicaid, and this year was on a panel advocating for better support for mental health resources for those working on hospital frontlines.

You don’t have to know all of this to be convinced by his performance, but it does I think explain why- after a fifteen-episode season, covering one fraught daytime shift- Dr Robby has entered the TV doctor hall of fame alongside his ER predecessor. It's rare that a show these days ever lives up to both online and critical hype, but to me The Pitt exemplifies exactly what I want out of television: well-paced, well-executed, all killer no filler episodes, a sub-60 minute runtime, which leave you wanting more. It's hard to make anyone care about a hospital drama, when they so often follow the same beats and amalgamate into one, but when both casting and writing strike gold, this is what you end up with.

(This month I have listened to 42 podcasts, watched 26 episodes of television, 10 films and listened to music by 71 different artists)

Five for July 2025:

• Film:

The knock-on effect of dedicating all my post-work time to a TV show this month is that my movie watching has fallen off a cliff. That said, over the course of one weekend I saw Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd's Friendship, a buddy comedy in the loosest sense of the word, which thank GOD also stars Conner O'Malley as a man who turns up and shouts about why the US shouldn't have pulled out of Afghanistan. If you like Robinson's weird and loud Netflix show, I Think You Should Leave, then you'll love this. My cinema viewing of it was interrupted by a lack of AC and a fogged up screen, but I finished the film at home, pleased that it exists and excited for what Robinson does next.

I also watched an in-cinema back to back of the Powell and Pressburger classic Black Narcissus (David Farrar! Slutty shorts!!) and Michael Haneke’s surveillance drama Caché (Hidden), starring Juliette Binoche & Daniel Auteuil. I was really taken by the visual ambiguity of not knowing whether you're watching video camera footage, or just an elongated fixed scene, purposefully tricking your mind into second-guessing everything you're watching

• TV:

Season four of The Bear seemed to appear on Disney+ with little fanfare which led me to believe it wouldn’t be enjoyable, but that wasn’t the case; I actually think it’s a far more coherent season of episodes than S3, which filled in a lot of the plot holes or narrative stretches from last year. While I don’t think it has the same propulsion of the first two seasons, I do still enjoy all of the performances, particularly how central Sydney has become to the story. The Ayo Edibiri and Lionel Boyce-written and Janicza Bravo directed episode, ‘Worms’, was a real standout and a much needed pivot away from the Berzatto family. I’m excited to see what’s on the horizon for season five!

• Music:

Aside from overplaying the new Nine Inch Nails single ‘As Alive As You Need Me To Be’ (straight from the soundtrack of Tron: Ares, a film nobody cares about), I’ve been rinsing to death ‘Mental Madness’, the debut album from Toronto’s Pig Pen, whose members include chef (and star of The Bear) Matty Matheson and Alexisonfire's Wade MacNeil. It’s a straight-up throwback hardcore record which at times reminds me of everyone from Doomriders, to Trash Talk, Cro-Mags and Cursed. It’s very up my nostalgic alley and is great to work out to.

• Podcast:

Despite my famed hatred toward anything AI related, morbid curiosity meant I was instantly drawn to Wondery’s new series Flesh & Code, which details the rise and fall of Replica, an app initially created to provide everyone with access to their very own digital companion. Do people fall in love with the avatars they lovingly created from scratch? Of course. As a glimpse into how some negotiate romance in an everchanging online landscape, it’s equal parts fascinating and depressing.

• Reading:

I’m uniquely aware of how awful the rot TikTok presents my brain with is, but sometimes amongst all the trash, I am presented with a gem. Algospeak is a book written by content creator and linguistic researcher, Adam Aleksic, who makes videos as the Etymology Nerd- which is where I first caught his work. In this book, he unpacks the deep internet origins of modern linguistics, and looks at how the rise of social media and the dark places within it have changed the way we speak. As a chronically online person, I love anything written about the internet and am especially interested in the way that our language evolves as a result of being plugged in 24/7 (I am generationally tethered to leetspeak).

In March I spent six days in Berlin, not that you’d know because I've failed to mention it- anywhere, at all, at any time, ever- since being back.

It's hard to quantify really what the city means to me, how it replaced in a very real way my deep infatuation with New York, a place I was fortunate enough to visit in my early twenties, six times in seven years. It’s also hard to talk about liking Berlin without sounding like a meme shared on a Real Housewives of Clapton-style account, so I won’t dwell too much other than to say that coming home (as always) felt heavy, like it was too soon, like we should just uproot our life here and move there. I am embarrassingly attached to the stretch of Friedrichshain in which I’ve spent so much time in the last decade; I like that at this stage I can now navigate my way around the city with ease, without having to panic too much about whether I need to be on the S or U-Bahn. I feel comfortable there; I feel rested in my bones. Beer is cheap, good coffee can be found on most streets, and vegan doughnuts are abundant. It is not a city without flaws- and I don't claim it to be- but anywhere can feel like a utopia if you try hard enough. 

It was my birthday in April, and as with every year, I spent the week before feeling anxious and preoccupied with complicated feelings about taking yet another trip around the sun. Nobody seems willing to talk about the abject dread that can appear when you should be celebrating, but I attempted to quell my own panic by making plans with those I love in the days before and days after; things that felt manageable and wouldn’t cause me to overload and fall into crisis (I still had some internal crisis). I went for walks; I watched good movies; I ate good food. I saw Real Lies at Village Underground. 

May felt largely work-oriented; career high-points and stress-inducing lows. I still can’t balance needing to be busy with a deep desire to do absolutely nothing and yes, this is what I spend my time talking about in therapy. I listened to too much Charli XCX, lamented the looming demise of one of my favourite Norwich landmarks (Anglia Square) and finally watched The Godfather, which I found to be an objectively “fine” movie.

As I write, we are 27 days into June and it’s already too warm, though the sun has provided me with much-needed vitamin D and mental levity. The summer is my least favourite part of the year even if I still have a childhood picture of it as a six-week long break, free from responsibilities. I work full-time, so that simply isn’t the case; June to August are always hellishly packed for me, September acting as the carrot on the stick to drag me through all those events, activities and school assemblies I have to endure. Three weeks ago, I saw Nine Inch Nails with two of my oldest, closest friends, which felt transformative and awe-inspiring, rattling my insides, my outsides and my brain. I’ve been chasing the post-show high ever since, hooking their discography to my veins in hopes that I can recreate the buzz of that evening. I haven't shut up about it much to my boyfriend’s chagrin (I am reading the subreddits daily). It feels good to care about things so earnestly; everything is bad all the time, a refrain I think I've probably typed in every single one of these newsletters I've sent out- it’s becoming my default. I had forgotten how good it feels to care. 

Recently, somebody I know shared an excerpt from a CS Lewis essay titled `On Living in an Atomic Age’. It was published in 1948, but feels prescient given the horrors that seem to loom around every corner these days. I read it not long after I’d seen 28 Years Later, Danny Boyle & Alex Garland’s post-apocalyptic follow up to their 2002 collaboration (starring Oppenheimer himself, Cillian Murphy), in which British life has become increasingly inhospitable (the zombies are smart now; people are even more insane). Notions of what the world would or will be like in the aftermath of disaster were fresh in my mind, but both Boyle and Lewis- below- press the importance of hope, of humanity, and not hiding away:

If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds...

Normality- caring- is covetable. 

(Across March and April and May and June, I listened to 138 podcasts, watched 115 episodes of television, 47 films and listened to music by 239 different artists).

(Mortifyingly Belated) Five for March, and April, and May and June, 2025:

• Film:

Condensing four months of film watching into a handy bullet point seems fairly impossible but I’ll try: 

March stand-outs included finally seeing Nan Goldin’s soundtracked slideshow The Ballad of Sexual Dependency in a gallery in Berlin, a visceral experience which reminded me just why I fell in love with her work in the first place. I also saw Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider for the first time (not in Berlin, but at my local Picturehouse) and predictably loved it, irritated that I'd avoided it for so long because I had presumed I'd find it cliched and parodic (I didn’t). 

More New Hollywood I watched in April: Five Easy Pieces, very, very Cheever or Carver-esque, with such unreal performances- everyone, but especially Jack Nicholson. I got stoned and watched Robert Altman's Nashville, sort of biblical and a fun start to my journey with a director whose work I have very little familiarity with.

Two standouts in May were new releases; The Ballad of Wallace Island, starring Tim Key as a lottery winner who decides to reunite one of his favourite bands for a private concert on a remote island. Sounds twee but it isn’t; Key is the real emotional core here and I didn't anticipate crying as much as I did. I also vibed hard with the new Wes Anderson- The Phoenician Scheme; even "lesser" Anderson to me is far more engaging than 75% of other director's outputs, so I enjoyed this even if it doesn't hit the dizzying heights of some of his previous work. 

More Altman in June- Popeye, a batshit piece of art, real fuelled by cocaine stuff of both dreams and nightmares- plus two rewatches of significant pieces of Edward Norton cinematic history: 25th Hour- I think, very underrated Spike Lee, perfect post-9/11 cinema, and not just because Ground Zero is captured on screen full-frontal, in perpetuity; and Fight Club, one of my most favourite Fincher films, which I was sceptical would live up to my adolescent infatuation, but it did (even if my big takeaway this time around was how dumb men are if left to their own devices; self-aggrandising, self-absorbed idiots in a pack, bemoaning problems in the world that they've helped create).

• TV:

Like most of the world, we mainlined Netflix’s Adolescence, the plot of which by this point doesn’t need explaining. Season three of The White Lotus preoccupied large swathes of my time in April (Walton Goggins forever) and in May, both The Studio and season two of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal made my anxiety pique in differing ways (I will never be able to listen to Evanescence without thinking of Sully Sullenberger). In June, I binged two pieces of pure millennial bait: FX’s Adults about a group of friends living together in New York, and Overcompensating, Benito Skinner’s semi-autobiographical story of coming to terms with his sexuality at college in the 2010s. Nostalgic in all the right ways (Uffie, Kreayshawn, Sleigh Bells all appear as needle-drops), it’s in direct contrast to Adam Curtis’s Shifty, which posits a very different look at the past and the way history and misplaced nostalgia for bygone days are manipulated in nefarious ways (a must watch!)

• Podcasts:

Never not late to the party (because it came out in 2022), I started and am still enjoying Project Unabom, which charts the eighteen years it took to arrest domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski. My favourite show in the world, The Big Picture, has been gradually charting their favourite films of the 21st Century (the Children of Men episode is especially good) and I also finally dipped my toe into another Ringer pod alumni, Bandsplain, mostly because I decided to conquer the Geoff Rickly episode in which he and host Yasi Salek discuss the career (and his love of) Nine Inch Nails. Every one of those almost four hours is utterly worth it.

• Music:

When I saw Real Lies in April, it was the day their new album- ‘We Will Annihilate Our Enemies’- was released, a real rager of an LP: ravey, summery, full of wistful looks back at youth and lost love. I have also rediscovered and spent an inordinate amount of time with Charli XCX’s pandemic LP ‘how i’m feeling now’, which turned five years old this spring. Insane to think about really (remember lockdown?), but it’s an album home to some of my favourite Charli songs (‘claws’, ‘i finally understand’, ‘anthems’) and one which works wonderfully walking home on warm evenings. See also on that front: Turnstile’s ‘NEVER ENOUGH’, album number five from them, which I sense I am going to absolutely rinse over the summer in much the same way that I did their previous LP, ‘GLOW ON’ (Charli had it right after all)

• Reading:

My inability to read a book has already been well documented here, so it’ll come as a surprise to no-one that I have only managed to finish two books in the last four months. I Love You, I Love You, I Love You by Laura Dockrill, a perennial favourite of mine who writes a fictionalised version of falling in and out and back in love with her real life partner. I also mainlined Holly Brinkley’s Deep Cuts over a singular weekend, a book that felt so relevant to my interests that it almost felt pointed at times (it was all the references to Interpol which did it). I’m currently enjoying every second I get with the new Philippa Snow, it’s terrible the things i have to do to be me: on feminity and fame; she’s one of my favourite cultural critics and I think often of her book Which As You Know Means Violence- so I’m hopeful I end up loving this new one as much as I do that.

Hi. Hope your 2025 is going well. Maybe see you again before Q3 ends?