A story of culture and norms overriding the default urge to find blame.

“…the primary purpose of an aircraft accident investigation is to prevent future accidents — a decision that implicitly privileged prevention above the search for liability. Conducting a police-style investigation that faults a deceased pilot does nothing to affect the probability of future accidents.”

I’m dying for someone I know to have the experience I had with this album, but I worry it’s not gonna happen. Like, you just have to sit and listen to all the words and feel all the music and do it a few times. Is anyone doing that anymore?

Anyways, it’s like a movie, like with a story that’s emotional and true (or at least feels true), and it’s artfully told, starting and ending in interesting places, and it’s vulnerable and observational and funny and heartbreaking. I literally laughed and cried and said things like, “holy shit” out loud to myself while listening to it. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. And the music is fucking amazing. There’s oboes.

This is so valuable. As someone who grew up in a semi-vacuum of healthy conflict modeling, my adult life has been trial and error in this area, and so it’s just wildly helpful to see other people working on their relationships. I find myself measuring my own progress against the couples in the show in a way that’s clarifying. For example, this one woman is so clearly trapped inside of her own story that she can’t even see how she’s in her own way about it—and I think I was that way once, and seeing it, I can see that I’ve moved past that, and that articulation is useful in understanding myself. And then this other guy extends such thought and care to his partner that it stuns you that people can be that good and caring and that gives you something to aspire to. It also helps you appreciate that there are so many different kinds of people, with different and completely valid life experiences. The slow depth of the show helps you move past whatever initial biases you might bring such that you can genuinely appreciate people that are different from you. It’s also heartwarming to see progress, and heartbreaking to see things fall apart. Such drama. You really grow to love, empathize, be frustrated by these people over the course of a season.