Eric Rothman

This has gotta be one of the best songs ever. Just a tragic yearning for opportunity and a better life, and kindof knowing deep down that running away isn’t going to be the answer, but doing it anyway because it’s a source of hope. I love so much toward the end of the song, we are tragically seeing into the future at how things do, in fact, fall apart, but then landing back in this moment of decision to go–now or never, this or nothing. And then there’s something deeply American about it all too: the promise of self-reliance as the spoils of hard work, and the romance of hitting the road and the freedom of that.

I think about homelessness often but I feel like Andrew helped me make sense of it in a completely new way. Incredible access that humanizes. He brings you along on a journey of meeting these people and figuring out how to help and just when it feels like you’re on the right path, everything turns upside down and you're forced to reckon with a much more complicated reality.

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.

Reminds me of Yuval Noah Harari’s, Sapiens, and his thesis about shared stories. Has the story of America been fractured into thousands of competing ones?

Also, I love the last sentence here, “…because you read this newsletter I’ve got your attention and we are a tiny polarized sub-group who know something others don’t, right?!” Phew, if that ain’t what makes a good newsletter!

I’m not sure why, but this always makes me feel better. 

This is Ezra Klein expertly and precisely explaining how the business models of the news used to work, how they changed when the internet came around, and how it's all falling apart. Just wall-to-wall insight. We take it all for granted and it also seems completely obvious in retrospect. Him and PJ are also just charming and funny and fun to listen to.