02 | what i read and listened to this week

another lazy list

podcasts: ezra, ezra, ezra

YES, I’m very much Ezra Klein-pilled. This is not new. It’s essentially the only podcast I listen to besides The Daily. But here’s what I listened to this week:

If you want to hear about where Democrats failed themselves—and their constituents:

I was pleasantly surprised by this conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper. I’ve largely avoided coverage of Tapper’s new book with Axios reporter Alex Thompson Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. Not because I thought it wouldn’t be good or important, but because I felt I knew the story. I remembered the spate of polls before Biden announced plans to run again that revealed a staggering majority of Democratic voters did not want him to be the party’s nominee. Months before the debate that changed the course of the election, I was aware of his decline. I was unsurprised by his debate performance. But I see now that this is not a story about what voters already saw. It’s a story about everyone ignoring what was in plain sight. The greatest takeaway from this interview to me was the warning of what happens when you place loyalty to a single man over your responsibility to the party, the people, who put him in power.

If you want to understand what’s really in the House’s massive budget bill—and who it hurts:

It’s no secret that the reconciliation bill passed in the House is huge. Two questions concerning it: how will the country pay for it? And who loses in this equation? There are proposed cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits. It also aims to expand Trump’s 2017 tax cut, which would largely benefit the nation’s wealthiest households. But there’s so much more in it. I thought Klein’s conversation with Catherine Rampell, an economic columnist at The Washington Post was a great entry point. (A note that Rampell, like Klein, are columnists, meaning they have takes.)

If you want to understand one of Trump’s biggest conflicts of interest:

I am not someone who understands cryptocurrency, like, at all. I was aware of Trump’s forays into crypto, that what he was doing was a conflict of interest for a sitting president. But I didn’t understand how he was making money from this, how it all worked. This tells the story of how Trump went from suspicious of crypto, to indifferent, to profiting off of it.

If you want to feel better (?) about the state of nation:

I loved the change in format in this one. Typically, conversations are between Klein and a guest. But in this episode there’s two guests—with different takes: Zack Beauchamp from Vox and New Yorker contributor Andrew Marantz. The question they debated? Whether Trump was “winning.” In other words, was he actually accomplishing what he set out to? How well was he corroding democratic norms? I thought it was a sobering debate. And one that’s important to have. We are far from the end of the American story—a democratic project that has not only seen darkness but, perhaps, knows that darkness better than any light.

music: soft breathy seventies-core meet bratty british girl pop:

I’m the person who listens to the same artist over and over again ad nauseum. This week, I’ve been big on Clairo and Flowerovlove, two very different vibes. If I have to describe Flowerovlove quickly, I’ll say she’s a Black British Sabrina Carpenter. And Clairo is, well…

If you want to mellow out on a drizzly afternoon, feeling like a girl with feathery bangs in an indie film set in 1978:

“I pull on the string that binds me to memories of / The way I loved you / I push on the door / The one I’ve ignored / The one that leads me to you / Glory of the snow / I’m waking up and now I know.”

If you want to dance + a shot of hyperfeminine cockiness + feel like you’re the main character in a Y.A Netflix romance:

“Die by my lips / Or you’ll be dismissed / And if I ask you to jump / I want you doing backflips / Above and beyond / So I know you’re the one / Don’t you dare be boring / Baby, don’t make me yawn / This is what I want / This is what I need / When I’m being mean / Kiss me, bitch.”

books: a summer romance, a reese pick and a modern classic:

One Golden Summer by Carly Fortune, after Emily Henry’s Great Big Beautiful Life (I literally can’t unhear the similarity between this and Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill now), is probably the most anticipated romance of 2025. I’m 60 pages in and, to be honest, so far it’s just okay. I’m being told to push through so I will. But from the beginning, I felt the conceit was a bit…forced? Convoluted? Let me back up: Alice is a photographer who, one summer, years ago, took a life changing photo of three teenagers in Barry’s Bay (a vacationing spot like the Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard where locals live year round). In the photo are the character’s we met in Fortune’s first novel, Every Summer After, Percy, Sam and Charlie (the last two are brothers). Turns out, when she returns to the Bay as a 30-something, Charlie, the boy from the picture, is the guy helping out around the house of Alice’s grandmother’s friend. Alice doesn’t know this for about 50 pages. But here’s my thing: that’s not enough tension to sustain those pages since the reader knows the connection all along. And what anticipation is there around…seeing someone in a photo you took? I GET what it’s trying to do, I do! But this is not a sticky premise to me. I also think we’re supposed to get a rise out of the fact that characters from Every Summer After appear in this novel but, if you’ll allow me to be an ass for a second and do some quick revision, I’d rather Alice just be part of the group in some way—is she Percy’s college friend who Percy brings to Barry’s Bay one summer and there she meets Charlie, but it’s weird now because Percy and Charlie slept together? Right now, there’s nothing keeping Charlie and Alice from just dating as soon as they meet. I don’t know where the romantic tension in this story is supposed to come from but I guess I’ll stick around, find out.¹

This is a book I know you’ve seen. A few years ago, it was everywhere. It sounded right up my alley: a messy, mature love triangle spanning years. But I just never picked it up. I think I shied away because of the hype. I may have been right to do so. I’m not far into this one either but, I’m not loving the way the past impinges on the present via short sections. I think, as of now, these interjections feel overly curated? They’re short but they also make me forget where we are in the present day timeline when we return to it (The present day narrative takes place over the course of 24 hours and time stamps like, 7:30 AM and 8:45 AM, are used to orient us. I still get lost though). I was trying to explain it to a friend: the novel should work, like a dancer who knows all the steps, the moves. But doesn’t have rhythm. That was mean, I know! I’m sorry! I think it’s also because, even though the book is in first-person, the protagonist doesn’t have a strong voice. I cannot tell you a thing about who’s telling the story by her voice, it feels more like third-person, but third-person can get away that. Regardless, I plan to keep reading!

Now HERE’S a banger for you. I’m late to it but in some ways I’m right on time. I don’t even know what Hardwick is talking about in here. It doesn’t matter. I’ve been approaching this book as I would poetry: just feeling the words, not trying to discipline them with meaning. I think Hardwick has one of the best character portraits since Fitzgerald’s description of Tom Buchanan:

"He bore a great name whose dignity extended throughout our country. The members of his family were alarmed by his pretensions. Strolling about Main Street, blond and tall and coarse as a Goth, he presented himself as a sensual aesthete, Southern, intellectual in the University of Virginia manner. His hunger for experience was not so much deep as wide. Like an actor he created spaces around himself, and when others were talking there was an arranged, dramatic silence drawn across his face…When I think back, he is wearing brown. Coming toward me. We are near the library, in the shade of old trees, near a peaceful house with a walled garden. Gothic revival, white columns in the distance. Everything washed in a harsh, hard light. He is thirty and I am eighteen. No power of mind can decipher why the difference in our ages defined everything to me, cast over every clarity a dark and sinister puzzle. There in the light, his exorbitant desire to please. Large, square teeth and something of the useless energy of a large, affectionate dog. The leap and lunge of his greeting.”

To wrap, here’s an essay on erotic decisions that wrecked me:

Erotic Decisions

1. I’m insane but as soon I posted this, I had to come back to complain in the footnotes. Here’s an exchange between the main characters I just read:

“She’s family. I did what anyone would.”

“I doubt that.” His eyes find mine, piercing as lasers, as if he can see deep inside. It’s unsettling. “I bet you’re not like anyone else, Alice Everly.”

This is the first time the characters are properly meeting…WHAT. This is the shit I’m talking about, unearned intimacy. Why does he think she’s not like anyone else??? She hasn’t done anything yet. Also, I know in romance it’s hot when the love interest says the main character’s name but this is already overdone, he’s said her name like 15 fucking times, it stands up on the page like a nail. The page before, I felt the same unearned compliment when I read this exchange:

“Boyfriend? Girlfriend? Husband? Wife? Partner?”

“Subtle,” I tell him.

“Not my forte.” When I don’t respond, he asks, “Maybe a distant cousin on your mother’s side?”

“The wedding’s next Saturday,” I say, deadpan.

Charlie looks at me strangely. His dimples are in place, but something shifts in his eyes. “You’re funny.”

I bolded the funny part he was responding to…WHAT? Even Alice says she’s not funny after this and he’s like, you are funny. It just feels weird and left-field, the dynamic is off, like, it’s not enough to show us how the love interests sees her, how are we meant to see her? If she’s not funny but this man swears she is, then there’s just this weird dissonance, like you’re trying to force us to believe this man actually feels this because you’re telling us he does instead of doing the work of rendering the actual chemistry between them. It’s like instead of just allowing the characters to have witty, barbed banter, the author turns to the camera and is like, did you see that banter, guys? You don’t have to tell onlookers when there’s heat between two people. Everyone feels it.