Inspired by Radiolab’s send off to Robert Krulwich (‘The Bobbys’) and a resolution to start using Substack in 2021, this post is a look back at some of the things I enjoyed the most in 2020.
This isn’t a best of list. (That would have required real effort and reflection!) This is just a ‘things that made a big enough impression I was able to remember them at the end of a very, very long year’ list.
Films
1917. I was plenty happy to see Parasite take ‘Best Picture’ at the 2020 Academy Awards but this was it for me.
Aniara. This 2019 film makes the list because I didn’t see it until 2020. It was a lot to watch while trapped inside an apartment during a pandemic with no end in sight.
Soul. Another relatable Pixar film for, ahem, adults coming to terms with mid-life existential angst and purpose-collapse.
The moment in Soul where Joe realizes that eating pizza had more of an impact on his happiness than achieving his life’s goal was the most relatable thing I’ve ever seen in a movie. When I performed stand-up on TV, I felt nothing and got sad. I’m glad a kids movie showed that.I also enjoyed Tenet, maybe more as a vibe than as a movie. Vivarium was weird but memorable. I love Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman and actually enjoyed WW84, but my high hopes for this film were definitely ruptured by the edit. And finally - while it seems I might be the only person on the internet with this opinion - Kajillionaire was painful.
TV
Servant on Apple+ (S1) was probably my favorite show of the entire year and good enough to redeem M. Night Shayamalan for me.
Ted Lasso on Apple+ (S1) made me want to be a better, more positive person in 2021.
Seduced on Starz - Having watched HBO’s version of the NXIVM cult story (‘The Vow’) first, I found this to be way more powerfully told.
Watchmen on HBO was a visually gorgeous, timely, well executed single season riff on Alan Moore’s original characters.
Westworld (S3) - While the third season felt a bit weaker than earlier seasons, I still love this show and was grateful to have it back.
The Queen’s Gambit: Netflix’s understandable need to prioritize scale over quality has made most of their originals feel a little hollow, or thin to me. The Queen’s Gambit was a good step in a better direction. It was also a show that benefited from being fully realized in seven episodes as opposed to having to become a series.
The Social Dilemma: For all the issues with what was essentially long-form content from the folks at the Center for Humane Technology, watching this with our kids was a useful way to precipitate a family conversation about screen addiction, attention, and commercialization.
Honorable mentions to: Tiger King (a documentary film would probably have been a better format), The Mandalorian (fun to watch with the kids and one of the best soundtracks in TV), Devs (still on my list to actually finish at some point), Raised by Wolves (might have been better as a movie?), The Outsider (probably more powerful if binged than watched week-to-week), and Perry Mason (I will see anything Matthew Rhys is in).
Finally, in the probably problematic but played a big role in my pandemic video diet anyway category: Architectural Digest’s Celebrity Home Tours and Bon Appétit’s Test Kitchen videos before everything fell apart.
Games
The Last of Us II: This was even more emotionally stressful to play than the original, but singular in its combination of story and gameplay. Definitely the game of the year for me, even if we have to play it in chunks in order to be able to get through it.
Ghost of Tsushima: A phenomenal opening sequence, a rewarding world/environment to explore, and about as violent and challenging as you want a samurai game to be. 13 Assassins, as a video game.
Speaking of assassins, I tried my hand at Assassin’s Creed Valhalla during the end of year break but found it to be less fun than Odyssey (great) and Origins (good).
Books
Remembrance of Earth’s Past, Cixin Liu: This was one of the most engrossing, exciting things I’ve read in years. The first book in the series - The Three Body Problem - is the most well known, but after finishing it I read the two sequels and the excellent, fan-made addendum immediately. Netflix turning this into a show led by Game of Thrones interpreters David Benioff and D. B. Weiss is probably the thing I’m most looking forward to in all media.
What You Do Is Who You Are, Ben Horowitz: Half the value of this book is in the title, but in a world where everyone is trying to figure out what culture means, this was a good read.
The Outlaw Ocean, Ian Urbina: This book is a good reminder for those of us who fear the world is fully explored that that 71% of the earth’s surface is actually a lawless, ungoverned expanse where terror and adventure still take place on a daily basis.
Music
The Drive By Truckers: The New Okay - coming out shortly before the election, this album really hit the spot for me.
Angelica Garcia: Cha Cha Palace - It Don’t Hinder Me is incredible
Run the Jewels: RTJ4 - stellar all the way through, but JU$T has been my most-played track of the year.
Perfume Genius: Set My Heart on Fire Immediately.
Steve Earle: Ghosts of West Virginia. Black Lung is my favorite track.
The Beths: Jump Rope Gazers. Hearing NZ rock on American radio will never not make me happy.
Kathleen Edwards: Total Freedom. Special shoutout to Options Open.
Lucinda Williams: Good Souls Better Angels.
TOOL: Fear Inoculum. 17 year old me would be disappointed if I didn’t include this although 17 year old me would be surprised and disappointed by how little time I actually gave it this year.
Special mentions to: BOTH Taylor Swift albums, Erika Wennerstrom’s Be Good To Yourself as a self care anthem, and Hiroshi Yoshimura who I first heard this year.
Podcasts
In ideas: The Lex Fridman Podcast - these can be interminably long, but have been some of the most provocative listens of the year for me. In a similar vein Making Sense is good for interesting guests (even if Sam Harris is insufferably insecure) and I also keep coming back to The Future of Life podcast.
In politics: The Josh Marshall Podcast - Josh is a go-to commentator for me and I enjoyed this podcast throughout the election. I also relied on Politics War Room for regular access to James Carville’s brain, enjoyed the Molly Jong-Fast/Rick Wilson teamup in The New Abnormal, and Battleground with David Plouffe and Steve Schmidt.
In business and marketing: Pivot was probably my most regular listen overall. A16Z was also strong.
In world affairs: Sinica and The World Next Week. I also loved The Spinoff’s podcasts as a way to stay connected to NZ news and culture.
For music, culture, and film: Sound Opinions, The Culture Gabfest, and The Rewatchables were my primary shortcuts.
Special mention to: Reply All’s episode ‘The Case of the Missing Hit’ - podcast perfection.
Articles, op-eds, talks, papers
NYT: The Great Empty - still surreal.
Mark Andreesen’s It’s time to build: Andreesen has a way of crystalizing the moment for wider audiences, as he did with ‘Software is eating the world.’ I thought this was a sequel that deserved as much focus.
Stuart Russell’s Provably Beneficial AI lecture - a companion to Russell’s book on the importance of building uncertainty into AI systems.
Anil K Seth’s The real problem: I’ve become more and more interested in the idea of ‘consciousness’ being simply a byproduct of highly connected, complex systems rather than the embodiment of souls or unique individual identities or whatever. Related: Ben Goertzel’s I’m just another neuron in the goddamn global brain
How to solve climate change and make life more awesome. Listening to this conversation at the start of 2020 was inspiring and exciting before it all went off the rails. One of the big questions to be resolved in 2021 will be whether the distraction and forced changes created by Covid-19 will help or hinder our efforts, such as they are, to avert climate disaster.
Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century. We need a lot more ‘reinventing x for the 21st century’ initiatives and the events of 2020 are good evidence that democracy is a pretty urgent place to start.
Covid-19 will massively accelerate workplace automation (with equally massive political and social consequences). I thought these were all useful to understand the issues at play: Automation and Labor in the Post-COVID World, ‘Robots Welcome to Take Over, as Pandemic Accelerates Automation,’ ‘How Many Jobs Will AI Destroy? As Many As We Tell It To’ as well as Pew’s research on the topic.
Peter Beinart’s Biden Wants America to Lead the World - It Shouldn’t.
Dean Takahashi’s It’s time to hurry up and build the Metaverse
Killer Mike’s impromptu address during protests in Atlanta.
Google Founder Sergey Brin Has a Secret Disaster Relief Squad - more direct action leadership like this in 2021 please.
To save the world, the UN is turning it into a computer simulation - who knows how real this is, but it gives me hope that technology might be able to help the UN play the bigger role we need it to in the 21st century.
Andreas Malm: “The likely future is escalating catastrophe” - the title of this piece more than anything else reinforced one of the key concepts in David Wallace Wells’s The Uninhabitable Earth that I thought was on display in 2020 and which I am most anxious about in the years ahead: cascading crises.
Digital Life 2020: An analysis of 2005-2011 Predictions - an instructive revisiting of predictions for life in 2020 at the outset of the digital revolution.
Artificial Intelligence, Values, and Alignment: With ethical AI now one of the most popular topics to argue about on Twitter, this paper is a useful exploration into the challenges in defining universal moral norms to align AI systems to.
Is the rate of scientific progress slowing down?: Typically provocative from Tyler Cowen and something that has stuck with me this year, especially after reflecting on the huge social and cultural changes created by technologies we now take for granted, like time and trains.
Milton Glaser’s Ten Things I Have Learned: useful life lessons from a giant who passed away this year.
Websites and platforms
Kottke and The Pudding are still two of the greatest sites on the internet
ESPN+ doesn’t get the attention it deserves and allowed me to watch all of New Zealand’s rugby and cricket games for ~$6 a month.
Google Shopping has gotten better and better and was very useful in helping me buy a lot of products I’d never had to think about before this year.
Recipes
Bon Appétit’s spicy chicken katsu sandwiches - these became a staple in our household this year.
Alison Roman’s caramelized shallot pasta - best with bucatini, if you can find it.
Stretch’s chicken savoy - one of the East Coast foods I miss most, from the Belmont Tavern.
Angie Mar and the Beatrice Inn’s Dry-Aged Côte de Boeuf with Blistered Blackberries, Garlic Confit and Charred Prawn Butter - this is criminally indulgent, but my favorite item on the Beatrice Inn menu and proved easy enough to version at home for my 40th birthday this year.
Bon Appetit’s Thanksgiving turkey - I will never put a turkey in the oven without dissembling it first ever again.
Moments
This year was full of terrible moments, but highlights included:
Being with (all of) my family to watch the new decade roll in in New Zealand.
Designing, building, moving into, slowly furnishing, and beginning to pay for our first house, which also reminds me how lucky I am every day.
A professionally awarded year like none other, with Agency of The Year recognition for Essence from Campaign Magazine, Ad Age, and AdExchanger.
A summer that provoked deep and protracted existential reflection on my biases and privileges.
Turning 40, which continued said deep and protracted existential reflection.
Election week, where sanity mostly prevailed, despite odds I still struggle to understand, and which delivered both the greatest advance story in political memory and unsung heroes.
Observations
These aren’t favorites - or even predictions - but given this post comes at the start of a new year, I thought I’d share a few of the things I’m most interested to watch develop in the months ahead:
Continued globalization of culture and entertainment led by Netflix’s internationalization which could be hugely positive for the world over time. (More).
China’s efforts to normalize its culture and values through entertainment and technology - possibly accelerated by platforms like TikTok and investments in genres like science fiction which help to create visions of global, China-inclusive futures - going up against efforts by western political elites to make China public enemy #1 - and at a time in which we urgently need to find global solutions to global problems.
Given the U.S.’s apparent defenselessness against conventional cyber warfare, perhaps the question is moot - America’s best defense is continuing economic relevance - but: what happens when someone really cracks quantum computing?
What will be unlocked by the application of AI to bioscience/engineering and who will the winners be, both in the marketplace and society?
Finally, how will the application of machine learning to argument and information change the way we disseminate and interpret communications, both as companies and as individuals? In 2020 we began to reckon with the potential implications of things like GPT3 and I am becoming increasingly convinced that raw information streams are dangerous places for humans to be, unprotected. The prospect of bots being used to A/B test arguments on humans until the most persuasive is found regardless of truth, fact, or reality is both terrifying - if it happens unseen and unopposed - and exciting - when done transparently to find consensus through supervised debate. The need for platforms to distinguish between humans and bots on their services has been obvious and urgent for years. Rather than relying on checkmarks as a prestige play to capture influencer engagement, maybe we’ll see platforms verify all humans (or at least all bots) in the months ahead.
That’s it. We have less than ten years to create a future sustainable and inclusive enough for everyone. Let’s hope we make substantial inroads this year.