Hello and welcome to the fifth annual recapping and curation of my favorite stuff for the year. (See also: 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.)
The obligatory disclaimer before we get into it: this is not a ‘Best Of’ 2024 list. There’s plenty of that out there and I have no business competing with it. These posts are supposed to be a way for me to keep track of the things and thoughts I spent the most time with each year. But I mean who are we kidding? I wrote this for you too. I’m glad you’re here and I hope you find it valuable.
In Film
Dune 2: This was hands down my favorite movie this year, so much so that I saw it multiple times in the theatre. Villeneuve is making the most aesthetically stunning big budget films, with incredible choices in adaptation and cast performances. Chalamet’s speech to the Fremen at the end of the film still gives me chills just thinking about it.
Interstellar: I grabbed a ticket to see this in IMAX during its 10th anniversary limited run re-release. 10.30pm on a Monday night two weeks into the release window was the best I could do given the demand. Even though I’ve seen this movie half a dozen times since 2014, watching it in IMAX with the volume turned up to 11 was magical.
Saturday Night: I’ve loved SNL ever since moving to the US. Seeing the show live in person is one of my favorite memories from my time in New York. This film dramatizes the 90 minutes leading up to the show’s very first episode in 1975 with all of the energy of being in the studio for a live production.
Wild Wild Space: I really enjoyed this documentary collaboration between Ross Kauffman and the NYT writer Ashlee Vance on the race to create and own the space economy, not least for the attention it gives New Zealander and Rocket Lab CEO Sir Peter Beck.
Winning is Everything, Stupid: James Carville is my personal saint and has been a motivating force throughout my professional career. 30+ years after The War Room was released, this documentary captures what remains special about James (and Mary) with lessons that I hope will animate everyone who cares about making the world a better place through the next four years and into the future.
TV/Video
Pantheon (AMC/Netflix): Probably the show I enjoyed and thought about the most this year. Originally released on AMC+ but spent the last year or so in limbo before having the first of its two seasons picked up by Netflix who I hope will quickly add the second. We desperately need more popular entertainment to help people grapple with the new kinds of issues coming our way and this is one of the best explorations of the potential for AGI and society to collide in unpredictable ways I’ve come across. In the words of one of the industry’s best thinkers on AI policy “There's more alpha in watching both seasons of Pantheon than in reading most recent reports about AI on Twitter.”
3 Body Problem (also Netflix): This is the show I was most eagerly anticipating in 2024 and given the challenge of adapting the subject material for a mass audience, Netflix did not disappoint. The first season is really just an appetizer for a much, much bigger story to be told across Seasons 2 and 3, so there is even better stuff to come. We just need to wait until 2026.
Hacks (Max): We binged all three seasons of this show after the recommendations and awards kept piling up. Some of the best comedy writing on TV with a ton of substance without getting preachy or taking itself too seriously. Do yourself a favor.
Feud: Capote vs the Swans (FX): I thought this treatment of a period in Truman Capote’s life I was unfamiliar with was incredibly fun and well done, with writing and performances that lived up to the characters.
Monsieur Spade (AMC/Netflix): Similar to Pantheon, this is an AMC+ show re-homed on Netflix in which Clive Owen plays a retired Sam Spade (private detective of The Maltese Falcon fame) living in the south of France. I found the dialog - and Owen’s delivery a bit distracting and the plot overly complex, but the quality of production and cinematography throughout make this worth watching.
A Thousand Suns: This is a gorgeous six mini-episode run of science fiction stories available on YouTube. Each episode explores a different potential future, with more on the way.
Blood of Zeus (Netflix): Netflix has two seasons of this show, which is also my second animated recommendation this year. All your favorite Greek characters and myths told from the perspective of - you guessed it - a son of Zeus.
Shoutouts: Apollo 13: Survival, Terminator Zero (found a way to make the Terminator genre interesting again), The Bear S3 (lots of hate for the pacing this season but I actually liked some of its more vibey episodes), Only Murders in the Building S4 (this should be getting old by now but they keep finding ways to make it fun), The 2024 DNC (incredible feats of production despite the ultimate outcome), Slow Horses S4 (getting better each season), The Penguin (Batman meets the Sopranos), Fallout (my preferred bunker show this year), Tales from the Loop (from 2020 but still feels fresh). Also, next up in my queue: Rogue Heroes, the Century of the Self, and Flow.
Books
I got through a decent amount this year thanks to the magic of audio books. Ultimately I find marking up a physical book much better for learning and retention, but audio has been a great way to crunch through the more topical stuff. In any case, here’s what stood out:
Deep Utopia, Life and Meaning in a Solved World, Nick Bostrom: Across all formats and genres, I found this to be the most important piece of content I spent time with this year and - apologies in advance - I won’t stop talking about it. As with Superintelligence, Bostrom doesn’t set out to answer the questions he poses but defines the next big problemscape: how we’ll create meaning in a world where human labor and creativity are no longer necessary. I hope that in time this book will become as important to preparing for an AI-enabled future as Superintelligence was to catalyzing AI safety initiatives.
Not Born Yesterday, Hugo Mercier: I’d recommend this to anyone working in communications or thinking about the topics of mis- and disinformation. (There’s a great 80,000 Hours interview with the author if you want a preview.) While on balance I still expect machines to achieve superhuman persuasion capabilities at some point (making the internet and social media a dangerous place for unmediated human engagement), Mercier does a good job setting out the challenges with persuading people of pretty much anything. I found his exploration on the difference between intuitive and reflective beliefs extremely valuable in understanding why people’s beliefs and behavior can vary so broadly.
Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will, Robert Sapolsky: This book made a convincing case to me for the absence of free will without triggering an existential crisis. The author doesn’t go there, but it’s interesting to think about how his arguments and the concept of determinism generally might apply to machine intelligence in time as well.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes: Someone recommended this book in a Twitter thread of the most surprising things they’d read in their lives and it did not disappoint. The neuroscience in the book seems to have been swamped by a better understanding of the brain over the last quarter century, but Jaynes’ observations on the absence of the self in historical writing and his hypothesis about its development being catalyzed by writing, cultural exchange, and extreme circumstances is one of the most fascinating things I’ve read in years. A foundational text for the Westworld TV series, it goes without saying it’s interesting to think about how Jaynes’ theories might be applied to sparking machine consciousness. More in this review.
Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari: As with his previous books, about half of this is timely and useful and half of it is duplicative with his previous writing. The book does provide an interesting framework for thinking about our current and future information landscape and reinforces (in my mind at least) how important it will be to mediate information in an ecosystem weaponized by machines. Harari’s profiling of the witch trials that followed the invention of the printing press and an ominous reference to the political instability that historically follows periods of transition from work to less work probably left a bigger impression on me than the book’s core thesis.
Five Decembers, James Kestrel: A Twitter “dad book” recommendation which I absolutely loved. Detective Noir set in Hawaii during WWII which would make a perfect gritty film or HBO series.
Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir: I listened to this follow up novel from the guy who wrote The Martian as an audio book. Similarly corny at times, and written to be made into the film it will be in 2026 (helmed by Ryan Gosling). Recommended if you liked The Martian and appreciate stories about guys “sciencing the shit out of things” to stay alive in space but want the added degree of complexity that comes with adding aliens to the mix.
Honorable mentions to We Are Agora (which I haven’t finished yet but builds on the idea that we’re The Borg), After 1177, Left Adrift, Co-intelligence, The Edge of Sentience by Jonathan Birch which is available as a PDF and Ken Liu’s Seven Birthdays.
Music
Bad Moves: Wearing out the Refrain was my favorite album this year and made me want to move back to DC and time travel to my twenties. Fave tracks: Hallelujah and I Know I Know.
Eddie Vedder’s Save it for Later was the single with the most plays for me in 2024 Its existence alone is enough to justify Season 3 of The Bear, where it’s featured.
Ber: I’m in love with Whatever Forever from this emerging Minnesotan artist.
Amyl and the Sniffers’ Cartoon Darkness features two of my favorite tracks this year: Me and the Girls and You Should Not Be Doing That
Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers: (oh my god, a second Australian band.) Please Me brings them together with the Linda Lindas.
The Chills: I was excited to discover a new single this year from the pride of New Zealand music: If this World was Made for Me.
Corb Lund’s El Viejo album is stacked with new Corb heaters. I found Out on a Win particularly resonant, along with It Takes Practice and When the Game gets Hot.
Charley Crockett: $10 Cowboy is all good vibes. I was particularly fond of Good at Losing.
Dehd: Poetry is indie rock bliss. Throw on Dog Days and have fun.
Additional shouts to Chappell Roan’s Hot to Go, Glass Animals’ I Love You So Fucking Much, Old Man Luedecke’s My Status is the Baddest, Jeremy Messersmith’s Life in Minneapolis, Cartwright’s You Me and the Sea, and this killer loop from a key scene in Pantheon. You can find a playlist of all my favorite tracks this year here.
Podcasts
Audiobooks ate into a chunk of my listening this year but podcasts still made up a plurality of my audio consumption.
In AI: The Artificial Intelligence Show became my go to listen as a weekly recap of major AI developments relevant to business and marketing more broadly. Highly recommended as a cheat code for staying up to date with what’s happening. Also recommended in the genre: Cognitive Revolution and Machine Learning Street Talk.
In Ideas more broadly: Dwarkesh (probably my favorite show overall), the Future of Life Institute podcast, the Foresight Institute podcast, and the Macroscience Podcast.
In History: Dan Carlin finally began his Alexander series. Fall of Civilizations, the History of Persia, and Bart Erhman’s Misquoting Jesus.
In Business: The previously mentioned AI Show has replaced Pivot as my business news podcast this year. Other staples now include Semafor’s Mixed Signals and Acquired.
In Politics and World News: The Bulwark and The Next Level podcasts, the Ezra Klein Show, Politics War Room, Politx, and The World Next Week.
In Sports and Culture: The BYC Podcast, the Slate Culture Gabfest, The Watch, Sound Opinions.
Special shoutouts to Future of Life Institute’s interview with Anton Korinek on the economics of automation and AI, 80,000 Hours episodes with Carl Shulman on AGI and the economy and society, Jonathan Birch on animal sentience, and Sihao Huang on China’s AI capabilities, Dwarkesh’s interviews with Gwern and Leopold Aschenbrenner, the Bulwark's post-election breakdown and Ezra Klein’s institutional reality check, Lulu Cheng Meservey on transforming company narrative, Andrej Karpathy’s NotebookLM History of Mysteries podcast (I really want to play around with my own version of this in 2025), and Lenny Ratchitsky’s interview with Alex Komoroske.
Articles, Op-Eds, Talks, Papers
On the economic impact of AI: Anton Korinek’s Scenario Planning for an AGI Future, Economic Policy Challenges for the Age of AI, and collaboration with Jai Vipra on Concentrating Intelligence, this essay on capital, AGI, and human ambition, Seb Krier’s posts on AGI labor disruption and the lack of planning for a smooth economic transition. Roon on the future of work and the coming meaning crisis, Stephen Wolfram’s “Will AIs Take All Our Jobs and End Human History - or Not?” Adjacently related: This NYT story on the FIRE movement and BI on millennials embracing retiree lifestyles.
On AI more broadly: The conversation definers this year were Sam Altman’s heralding of the Intelligence Age, Dario Amodei’s Machines of Loving Grace, Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness, and A Narrow Path. Also: The Compendium from Connor Leahy and co. Elon University continued to do the most valuable research in the field with their canvassing of experts on the future impact of AI. In the realm of AI policy, I found Seb Krier’s Positive-Sum Symbiosis and Miles Brundage’s Time’s Up for AI Policy valuable and the US House Task Force’s Report on AI was directionally important.
On how the future’s shaping up: Ilya Sutskever’s NeurIPS presentation. Ethan Mollick’s scene setting early in the year on where things are going with AI. Sakana’s work on automating science and Aidan Toner-Rodgers paper on AI, scientific discovery, and product innovation. Nick Bostrom indulged one of my priors for building The Culture. More practically, DeepMind published a paper on the ethics of AI agents which will dominate the agenda next year and I also enjoyed this very cool and important paper on generative agent simulations of 1,000 people, an approach will shape the future of market research. Also worth reading: Gavin Leech’s summaries of 2024 breakthroughs and speculative breakthroughs.
On intelligence and consciousness: Richard Ngo’s hypothesis on the nature of collective intelligence and Michael Levin and Patrick McMillen’s Collective Intelligence Across Scales and Substrates paper. Adam Mastroianni wrote about the differences between people and jukeboxes and Robert Long et al published a definitive piece on Taking AI Welfare Seriously. (Of course, it would be nice if we could address the colossal moral debt we owe to animal welfare at some point - I suspect this may become more socially pressing as organizations like the Earth Species Project move us closer to decoding animal language).
In communications and information science: Joel Flynn and Karthik Sastry’s Macroeconomics of Narratives, Semafor’s interview with the Trump campaign’s Brian Hughes and Alex Bruesewitz about their comms strategy. This multi author paper tracking the increasing persuasiveness of LLMs, HAI’s policy brief on the the issue of AI-generated propaganda and DeepMind’s paper suggesting approaches to mitigate the danger of persuasion AIs. Julia Alexander’s post speculating on social media collapse and the trend toward small group sharing (which pairs well with this post). This multi author paper on the Agora Protocol, “a scalable communication protocol for networks of LLMs.” In PR all you probably need to read is Lulu Cheng Meservey’s Go Direct manifesto, her Twitter feed generally, and this obvious but timely post on the importance of synchronizing internal and external narratives. Kyle Chayka’s new rules of media were good and I also found Bo Seo’s RISA framework for arguments valuable.
On strategy and frameworks for thinking: This archive of John Boyd presentations, Alex Komoroske’s live doc of thoughts and observations, Cormac Herley’s paper on Nigerian scam strategy, and a fun flowchart for increasing agency.
On status: This post on the importance of status game fragmentation to social cohesion and Lawrence Yeo on status and the illusion of progress.
In business: Matt Levine’s newsletter continues to be indispensable. Foundation Capital’s post on Service as Software and the potential of agents. Lux’s Q1, Q2, and Q3 reports and McKinsey on the next big arenas of competition. And this piece on Delta’s unheralded but successful positioning strategy.
I also enjoyed The Eleven Laws of Showrunning, Richard Ngo’s writing at Narrative Ark, Gwern’s essays, this Daniel Chambliss paper on the mundanity of excellence, the allegory of the whispering earring, Facebook’s little red book, as well as John Cena on purpose and Neil Hughes on the meaning of life.
Recipes
Turns out 2024 was a pretty light year for trying new recipes but two new hits came from Meredith Hayden: her Sake Soy Marinated Fried Chicken and Ziti Alla Zozzona. This deconstructed Italian sub salad was also a mainstay over the summer and we tried two of the NYT’s new Thanksgiving pies which will definitely be repeated: Vaughn Vreeland’s cranberry citrus meringue and butterscotch banana cream.
Websites and Platforms
I spun up a Bluesky account this year like everyone else but am generally underwhelmed and Twitter/X continued to be the primary way I followed both the election and developments in AI.
Even though Claude seems to retain an edge for creative writing, ChatGPT continued to be my primary LLM, even more so now with the application of Eigenbot’s custom instructions and advanced voice mode. With that said, NotebookLM is the product I’ve found most useful in focused application and I’m excited to use it even more in 2025. At work, it’s been great to see WPP’s continued integration of the major tools into WPP Open.
Suno made waves in our household in the first half of the year and while our usage dropped off precipitously, it’s good to see them continuing to move the product forward. On the agent front, Replit, Lindy, Agent.AI, and Howie all look valuable and I’m excited to experiment with them. I’m also excited to see how Fashion VDM evolves and am keen to play around with both Compendium and WebSim after endorsements from Alex Komoroske.
Beyond AI and social media, public.work is beautiful.
Products and Purchases
Outside of a basement renovation we were forced into by heavy rainfall this spring, my largest investment this year was in the Wondering Forward coaching program. I found this personally and professionally valuable and highly recommend it to anyone grappling with burnout, identity, and purpose.
Other products I discovered this year include Sam Sa’house’s Smokey J hot sauce and Molly Baz’s Ayoh mayo, Quince generally, these sweet beer glasses from Kinto, Protocol skincare (thank you Instagram), and LeStrange’s 24 Trousers. I discovered how good Cool Whip can be and am now loafer pilled after buying my first pair of Birks. My favorite purchase of the year, however, is probably this Specht & Stone replica, which I picked up as a gym and swim watch. Dupe culture is normal now and it didn’t take long for me to stop worrying and love wearing what would be basically impossible to procure even if I had the money.
Highlights/Milestones
I’ve been inconsistent about including personal highlights in previous posts, but despite there being a lot to dislike about 2024, several things stood out as worthy of commemoration:
Starting the year in New Zealand after spending my first Christmas at home since 2002.
Paying a visit to the White House with William and Penelope in June, including the overwhelmingly surreal experience of making it inside the Oval Office. I don’t really have words to describe how meaningful it was to share an experience with my kids that so few people ever have, even after spending entire careers working in Washington.
I made it to 44, a milestone that’s been hanging over me since my dad passed away at the same age 25 years ago. I guess 45 is the really big one now, so check back next year.
Indulging in the boy math of digging out and landscaping our back yard myself, moving tons of rock, gravel, and sod via wheelbarrow without managing to injure myself or others, followed by biting off a basement renovation.
In December, IPG announced it was selling Huge. At the time, this felt like the closing chapter in a story I helped write but, ironically, given Omnicom/IPG’s now pending merger, it may actually give the brand a chance at continued survival.
Finally, this is a year in which the time we spent together as a family felt especially meaningful. With Penelope and William edging closer to their university eras, every birthday and holiday together has been extra special. Watching the older kids forge their own bonds with Madeline, who is now three, and Madeline’s own transformation from a toddler into a confident, caring, and joyful personality in her own right has been intensely gratifying.
Final Thoughts and Observations
Looking back, 2024 feels like the year we all finally decoupled ourselves from the 20th Century, which I suppose is fitting as we head into the second quarter of the 21st. For me, this was a year of lasts and firsts, perhaps best exemplified by the US election and the step change we saw in technological acceleration in AI and beyond.
Everyone seems to have their own personal critique to explain the Democratic failure in the Presidential election and their own pet prescription for the path forward. I personally think debates over whether Democrats ran “too left” or “too right” are red herrings (the spectrum itself no longer useful in understanding modern politics). The party’s fate was first sealed when there was no change at the top of the ticket and then again when the campaign rolled the die on defending the status quo instead of giving voters an alternative vision for change.
The electoral college margin is belied by how close Democrats actually came to hanging on: just 232,000 votes short across 3 states according to my math. But if you’re going to lose you might as well learn something important in the process and it feels like we just watched the last 20th Century presidential campaign play itself out. Even the most sophisticated traditional campaign - with perfectly produced events and an unhinged SMS fundraising strategy - is no longer enough to get you over the line if your competition has fully embraced the fragmented media landscape that defines today’s reality and you haven’t.
That will surely resolve itself, and there are two more structurally significant issues for Democrats to address in the coming months: the modernization of their agenda and the actualization of the party in people’s lives beyond elections.
In 2016, I wrote about the need to rethink the core issues in our politics and the inherent opportunity for both parties in rebuilding their issue agendas around technology and the politics of the future. It was fascinating in this election to watch striking dockworkers hoisting “machines don’t feed families” signs as port automation got a brief turn in the spotlight. These are the kinds of issues that will define the future of our politics and while it looks like Republicans are currently best positioned to become ‘the technology party’ in the US, this only increases the urgency for Democrats to put a people-centric vision for technology at the heart of their agenda. With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence almost upon us, there’s no time like right now to start a conversation about how we want the next 250 years to play out.
In the wake of the election, Jamelle Bouie pointed out the absence of practical ways for people to get involved in Democratic politics outside of voting, donating, and volunteering in election years. Filling this gap with clubs, chapters, and action groups that rally resources to directly address problems outside of the legislative process and that are as easy to participate in as a church or sports league would seem to me to present very real, practical avenues to make Democrats far more relevant to people’s lives - and aid their electoral fortunes.
In any case, while politics this year felt like the last gasp of a fading era, the pace of change in technology was exhilarating.
Even after a year of capability jostling and one upmanship from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, OpenAI still managed to astound with their end of year preview of an o3 reasoning model that really does appear to be generally capable. 2025 will no doubt see the introduction and adoption of intelligent agents, and from there artificial labor and the agent economy, followed at some point by automated R&D and intelligent organizations with limited, and eventually no employees at all.
It’s hard to understate the chaos this transition will unspool once it begins to scale or its knock on effects for every part of the economy and society. Sure, some people will continue to prefer human crafted products and services and it’s very possible we’ll see new kinds of currently unimagined jobs to keep a portion of the population employed. It seems less likely to me that new kinds of jobs - and the identities that come with them - will be available to the people displaced by the first waves of agentification, however. The globalization and offshoring displacement of the 90s and 00s seems like the appropriate analogy at a much smaller scale: policies that gave us the incredibly cheap TVs we wanted were followed by severe social and political realignment and instability that we failed to prepare for and are grappling with today.
Beyond the developments in LLMs, SpaceX’s accomplishments with its Starship program, DeepMind’s ongoing application of AI to biology, and Google’s announcement of Willow, its quantum chip, were all stunning in 2024 and seem to promise even greater acceleration to the already rapid pace of change in the year ahead.
All of this has the potential to create the greatest coordination challenge we’ve ever collectively faced - and with the right urgency and ambition the potential to transform the human experience into something entirely new and wonderful. Perhaps in the future, companies will function as algorithms and systems that produce goods and services directly for people’s benefit or simply contribute to the growth of the global economy to fill new kinds of sovereign wealth funds that enable a post-work world. But while this post from Jeff Ladish makes me hopeful that a secret benign conspiracy exists among technical pioneers to build our own version of Iain M. Banks’ The Culture, the bigger takeaway is that we desperately need to fill the socio-technological vision vacuum in our politics and culture more broadly.
The acceleration in technology has already begun to significantly outrun the anachronistic nature of our current institutions and political discourse. In 2025, I suspect we’re about to see an attempt from an administration mainlining Silicon Valley accelerationism to catch them up. We will all have a stake in how it plays out. Back in 2020, I estimated we had just 10 years to decide what kind of future we wanted to live in. Today, that deadline feels more urgent than ever.
Finally, as an invested New Zealand watcher, from afar it seems to have been a somewhat quiet year back home. The exception to this has been the incredible growth and development of Rocket Lab - SpaceX’s closest competitor and a huge credit to New Zealand’s concept of itself as a country of innovators. I’ve previously written about my hope for New Zealand to invent itself as a laboratory for the future, so I was very pleased to see The Atlantic’s praise for NZ’s approach to addressing its housing crisis and Bloomberg’s coverage of its solution to public debt, both as examples for other countries to follow. AI is of course another huge opportunity to forge the new economic models countries will need to employ in a world shaped by a select few superpowers and companies with the resources define the agenda. While it was great to see NZ make it onto Stanford’s debut AI Vibrancy Index, given the talent we’ve contributed to the industry in the shape of folks like Shane Legg and Richard Ngo I hope the government will invest as much as possible in funding national champions in the field to provide homegrown talent with opportunities to contribute.
That’s all I really have to say after another crazy year except thank you for reading and I wish you and yours the best for what I expect will be an even crazier 2025.