Last week, on a long flight to Arizona for work, I watched Voicemails for Isabelle, a Netflix movie that was lurking in its “Top Ten in the U.S.” list.

Here’s the official summary: “She’s got a thankless job, a messy dating life and no clue her TMI voicemails to her late sister are popping up on a stranger’s phone — and he’s smitten.”

While the quirky premise is new, everything else in this romantic comedy is formulaic, predictable, and assembled from a scriptwriter’s template. Plus, there’s a cringeworthy, laughably bad subplot about the main character Jill’s culinary career and a food truck side story. By almost every measure, this movie should not work. At least not on me.

Instead, I found myself crying, not once but twice, during Voicemails for Isabelle. I tried to hide it from the person next to me in Seat 8E, but I think she spotted me wiping tears from my eyes.

Here’s the trailer (and yes, as I have noted here in the past, it reveals way too much)

Despite the film’s manipulative formula, I was entertained and moved. I gave it 3.5 out of 5 on Letterboxd. Zoey Deutch gives a great performance — she’s charming, funny, and likable in the lead role. But the bigger question: Why did it hit me quite so hard?

As it turns out, I’m not alone. Evidently, finding movies more intense on a plane is a familiar experience.

There’s no scientific or academic consensus that flying itself makes people cry more. There are limited findings that suggest that altitude and oxygen levels might trigger “mild hypoxia” that could affect passenger cognitive and emotional states.

But the most likely explanation is psychological: stress, fatigue, reduced control, separation from home, and hours without the usual distractions can create a mindset where stories land differently.

In a 2018 Time article, psychologist Jodi De Luca described the phenomenon: “We have little control over our environment while we are traveling by plane… Although we may not be consciously aware of our emotional vulnerability, our emotional brain is working overtime.”

Flying, for many of us, can be an emotional experience, if only on a subconscious level. You’re leaving home, often headed to a stressful meeting or a significant personal event, sealed inside a metal tube hurtling through the sky at 500 miles an hour, 32,000 feet above the ground. You don’t control the altitude or speed, and you really don’t even know where you are unless you’re watching the flight tracker. If you think about it too long, it’s a genuinely terrifying way to spend a few hours. So instead, we nap, or distract ourselves with games, books, or movies.

I’m still a big believer in film as an experience to enjoy on a big screen with a crowd. It’s one of my favorite things to do. The second best option is at home on a big HDTV with surround sound.

But sometimes film watching is small, personal, and intimate. And when you’re in a vulnerable state, it can hit harder and deeper.

Watching a movie from seat 28D on a plane is far from the ideal film experience. It’s Nolan and Scorsese’s nightmare scenario. And yet, sometimes, if you’re open to it, there’s no better place to let down your guard and feel a movie in your heart.

[Spoiler alert: this post may spoil the Star Wars trilogy, Harry Potter, The Matrix, and Andor. To be fair: you’ve had 50 years to catch up, so it’s kinda on you.]

Many of our most popular books and films are filled with singular heroes, the “chosen ones.” Luke Skywalker. Harry Potter. Neo. Invariably, the story features a hero who goes from obscurity and everyday life as a single person to overthrowing a corrupt, brutal, and oppressive regime.

Luke Skywalker destroys the Death Star and saves the galaxy from the Empire. Neo helps stop the machines and frees humanity from the Matrix. Harry doesn’t even know he’s a wizard until he’s 11; then he becomes the most important one of all time, saving the world from Voldemort’s cruel reign.

I love all these stories. They work beautifully because they follow a classic narrative arc: the call to action of a reluctant hero, an older mentor who helps them realize their potential, trials and challenges that shape and mold them, and, ultimately, the hero unlocking their full potential and using it to defeat an overwhelming enemy.

Billions of dollars have been made from this formula and these stories.

Like many in my generation, Star Wars shaped my worldview. And yet, today in the real world, when we witness horrible things happening around us, when a government is cruel and punitive, brutal and unjust, it seems clear that there is no “chosen one” who can save us.

Luke isn’t coming through that door.

All of this keeps me coming back going back to Andor. More than any of the epic stories named above, it’s the right story for America today. More people should have seen it. If as many people saw Andor as watched The Masked Singer, we might be a far better nation today.

One of the best shows of the last decade, Andor deserves all the praise. It’s easily one of the smartest, best-acted, and most thoughtful series on television this century. And while it’s set in the well-known Star Wars universe in the years leading up to the original film, it conveys a very different message. It feels much more like where we are today.

And yet, just a month ago, a new Star Wars film — The Mandalorian & Grogu — arrived in theaters, offering a stark contrast: action and nostalgia, without the weight or depth that Andor brought to the screen. It bombed, and not just because it’s a shallow, forgettable action movie spun off from a so-so Disney+ show, but also because it had nothing to say.

Andor has no lightsabers, space wizards, floating rocks, Jedi mind tricks, or lightning fingers. Just ordinary people and the messy, complicated work of bringing groups together to oppose a repressive government.

Despite its name, Andor is about much more than its main character. Cassian Andor may be the through line of the story, but the show demonstrates how a rebellion starts from scattered fragments. Cassian is one of many heroes of the Rebellion who sacrifice everything so that others can be free. Andor features a range of characters who all play pivotal roles in the story, but don’t make it to the end to witness the fall of the Empire.

None of them has extraordinary powers or abilities. There’s no prophecy about them. There’s no anticipation that they are the fulfillment of some ancient destiny. They’re just people who are fed up and refuse to stand by and do nothing.

Marva’s speech from the end of Season 1 feels eerily well suited to America 2026. Also, if you knock over my droid, I’m punching you in the face.

Andor is a Star Wars story for our times. It shows how easy it is for people to look away from corruption, how readily they want to believe in institutions, and how the media and communications can warp how the public understands the world. It reveals how readily people will ignore injustice happening to some people, even when it’s just out of sight. Willing blindness is easy.

The world that George Lucas first created was always inspired by resistance. In 2005, he told the Chicago Tribune:

“It was really about the Vietnam War, and that was the period where Nixon was trying to run for a second term, which got me to thinking historically about how do democracies get turned into dictatorships? Because the democracies aren’t overthrown; they’re given away.”

Even though the original Star Wars trilogy centered on a “special” hero with the power of the Force, that broader inspiration of rebellion and revolution was deep in its DNA. It wasn’t just a story about Luke and Darth fighting with light sabers; it was about the fall of democracy and the struggle to reclaim it.

Andor wasn’t created as a direct response to Trump, but it doesn’t feel accidental that a show created in 2018 and completed in 2025 has so much to say about authoritarianism, institutional failure, and systemic cruelty.

The problem with Luke, Neo, and Harry is that everything hinges on them, and ultimately, they alone are the key to change. Our history doesn’t look like that. Over the years, it’s become a bit too easy for Americans to look back at Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks and credit them for the Civil Rights movement. In reality, beating back Jim Crow, institutionalized segregation, and restoring voting rights took thousands of individuals, people who marched, boycotted, organized, protested, and lobbied for change. Most didn’t make the history books or the documentaries. Many didn’t live to see the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, or the election of Barack Obama. But they helped build the path to make it all happen.

Luke, Neo, and Harry taught generations to wait for a hero. Andor knows better. There’s no one coming through that door — there’s only us, and we’re the ones who have to walk through it.

It’s hard to overstate how big film critics Siskel and Ebert were in the 1980s and 90s. Starting with the PBS show Sneak Previews in the late 1970s, the show evolved into the nationally syndicated program At the Movies. Unlike the erudite, stuffy film critics at the New Yorker or the New York Times, these were two smart, thoughtful Chicago guys talking about movies for five or six minutes each, then delivering their trademark thumbs up or thumbs-down at the end.

Sometimes they agreed, but it was better when they didn’t, and their arguments over a new release felt real and entertaining. Siskel and Ebert were celebrities: they appeared on The Tonight Show and David Letterman, as well as on Sesame Street, The Simpsons, and Saturday Night Live. It was a big deal to get “Two Thumbs Up” from Siskel and Ebert. That phrase would lead to full-page newspaper ads for a movie hoping for box-office success.

I watched the late Siskel and Ebert almost every week, and they’re one of the reasons I love movies today. But putting sentimentality aside, we don’t need more Siskels or Eberts.

Along with shoulder pads, Members Only jackets, and Day-Glo oversized sweatshirts, the era of Siskel and Ebert is long gone. And we’re better for it.

The decline of American newspapers and local media has been terrible for the public good — the loss of local reporting, long-form journalism, and investigative reporting makes us all less informed and fuels disinformation. But the near extinction of the professional film critic isn’t one of those losses. In the 1990s, U.S. daily newspapers routinely staffed one or even two film critics. Last year, only 25 newspapers had full-time film reviewers. Today, neither Siskel’s Chicago Tribune nor Ebert’s Chicago Sun-Times employs a film critic.

I’m sympathetic to the writers and reviewers who lost their jobs, but the shift of film culture and criticism from newspapers and magazines to a much broader range of voices has been a net positive.

Film reviewers served an important function in the last century: they helped audiences decide whether a movie was worth their time and money. When it can cost a family more than $100 to go to the movies in 2026, that role still matters. The difference is that back then, you only had a few places to get that answer: word of mouth or professional reviewers. Those were the only options in the pre-internet, pre-social-media era.

Today, there’s a beautiful revolution in film analysis and criticism. The Internet has opened the door to so many more perspectives and takes on film and television. And unlike the roster of traditional newspaper and magazine film critics, which was overwhelmingly white and male, we now have a broader range of perspectives and backgrounds.

Letterboxd, a film-lovers’ app and online community, has grown to more than 28 million users in over 190 countries as of April 2026. Letterboxd users rate and review movies, while interacting with other film fans. They are encouraged to highlight their “top four” films — a nearly impossible task, but also a fascinating profile of what they love. In 2024, Letterboxd hosted more than 143 million reviews and nearly 900 million logged films.

If you want to know more about a recent release, there are thousands of Letterboxd users to provide reviews, thoughts, and ratings the day it opens.

And Letterboxd is just one part of the picture.

We have creators of all ages and backgrounds producing thoughtful, smart, entertaining film and TV content across TikTok, YouTube, Substack, podcasts, and many other channels. There are many film lovers who turned small YouTube audiences into full-time careers as content creators.

Consider the rise of Juju Green, better known on TikTok as “Straw Hat Goofy.” Green has more than 3.6 million TikTok followers, having gone from a part-time film reviewer on YouTube who did deep dives into Pixar and Marvel movies to a full-time content creator who now regularly attends premieres and interviews leading actors. He was able to rise on his own through the same channels we all share. No one from the LA Times or KABC hired him — he created the opportunity for himself by producing engaging, entertaining media on TikTok and YouTube and building an audience over time.

And many of these YouTubers and TikTokers go beyond what newspaper reviewers did — they don’t just review films; they spotlight overlooked gems and share lists of lesser-known movies worth watching on streaming channels. One of my favorites on TikTok is self-described “film junkie” Bryce Vaughn, who often shares collections of hidden gems, like this:

@da_narratorTop 10 (ORIGINAL) Most Mindblowing Movies On Netflix Part 2

Tiktok failed to load.

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TikTok creators like Bryce do more than give thumbs-up or thumbs-down to the latest major releases; they help reveal smaller, forgotten, or overlooked movies. Podcasters and TikTok introduced me to some of the best films I’ve seen in recent years — Bob Trevino Likes It, Ghostlight, and Flow. All three were under-the-radar releases that had little to no marketing. The online film community kept me from missing out.

Last week, I mentioned The Filmcast, one of my favorite podcasts. Another essential podcast is House of R, featuring Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin, who bring impeccable geek credentials to their film and movie deep dives, along with female perspectives that are often crowded out online. These are just two of hundreds of movie podcasts where enthusiasts discuss and break down new films. Often, as on the old Siskel and Ebert shows, you get two people debating the merits of a new release. These shows don’t need a network or syndication: just a microphone and a laptop to reach unlimited audiences. And while the quality of these podcasts may vary widely, we’re blessed with a wealth of perspectives.

Siskel and Ebert might give a movie six minutes. On podcasts and YouTube today, film lovers often spend hours diving deep into a movie’s themes and details. There are entire long-form videos that explore the endings of films, unraveling symbols, implications, and unanswered questions.

Last weekend I saw Backrooms, a slow, creepy, mind-bending film. As I tried to understand what I’d just watched, there were not only reviews but also a wealth of content from other film fans who’d taken the time to dive deep into this intriguing new movie. Lucas Blue, a brilliant YouTube creator, broke down the movie’s themes, narratives, and hidden details in a 37-minute video essay. It’s smart, insightful, well-produced, and unlike anything we could have had 30 years ago.

Naturally, there are downsides to this shift from institutional film critics to legions of independent reviewers. Meta-review sites like Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and IMDb, like Letterboxd, have millions of contributors. But Rotten Tomatoes in particular has an ugly side, where racists, sexists, and other bad actors routinely review-bomb films they want to harm. They typically target any Star Wars, Disney, or Marvel movie or show with a woman or a person of color in a leading role, like The Last Jedi, Captain Marvel, or the 2023 Little Mermaid remake. You can also find plenty of toxic videos on YouTube and TikTok that delve into the worst kinds of racist, misogynist, and right-wing perspectives.

Yes, as awful as that is, I’m not sure how different it is from the old world of film reviewers. There have always been film reviewers with their own grudges, biases, and ideological blind spots. The internet didn’t invent bias in film criticism. It simply allowed more to participate and let them to crank up the volume.

When it comes to film and TV reviews, we’re in a far better place than we ever were. Despite the small vocal minority of trolls and bad actors, we have more voices, perspectives, expertise, analysis, and access than at any point in pop culture history.

As much as I loved Siskel and Ebert, what we have today is far better.

Thumbs up.

Jones and Adam have joined me on hundreds of walks around my neighborhood. Dave, Jeff, and Devindra drove with me on late-night trips to Washington, D.C. and Wrightsville Beach. They’ve been with me through job changes, the isolation of the pandemic, and the slow decline and passing of my dog, Ace.

We’ve been through so much together, and yet they have no idea who I am.

I’ve never met Jeff, Dave, or Devindra, the hosts of the Filmcast, which I’ve listened to for over a decade. If I passed them on the street, they wouldn’t know me. It’s nearly the same for Jones Angell and Adam Lucas of the Carolina Insider Podcast, which I’ve followed to since 2018. They don’t know me either.

Carolina Insider primarily covers UNC sports, but it’s quirky and odd, with “Story Time” and “How Do You Justify That?!?” segments. Adam and Jones also have strong opinions on the proper flavor of green Skittles, the “secret” Chick-fil-A menu, and the best way to get rid of flies. It feels less like a sports podcast and more like catching up with a couple of familiar buddies once or twice a week. Similarly, while the Filmcast focuses recent movies, what sets it apart is the frequent, lighthearted back-and-forth banter about everything from theater popcorn size and pricing complaints to limericks about recent releases to tactics for smuggling sandwiches or burritos into movie theaters. Both shows have a core topic, but the personalities and the interactions between the hosts make them different from dozens of shows on the same topics.

These two shows are among half a dozen podcasts I’ve listened to for years, whose hosts have become oddly familiar. After hours and hours in my ears and my head, you tend to feel like you know them more than you actually do.

Each show publishes once a week, sometimes more often than that. I’ve listened to Carolina Insider for at least 500 to 600 hours over the past eight years — more time than I’ve spent with my brother in Los Angeles or my best friend, whom I see once or twice a year. If I think about all my friends from high school and college, I’ve easily spent more time with the Filmcast’s Jeff Cannata than with all of them, combined, over the last decade.

When I say that out loud or write that here, it feels absurd.

I fit the classic stereotype of a middle-aged family man with few close male friends. It’s not that I don’t have friends, but sustaining adult friendships takes time, effort, and schedule flexibility that I rarely have.

So why do these strangers play a bigger role in my life than real-world friends?

Part of the reason is convenience. I can listen to the Filmcast walking the dog at 3 a.m. I can listen to Carolina Insider on the drive to the gym. If I’ve got nine minutes on the road to Target, they’re ready when I am. Most of that is impossible with the real people in my life.

But convenience isn’t the whole story. Most people in my life outside Chapel Hill don’t care about UNC sports. So, if I’m still processing a bad March loss to Duke, there aren’t many people who want to talk about it — not even in my own household. But Carolina Insider has plenty to say. The same goes for the Filmcast. On Monday night, I saw Spielberg’s latest film, Disclosure Day, and left the theater at midnight with nobody to discuss it with. But David, Jeff, and Devindra were ready to go on my ride home, processing it right alongside me.

The strangest part is that, after hundreds of hours with these people, I feel connected to these people even though I’m nobody to them.

To be fair, I did meet Jones and Adam once. One of the traditions surrounding the Carolina Insider show is that they make time before games to take an “arms crossed, serious face” photo with listeners. Before a UNC game a few years back, I walked down the steps near the Smith Center press area and asked to take a photo with the guys. They happily agreed. I thanked them and told them how much I’d enjoyed listening over the years. They thanked me for listening, and we took the photo — all three of us, arms crossed, serious expressions, exactly as Carolina Insider listeners are supposed to do. (And then a second, without the serious faces.)

Jones and Adam have no doubt taken thousands of those photos and forgotten almost everyone they’ve posed with, including me. But every time I see these images, they make me smile. The photos didn’t change anything: they still didn’t know me, and we’re not friends. But to me, it felt like a reunion, even though we were meeting for the first time.

For the Filmcast, the personal connection deepened in a different way. In an episode from June 25, 2024, Jeff talked about watching Ghostlight, a film about a community theater troupe. About 33 minutes in, he started crying as he talked about what the movie stirred up — the realization that acting in theater productions, something he’d done for years, would likely no longer be part of his life. “For the vast majority of my adult life, I did a play every year. At least one every year, since I was 19,” Cannata said. “And then I had kids, and I haven’t done a play since.”

A few moments later, as he tries to explain how the movie made him feel, his voice breaks, and he can’t find the words. It made me want to put my arm around him. I felt like I had a friend who was struggling with a genuine sense of loss.

It’s not the kind of moment you expect from a podcast about movies. But that’s exactly why it stuck with me.

One of the most moving experiences as a listener was hearing how Jones and Adam dealt with the death of Eric Montross, a former Carolina player and friend of the show who died of cancer. In the first show after Montross’ death, Jones turned to Adam and said, as he struggled to get the words out, “Adam, I’m not sure how we’re going to get through this... but we will.”

For years, guests had signed off every episode of the show with a running gag — saying “See you later, Big Grits” in their own voice and style. “Big Grits” was a nickname Montross picked up from a diner waitress on a road trip in Memphis. Suddenly, what had always been a lighthearted tradition carried a different weight. Do you retire it out of respect? Does continuing the bit feel insensitive? Ultimately, the tradition returned. In the end, it felt like a touching, playful tribute to someone who mattered deeply, an extra layer of meaning beyond the inside joke it had been before Eric’s death.

I didn’t know Eric Montross personally, although he was in one of my classes at Carolina in the 1990s, and I watched him play on the 1993 UNC championship team. Montross was just slightly younger than me, so his abrupt, sudden death affected me, stirring my own thoughts about mortality. Listening to Jones and Adam process their grief helped me get my head around it, even though they didn’t know I was there.

So do these deep connections with strangers make me pathetic or crazy?

Ultimately, there’s nothing unhealthy or unusual about my connection to podcast hosts. After all, that’s what the best podcasts are designed to do. They create community. They build a culture. They connect.

It’s hard to build and maintain lasting friendships as an adult, especially if, like me, you work remotely, raise kids, and deal with all kinds of grown-up challenges. I don’t think I’m unusual to want connection outside of all that. I just found it somewhere unexpected.

Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but I suspect I’m not alone.

The kick pushed me into retirement.

A 12-4 season on the line, the best defense in the NFL, and the Super Bowl two games away. All the Chicago Bears had to do was convert a makeable 43-yard field goal to advance one step closer to a championship.

Then this:

The football bonks off the left goalpost, clanks off the crossbar, then wobbles to the ground. Game over.

Take a closer look at Staley, the Bears mascot, behind the goal posts. His furry arms rise, expecting triumph, and instead, he collapses onto the field, devastated. He embodies the despair of millions of Bears fans:

Back at home, my wife captured the moment as I watched it:

The miss was the final straw. At first, it was just the latest, most painful loss. Another in a seemingly endless series of gut-punch Chicago Bears defeats. In the final second of that video, I wave my hands side-to-side, suggesting to my wife to stop recording. But equally, that “no more” gesture was the precise moment when I started to realize the it was time to quit.

Later that night, or perhaps the next day, my wife Yvette, in the most loving way possible, said to me, “As long as I’ve known you, the Bears have only made you angry or sad.” She wondered why I kept doing this to myself.

Marie Kondo, Netflix celebrity declutterer and author of the bestselling book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” famously advised readers and viewers to ask themselves if something they owned “sparked joy.” If it didn’t, Kondo said, you should give it away. Considering the latest Bears loss, I asked myself the hard question: Did being a Bears fan bring me joy?

All the other teams I’ve followed for years had rewarded my loyalty and passion with championships and moments of elation. In my lifetime, the Lakers have won 11 NBA titles across four decades. My UNC Tar Heels have won five championships, four since I’ve had a true connection with the school, and at least one in every decade since living in Chapel Hill. The Dodgers, the team of my youth that my dad raised me to love, have won five World Series in my lifetime. All of these teams also had heartbreaking defeats, but they’ve offset those disappointments with memories I’ll cherish until I die.

The Chicago Bears, on the other hand, have fallen short every year since 1986. Forty years of failure. Sure, there were big wins here and there, but mostly it’s been 25 losing seasons and 15 that ended in disappointment. It has been one of the worst-run franchises in professional sports. Countless new coaches, quarterbacks, and draft picks never seemed to make a difference.

Sports fandom can be biased and irrational, but I did the math to make sure I wasn’t just being emotional about this. The data don’t lie — the Bears have been a bad investment of my time, emotion, and loyalty:

If wasn’t just the missed kick that ended a season with real hope. It was decades of pain.

In 1985, I was sucked in by the audacity and weirdness of the Chicago Bears. Before that, I really didn’t care about the NFL. My hometown L.A. Rams were boring and forgettable. But the Bears had characters — QB Jim McMahon, Walter Payton, William “Refrigerator” Perry, a 6’2”, “Iron Mike” Singletary, and the gruff and furiously mustached coach, Mike Ditka, just to name a few. They had a historic defense, stacked with four future Hall of Fame players. The team was so cocky that before the playoffs, they released the “Superbowl Shuffle” video, easily one of the goofiest, most-1980s things of all time. How could I not love this team?

They won it all in Super Bowl XX, beating the Patriots, 46-10. And as fate would have it, I moved to Chicago for college the following year, immersing myself in the heart of Bears fandom. They still seemed poised for another Super Bowl every year. Without question, I was a bandwagon fan, but I’d pay the price for that choice over the next four decades

In 1988, two years after Super Bowl glory, they lost at home in the first round to the Washington Redskins, despite taking a 14-0 lead, all but closing the window for that historic team, and sending Walter Payton into retirement. In 2011, in the NFC Championship Game against the arch-rival Green Bay Packers, with a ticket to the Super Bowl on the line, QB Jay Cutler went to the sideline with an injury, leaving the game in the hands of third-string QB Caleb Hanie, who threw a crushing pick-six to a nose tackle. The Packers celebrated on the Soldier Field turf before marching on to win it all. Just two years later, in 2013, a high-stakes, win-or-go-home Week 17 finale, again against the Packers, came down to fourth-and-eight in the final minute of the game, when a blown secondary coverage allowed Aaron Rodgers to find Randall Cobb uncovered for a season-ending touchdown with only 38 seconds left on the clock. That one made my daughter Isabella cry.

Even off the field, the Bears made epic mistakes: in 2017, they held the number three pick in the draft and traded up to select QB Mitch Trubisky. They could have kept their spot, and their later picks, and drafted future MVP Patrick Mahomes. But they preferred Trubisky, who wound up being a bust, and let him walk away in free agency after four disappointing seasons.

But worse than any of this was the 2007 Super Bowl. The Bears were a gritty underdog team with a smash-mouth running attack and a smothering defense, up against Peyton Manning’s boring Indianapolis Colts. On the first play of the game, Bears’ speedster Devin Hester returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown. It was an electric, joyous moment where it felt like, finally, maybe, all the patience would pay off, and it was our time.

Sadly, the Bears had a fatal flaw: quarterback Rex Grossman, who finished the game with only 165 yards passing, two interceptions, and two fumbles. Bears lost 29-17. If that wasn’t enough, I was photographed at a Bears bar in Las Vegas and made the front page of the Las Vegas Review Journal.

So, yeah, I endured all of that, but the missed kick in 2019 was the last straw. Later that year, I retired from being a Chicago Bears fan.

It’s hard to step away from a team you’ve followed for decades. If you’re a true fan, it’s part of you. It’s part of your identity. We tend to think of these things as unbreakable. After all, I’ve played as the Bears in every video game from Tecmo Bowl to Madden 2026. I still have that Walter Payton jersey in my closet. Most of my friends still think of me as a die-hard Bears fan.

And yet, it’s actually not so hard to pull back. I was done following offseason blogs, listening to Bears podcasts, and going to North Carolina Bears bars to watch regular-season games. I turned off Bears alerts on my phone. I certainly wasn’t paying for the NFL Sunday Ticket to watch their games anymore. I gave away a lot of my old Bears T-shirts and hoodies. I didn’t scrutinize the box scores and worry about Chicago injury reports.

More than anything else, I just let myself enjoy the NFL season and watch big games without feeling the burden of living and dying with my flawed and cursed former team. It has been liberating. All those years of frustration and let downs are behind me. I let it go, and for the most part, it’s been the right move. I can enjoy the NFL without feeling let down most Sundays.

So I recommend this to anyone else out there who’s been plagued with endless sports disappointment and failure: it’s OK to retire and let go.

I see you, Browns and Jets fans. You’ve done your part; it’s OK to walk away and stop tormenting yourself. If you own a Cleveland Indians/Guardians, Los Angeles Angels, or Pittsburgh Pirates hat, kudos to you on your perseverance, but it’s fine to let go. Same goes for Nets, Jazz, and Wizards fans — I salute your loyalty, but you deserve better. Just step away. Clippers fans: it’s never, ever going to happen. Don’t punish yourself for a bad decision you made years ago.

Despite the upsides to giving up on Bears fandom, the 2025 NFL season put my retirement to the test with a charismatic new coach, a resourceful, likable young team that won their division, and one of the league’s rising stars in QB Caleb Williams. Despite my retirement, seeing them beat the Packers twice last year in dramatic fashion brought a huge smile to my face. Next year, maybe they — Wait, NO!

I’m not coming out of retirement. This is how they set you up for the next epic letdown — with hope. Next year… Next year… Next year. Fuck hope. The disappointment hammer is always about to fall, especially on Bears fans.

It’s not an easy thing to retire from being a fan of a sports team. And in truth, you can never really let go of a team you loved. Sports don’t work like that. Part of you remains with that team, forever.

It just doesn’t need to be all of you.

I’ve rarely been more wrong about anything than the show Schitt’s Creek.

More than a dozen people recommended the show to me over the years, and I never took to it.

First, there was the shows’ name. It made me cringe and felt like a cheap gag. I still don’t like saying it out loud.

Second, I watched the pilot episode and didn’t feel it: I didn’t like the characters, found them annoying and unlikable, and simply didn’t care what happened to them. So, the show remained in my Hulu queue, untouched for years.

But friends and colleagues kept telling me it was a must-watch. It kept coming up on people’s lists of favorite shows.

And then there were the GIFs.

So…

many…

GIFs…

I’d see the GIFs and memes on social media, in Slack and Teams chats, in comment sections. The show had a cultural relevance and iconic power that I didn’t get. I started to wonder what I’d missed.

So, I finally gave the show another chance. And within months, my wife and I finished the sixth and final season, 80 episodes in all, heartbroken that it was over. I didn’t want it to end.

Everyone was right, and I’d been wrong.

It’s one of the best comedies in decades: a brilliant mix of humor and heart, delivered in 22-minute slices. I’m six years late to the party — Schitt’s Creek ended in 2020 — but now, I get it. In its final season, the show swept the Emmy Awards for a comedy: all four acting awards, Outstanding Writing and Directing, and Outstanding Comedy Series.

But why? Why the cult status, all the awards, and the meme immortality?

🚨 SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen Schitt’s Creek, what follows includes spoilers for the full run of the show. Ok, you’ve been warned. 🚨

More than anything else, the premise of Schitt’s Creek is a compelling fantasy of reinvention. Imagine you and your family losing nearly everything, moving to a small town where you knew nobody, and living within feet of each other in a run-down motel. What would you do? How would you adapt? If your career, reputation, and connections dissolved, what kind of person might you become? For each of the main four characters, the show pits them against the same question: What do I do now?

Alexis Rose arrives in Schitt’s Creek as a spoiled, superficial, shallow party girl and socialite. Early on, she gets lost in possible escapes from the town, and falls in and out of relationships. But by season two, she starts to focus on herself, finds a job in the town, swallows her pride, and returns to high school, sitting in class among teenagers to finish her degree. In season four, she studies marketing at a local college, digs into her classwork, and puts what she’s learned to use when she comes up with the idea of “Singles Week” to attract tourists to the town. This success fuels her to take the idea of building a public relations business seriously. She goes from relying on her relationships with men to define her to being her own independent self. Had Alexis never been forced to reset her life, maybe none of this would have happened.

In the real world, we rarely get that chance. Our lives are built piece by piece, creating a resume or a LinkedIn profile that paints a picture of who we are and what we do. It feels written in ink, not pencil. We don’t get a reset or a do-over. In Schitt’s Creek, the Roses do.

Along with the fantasy of reinvention, Schitt’s Creek also drives the notion of minimalism and downsizing. It’s not just losing wealth and status that ultimately brings the Roses to a better place; it’s being physically pushed together into two small adjoining rooms where they fight over closet space and overhear each other’s conversations. Their stripped-down, small-space life has the unintended consequence of forcing them to realize how they’ve neglected each other and taken each other for granted over the years. It pulls them into each other’s lives and doesn’t let them ignore each other’s struggles; it requires them to be more honest with each other than before, when they often lived on different continents. Their proximity makes life chaotic and claustrophobic, but it also binds them together in a new way that wealth, fame, and comfort never could.

To me, this felt real. When my family moved from Washington DC to North Carolina in 2012, we went from a big, three-story house to a small, three-bedroom single-level apartment designed for college students. Our kitchen, dining, and living spaces were all one big room. Sound carried easily from one end of the apartment to another. We had one brown IKEA sofa, and often, the four of us had to squeeze together on it to watch Yo Gabba Gabba or Frozen. It was small, but cozy, and we were always near each other. Our dog Ace was never more than a few feet away from one of us.

About seven weeks after moving in, my wife posted on Facebook, “I just love apartment living ... Not so sure I can go back!” In the comments, one puzzled friend wrote: “I can’t tell if you’re serious?”

She was, and we were.

At least for a while, having less space and less stuff felt more fulfilling and enjoyable than what we’d left behind on Capitol Hill. Like the Rose family, that time together in a tight space didn’t last forever. Eventually, we moved to a house with more space and square feet. The girls could retreat to their own bedrooms, out of sight and earshot. That apartment-life proximity couldn’t last forever. But for a little while, as we adjusted to being a new family in an unfamiliar place, the small 1,200-square-foot apartment was exactly what we needed.

And that’s what makes the Rose’s living situation so compelling. It’s mostly played for laughs in the show, and yet there’s something pure about life forcing them closer together, both physically and emotionally. They yell at each other, mock each other, and often bicker over the limited shared space. Many of the show's cold opens involve a clash in one of their rooms. But between all that, there are quiet moments when they support each other through struggles.

In Season 6, Episode 11, David comes into his room and finds Alexis sitting alone at a table in sweatpants, binge-eating yogurt. She’s distraught about breaking up with her boyfriend, Ted, lamenting that a plant he gave her had died, as well as the struggles with her PR business. David tries to joke with her to lift her mood, but it doesn’t work. Finally, in his own way, to force her to shake out of her funk and get back out into the world, he tells her: “I never thought I’d have to say this, but there is only space in this family for one unstable sibling, and I have held that title for a very long time, so you are going to have to get it together.” His nudging ultimately works: forcing her to join his bachelor party escape room activity, which ultimately shakes her out of her despair.

The show’s unique blend of comedy and heart reveals small moments of love and support, even when they take strange shapes.

Along those lines, one of my favorite scenes in the entire show was a small moment in season three when Alexis and David are driving back after an outing (again stuck together in a small space). They clash about their relationship and trust, and in the end, David reveals that he spent years worrying about her safety, more than their parents:

David: “I was the one at home, not having fun, because I was constantly worried about which East Asian palace Alexis was being held hostage in this week. Not Mom and Dad. Me.”

Alexis: “Well, you didn’t have to worry about me.”

David: “Well, I did.”

Alexis turns to look away from David and reveals the slightest smile, a genuine, beautiful, vulnerable moment. In a show filled with quick laughs and bickering siblings, there’s a quiet moment of love.

Finally, there’s what the show has to say about middle age. Unlike their young, immature children, Johnny and Moira Rose are both thrust into midlife crises throughout the series. Johnny struggles to make sense of his next move and how to recover from losing everything. He wears an immaculate suit every day, still dressed like a CEO, despite having nowhere to go. Moira faces the fact that her acting career is likely over, and there’s little to no demand for her in film or TV. Both are plagued by self-doubt and the fear that their best days are behind them. They also start to realize that they weren’t good parents, and it may be too late to salvage their relationships with their adult children. Their children have time to figure out their careers and lives, but for them, is it all too late?

For the first three seasons, Johnny struggles to figure out a path for a comeback. He tries to sell the town, but that falls apart. He fails repeatedly, most notably when a disastrous attempt to enter the raw-milk business ends with him nearly arrested for bootlegging. But his true second act has been right in front of him the whole time. When Stevie, the motel’s overwhelmed manager and owner considers selling, Johnny steps in to help with the day-to-day operations. It starts as an act of self-preservation to save their home, but it unexpectedly gives him a new purpose. He works with Stevie to improve the motel and gradually turns the business around. That humble work ultimately sparks his next big venture, a nationwide chain of revitalized roadside motels. In the end, the foundation for his massive second chance was built entirely on his biggest setback.

Moira’s path to reinvention follows a similarly bumpy, humbling trajectory. Adrift in Schitt’s Creek, she tries filling the void by joining the town council and singing with the local choir, the “Jazzigals.” But her true comeback arrives in an unlikely package: a starring role in a low-budget B-movie about mutant birds, which is filmed in Bosnia. Undeterred, Moira throws her eccentric heart into The Crows Have Eyes 3: The Crowening, and that commitment pays off. Thanks to a viral red carpet mishap caught on video and a release on a streaming channel, the movie becomes a surprise cult hit, reviving her dead career, and launching her back to television. Like Johnny, Moira discovers that embracing a spectacular downgrade is exactly what saves her.

By the finale, each of the Roses gets a second chance. Each of them defies self-doubt and the skepticism of others and betters themselves during their time in the town. They learn to rely on and support each other, and to celebrate small steps toward big changes. David finds love and marriage. Alexis finds her independence and self-reliance. Moira springboards a bad horror movie to revive her TV career. Johnny starts a new national business. Does it always work out this neatly for the rest of us? No. But that’s the appeal of the show — it suggests that failure and loss might lead to something better.

Schitt’s Creek is 90% comedy and 10% heart. But that 10% is what makes it so memorable and endearing. It’s hard to spot in the thousands of GIFs and memes from the show, but those small, quiet, beautiful moments define the show. Amid the countless laughs and comic moments, the show reflects the audience’s fears, doubts, and regrets, and provides hope that any of us can still choose another life if we’re willing to let go of the things we lost.

I look down at two red queens and then over to my right, where I see one small bet on top of the blinds. I bet $25. A few players throw away their hands, and then one player, an old guy in a Steelers hat, calls. Just him and me.

The dealer reveals the flop cards in the middle of the green felt table: a king, a four, and a three. I still have two queens, a very strong hand. But if he has a King, pocket threes, or pocket fours in his hand, I’m in big trouble. I think I’m still holding the better hand, so I bet $30. The Steelers fan squints at me, scratches his beard, then raises to $75.

Spots like this are a test. You don’t have all the information you need to make a decision. And yet, you’ve already committed yourself. Real money is at risk. Things slow down, and it feels like all eyes are on you. The pressure and the spotlight can make you second-guess your gut or lead you to make a reckless decision.

When I was less experienced, I might have talked myself into calling. Maybe he is bluffing? If this guy shows a bluff after I fold, will he mock me? Maybe he’s hoping to get lucky and hit a straight? Maybe he’s too stupid to know that a pair of fours wasn’t good enough to beat me. Even if he has a king in his hand, maybe I can make a huge raise and force him to give up?

But tonight, looking at this guy who hasn’t played a hand in the last hour, suddenly willing to raise me, I’m pretty sure I’m beat. If I keep going, I’m going to lose. I feel 90% certain. So I fold, sliding my queens to the middle of the table.

Was I right? I may never know, and I have to live with that.

•••

From an early age, American culture teaches us that quitting is shameful. To call someone a “quitter” is an insult. Coaching legend Vince Lombardi famously declared, “Winners never quit and quitters never win.”

Quitters are weak. They’re losers. They fail.

And yet if you play enough poker, you learn that folding — giving up and quitting a hand — is routine. Playing competitive poker for the last two decades, I’ve easily folded hundreds of thousands of hands. That’s a lot of letting go.

Poker, if you play it right, teaches you to make cold, rational decisions, setting aside ego and emotion to give you the best likely outcome. You have to embrace uncertainty and incomplete information and still make decisions. You never know for sure what cards you’re up against or how the next card in the deck could change your fate. There are rarely easy, obvious answers. But more often than not, giving up is the right move.

Winning players also learn to let go of sunk costs. Once chips are in the pot, they're not yours anymore — the only thing that matters is whether the situation justifies putting more in. Bad players never quite grasp that distinction. They chase losses, defend bad decisions with more bad decisions, and confuse stubbornness with persistence.

Many of us do the same thing all the time away from the table — finishing books that bore us to sleep, sinking money into old cars, or, more significantly, staying in bad jobs or broken relationships long after it’s clear things won't get better.

We know we should quit. We feel it late at night when we can’t sleep or shake bad feelings from our minds. But that stigma around “quitting” tells us to stick with it, grit our teeth, and carry on. We look at what we’ve put into something — a job, a project, a relationship — and can’t accept the notion of just letting it go. We can’t fold. Not after the time, the effort, and the hopes we’ve put on the table. We’d rather lose than quit and stop the bleeding.

Quitting feels like the coward’s way out, a shameful defeat, when in real life, it often takes courage to walk away from a bad situation. Our culture rewards and idolizes the people who “stuck with it” and powered through hard times. But it’s often the easier path to stay in a bad situation rather than risk stepping out into an unknown and uncertain alternative. All kinds of bad thoughts trap us to stay with losing hands:

“Maybe this is all I deserve.”

“What if there’s nothing better out there for me?”

“This seems bad, but maybe my luck is going to change.”

And yet, there’s a thin line between smart folds and just lacking grit. There’s a delicate balance between folding in bad spots and taking smart chances when the odds are in your favor. There are times, in life and in poker, when the right action is to take a chance, ignore your doubts and fears, and go with your gut. Sometimes you need to take a big risk on an educated guess or, even scarier, raw instinct. Everyone needs to gamble now and then. Once in a while, the right decision is to swallow your fear and go all-in.

Folding isn’t giving up forever; it’s a tactical retreat. It’s a short-term setback that lets you save what you have, hang on to what you can, so that when opportunity comes, you’re ready and have enough left to try to seize it.

•••

As he raked in his chips, the Steelers guy grinned and flashed his cards: Ace King. I dodged a bullet. He had me beat and would have been unlikely to go away at any price. Folding had allowed me to lose the minimum before things got worse.

If you’re competitive and ambitious, it’s hard to swallow losing, even a small hand. It’s not fun to see someone take your chips from you and smile.

And yet, poker has taught me something else: if you can be patient and remain calm, things can change in your favor. If you can withstand snarky comments and occasional taunts, your opportunity may come. If you manage not to lose everything in a bad situation, you may just have chances to get it all back, and more.

Had I gotten carried away with that hand, I could have lost it all, and maybe I’d have called it a night. Instead, I kept what I needed for a better opportunity.

An hour later, I flopped two pair and turned a full house. The Steelers guy, still there, had something he couldn’t fold, a hand he wasn’t willing to give up on. I bet, he raised, I reraised, and, within seconds, all our chips were in the middle of the table. The dealer snapped out a final card, which didn’t help him, and I dragged in a massive pile of chips. He shook his head, muttered something to himself, put on his hoodie, and walked out.

Sometimes folding is the key to winning big later. Vince Lombardi had it backwards. Winners quit all the time. And quitters often win in the end.

My kids loved Curious George books when they were little. So did I. We read them night after night. And when you read the same stories to kids over and over, you start noticing the small details and patterns.

In “Curious George at the Aquarium,” the Man in the Yellow Hat unwisely leaves George on a bench and says, “please wait here while I buy the tickets.” George gets impatient, hops a gate, and lets himself in. He climbs into the penguin exhibit and starts playing with the animals — but when spectators spot him, he panics and bolts, leaving the door open behind him. Most of the penguins escape. It’s mayhem. As staff scramble to round up the loose animals, George notices a baby penguin that fell into the water and is struggling to swim. He fishes it out. By the time the furious aquarium director arrives, two kids are already praising George for saving the baby penguin, and all is forgiven. We’re told, “the director thanked George for his help and made him an honorary staff member of the aquarium.”

Something similar happens in “Curious George Goes to a Chocolate Factory.” George and the Man in the Yellow Hat stop for “a treat,” and the Man — in another act of sheer recklessness — tells George to “wait here … and please stay out of trouble” while he goes to pay. Within seconds, George sneaks onto a factory tour, wanders onto the floor, and steps on a lever that sends the chocolate-making machines into overdrive. Bedlam follows. As workers run off for more boxes and find a way to stop the machines, George eats dozens of chocolates and then uses his nimble hands and feet to sort the rest into boxes before they hit the floor. One employee spots him and yells, “Get that monkey out of here! He’s ruining our chocolates!” But the others jump in: “This little monkey SAVED the chocolates!”

Inexplicably, the factory manager thanks George and rewards him with a box of chocolates. Of course, nobody accounts for how many chocolates George ate, or the health and contamination risks involved with letting a monkey sort and pack chocolates with his dirty, unwashed hands and feet.

Read enough Curious George, and you’ll see this pattern in every other story. It’s a basic, entertaining formula — George can’t help himself, creates a problem, figures out a way to make things OK again, then usually someone thanks, praises, or rewards him.

Today, there is no better real-world example of this effect than Donald Trump. Despite being the least curious President in American history, Trump embodies the “Curious George Effect.” Again and again, he acts recklessly or foolishly, leading to chaos, economic panic, or international crises. Then, once he does just enough to bring things back close to “normal,” some segments of the public, his own party, and right-wing media outlets celebrate his “leadership.”

Months after teenagers on TikTok organized a prank that inflated ticket requests for a 2020 Trump campaign rally, the President signed an executive order aiming to ban the app, declaring it a national security threat. He failed, but bipartisan momentum built over time to ban the app. After TikTok briefly went dark in January 2025 due to a bipartisan congressional ban, Trump swooped in with an executive order to suspend the shutdown and negotiate a new deal. Many celebrated Trump as the platform’s savior. The late Charlie Kirk gushed, “Donald Trump just single-handedly saved the digital town square for an entire generation. This is what leadership looks like,” TikTok itself thanked him, calling his actions “a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship.” This, from the platform he tried to destroy.

In April 2025, Trump announced sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs that sent the stock market into its worst freefall since the COVID crash. Within a week, he paused most of them and took credit when the markets partially rebounded, calling it “the biggest day in financial history.” He brought the global economy to the brink, backed down, and then basked in the relief rally. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt mocked the press pool: “Many of you in the media have clearly missed the art of the deal.” Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who’d been a tariff critic days earlier, gushed: “Textbook, Art of the Deal.”

Last February, the Trump administration launched airstrikes on Iran in the middle of nuclear negotiations, assassinated the Supreme Leader, and killed thousands of civilians. On April 7, he threatened to destroy Iran outright, casually floating the deaths of 91 million people. By the end of the day, the threats had evaporated, and he’d accepted Iran’s terms for a ceasefire. Trump declared all military objectives met and crowned himself, once again, the architect of peace in the Middle East. Trump handed himself a box of chocolates for walking away from his own threats: “A big day for World Peace! Iran wants it to happen, they’ve had enough! … Just like we are experiencing in the U.S., this could be the Golden Age of the Middle East!!!” On “Fox and Friends,” co-host Ainsley Earhardt insisted: “The president didn’t chicken out. Up until the 11th hour, he almost had to do it, and Iran, obviously, they came to the table.”

Unlike George, whose escapades rarely did real harm before he cleaned up the messes he made, Trump’s chaos has real-world impacts that can’t be laughed off on the last page. At least 16 Americans have died in the Iran war, and more than 380 service members have been injured. More than 1,600 Iranian civilians are dead, including at least 175 people, mostly children, killed when a U.S. Tomahawk missile struck an elementary school. Millions in Iran and the Middle East continue to live in fear of his erratic, unhinged threats and reckless decision-making. There’s no happy ending to the story.

Without the Man in the Yellow Hat, who keeps leaving George unsupervised and free to unleash chaos, there’s no Curious George effect. His willful blindness is essential.

So, in real life, who is the Man in the Yellow Hat? Is it Congress, that has abandoned its constitutional duty to check the president and curb abuses of power? Is it the Supreme Court that rarely rules against Trump’s worst criminality, corruption, and lawlessness? Is it the tens of millions of voters who knew exactly who Trump was and reelected him anyway? Maybe it’s all the above. There are enough yellow hats to go around.

Back when we read Curious George every night, my daughter Isabella, only two or three at the time, started pointing out how often George created a problem, but got praised for fixing it at the end, even though he made a mess in the first place. Even as a toddler, she could see that it didn’t make sense.

So why do millions of adults seemingly miss this basic grasp of cause and effect? Why would politicians or pundits rush to praise Trump for de-escalating a crisis he ignited? Why do the markets rise and fall with self-inflicted crises, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the monkey is still loose in the factory?

Unlike George, who is just “a good little monkey,” too curious for his own good, Trump is calculated, vindictive, and malicious. His mayhem isn’t a series of whimsical accidents; it’s calculated and deliberate.

The monkey doesn’t just wind up on the factory floor, or inside a zoo exhibit, or driving a dump truck into a lake. He gets there because nobody stops the monkey until after he makes a mess. He gets there because too many people aren’t paying attention.

Or worse, some just don’t care because they want the monkey to break things.

@dropofnostalgiaI can Smell It Already🥹#90s #nostalgia #fyp #90skids #blockbuster #dvdmovies #viral

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or this:

@bowmantvLost Trades and Spaces 17: Blockbuster: Where the Weekend Lived.

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Blockbuster is a core icon of nostalgia for many who grew up in the 80s and 90s. I’ve seen dozens of videos of people talking warmly about missing those Friday nights at Blockbuster, picking out a movie or two with their family. Something about the simplicity of it, the lack of cell phones, and the analog culture compared to today that makes a lot of people wistful and nostalgic.

I suppose I can see the appeal when you contrast it to today’s iPhone/iPad culture. If you squint enough, you can look back on it with a vague sense of nostalgia for a time when a family would settle on renting Beverly Hills Cop 3, then go back and watch it together at home on a big living room TV.

But Blockbuster sucked.

Their movie selection always lacked variety, with sections dedicated to whatever crappy new releases they were trying to force-feed customers. They charged punitive late fees and overcharged for candy and snacks. If it was busy, you had to wait in a long line to check out your videos. Comedian Gary Gulman did a definitive takedown of Blockbuster in 2012:

The experience was worse in every way than today. You had to settle for whatever was on the shelf and not checked out, which at Blockbuster often meant you ended up with a movie you didn’t really want to see. Sometimes the videotapes were damaged. Sometimes you got the wrong one in the box. And there was always the stress of rewinding it and returning it by an unforgiving due date.

When it comes to 80s and 90s nostalgia, Blockbuster is merely the starting point for many people born in the Nixon and Carter eras, who often wax about the 80s as a gauzy, idealized golden age.

Videos like this romanticize drinking from hoses, “being out until the streetlights came on,” and eating cold pizza from the fridge. Note the cringeworthy tagline: “Gen X was built different”:

@zfg.studioIf this unlocked a memory, you’re one of us. #GenX #80skids #ChildhoodUnfiltered #80s #nostalgia #80snostalgia #ZFGStudio

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@generation_x1977A decade that resonates with so many. It was like a different world.The 1980s #genx #nostalgia #80s #childhood

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I see and hear all of this online. But I’ve also heard it from friends and classmates from the era: The music was better. Kids had it better. America was better. It goes on and on, a wistful yearning for some lost era where life was easier, simpler, and pure.

The truth is that America in the 80s, like Blockbuster, wasn’t better. The notion that it was a magical era of freedom and awesomeness is one of the Internet’s great lies.

No doubt — lots of things in the 80s were awesome: Purple Rain, Rocky III, Rocky IV, The Los Angeles Lakers, Wham, Bananarama, Pac-Man… But it wasn’t all just big hair, Ray Bans, and day-glo sweatshirts.

Smoking was everywhere — at bars, in restaurants, and on planes. The haze of nostalgia tends to obscure the rampant homophobia and street violence that defined the decade. The U.S. homicide rate hit an all-time peak in 1980, roughly double what we see today. Drunk driving caused roughly 60% of all traffic fatalities in 1982. We lived under the relentless looming threat of nuclear war. And by the end of the 80s, AIDS killed more than 100,000 Americans.

For Gen X and Gen Y adults, the impulse to imagine your preteen or teenage years as “better,” and to project that on the era, not on ourselves, is understandable. For most of us, life was less complicated back then. You didn’t worry about paychecks or mortgages or kids.You didn’t need to think about aging parents, kids with anxiety, or friends with cancer. You could eat a McRib with fries and a vanilla shake and never think about blood sugar or cholesterol. It’s human nature to look back at younger days through the lens of middle age and envy a simpler life you had decades earlier. But it’s not the decades that have changed dramatically, it’s you. You weren’t “built different” than kids today. You were just born earlier.

And this is probably how people who were adults in the 80s felt about the 50s. Or how grown-ups in the 50s felt about the 20s.

Back in the 80s, my Uncle Joe, a World War II veteran and retired postal worker, used to complain that all the new movies were trash and that he hadn’t seen a movie in the theaters since From Here to Eternity in 1953. I tried to get him to check out Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark, but he didn’t want to hear about it. Movies just weren’t like they used to be. He wasn’t that different than people my age today, who can’t let go of the 80s and insist it was all better back then.

RIP Uncle Joe, but I’ve seen From Here to Eternity, and it was just OK. For that matter, the 80s were just OK. And despite what TikTok, Instagram, and nostalgia-mongers on the Internet say, Blockbuster sucked.

In 2003, at the peak of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a previously little-known Iraqi official became a global celebrity. Iraq’s Minister of Information, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, routinely stood up in a military uniform and a dark beret before microphones and press and confidently declared the doom of the U.S.-led invasion force. He made statements with bravado and self-assurance, even as it became increasingly clear that none of it was true. Eventually, he became a TV and early Internet meme, earning the nickname “Baghdad Bob” and “Comical Ali” for his bold, confident public disinformation.

When the war started, asked about the invading forces, he declared, “our initial assessment is that they will all die.” As the war continued, his brash statements varied dramatically from what could be seen on CNN, often declaring catastrophic losses for American troops: “Their forces committed suicide by the hundreds. ... The battle is very fierce, and God made us victorious. The fighting continues.” As tanks and troops poured into Baghdad near the end of the war, al-Sahhaf remained in bold denial, insisting that “Baghdad is safe. The battle is still going on. Their infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad. Don’t believe those liars.” As gunfire and sirens blared in the background, he said, “We besieged them and we killed most of them. We will finish them soon. My feelings? As usual, we will slaughter them all. Their tombs will be here in Iraq.”

On April 7, 2003, a day before he would vanish from the public, in a press conference on the roof of Palestine Hotel, he insisted boldly that “There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!” Meanwhile, U.S. forces had already taken Iraq’s Presidential Palace and the Information Ministry. In his final public appearance the following day, he stood firm and insisted, “There are no American troops in Baghdad!”

And with that, the Iraqi Information Minister vanished from public view for years.

What made al-Sahhaf so iconic, such a meme (perhaps even before that had a name for it), was his audacity, shamelessness, and utter commitment to the lie. He would say untrue things with conviction and seeming disdain for those who didn’t understand what he knew. The Western media, he boldly asserted, was being duped into not seeing an Iraqi triumph. He became a punchline because you could see his words played against a split screen of visuals that disproved his lies. Comedians mocked him. News channels made fun of him. People created social media image memes; and people continue to create them today.

There were his words, and then there was reality. But he never stopped and never conceded anything. And then he vanished from sight.

When we fast forward to 2026, what stands out today is how unremarkable “Baghdad Bob” is compared to the modern GOP. What was outlandish and absurd in 2003 is now standard practice in Trump’s White House, which shows no obligation to facts or objective reality.

There’s never been an administration quite so willing to demand that the public disregard their own eyes. On day one of Trump’s first administration in 2017, he sent out his Press Secretary Sean Spicer to claim that the inauguration drew “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period — both in person and around the globe.” This came in response to aerial photos showing that the crowds in 2017 were far smaller than at Obama’s 2009 Inauguration, along with Metro ridership data and expert crowd estimates that made clear that Trump’s Inauguration was attended by far fewer people than Obama’s. Days later, Kellyanne Conway went on Meet the Press to defend Spicer’s laughable claims, insisting that the White House had “alternative facts.”

Day one was a sign of what was to come and would become standard practice. Trump didn’t misspeak or make an occasional gaffe like former Presidents; he just routinely lied. He makes outlandish, factually wrong claims with almost every public appearance, to the point that it’s nearly impossible, or notable, to keep up with all the disinformation.

In his first term, Trump repeatedly chose to manufacture his own reality rather than acknowledge inconvenient facts. The examples are too numerous to catalog, but here are a handful of his most notable lies. Trump claimed that he only lost the 2016 popular vote because millions of undocumented immigrants voted illegally in California. To justify his early Muslim travel ban, he and his advisors regularly cited the “Bowling Green Massacre,” a terrorist event that never occurred. He insisted that he had passed the largest tax cut in American history, though nonpartisan records easily proved it was only the eighth largest since 1918. He even extended his defiance of the truth to the weather, using a black Sharpie to crudely alter an official hurricane map rather than admit he was wrong about a storm’s path toward Alabama. He capped his term with the “stolen” 2020 election lie — a sprawling conspiracy involving rigged machines and ballot dumps that was dismissed by dozens of courts and his own Department of Justice. Every one of these claims takes a minute to debunk, many are repeated still today by Trump and his followers.

If anything, this tendency has gotten worse the second time around. Donald Trump’s 2026 State of the Union was the longest in U.S. history, and it may also have been among the most dishonest. Fact-checkers at CNN, NPR, NBC News, FactCheck.org, ABC News, and AP collectively flagged somewhere between 35 and 40 distinct false or misleading claims — concentrated most heavily on the economy, where Trump’s lies were both brazen and specific. He claimed to have secured “$18 trillion in foreign investment commitments,” but his own White House website lists $9.6 trillion, and analysts say billions of that isn’t investment at all. He called the “One Big Beautiful Bill” the “largest tax cuts in American history,” but the Tax Foundation ranks it sixth. He described an economy “roaring like never before” yet, by every meaningful measure — GDP growth, job creation, unemployment — it has performed worse in his first year back than in Biden’s last.

The problem has grown beyond Trump himself. His minions have followed suit and embraced Iraqi-Information-Minister–level disinformation. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stood before cameras in October 2025 and declared, “There’s no American citizens have been arrested or detained. We focus on those that are here illegally. And anything that you would hear or report that would be different than that is simply not true and false reporting.” A ProPublica investigation had already documented more than 170 U.S. citizens detained by immigration agents, including pregnant women and a child with cancer. Attorney General Pam Bondi, meanwhile, turned a Cabinet meeting into an assault on math and common sense, telling Trump directly: “Since you have been in office, President Trump, your DOJ agencies have seized more than 22 million fentanyl pills, 3,400 kilos of fentanyl, which saved — are you ready for this, media? — 258 million lives.” The U.S. population is 342 million. Fentanyl kills roughly 55,000 Americans a year. And Robert Kennedy Jr., as HHS secretary, spent much of 2025 pushing the long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism — rejected by more than 25 large-scale international studies — then personally ordered the CDC’s website rewritten to suggest the science had simply been “ignored by health authorities.”

But at this point, who’s really still keeping track of all this? With more than a decade of Trump and his violent disregard for the truth, fact-checking seems mostly irrelevant. The Washington Post‘s Fact Checker — Glenn Kessler’s multi-year tracking project — logged every false or misleading claim Trump made across his entire first term, and the final tally came to 30,573. And it got worse every year: Trump averaged six false claims a day in year one, 16 in year two, 22 in year three, and 39 a day in his final year. He didn’t just lie constantly — he accelerated. It took him 27 months to reach 10,000 false claims, another 14 months to hit 20,000, and less than five months after that to blow past 30,000.

Perhaps it’s a sign of our times that Kessler left the Washington Post in 2025 as part of the downsizing and implosion of Washington’s iconic newspaper. The Fact Checker hasn’t continued since his departure. Kessler’s sobering final column for the Post warns that “the country has gotten so used to Trump exaggerating the truth that it no longer seems surprising.”

“In an era where false claims are the norm,” Kessler concludes, “it’s much easier to ignore the fact-checkers.”

The Iraqi Information Minister would fit in just fine in Washington, D.C. today. What was surprising and ridiculous in 2003 is now commonplace at the top levels of the U.S. government. Turns out the joke was on us. He was just ahead of his time.

There’s a folder on my MacBook called “Writing.” It’s one of the oldest folders on my digital desktop. It holds 45.5 MB worth of half-baked ideas, unfinished stories, incomplete novels, and lists of ideas for the “next” project. For the most part, it’s a collection of failures and abandoned ideas.

There’s a book I started after my divorce in 2002 — “The newly-divorced guy’s guide to dating” (Seemed like a good idea at the time; the perfect gift for that friend you know who suddenly might need it?). I got through a few chapters before losing interest. There’s also a folder filled with pitches and queries for articles that rarely got accepted after graduate school. There is a NaNoWriMo novel I started in 2021 about a guy who gets a phone call from himself 20 years in the future; I nearly finished that one — 47.341 words — but never got beyond the “shitty first draft” stage and struggled to solve some third-act problems. There’s the nonfiction book I started in 2018 about voting rights and fair elections. I got about a third of the way through that one. I did a ton of research, interviews, and travel working on it, but it stalled around the time I took a new job in 2019. There are early drafts of some children’s books I started and then abandoned. And then there are countless half-baked columns, essays, web copy, and blog posts that never got past a first draft. Four out of five things in there are unfinished. It’s an island of lost toys.

I’ve got a fiction book I’ve been working on for the past couple years, but it’s suffering from bursts of over-editing, followed by stretches of neglect. I haven’t given up hope on that one, but it’s become a slog. Each project seems to go from being a fresh, exciting idea to a thankless grind. Eventually, it gets lost along with everything else in the limitless “Writing” folder.

Still, there are some quality finished works in there: a few stories I published, blog posts from decades ago, freelance columns for an online magazine that evaporated with the end of the first dot-com boom. There are a bunch of stories I did in graduate school, but never made it outside the classroom. Some of the work is good. I’m proud of some of it. Others, I don’t need to see again.

Good or bad, they all seem old to me now. They all seem frozen in time. Someone else wrote them: Someone without kids. And then someone with babies. And then someone struggling with toddlers, work, and midlife stress. And then someone with time on his hands because he’d lost a job and was writing now and then while freelancing. And then someone writing blog posts about design, freelancing, and nonprofit marketing because it might expand their business or get them invited to speak at conferences.

All those words feel written by a stranger. There’s some good work there, scattered among all the false starts. But it’s like looking at old trophies. It feels like nostalgia, not creativity.

When I look back, honestly, and with tough love for myself, it’s been 30 years of not writing more than writing.

In my 20s, fresh out of college and grad school, I figured it would just be a matter of time before I published a book or made it as a full-time writer somewhere. I just had to keep at it. I’m closer to 60 than 30 now, and I’m still not there. Writing has been part of many of my jobs, but rarely has it been the writing I really wanted to do. It’s been for business… for marketing… for email campaigns or website copy. The 23-year-old me who moved to Washington DC with big dreams of changing the world with speechwriting or a book that people couldn’t put down, would be horrified and dismayed to see me now as a marketing professional who manages. I’m one of his worst-case scenarios.

Now, maybe 23-year-old me’s judgment is a bit harsh. He doesn’t understand what it takes to pay a mortgage, raise teenagers, and get ready to send them to college. He never had to figure out how to get a third car or a new water heater. He doesn’t worry about retirement or taxes. He never woke up in the middle of the night stressed about work. He also doesn’t know what it’s like to see your daughters light up when they meet fairies at Disneyland, or how it feels to watch your daughter make her first basket, or what it’s like to celebrate one getting into college. He’s still barely more than a teenager. He hasn’t seen his kids smile, and want to do everything he can to make them laugh.

He doesn’t know what I know, for good or for bad. He doesn’t yet know that writing is important, but it’s not everything.

Still, he’s not wrong about everything. I don’t write enough, even on the side, even for the love of it. He knows enough to see that I can’t publish if I don’t write. I can’t sell a book — or try to sell a book — if I don’t finish it. I can’t call myself a writer if I don’t write.

I plan to use Substack to share my perspectives on life, politics, culture, and things I can’t let go. From time to time, I’ll also write my takes on film, TV, gaming, sports, and poker.

Hopefully, the things I write will be worth someone’s time. If not, at least they got out of the folder and out into the light.

In 2010, I canceled DirecTV. Back then, this felt radical. My father-in-law, visiting shortly afterward, was dismayed and visibly upset. No cable?

I was sick of the steep prices and inconsistent service. And I hated the long-term contracts. with a cable or satellite company that treated customers horribly. This was early in the streaming revolution, but I realized we could get almost everything we needed from a mix of Netflix, Hulu, and Apple’s early steps into offering TV shows you could purchase by the episode or season. I got a small PC (Roku, Alexa, and Apple TV hadn’t come around yet) and connected it to my pre-HD TV. I also set up a digital antenna to pull in local TV broadcasts.

It felt liberating to know I could cancel my TV services (or add them back) whenever I wanted. And I was saving more than $100 a month. I’d cracked the code to beat the system and still watch what I wanted. Everyone else was a sucker.

16 years later, the joke is on me. I suppose I’ve saved a lot of money avoiding cable/satellite since 2010, but I still pay Google Fiber for my internet and now have half a dozen streaming services for TV alone. Whatever I saved has been redirected to a bunch of other services now.

And TV is just the start. Today, I still don’t have cable, but I do have more than 20 other subscriptions.

Here’s a random Tuesday. My Applecare-protected phone wakes me at 5:30. I head to the gym and do a workout I track in an app, while listening to Spotify. While I’m gone, Amazon drops paper towels on the porch, thanks to Prime. Working from home later, I bounce between Microsoft 365, Google Gemini, and Grammarly. I can check where my kids are on Life360. At night, they use Quizlet to study or Canva to work on a school project. As we wind down, my wife and I pick something from Netflix, Hulu, or Apple TV — whichever feels right. Or maybe I play online with PlayStation Plus on the PS5. Eventually, my wife falls asleep wearing an Oura ring that monitors her sleep quality as I drift off watching ad-free YouTube.

I may be an outlier, and I’m sharing a catalog of poor spending choices here, but I’ll guess I’m not alone, especially people with families.

None of this is an accident. Big business has engineered subscription services to be easy to try and increasingly hard to drop. They’re counting on us to either get hooked or to forget to cancel. If we try to cancel, they have multiple options to tempt us to reconsider.

The subscription economy has surged in the past decade, worldwide and particularly in the U.S. Subscription-based companies are growing more than four times faster than the S&P 500. In 2017, nearly half of American households with a streaming service only paid for one. By 2026, the average individual now juggles 5.6 subscriptions, while the typical household will manage a stack of 8 to 12 different services. American adults spend an average of $90 a month on subscription services.

I used to think it was a win that I could add or drop streaming services whenever I wanted to — I’ve subscribed to Sling TV for a few months during March Madness or the World Series, then dropped it — but increasingly it’s easy to forget the latter part. Many consumers, like me, suffer from “subscription creep.” We’ve become blind to what we’re paying for. Recent surveys show that most of us underestimate the number of subscriptions we have or how much they cost. A 2025 CNET survey found that the average American spends about $17 every month — more than $200 a year — on services they forgot about or don’t use.

The “free trial” trap makes it worse: nearly 65% of people admitted they’ve forgotten to cancel a trial before it turned into a paid plan. Autopay options accelerate the problem. 86% of subscribers have services set to auto-renew, so small, forgotten charges pile up month after month without us ever noticing. In my home over the last year, I’ve had three accidental subscriptions spawn from “free trials” that my teenage daughters forgot to cancel. I was one-for-three in getting them refunded.

The problem of zombie subscriptions has become so widespread that there are multiple subscriber services to help you monitor all your subscriptions and help catch the ones you forgot you were paying for. It’s an inception of subscriptions.

We’re also entering a world where subscription options extend well beyond the digital realm. For a while, Taco Bell offered a “Taco Lovers Pass” — for about $10, one taco every day for 30 days (evidently, this taco subscription comes and goes; I’ve been advised to stay tuned in the Taco Bell app for the next time it’s offered). Panera offers a monthly subscription to the Unlimited Sip Club for “endless access to select coffees, teas, fountain drinks and more.” Sheetz recently offered a monthly subscription for unlimited fries (“One Every 2 Hours”).

A subscription to French fries — arguably the most American thing ever — is an almost absurdly perfect symbol for where we’ve gotten to in this new, exploding subscription economy.

In 2010, I thought I was the guy who’d cracked the code — no contracts, no worthless bundles, cancel anytime. Technically, that is all still true. I can cancel any of these services whenever I want. But I rarely do. I have more flexibility and choice than ever before, but they have me locked in all the same.

As is the case with most revolutions, televised or not, what comes next isn’t freedom, it's just something else.

Sports are just games. Intellectually, I get it. College and professional sports involve people I don’t know, running and jumping around, playing kids’ games against other people who don’t know me. Football, basketball, and baseball are entertainment, and nothing that happens on Astroturf or under the lights of a distant sports arena makes a tangible impact on my well-being or that of my family. In an era of free-agent players who switch teams multiple times over their careers, it’s not logical to care deeply about a sports franchise, since the only constant on most teams is the uniform. As Jerry Seinfeld once observed: “You’re standing and cheering and yelling for your clothes to beat the clothes of another city.”

And yet, last June, I lost my voice for two days after yelling at the television during Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals. I’ve ended relationships when it became clear that my rooting interests were irreconcilable with the person I was dating. In 1993, I literally danced on Franklin Street after the University of North Carolina Tar Heels won the NCAA basketball championship, then climbed up into a tree and sang. I once painted my face blue and white before taking my seat in the bleachers of Dodger Stadium. On February 5, 2007, readers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal opened their morning newspaper to see a front page, nine-inch-wide color photo of me, dressed in a dark navy Walter Payton Bears jersey, slumped down on a bar stool, covering my eyes during the miserable closing minutes of Chicago’s Super Bowl loss to the Indianapolis Colts. The above my photo headline reads: “HARD TO BEAR.” I looked like someone who had just watched his house burn down.

Me on the front page of the Las Vegas Review-Journal on February 5, 2007, the day after the Bears lost the Super Bowl to the Indianapolis Colts.

I know all of this is basically meaningless, but my head doesn’t get the final say.

Millions of us ride waves of emotion and passion along with the fates of our teams. As the NBA season draws to an end, for fans of 15 of the 16 playoff teams, it won’t end well. In the fall, the baseball season will come to a close, and millions of fans will see their springtime optimism dashed. Many fans have a lucky chair, hat, coaster, t-shirt, or jersey. We will lose sleep after a big loss and sulk for days. We will yell at their televisions or ask angry questions to people on the screen. We will lack all perspective and suffer wild emotional swings, whip-lashed between joy and bitterness; all from watching strangers play a game.

All of this intensity and jubilation and anguish baffles my wife, who often watches me with pity, sympathy, or curiosity; the same way she might note a cat playing with a ball of yarn or a dog chasing its tail. After all, it’s just sports, right?

It isn’t, though I can see why she – and others – might not understand.

We’re not insane, though it may look that way. Let me try to explain how we got to this point.

Americans spend $10.5 billion on sports merchandise every year – jerseys, sweatshirts, hats, flags — with a national average of $34 per person. Fans at live events spend more than $26 billion annually. That’s nearly four times as much as Americans spend on movies. NFL broadcasts are among the highest-rated programs on television. The numbers make clear that millions of fans invest money – in addition to their hearts and minds – into the business of professional and college sports. It also explains one of the reasons fans are so obsessed with sports: marketing.

Football and basketball games take place in parks every day, with no cameras, no fanfare, and no howling fans, but the billion-dollar sports marketing industry has transformed kids games into big business. Using corporate advertising tactics and techniques to attract and seduce consumers, the NBA, NFL, and MLB have turned sports into more of a product than a game. For the leagues, it’s as much about selling officially licensed team apparel, posters, DVDs, and video games as it is who wins.

Few people know more about this industry than William Sutton, President of the Sports Marketing Association. Sutton, whose clients include the NBA, the NHL, the Orlando Magic, Phoenix Suns, Charlotte Bobcats, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Cleveland Indians, is also a professor at the University of Central Florida, where he teaches a new generation of sports marketing gurus. Sutton is the co-author of Sport Marketing, a 552-page manual on the science of selling sports, detailing techniques for employing “DataBased Marketing,” “market segmentation,” and “managing sports brands.” It details business models for organizations and leagues to attract intense, loyal fans and consumers, just as Apple, Nike, or Coca-Cola do. The website for his “Strategic Marketing and Revenue Enhancement” services declares that “our goal is simple: ‘Leave no money on the table.’”

“There are only three things in the world that evoke such a hard emotional response,” Sutton said in a telephone interview. “One is sports, one is religion, and one is politics.” This deep emotional response, he said, is rooted in a sense of identity and affiliation with a particular team, but also the power of marketing to amplify and encourage those emotions.

People feel intensely about sports for the same reason that we may feel drawn to McDonald’s or Ben & Jerry’s or Heineken: we’ve been conditioned and manipulated by marketing communications, sometimes at a subconscious level. We feel loyal to a brand, even if we can’t quite articulate why.

Sutton says fan intensity and profits go hand-in-hand. The more avid the fan, the more likely he is to buy stuff. “If you meet a real, real, real fan, you’ll be scared,” Sutton told me. “You’ll be afraid because you can’t believe that anyone can be so emotionally connected to this thing. It just doesn’t make sense. On the other hand, as a marketer, I love it. That’s the guy I’m going to sell to.”

Sports fans often identify with their team as if they were part of it, directly connected to the energy and effort that can help secure a win. We say things like “you can’t stop our offense!” or “what a great win for us!” They aren’t just supporting the team; they feel like they are part of it. Sutton’s describes this phenomenon as “BIRGing,” short for “basking in reflected glory.”

Sports marketers embrace such fan identification and encourage it. Think about Gatorade’s “Be Like Mike” or Nike’s “I am Tiger Woods” ad campaigns. Consider the lyrics from the “Be Like Mike” ad:

Sometimes I dream
That he is me
You’ve got to see that’s how I dream to be
I dream I move, I dream I groove
Like Mike
If I could Be Like Mike
Again I try
Just need to fly
For just one day if I could
Be that way
I dream I move
I dream I groove
Like Mike
If I could Be Like Mike

Is it any wonder that many fans are willing to pay $259 to wear an “authentic” NFL jersey or $179 for an NBA jersey? You can root for a team and identify with it, but to wear the jersey of another player, dressing up in his clothes, with his name and number on your back, you symbolically become that player. Want to be like Mike… or Tom Brady… or LeBron James? All you need is a credit card, and you can play the part.

Marketing and promotion account for much of sports’ broad appeal, but it can’t explain the depth of passion people have for their teams. I might prefer Coke to Pepsi, but I don’t hate Pepsi. If a restaurant only serves Pepsi, I’ll drink it. It doesn’t work that way with sports. If you are a true New York Yankees fan, you hate the Boston Red Sox (and visa versa). You’re either for the Bears or the Packers, Ohio State or Michigan, North Carolina or Duke. Sports aren’t about preferences; they are about choosing sides.

Your side is often chosen because of where you grew up or where you lived. Sports fans can be indoctrinated at an early age by parents or friends or by accidents of relocation. Your father teaches you to hate the Dallas Cowboys. Maybe your mother went to UCLA. You might grow up seeing the local baseball team’s colors and associate them with home. However you developed that early association, it creates a “tribe” to which you belong. Wherever you go, it stays with you and provides a connection to your past, who you were, and where you came from. A team can be like an old friend – complete with ups, downs, good times, bad times, disappointments, and celebrations – a relationship that anchors you, that provides a constant in your life.

For me, the Lakers have been that constant. My earliest glimpses of sports fandom took in several hall-of-fame players in their prime: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in his oversized goggles, swinging across the lane and unleashing his graceful, but unstoppable sky-hook shot; Magic Johnson, sprinting up court, flipping passes behind his back to his gravity-defying teammates; James Worthy, faking his opponents to the left, then spinning right and slashing to the basket for a dunk.

I packed my loyalties with me when I went to college, and living away from L.A. for the first time, endured the taunts and jeers of Chicago and Detroit fans, while bonding with other expatriate Lakers fans on campus. Shortly after I moved to North Carolina for graduate school in the fall of 1991, I was stunned by the news that Magic Johnson was HIV-positive. Convinced he would be dead within two years, I felt like I was losing an old friend. (18 years later, Johnson is still alive and relatively healthy, a testament to advances in the treatment of HIV). Over the years, Lakers have come with me on various travels: in a revolting Texas bar that reeked of stale beer and Marlboros, I watched the Lakers suffer injuries and lose the 1989 Finals; on a small breezy island in Belize, I watched the Lakers battle San Antonio and talked trash with a bartender who favored the Spurs; when Robert Horry hit a miraculous three-point shot at the buzzer to beat the Sacramento Kings in 2002, I was outside a wedding with a group of old friends, listening to the final play on a car radio together. When we heard the final score, we screamed and hopped around the parking lot. We missed seeing one of the most famous shots in basketball history, but we didn’t mind: our guys won. We won.

One of the greatest shots in NBA/Lakers history. I didn’t see it happen.

In my 30’s, when I found myself more than twenty years and 2,500 miles from where I grew up, living on my own, divorced, struggling with career and financial troubles, I often fell asleep to late-night broadcasts of NBA games from the west coast. The familiar voice of Chick Hearn, the Lakers announcer who had called games since before I was born, kept me company. His voice was a comfortable, familiar blanket, helping me drift off to sleep when little in life seemed certain. Years later, in a different house, on another sleepless night, I found myself pacing and rocking my fussy newborn daughter in a dim living room, warmed by the glow of late-night Laker playoff games. She didn’t see much of the action, but the sounds of the game helped her fall asleep.

Sometimes, a passion for sports isn’t just about connecting with your past or your childhood teams. Often, it’s about the present – where you are and the community you embrace. When people come together on a campus, at an office, or in a city, differences in education, class, and race can deepen their divisions. But sports tie people together and bridge gaps. Strangers sitting at an airport bar waiting for delayed flights may have nothing in common other than a shared dislike for the New England Patriots, but that may be enough to spark a friendly conversation. A Washington D.C. cab driver and a patent lawyer might have little to talk about, but a discussion about what happened the day before to the Redskins might shorten a ride across town. Countless awkward lulls in conversation between young men and father-in-laws have been overcome by small talk about basketball. Sports can give you opportunities to extend yourself towards others, with little risk, and develop thin threads of connection.

When I was a graduate student at the University of North Carolina in the early ‘90s, I waited out all night to get tickets to the Duke-UNC game. It hadn’t taken me long to become indoctrinated into a highly irrational, but deeply-felt hatred of Duke basketball and all of its dorky fans from their god-forsaken campus 12 miles away. Top-ranked Duke had won the national championship the previous year, and the team that trotted out on our court to a roaring wave of boos had won 17 straight games to start their season. Many experts suggested that this was the best team in college basketball history, and that it might go undefeated. I sat in the upper corner of the “Dean Dome,” miles above the action, but even in the worst seats in the arena, the atmosphere was electric and intense; it was the biggest game of the year. To my right were the two colleagues I came with; but to my left was a thirty-something man, sitting alone. He looked like a young Morgan Freeman.

We didn’t talk at all before the game. During a time-out in the first half, as Carolina trailed Duke, I shook my head and grumbled about poor rebounding. The stranger to my left agreed. By halftime, we were chatting a little about what Carolina needed to do to pull off the upset. As the Tar Heels jumped out to an early lead to open the second half, we were high-fiving and yelling at the referees together. By the end of the game, when Duke All-American Christian Laettner missed his last-second shot, and Carolina hung on to win, 75-73, the crowd went berserk, the noise was deafening, and we hugged in celebration like long lost brothers.

Don Miralle’s sports photography has been featured in Sports Illustrated, GQ, Newsweek, and the New York Times. He has covered six Super Bowls, six Olympic games, and almost every major sporting event. The National Press Photographers Association named him the “Sport Photojournalist of the Year” twice in the past three years.

Miralle doesn’t just take action shots; he prides himself in capturing moments that reveal depth and layers of the experience. In a telephone interview, he said that he wants readers to look at his work twice and think, “there’s something more here.”

One of Miralle’s photos shows a Philadelphia Eagles player walking off the field after losing a playoff game, shoulders hunched, his green uniform bathing in a dense shower of red and white home-field confetti. Another shot shows Olympian Michael Phelps, moments after winning his eighth gold medal in 2008: water splashing around him, frozen, along with his beaming expression of pride. Another captures USC receiver Chris McFoy leaping to catch a touchdown over a Colorado State player. A bright, wide beam of light shoots down from the top of the venue, through McFoy and the ball, illuminating him like a heaven-sent spotlight. Taken one-tenth of a second earlier or later, or from a few feet to his left or right, each of these images would be unremarkable. But as shot, they convey more than a score, or who won or lost; they tell stories in a powerful way. “I’ve never been to two sporting events that are the same,” Miralle said. “It’s happening right there and it’s never going to happen again. It’s a fleeting moment.”

David Hill, CEO and President of Fox Sports, quoted in 2001, made a similar observation, saying “sport is the greatest entertainment that there is. It’s the last unscripted drama, and the guy in the white hat doesn’t always get to kiss the horse.”

In a media culture littered with re-hashed sit-com programming, formulaic movies, and contrived, derivative “reality” shows and contests, sports offer something increasingly rare: authentic drama. What makes conflict in sports so compelling is that there is always a decisive outcome. No one knows what will happen or how it will end. Often, sports can turn out to be dull and disappointing, but every once in a while, something truly spectacular and memorable happens that people will remember and talk about for years. Great sports moments are like classic scenes from the movies; they become timeless, etched into cultural memory.

Miralle, who has photographed Olympians and Super Bowl MVP’s, described this with a sense of awe. “It all comes to fruition: their training, their genetics, their background, everything… all the time they put in comes to a pinnacle point in this arena, this spectacle of sport they’re in… and either they do well or they don’t do well. It’s amazing to see when they rise above.”

Most of us peak early in sports. Long before adulthood, we realize that we will never run in the Olympics or pitch in the World Series. Sooner or later, we hit a limit: we aren’t strong enough or fast enough. Our reflexes are too slow. We find ourselves in stressful game situations, and instead of rising to the challenge, we shrink. We discover that practice, hard work, and determination aren’t always enough; others will still always be better. Others make it look easy, effortless, and beautiful. Somewhere along the way, we step away from the court or the field and take a seat in the stands. In the same way we admire great painters or novelists, many of us can’t help but marvel at those who perform athletically at a higher level than the rest of us.

Sporting events compress and condense stressful, competitive situations, put them on public display, and televise them to millions. Quite often, great college and professional athletes fall short and — like so many of us — crumble under pressure. But sometimes they don’t. When you witness someone competing under the most challenging circumstances and still succeed, it is beautiful to behold. It is art.

It’s an experience few of us will ever know firsthand. We don’t know how it feels to silence a stadium with a home run, knock out an opponent in the boxing ring, kick a last-second field goal, sink a buzzer-beating three-point basket, or run faster than anyone else on the planet. We can’t know what it feels like to win the Super Bowl, or the World Cup, or an Olympic gold medal. We don’t have any idea how it feels to face off against the toughest competition, in front of millions of spectators, and emerge victorious.

But as fans, we have the chance to get close. And, more than anything else, that’s why we watch.

I’ve always loved trailers. Aside from the movie itself and any smuggled Milk Duds, Red Vines, or Mike & Ike’s, trailers have always been one of the joys of seeing a movie in a big theater. My family has learned that I’m determined to be “on time” for a movie so that I don’t miss the previews. Without them, I feel robbed.

A good trailer is a work of art. The first trailer for Interstellar made me cry. The final trailer for Avengers: Infinity War still gives me chills. This Star Trek (2009) trailer is a hype-generating masterpiece that makes the reboot seem like the coolest movie in history. The first time I saw the trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, with the John Williams music and the appearance of Han Solo and Chewbacca, I was floored.

The best trailers build your anticipation and excitement for a film, give you a sense of what it promises, but keep most of the story hidden away until you show up to see the movie.

This trailer is too much. That music, that line: “When are you coming back?”

On the oher hand, many trailers turn out to be far better than the actual films they preview (hi there, Suicide Squad and Matrix Resurrections), but that promise, that tease, that hint of awesomeness is still almost always worth it.

And for every great trailer, there is one that seems determined to ruin the film for its audience. Companion, a dark, smart, inventive sci-fi thriller from 2025, reveals its biggest twist 30 seconds into its trailer; without that, the movie might have been a mind-blowing experience. Instead, a massive secret is spoiled, and the audience knows it’s coming before they even take their seats. But this is nothing new. This trailer for Cast Away (2000) spoils the ending of the film and shows scenes that happen after Tom Hanks makes it back home from the island. The greatest movie-trailer-that-spoils-the-entire-film would have to be Free Willy. It’s not only a condensed summary of the entire film, but literally shows the big, iconic ending of the movie at the end of the trailer. Someone should have been charged with a crime.

Did they free him?

I’m not alone in how much spoiler-y movie trailers offend me. Jeff Cannata, one of the hosts of the outstanding Filmcast podcast, goes to the extreme measure of lurking outside his theater until the trailers are over before he takes his seat, all to preserve the purity of his filmgoing experience. I love trailers too much to do what he does, but I respect his commitment. That kind of defensive moviegoing behavior sounds extreme, but it points to a real split: audiences don’t all want the same thing from a trailer.

I suspect the directors and screenwriters of these films hate spoiler-y trailers as much or more than I do. Most often, a marketing team, separate and apart from the film’s director or screenwriters, creates the trailers, at the direction of the studio, to drum up as much interest in a movie as possible, even at the expense of spoiling the in-theater story experience. Their interests — a big opening weekend, overall ticket sales, and a splashy release — likely don’t align with the narrative instincts of the writers and directors of the films. Whoever made that Companion trailer likely figured the reveal was worth it to give people more of a sense of the story and catch their interest, even though it would reveal a big secret.

Studios are structurally rewarded for opening-weekend performance more than for preserving narrative surprise. And so if a trailer spoils a film but spikes more buzz and interest for an opening weekend, so be it.

But that begs the question: why do they think spoiling movies or previewing entire plots makes their films more marketable? What do they know that convinces them that it’s the most profitable approach for their bottom line?

Researchers at UC San Diego did a study in 2011 that showed that people enjoy stories more when they know the ending beforehand. In their study, people who were “spoiled” liked the stories more than those who read them cold. Another study in 2016 by researchers Rosenbaum and Johnson found that whether you enjoy or despise spoilers largely depends on your personality type. They established that a significant portion of the audience has a measurable “preference for spoiled stories.”

Overall, U.S. moviegoing is down roughly 35% since the start of the pandemic in 2020. So, it’s not hard to imagine anxious studio executives looking to pull any level that they think they must bring more people to the multiplexes. And with the rising costs to see movies today, it may take a little extra to nudge a family to get tickets to a new release.

So maybe the studio executives and focus groups aren’t actively trying to ruin movies. Maybe they are just looking at the data, reading the room, and giving audiences exactly what they want. In the minds of the studio, which hires a marketing agency to cut a film trailer, it’s not a huge logical leap to imagine them greenlighting a trailer that gives away the entire plot, if it lowers a viewer’s resistance and makes them more likely to go to the theater. A viewer doesn’t have to work as hard to figure out what’s going on, so they feel smart, comfortable, and safe spending $20 on a ticket and $12 on a bucket of mediocre, semi-warm popcorn.

Ultimately, bad trailers may be smart business. Spoiler-heavy trailers are an easier lever toi pull than fixing the actual theater experience. It’s cheaper to reveal the third act or a “surprise” cameo than to slash ticket prices, drop the price of popcorn, staff theaters properly to keep bathrooms and theaters clean, and make going to the movies feel worth it again.