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(Adapted from a speech I gave at my mother’s 80th birthday on April 14, 2022)

One of the best bits of advice I’ve ever read is something that a lot of people wish Maya Angelou wrote, because it seems like the kind of advice that she might give: “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”

That quote seems like the best way to summarize the good fortune that goes along with being one of Phyllis Bonfield’s children. The things I remember her saying to me are fading like my hair color and eyesight. On the other hand, the feelings of gratitude, of mattering to someone who matters to me, of appreciation for the ways she cared for me and shaped me — those feelings are getting stronger and richer every year.

I remember how she would make me fried eggs any time I had to take a standardized test. They filled my belly with a gentle, fireside warmth that made me feel calm and confident, like the tests were a game and I should have fun with them. That was why it felt so good when she would let me cook dinner for our family, or make her a milkshake or sundae for dessert. It felt similar, years later, when she passed her editorial red pen to me, at least symbolically, and let me help her with a ghostwriting assignment for the president of the American Society of Chartered Life Underwriters and Chartered Financial Consultants. Neither felt like a role reversal. They were more like initiations. A chance to experience something with her that felt both loving and powerful. Arranging a meal for people you love. Communing with others through the written word.

Years ago, there was a debate that divided my Reconstructionist congregation. Should we announce pets, along with the names of deceased family and friends, before reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish? Most congregants seemed to feel uncomfortable with the idea. Even still, no one wanted to tell the Animals Are Family, Too activist that it made them uncomfortable.

I’ve been devoted to animals my whole life. Beth and I live with four cats. One of them was sitting on my lap while I wrote this sentence. They are part of our family and our psyches. Their happiness brings us joy and their pain devastates us.

Three weeks ago, we needed to rush Merle, one of our cats, to a veterinary hospital. When he got home, each of the other cats began falling ill, turning away from food, barely moving for days. We assume that Merle brought home a virus. Or all he had was a virus and he got it first and worst. Fortunately, each of the cats has rallied and all seem to be healthy again.

The veterinarian could only speculate about Merle’s condition. She asked us if wanted to subject him to invasive tests and expensive treatment. We decided against it. We love him and we also understand his lifespan and limitations, and ours as well. We don’t see our cats as people.

Every so often I run into a book or essay about how we would be happier if we stopped consuming social media and the news. The authors tend to looks like me. Clay Johnson wrote the first one I encountered, The Information Diet (2012). The most recent ones I stumbled on are The Digital Vegan (2021) by Andy Farnell and Five Things You Notice When You Quit the News (2016) by David Cain.

I agree with some of these authors’ ideas. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are cannibals whose excrement sometimes fertilizes flowers. Most news reporting is numbingly formulaic, poorly researched, intentionally deceptive, and deliberately triggering. If you have the privilege not to use social media or follow the news, you’re already well off. Abstaining from these opiates will make you feel even better. Especially when the news is dominated even more than usual by atrocity.

You might also be happier if you avoid facts that cause you to consider your advantages. Sure, I’m talking about the Critical Race Theory moral panic. I’m also talking about our liberal parents who raised us in “safe neighborhoods” with “good schools”.

It feels like a catch-22, at least if you have the means to insulate yourself and an inclination toward moral courage. Your options are smug denial or Sisyphean trauma.

“This is not advice,” Matt Levine will write before proffering tongue-in-cheek advice. “None of this is ever advice.” For Matt, a humorist disguised as a finance columnist, this is a running gag, a way to get readers to smile as he sets up a punchline.

It’s also a subtle reminder that we are awash in advice — and exhortations, mores, recommendations. Everywhere we look, people are telling us what to do or think, and the consequences for failing to comply.

Sometimes advice is welcome. This is usually the case when I ask for it (there are exceptions) and rarely the case when I don’t. Like most people, I seek out experts, both in person and on the Web. I would often be worse off without their opinions and guidance. The list of things most people seem to know and I don’t is embarrassing (and cleansing; see below). And yet, regardless of your intentions, my ignorance is not an invitation to correct me.

In this newsletter, I want to avoid doing to you what I don’t want you to do to me. I’ve gone back into my archives and rewritten history:

Yo!

Welcome to December 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it.

Podcasts

• An Absurd Result (I Liked It): Journalism as advocacy. As The Science improves, The Law has new responsibilities. In this instance, DNA analysis and the statute of limitations for rape.
• Generally Intelligent (Worth My Time): Sweet nerds getting excited about human and machine intelligence. Their kindness to each other gives me hope.
• Hope Chest (A Personal Favorite): Stacia Brown’s letters for her daughter to listen to when she’s old enough. The most beautiful podcast, bar none.
• Jainism for Everyone (Worth My Time): Come for the stories, stay for the discussions. Timir Chheda invites us to think about some ideas. Then he leads sincere, inclusive conversations.
• Kabbalah Revealed (Worth My Time). If we met, I would love for you to tell me all about the thing that most interests you. For Anthony Kosinec, it’s Kabbalah.
• Queen of the Ring (I Loved It): My great grandmother had little English and I had less Yiddish. Our naches (joy) was professional wrestling. Host Alexa Pruett helps me feel that again.

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Welcome to November 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it.

Podcasts

• Death at the Wing (I Liked It): Each episode features a basketball star’s tragic story and its relationship to Reagan-era policies. The debut podcast from director Adam McKay (The Big Short, Vice).
• Ear Hustle (A Personal Favorite): Prison life at San Quentin, told by people on the inside and their families. Later seasons feature other prisons and the transition to post-incarceration.
• Hi-Phi Nation (A Personal Favorite): Vassar professor Barry Lam has a background in broadcasting and a PhD in philosophy. His memorable, moving stories balance philosophy and investigative journalism.
• Maintenance Phase (A Personal Favorite): Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes investigate the health and wellness industries. If Michael Hobbes asks to start a podcast with you, say “yes.”
• Order 9066 (I Liked It): A quilt of narratives about WWII-era Japanese-American incarceration. The American Saga: Americans caging other American because they are not white.
• Unfinished (I Loved It): Careful, embedded, investigative journalism. Season 1 is about Isadore Banks and his lynching. Season 2 is about Short Creek and fundamentalist Mormons.
• Unread (A Personal Favorite): A brief memorial to a friend and their shared love of Britney Spears. Full of love, laughs, heartbreak, and intrigue. My favorite kind of podcast.
• Vinimark (I Liked It): I don’t need much interaction with something to enjoy learning about it. Given how much I enjoy this South African show about wine, add vino to my list.
• Wild Thing (I Loved It): Science storyteller Laura Krantz maps our obsessions. Season 1: Bigfoot. Season 2: UFOs. I can’t wait to hear what’s next.
• xoxo, Jess (I Liked It): What’s the ideal training for podcasting? Who excels at communicating with intimacy, succinctness, and humor? Jessica Walker makes a case for greeting card entrepreneurs.

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Welcome to October 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it.

Podcasts

• Entitled (I Liked It). Academic discussion of human rights law. It introduced me to new ideas, which I appreciate. It would be better if episodes were shorter.
• King of the World (I Loved It): Shahjehan Khan’s “historical, cultural, and personal look back at the 20 years since 9/11.” It hits close to home in many ways.
• Nocturnists (I Loved It). Curating and interviewing are self-portraiture. Physician Emily Silverman hosts Moth-like stories by health professionals, and discusses their experiences with them.
• Other Men Need Help (I Loved It). I find myself channeling host Mark Pagan in my relationships with men. Sometimes I’m vulnerable, present, and caring. Other times I’m needy, needy, needy.
• Queersplaining (I Loved It): Accepting ourselves and others as they see themselves is radical. Empathetic conversation is revolutionary. Callie Wright is showing us the way.
• This Land (A Personal Favorite): Our genocide of indigenous peoples continues. We use their children and The Law as weapons, our God as a shield. Because we are good people.
• The Zen Studies Podcast (I Loved It): Somehow Zen podcasts outnumber podcasts. Amid this abundance, I found the teacher for me, Domyo Burk. She specializes in helping novices appreciate nuance.
• Zoroastrian Q&A (Worth My Time): Pablo is an earnest and endearing Zoroastrian convert and aspiring scholar. They provide answers about Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism in a gorgeous unidentifiable accent.

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Welcome to September 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it.

Podcasts

• Jacked (I Liked It): Taraji P. Henson tells the story of New Jack Swing, and she is exquisite. The kitsch I anticipated, the tragedy not so much.
• Xai, how are you? (I Loved It): Queer Talmud is my happy place?! At least with Xava, a divine and glittering scholar, and her partner and foil, Michael.

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Welcome to August 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it.

Podcasts

• Butts & Guts (I Liked It): Engaging, focused conversations with Cleveland Clinic gastroenterologists. Host Scott Steele and his guests help us understand their practices and share in their passion.
• Firebug (I Liked It):The suspect has written a novel that might also be a memoir and confession. In LA, even true crime is pure Hollywood.
• Value Investing with Legends (Worth My Time): Chummy, academic conversations with successful investors. Beating the market is difficult. The people who do often have good stories and helpful advice.
• Welcome to Your Fantasy (I Liked It): The story of Chippendales is sketchy and tawdry, only not in the way I imagined.

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Welcome to July 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it.

Podcasts

• Aack Cast (I Loved It): Comedian Jamie Loftus tells the story of the Cathy comic. Its creator, Cathy Guisewite, is cooperating. A perfect subject for a singular podcaster.
• Blindspot (I Loved It): Superb, Slow Burn-style narrative-based history. Season 1 covers the lead up to 9/11, and Season 2 tells the story of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre.
• Murder at Ryan’s Run (I Liked It): It started as a show about police violence against MOVE, a Philadelphia-based Black liberation organization. It became a show about cults, exploitation, and murder.

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Welcome to June’s 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it.

Podcasts

• Good One (I Liked It): Comedians detail their process for developing a favorite bit. Think: Song Exploder for jokes. Start with the Maria Bamford, Tig Notaro, and Patton Oswalt’s episodes.
• Operation Midnight Climax (I Liked It): A history of MKUltra that shouldn’t have eschewed podcast’s affordances (e.g., interviews, archival audio). Good pacing and an unforgettable protagonist redeem this audiobook.
• The Real Sarah Miller (I Liked It): Her “very specific interviews” are succinct, so-uncool-they’re-cool celebrations. She loves her topics and her guests, and all the rest is good natured impudence.
• The Untold Story: Policing (I Loved It): Actor Jay Ellis is a talented, charming expository journalist. He finds the right experts, asks them good questions, and keeps things focused and moving.

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Welcome to May 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it.

Podcasts

• The Edge (I Liked It): Nuanced journalism about the Houston Astros’ methods, championship, and ensuing cheating scandal. I would love to see my favorite team give Jeff Luhnow another chance.
• The Improvement Association (Worth My Time): Spoon didn’t always sound like Billy Joel. Like Zoe Chace’s earlier reporting, Spoon’s piebald, sparing production made it distinctive. Both benefit from fewer chefs.
• The Last Archive (I Loved It): Emerging media synthesizes existing media (e.g., blogs, radio plays). As we enter an age of “podcast lectures,” writer-historian Jill Lepore is establishing its form.
• Sudhir Breaks the Internet (I Liked It): Facebook and Twitter are garbage. They traffick emotion, sabotage well-being, make us worse neighbors and citizens. I hope whatever supersedes them has a moral compass.
• This Is Love (I Loved It): I would listen to Phoebe Judge declaim the phonebook. This is a lot better than that: stories about love to listen to while cutting onions.
• West End Stories Project (I Loved It): Ke Parks has developed mutual respect with her subjects. They gift her, and us, with the parts of their stories we most need to hear.
• You Must Remember This (A Personal Favorite): While I like movies and see value in gossip, I find Hollywood boring. It’s Karina Longworth’s thoroughgoing insightfulness that makes this podcast a treasure.
• You’re Wrong About (A Personal Favorite): Righteous millennials Michael and Sarah are trying to make sense of their world. In the process, they’ve created a pluperfect podcast: funny, forgiving, and incisive.

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Welcome to April 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it.

Podcasts

• In Front of Our Eyes (Worth My Time): Weekly updates on one of the most important court cases of our time. Unfortunately, the journalism is pedestrian and provides limited insight or context.
• The Lonely Palette (I Loved It): Tamar Avishai is to art as Karina Longworth is to film. They’re the best writers in podcasting, simultaneously complicating and demystifying their subjects.
• Norco 80 (I Loved It): Imagine telling a heist story like Reservoir Dogs or Baby Driver with compassion, sensitivity, and rigor. I look forward to Antonia Cereijido’s future projects.
• Stronger by Science (I Loved It): Eric and Greg are experts in muscle and strength, and its relationship to biology and statistics. They’re also humble, egalitarian, likable, and very, very funny.

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Welcome to March 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it.

Podcasts

• Choiceology (I Loved It): Wharton professor Katy Milkman shares interviews and stories about our cognitive biases. I love her enthusiasm and affection for behavioral science and her subjects.
• City of Women (I Loved It): We are women or will be soon. We live in Bangalore or will soon. We are fighters, bending the din. Hear our laughter and surrender.
• The Many Near Deaths of John Huizinga (I Liked It): What’s better than a septuagenarian Dutch-Canadian raconteur and near-death connoisseur? The wonderful father-daughter dynamic that enfolds his stories.
• Recording Artists (I Loved It): Archival interviews with artists Alice Neel, Lee Krasner, Betye Saar, Helen Frankenthaler, Yoko Ono, and Eva Hesse. Helen Molesworth and her guests add thoughtful context.

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Welcome to February 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it.

Podcasts

• Amended (I Liked It): Laura Free, a Humanities New York board member, partners with them to revisit the story of U.S. suffrage. We missed too much in school.
• Driving the Green Book (I Loved It): Gorgeous, heart-wrenching interviews about mid-century American racism, and African-American ingenuity and kindness. Host Alvin Hall is in my Top Five. ¹
• How It Happened (I Liked It): As much as I hate to relive it, this series about Trump’s last two months feels like a justifiable coda. We must never forget.
• Politics & Polls (I Liked It): Engaging exposition and interviews about recent events. Julian Zelizar and Sam Wang’s easygoing comfort, with each other and the topics, is rare in political commentary.
• The Promise (I Loved It): Meribah Knight tells the story of contemporary American segregation. First she covers public housing, then public education. East Nashville is us.

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Welcome to January 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it.

Podcasts

• Chronicled: Who Is Kamala Harris? (Worth My Time): Uneven production and storytelling about a fascinating subject. What separates successful politicians from the rest of us is their monumental confidence.
• Command Line Heroes (I Liked It): An inclusive, entertaining show about coding and hardware. In Season 6, Saron Yitbahrak shares compelling, well researched stories about BIPOC inventors.
• Fiasco: Bush v. Gore (I Liked It): In a corrupt system led by broken people, political catastrophe is inevitable. Leon Neyfakh of Slow Burn (I Loved It) documents these breakdowns in interviews and restrained exposition.
• Floodlines (A Personal Favorite): I was wrong about Katrina; it wasn’t about the storm. Vann R. Newkirk II’s humanities-centric journalism returns an indelible story to its owners.
• In the Dark (A Personal Favorite): Madeleine Baran combines forceful narratives with fearless, exhaustive research about corruption and incompetence. The concluding episodes of Season 2 are heartbreaking and gratifying.
• Lolita Podcast (I Loved It): Jamie Loftus is everywhere, including My Year in Mensa (I Loved It). She reveals her genius for nuance in this series about Lolita’s genesis and afterlife.
• The Shakeout (I Liked It): A Canadian running-themed show hosted by Olympic-hopeful Kate Van Buskirk. Topics include social justice, doping, and community building. I skip the race results episodes.
• Somebody (I Loved It): Shapearl Wells searches for justice for her slain son, Courtney. A beautiful, painful, unpredictable story about racism, agony, and determination. He should still be alive.
• Two Minutes Past Nine (I Loved It): Leah Sottile first covered fascist bigots in Bundyville (I Loved It). In this series, she tells the story of Timothy McVeigh and the seeds of Trumpism.
• Who We Are (I Loved It): Carvell Wallace’s Closer Than They Appear (A Personal Favorite) is a masterpiece of self-exploration. Who We Are is about context: the omnipresence of structural racism.