Slate Magazine

"I used to have a co-worker who would go into a small closet, sit on the floor with his knees up and phone positioned just so on his ear, and then fall asleep." It's the biggest no-no in any office. These people have figured out a genius way of doing it anyway. 😴

I wrote about the Brutalist, AI, and lines in the sand.

You can’t look away anymore. Starting today, these are the people poised to reshape America—and beyond. To brace for what is coming, we at Slate dove headfirst into the new Trump World Order, to present you with the starting lineup. These are the people we’ve identified as the most important players in Trumpworld right now. We’ve taken a close look at what brought them into the fold, and what might get them kicked out. Welcome to the next four years—or at least the next few months.

Ah, how does it FEEL?! My first new Hit Parade episode of 2025 is about—who else?—Bob Dylan, the subject of this season’s much-talked about biopic 𝘈 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘦 𝘜𝘯𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯. Except the movie leaves off in the mid-’60s, before Dylan scored any of his chart-topping albums and most of his Top 40 singles. So how did Bob function as a pop star, a creator of hits? I walk through his chart career decade by decade—from his “it”-boy ’60s to his album-rocker ’70s, through his misspent ’80s, his vibey ’90s, his trickster ’00s and his interpretive ’10s and ’20s. Dylan scored a gold or platinum album in all those periods, and his hit songs reflected their (a-changin') times as much as they invented new idioms. So…join me for a walk through Billboard's back pages—for a reminder of the breadth of Dylan’s Zeitgeist moments. There’s never been a better time to be tangled up in Bob. 🎙️✍🏻🙏🏼 LINK: https://lnkd.in/eZhQGC42

my latest as a newly promoted staff writer for Slate Magazine: I wrote about an underappreciated consequence of Mark Zuckerberg's push to run Meta more like Elon Musk runs X—which is that it undermines Zuck's *own case* for attracting disaffected Twitter users to Threads: https://lnkd.in/gX6Tub4E

Could it be the unexpected winner in America’s social media shake-up?

"I felt like checking my email constantly made me responsible. But ... did it really?"

As a longtime listener to Slate’s daily news podcast What Next and a huge fan of its host Mary Harris, it was a major thrill to make my debut on the show this week. I’m the guest for the Tuesday episode, in which Mary and I talked about how Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” tied the all-time Hot 100 No. 1 chart record set by “Old Town Road” in 2019, by fusing audiences and learning from Lil Nas X’s country-trap example. 🥇🎧🤠 LINK: https://lnkd.in/ea6-b69h

Have a Tune™ and a smile: The December episode of my podcast Hit Parade is about the intersection of advertising and hitmaking—how Madison Avenue has shaped decades of chart smashes. Sometimes they’re jingles that turn into singles—from the Carpenters song that started as a bank commercial; to the Japanese beer jingle Sting got onto your radio; to the Chris Brown hit that smuggled a famous gum tagline into the chorus. Sometimes it’s an ad placement that redefines an artist’s career, from Shaggy to Nick Drake, Jet to Feist. And then…there’s the weird, bespoke story of “Convoy,” recorded by a fake artist who launched in a bread commercial before birthing a Christmas music empire. It’s all a bit crass, irresistibly catchy and American as apple pie. (Although the Brits are no slouches in the hits-spawned-by-adverts department!) Before you finish your holiday shopping, get cozy with my show about some real-life Don Drapers who’d like to teach the world to sing…and buy. 🤑📺🥤 LINK: https://lnkd.in/eck36qHq

Most millennials leave their jobs after 2.7 years. Something incredible happened when I did the exact opposite.