Lili Loofbourow

I chatted with Lili and Patrick about THE NATHAN FIELDER ELIZABETH HOLMES movie, who is the real villain in it, the way nothing it true or false, and it's long and could have been so much longer. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq8w...

I am so thrilled to see how many people are joining @heydaybooks.com for our annual Harvest celebration! This year we are honoring Indigenous children's book authors, activist Jane Fonda, historian Rhae Lynn Barnes, and more! Join us: heyday.salsalabs.org/Harvest2026/...

Told the kids we were going to El Cerrito yesterday for their friend's bday party and the whole drive, they were like "ok but where IS the small montaña"

We went deep on You Can See Everything youtu.be/vq8whJ12KuI

Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzman--most famous for "The Battle of Chile" died last month. It was fun to talk about his work--and what got better and worse over his 50 years making movies--with @patrickiber.bsky.social even though my computer melted down at one point www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rxwz...

Helen DeWitt turning down the Nobel Prize next year because she doesn't want to do the Instagram reaction pic.

In the interest of spreading the love a little, TV-wise, I wrote about 50 shows that made my "Best 100 TV shows of the 21st Century" list but not the NYTs. somepersonalnews.substack.com/p/50-shows-t...

New ep! some experts in dying fields (me, @patrickiber.bsky.social & @zunguzungu.bsky.social) talk Sophy Romvari's film "Blue Heron" + FEELINGS nb: I'd finished watching (and gotten a raging migraine) ~9 minutes before we started. not in PEAK FORM but, y'know, real "real" youtu.be/cS5FveHwFDA

Episode 3, which we will post next week, is about the independent film Blue Heron. I really encourage people to watch the movie before listening to our conversation. This is a powerful one www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeWg...

In Episode 2 I asked actual TV critics what the New York Times list got right and got wrong, while I thought about how the shows reflected the moments of their production www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCPd...

In Episode 1 we broke down the Netflix adaptation of 100 Years of Solitude and ended up talking a lot about the book, including what made it it such a significant cultural event in a way that the TV show (although quite good) has not been www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLyj...

We have other jobs so it's one object a week for us, but we'll go long on it. Could be a film, TV show, essay, book, etc. and once we're in rhythm we'll let people know what is coming so that they can follow along, if desired

Part of the backstory here is that I was sad to see Slate's culture podcast wrap its 17-year run; I had learned a lot about movies, music, books, etc. that were worth thinking about through it. I encouraged Aaron and Lili to do a culture podcast and they told they would if I did, more or less

The podcast is up and running. "Experts in a Dying Field" includes the Washington Post's former TV critic, @lililoofbourow.bsky.social, writer and critic @zunguzungu.bsky.social of the Oakland Review of Books, and me. Each week we are taking on a cultural object, big or small, present or past

Here's Ep 2 of Experts in a Dying Field, in which @zunguzungu.bsky.social, @patrickiber.bsky.social and I gab about the 100 Best TV Shows list and how shows age (my favorite example is Gen Z viewers marveling at how nice Walter White's house is. "He has a pool?!") www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCPd...

ICYMI, I wrote about literal and metaphorical nitpicking. (also "Tangled," microscopy, a 17-year-old girl who died of peritonitis in 1943, parenting, Robert Hooke, corpse brides, poker, dolls and bad moms) It's been a complicated week somepersonalnews.substack.com/p/nitpicking

If you get lice, you have to wait 9 days before you can apply a second dose of the poison and find out whether any new ones have hatched. This is my record of that nine-day window. somepersonalnews.substack.com/p/nitpicking

I wrote about whether Odysseus is a *dad* or a *father* — and why Christopher Nolan should just get a phone and not be such a turd about it. pjmaciak.substack.com/p/the-dadyssey

Burned out on the Kavanaugh circus, I figured a graveyard in Patagonia would be the emptiest place on Earth to wallow in "political grief"? "Is that a thing? IS THE POLITICAL PERSONAL?" I scribbled on the plane, like a weirdo. Then some stuff happened. somepersonalnews.substack.com/p/a-bare-ass...

one day you look up and twenty-five years have zipped by since you started the thing. and you're different, and the world has thinned. and yet here we are. and here it all is. so here we go. some personal news: substack.com/home/post/p-...