My annual recap of media and products I enjoyed over the year.

Music

Getting Killed and Heavy Metal – I’m on the Cameron Winter and Geese train along with everyone else.

The Thief next to Jesus – Spiritual stuff.

Manning Fireworks – MJ is a talent.

Dream River – I’m catching up on all the Bill Callahan.

Strange Love – My kind of supergroup.

Here is my 2025 playlist of songs I enjoyed throughout the year.

TV Shows

The Pitt – My show of the year. Bringing back the medical procedural.

Task – Tight and sharp.

Andor season two – Smart Star Wars.

Invincible – I watched all three seasons. It’s violent. It feels like a comic book show in a good way.

The Eternaut – Strong start. Faded a little.

Department Q – The plot shouln’t work and yet it does. Team Akram forever.

Adolescence – Incredible achievement. Brutal watch at times.

The Studio – Made me giggle.

Movies

Sinners – Loved it.

Black Bag – Slick.

Anora – Decent. Can’t believe it won the Oscar.

One Battle After Another – Made me laugh.

Predator: Killer of killers – I enjoy seeing good takes on the Predator universe.

Killers of the Flower Moon – Evil pricks everywhere. Too long. Still good.

The Wild Robot – Beautiful art. Pulls at the heartstrings.

Books

I still don’t read enough books.

Project Hail Mary – Like a science puzzle. Second half picked up steam. Good fun.

The Wager – A mad story of survival.

Count Zero – Getting my old school Gibson back on.

Products

Gozney Arc – Gas fired pizza oven.

Dictador 20 year old rum – Good booze.

Didgeridoona cooler bag – Good for transporting booze.

Huski Champagne Flutes and cooler – Good for drinking booze.

I find the 24 hour news cycle exhausting and unsettling.

So, these days, I mostly opt out of it.

Instead, I check the news once a week, usually on a Sunday, and see what’s lasting that has risen to the top.

Kagi News and the Economist World in Brief are my main sources.

I start with local news and end with international news.

I find this approach provides a calmer experience.

Kagi:

Every day, our system reads thousands of community curated RSS feeds from publications across different viewpoints and perspectives. We then use AI to distill this massive information into one comprehensive daily briefing, while clearly citing sources.

I’ve wanted something like this for a while. I like how the daily update cadence debounces the signal.

I’m keen to see how it works in practice.

Priscilla Page:

Finally finished this long-gestating essay about Highlander. Obviously, there will be spoilers ahead. Since everyone loves talking about the mismatched accents and there was no place in the essay to insert this information seamlessly, I wanted to mention that no one involved in the production seemed to give a shit. They weren’t exactly aiming for realism. Although Christopher Lambert’s complete inability to speak English was shocking to the filmmakers — they didn’t meet him until after they cast him — but everyone had fun with it.

This was a fun read. I loved Highlander as a kid.

Let’s rip though a bunch more media, and a couple of products, that I enjoyed in 2024¹.

Music

Music is easily the most consumed media for me this year. Here’s a few albums I enjoy.

Love Changes Everything — Nothing like a Dirty Three album.

Little Rope — Hell of an album opener.

Teenage Snuff Film — Digging into my Australian music history.

Wild God — Good to have another Bad Seeds album.

Eleanor Jawurlngali — An ethereal voice.

Songs of a Lost World — I don’t listen to The Cure much. This new album is great.

I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍 — Loving these guys.

No Name — Grimy Jack White.

TV Shows

Turns out I still watch quite a bit of TV.

What we do in the Shadows — Final season. Better than the previous one. It was the right time to bow out. Laszlo and Nadja forever.

The Diplomat — Caught up on the first two seasons. Bit of London. Bit of politics. Bit of espionage.

Fisk — Caught up on the first three seasons. Cracks me up.

Drops of God — Wine-based superhero comic story. Yep, that’s right.

Industry — Season three was the best yet. The finale was fantastic.

The Bear — Season three felt like it was a bit padded out, but it still had its high points, like the episode Napkins.

Outer Range — Weird as shit.

Shogun — Kept me rapt.

The Gentlemen — Geezers geezering.

Blue Eye Samurai — Makes me want to watch more animated fare.

Mr and Mrs Smith — Great mix of character and action.

Fargo - Season five was a return to form.

Black Doves — Worth it just for the Irish assassins.

Movies

I need to watch more movies instead of TV.

Dune: Part Two — Technically brilliant.

Furiosa — George Miller is a genius.

Books

I fell off the reading wagon pretty hard this year.

Wool — Read this after watching Silo season one. Good sci-fi.

Infinite — I’ve been fascinated with immortality stories ever since watching Highlander.

Rubicon — An ancient Roman violent soap opera.

Road to seeing — One of my favourite photo books.

Podcasts

My regulars with a couple of new entries.

The Rest is History — The lads continue to produce good series. The French Revolution and Custer hooked me.

Conversations with Tyler — The density of ideas in these remains high.

The Watch — One for the CR heads.

The Rewatchables — Makes me laugh.

Bandsplain — Love the Grunge season.

The Big Picture — The more unhinged the draft show, the better.

Dithering — I enjoy when they bring up new angles on tech-related news.

Lenny’s Podcast — New to the rotation. Good for getting a view of product management.

Acquired on Microsoft — Two episodes running through the history of Microsoft.

Games

Playing games is the most reliable way for me to “switch off”. I don’t play loads. There are a couple of new additions this year.

Balatro — Roguelike poker game. Is killer on iPad.

Astro Bot — Sony found their Super Mario.

Greed — Dice game that’s great for the whole family.

Products

Yeti stubby cooler — Keeps those drinks cold.

Apple Watch Ultra 2 — In Batman black for maximum stealth.

Le Creuset Casserole — Grab one on sale and keep it forever.

Fujifilm GF 63mm F2.8 Lens — A good sized, fast, 50mm prime equivalent for the 100S.

I’m giving MusicBox and Play a crack for keeping track of music I want to listen to and videos I want to watch¹.

I was previously managing my music to listen to via a specific playlist in Spotify so I migrated that across.

For video, I migrated my YouTube Watch Later list, Instapaper videos folder, and AppleTV+ and Netflix watch later lists across.

I like how the apps sync across all my Apple devices and everything is in one spot.

I’m especially keen to give the Play app on AppleTV a try.

Now I need something similar for all my podcasts and audiobooks.

It’s always a joy listening to Charlie.

Also check the online version of the re-released book of his wit and wisdom.

Here’s a roundup of things, mostly media, I enjoyed in 2023.

Music

I create a Spotify playlist each year where I add songs I like. Here’s my 2023 edition.

I scrobbled about 6700 songs this year.

Here are my top ten tracks and top ten albums.

TV shows

Slow Horses — A season a year, six episodes each, sharp, great cast, Oldman ripping three zingers an episode, set in London which hits me in the nostalgia spots, can’t wait for this season’s finale next week.

The Bear — Season two built nicely on the first season. Episode seven of the second season was a highlight.

Scavengers Reign — Body horror stuff isn’t my thing but this show was great. The creativity on show in the flora and fauna design is incredible. The art reminds me of Mœbius.

What We Do in the Shadows — After each season I feel like the show is running out of steam but then each season I laugh during each episode. It has the best intro song ever and Matt Berry is a genius.

Hijack — Idris and some tightly shot thrills.

Deadloch — Everything is inverted. Finished strong.

Succession — They stuck the landing.

Better Call Saul — Finally finished this slow burn. Satisfying finish to the series.

Jury Duty — Wild that this worked. Made me laugh.

Station Eleven — Unexpectedly uplifting post apocalyptic story.

Silo — I love a good mystery. Made me start reading the books.

Movies

Dune (2021) — Well done. Sent me off reading the books again.

John Wick: Chapter 4 — So over the top. Beautifully shot. They shouldn’t make any more, though.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse — The best comic movie fare by a wide margin.

Dunkirk — I’m seemingly on a five year lag with Christopher Nolan movies.

The Killer — Fassbender and Fincher on one.

Books

Dune Chronicles — I reread Dune and then read Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, and most of God Emperor of Dune. I underappreciated Herbert’s world building which is incredibly influential. I lost steam about three quarters into the fourth book.

Faith, Hope, and Carnage — Whirls around creativity, spirituality, loss, religion, partnerships. Probably only for Nick Cave sickos like me.

The Psychology of Money — Principles around money and how to handle it. Hold strong and let the power of compounding do its thing.

This is How You Lose the Time War — Sci-fi time travel done well.

Rendezvous With Rama — Classic mysterious space objects baby.

Podcasts

The Watch — Chris and Andy forever.

The Rest is History — Educational and funny. (The live show was great too.)

Dithering — 15 minutes is a sweetspot.

The Rewatchables — Always makes me laugh.

Bandsplain — Yasi has charm for days. The Afghan Whigs episode was a particular favourite.

Conversations with Tyler — I love Tyler’s interview style. I always learn things.

Games

God of War Ragnarök — Nothing more satisfying than that axe flying back into your hand.

Elden ring — Only scratched the surface as I don’t have the hours or energy to get up the difficulty curve of this.

Diablo 4 — As addictive as ever. I ended up mashing buttons on this on many evenings.

Baldur’s Gate 3 — Throw back CRPG. Will crack this back open once time allows.

Cyberpunk 2077 — Cool world. Choices didn’t seem like that big a deal. Will crack this open again at some stage given the latest patch seems to have changed a bunch of things up.

King of Tokyo — The kids love playing this. Quick to set up and is great fun.

Products

AirPods Pro 2 — I use these every day. Apple’s best product in a while.

Leica Q2 Reporter — I’m back in Leica land. I carry this camera with me often and have shot way more this year as a result.

True Classic Shirts — These dadcore shirts go good.

I caught the lads on the last show of their Australia Live tour.

Top drawer stuff. They had me laughing in my seat.

The Q&A questions from the audience were sometimes deranged which was perfectly appropriate.

There’s another season of Historical Love Island on The Rest is History podcast.

Last year’s episodes are belters too.

I just binged season two of The Bear.

Intense and roaring. Loads of heart. Loved it.

Definitely recommended.

Update: This Spotify playlist for season two is great listening for children of the 90s.

The man can tell a story.

I ❤️ every time Sam goes on The Watch.

Alex Blumberg interviews Ira Glass.

A podcast about Watergate.

Ryan Kazanciyan:

I’ve been waiting eagerly for this episode to air — it’s my favorite of the season. As I looked through my notes, I was surprised to find that Kor and I first started working on scenes for “eps3.4_runtime-err0r.r00” as far back as January. The attacks against E Corp’s Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) are among the most complex hacks we’ve depicted on the show

It was emotional.

Lamar Odom’s story.

Heads in unexpected directions.