Not EK, himself but this is covering one of the signature bits from abundance, how high speed rail failed in California, one of the most left leaning states in America.
I find Wendover is pretty neutral and unbiased. He is left leaning in that "reality has a liberal bias" way but he's rarely explicitly political, so I am looking forward to this one!
It's a fascinating story, for those who don't know, the real Beatles, specifically Paul and John (not sure if George participated) re-recorded the vocals for *I Want To Hold Your Hand* and *She Loves You* entirely in German, to cater to the German audience. It speaks to how relatively small they were back then, that this could be demanded of them and they'd do it. And they did. Someone must have translated the lyrics and written them out phonetically because even back then none of them were fluent German speakers.
I don't know much more of the story but I've always wondered what Germans think of it, if their pronunciation is any good or if the translations all make sense.
A couple pretty well known names that have never been nominated for an Oscar include Donald Sutherland, Martin Sheen, John Goodman, Alan Rickman and Jim Carrey.
These are *all* good actors... They all deserve a nomination. But who is the best among them? And who have I forgotten? I would say I am most surprised that Martin Sheen never got a nomination. Rickman, being English and having mostly done work there, it kinda screws you in the Oscars.
We found them closer to the water, with no way to identify, we decided to leave them by the entrance to the park on 23rd
Just a warning for any writers out there. They do screenwriting competitions and I have found one person who said they were paid when they won, but received no promotion. Another said they received aggressive tactics on twitter of the account trying to get people to submit by paying them.
The biggest red flag though is just their social presence, which is basically their entire presence besides a website with suspiciously little real information... Most of their social posts are just viral clips, stolen bits of interviews with writers and performers that they add music to, which is so lowest common denominator as to be deeply suspicious. Their website also has weird typos on it.
Both shows actually do cover similar themes of identity, people stuck in self perpetuating cycles, etc... but to go from a show covering that in the most feel good way possible to a show which dives into the darkness of the human psyche, yeah, whiplash is the term I'd use.
For the record, Ezra Klein is not involved in this. He founded Vox.com in 2014, which is different to the parent company, Vox Media, which existed beforehand. Klein left the company in 2020.
Certainly seems relevant though, not just for his project ending up part of this but for the broader implications around journalism which Klein covers.