My Favorite Content from 2025
How one man spent his limited attention span over the pass 12 months
Happy New Year to each of you! I wanted to start the year with a commitment to write more for this little Substack project. I’m not quite sure what kind of writing it will be, so hopefully you enjoy the experimentation. But first, something familiar, an end-of-year list!
I looked back on my 2023 list, and I felt a pang of regret when I skipped this tradition in 2024. We all consume more content than ever, and attention is a valuable resource. I want to log how I spent it each year, even if it’s joining a sea of similar content. I like the idea of checking these lists in a decade and analyzing how they compare to what was consensus at the time.
Favorite New Film: The Secret Agent
It has been a good year for films, but my favorites often deviate from the norm. Set in 1977 Brazil, The Secret Agent is at first a simple story of a man on the run from his past, but its ambition accelerates the experience into something memorable. The story managed to be touching, funny and audacious, all while engaging in powerful character and political work. I don’t know many who have seen this film, so that is how this earns my recommendation.
Honorable Mentions: Some combination of Marty Supreme, Sinners and One Battle After Another. I’m betting that Sinners is the most impactful on our culture, but I personally favored the other two.
Favorite New Show: Death By Lightning
There weren’t many new shows that I fell in love with, except for this one. I have gripes with the critical darlings such as Pluribus and The Studio, but Death By Lightning was a succinct and thoughtful mini-series that deserves recognition for spotlighting a footnote in our nation’s history.
Honorable Mention: The Lowdown was a fun and unique story that balanced modernity and nostalgia in a fun way.
Favorite Reality Show: Alone
I despise reality TV, so being this captivated by Alone surprised me. The show is set up as a survival contest, or something that may only be appreciated by preppers and outdoorsmen. But when you send 10 survivalists into the woods to live alone and film themselves for 2-3 months, you see parts of the human condition that we like to forget about. You learn about practical things such as hunting, foraging and indigenous practices, but you also encounter deeply personal experiences with loneliness, trauma and regret. If you can stomach watching someone skin a squirrel, then you would get a lot out of this show.
Favorite Non-Fiction Book: American Serengeti by Dan Flores.
I didn’t cover enough of this during my Montana and Wyoming travel log, but the natural beauty I encountered on that roadtrip was incredible. Seeing my first bison took my breath away, and I couldn’t help but wonder about the time when millions of these creatures roamed the middle of America. I was captivated by this book, which covers the history of the great plains through the eyes of the animals that we have displaced since American settlement began. If this topic is also a blind spot for you, I’d recommend brushing up on it.
Favorite Fiction Book: Stoner by John Williams
This book benefitted from a viral social media resurgence in 2025, but I am grateful for it. In the world of highly visible influencers and millionaires, our culture is losing sight of what a small life is, even though that is the life that most of us will experience. Full of small battles and small victories, it was refreshing to follow the life of a soft-spoken midwestern professor for a few hundred pages.
Favorite Song: Nose on the Grindstone by Tyler Childers
Tyler Childers continue to bring the heat with Snipe Hunter, a fun and heart-wrenching album. Give it a listen!
Honorable Mention: Yamaha by Dijon
Favorite Podcast: Wisdom of Crowds
Wisdom of Crowds is great at a few things that most podcasts are bad at:
Being topical without being stuck in the news cycle
Modeling healthy disagreements and letting the audience decide
Doing the homework (reading the guest’s book, researching topics, etc.)
Check them out if you’re looking for thinkers to take you away from the algorithm for an hour or two.
Favorite Short-form Video: N/A
While I have cultivated my algorithm to feed me the occasional helpful laugh, tip or insight, I can’t remember a single short-form video for more than a few days. I keep this category here to remind everyone that this content is not designed to stick with us as well as books, movies or music. When it comes to reclaiming your attention, I would encourage you to focus your eyes elsewhere.
Favorite Long-Form Video: Andrej Karpathy — “We’re summoning ghosts, not building animals”
While this is technically a podcast, I enjoyed the video version because I was able to observe the points of confusion and disagreement between guest and host. Dwarkesh Patel has become tech’s biggest interviewer, and Karpathy is one of tech’s most prominent problem solvers. It’s easy to either say that AI will change the world or it’s a dangerous slop-generating tool. I chose the middle path by listening to conversations like this, where people within the industry poke massive holes in the narratives and headlines we encountered in 2025.
Favorite Substack Post: James Baldwin Was Not Your Figurehead by Freddie deBoer
I don’t know if I should Substack about Substacks, so I won’t say much about these essays. I found them both thought provoking, so just give them a read and let me know what you think.
Runner Up: Against the City of Noise by Justin Lee
Favorite Human Interest Piece: The Story of Riley Walz
The world is certainly getting weirder and scarier, but also more interesting. That was the takeaway from this feature on a Gen Z hacker who is the true definition of chaotic good. These are the types of young people that can make an outsized impact on our digital world, and I appreciated the chance to understand Riley a bit better.
Favorite Video Game: Claire Obscure: Expedition 33
I spent more time playing various strategy games, which have been useful to keep the mind sharp, but Expedition 33 was the most inventive gaming experience of the year. Set in a fantastical world where humans are eternally trapped by a cruel, omnipotent creator, the world imagined by this independent gaming studio is incredible. It evokes the experience of playing Final Fantasy or Persona, but with a heaping amount of originality given to its characters and mechanics. It offers the rare trifecta of art, storytelling and gameplay that creates true verisimilitude.