On Monday’s Ask or Tell Me Anything, a caller asked about news sources that might help a person navigate the, um, fast-moving events of 2025.

In my charmingly fumbling way, I talked about a few newsletters and some old reliables, but the question has hung around. We’re going to try to answer it here in a somewhat different way.

Two caveats:

I don’t think people should break up with, say, The New York Times. People treat their media allegiances like Tinder dates instead of like marriages. On a Tinder date, one major failing is enough to send a person to the exit. (I have never been on a Tinder date, but I was fascinated by a recent episode of This American Life which dealt with “trap questions” that people ask as a substitute for sticking a fork in the date to see if it’s done. One of them was “What’s your favorite Tom Hanks movie?” This question bothered me for several hours, culminating in my decision to watch Cloud Atlas for the first time. But that’s a whole other story.¹)

The New York Times is a marriage. You don’t end a marriage just because your partner snores or continues to publish Tom Friedman columns. Whether or not those two are essentially the same thing is a matter I leave up to you.

The Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New Yorker — these are coops full of some of the smartest and most experienced journalists. In particular, The Atlantic and Ezra Klein of the Times (especially his podcast) seem geared up for this moment.

Second caveat: Here at the show, we think a little differently. We don’t always know what we want to know about, so we journey to some odd places.

Example: I was listening to a BBC podcast called You’re Dead to Me, in particular an episode about Leif Erikson. And I realized that I was sort of interested in Leif Erikson and absolutely frantic to do a show with the main guest, Viking historian Eleanor Barraclough, who is exactly the type of person I enjoy talking to, as I explained last issue.

Here are some suggestions from me and other people who work on the show.

Me first: Two aggregators. The first is Memeorandum, a somewhat mysterious site which claims to be “auto-generated” as opposed to being curated by persons. I won’t go into mechanics, but they’ve done a really good job of incorporating and scraping a lot of newsletters and other startups. Second aggregator: Arts and Letters Daily, which has pretty much the opposite vibe. Memeorandum is the mechanized hum of modern life. ALD is the Brodsky Quartet and Elvis Costello performing a song cycle based on letters written to Juliet Capulet and mailed to Verona.

Both of these sites link you to all kinds of obscure publications. Through ALD, I might wind up at something called Knowable and become interested in — as opposed to the article I was directed to — another piece on the site about cognitive research that involved performing magic tricks for nonhuman animals.

I could go on, but the others have ideas.

Jonathan McNicol, producer
I want to start here by allowing you a thing. I’m in the news business, and you have my permission to completely check out of the news. Temporarily, intermittently, permanently — whatever you need to do is absolutely, 100% OK to do. In the event of an unexpected change in cabin pressure, you’re supposed to secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others. Your health — mental and otherwise — is all you really have. Take care of yourself first and foremost. OK? OK.

Having said that, the truth is that I keep track of the world of politics and government by repeatedly, just all day long, refreshing Bluesky (follow me!), where I follow many reporters and editors and producers and other news people. I get a lot of news alerts on my phone from all the big-name news apps. I listen to some big-name podcasts: the Slate Political Gabfest, the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, NPR’s Throughline.

I’ve got two real tips here: 1. Remember how during the first Trump administration, Teen Vogue suddenly became this new bastion of journalism excellence? Well, in the early days of the President Trump Part II: The Revenge era, the new Teen Vogue would seem to be … WIRED magazine. (Which, by the way, was a great magazine for decades before Trump was even a real political figure, and which doesn’t need Elon Musk’s nonsense to keep being one.) And 2. And this one is kind of expert level. Do not attempt if you’ve got any doubts about the health stuff I was saying at the beginning here: I consume some junk I really hate. The Daily Wire, for instance. I home in on the utterly fatuous pop culture takes burped out of the likes of Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh (all of this stuff is more about culture than it’s about policy, I’d argue). And then I feel like I know some of the other ideas that are out there. And like I need to be boiled.

But I mean, what do I read that really makes me feel like I’m learning things? Quanta Magazine for math and science news. Bright Wall/Dark Room and Cinephilia & Beyond and Vulture and RogerEbert.com for smart, sane pop culture takes. And finally, the Associated Press’ Oddities section is where the REAL news is.

Lily Tyson, senior producer
In addition to the major news sites and newsletters, I’ll mention a few that I enjoy. First, historian Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American. Many of you probably read this already, but just in case it’s new to you, the premise is that Richardson writes daily letters to keep a record of this time for a future historian. It’s a great way to start the day with an overview of the big stories, and it’s written clearly and concisely, with all sources cited.

I also look forward to Tangle, which Colin told me about. This might seem small, but I really appreciate that it comes out in the afternoon, when I usually have my inbox more under control and am ready to dig into a longer newsletter. They (usually) pick one story to give an explanation of and then offer “What the Left is saying” and “What the Right is saying.” My favorite part is that they always give a bit of good news at the end.

For websites, in addition to your usual suspects, I enjoy The Conversation, which is basically a place where academics write articles for the public about a variety of topics, some very newsy, some very non-newsy. I find it’s a good way to get more context and history on topics I’m interested in (and a great way to find guests for the show!).

I also think it’s key to have a few non-news focused newsletters that you are really excited about. For me those are Anne Helen Peterson’s Culture Study newsletter (and podcast), NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter, and Casey Johnston’s She’s a Beast.

Some of our listeners have recommended Vox’s new newsletter The Logoff. What sources are you turning to right now? Let us know at [email protected].

¹ Editor’s note: McNicol here. This Tom Hanks question has hijacked a part of my brain for most of an evening. Here’s Hanks’ filmography, which will be helpful as it hijacks your brain now. The most important Tom Hanks movie — with “most important” being a halfway OK way to determine “best” — is Toy Story, and it isn’t particularly close. (Which tells you more about Toy Story than it tells you about Hanks’ filmography.) And I also realized in this process that I’m pretty sure the most Tom Hanksy of the Tom Hanks movies is … That Thing You Do!, which is maybe a surprise. (And which is also a very good, very fun movie and a perfectly reasonable answer to this question.) It’s awfully tempting to try to come up with some sort of slightly off-the-beaten-path answer, though, in which case I’d probably say something like Road to Perdition or Catch Me If You Can. (The Some Men Want To Watch the World Burn part of my brain wants to say The Man with One Red Shoe.) But really, your favorite movies are the ones you watch the most. The Tom Hanks movie I’ve seen the most times is almost certainly Apollo 13, and I’ll stand by that as my answer. To this question that no one has asked me. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Susan by email: Why do you call him Jonathan McPants? 🤷🏻‍♀️

McNicol: The answer to this couldn’t be more boring. My Twitter handle is (was, really, at this point) @mcnicolpants. And, uh, that’s it. That’s the answer. It’s mcnicolpants kind of like fancy pants? But more McNicol and less fancy…? It’s pretty dumb.

(And it’s even dumber now because I don’t really use Twitter anymore, and I’ve given up the “pants” part everywhere else. I’m @mcnicol on all your other social medias.)

But because of that, Colin started calling me Pants and McPants. And sometimes when Colin talks, a lot of people can hear him (this is how radio works). And here we are.

Okay, fine. Two more bits of context:

1. Pants are inherently funny.

2. David Letterman (a huge, huge influence on, like, my whole personality) has a production company called Worldwide Pants, Inc. Because pants are inherently funny.

But that’s it. That’s all I got.

Well, actually: P.S. I also wear this t-shirt sometimes (and ALWAYS with pants) to throw people off the scent.

We want your questions! Mostly we’re looking for queries about the show, but we’ll take them about pretty much anything and try to come up with some sort of an answer. (Please note that we make no guarantees about the veracity of our answers.) Send us your questions at [email protected]!

Saturday at noon: Our pop culture roundtable, The Nose, looks at the Academy Award-nominated theater and prison drama, Sing Sing, and Netflix’s Taylor Kitsch- and Betty Gilpin-starring limited series, American Primeval.

Monday at 1 pm and 9 pm: We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls, calls about anything, everything. And we’re doing another one. In other words: Give us a call during the 1 p.m. EST hour. 888-720-9677.

Tuesday at 1 pm and 9 pm: Here’s the news: Squirrels, fluffy-tailed, seed- and nut-hoarding, sometimes nuisancey, usually basically vegetarian squirrels … would appear to have become carnivorous hunters. That seems like it requires further investigation, doesn’t it? So this hour: Squirrels — your favorite (or least favorite?) little backyard rodents and, it turns out, possible harbingers of the endtimes. Or something.

Wednesday at 1 pm and 9 pm: We’ve come upon the everyday carry subculture. It’s all about optimizing the objects you carry every day, like a 30-function multitool or a 200-lumen flashlight the size of a lip balm. What’s in your pockets right now? Phone, wallet, keys … maybe some discarded receipts or old gum? This hour: What do we carry with us and why? Should we all think more deeply about what’s in our pockets and purses?

Thursday at 1 pm: Do you ever wish you could have a conversation with your pet or the bird outside your window? This hour, we learn about how animals communicate with one another and how we communicate with them. Plus, some pet owners are turning to soundboards to communicate with their pets. We talk with a researcher who’s exploring how effective that is and what it can teach us about the future of animal/human communications.

Friday at 1 pm and 9 pm: On Fridays, we do shows about pop culture. On this Friday, assuming that the heat death of the universe hasn’t come early (which all thinking about the future kind of assumes), we will air some sort of show about pop culture. It may be that it’ll be a show about the new Noah Wyle medical drama The Pitt, specifically, and about medical dramas, generally. Or it may be that it’ll be something else entirely. And by the time we get to Friday, and assuming the early heat death of the universe hasn’t absolved us of the responsibility, we’ll figure that out for sure.