Come take a mind-safari with us to Beirut, Manchester, and West Palm Beach. Plus: tilling the GOP 2028 field way too early.

A defence of the pastoral lifestyle and also the barbacoan lifestyle. Also: your gut health and soda, thunder v swamp, grudgingly handing it to the Knicks, and 10 mpg(ame).

Links: Musicology Duck’s reflecting pool · The Double Pivot · Sickos Committee

Unfortunately additional Maine. Then: a bit of fish and the Intercept Cinematic Universe.

A Very Special SpaceX Episode with Quantian (@quantian) and ESGHound (@esghound)! Come for the S-1, stay for the physics. Contains not even homeopathic levels of investment advice.

Links: Ann Lipton, "No Votes, No Sales, No Suits" · our earlier space ep with Normal astrophysicist Mike Boylan-Kolchin, We Are All Made of Starmusk.

Lots of tech, somewhat more Pope than usual, and a well-conceived 2028 Presidential Democratic contender tier list that will never embarrass any of us in any way. Plus Jack White's upholstery era and Stephen Colbert.

Patrick Wyman joins the Normal Men to talk dirty soda, apartment deposits we definitely did not get back, the only bracket that matters, 1619 and its descendants, and sharp little lads.

The Men get chippy, Fed up, car talk, Giuliani hantavirus and other pathogens, Graham crackers and some states that are probably in the Midwest, and the AI capex bubble (?).

Panic! at the WHCD, several niche beverages, American airports, and strait cash homie.