A Musical Sternal Exclusive and a Happy Anniversary!
Greetings Sternal Journalists!
Today is a very big day, as I'm sure you know, lots of people are throwing parties...
fooooor the one-month anniversary of the Sternal Journal going weekly!
WAHOO!
To celebrate, I'm going to finally make good on my promise to do a shorter Sternal Journal while I work on some Journals that require just a bit more effort than the typical amount I put in every Saturday evening, fueled only by a 7 o'clock buzz and the TRON: Legacy remixes album.
Even so, as a Premium Sternal Journal Subscriber, I'm granting you access to an UNLISTED ROUGH CUT of "Whole Foods Rotisserie Chicken of Misery," a new song from my show Julian Stern, As Per Usual, Blows You Away.
If you haven't seen the show, this is a song I wrote inspired by the small army of despondents you can find staring at any rack of Whole Foods rotisserie chickens. If you have seen it, you know what you're getting yourself into.
It is a bit of an ear worm, so be careful! Streamable track and video on the way.
And now, the recs!
"The Lessons of 2016," The Daily. I call this newsletter The Sternal Journal first of all, because it's a silly rhyme-y name. But second of all, I really do love and believe in journalism. Journalists have never been more important and they've never had a tougher job than they do now (this is quite possibly not literally true, I don't have a great grasp on history, but you get the idea).
This episode of The Daily is an in-depth conversation between host Mikey B and the Executive Editor of the New York Times about choices and, in some cases, mistakes they made covering the 2016 election. Barbaro doesn't pull any punches from what I could tell, and they have some really interesting back-and-forths about newsworthiness and the responsibility to publish or not.
"The Editors," Catch and Kill. And if you didn't like that recommendation, you'll hate this one too. But if you listen to that episode and you're left feeling uneasy about the difficult line journalistic institutions have to walk (fair, but I have faith!), I'm doubling down on the recommendation of this podcast. Especially this episode.
The way lawyers and editors and fact checkers of the New Yorker rally behind Ronan Farrow to take down the producer and shitbag whose name needn't be repeated is inspiring and fuckin' awesome. I think you can even start with this episode if you want. The fact. They're these nerd warriors who take no shit. I loved it.
Finally, it was a rough week for a lot of reasons. Most of the reasons affect people I know much, much more than they affect me. But I was still feeling the weight of it all at times, and rediscovering this song about resilience and legacy and rebirth brought me some comfort.
Okay, that was only a little shorter. But I tried!
Have fun today, don't let that party end.
<3 Julian