The TueDo List: Björk’s Latest + Gray Extensions + Fit at 50
And a deluxe new box set for Blondie fans
THIS WEEK
📖 READ: A Canadian news anchor was fired for gray hair. Meanwhile, there’s huge demand for gray hair extensions (the perfect accessory for your silver gap year). Inside the final days of the Wendy Williams show. How three Kentucky women are fighting for reproductive rights in their state. What it was like traveling the world as one of the first Black Pan Am flight attendants. Did “Rhythm Nation” ever crash your computer? Being confined to Iceland is Björk’s idea of a good time.
👀 LOOK: We’re here for all the pink wedding dresses. And we want to wallpaper the world with Lainey Molnar’s illustrations.
🎧 LISTEN: “Lobby” by Anitta (with Missy Elliott). Plus new music from Lee Fields and Billy Idol. Serena Williams is the first guest on Meghan Markle’s new podcast.
🤣 LOL: Your changing middle-aged body still has two well-working middle fingers. Some people blow off steam by… pretending to be sheep?
🛒 ADD TO CART: Stranger Things Vans. Beastie Boys “Sabotage” action figures. The ultimate Blondie box set.
📺 WATCH
Now: Season 2 of Kevin Can F**K Himself (AMC), Girls Can’t Surf, a documentary about sexism in ‘80s and ‘90s surf culture (Prime), and Grease may be playing in a theater near you for just $5.
Thursday: “Raucous girl gang show” Everything I Know About Love (Peacock).
Friday: Partner Track looks like it has some Sex and the City vibes (Netflix) and Michael K. Williams plays a hostage negotiator in Breaking (Theaters).
OBSESSED: A Podcast Helping People Heal Old Wounds
By Pamela Newton
During the long, slow days of the pandemic, I started listening to all kinds of podcasts while I was doing dishes or physical therapy. Now, I actually look forward to those tasks because I get to hear my “stories” (much the way I imagine a family in the 1930s might have eagerly gathered around the radio). Podcasts are a reminder that the world goes on even in the strangest of times. They are also a link to the world—to the irrepressible humanity and messiness and tenderness of it—when I feel most isolated
I’ve cycled through many phases in my listening, but my current favorite is Heavyweight, hosted by Jonathan Goldstein (formerly of This American Life). Goldstein’s mission is to help people heal old wounds, to lift whatever “heavy weight” they’ve been carrying. In a style that is endearingly nerdy and self-deprecating, Goldstein casts himself as a semi-competent guide, leading others toward resolution and catharsis.
Sometimes guests are his friends—like the friend who is fixated on having lent (and lost) a CD box set to Moby, before he was famous—and sometimes they are people who have reached out with surprisingly moving stories. There is the young woman searching for the stranger who clandestinely helped her get on birth control as a teenager, or the mother of a convict on death row offering forgiveness to one of the jurors who put him there and now regrets it. I’ve cried into my dishes many times. This may sound like serious stuff, but the show is never self-serious, which rescues it from becoming cheesy. And each episode has a satisfying arc; it doesn’t always resolve the way you think it will, but that’s part of the fun.
Heavyweight makes me feel like people are fundamentally good and, binge-listening to episode after episode, the cumulative lightening of so many people’s burdens seems to somehow vicariously lighten my own.
STORY: I Got in the Best Shape of My Life at 50… And Then 55 Hit
By Susan Ito
By the time I turned 50 that summer, I had shed more than 30 pounds, had completed two more 5K races, had leveled out my blood sugars into normal range and felt like a completely new person. At a birthday celebration on the Russian River, I yelled to my family and friends, “I’m fifteeeeeeee!” and took an ecstatic running leap off the dock into the river, forgetting I was still wearing my glasses. They flew off my face and sunk to the bottom. I didn’t care. It was a blurry, happy party.”
Have a great week, TueNighters!
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Thanks for writing about Heavyweight. I just finished listening to the first episode. Loved it. This podcast will keep me company as I grind through my weekly housecleaning.😄