New Year’s Eve 2025 on the mountain at sunset, concept. 2025 and 2024 on the cliff at sunrise, creative idea. Free space for design. Calendar 2025
Maggie Rose has landed her first Grammy nomination for her latest album, “No One Gets Out Alive.” It’s nominated for Best Americana Album, a fitting category, though on my first listen of it earlier in the year, I declared it to be the album of the year in every category.
I walked away from cable news after the election two months ago. I just needed a break, I told myself. Now, I can’t imagine ever returning. In my brief time away, I have come to realize that those platforms aren’t all that meaningful to me. Their product is the argument, the disagreement, the conflict. That product wasn’t provoking thoughtfulness in me, it was preventing it. So, that break I needed has become a lifestyle change for which I’m grateful.
There are far better sources for perspective, yes, even coming from this political columnist, than the pundit world. In 2025, I recommend we invest more of our time listening to those better voices.
Rose has a beautiful and powerful voice, and her years of Nashville experience combine to make her a true professional at her craft. The metal-head inside of me was drawn to her hit’s title — I was expecting something dark and nihilistic — which was my mood at the time. Wrong. The title track is a guide on how to embrace life and living, because we only live once. It’s an Americana lesson, through a voice that sounds like a combination of Bonnie Raitt and Aretha Franklin. It’s perfect.
The song is simple. “Call the boy. Ask the girl. Have no regrets when you leave this world. Cause you know no one gets out alive.”
What else is an example of simple? The benefits of a fluoride-enriched public water supply. The CDC has all the data to show how we are healthier as a result of fluoridation, and don’t confuse that term with the state. Collier County in southwest Florida, where I spend some of my wintertime, will remove fluoride from its water supply on January 1. There’s no evidence-based benefit of the move, just barbershop theories that likely came from the cable news playing on the shop’s tv.
Turn it off. Read the data. Don’t trust the CDC? Pick any of the countless other scientific studies that reached the same conclusions. It will be five minutes well spent. Then go listen to some new music, watch a new movie, or read a new book.
Making me think
On Friday night, my wife and I took in the new movie about Bob Dylan, “A Complete Unknown.” I’ve always respected Dylan as a great writer, even before he won the Nobel Prize for it, but I was never one to sit and listen to his songs. The movie changed that for me — I like his music more now. It didn’t help me understand him better, though, which is what I wanted from it. But I do now understand the moment better. And importantly, his commitment to the entirety of his craft makes him, as an artist, even more credible than he already was for me.
His writing makes me think. I can’t give a writer a higher compliment than that.
There are sectors filled with people who are far more credible than the political class. The population should spend more time paying attention to social commentary that’s brought to us every day through art. Becoming reengaged with more thoughtful sources of commentary these past two months feels like the weight of the world has been lifted from the back of my neck.
Most of us can remember learning to read as children. The stories we read were often followed by an important question from our teacher or parent. “What’s the moral of the story?”
Too many of the stories we are consuming today don’t have one. At least not one that leads to personal growth. Neither politics nor cable news, or heaven forbid, Twitter/X, provide that. It’s not their product.
Earlier this year, through an event of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library, I was fortunate enough to meet former journalist and novelist, Jess Walter. Embarrassingly, I didn’t know anything about him before he visited Indianapolis.
He was in town as part of his National Endowment of the Arts Big Read event, featuring his award-winning novel, “The Cold Millions.” I hadn’t read it, but thankfully I now have. I’m now halfway through another of his noted works, “Beautiful Ruins,” and I love his writing so much, I don’t want it to end.
In 2025, I plan to refresh my search for the moral of the story. Maggie Rose’s album has retaught me that my values actually are valuable, and I don’t need anyone or anything to confirm that. I, like so many of us, just need to spend more time living it.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.