Music, podcasts, news, videos, articles, and other pop culture items of note to freshen up your perspective.

Anderson East’s latest album Encore is a gritty and soulful trip through the heart of Americana.  A voice that is raw around the edges in all the right places, East’s slow southern style is easy on the ears and begs to be listened to while sitting on a front porch sipping on an ice cold beer. Song worth playing on repeat? King for A Day. Now, go grab that beer. 

New Philosopher (Pictured Above)

Lamenting the $4 I was about to spend on a bottled water in the airport over the Christmas holidays, the cover of New Philosopher caught my eye, “To buy or not to buy.” Curious, I flipped through the first few pages. An ad-free magazine, New Philosopher is bursting at the seams with articles offering nuggets of truth, ideas that challenge contemporary thoughts, and solutions to issues that we all face. As the title implies, the latest issue explores the individual and societal challenges of materialism. Appropriate, I thought, given the self-discipline it takes to not shop for myself during the holidays.  

Not until a man was having difficulty reaching around me to pull a magazine off the shelf did I realize I was 15 minutes deep into the first few articles and about to miss my flight. This independent quarterly is filled with so much food for thought for living a more fulfilling life, I grabbed the highlighter I had in my carry on and got to work. It’s a more than a magazine, it’s a reference guide, and one I plan to refer to often.       

Dave Chappelle: “Equanimity” & “The Bird Revelation”

Coming off the heels of a year that left us asking more questions than we were finding answers, Dave Chappelle offers some much needed perspective with the release of “Equanimity” and “The Bird Revelation” on Netflix. Chappelle draws you in with his comedic take on the events of the past year, but it’s his masterful storytelling that reminds us why we can’t get enough of him and also why he walked away from it all thirteen years ago. Human nature, it’s a funny thing. But then again, as Chappelle cautions, “everything is funny until it happens to you.”