41 Things I Learned In 2025
And what that means moving forward
Welcome to Human Pursuits, the column that features need-to-know names and stories in media and other creative spaces. Today, some of what I learned in 2025, and a look at what comes next.
Happy New Year.
In just a few short hours, the ball will drop in Times Square, fireworks will ignite over Los Angeles, and Leah and I will sit down for a meal at one of Vancouver’s coziest Italian restaurants. We’ll enjoy some Rigatoni alla Vodka and Cherry Coke Baby Back Ribs before scuttling home to sing Auld Lang Syne with Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen (if you’re looking for a last-minute resolution, cable TV is one of life’s ultimate luxuries). It’s a quieter plan than years past, but one I’m particularly excited for. Both because it involves tiramisu, but also because it offers one catch my breath before work inevitably picks back up in January.
I spent most of 2025 on the run, pushing myself to publish more newsletters, schedule more interviews, and generally pound the digital pavement. About halfway through, I realized that I was clearing out a lot of old ideas and meeting people I’ve long admired. I became pen pals with a few of my personal heroes. I had my work published in new spaces. I even hosted a couple of in-person readings.
Along the way, I overcame a lot of the anxiety that coloured the first five years of Human Pursuits. If 2024 was about building a better system, 2025 was about leaning on that system and utilizing it to maximize my productivity, as well as my personal enjoyment. I can’t predict the future, but I suspect 2026 will be more of the same. I want to cultivate this space—and by extension, my life—with more care and effort. That means more interviews, more essays, but also more experimentation.
Paywalls? Podcasts? Publishing houses? It’s all on the table. I’ll keep you posted. Whatever happens, it will be informed by lessons learned in 2025. Recurring themes included making space for silence, courting a bit of conflict, creating your own community, and finding joy in repetition.
Few people shaped my year quite like Francis Zierer. His podcast, Creator Spotlight, was a constant source of inspiration when it comes to growing and monetizing your work online. While I have yet to make meaningful strides on the latter (it’s still a free newsletter, after all), our conversation reminded me that it is a luxury to be precious with your work. “I think there’s a pragmatism that is needed if you’re going to monetize in a real way,” he said. “I also think creators can learn a bit from the more cynical, more capitalist, more entrepreneurial people whom they’re so often skeptical of.”
Night Gallery designer Josh Zoerner put it more simply: “You can’t do nothing and be broke forever.”
Similarly, Tay Roebuck from the rock band Smut reinforced the idea that there’s no glory to be found by resting on your laurels. “We were so lucky in the early days because we were getting asked to go on tour with bands that we liked. We thought everything worked at this slow and steady pace,” she said. “But that’s not really the case; we need to practice three times a week and apply for things, and work on things 24/7.” In newsletter parlance, that often meant picking up the pace. If you want to hang with the big dogs, you need to be willing to go off-leash.
Talkhouse co-founder and publisher Ian Wheeler, meanwhile, taught me that there’s nothing wrong with being realistic about expectations. “Some of my favorite record labels had that perspective,” he said, “Merge Records had the philosophy that all of its artists should recoup. They wanted them to be in the black… With Talkhouse, we’re using the same philosophy. We’re focused on ‘How big can this thing be?’ and if the property achieves that, we scale up even more.”
TikToker Natalie Doloff expanded my views on success even further when she told me that she feels successful now because “there’s a community in my followers and comments.” Sure, most people are coming for her cat, Tiny, but they’re staying because they feel connected to her and her perspective. That’s valuable.
If you ask playwright Ben Firke, success is too often reduced to numbers. “The way art is discussed now, it feels like people are almost becoming unpaid publicists,” he said. “They’re talking about Billboard chart positions and box office openings. And to some extent, who cares? There’s a lot of great art that doesn’t find a mass audience and remains niche. That’s okay.”
Increasingly, I feel like success is just shutting up and listening. “Listening… is how you keep a good conversation or a good interview going,” said dylan tupper rupert . “You prepare so that you have a good understanding of who someone is and what they’re about. That allows you to be a bit more freewheeling.”
Oliver Darcy echoed this when he reminded me that conversations do not need to be inherently extractive. “The best stories often come from organic conversations — not when you’re actively soliciting information,” he said. “You get good tips when you have running conversations with several people.” In other words: it’s fun to gossip and talk shit, even if it doesn’t immediately go somewhere.
And then Madi Diaz reminded me that half the battle is listening to yourself. “When I’m feeling urgent to write, it’s because I’m trying to work something out and explain it to myself so that I can understand it.” In this sense, her new album, Heavy Metal, is something of a breakthrough.
At the same time, all experience is good experience. Or, to quote Maya Martinez (a.k.a Maya 69 ), “Even a bad conversation can be good… It’s about the energy behind it… There’s still something nice happening between two people. There’s a connection.”
Thinking about it now, I’m realizing I spent a lot of 2025 redefining what makes a good Human Pursuits interview. Maybe it’s confidence, or maybe it’s like Isabel Pless said—“realizing how little people think about me and my potential screw-ups.”
I felt really connected to James Goodson from Dazy when he said, “Constraints make it easier to create things. Because we tend to have limitless options, it sometimes feels like ‘Whoa, now I don’t know what the hell to do because anything’s possible’… It’s almost like giving yourself a box so that you can find something interesting while you’re breaking out of it.“
Timm Chiusano shared a nice perspective on this. “Some people see potential challenges as a hindrance. I want to see challenges as opportunities to do things differently.”
Songwriter Graham Hunt reminded me that progress comes as much from perspective as it does technical ability when he said, “I feel I’ve gotten better as a songwriter, not because I’ve gotten better at writing lyrics or playing guitar or singing, but because I’ve developed better taste in knowing what works. Like, are these two parts going to fit in a cool way? Or am I just forcing it?”
As someone who still struggles with thinking his perspective is interesting or worth sharing, I appreciated Petey USA’s advice to think about things “holistically.” Talking about his new album, The Yips, he said, “I have to remember that my perspective right now, at this phase of my life, is important to someone, and still worth exploring.” (I also enjoyed learning that his tour rider includes pepperoni sticks and Athletic beers).
Pushing this idea one step further: you can’t afford to be indifferent. “Some bands can pull off the slacker thing,” said Sonia Weber from Alien Boy “I want to explore every corner [of Alien Boy’s world]. If I don’t, it’s going to keep me up at night.”
The challenge, of course, comes from finding a way to operate with deep care, without crossing the line into criticism. “When you’re hyper-analyzing things in a critical way, it tends to corrupt the process rather than letting pure emotions out,” said Trevor Powers from Youth Lagoon. “Ideally, 95% of a song or an album would be created using intuition, and then the other 5% with critical thinking or conscious thought to clean up the mess.”
Brooke Domer (Brooke) struck a similar sentiment when she said, “The most interesting photo is always the one you get before the actual photo, you know? Like, it’s always that moment before the big thing you’re anticipating. Sitting in a pool mid-conversation, or walking through the water, or standing in the sand, or walking through the grass at your grandparents’ house…” I didn’t always take things as slowly as I would’ve liked in 2025, but when I did, it felt luxurious, like she said.
Singer-songwriter Liam Kazar even sort of roasted me for my rise-and-grind lifestyle when we spoke, saying, “anything accomplished before noon is a bonus… I have my isolated mornings. If I’m really on top of my game, I’ll do some writing, but I tend to do more writing in the afternoon when I have a guitar near me.” I reminded him I have a day job.
Speaking of roasting, one recurring thread this year was that people are tired of media that always plays nice. “I am not a conflict guy myself, but I recognize the value and necessity of the adversarial aspects of what [publications like Defector] do,” said 60 Songs That Explain the 90s podcaster Rob Harvilla.
“You don’t want to be a full-time hater. That’s insufferable…” said Such Great Heights author Chris DeVille. “You want to be excited about the music that rules. But that’s one of the reasons people took Pitchfork seriously in the first place; they were willing to be negative about the things that sucked and didn’t just rubber-stamp everything.”
Hands-down, my favourite lesson of the year came from GQ’s U.S. Site Director Nick Catucci, who said, “the audience needs something to grab onto. It can’t just be a flat surface for them to slide down, and one of the ways that you do that is you provoke them a little bit, but you provoke them in good faith.” Ya’ll motherfuckers need some mischief!
Nick’s GQ colleague, Yang-Yi Goh, suggested that mischief and other old-school media attitudes had translated to actual readership on the site. “The internet’s never gonna be like what it was in 2005 again, but if you’re doing good, or funny, or interesting work, people will turn out for it.”
Still, it costs nothing to be nice—especially to yourself. “There’s this line of thinking where, if you are a person who has a bit of an edge, you worry you will lose something if you relax, or that your presentation will suffer. It’s not true,” said Canadian sports broadcaster Jay Onrait. “That’s a fallacy that allows shitty people to continue behaving shitty.”
Another key lesson from 2025 came from journalist Nate Rogers, who reminded me about the essential distinction between subjects and stories. “Band profiles, for example, are often just a subject, not a story. Ideally, there’s something interesting about the artist that tells a bigger story about culture or music that no one else has done.”
And the line between journalist and storyteller has maybe never been blurrier. “I really come to this thinking about craft and storytelling first and foremost,” said Alternate Realities podcaster Zach Mack. “Journalism helps me get there, but it’s the craft and the storytelling that interest me the most.”
OG “Substackista” and world-class editor Delia Cai touched on something similar when she told me she doesn’t consider herself a reporter. “I went to journalism school at Mizzou, and they placed a real premium on capital-J journalism. Calling up sources, getting scoops, and doing hard news,” she said. “I was never very good at that. As a Midwesterner who hates prying, I’m like, ‘If you don’t want to tell me something, okay, more power to you.’”
On the topic of growing and changing, I loved when Steve Sladkowski from PUP told me, “For a long time, I thought I had to be a jazz musician because I was studying jazz. But I loved rock music… Over time, I found musicians who look in between the spaces of genres to find the connective tissue and find a way to meld them together.”
Looking between the spaces strikes me as a very whimsical way to see the world. “Try[ing] to capture things someone may not notice,” as content creator Sarah Gray might say.
To borrow an idea from illuminati hotties’ Sarah Tudzin, a lot of it comes down to “hearing the room,” zeroing in on the frequencies that are imperceptible to most people, and realizing that even physical spaces like Drop of Sun studios, where she helped record eliza mclamb’s new album, Good Story, are one of your tools.
Change comes from the outside, too, though. “A lot of people, maybe they have a friend from middle school or college, and the relationship is always defined by that one thing.” said Grady Allen from Anxious. “For us, having to constantly work together on Anxious means the relationships are always evolving.”
L.A. Explained co-founder Thom Vest also tapped into this sense of collective whimsy when he said, “You have to know where to find the magic, and then share it with people…” It was a throwaway line in our interview, but I can’t stop thinking about it.
I also can’t stop thinking about author Erin Somers’ vigorous plea for protecting one’s secret inner life. “It’s this safe, personal thing, and you feed it with your intellectual pursuits, the films you watch, the music you listen to, and the books you read, and it’s just for you. I think there’s something sacred about it.” Sacred!
At the same time, there’s nothing more mysterious, more personal, than a person’s feelings about autofiction. Is it real? Is it fake? Chatting with Spencer Oakes I realized the answer is basically Yes! “We put ourselves into everything—our characters and our stories,” he said, “Everything is autofiction.”
My friendship with Spencer was a highlight of 2025, as was my friendship with stylist Lindsey Hartman, who gave me goosebumps when she said, “People should be doing enough good to outweigh their bad, because we’re all fucking bad at the end of the day, and that is what unites us.” A forever icon.
Lindsey also introduced me to Staz Lindes from The Paranoyds, who made me want to throw my phone into the ocean and dye my hair Kool-Aid red when she said, “I don’t think you can discover what makes you feel like that by looking at your phone. You want to be a nonconformist because it means discovering who you are and how to enjoy the earth.”
Musician Colin Miller reminded me that even conforming to audience expectations can be a drag. “I didn’t want to have to spell things out for the audience. I don’t think that’s interesting. I prefer it when things are open-ended and have multiple meanings.”
That said, if you must cater to your audience, it’s usually a good idea to have some momentum. Shorter chapters helped author Kevin Nguyen. I tried to cap my personal essays to 800 words or less.
Creating compelling content is one thing, but creating your own community is another. I’m no expert, but I’m learning a lot of it comes down to a sort of energy transferrence. To quote the meme account Big Dawg Socialism, “I feel like as our audience has grown, we have attracted mostly people who are kind and want better for all… We as revolutionaries are guided by love when it gets down to it. Which feels funny to say when we are posting stuff like cat memes.”
He isn’t posting memes, exactly, but Catcade rescue co-founder Christopher Gutierrez told me something similar. “We exist to provide a little bit of help. We can’t save them all. We can’t save even the majority of them. But what we can do is make a small bit of difference in the handful of cats that we can save.”
I mentioned earlier that I feel a lot less anxiety about Human Pursuits and the path it’s leading me down. Part of this, I think, is simply because I’ve been working so hard that I accidentally managed to exercise some demons. The demons are tired. They’re literally exhausted. I’ve also realized, however, that there are large parts of this thing that I cannot control, and so there’s no use in worrying. To paraphrase King Isis: serenity is feeling at peace with yourself—the good parts and the bad parts—and being okay with the unknown.
