Happy New Year From The Dispatch!

Happy Tuesday! Today’s the day to finalize those New Year’s resolutions, and as for us, we’re aiming to roll back our news intake in 2025. 

Kidding! 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• President-elect Donald Trump on Monday endorsed Mike Johnson’s bid for another term as House speaker. “Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hard working, religious man,” Trump posted on Truth Social Monday. “Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement.” The vote for speaker is scheduled for Friday, and assuming all Democrats are present and vote against him, Johnson can only afford one Republican defection and still win a majority. With Rep. Matt Gaetz’s resignation, the House GOP has only 219 members—just one above a majority and three fewer members than when former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was elected in January 2023 after 15 rounds of voting. 
• Treasury Department officials told lawmakers on Monday that China-backed hackers had successfully infiltrated the department’s workstations in a “major incident.” The department was reportedly first informed of the breach on December 8, though a spokesperson for the Treasury Department said Monday that there is “no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury systems or information.” Treasury officials seemed to indicate that only unclassified documents had been compromised, though it wasn’t clear how many workstations the hackers accessed. 
• The Iranian government has arrested Italian journalist Cecilia Sala for “violating the law,” as confirmed by the state news agency on Monday. Sala, who was traveling to Iran on a tourist visa and was due to return to Italy December 20, last posted on X on December 17, linking to a podcast she recorded about patriarchy in Iran. The Italian Foreign Ministry said that the arrest was “unacceptable,” and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani referred to the arrest in Italy of Iranian-Swiss citizen Mohammad Abedini-Najafabad, on a U.S. extradition warrant, as being connected to the case. 
• The Biden administration announced on Monday a final $6 billion disbursement of security and budgetary aid to Ukraine—$2.5 billion and $3.4 billion, respectively. The package is the last disbursement under the $60 billion Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act that Congress passed in April. Meanwhile, Russian and Ukrainian officials announced on Monday that they had completed a prisoner exchange brokered by the United Arab Emirates, resulting in the return of 189 Ukrainian personnel and 150 Russian troops. 
• A joint investigation team charged with examining South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s attempt to declare martial law earlier this month requested a warrant for his arrest on Monday. Yoon has ignored three summonses to appear for questioning, following his impeachment by the National Assembly on December 14, and is being investigated for insurrection and the abuse of power. Yoon is currently suspended from his presidential powers, and the nation’s Constitutional Court has 180 days to decide whether to remove him from office. 
• A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a jury’s finding that President-elect Donald Trump is civilly liable for sexual abuse. A jury last year ordered Trump to pay $5 million in damages to E. Jean Carroll—a magazine columnist who accused Trump of assaulting her in a department store dressing room in 1996—whom the jury ruled Trump had defamed. Trump’s lawyers asserted that Judge Lewis A. Kaplan had erred in allowing other women who had accused Trump of sexual abuse to testify and in allowing the jury to be shown the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump bragged about groping women, arguments that were rejected by the three-judge panel. 
• The Taliban announced on Sunday that all foreign and nongovernmental groups that employ women in the country will be closed. “In case of non-cooperation, all activities of the offending institution will be suspended and the activity license they received from this ministry will be canceled,” according to a letter published on X by Afghanistan’s ministry of economy. On Saturday, the nation’s ministry of urban development and housing announced that buildings should not have windows or views that look into places where a woman might sit or stand, such as a garden or kitchen. 
• The Senate Intelligence Committee released a bipartisan report on Friday that found fault with the CIA’s handling of mysterious health problems—known as “Havana syndrome”—experienced by U.S. personnel overseas. The report found that the agency’s response to the “anomalous health incidents” made it more difficult to provide medical care and compensation to victims of the incidents.  

The Dispatch’s 2024 Culture Favorites

Movies.

James Sutton, TMD reporter

1. In the Bedroom (2001)
2. The Holdovers (2023)
3. The Art of the Steal (2009)
4. Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
5. You Can Count on Me (2000)
6. Marriage Story (2019)
7. The Squid and the Whale (2005)
8. His Three Daughters (2023)

I wasn’t able to watch too many movies in theaters this year (I’m off to Nosferatu tonight!) so I restricted myself to movies I saw for the first time this year, not just in theaters. As you can probably tell, I have a weakness for movies by and about overeducated New Yorkers, and this year was no exception. In 2024 releases, which for me included The Holdovers and Anatomy of a Fall (I was living in Britain), I especially liked the former. Alexander Payne is our best director of movies about middle-aged men in crisis (a crowded category), and Paul Giamatti gave his best performance in a movie that could have descended into sentimentality but never did. 

Of the older films, I really enjoyed The Art of the Steal, a documentary about the entirely legal “heist” of the stunning art collection of Albert Barnes from his home in Merion, Pennsylvania—where he intended it to stay—by the city of Philadelphia to a downtown museum built for the purpose. It’s got everything: feuding billionaires, a gallery of weird art-world types, scheming nonprofit executives in cahoots with city government, NIMBYs, and a truly maddening bending of the laws around estates. If you’ve got an art buff in your family with a strong libertarian streak, this is the hate-watch for you. 

Mary Trimble, TMD editor

1. Dune: Part Two (2024)
2. Brief Encounter (1945)
3. Lee (2023) 
4. American Fiction (2023)
5. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
6. Wicked (2024)
7. Twisters (2024)

After last year’s “Barbenheimer,” 2024 was once again the year of the Collective Movie Experience—just not so concentrated in a single event. Not all of the movies I saw this year were the greatest movies I’ve ever watched, but seeing a film in a crowded movie theater has a certain magic that makes even average movies eminently watchable. Twisters was one such film. Great? No. Extremely fun to be in a room full of 20-somethings chomping on popcorn and clapping for Glen Powell in a cowboy hat? For sure. 

On the merits, though, Dune: Part Two was the best movie I saw this year. I remember walking into Denis Villeneuve’s first installment with no idea what I was getting into, having never been exposed to the books or the previous movies. I emerged from that film dazed and confused by what I had just witnessed. I had a better handle on the whole concept with part two, so this time I could just enjoy one of the most visually stunning movies I’ve ever seen. And that score! The low, pulsing “womp womp” that is constant in the background of that film haunted me for days. 

 Grayson Logue, TMD deputy editor

1. Dune: Part Two (2024)
2. Civil War (2024)
3. The Godfather (1972)
4. There Will Be Blood (2007)

Dune and Civil War were some of the few movies I saw in theaters this year, and both were well worth it. I was surprised by how well the combat scenes of Civil War were shot and sounded. I’m looking forward to director Alex Garland’s next project, which is a combat film about the Iraq War. I also took some time to fill in gaps I had on some classics and unsurprisingly, The Godfather and There Will Be Blood didn’t disappoint. 

Alex Demas, fact checker 

Inside Out 2 (2024): It’s everything a good children’s movie should be: exciting, colorful, fast-paced, funny, and compelling for both kids and adults. The movie takes you inside the brain of Riley, now 13 years old, as her five anthropomorphized emotions—Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger—fight to regain control over the brain’s “Sense of Self” from four new intruders: Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and Ennui.

The story is remarkably clever and includes several true laugh-out-loud moments. But the most impressive part of the film is that it does all of this while communicating an applicable and clinically sound approach to mental health. If you’ve ever studied adolescent psychology (or been raised in a family of mental health counselors, like me), you’ll immediately recognize the key tenets of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy poking through every inch of the story. It’s a movie that you’ll want your kids to take to heart, and maybe one that most of us adults could benefit from internalizing as well.

Charles Hilu, reporter

1. Wicked (2024)
2. A Man for All Seasons (1966) 

Wicked is one of the best movies I have seen in a while. Many of you will know that I am a massive musical theatre nerd, so it will be no surprise that I loved the almost universally acclaimed big-screen adaptation of the Broadway musical. This is a product where it was obvious that its creators absolutely loved the source material and thus could capture its magic. 

I’m only about 58 years late to the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons, which recounts St. Thomas More’s refusal to submit to England’s King Henry VIII as he broke away from the Catholic Church. It has probably become my favorite religious movie.

Luis Parrales, associate editor, arts and culture

Take this list with a grain of salt, because there’s a ton I still haven’t seen (The Brutalist, Nickel Boys, Flow). And the order might change. But with those caveats in mind …

1. Challengers (2024): On the surface, Challengers is like The Social Network meets Y tu mamá también meets Wii Sports Tennis: an erotic sports drama in the age of meritocracy. That alone would make it memorable. But beneath the nonlinear storyline and pulsating score (Guy Denton described it as “music for an intergalactic rave”), Challengers depicts jealousy and desire in the most alluring way I’ve seen in a while. It’s never comforting to watch this love triangle devolve, but it’s always compelling. 
2. A Real Pain (2024): The year’s most beautiful movie about family and heritage. Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut is equal parts warmhearted and witty, and Kieran Culkin proves that his Succession fame was no fluke. At its core, A Real Pain—the story of two cousins going on a Jewish-heritage tour through Poland—is a movie about the parts of you only loved ones can bring out.
3. Anora (2024): Watch in theaters if you can; don’t watch it with grandma. Mikey Madison delivers one of the year’s best performances as a stripper who thinks she’s hit the jackpot when the son of a Russian oligarch winds up at her club. A quick synopsis can’t do the film justice, so I’ll just say that Alexis de Tocqueville was on to something when he ended his magnum opus by placing Russia and America as foils. In a way, Anora shows there’s still something to that.
4. The Substance (2024): I’m a sucker for movies that carry through a consistent aesthetic, and what Saltburn was for last year The Substance is for this year. An unnerving thriller, a visual homage to Kubrick, and one of Demi Moore’s best performances.
5. Dune: Part Two (2024): Pure spectacle, Denis Villeneuve-style. It certainly doesn’t do much to assuage fears that all Hollywood knows how to make these days is reboots and sequels. But for my money, Dune: Part Two offers definitive proof that a well-executed retelling can still show off the magic of the movies.

TV Shows.

Mary Trimble, TMD editor 

1. For All Mankind
2. We Were the Lucky Ones
3. Slow Horses
4. Lessons in Chemstry

At this point, basically everyone in my life has heard me talk about For All Mankind, Apple TV+’s brilliant alternate history of the space race that imagines what would have happened if the Soviets had gotten to the moon first. I’d never cared a lick about space until I watched this show, and it gets so many things right. It’s perfectly paced, and changes just enough about the real timeline to make the alternate world distinct without making it absurd (I promise that World War III almost starting on the moon makes perfect sense). 

We Were the Lucky Ones on Hulu is history of a different kind, the true story of five Jewish siblings who all manage to survive the Holocaust. Logan Lerman and Joey King—better known for the teen flicks of my youth—are the emotional center of a show that’s a difficult but holistic and worthwhile look at the horrors of the Holocaust that extended far beyond the concentration camps. 

Rachael Larimore, managing and commissioning editor

Slow Horses: I’ve been trying to figure out what magical quantity it is that makes this spy drama from Apple TV+ so addictive. There’s the casting—Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, the curmudgeonly head of Slough House, a kind of purgatory for MI5 agents who’ve failed on the job but not quite so spectacularly as to get fired; Kristin Scott Thomas as Diana Taverner, the No. 2 at MI5 whose too-clever-by-half schemes tend to blow up in her face and create messes that only Lamb’s rejects can seem to fix, and Jack Lowden as River Cartwright, a bright young agent who didn’t deserve his exile to the dreary satellite office. The writing is good, and you really come to care about the characters. But the secret sauce for me is the pacing. So many recent espionage dramas follow the Mission Impossible template of nonstop action and constant tension. Slow Horses is, well, a little slower. The show gives you time to know the characters and understand their motivations, but it never drags—perfect for binge-watching. The only downside? We rushed through all four seasons so now we have to wait for the next one. 

ManningCast: Thursday Night Football. College GameDay. Weekly college football marathons. Three rounds of NFL games on Sunday. By the time Monday Night Football comes around, I’m a little tired of traditional play-by-play. Enter the ManningCast. While Joe Buck and Troy Aikman are yapping on ESPN, we tune into the alternative broadcast on ESPN2 featuring former NFL quarterbacks Peyton and Eli Manning. They appear onscreen from their respective couches and shoot the breeze with celebrity guests while commenting on the game and working in relevant clips from their own careers (not always highlights). The Mannings’ self-deprecating humor and good-natured brotherly insults (I don’t think Eli’s gone a single show without mentioning Peyton’s giant noggin) set the tone, but their deep knowledge of the game and personal perspective help you understand what’s happening on the field as much, if not more, than the guys assessing the Xs and Os in the broadcast booth. It’s just a lot more fun. 

Bad Monkey: The thing about Vince Vaughn is that he never really disappears into a role. But if a good script calls for an impulsive and wise-cracking motor mouth, he’s your man. Bad Monkey, also on Apple TV+ and based on the novel of the same name by Carl Hiaasen, makes the best of Vaughn’s attributes. He plays Andrew Yancy, a detective who’s been knocked down to health inspector for disciplinary reasons and who stumbles onto what seems to be a murder mystery when his partner enlists him in some off-the-books sleuthing. The show benefits from great performances by Ronald Peet as Neville Stafford and Jodie Turner-Smith as the Dragon Queen. Neville seeks out the Dragon Queen, a beautiful witch doctor, to cast a curse on a developer who knocked down his beach cottage, a decision that leads to both of them getting caught up in the case that Yancy is investigating. The plot is a little predictable and there are perhaps a couple too many side stories, but the whole thing is set in the Florida Keys and the Bahamas, which makes it a perfect counter to the gloom of winter. 

Grayson Logue, TMD deputy editor

1. Severance 
2. The Americans 
3. Shrinking Season 1
4. Bad Sisters Season 1 

2024 was the year I returned to Apple TV+ shows after finishing Ted Lasso and The Morning Show. Shrinking is one of the best contemporary sitcoms I’ve watched in a long time (thanks in no small part to Harrison Ford). Severance has become one of my favorite thriller series, and I’m eagerly awaiting Season 2’s release. Bad Sisters is so much fun to watch, though I’ve avoided starting the second season because I’m worried there’s too little room to improve on the premise of the first. My wife and I also finally pushed through to finish The Americans, which we had been watching for years; it’s a great show that probably could have been shortened by a season. 

James Sutton, TMD reporter

1. Man on the Inside
2. English Teacher

As The Dispatch’s token Californian, I’m professionally obliged to recommend Ted Danson’s new Netflix series, Man on the Inside. A light-hearted comedy about a retired professor who goes undercover in a San Francisco retirement home, this is the best San Francisco has looked onscreen since The Princess Diaries—take it from a native of the most beautiful city in America (probably the world). 

And as, I think, the only Dispatcher who has taught English in the classroom, I also feel obligated to recommend English Teacher, a delightful new sitcom about a high school teacher in Texas. It’s the only TV show I’ve seen that tackles “woke” issues in a genuinely funny way, mostly by keeping quite a light touch. It also, like Glee, captures how downright weird public high school can be, including some of the adults who choose to spend their careers there. But be warned: It is very, very raunchy. 

Victoria Holmes, associate audio/visual editor  

I don’t watch TV shows often and rarely go to the movies. My primary subscription is YouTube, where I dive into random three-hour documentaries that capture my curiosity. I am probably the least-versed pop culture person at The Dispatch, but I do have strong opinions on what I consume.

Shōgun: This series captivated me completely. From the intricate plot to the stunning cinematography, it kept me engaged unlike most shows.

Books. 

James Sutton, TMD reporter

I regret to say that I read a lot of junk (there’s quite a bit of Tom Clancy, Stephen King, and George R.R. Martin under my belt, and I’m a Dan Brown completist), but I found some genre fiction this year that rose to, I hope, more literary heights: the detective novels of Tana French. I read her newest book, The Searcher, this year, as well as The Witch Elm and In the Woods. French examines the intricacies of modern Irish society with deeply realized character studies, alongside the usual mystery twists and turns. I couldn’t put them down. 

For something a little more intellectually engaging, I was captivated by Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel, Crossroads. A very Franzonian (I’m coining that word) kaleidoscopic family drama centered around a 1970s Christian youth group, Crossroads is less a religious novel, à la Graham Greene, than a novel about religion: the human desire for personal transformation and transcendence, and our attempts to be good, or even simply understood. It’s also a humorous, sensitive portrait of a not-so-gracefully-aging minister, his wife with a (very) dark past, and their children buffeted by that decade’s winds. 

On the history front, I really enjoyed dipping into Alexander Mikaberidze’s The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History, which is a bit of a doorstopper, but also a great look into how those conflicts were a truly international event. If you know Waterloo, but less about the beginnings of the “Great Game” in Persia or the rise of Mehmed Ali in Egypt, this is the book for you. It’s the perfect antidote to the disgraceful film that Ridley Scott made last year. Christopher Clark’s Revolutionary Spring, a revisiting of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, is magisterial (a backhanded compliment), but also a great guide to understanding our fractured and disorganized political moment.

And finally, in journalistic nonfiction, I read John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead, a 2011 collection of essays from places like Rolling Stone and Esquire. It’s literary magazine journalism at its best, making topics that might seem boring, dated, or just plain tacky—Christian rock, Axel Rose, and MTV’s Real World—into windows on a vast, confounding American culture.  

Victoria Holmes, associate audio/visual editor

G.K. Chesterton on St. Francis: St. Francis is my favorite saint, not for the superficial “hippie” image many associate with him, but for his radical impact on the church. Chesterton masterfully delves into the man behind the legend, contextualizing his revolutionary life and influence within his era.

The Grotesque in Art and Literature: As an art enthusiast, I make it a point to visit museums whenever I travel. The grotesque intrigues me—not simply for its distortion but for its psychological depth. This book provided an enjoyable exploration of the concept through a religious lens.

 Grayson Logue, TMD deputy editor

1. Circe by Madeline Miller
2. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 
3. The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration by Mark Roseman

After starting grad school classes again, I didn’t read as many books as I would have liked this year, but I came across some great ones in my course research and made time for some enjoyable fiction. I took a class on the Holocaust this fall and was surprised by the diverse historiography in the field. Roseman’s book provides a compact and accessible examination of one of the most scrutinized primary sources in the record of the Holocaust, and he also does an excellent job exploring broader historical debates over the evolution of the Final Solution.

Music. 

 Grayson Logue, TMD deputy editor

1. “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” by Sabrina Carpenter  
2.  “Good Luck, Babe!” and “Casual” by Chappell Roan
3. “Good Looking” and “Moves” by Suki Waterhouse  
4. “He’s Fine” by The Secret Sisters
5. “So Caught Up” by The Teskey Brothers 
6. “White Christmas Outside of Reno” by Nathan Marshal   

This list is an upgrade from brown noise, but the dominance of individual songs over albums still reflects the fact that music is not my strong suit. There are very few artists for whom I’ll listen to their full album. Regardless, these are some of the songs I enjoyed most this year. “White Christmas Outside of Reno” is a welcome late-breaking addition from an up-and-coming New Orleans bluegrass artist.  

Mary Trimble, TMD editor 

1.  Don’t Forget Me by Maggie Rogers 
2. Cunningham Bird by Madison Cunningham and Andrew Bird 
3. South of Here by Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats
4. Oh Brother by Dawes
5. The Avett Brothers by The Avett Brothers  

2024 was a great year for music—at least for those of us who are into songs featuring mandolins. I wasn’t much more than a casual Maggie Rogers fan when Don’t Forget Me, her third album, dropped in the spring. It came out just as I was in the middle of a crosstown move, driving back and forth between my old apartment and my new one over, and over, and over again and in need of something to listen to. It immediately filled that need: It’s sensitive and funny and fun and the perfect record to blast from your open car windows while you sing at the top of your voice. Unfortunately, I do now vaguely associate it with the latent anxiety of packing, but I’m willing to overlook it for the bangers. 

And only an album as good as Don’t Forget Me could have beat out Cunningham Bird for my top spot this year. The collaboration between folk musicians Madison Cunningham and Andrew Bird is a track-for-track cover album of Buckingham Nicks—Lindsey and Stevie, respectively, from before they were Fleetwood Mac. The reimagining of the hard-to-come-by album is both timeless and fresh, obviously Buckingham and Nicks and clearly Cunningham and Bird. 

Alex Demas, fact checker 

Clancy, Twenty One Pilots: Mary, Declan, and I often connect over how similar our tastes in music are and how many beloved musicians we have in common. That overlap ends abruptly with Twenty One Pilots, however, a band whose genre breaks entirely from my typical listening habits. The duo’s seventh album, Clancy, is the third act in a multi-album story arc whose lore is so deep and convoluted that, at this point, you should probably just ignore it. High-concept metaphors for a cyclical struggle with identity, purpose, and anxiety aside, Clancy is the band’s most approachable album yet and is a great entry point into a discography that, love it or hate it, is undeniably original.

Sketch of a Promised Departure, Joe Pug: Despite his relatively small popular following, Joe Pug is widely—and rightfully—recognized within the folk community as one of the preeminent songwriters of his generation. His most recent album, Sketch of a Promised Departure, reflects the maturity of an artist who has moved past his idealistic youth hustling through Chicago’s music scene into an adulthood where a career as a blue-collar musician isn’t always compatible with the responsibilities of a husband and father.

Worth Your Time

• What answer did writer Fyodor Dostoevsky give a concerned mother about how to teach her son the difference between good and evil? “His answer both eased my anxiety and terrified me,” Vika Pechersky wrote for Christianity Today. “On the one hand, Dostoevsky gives simple advice to a set of very complex questions. There is no need to master elaborate philosophical systems and social theories to teach my children the meaning of good and evil. According to Dostoevsky, people have a natural yearning for truth, and this yearning comes to our aid in the work of parenting. Herein lies the terrifying part, for the work of parenting starts with my own self—my love of truth, rectitude, goodness of heart, freedom from false shame, and constant reluctance to deceive. I have to embody the love of truth and goodness and live them out in my daily life if I want to teach my children to love what is good.”

Presented Without Comment

New York Times: Jeans in the White House? President Carter Made It So. 

Also Presented Without Comment

Reuters: Syria’s De Facto Leader Says Holding Elections Could Take Up to Four Years

In the Zeitgeist

In honor of Rachael calling out ManningCast as one of her favorite shows of the year, here’s Eli Manning going undercover as a college football walk-on hopeful in a sketch that inspired Glen Powell’s upcoming show, Chad Powers. 

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Kevin D. Williamson reflected (🔒) on New Year’s resolutions and generosity as only he can, and Nick Cattogio, in his characteristically cheery fashion, took stock (🔒) of “Never Trump” as the president-elect nears the start of his second term.  
• On the site today: Thomas S. Kidd writes about how former President Jimmy Carter, despite his deep Christian faith, couldn’t hold the allegiance of evangelicals, and Kevin D. Williamson recounts some of the lows of Carter’s presidency. Michael Warren delves into what’s dividing Republicans as Donald Trump’s second inauguration approaches.

Let Us Know

What was the best thing you watched or listened to this year?