Watching Reading Listening

Recently, many government norms we’ve taken for granted as “how America works” have been exposed to be just that - norms. They’ve proven to be malleable (and in some cases optional). For those of us who only know this country, it can be challenging to know what to make of it. While we’ve learned about other democracies’ deterioration and collapse through history, those moments feel far removed from the 🇺🇸 Democracy 🎇 we‘ve enjoyed here.  Anne Applebaum, a staff writer for The Atlantic, is on

Earlier this week, I took my mom to see The Wild Robot and I loved it. It explores aspiration, acceptance, and resilience in a funny and moving way, and the visual storytelling is beautiful. I'm a sucker for both animal and robot-with-feelings stories, so this film is right in my wheelhouse. This movie hit hard as a parent who regularly thinks about our kids (now 14 and 11) growing up and heading out on their own. I hadn't read the book it's based on, but I'm happy to learn there are two

Last week my son and I saw Transformers One and both really enjoyed it - and not just because I went in with pretty low expectations based on the live action Transformers movies I’ve seen. It legitimately does a great job telling the origin stories of Optimus Prime and Megatron and as someone who grew up in the 80s during the Transformers action figure heyday, it felt new while also staying true to that original IP. Watching it also reminded me of the original Megatron action figure that transf