This Week's Thoughts

I’m catching a vibe writing this email, and I hope you can feel it. Let’s have a stupid fun week, do some creative stuff because we can, and make the most of these last wintry days of the wintriest month. Time to take it anywhere.

Oh also if someone sent this to you: Tell that someone thank you for me and sign up to get weekly Thinking Is Cool emails from me, Kinsey, right here:

What I’m Thinking About This Week: Throwbacks

Since the start of season 2 earlier this month, the HBO headtrip Euphoria has made a practice of including songs roughly double the age (or more) of the show’s target audience. In the first two episodes alone, Gerry Rafferty’s "Right Down The Line,” released in 1978. Steely Dan’s “Dirty Work,” released in 1972. Hall & Oates’s "Do What You Want, Be What You Are,” released in 1976.

In fact, aside from that Orville Peck curveball and the odd made-for-this-show-or-for-TikTok track, Euphoria has sonically dealt largely in golden oldies and late ’90s rap. I’m sure some television critic has a deeply strategic theory for what that means, but for the lay consumer, it means this: rediscovering the music your dad always played when you were a kid.

My Dad’s favorite song is famously “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac, a true masterclass in music, lyrics, and unrelenting feelings released in the ’70s. Dad isn’t what I would call a music fanatic, but I remember clearly that he’d always say something along the lines of “now this is music” any time The Eagles or that unmistakable Stevie Nicks sound came on the speakers on a Friday night at Applebee’s.

Lately, egged on by the music I’m rehearing on Euphoria, I’ve been finding myself gravitating toward soundtracks much more suited for my Dad’s taste than my own. I’m writing this on a Sunday afternoon, blaring Carole King Radio on Spotify. And honestly, this music goes so hard.

I think this newfound appreciation for Dad music is a mix of influence that’s contemporary and nostalgia that’s resolute. As a kid, I would dread the times my parents played Seventies on Seven on the car’s XM radio on road trips to my grandma’s. All I wanted was Pop2K and Ryan Seacrest and I made it known. But today, I’m a caricature of a manic pixie dream girl, dancing around my apartment by myself while “Something to Talk About” and “Black Water” blare through my tiny speaker. And I’m so distinctively happy.

It’s not to say that music produced today isn’t artful or transcendent, but listening to old music with slightly older ears and a significantly older mind reaffirms to me that we change and our tastes change with us. And that’s pretty spectacular.

On Sunday morning, my dad sent our family group chat a bluegrass song that he “never tires of hearing,” one that I most likely would not queue up if handed the aux. But it was beautiful, and more importantly…it was from him.

So this week, as I thumb through the algorithmic playlists Spotify hand delivers to my phone, I’ll pause to consider trying something I heard my Dad talk about once way back when. Because you never really know what might tickle your fancy next.

Now, consider this for your own Carole King jam session…

You’re about to read a description of this week’s Thinking Is Cool episode that might make an ad feel weird, and I want to preface that description with this: I teamed up with Massican because I really like Massican wine. And I’m pretty positive you will, too.

This isn’t a targeted ad. This is an ad for a product I truly love (especially the Annia pictured above). For wine I buy myself and have bought myself since before Thinking Is Cool was even a sparkle in my eye. For something made sustainably and uniquely. For Massican.

Massican creates wines that are crisp and complex, wines that unveil themselves to you, wines that start conversation. But they’re also $30 a bottle, free of additives and sugar, and low in alcohol. I don’t need your data to know you’re into that.

New Massican wines are bottling in February and dropping in March…and between the two of us, they tend to sell out pretty quickly. So get on the list or purchase a bottle (or five) today on the Massican site. Or check out the Massican selection at local fine wine shops and select Whole Foods nationwide.

What You Should Be Thinking About This Week: The FBI Agent in Your Phone

I’m only kind of kidding because there isn’t actually an FBI agent in your phone, but there might as well be given incredible amount of data that you offer up every time you paw through Instagram or type in “perciatelli vs bucatini” on Google.

This week on a brand new episode of Thinking Is Cool, I explore the depths of surveillance capitalism we’ve willingly and unwillingly submitted ourselves to. It’s pretty astounding how much we don’t know about the information we hand over in the form of anonymized data. 

It might not seem like a big deal when you think about it in the context of just yourself—I mean, realistically I’m 1 of about a million carbon copies of girlies in their late 20s who like to read and also like to dress like Claudia Schiffer in the ’90s and also have a fondness for matching sets and also think maybe snail mucus will cure their skin problems. But when you think about the ways the data we may or may not care about can be weaponized en masse to literally shape society…things get kind of scary.

This episode explores those fears. But it also offers solutions and considerations that were entirely new to me, a power internet user, when I heard them first. Listen and send to the friend in your life who’s holding out on Instagram Reels because TikTok is a Chinese-owned entity.

Find the episode on Apple, Spotify, and everywhere else.

Thank you for reading, everyone. I’ll be back in your inboxes, AirPods, minds, and hearts next week with an experimental episode that I’m equally nervous & excited to release. Yolo! Ok see you soon.

-Kinsey