May 16, 2026
What I'm Watching, Reading, Listening to, and Rediscovering This Week
Howdy! This is the 28th straight week I’ve provided The Saturday List, and it’s the 38th edition overall. Happy to have you on board as I share what I’m Watching, Reading, Listening to, and Rediscovering.
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Watching: Network TV is a Parallel Universe, A YouTube Video from Wade Stotts
If you don’t watch a ton of traditional network TV, you aren’t alone. And you might wonder why some of these shows are still on TV?
I mean, we’ve all heard about the big drop in ratings, and how the only monoculture moments anymore are things like the Super Bowl. But there’s a steady diet of shows like NCIS and its ilk (CBS), or Chicago Fire and its brethren (NBC), or ABC’s offerings that are connected to emergency services (more on that one below). Someone needs to study this phenomenon, and needs to do so with a heavy dose of snark.
That someone is Wade Stotts, who hosts programs on Canon Press, which is a Christian publishing house that also does some rather interesting pop-culture stuff. In this video, Stotts studies those shows and zeroes in on the formula. Specifically, we’ll hear about Marshals and Tracker on CBS, and then he’ll do a deeper dive on 9-1-1 on ABC.
Stotts is absolutely hilarious in his 24-minute breakdown. And you might find it especially funny if you do ask yourself: “Who watches this?” (Unless the answer to that question is…you.)
Reading: Why Did LLMs Steal Our Em-Dashes?, An Essay by Lia Erisson, An Undergraduate at McGill University
This was the deepest dive I’ve seen yet into the reasons why the “em-dash” (“—”) became a sign of AI use.
And it makes total sense, as Lia Erisson, who is an Undergraduate at McGill University in Montreal, writes:
The whole essay is great and actually gives me hope — I grew up reading the writing of Sports Illustrated, whose writers seemed to adore the em-dash; I’ve probably used it for 40 years — that I will someday be able to sprinkle them throughout my writing without worrying about being called a “bot.”
N.B. If you want a writing tip AND you have a number pad on your keyboard, you can insert an em-dash by doing as follows:
Hold down the “Alt” button on your keyboard;
While holding it down, use the number pad to type the following four-number sequence: “0-1-5-1.”
— is the result. It’s still glorious. I’ll keep using ‘em. (Ha.)
Listening to: The Twilight Sad
Something about a band from Scotland called The Twilight Sad just hits right these days. Maybe it’s the “Scottish-forward” voice of lead singer James Graham or maybe it’s the fact that I have always liked “post-punk” even though I have struggled for a definition of the genre.
In any event, Messrs Graham and guitarist Andy MacFarlane are a recent discovery of mine, and it turns out they’ve been around for a while. Here are a couple songs to introduce you to the band — or re-introduce you, if they’re someone you’ve heard of but have forgotten about — and there’s something new, and something from what seems like ages ago.
First, here’s “Designed to Lose,” off of 2026’s It’s the Long Goodbye:
Off of 2009’s Forget the Night Ahead, here’s “Made to Disappear” — performed live on Seattle’s KEXP (with thanks to the SiriusXMU crowd for putting this on the other day):
Finally, from the band’s first album, Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters, here’s “That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy”:
Rediscovering: Bruno Mars, Super Bowl XLVIII Halftime Show (2014)
In honor of Bruno Mars arriving in Chicago for a couple nights where he’s playing Soldier Field — and in anticipation of a day when the Chicago Bears will eventually leave Soldier Field for a Chicago suburb that may or may not be in Illinois — let’s throw back to his performance at Super Bowl XLVIII.
It doesn’t get mentioned in the same vein as Prince, nor is it as notable as the Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake “Wardrobe Malfunction,” but it was pretty darn good.
You want 13 minutes of energy like Bruno provided, and you want a surprise guest appearance from Red Hot Chili Peppers. So 9/10 for Bruno.
If you’re seeing him on his tour, here’s hoping it’s excellent; the list of solo artists that can sell out Soldier Field and its ilked is pretty limited, so he’s likely to deliver.
Thanks for reading; I’ll give you another “Subscribe” button below, and here’s hoping it’s an impeccable week.
Dave