The Saturday List — April 4, 2026

What I'm Watching, Reading, Listening to, and Rediscovering

Apr 04, 2026

Hope it’s been a great weekend so far, and that it will be a great week ahead.

Here’s the 22nd straight edition of The Saturday List.

Watching: Highlights from The Vandy Program

Since the last edition of this here newsletter, I’ve launched three — THREE!!! — new episodes of The Vandy Program, which is my interview-meets-podcast program. You can find it on YouTube, where the full episodes get posted first.

First, there was my friend John Puccio, whose Substack article on The Perpetual Present really got my attention.

In this 4-minute-ish excerpt, John and I discuss the aesthetics of The Cybertruck.

Before we continue, feel free to share this FREE post with your Internet pals.

Next, Jerry Beach, who is a Long Island-based sportswriter and author — he wrote the definitive account of the 2000 Subway Series — and he has thoughts on whether we might see a tenuous offseason in 2026; baseball’s owners and players seem to be far apart on a few issues.

Finally, I caught up with former WAER-FM colleague Matt Dery, who has carved out success for himself in two industries: sportscasting — Matt is the host of the Locked On Lions podcast — and marketing, where he manages marketing and business development for Financial Architects, a financial firm in Detroit (where Matt has lived for going on 30 years).

One question I asked is, basically, how did the Lions become THE LIONS? What’s behind their recent return to relevance?

Well, I had a guess. Matt tells us more here.

The full interviews are on the channel. All three were big fun for me, and I hope you, too, will enjoy.

Reading: Building Great Sentences, by Brooks Landon

It’s amazing — to me, at least — that I have only recently heard of this book; seeing as I write for a living and try to digest as many books on the craft as I can find. But this just caught my eye and Brooks Landon seems to know a thing or two (or more) about writing. And, specifically, writing sentences.

Building Great Sentences is on the way to my home and will greet me when I return from various travels.

Here’s the blurb on Amazon.

(Note to self: this being the second reference I’ve heard to Absalom! Absalom! this week, should probably check THAT out, too.)

Listening to: Ratboys

Okay, Ratboys. You win. I’m now a fan. The band originally formed in South Bend, Indiana, when two University of Notre Dame freshmen, Julia Steiner and Dave Sagan, first met. They are now romantically linked; e.g. they are “partners” according to the band’s Wikipedia page. She sings, he plays lead guitar.

Here’s “Light Night Mountains All That,” which is right now getting airplay on Sirius XMU.