The Saturday List - December 13, 2025
What I'm Watching, Reading, Listening to, and Rediscovering
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Watching: Red Team, a Short Film by Cairo Smith
A great investment of 16 minutes of your time: it’s an AI-gone-wrong cautionary tale.
Reading: The End of the World Is Just the Beginning, by Peter Zeihan
Warning: This is not an easy read. And it’s more than a little depressing, too.
Any book that tells you that certain countries will cease to exist as we currently know them can’t be too uplifting.
With a subtitle of “Mapping the Collapse of Globalization,” geopolitical consultant Peter Zeihan tells us all about how things will never be the same. A lot of it is about demographics: China’s one-child policy, or America’s aging Baby Boomers, or a whole generation of Japanese — or Koreans or Russians — that isn’t having enough babies.
And then you mix in things like oil, and global supply chains, and US isolationism and demand for cheap “crap” from China.
It’s not a total downer, though: there will be opportunities.
Here’s a link to the book on Amazon.
BONUS: here’s Peter being interviewed by Chris Williamson; the interview just dropped a few days ago.
Listening To: Future Islands
It started for a lot of people with an appearance on Letterman — remember, The Late Show music director Paul Shaffer remains the ne plus ultra of music directors — on March 3, 2014. Future Islands, a band from Baltimore fronted by a chap called Sam Herring, performed “Seasons (Waiting on You).”
And…well, you probably just have to watch for yourself. But there were quite a few people who fell in love with the band that night.
This prompted a completely blown away David Letterman to say: “I’ll take all of that you got!”
More than just a one-trick pony, the band has released a couple really solid tunes over the years, including one of my personal favorites, “For Sure.”
And, how about another live performance, this one at the Sydney Opera House.
If you need an energy boost, any of the three videos may do the trick.
Rediscovering: Jordan Peterson Talks About Imposter Syndrome
From three years ago, on Chris Williamson’s Modern Wisdom podcast. Eight minutes. Really good.
We’ll see you next week.