The Saturday List — January 10, 2026

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

Welcome back! Hope it was a great week…

Here’s what I’m up to (after a friendly reminder to click that subscribe button right here, it’s free!)

Watching: Sky News Press Preview

Ages ago, there was a chap called Aaron Brown (RIP; Aaron passed away at the tail end of 2024) who spent quite a bit of time on CNN. Before his CNN stint, he hosted a show called World News Now, which served as ABC’s answer to NBC News Overnight, and now I’m really dating myself.

World News Now was great for THIS particular news junkie and occasional insomniac. Off the cuff, somewhat unscripted, and they MAY have been the inventor of the idea of showing the front pages of newspapers the night before they hit the newsstand.

Brown brought the idea with him to CNN — where, coincidentally, his first on-air broadcast was on September 11, 2001 — and would show the papers on his NewsNight program.

Enter the modern take from the UK’s Sky News network.

Friends have heard me rant about how much I love Sky News and/or how much I am addicted to Sky News. (It’s available on most “smart TVs,” mine is a Samsung.)

For me, as an antidote to my local news, and to ramp up for the network news here, I watch Press Preview most evenings at 4:30 my time.

It’s also great evidence of a thriving newspaper industry — or at least one that appears to be thriving — and Sky News takes things a little further than Aaron would by inviting a couple journalist pundits to walk them through their thoughts on who is covering what.

Here’s Thursday’s edition; most days the network posts the video on YouTube.

Reading: ‘31 Days of Content: Here’s What I Learned’ (by…me)

I decided to post something, either here or on my Area 224 site, every single day in December. Some of the content was new, some of it was repurposed from earlier in the year, but all of it was meant to get me in the habit of writing consistently.

I got a ton out of the experience, and shared key things I learned at this post: 31 Days of Content: Here’s What I Learned.

Oh, and one of my favorite posts from the month is one that didn’t get a ton of views; so I’ll share it here, along with the video that leads it off:

It’s Sunday, So Here’s Advice from an Orthodox Priest…

Listening To: Urge Overkill

The film Pulp Fiction introduced most of the civilized world to the band Urge Overkill, thanks to the band’s cover of a Neil Diamond song, “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon.” But, if you were anywhere near Chicago — as I was, beginning in 1993, living in Lincoln Park — Urge Overkill was already a staple.

Yes, “Girl…” was UO’s highest-charting song in the US, peaking at 59 on the Billboard Hot 100. It’s a great tune and here’s the YouTube link.

The Pulp Fiction soundtrack coincided with the band’s album Saturation in 1994; Alternative and alt-rock stations in Chicago had “Sister Havana” on semi-heavy rotation.

My personal favorite UO disc is Exit the Dragon, from which I’ll share a couple tunes. First, a song that received airplay but failed to chart — thanks, WXRT, which was known for a completely random mix of rock, alternative rock, and Thin Lizzy — called “Monopoly” has lived rent-free in my head for ages.

A few years back, in a ranking of the Greatest Songs Ever, I put “The Break” by UO (also off of Exit the Dragon) in a tie for tenth on my all-time list. Here’s what I said about the song, and band, then:

“I maintain this is the perfect 90s rock song. Impeccably crafted, with an unheard of “verse-chorus-chorus-verse-chorus” structure, this song even tells the story of the band itself: UO could not get a break in the 90s. Despite getting tons of street cred from another song, this Chicago band was never as ubiquitous in the 90s on Chicago radio as Smashing Pumpkins.

The video, too, is pure UO-level hubris. Eddie “The King” Roeser and Nash Kato were over-the-top in love with the whole scene, man. “Everything ends in a heartache.” They, too, couldn’t get a break; like the other occupant of my number ten slot (Constantines, “Working Full-Time”), Urge Overkill could have sold out stadiums if they had played their cards right and maybe ended up in a few more Tarantino movies.”

Rediscovering: The Brilliance of Clarke & Dawe

For decades, John Clarke and Bryan Dawe were staples on Australian television. Brilliant satirists — Clarke, the balding one, died in 2017; Dawe is the other chap and is still knocking around in Australia — their riffs on current events were legendary.

For instance, here’s “The Front Fell Off,” where Clarke plays the role of an Australian Senator named “Bob Collins.” It aired in 1991 and has to do with an oil tanker whose…well…you guessed it…front fell off.

Then there’s this, on the European Debt Crisis, where there appears to be quite a bit of confusion about who owes what to whom.

Banking, explained…

And, my all-time favorite, this discussion of “quantitative easing.”

Have a great week, everyone! And don’t forget to subscribe!