This Week was Personal : March 14, 2026
What we carried this week...
This was a week about clocks; real ones and metaphorical. We published Whatever happened to, “meet me at high noon?”, which traces how we surrendered our relationship with the sun to a railroad logistics decision made in 1883 and never looked back. Daylight savings hit this weekend and the article landed right on time (pun absolutely intended). No episode this week, but the Oscars are Sunday and we’ve got thoughts including a full article coming Saturday on what A-list talent got shut out and if that means something more than just simple politics.
The Clock Isn’t Yours
In Whatever happened to, “meet me at high noon?”, we traced timekeeping from monks ringing bells by candlelight, through the railroads imposing four time zones on a continent, to the DST policy we can’t seem to kill. The core finding: DST doesn’t save energy. It costs about as much as it saves, and heart attacks spike 10% the week after the spring transition. The real problem isn’t the clock change, it’s the assumption that work and school schedules are fixed and the only lever we can pull is the clock itself. British Columbia just ditched clock changes permanently after 93% of surveyed residents said stop.
The takeaway: A coordination problem gets solved by whoever has the power to impose a standard, and then the standard becomes invisible and you stop noticing it.
Unrivaled Sold Out. The WNBA Can’t Agree on Housing.
Unrivaled sold out the semis, 21,490 in Philly, 18,261 in Brooklyn, over $2 million in ticket revenue between two stops. The demand for women’s basketball is not theoretical anymore. Meanwhile, the WNBA and the players’ union blew past the March 10 CBA deadline with no deal. Players want 26% of gross revenue. The league is offering 70% of net, which sounds generous until you realize “net” means they subtract everything first. They’re still fighting over housing.
The takeaway: The proof of concept is everywhere. The investment to match it is not. A lockout, the first in league history, is still on the table.
Kanye’s Back at SoFi. Two Nights Now.
Kanye announced a SoFi Stadium show in LA on April 3rd. Then demand hit and he added a second night April 1. Tickets starting at $200 (good luck getting them that cheap). The album is called Bully, which… say less. This is a man who spent the last three years saying the worst things out loud, and 70,000 seats still aren’t enough. Accountability was never the point of celebrity. The point is proximity. And proximity doesn’t require forgiveness.
The takeaway: The music still matters to people we love, and the man behind it keeps daring us to stop caring. Both things are real. We still processing but already talked through Ye’s Paid Apology (Not a Verdict) and JAŸ-Z and the Cost of Re-Entry and we’re definitely not done on this one.
Substack Wants to Be the Whole Studio
Substack launched a built-in recording studio this week; solo video, up to two guests, auto-generated clips and thumbnails, screen sharing, all native. They already own the subscriber relationship, the payment layer, and the distribution feed. Now they own the production tool too. Creators using audio or video are growing revenue 50% faster than those who aren’t. The play isn’t competing with Riverside or Spotify. The play is: why would a journalist with 20,000 subscribers ever need a network again?
The takeaway: It’s a question legacy outlets don’t want to answer. Substack just made it harder to avoid.
Oscar Preview: The A-List Shutout
The Oscars are Sunday. Here’s the preview: this year’s nominations tell a story about what the Academy actually rewards, and it’s not star power. We’re also pulling in some thoughts from our BAFTA-focused episode — Ep14 covered BAFTAs, Tourette’s, and Hamnet, and some of those threads connect directly to what’s happening at the Oscars this weekend.
Listen to Ep14 — BAFTAs, Tourettes, and Hamnet — our BAFTA conversation that sets up this weekend’s Oscars
Bam Scored 83. Everyone Lost Their Minds. Both Are Worth Examining.
Bam Adebayo put up 83 points against the Wizards on Tuesday, the second-most in NBA history behind Wilt’s 100. He passed Kobe. And immediately, the discourse split into two camps: historic achievement versus manufactured stat line.
Here’s what actually happened: Bam had 62 by the end of the third. The Heat were up big. And instead of pulling him, Spoelstra kept feeding. The team intentionally fouled Washington on defense to get the ball back faster. Bam went 36-for-43 from the line; both NBA records. He was fouled 26 times in a single game. The Wizards threw quadruple teams at him in the fourth quarter while Gordon Hayward called it “not legit” and ESPN’s Tim MacMahon called it “hideous basketball.”
Here’s what bothers me about the reaction: nobody questions when a system is engineered to protect a star’s legacy. Front offices tank entire seasons for draft picks and we call it strategy. But when a team engineers a single game to let a player do something historic, suddenly it’s an ethics debate. Tyrese Haliburton had the best response — he said it finally made him believe Wilt’s 100 actually happened in almost the same way as Bam’s 83. Of course it was engineered too. They all are. The question isn’t whether the system helped. It’s whether we’re honest about how much systems always help.
The takeaway: Every historic stat line is a collaboration between talent and circumstance. We just don’t like admitting it.
We’re still standing
We lost an hour this weekend. The clocks changed, the coffee hit different, and Monday morning felt like a personal attack. But that’s the rhythm of life these days ins’t it? We adjust, recalibrate, and keep moving. This week felt like a gut punch, and we have a few things to look forward too. Next week we’ve got Oscars coverage (which we’ll ALL have a lot to say about), more from the WNBA situation as it develops, and we’re settling into a frequency that feels right.
See you next week.
— Will, Steph, & Jamie