Checking the notes and citations of my manuscript. I remember doing this before the age of citation managers. How did people do this before word processors?

Hard to believe, at one point a bunch of people were paid yearly salaries to watch and reflect about how they felt about movies. And some of the writing was pretty great.

Jeff Bezos’s wealth has increased an average of $70 million every day of 2026, meaning that he could have offset The Post’s losses with what he’s made since Monday.

Look no further.

I’m careful with “genius”—I’m even careful with “artist”—but Catherine O’Hara was both and we scarcely deserved her.

This was inspired by seeing someone using Excel on their phone. What are we doing here?

Being anti-phone is cool. But what about being pro-desktop? I love having a big screen, a solid keyboard, and not being able to take it with me anywhere.

We set out to determine how many images of women and girls Grok created during its nudifying spree. What we found was “industrial-scale abuse,” experts said. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/t...

“Vertical video is a format of necessity that rewards users’ inattentiveness…Instead of making something worth the mild inconvenience of rotating a phone, posters go for whatever is safest, easiest…It’s a design choice that sacrifices artistry so users don’t have to use their wrists.”

Lovely little reflection on breaking the death grip of Instagram and our appified attention spans from @gbullard.bsky.social.

I wrote about snails, Switzerland, and fitting in for the NYT Magazine. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/m...

I wrote about snails, Switzerland, and fitting in for the NYT Magazine. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/m...

NEW: When Propecy Fails is one of the most famous social psychology books of all time, a look at a small group of UFO believers when the “spacemen” failed to land. I wrote about a new study from an independent researcher who says the book is not what it seems. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Happy 89th Birthday Dick Cavett, thank you for making television that would absolutely never be made by a major broadcast network any more, like letting Orson Welles perform a 9 minute monologue on ABC

It's amazing how many tricky problems of writing can be solved by moving a paragraph, then deleting it.

Podcasting

Humbly presenting to the void: today is new album release eve. Tomorrow you can get hear my second piano trio "Payne Hollow," inspired by Harlan and Anna Hubbard who lived deliberately on the banks of the Ohio. Recorded by local group NouLou Chamber Players. fictivemusic.bandcamp.com/album/piano-...

With less than one month to go before the paperback release, I am sharing a review a day. Today's review is from the esteemed Olivia Liang in The Financial Times.The FT was actually the first review to appear outside of a trade publication and it was a huge relief to see it reviewed so well overseas

This is a really fun look at a great comic.

Part three of the cultural history of the bowling shirt. Folks, we've got swing revival, Two and a Half Men, fake irony, and a gallon of Donkey Sauce. gabebullard.substack.com/p/the-end-of...

Eating figs and singing ”I got figs” to the tune of ZZ Top’s “Legs.”

Still writing about bowling shirts. This time, I touch on the swing revival, old Mac games, that Lit video, and the false idea of a 20-year nostalgia cycle. open.substack.com/pub/gabebull...

Speaking of film formats, I recently published an article on Pola-Lite, a largely unnoticed and under-researched single-strip 3-D format, in Film Atlas, an encyclopedia of every film format ever. I had a blast researching this. It has everything! Monsters, Douglas Sirk, questionable origin stories!

I encourage anyone working in a creative field who is concerned about AI replacing them to not aid in AI's replacement of people in other creative fields. If you're a freelance writer, ask your editor how they'll illustrate your story—with stock images, illustrations, new photos, or AI.

Reading a post critiquing AI podcasts and the image appears to be an AI-made illustration. I see this a lot. People in one medium critique the use of AI in their field, but then use it to do things they can't do or they don't want to hire out—like audio producers using AI images.

Five years of Defector: defector.com/five-years-o...

Many congratulations to Laura Garbes (University of Minnesota) on the publication of her pathbreaking sociology of the culture, idealism, and contradictions of public media. Out today on Princeton University Press.

Don't trust anyone* who shows up to work in the morning with their tie already loosened. *Anyone who isn't a musician†. †A good musician.

Maybe I need to stop on these book edits. I just imagined I wrote the phrase "Load o' Laundry."

So much of mainstream American journalism has just been finding the "iconoclasts" to ensure you're "adding something to the conversation." So you end up with 3 kinds of interviews:

Part one of my cultural history of the bowling shirt is one of the most popular essays I’ve published in a while. I guess people like it? gabebullard.substack.com/p/what-happe...

Going deep on bowling shirts. gabebullard.substack.com/p/what-happe...

Hey Beautiful Nerds! @99pi.org is fifteen years old tomorrow! Hard to believe. We used the occasion for me to talk about our editing process, my design hill to die on, and foot measurement devices podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/9...

The big question facing stations now is whether this surge of giving can last, and fill the gap Congress created. 📝 Story by @gbullard.bsky.social niemanreports.org/rural-statio...

"It’s hard to make good work, period. It’s harder when you’re working in an abstract medium like audio where you literally can’t see the thing you’re editing. The work necessarily moves slower." 👇 defector.com/the-future-o...

This is such an important piece. What's happening to film criticism - and so quickly - is deeply saddening.

“Shipoopi” but it’s Labubu.

Some people have asked if there’s a way to support us beyond a subscription. Yes! Please! :) You can make a one-time (or ongoing) contribution to support BWDR via paypal below. Every bit goes into keeping things going & keeping this ship afloat:

It’s so vital to have publications with thoughtful editors focused on art. Support BW/DR.

One of the great modern American film magazines needs your help! The best way to help is to get a 1 year subscription. The price -- $2.41 a month!! -- is bargain for all the great writing and illustrations it'll help pay for.

This is the best money you will ever spend on a film magazine. Nowhere else in the industry is publishing the kind of work you'll find here. It's so, so, SO worth it.

Delighted to have interviewed with WBUR's Meghna Chakrabarti "On Point." First half discusses the historical intricacies of the US public media ecosystem. Second half I tried to detail how the GOP rescission bill was designed to attack democratic media.

It's so odd to me that we have hours and hours of video podcasts where a host talks to a guest, and none of them look half as decent as TV did 50 years ago. The technology exists!