What I Read (and Watched) This Week - September 28th, 2025 Edition

From the 'Mississippi Miracle' to a hypothesis on why hotter countries are poorer, it's the return of my reading recommendations.

Sep 28, 2025

Brian Campbell and I in the media room for Canelo vs. Crawford at the Fontainebleu in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This ‘What I Read’ series is something I started when this Substack first launched that I got away from due to a deluge of work commitments. I also ended up spending as much time as possible reading articles and watching videos during the week so I could cram each edition with as many recommendations as possible. That was plainly unsustainable and created quick burnout.

Truthfully, my workload hasn’t decreased since then. If anything, it’s probably gone up, but I wanted to bring this series back because I truly enjoy doing it. My goal now is to be able to deliver this in a consistent way even if it means each edition isn’t always teeming with recommendations. If I’ve found anything to be true in life, it’s that activities or efforts which deliver the best results are just the ones that can be done with regularity over time. With that in mind, you’ll see in this week’s edition the problem of original Hollywood movies flopping, motivations of the ICE shooter, a lecture on how societies collapse, why warmer countries tend to be economically poorer and more.

I won’t ignore bad news in this newsletter. To that end, there’s plenty in here. But I also don’t want a newsletter filled with every latest iteration of the Trump administration’s incompetence or mendacity. Some of that will naturally get included, but that isn’t my focus. The mission has never been clearer: here are some cool or interesting things I saw this week and I’d like to share them with you.

With that in mind, thank you to the paid subscribers who make this newsletter possible. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you all so very much. I hope there’s useful reading or viewing for all of you in today’s newsletter. As always, this post is free and available to all, so feel free to share far and wide.

Domestic News

Ken Klippenstein
talked to the ICE shooter’s friends to get a sense of who he was or if he had an ideological agenda. What he found was a young man whose friends distanced him for being too much of an edgelord.
Have you heard about the Mississippi Miracle? It turns out Mississippi - along with other southern states like Louisiana and Tennessee - have figured out a literacy and education formula that has drastically improved reading and education outcomes to the point where those states are now nation-wide leaders.
The Guardian looks at Bari Weiss in the role she plays as the enforcer of (right-leaning) institutional or oligarchical power and silencing any anti-Zionist voices or ideas:

“But while Weiss is widely understood as a provocateur, what is less well understood is how she has used the Free Press to empower rightwing factions within established elite institutions, and how her efforts have been turbocharged by Trump’s return to the White House. If Weiss does join CBS, it will only formalize the role she has already carved out as the Trump administration’s de facto ally in its effort to silence progressive and pro-Palestinian voices. Weiss will be an ideological commissar situated within the highest levels of the media business, wielding her considerable platform to help the White House enforce compliance in spaces that fostered resistance during Trump’s first term: the media, academia and civil society.”

If Trump is able to hire and fire at the Federal Reserve, this represents a real consolidation of executive power.
Why and how are men and women becoming bifurcated in their ideological views? John Burn-Murdoch hazards a guess.
Have you heard of this teacher in China teaching in English to mostly Chinese students about the U.S. and the West? He posts his lectures on YouTube and recently exploded in popularity. He also has a Substack that accompanies his lectures. This discussion of societal collapse will scare you:

Chris Hedges explaining how Ezra Klein misses the mark in his own Charlie Kirk analysis is important to hear:

Francis Fukuyama warns of impending plutocracy:

This article from Naked Capitalism on what’s going on in Argentina is quite helpful (thanks to one of the paid subscribers here who recommended it!). Juan David Rojas also has a brief explainer on the issue.
Why are warmer countries poorer? Here’s a novel thesis: the heat creates a series of complications that force people close to the equator to move into elevation, but when that happens, it makes trade and commerce more difficult due to significant terrain challenges.

Science and Tech

Taylor Lorenz speaks to a Wired magazine reporter about foreign governments (typically in countries engaging in some form of atrocious human rights violations) are leaning on influencers to launder their image:

What actually causes obesity? It turns out there a series of factors many have not considered, including the existing scientific establishment.

Sports

This is a true story about how a boxer getting punched in the balls ended up derailing his life.
Thomas Gerbasi - a longtime combat sports writer on both the UFC and boxing side of things - recently died. Ben Fowlkes’s story on his life is worth your time:

To understand just how vital Gerbasi was to UFC operations, you only needed to know his zip code. A lifelong New Yorker, Gerbasi adamantly refused to relocate to Las Vegas and work out of the main UFC office with everyone else. This was uncommon, to say the least, since UFC CEO Dana White has never been a man who believed in remote work. According to other UFC employees, there were only two people who were so essential White would let them work from home indefinitely: Gerbasi and former UFC matchmaker Joe Silva.

Entertainment

Original movies in 2025 have basically all flopped at the box office:

Generative AI startups are coming for Hollywood.
There’s a long feature in the New Yorker about The Rock, which is well written, although I don’t find Dwayne Johnson in any way some kind of sympathetic figure. That said, The Smashing Machine is out next week and I’m curious to give it a look:

Learning it taught him a crucial lesson. Pro wrestling is, in large part, the art of dramatizing pain: the theatrics of dishing it out, absorbing it, selling it. Wrestlers gasp, wince, crawl, roll, clutch their backs, slap the floor. Nothing about this can be done casually. Pain, even fake pain, is an elemental, almost sacred thing. You can’t disrespect it. To do it well, you have to use your whole self.