Conduits of Conversation

This season is the best time of year for lingering, unhurried conversations. Good talk is as much an art as music or painting, and we hope you’ll be able to throw these bits onto your canvas this month.

Kelsey

Folk Angel Music only releases Christmas albums. There are seven, and they’re all great, but All the Earth Rejoice is my favorite.

The Ink app lets you send beautiful cards of all kinds (Christmas, thank you, birthday, etc.) from your phone and lets you personalize them with the pictures in your phone’s album. They mail them and everything.

Let someone else curate your interesting wine for your holiday party or impromptu gathering of friends this holiday season. Wine Awesomeness curates a box of wine that’s delivered to your doorstep. It includes a booklet that gives you winsome descriptions, pairings, recipes, great song accompaniments and more. You can give everyone something to talk about without working very hard.

Brandon

I have been shoveling newsletters into—yes, into—my inbox for a few years now. I love them. The top three are theSkimm, NextDraft, and The Week’s 10 Things You Need to Know Today. All three of these highlight the top news stories of the day—the first two are witty and fun, and the last is just the facts.

This conversation on wisdom features one of my heroes, Krista Tippett, with the president of Fuller Seminary, Dr. Mark Labberton. This kind of insight into what it means to be human continues to shape my entire being.

Last week some of us went to see N. T. Wright speak at Southern Methodist University on the nature of the crucifixion and what it means for us today. If you have a few hours to devote to it, it’s a great chat. We’ll be writing about it soon enough.

Jonathan

The National Book Awards just came out. Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad won. So, read it with me. Also, read Zadie Smith’s new novel Swing Time simply because she is Zadie Smith. 

After you read these, fast from this stuff. It’s the holidays. Put down the phone and computer and just be with people. Be embodied with people like Jesus was.

Oh. But don’t do that before you watch Planet Earth 2. It’s so good.

Oh. And go see the movies Silence and Arrival. Then go home and watch Kubo and the Two Strings.

Drew

The New York Times wrote a how-to on how to properly use a chef’s knife.

Turkey cooking tips from my favorite cooking site, Food52.

My must see movies before the end of the year: Arrival, La La Land, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. (I am the resident Star Wars nerd.)

This Radiolab podcast is one of their best.

The Jet Propulsion Lab at NASA has made a series of travel posters for potentially habitable planets that are beautiful. It’s educational too: just click on a poster to learn more about the planet.

David Bazan’s Dark Sacred Night Christmas album—moody, thoughtful, atypical, and even challenging.