Our favorite pop culture picks in 2024

Episode Notes

Transcript

Lee Rawles:

Welcome to the Modern Law Library. I’m your host, Lee Rawles, and today we’re doing our annual pop culture picks episode where I speak to some staffers from the a, a journal about different pieces of pop culture that we’ve enjoyed this year. It may not be from this year, but we watched or listened or read it This year, I am lucky enough to be joined today by Danielle Braff, Anna Stolley Persky and Victor Lee, who you may know from the a BA journal’s, other podcast legal rebels. Guys, thanks so much for joining us.

Danielle Braff:

Thanks for having us.

Lee Rawles:

Thanks for having us.

Danielle Braff:

Thank you.

Lee Rawles:

So Danielle, I’m going to start off with you. I know you’re a huge reader and I assume that my listeners of the Modern Law Library are pretty fond of reading too. What were some of your favorite books you read this year?

Danielle Braff:

I have a few favorites from this year. One of them that I’m sure will be also a favorite of others is The God of the Woods by Liz Moore.

Lee Rawles:

I absolutely loved it. Yeah, I read it this year too.

Danielle Braff:

Yep. I just thought it was great because it almost reads like fiction, but there’s also crimes involved and a missing person and there’s just so much drama and it’s written really, really beautifully, which is not always the case for crime books.

Lee Rawles:

And can you give just readers who have not heard of the God of the Woods by Liz Moore?Just A really quick synopsis of what we know at the beginning of the book.

Danielle Braff:

So it takes place at a summer camp, which is a really fun setting, and one of the campers goes missing, and she is the daughter of the family that owns the camp. So it gets very, very complicated. There’s lots of family drama in this book, lots of different mini stories involved, which makes it really compelling.

Lee Rawles:

And one of the other elements is her older brother. As the book opens, her older brother has been dead for many years in what essentially was a take on the Charles Lindbergh baby kidnapping. You recognize elements in it. So no, I very much enjoyed this. I don’t know, Anna, did you read this book at all or Victor?

Victor Li:

Yep, I read it. I also liked it. I think I gave it five stars. I will say I thought it could have been edited down just a wee bit, but that’s my personal take on it. But yeah, it was very well done drama with multiple places where you said, oh, oh, that’s what’s happening. So that’s always good.

Danielle Braff:

Yeah, I mean, it was a long book. I like a slow burn, so I really liked that about the book, but I could see how it could be cut down a bit.

Lee Rawles:

Anna, did you have another book that you would recommend?

Victor Li:

Oh boy, I have so many. So I do track on Good reads if anybody wants to see me there. I read 57 books out of my goal of 50. I’m going to give you one fiction and one nonfiction. Love it. So my nonfiction, and this was hard to choose between, but I Chose Who by Fire and that’s by Maddie Friedman. And it basically tells the story, the true story of Leonard Cohen’s visit to Israel during the 1973 Yum Kippur War and what happened there. The writer’s particularly talented, he’s a reporter by background. He’s particularly talented at making you really feel like you’re there. It’s just such a weird piece in history. Most people didn’t know that Leonard Cohen was in Israel during this time. It was news to me and that some of his songs are based on his visit. And of course they played the, I listened to it on Audible, they played the tracks. So wonderful book. So that’s nonfiction. Did anybody else read that? No. No. Okay. Fiction. I went back a couple years, but not too long for The Great Believers by Rebecca Mackay.

Lee Rawles:

Oh, that was such a good book.

Victor Li:

So good. So it is placed during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. It actually has two time tracks, but that’s the main one. And it just is so totally engrossing telling the stories of sort of characters in Chicago during the start of the AIDS epidemic. And what Mackay is so amazing at is character development. I don’t know if you agree Lee, but just the characters we’re believable and it was such a moving book.

Lee Rawles:

Very much so. And another right now, I wish that I could be on online looking at my back list, but yes, I read this one and very much enjoyed it. And I know that I’ve enjoyed her in previous books

Victor Li:

As well. Yeah, she had a more recent book that was more of a murder mystery and that was also quite good. This one just moved me again, I think I was looking through my books and I realized my theme was character development, which I felt like she does really well.

Lee Rawles:

Well, Danielle stole like You, Anna, I was like, I’ll pick one fiction, one nonfiction listeners. You get to hear me over the summer. I usually share also some of my picks. So I feel like you don’t need to hear all about my reading as well. But you stole my fiction book, Danielle. I was going to recommend the God of the Woods by Louis Moore. I’m glad I went first. And my nonfiction book that I was going to recommend is written by a Ukrainian journalist named Ilia Panco. And the title of the book is I will show You How it was the Story of Wartime Kyiv. And he writes very movingly. And when you think about the fact that this is not his first language, he’s writing it in English to communicate with a Western audience and much like Anna’s choice, you really feel you’re there, you the tension. And to know that this is just essentially his experiences. The book is published this year in 2024, so it only reflects his experiences through 2023. This is a award that’s ongoing anyway, I highly recommend that I will show you how it was, is the title. And Victor, we haven’t talked to you yet. Did you have any books this year that you’d really like to recommend?

Anna Stolley Persky:

I’m not really a fiction reader. I really like to read just history and nonfiction. So most of my reading this year was in that realm. The book I really liked this year was I read The Battle for the Marble Palace by Michael Bobbell. It’s about the eight Fortis confirmation hearings in 1968 when he was nominated to be Chief Justice. He was already on the Supreme Court. He was nominated to be Chief Justice to replace Earl Warren. And that was unsuccessful. And it was different from other Supreme Court rejections because unlike some of the other ones like John Rutledge or John J. Parker, he actually got a majority, but it was a filibuster, so he wasn’t able to get the seat. The Senate refused to actually have a real vote on it, but it had a huge impact on the way things turned out. Obviously, he did not become Chief Justice.

If he had, the court probably would’ve continued its leftward drift as it had under his predecessor Earl Warren, his would be predecessor, Earl Warren, Earl Warren. And instead the court started moving to the right. And we see obviously that more of that over the last few years just with subsequent Chief Justices Berger than Rehnquist and now Roberts. So just interesting to see the context of that and just how things developed and looking at some of the way, some of the arguments for and against them. There were some ideological reasons, some political reasons, some personal reasons. As very often these confirmations turn into more than just one or one thing or one or two things. It’s a lot of things. So it really set the stage for some of sort of the unpleasant confirmation hearings that we’ve had in the years since. So I really enjoyed that book. I like that one a lot.

Lee Rawles:

The Battle for the Marble Palace, I’m going to look that one up.

Anna Stolley Persky:

I think it came out not last year, a couple years ago. So I really liked that one. And then another book that I would recommend, I guess it would’ve had more resonance four years ago, but there’s a book called Fraud of the Century that I read that I really enjoyed. It’s by Roy Morris Jr. It’s about the Rutherford b Hayes Samuel Tilden election in 1976. And that was a very corrupt election with multiple sets of electors, all kinds of fraud going on. Terrible, let’s be on cheating on both sides. Ultimately, it got resolved by an electoral commission where one Supreme Court justice ended up swinging the whole commission. And in 2020 when Donald Trump was alleging that the election had been stolen or whatnot, one of the ideas put forth was to create another similar type of electoral commission that we had in 1876 that would’ve had senators, congressmen and justice of the Supreme Court. And so that was what got me to read it. And just reading about some of the stuff that was going on, like asking people to hold their votes, stuffing, stuffing ballot boxes and things like that. It definitely kind of brought forth a lot of feelings of deja vu, I guess.

Lee Rawles:

Well, an election year is the year to read about elections. Danielle, did you read any nonfiction? I know that you love fiction, but were there any nonfiction books that you’d like to recommend?

Danielle Braff:

I really just mostly read fiction.

Lee Rawles:

Your working life is nonfiction, so I understand.

Danielle Braff:

Yeah, I mean I’m happy to recommend other fiction, but

Lee Rawles:

Yeah, how about it? Since they are being shorted of an additional fiction recommendation from me, I would love to hear a couple more of your recommendations for fiction.

Danielle Braff:

Sure. So I really loved the most fun we ever had by Clara Lombardo, and it is a slow burn fiction about a family and all the relationships within that family. You really get to know each of the characters so well. It goes through many years of their lives. And it’s interesting, it’s about infidelity, it’s about resentment. There’s everything in this book, and I really, really loved it. She also wrote this year, she wrote Same as It ever was, or this year it was published, which was a very similar in style, but I thought it was a little slow also about a family. I would recommend both, but I did like the most fun we ever had more.

Lee Rawles:

Well, we’re going to take a quick break to hear from our advertisers when we turn. We’re going to get into what movies, TV shows and podcasts we all enjoyed. Welcome back to the Modern Law Library. I’m your host, Lee Rawles here with reporters, Danielle b Braff and Anna Olli, Persky and assistant managing editor Victor Lee of the A Journal. So I’m going to start with movies. I have the least to say about it. I have not been inside of a movie theater in 2024. I want that to be a much bigger part of my 2025. That’s going to be one of my resolutions is to sit down and watch movies instead of just tv. And maybe you guys are going to give me some movies that I can start with. And I’m going to start with you, Anna. Did you see many movies this year?

Victor Li:

I saw a few. And so I’m going to start with a one that is controversial, but it shouldn’t be, which is wicked. So I’ll backtrack and say that I’m a big fan of the book and the musical and the musical is very different for the book. So I didn’t know what to expect going into seeing the movie. And I thought it was fabulous. The acting was specifically very good. It was very carefully done for the movie screen versus on theater where you have to act differently obviously. And I thought it was very impressive. The cinematography was amazing. The story was still there, just different because it has to be told each time you go away from the book, you tell it a little differently. And I don’t think I need to do the plot of Wicked. I think people know,

Lee Rawles:

I would hope So. I was wondering how it was going to translate to the movie screen because I have seen the wicked production in Chicago on stage. And like you said, the acting has to be so big in a Broadway show. So you really enjoyed it.

Victor Li:

I did. I really enjoyed it. And I have a second one to recommend also. I saw a Real Pain, which is lesser known, and it’s about these two cousins that are going on a trip to Poland. It’s like a tour for about the Holocaust, and they’re doing it in memory of their beloved grandmother. And it shows this tension in this relationship and the tension of the heritage they have. And I thought that was very well done too. So those are my two.

Anna Stolley Persky:

Victor,

Lee Rawles:

How about you?

Anna Stolley Persky:

So most of the movies I saw this year were kids’ movies. But the one movie I that I saw that wasn’t a kids’ movie was Deadpool and Wolverine. And I have to say I really enjoyed it. I mean, it’s a good, I know for people who are sick and tired of comic book movies or superhero movies or whatnot, this movie was, I mean, I don’t know how familiar people are with the Deadpool movies, but there was enough satire and enough kind of funny kind of asides and fourth wall breaking and stuff to keep it interesting. And plus I actually really enjoyed the story, even though that was very much sort of in the background. It wasn’t the selling point. It was really the selling point was really, Hey, here’s Ryan Reynolds. He’s funny. Hugh Jackman’s coming back as Wolverine for the 8 million times, so watch it now before he decides to retire finally.

But it was really funny. It was good. And plus, for people who’ve watched a lot of comic book movies even before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they do something very funny with some of the characters who existed in this space before the MCU came out, which was a nice payoff for some people who like fans like me who had watched some of these older movies like Daredevil or Blade or movies like that. So I’d recommend it. It’s funny, I think it’s on streaming now. Nowadays. All movies pretty much go to streaming within a couple of weeks of being in the theater, which I don’t know how I feel about that.

Lee Rawles:

Well, that’s when I tell myself I’ll watch them and then I end up not watching them.

Anna Stolley Persky:

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I told myself I was going to watch Joker two, but I heard it was terrible, so I was like, I’m not going to stream that one,

Lee Rawles:

Not with my few hours of my precious life. So Danielle, how about you?

Danielle Braff:

So I tend to watch more musical theater than movies. I was really looking forward to. Wicked, didn’t love it as much as Anna. I just thought it was a little slow. That’s okay. It’s also not my favorite musical theater production either. So there’s that. I just thought that Wicked was a little long slow. I mean, wicked has two amazing songs in it, but I wish there were more that I loved. I really liked this year how a lot of the movies and shows are sort of flipping the script and showing the other side of things like Wicked I just saw and Juliet the Musical, which is all about what would happen if Juliet took a sleeping pill instead of killing herself. And she goes on to live a really independent fun life. And I thought that that was a pretty interesting twist, really fun musical, especially for people who are new to musicals because the songs were light and fun. They did Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, stuff like that. And it was very easy to follow. There are many kids in the audience. And finally, I loved Mean Girls the musical that was made into a movie this year. And I felt like a lot of people didn’t like it because they would break into song every other sentence, but

Lee Rawles:

Well, that’s a musical

Danielle Braff:

And yep, that’s exactly why I did love it. I think that the songs and mean girls are really, really good, and I enjoyed that one.

Lee Rawles:

Well, I’m going to shift us to TV shows where I do have a little more to say. I’m going to start out with two sitcoms that both look at the world of American teaching, but really have kind of a different feel. They’re both very funny. Abbott Elementary has been now a long time favorite. I think it’s in its fourth or fifth season by now. And this year premiered a show called English Teacher, which is instead of being set in an elementary school, it’s set in a high school. It lampoons both the teachers and the students kind of lovingly. And I very much enjoyed both those shows this year. Two shows that may appeal to the modern law library audience if they like more detective crime shows with quirky characters. I very much enjoyed the show Will Trent, where it has a man who grew up in the foster care system and is pretty clearly divergent somehow some way now working for the police.

And then the other one that I wanted to shout out is High Potential, which stars one of the actresses from, it’s always sunny in Philadelphia, and she is a cleaning woman who is a custodian for the police department, essentially. And she sees one of their murder boards, and much like Matt Damon in Goodwill Hunting draws a little conclusion on their murder board essentially saying this is a victim, not a suspect. And they hunter down. They’re like, how did you figure this out? Anyway, it is a great show with a lot of heart to it, and I really recommend that one as well. Last one I’m going to call out is for all Mankind, which is on Apple Plus. And it is a show looking at what would’ve happened if the Soviets managed the moon landing before the United States. You start out in the sixties and each season has been a new decade and the first season, honestly, history has not gone too differently. But as each season moves on, you see the path of this alternate universe really diverge from ours and I love it. So those are the ones that I am going to recommend. Victor, how much TV have you watched that does not involve Bluey or another kid’s character?

Anna Stolley Persky:

So he’s really into this show called Cayo, which I can’t stand. Oh, that

Lee Rawles:

Is unfortunate. Victor. Victor, that brings, I’m so sorry. That brings nightmares.

Anna Stolley Persky:

Yeah, and I think they just rebooted it this year, but that’s not going to be my pick. That’ll be my pick to avoid. So yeah, after watching that show, I need to rinse my eyes or something, I don’t know, jump off a cliff or something like that. So for me, and this I guess has some kind of legal angle, I guess. I watched the American sports story featuring Aaron Hernandez. I like watching these serials about actual cases. I watched the Menendez one. I watched the OJ Simpson one. The OJ Simpson one was actually really good. The Menendez one, not so much, but obviously there are other things that the Menendez brothers are worried about these days. But yeah, the American sports story with Aaron Hernandez was surprisingly good. I was skeptical going in. I thought, okay, well, it might be a little too soon. And I didn’t know there was too much to say about it other than what we knew about.

But actually there was a lot that I didn’t know about. I mean, I guess we’ll see how the network does as far as how much stuff they get away with creative license or how much of it they can back up and whatnot. I was surprised with some of the things I think they alleged Aaron Hernandez had a gay lover, which I didn’t think that that was the case. But yeah, I mean, so that kind of threw me for a loop and I wasn’t expecting that. So I’m watching that. It kind of has some new context on things and made me think about the case in a different light. So that was entertaining. And plus I enjoy watching football. And so there was the sports scenes I thought were well done As far as non-legal, actually, no. There’s one other thing I wanted to talk about. It just happened on SNL this weekend.

There was a skit that made me really laugh. The Courtroom skits can be hit or miss, but this one was just so absurd that I just thought it was hilarious. There was a lawyer whose brilliant strategy was, he was going to confuse the eyewitness by having a bunch of people in the Courtroom dressed like his client, but his client was dressed in a yellow leisure suit with a devo hat that they wore in the Whippet video. His bright idea was to confuse the eyewitness into not being sure about her identification, but because the Courtroom procedures being the way they are, he’s sitting at the defense table the whole time. So all she has to do is just point at him. And no, this is the guy at the defense table. It’s the guy at the defense table. So at one point, his bright idea was to have all the Devo guys shuffle around the court to confuse her, but meanwhile, the defendant’s still sitting there at the table. She’s like, it’s still the defendant sitting at the table. So it was one of those absurd things that just made me laugh and it incorporated enough actual Courtroom rules to make it realistic and funny.

Lee Rawles:

So it makes you think that there is a law grad somewhere on the SNL writing staff

Anna Stolley Persky:

Or someone who’s watched a lot of law and order. But yeah, it was well done.

Lee Rawles:

Well, if I can find that listeners, I will embed that in the page on ABA Journal dot com slash books. Danielle, how about you? Are you a big TV watcher?

Danielle Braff:

So I do watch tv, but it’s really embarrassing to share the types of shows that I watch, namely Vanderpump Rules, that sort of thing.

Lee Rawles:

I’m a hundred percent sure that some of our listeners will identify with that.

Danielle Braff:

Anything on Bravo, I’ve probably watched Vanderpump Rules is apparently recasting due to it’s old storylines. So I’m excited to see the next season. But more of a mainstream show that I really enjoyed was Young Sheldon, which is, I mean, it’s for kids, but it’s probably the first and only show that I watched with my younger daughter that we both equally enjoyed. So I’d really recommend this for any parents looking to watch a show with their children. Young Sheldon is written so well. There are many seasons of it, and it’s about a boy who appears to have autism and he is a genius and the rest of his family are not. And the way they embrace him, the way they encourage him. It’s also a very funny show. I highly recommend it.

Anna Stolley Persky:

I enjoyed the finale too. I thought it was very well done.

Lee Rawles:

Anna, how about you? Do you do much TV watching or watching TV with your kids?

Victor Li:

I do some, not a lot, but I do have a couple to recommend. I absolutely adored the second season and the first season of The Diplomat, and that’s with Carrie Russell on Netflix. And it’s sort of, she ends up being a UK ambassador and US ambassador to the UK and all this dramatic stuff happens. But again, there’s lots of character development too, including her relationship with her husband, which is very complicated and it’s just fabulous and ended on a big cliffhanger. So that was fun too. And then also the second season of Shrinking, which came out this year, shrinking is about a bunch of therapists who have a lot of problems and it has Harrison Ford in it, for example. And it is just a complicated, funny, lovely show. And I did watch that with my 16-year-old daughter. She ranks it up there with her other top favorite shows, which are friends in the office. So she’s old school that way’s your piece for her old school. But I really recommend shrinking. The acting is also fabulous. So yeah, those are my TV recs.

Lee Rawles:

Well, we’re going to take another break, dear from our advertisers when we return, we’ll share what podcasts we listen to this year. Welcome back to the Modern Law Library. I’m your host Lee Rawles, and obviously I’d like you to spend all the listening time you can downloading episodes of the Modern Law Library and really exploring our back catalog. But I do listen to quite a number of podcasts throughout the year and would love to get some more recommendations from you guys if you have any. Danielle, I’ll start with you. Are you a podcast listener?

Danielle Braff:

Sure. I mean, I dabble in podcasts. I usually just listen to them when making dinner or doing the dishes so I don’t pay too much attention while I’m listening, which is why I love the Crime Junkie podcast. It’s two women discussing usually recent, but sometimes older, true crime stories, and they’ve really done their research. They go into a lot of details. You really get to know all about the people involved in the crime. And it’s easy listening for me at least while I’m doing the dishes. And it’s very interesting because they talk a lot about the psychology behind the crimes.

Lee Rawles:

Anna, how about you? Do you have any podcast recommendations?

Victor Li:

I do have one to recommend, and it’s honestly by Barry Weiss if you don’t know who she is. She’s a New York Times reporter that moved on and has started something called the Free Press, which has sort of a different perspective on the news. And I find her to be a very thoughtful interviewer and she presents perspectives in the news that I don’t get otherwise. I don’t get through my friends, I don’t get through my usual channels. So I’ve really enjoyed listening to honestly.

Lee Rawles:

And Victor, how about you?

Anna Stolley Persky:

So this past year, just because of the election, I listened to a lot of political podcasts. I think I’m going to stop doing that

Lee Rawles:

Just for your own mental health, take a break.

Anna Stolley Persky:

And these next four years, I don’t think it’ll be much use for these next four years. So the ones I liked, I liked the majority report was Sam Cedar. I thought that was very well done. They talk about political issues, but then also occasionally they’ll have people who write books come on and talk about their books and talk about the things. Well, actually, one really interesting one that I remember was someone wrote a book about Ronald Reagan that had a completely different take on him than what was generally known about him. They talked about how I guess he really was very religious, whereas most people just assume that it was just an act. Again, I’m not endorsing it, not saying anything about it, but it just, I think most people thought that about Ronald Reagan. So it was interesting to kind of get that different take on it.

Also, there’s a British podcast I listen to, which is also political, the James O’Brien podcast. I enjoy listening to him because he’s very good at, he’ll have callers come on and he gets crazy once sometimes, but he’s very good at picking apart people’s arguments and coming out with spotlighting weaknesses in what they’re saying and whatnot. So I just like listening to that sometimes just for the entertainment value. And then non-politically, I like listening to the Low Post. It’s a basketball podcast. One of my former colleagues that I used to work with way back when he started off Zach Lowe, he started off in the legal reporting business and then went to basketball. That was always his passion, and he quickly established himself as one of the best basketball reporters working today. And he was recently on ESPN, but they let him go because of some of the recent blood landing.

But it wasn’t because of performance issues, it wasn’t because of anything he did. He’s actually very good, he’s very analytical, very nuanced with his observations. And so I think that kind of contrasted with some of the whole like, Hey, let’s have something go viral. Let’s have something go viral. Let’s have something. Let’s have this really crazy take that people are talking about on social media, not really his game. It’ll interesting to see where he ends up. I look forward to hearing more from him. Obviously he’s been kind of on hiatus since then. So those are my picks.

Lee Rawles:

Well, I mentioned that I really enjoyed the TV show for all mankind. And so I want to shout out there a company podcast. I like it when a show has an accompanying podcast where they get into behind the scenes stuff and for all mankind, they talk to actual astronauts and the space explorers, et cetera, who consulted with them for the show. And so you got to hear from actual NASA scientists about, oh, well this is how this would actually happen. Or actually, this thing that seems absurd is drawn from a real history, real space history. And that was just really fun. They stopped making it unfortunately. So this is my request for them to bring that back. There is a history podcast that I like to turn on when I’m just going to do the dishes or short form. I enjoy a lot of long form history podcasts, but sometimes you need a three hour car drive to get through one episode, and that’s a big ask.

So for short historical takes that are trying to give you something that’s not necessarily standard for history podcasts, it’s called not Just the Tutors by History Hit. It’s a British podcast. So the Tudor Dynasty is heavily covered and their podcast is to showcase history that’s not just the tutors. So I wanted to shout that out. Two podcasts that have just launched that I think I’ll be listening to in 2025 are not going to lie with Kylie Kelce, the wife of Jason Kelce, who has a very famous podcast, new Heights, and a very famous brother, Travis Kelce, who dates Taylor Swift. I listened to her first episode. She talks to the star of High Potential, which again, I very much enjoyed. So I will be listening to her in the new year. And then just as Victor is a football fan, I am a hockey fan, and the sheet with Jeff Merrick is going to be one that I’m following in the new year. And I hope that my listeners are going to follow us for our adventures in 2025. I want to thank Danielle, Anna, and Victor for joining us for this episode of the Modern Law Library, and to thank you for giving us your time. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate review and subscribe in your favorite podcast listening service. And if there’s a book you’d like me to cover in an upcoming episode, you can reach out to me at books at ABA Journal com.