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Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! This week I’m speaking to actor Narayan Hecter, who is of mixed Jewish, Polish, Romanian, French and Vietnamese heritage – phew! Narayan plays Joseph in Paramount+ series No Escape, and drew on his own feelings of not quite belonging for the role. Growing up on a small island near Madagascar before a nomadic childhood, Narayan’s identity has always felt in flux, but perhaps this fluidity, expressed in Narayan’s French lilt, is a refreshing way to live.

Here is a button where you can subscribe to this newsletter now, if you have not previously done so. I do hope that you enjoy it. The world is heavy, and scary, and the news is hard, and the years pass, and your loved ones slip through your fingers, and sometimes everything can seem like it is spiraling out of control. We are headed into a six-month stretch of American life that will be inexhaustible in its ability to erode your will and disorient your sense of reality, which is particularly alarming because this stretch may just result in everything you and I and everyone we know have ever understood or valued to change in ways that are irreversible.

Peter Zeihan is of the most popular geopolitical analysts around today. His YouTube channel has almost 700k subscribers, and his channel regularly rack up millions of views. Zeihan has made some very bold predictions about the future of China. He speaks very confidently and fluently, and on the surface at least, seems to base his conclusions on facts and solid arguments. ncG1vNJzZmibqafCtLbAp6qsnZ5jwLau0q2YnKNemLyue89ooGaekZjBbq%2FHnpqknZRivabAxKtks52Zna6vv4ycn6KmkWSwsLnMnqWtqw%3D%3D

When I was twenty, I wanted to write magazine profiles. It was 2005 and this still seemed like a job—difficult to get, but theoretically possible. Of the few profile assignments I ever had, I was only totally satisfied with one—about the mercurial Francis Farewell Starlite— because I felt I managed to interpret him without explaining him. After more than a decade of writing fiction instead, I again feel drawn to reading and writing profiles, the form that asks you to translate the mutability of personality and character into sentences that are both true and particular.

Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! This week I speak to Selling Sunset star, Amanza Smith, who is of Nigerian and white heritage. Amanza might be best known for selling million-dollar properties, but she should be known for her nuanced perspective on ethnicity. Read on for Amanza’s experience, and how she’s raising her children to appreciate difference. My father is actually 50% Nigerian and 50% a whole lot of different stuff, including Asian, Native American and European.

I used to be a big “Survivor” fan. At some point in college, I stopped watching it and instead became an obsessive fan of “Grey’s Anatomy.” But earlier this year, my colleague ran into host Jeff Probst at Sundance and wrote this great piece on the show’s 40th season, which featured past winners of the series. So of course, I tuned in. When it was over, I was really sad because it was one hour a week where I was guaranteed to not think about anything else other than game play.

Content Warning: In this essay, I discuss miscarriage. In order to keep working, I depend on the financial support of my readers. One time donations and paid memberships to pocket observatory allow me to pay for the resources I need to be able to write. make a donation join pocket observatory Not so long ago, talking about pregnancy was considered indelicate. Acknowledging a woman was pregnant meant accepting a woman had sex to become pregnant and, well.

Hello! It’s funny how you can know a song well, but know next to nothing about the band behind it. I was listening to a “90s Hits” playlist recently, when I heard that familiar line: “I get knocked down, but I get up again…” It’s part of the chorus of a song called Tubthumping from the band Chumbawamba. I certainly remember the song – as anyone who had the radio or MTV on in 1997 would.

My lashes are short, straight and angle downward into my eyes—if I don’t curl them, I’m literally looking at my lashes all day. Over the years, I’ve listened intently while friends and colleagues shared their stories about lash extensions (my current feeling: they look amazing when they’re first done but the risk of them looking wonky and the awkward growing-out phase are enough for me to say “pass”). Strips of false lashes—even the more natural looking ones I picked up in Asia—look too extreme, and fake, on me.