We're team players
On collaboration.
One of the founding principles of Three Point Four Media was collaboration. We know a lot of very smart and talented freelancers who are good at a variety of things and we bring them in based on our client’s voice, industry, and needs. We never pretend to know something we don’t; we bring in the right people who do. That has proven true over the last seven years and it’s central to our work in early 2025. Right now, we’re producing a video for Acumen America and working with a talented director. We’re pitching an existing client on a new website with another agency. We’re also working with a new client who has turned the tables on us a bit: they just want to collaborate. So many of our clients come to us because they don’t have our skillset or the bandwidth and need us to do everything soup to nuts. This is great and we enjoy it; we’re good at both the project management and the creative side. But this new client, who we will reveal when the work is live and our contract allows, wanted the Three Point Four team for our ideas and our editorial instincts. It’s less about who came up with the final output and more about how good it is. It’s a true group project. Everyone’s a team player. And honestly? It’s really fun. Can’t wait to share the work with you this spring.
Onto the links.
An article
Chris Hayes doesn’t fully deliver on the headline here (he has not mastered his attention), but I did find his op-ed interesting as I’ve spent a lot of time thinking how short my attention span is these days. This is the one line that really stuck with me: “Daydreaming is a central experience of being alive and also a casualty of the attention age.”
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A book
Speaking of attention spans, whenever I get in a rut where I am reading only the news and watching dumb sports videos I reach for a short story collection. There is something about how digestible each story is that holds my attention easier. I realize this is silly, because what are short stories if not chapters in a larger novel but I loved Anthony Doerr’s The Shell Collector. There is a curator from Ohio who finds love in Africa, a couple marooned in the depths of a Montana winter, and a long, deranged story about a metal eater. It really does, as the dust jacket says, explore the human condition. Read if you like: Feeling cold without having to actually face the elements, stories about shattered humans, stories about grief, stories about the traveling circus, the great outdoors, Wells Towers’ Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned.
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A Broadway show
I really enjoyed Simon Rich’s Broadway debut, “All In: Comedy About Love.” It’s a breezy 90 minutes of vignettes—a few of which appeared originally in The New Yorker’s Shouts & Murmurs section—that feels more late-night show than Broadway. I don’t understand why the Times critic was so negative about it. It’s a rotating cast of famous people (John Mulaney, Chloe Fineman, Aidy Bryant, Fred Armisen, Richard Kind, et al.) reading funny stories from plush chairs with good live music (songs by The Magnetic Fields performed by The Bengsons). What’s not to like! There are worse ways to spend an evening. All shows should be 90 minutes.
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A song
Destroyer announced a new album this week and the lead single “Bologna” has been on repeat in my headphones. The lyrics are a perfect encapsulation of why I enjoy Dan Bejar’s songwriting so much: Cryptic and kind of nonsensical but also atmospheric in a way that you can assign your own meaning.
Children, quiet!
The storm's been listening
In, In
Night comes in on wings
Wearing your rings
Parading her furs
Pressing its luck
That explains things
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A run
I was in New York this week tending to some family and Three Point Four business, which means I got to do one of my favorite things: Run in the city after dark. (Don’t worry, I was not arrested this time.) There is something so peaceful about the City’s parks after dark in the winter. Wednesday night I ran up the Central Park Bridle Path, around the Reservoir, down the east side past where Noah was cheering for me during the marathon one year when I bonked really badly and barely noticed him, and then directly onto the warmth of the R train. Whatta town!
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Noah will be with you in two weeks and we have some new newsletter features in store for 2025.