As we promised in October, we saw the movie Song Sung Blue on Christmas Day. It was excellent.. It features wonderful performances by Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman, the music of one of the great American songwriters*–Neil Diamond–and displays the heroism of Eddie Vedder. The movie has an audience ranking of 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes but only 75 percent from the critics. Many of the complaints we saw from reviewers were the “sudden turn” the movie takes about halfway through. This is an odd complaint—the movie is based on a true story. It’s like complaining about a film depicting the year 1929 by saying the jazz and flappers were great but out of nowhere the stock market crash occurs. Well, yeah, because that’s what happened. The box office story last weekend was the success of the latest Avatar nonsense and all that Chalamet hullabaloo.** We urge you to see Song Sung Blue, a wonderful movie about real-life people. But today is New Year’s Day, so we’ll keep this short and besides we traditionally watch The Big Lebowski every New Year’s Day and need to get that cranked up. So, rather than our usual three international stories, in the interest of getting 2026 off to an optimistic start, we list three amazing things that happened last year. There’s a good chance you didn’t hear about them because of news media negativity bias and all that Chalamet hullabaloo***. But you should. These events, discoveries and happenings are more important and portend more than most of the negativity you hear.
*Read the Special New Year’s Day Neil Diamond Addendum at the bottom of today’s edition for proof
**We actually like Timothee Chalamet and are looking forward to seeing Marty Supreme.
***No, really, despite these shots, we like Timothy Chalomaet. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, but we refuse to spell his name correctly.
Without further ado, here are three good things that happened in 2025.
We’re Conquering Malaria
Malaria is one of the leading causes of death in children in the world, but in 2025 lots of progress was made to eliminate this killer. Three places were certified malaria-free in 2025 (Georgia, Suriname, Timor-Leste)—a reminder that elimination is achievable with consistent public-health systems and technology development. And more good malaria news is on the way: 24 African countries started offering malaria vaccines in 2025, reaching more than 24 million children (don’t tell RFK Jr). The new vaccines being rolled out are so far being shown to provide 90 percent protection. There is a good chance that soon malaria will no longer kill children.
Renewables Are Winning
We’ve catalogued this trend throughout the year but it bears repeating, there is an energy revolution taking place. This is especially true of solar power (generation) and batteries (storage that provides for clean energy even when the sun does not shine). Global solar additions surged in early 2025—the world added about 380 GW of new solar capacity in the first half of 2025 (a sharp year-over-year jump). Per Ember, “Clean power surpassed 40 percent of global electricity generation in 2024, driven by record growth in renewables, especially solar.” Clean energy is becoming cheap and abundant. That is good news for dealing with climate change but it is also transformational for the world. With cheap abundant energy many things become possible, from desalination projects to drones. Not all of this will be beneficial, but much of it will be.
Self-Driving Cars Finally Arrive
We were early—too early—on autonomous vehicles when over a decade ago we predicted they would soon be ubiquitous. But being too early in a prediction does not mean it will never happen. The year 2025 saw great progress in self-driving technology. Waymo expanded into additional cities with more planned for 2026 and 2027. Its self-driving technology has already proven far safer than human drivers. But self-driving is not just in the United States, the technology is being developed, produced and deployed in many countries, especially China, but also in Europe and the Middle East. Fears of technology lead to efforts to block the implementation of autonomous vehicles. However, because its development and deployment are global, economics and safety will win out. We will soon all be safer and more productive as self-driving cars take over the roads.
Special New Year’s Day Neil Diamond Addendum
You can take your complaints about corniness and being overly earnest some place else. You really don’t think Neil Diamond is one of the great American songwriters? Well, there are not very many others who have written more popular, stand-the-test-of-time songs than Neil. Ponder the list below, which could easily be expanded if we didn’t have to go watch The Dude.
In no particular order:
- Solitary Man (Johnny Cash covered it which means you can’t disagree it’s a good song)
- Cherry, Cherry (one of the greatest pop songs of all time)
- I Got the Feelin’ (Oh No, No) (Made it to Number 16 on the charts)
- You Got to Me (Hit number 18 on the charts)
- Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon (immortalized by Quintin Tarantino and Urge Overkill)
- I’m a Believer (a huge hit for the Monkees back in the day and Smash Mouth in the movie, Shrek)
- Thank the Lord for the Night Time (you’re thanking the Lord for this song)
- Red, Red Wine (big hit by UB40 in the 1980s)
- Shilo (we had a huge Internet argument once on whether the song is about a dog or an imaginary friend)
- Kentucky Woman (a big hit and covered by Deep Purple and Waylon Jennings)
- Holly Holy (Reached number 6 on the charts and utilized on countless soundtracks)
- Sweet Caroline (Some overrated baseball team plays it every game)
- Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show (beautifully used in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
- Soolaimon (plays a key role in Song Sung Blue)
- Cracklin’ Rosie (great cover by The Pogues. If you’re endorsed by Shane MacGowan, well, then you are minted as a great songwriter. Sorry, them’s the rules)
- I am…I Said (go to hell you haters)
- Song Sung Blue (Number one hit, covered by Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams and countless others
- Play Me (According to Wikipedia it ” is an audience favorite, especially among women, who carry signs that read ‘Neil, Play Me’ to his performances[10] and scream ‘me, me, me’ when he plays the tune”
- Desiree (hit number 16 on the charts and “It was used as the first long-distance dedication on American Top 40
- You Don’t Bring Me Flowers (Barbara Streisand, you coming after her?)
- Forever in Blue Jeans (you know you’re humming it right now)
- September Morn (Number 17 on the charts)
- America (When we surround Stephen Miller’s house like he’s Manuel Noriega, we crank this song at obnoxiously loud levels)
