11.07.25 | 11:29 am

I want to thank everyone who came out for our TPM 25th Anniversary show in Manhattan last night. Kate Riga and I did a live version of our podcast (it should be in your feeds soon). But before that we had a panel/oral history of TPM featuring three members of our current team — John Light, Nicole LaFond and David Kurtz — and three alums — Paul Kiel, Evan McMorris-Santoro and Katie Thompson. I loved this discussion. I’m not sure precisely what my expectations were, but whatever they were, it exceeded them.

Before this panel, we did a Q&A with a small group of readers and then after I was doing the podcast with Kate. Those were the things I needed to be on for. I decided in advance that I wanted to be as invisible as possible for the panel/oral history. I had some idea of wearing a hat and sunglasses. But it turns out I don’t own a pair of sunglasses. So I settled on a beanie and sitting as far back as I could. I wanted to watch as much as I could as an observer, not being in any kind of eye contact with the people on the stage and as far to the back of the venue as I could get so as few people as possible were aware of me being there. It’s hard for me to get outside of TPM, to get some distance to see it from the outside, and TPM probably has similar feelings about me.