Merry Christmas! I’m Geoff Plitt, and welcome to What You Need to Know, the brief, weekly newsletter where I share the best comedy videos I’ve seen all week. It will always be free, and you’re welcome to become a friend by following me on Twitter, Threads, Instagram, or TikTok, where I share my own jokes every day. And now, the videos you came for: Every year, Stephen Colbert’s team produces an animated Christmas special satirizing the year’s news, and this year’s is absolutely amazing.

“Here you go. Want to try and do something with this?” In the summer of 1990, my boss at the Texas City Sun was going through the daily stack of mail when he tossed a Rounder Records/Bullseye Blues press kit onto my desk. He knew I was into music, and opportunities were rare — that’s being generous — to do much regional or national entertainment coverage. Writing a profile on a musician opening for Bonnie Raitt would be a nice change of pace amid the daily grind of cops, obits and meetings.

I have long been obsessed with the Penguin Ice Bucket, a product put out by the West Bend Aluminum Company of West Bend, Wisconsin, beginning in the 1940s. You know this item. You have seen it countless times in antique stores or on eBay. Perhaps your parents or grandparents or aunt and uncle owned one. My parents did and it delighted my eye from a very young age. It instantly made frozen water and bar culture exciting and fun to my childish mind.

I have been reading the writings of Gaius Musonius Rufus. Musonius, as he is often called, was a Roman Stoic and the teacher of Epictetus. I’ve been reading a translation of his writings by Cora Lutz, published under the title That One Should Disdain Hardships. Few of his writings survive. What we have is a collection of summaries of his lectures, most bearing the mark of having been written by a student of Musonius rather than by Musonius himself.

I follow my nose when it comes to covering pop culture: I write about what I consume, and I just so happen to be consuming the latest season of Call the Midwife… again. Have a particular poetry & pop culture intersection you’d like to see covered on PopPoetry? Let me know! I’m also open to guest-writer pitches year-round. I’d love to hear from you! Contact Me Actress Judy Parfitt’s legendary Call the Midwife character, Sister Monica Joan, is both the oldest in age and youngest at heart of all the residents of Nonnatus house.