Good morning! We are picking up the pace as we race to an arbitrary finish line. 100 published posts down, 900 left to go! Today we bring stories of the news, moving to Italy, the best grocery shopping list designs, a reminder about our love of Ska, and how the song sauce is made. Enjoy your day!

Chris Licht has a lifetime of experience in TV; his latest challenge at CNN might take another lifetime to achieve its goals. The NYT writes a good story and does a good interview with Licht; we also listened to a Kara Swisher interview with Licht in November, and some of the honesty Licht comes with is impressive.

One issue we have with the NYT piece is the introduction to the article. In a pull from the article, it uses a quote from Licht where he says, “uninformed vitriol from the left has been stunning.” As a lead-up to the NYT interviews, the surface of this comment gave us the sense that there would be more from Licht about the left, and once we dug into the articles, we could not find anything that matched the quote.

As the election cycles close, the reports from changes at CNN made us hopeful. There was talk of being less One Man centric and showing both sides of stories. But it’s still a business, and in the commercial media, business ratings drive decisions. The early ratings of new shows, new timeslot coverage, and other steps have not proven popular with the public. Many of us have become exhausted by six years of media slinging, and we have all pulled back somehow.

In the Swisher interview, Licht did say he felt supported by the newly restructured Warner Bros. Discovery. If he’s given the support and the time, his experience could turn the ship around. If sixty percent of the news-absorbing public tends to be more centrist, it would be great to have a place that supports that.

Speaking of CNN - the Italian town of Presicce is offering people money to move to their quaint little town. Several stories have been coming out of sections of Europe where the young have left the rural towns in search of big city life, leaving many of the towns with too much vacant property and too many old people.

Modern Day Under The Tuscan Sun

Seth Godin tells us today that alphabetical order is not the way to make a grocery list. We agree the best way make a grocery list is to go online and pull up a list you’ve already used, order a bunch of stuff and have it delivered to your door.

When you have to make a trip to the store, and you want the shopping list to be handy, our recommendation is to grab an old envelope, always think recycling, no single use. Then take Godin’s idea of a grid, map out the store with that grid, and enter your items. Envelopes are usually thicker; you can fold them over the kid seat in the shopping cart so you can always see what you have to get.

Yes, we went from the grid to shopping lists; we did that.

In an ABC News special from more than a decade ago, Dan Harris interviewed several members of the legendary Ska band The Specials, and with the recent passing of Terry Hall, it was good to revisit this. Ska came along at the same time as punk in the U.K.; it has the same DIY sensibility and the “we don’t care what you think about us” vibe that is still beloved by many of us today.

The Specials made great music on top of that. In the interview, Harris asked Terry Hall if the rumor about his inability to smile was true. Hall replied, “I never found it necessary.” Hall did make one exception, The Simpsons.

[Music Notes]

Butch Vig, the legendary music producer and Co-Founder of the Smart Studios recording studio in Madison, WI, was on The Story Behind The Song podcast produced by Consequence. Vig talked about the recording of Nirvana’s Nevermind and Smells Like Teen Spirit. This podcast is a bit repetitive if you have seen any of the several documentaries on Nirvana, especially the ones produced by Dave Grohl. If you haven’t, then it’s worth a listen to.

A new piece of information from this latest interview with Vig was that the band did a demo tape with Vig at Smart Studios before they moved from Subpop Records and signed with Geffen Records. This was also before Dave Grohl joined as the drummer. Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic made 100 bootlegged copies of the demo they originally did with Vig and gave them to their friends. It worked out for Vig in the end, he did go on to produce Nevermind with Nirvana at Sound City in California, and all our lives were changed!

Words | Music | Art | Unknown

The ghost has gone to town.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

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With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.