Welcome to Seen and Heard, a new feature on richardhowe.com. 

As regular readers know, I spend most of my time here digging into local history and dissecting the politics of Lowell. However, like everyone else, I spend the rest of my week absorbing a wide range of other media—from books and newsletters to podcasts, films, and sporting events. Starting today, I’ll dedicate one post each week to cataloging the most interesting things I’ve consumed over the previous seven days. 

Film – Jay Kelly: On New Year’s Day, I watched the 2025 film, Jay Kelly, on Netflix. For many years, going to the movies on New Year’s Day was a family tradition, but Covid interrupted that so now we watch a movie that streams into our family room. Jay Kelly stars George Clooney, Adam Sandler, and a top-notch cast of familiar faces. It’s the story of a famous movie actor (Clooney) and his devoted manager (Sandler) who impulsively embark on a trip through Europe. Along the way they painfully come to grips with choices they have made through life and the impact those choices have had on themselves and their loved-ones. While there are comedic moments, this is mostly a well-done, thought-provoking drama. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 77% rating. 

Film – Cover Up: This is a 2025 documentary about Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who broke the news of the massacre at My Lai, Vietnam. In 2004 while writing for the New Yorker, Hersh was the first to publish photos of American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib during the occupation of Iraq. (Hersh later wrote a book about this, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib and gave a book talk at the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center.) For anyone interested in the history of American Foreign Policy in the post World War II era, this documentary, also on Netflix, is must-see TV. It is equally divided among Hersh’s background and upbringing; his methods of conducting investigative journalism; the My Lai story; and the Abu Ghriad story. The film shares substantial contemporary video about My Lai that is just stunning and deeply disturbing, not least because much of what was said in defense of the US action there is like a script of the rhetoric from Washington today. Rotten Tomatoes gives Cover Up a 100% rating. 

Newsletter – Heather Cox Richardson – When I launched my own newsletter on the Substack platform three years ago, I partly modeled it on “Letters from an American,” a newsletter on that platform written by Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor at Boston College. Hitting your inbox sometime before 4am each day, “Letters” summarizes the biggest news in U.S. politics with an explanation of why these events matter by connecting them to American history. The newsletter is free, although she welcomes fee-based subscriptions. I subscribe to many other newsletters on Substack and will mention many of them in the coming weeks, but my first-read-of-the-day is always Richardson. 

Newspaper – Boston Sunday Globe Sports: I enjoy sports exclusively as a spectator these days. For many years my preference has been to read about a sporting event afterwards rather than watch it live (although I’ll do that, too). In this context, the highlight of my week is the Sunday sports section of the Globe. Going back to the days of Bob Ryan, Peter Gammons, Will McDonough, and others, I’ve long consumed sports coverage from the Globe. Ryan still writes occasionally and the “old timer” is Dan Shaughnessy, who usually has a column on Sunday which begins, “Picked-up pieces while . . .” and then meanders through a dozen or so items from pro sports in Boston with an occasional foray into some unique and local college or amateur athletic event. Also high on my list are the Sunday Notes columns on the four major men’s sports: Kevin Paul Dupont on Hockey; Gary Washburn on Basketball; Peter Abraham on Baseball; and Ben Volin on Football. Earlier versions of these Sunday features, especially the basketball notes when being written by Bob Ryan, also influenced how I compose my Sunday newsletters even though they are about Lowell politics rather than sports. 

Podcast – On with Kara Swisher – I listen to podcasts each morning while exercising and also on long car rides. On with Kara Swisher is one of my favorites. Swisher is a longtime tech journalist who is often blunt in her remarks and in her interviews. This week, her guest was Isaac Chotiner of the New Yorker. I don’t specifically remember reading anything by Chotiner but I likely have. His beat is the “Q&A” interview series. It sounds like he has a reputation as a tough questioner. In this podcast episode, Swisher and Chotiner compared notes on how they prepare for interviews, what they hope to accomplish, and how they handle it when their subject turns uncooperative. 

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading. Please check back next week for the latest installment of Seen & Heard.