The understanding that we have reached when we've talked about it, to the extent we've talked about it at all, is that The Distraction should try to be a good hang even in bad times. This is dependent, of course, on the extent to which Drew and I are capable of managing that, and also relative to how bad the times in question are. We are, in every facet and on every front, in a real test of how well we can follow through on that goal at this moment.
The general thrust of The Bad Times you are no doubt familiar with; we have written about them at the site and talked about them in every episode of 2026, but also presumably you have a phone, or a window. But also, as you read this, much of the Defector staff is in Philadelphia for the funeral of our friend and Defector co-founder Dan McQuade. We have celebrated his life and work on the site in the week since he passed. There is a massive team-written remembrance of him on our front page right now; last night, some of us told stories about him in a bar in Philadelphia while "November Rain" played on the jukebox, which was both moving and kind of preposterous in a way I think he might have found funny. A lot of things have felt like that of late. This episode is like that, too.
There is no small amount of grief and grieving in every episode we've done this year, but this week's episode is pretty much nothing but. Drew and I talked about our friend, and what made his work so singular and what him so great; we talked about what we'll miss about him and how we're missing him already. We do get on the record with our stupid Super Bowl picks at the end, but this week's episode is, as so many of my waking moments and idle thoughts have been in the week since his death have been, about Dan.
We're going to be thinking about him a lot in the weeks and months to come, and I imagine we'll be talking about him some, too. I have enough experience with mourning to know that there's no predicting the actual shape of it, and no controlling the scope or scale of it; that is out of my hands. But if it is definitely too much to say that it "felt good" to talk about our friend and why we loved him given the context in which that conversation happened, it did feel helpful to get some of what has been roiling and raging in my chest this last week out into the world, and to get on the record about how much we loved this brilliant and singular goofball. How cathartic that experience will be for listeners is something that will necessarily depend on the listener; I imagine you already know whether you want to listen to this episode or not. But it was one we needed to do, and I think the affection and admiration that Drew and I—and everyone else at the site—felt for Dan comes through.
Going forward, you can probably expect more episodes like last week's, in which we were joined by returning champion Rohan Nadkarni and talked about swanky travel and bad football, his upcoming reporting work at the Milan Cortina Olympics (which you can follow here), and the usual dumb shit we talk about on these podcasts. For posterity's sake, here is that last, bizarrely normal-seeming episode.
The return of your regularly scheduled Distraction programming is both imminent and distant. We're going to take it as it comes, but there is nothing to do but take it. If you'd like to make a donation to support Dan's family you can do so here, at his memorial website. Thank you as always for bearing with us.
If you would like to subscribe to The Distraction, you can do that through Apple Podcasts or wherever else you might get your podcasts. Thank you as always for your support.
