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I began this blog while on hold with United Health care for 32 minutes. The constant beeping is their way of telling me that no one has hung up on me yet. Somehow I think if companies allowed human beings to answer phones as they once did, and outsourced less to robots and AI gizmos, more Americans would be employed in gainful, transparent ways. It’s harder to lie to a person than it is to a system. And what we’re seeing in Washington is system after system being gamed.

But I apologize. This is my upbeat, optimistic blog. Let me reposition myself. Okay then.

For an adult who basically skipped tv in my 20s other than reruns of the Mary Tyler Moore Show and morning tv and spent her 30s watching Thirtysomething and LA Law other than some news and late night talk shows for year – I am overwhelmed by the amount of tv I must watch to keep up. I’m not someone who turns on the tv when I walk in my empty house – not that there’s anything wrong with that; it’s just not my thing. (I also don’t take off my shoes when I come home. I know that could seem odd to you, but you want honesty? This is honest.)

I still haven’t watched The Wire or Breaking Bad or Homeland or Game of Thrones– I grovel for your forgiveness.

But ever since Trump became president, I have felt that it was my civic responsibility to watch the news obsessively – like the little Dutch boy who tried to close the leak in the dike – I had to manage through thinking and focusing on each new day’s disappointment or catastrophe – rolling back EPA provisions, or Trump persuading Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy to step down from his lifetime appointment in order to push angry, unjudicial partial Brett Kavanaugh into position, or Wilbur Ross saying the new pandemic would be good for American business, or the giant hypocrisies of the GOP.

Meanwhile scripted tv has become so good! The Crown, Shtisel , (very similar in some regards), The Americans, Succession , The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Silicon Valley, VEEP, Transparent , Wild Wild Country, Fosse/Verdon, and so on and on and on. It is hard to keep up. Not to mention all the documentaries and one-offs. And the competitions. And when they’re good they allow us some escape.

Happily for us our guest is James Poniewozik, the Chief TV critic for the New York Times. He keeps up and then some. His new book is Audience of One – Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America.

Lisa’s 5 Things:

1. I never used to talk about cooking. I didn’t cook and couldn’t stay awake during a conversation about ingredients and recipes. Seems like that’s changed. On Monday I emceed a cool evening for the joint benefit of Navigators USA and PANY, and backstage, sitting with a half dozen great actors we discussed two things: politics and food! As actress Barbara Rosenblat recommended, sprinkle sesame oil on steak before cooking. Actress Mary Testa recommends salting olive oil before using it as a salad dressing. Who knew?

2. Walking through Central Park. I used to think of crossing the park on foot as a herculean task that could take half a day. That is just so 20th century thinking. Twice recently I’ve walked through – even on very cold days – and enjoyed the quiet and the surprising views so much. A woven wooden bridge I’d never noticed. The dialectical beauty of the green trying to work itself out of the earth near some frost. I highly recommend a walk through nature wherever you live.

3. My exercise place. It’s a tiny downstairs studio that offers both Gyrotonics and Pilates lessons and classes. I love the teachers too. They are all dancers who find the physics of moving a body through space interesting. I need to concentrate on my shoulders, my breathing, and so on, so being there is also a respite from the noise that’s constantly in my head. The studio is so nearby that if it offered sumo wrestling, I’d probably be doing that.

4. Adam Schiff

5. Nancy Pelosi

James Poniewozik’s 5 Things:

1. My Escali digital kitchen scale. It was hard not to make all 5 of these cooking-related items. This is my best bang-for-the-buck kitchen item—it cost me like 20 bucks, I use it for most recipes, and it’s even good for measuring coffee in the morning.

2. Tivo. People expect me, as a TV critic, to have a lot of fancy TV-tech suggestions for lists like these, but my TV setup is more or less as boring and basic as anyone’s. But Tivo has been around almost exactly as long as I’ve been a critic, it’s still the best DVR, and I can’t fathom how I would have done the job before it.

3. March Mammal Madness. My family's favorite end-of-winter ritual, it's an annual bracket run by scientists in which a field of animals compete on the simple basis: who would win in a (theoretical) battle? A great sports substitute for the non-sportsy:

4. Bob's Burgers. I also could have done a list entirely of TV series, but making TV lists is actually very stressful for me. I'm rewatching the entire series with my younger son, and it's just the perfect joyful escape at the end of the day.

5. Epiphone FT-85 Serenader acoustic 12-string guitar. It’s older than me and I am not good at playing it, but it sounds beautiful and it’s therapeutic for anyone to be able to play any instrument, even a little.