Cog's best essays of 2025

Editor's Note: This essay appeared in Cognoscenti's newsletter of ideas and opinions, delivered weekly on Sundays. To become a subscriber, sign up here.

I’ve been to two middle school concerts in the past week. Some parents dread these events, but not me. My twin girls are in the 6th grade chorus and their school’s honors choir. The music is fine, good even. But I’m really in it for the people watching. As all those kids file up on stage, I finally get to put names with faces. The 11- and 12-year-olds are so sweet and awkward it makes my heart hurt. Plus, it’s a chance to further my understanding of middle school fashion choices (can confirm: Ugg slippers are in).

It was bittersweet sitting in the audience this week, though. On the heels of mass shootings at Bondi Beach and Brown University, and the murder of an MIT professor in Brookline (right down the street from WBUR), it felt weird and uncomfortable to acknowledge this reality: We’re here, clapping along to our kids singing “Sleighride,” while families near and far are the victims of hate and violence. Make it make sense, world.

For better or worse, I’m getting to be halfway decent at holding joy in one hand and sadness in the other. My friend tells me the Buddhists urge us to observe pain but not absorb it, and that this is different from the idea that “ignorance is bliss.” Sometimes life isn’t one or the other. It’s both. And it’s our duty to stay informed about the stories of the season, however tragic, and show up to the holiday concert.

We put that mindset to work at Cog this year, week after week. We published 230-odd essays on topics of all kinds, personal and political. Your three Cog editors wrote dozens of original essays for this newsletter, too: about gardening, the Newport Folk Festival and Bruce Springsteen, and, more often than not, how we try to make sense of the world around us.

If you’ve been following along for a while, you might agree with this statement: Cog is eclectic, a little bit weird. But we mean that in the very best way. I mean, where else can you read about KPop Demon Hunters, the Guinness Book of World Records, Medicaid and pottery — sometimes all in the same week?

We’re proud of our authors and the work we published in 2025. And when Congress eliminated federal funding for all of public media, including WBUR, we took that uncertainty in stride and kept going. Our “Best of 2025” post is a chance to revisit a favorite essay, or discover a piece you missed the first time around.

My favorite yoga teacher talks a lot about ease. It’s not without irony, because she usually urges us to “find ease” when we’re in deeply uncomfortable poses (that’s triangle or trikonasana for me). Last Monday, she read this passage from a book by Charlotte Bell: “At its essence, the practice of right effort means learning to act in harmony with the truth … When your actions are in harmony with what is true for you, you feel joy and ease in everything you do.” Then, before we rolled up our mats — and in acknowledgment of the horror-show news cycle — she said: “Go do your good. The world needs it.” To me, it felt simple and profound.

We’re taking next week off from publishing new work and sending the newsletter. We’ll be back in your inboxes in January. Until then, go do your good.