2023 – The Mixtape

My annual handcrafted mix of my favorite songs

2022 – The Mixtape

Please turn off your shuffle. What you’re about to hear is a compilation that has taken months to craft, shifted and changed again and again right up until, well, right before I started writing this. Maybe even a couple more times before I publish this.

2021 – The Mixtape

2021 was…well, you know what 2021 was. It was a lot. For everyone. American democracy is crumbling, women’s rights are being rolled back, racial justice takes two steps forward and three steps back, trans people have to keep fighting to be afforded basic decency, and of course we’re still deep in the waves of strife…

The Best of 2020 – The Mixtape

2020: The Mixtape By: Christian Hagen Every year since 2017, I’ve made a Spotify playlist collecting some of the best new music from across many genres, countries, and levels of notoriety. I take 100 songs, all from different albums by different artists, which I think are deserving of your listening pleasure, and I spend months…

The Best Of 2019 – The Mixtape

The Best of 2019 – The Mixtape By: Christian Hagen I already touched on the status of my life as it is in my breakdown of my Best of the 2010s playlist. To summarize: Not great. But there have been flashes of brilliance and joy, and in many of those, the music on this playlist…

The Best of the 2010s – The Mixtape

The Best of the 2010s – The Mixtape by: Christian Hagen It’s hard to imagine a more stark contrast than the one between the world of 2010 and the world of 2019. In a mere 10 years, American politics has transformed from the well-meaning liberalism of Barack Obama to the neo-fascism of Donald Trump. Hope…

The Best of 2018 – The Mixtape

The Best of 2018: The Mixtape By: Christian Hagen 2018 was the worst year of my life. This was even before a series of personal setbacks punctuated every struggle I’d been facing mentally and physically and lay bare just how fragile my life could be. I’m not the first to express this sentiment, but it…

The Best of 2017 – The Mixtape

2017 has been a nightmare in many ways. America is in constant political crisis. The international community is facing the rise of right-wing extremism, white nationalism, religious and ideological terrorism, an increasingly centralized wealthy elite, and a fundamental threat to democracy in the form of widespread election hacking in nearly every Western nation. Waves of…

Trump, Fascists, and the American People

If there are two sides, they are not equal.

The True Evil of the Abortion Debate

Abortion in America contains a great and terrible evil at its heart.

Discovery: My Favorite Finds of 2016

I’m a lifelong devotee of albums. I’ve defended their right to exist through years of critics bemoaning their supposed demise. But in 2016, my listening habits shifted. Thanks to Spotify, Vevo, and Cymbal, I’ve found a new love: Songs. I know, it sounds so basic, but truly, until 2016, I valued songs less if they…

Lessons from Television: Prisons

Last Week Tonight. Adam Ruins Everything. Full Frontal. Modern television has become a marvelous source of easily-digested, enlightening, and entertaining bubble-bursters with thoroughly-researched explanations of the ills in American society. These shows are extraordinarily compelling, but unfortunately, they face obstacles that make them harder to put in front of viewers, from cable subscriptions to the sheer…