Welcome to the inaugural Darby Comm Trail Mix column, where our team shares what we’ve been reading, watching, and listening to lately. Whether they made us think, made us laugh, or taught us something new, these are the standouts that left an impression.
What’s on your list? Email us your latest picks!
Stacy
Listening: I’ve been really into Amy Poehler’s new podcast, “Good Hang.” It’s truly a delightful, easy listen and always puts me in a better mood. She brings on really great guests, many of whom are celebs that I love, and it’s fun to hear them in such a laidback setting. You feel like you’re really getting to know these folks. The best part is when Amy asks everyone at the end, “What’s making you laugh right now?” I think in today’s tumultuous state, it’s so important to lean into humor, and I really appreciate this question. Comedy is medicine, and I love learning about what’s making people laugh.
Watching: This month is all about Unrivaled basketball. For those who haven’t heard, it’s a new women’s 3-on-3 basketball league started by WNBA stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart. The league is based in Miami and goes from January to March. The games are fast-paced, exciting, and consist of a mix of players from the WNBA. What’s incredible about this beyond the entertainment of the game is that Stewart and Collier created a league that pays the players equally ($100k for the season), they’ve built a state-of-the-art facility that caters to women (rooms for breastfeeding, gyms, recovery, new locker rooms) and they’ve secured some of the most impressive brand partnerships I’ve ever seen. The WNBA could really learn something from the way these two women are running this new venture.
Reading: Since it’s the start of the year, I am starting over my book, The Daily Stoic. In a world full of chaos, this book reminds you to slow down, remember what’s within your control, and helps you to cultivate resilience and self-knowledge.
Cory
Listening: Recently, I’ve introduced my boys (2 & 4) to the power of the “pump up jam.” Nothing calms the nerves before bed like “Song 2” by Blur. Freshly out of the bath, my youngest demands “Woo-hoo” be blasted through the bedroom speakers while we all jump around, belting out the chorus.
After one such energetic jam session, I overheard my oldest confiding to his mom, “Every time we play that song, Dad screams ‘Woo-hoo’ really loud and then gets the hiccups.” Roasted.
Unrelated–the boys have been taking a long time to fall asleep lately.
Reading: Brendan Leonard of Semi-Rad wrote a great article on parenting cliches. It’s funny, endearing, and relatable. “I asked for this. I consider myself privileged and lucky to be in a position to ask for this, and then receive it…I would add the caveat, though, that maybe some of us weren’t super familiar with some of the specifics of the “this” that we were asking for, such as the amount of time I would spend using a Libman Easy Grip Scrub Brush to remove human feces from clothing.” Preach!
Kaleb
Watching: Ice fishing season in full swing here in northern Vermont. So that means the only thing that plays in the background throughout the house, like elevator music, is some kind of upper Midwest walleye ice fishing video on YouTube. My girlfriend hates it, I love it! There are a lot of mixed feelings surrounding ice fishing in the angling community. Some anglers wait all year for it like it’s their Super Bowl. Others hibernate and feel bad that their boat has to endure the long, cold winter. One thing I personally love about ice fishing, as opposed to open water, is that ice fishing brings people together. It’s much more of a communal activity. For example, you can have 10 people hanging out, cooking, fishing, and having a good time, while it can be a challenge to even have 3 people fishing on a boat. The ice brings people together and strengthens the angling community because it doesn’t require a boat and tons of specialized gear. It’s a nice break that lets you slow down, fish with people you haven’t fished with all year, and share a good time while waiting for spring.
Suzanne
Reading: I ramped up my leisure reading in 2025 in an effort to spend less time on a screen, and one book stands out as my favorite from the year. Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy kicks off with a mysterious woman washing ashore on an extremely remote island near Antarctica that is inhabited only by a man and his three children. The sense of place McConaghy creates is truly unique (and not a little bit creepy), and the story packs equal parts mystery and rich character studies. I couldn’t put it down. *Warning: consider having tissues on hand for the end.
Watching: Now that my oldest daughter gets to stay up one hour later than her little sister, she and I have started watching shows together every night, and right now we’re getting into “Shadow and Bone” on Netflix. Admittedly, I would have skipped this based on the somewhat cheesy title alone, but I’m glad we gave it a chance. It manages to combine fantasy, politics, and a love story effectively, with humor throughout. Yes, there are a lot of pauses to explain things to my 10-year-old, but that counts as educational time, right?
Tim
Listening: Mon Rovîa released his first full-length album, Bloodline, recently. I’ve been spinning the record, digitally, almost nonstop for the past week. It’s a touching blend of his West African heritage and Appalachian folk music. Mon Rovîa is such a visceral storyteller, both lyrically and thematically, that it reminds me of the early atmospheric albums of Bon Iver. It’s wild to drop what might be the best album of 2026 in the first week of January.
Gordon
Watching: I just rewatched “Band of Brothers” for about the umpteenth time, and it hits just as hard every single round. The series follows Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment tracking their path from training, to D-Day, through Europe, and all the way to the end of WWII, capturing the Eagle’s Nest.
Last winter, I actually visited the museum in Camp Toccoa in Georgia where the 101st Airborne Division trained before heading to England to finish their prep before parachuting into France on D-Day. Seeing that history in person makes the show even more special now. But what gets me every time are the interviews with the surviving men at the end of each episode. Hearing them tell their stories firsthand puts everything in perspective. Humbling doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Jared
Watching: Now that it’s on HBO Max, I’ve been rewatching “Mad Men.” In my opinion, it is one of the greatest TV shows of all time. I forgot how much I loved it the first time around. There’s something about it that puts me in a trance. I feel like I could watch it endlessly and never get bored. I saw a comment that said it was like “watching the great American novel,” and I thought that felt right.
I can’t stop thinking about this TikTok I saw the other day. It’s nice to know TikTok isn’t purely rotting my brain—just mostly rotting it. It’s about the medium between anti-intellectualism and hyper-intellectualism. There is a lot of discourse about the rise of anti-intellectualism in America, and rightfully so, but true media literacy exists between anti and hyper. I won’t do it justice if I try to explain it so give it a watch, it’s only a few minutes.
Reading: I reread “Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life” by William Finnegan every so often. This might’ve been my fifth (?) time around. I was given this book by my cousin who is an avid surfer and taught me to surf when I was little. I don’t surf much anymore, but the story is so much more than that. Half surfing, half coming-of-age story, I find comfort in his struggles and inspiration in his adventures. The author and protagonist, Bill, is a writer by profession, so it’s beautifully written.
Listening: I started listening to the Throwing Fits podcast recently and there was a fantastic episode with Avery Trufelman about the history and overlap between military and outdoor clothing. So much of modern fashion comes from military wear, and outdoor clothes are no exception. Today, the relationship is closer than ever with outdoor companies producing the military’s technical wear.
Angie
Listening: A friend of mine introduced me to Articles of Interest last month because it is a podcast all about fashion. I accidentally started at Season 7, which just happens to be all about gear and the history of how the outdoor recreation industry began. From how Gerry was the innovator for many products the industry uses today, to how Banana Republic went from creating clothing from army surplus to safari outfitting store, and the fact that the military has intense testing conditions to test gear (and how the outdoor industry influences their gear and vice versa). It is a fascinating listen and I think anyone working in the industry should listen to the entire series. I bet you’ll learn something new each episode!
Reading: When I was working on my 2026 vision board with my daughter on New Year’s Eve, I revisited many magazines that have been sitting in my office over the past year. As I was flipping through the spring issue of Bicycling Magazine, I came across an article by David Howard that piqued my interest on Igor Kenk, with the subtitle “Is this former cop the world’s most prolific bike thief?” What I read wasn’t exactly what I thought this story would be about and it left me wanting to know more about Kenk, who he really was, and why he did what he did. If you love a good mystery, I suggest reading this article.
That same evening, I also came across this article by one of my favorite writers, Latria Graham. A native of Spartanburg, SC, not far from where we’re based in Asheville, NC, Latria writes stories about the South that make you feel the emotions of living in an area so full of tradition and conflict. In this piece, Latria reflects on processing her emotions in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Living through this natural disaster first-hand, her article took me back to what so many of us were dealing with at that time and gave me a moment to pause, reflect, and live through another’s perspective of the event. Latria’s visit to The Museum of Infinite Outcomes and what she took away from the experience resonated with me. Just like Latria, I have made an effort post-Helene to plant native species back in my yard to continue rebuilding the ecosystem of this area, plant by plant, and see it as “my small act of faith in the future.”
Abby
Reading: Everyone in the office knows my love of Reddit, mostly because I’m always finding something new to nerd out on. So when a post from the laundry subreddit popped up on my feed one day, I couldn’t explain the intense fascination I suddenly developed. Hear me out. This isn’t some traditional housewife, gender-role how-to guide. No, this subreddit is pure science-driven textile care, and as someone with a background in biology and chemistry, I was hooked. I learned about the importance of enzymes in your detergent (which most liquid detergents lack), how water hardness affects cleaning efficiency, and how to reverse prehistoric stains and odors with the Laundry Spa Day Guides, to name a few. It has completely changed the way I approach this dreaded chore.
Beyond learning how to make your towels white and fluffy again, it’s given me a new perspective on the lifecycle of textiles and how short their typical usage life is. Dirt and stains are the second-highest reason why consumers discard garments, behind wear and tear. Fewer than 5% of used textiles get recycled into new products. The rest either end up in U.S. landfills or get shipped off to countries like Congo, which are already overwhelmed by textile waste from fast fashion.
Every time I visit our local outdoor consignment shop, I see high-quality 100% wool sweaters shrunk down to almost toddler size (an exaggeration, but you get the point). A shrunken Fjallraven sweater might be an awesome score for a kid, but if we, outdoor enthusiasts who love to tout sustainability, can’t even bother to understand how to care for our own clothing, then all the talk about recycling, upcycling, and buying responsibly falls flat. Get you a detergent with lipase in it, or with wool-safe enzymes that are protease-free in this scenario, along with some citric acid for your rinse cycles, and you’ll be amazed how much cleaner your clothes will start to feel.