Odessa

I’m dropping in here to recommend ODESSA, the four-part docuseries from the New York Times. I started listening because I discovered the second episode in the feed for THE DAILY, and it billed itself as a doc following the real-life high school behind FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. And my love for Matt Saracen knows no bounds. Turns out, it’s something much better and more compelling than that. It’s a series about the high school on the other side of town from the real-life Dillon Panthers—a high school with a not-great football team and an excellent marching band, which happened to stay open for in-person education during COVID. It’s a look at how an entire economy can be decimated overnight when the price of oil plummets. It’s also a look at the costs of closing schools—and the costs of keeping them open. And at its emotional center is a teenager named Joanna Lopez—and hearing her tell her story in her words brought me to tears twice this morning. Once, feeling the emotional highs of finding belonging in high school and a second time, feeling the lows of what it means when your family can’t make ends meet, and your future becomes collateral damage in a macro puzzle that feels entirely disconnected from your life.

—Neha Gandhi, EVP, Digital & Strategy