2025 Favorites: Albums, Books, Advice

Posted on by StevenMGruber

Looking back at 2025 by compiling my list of favorites. This year was chock-full of life milestones worthy of a little reflection.

Favorite Albums:

  1. Westward – Dylan Gossett
  2. Somewhere EP – Caamp
  3. Burnout Days – Flipturn
  4. So Long Little Miss Sunshine – Molly Tuttle
  5. last night you said you missed me – Hazlett
  6. Chasing the Chimera – Del Water Gap
  7. Man’s Best Friend – Sabrina Carpenter

Part 2: 2024 spillovers:

  1. Bloom – Ben Bohmer
  2. Deeper Well: Deeper Into The Well – Kasey Musgraves
  3. brentiii – Chelsea Cutler & Jeremy Zucker
  4. Never Better – Wild Rivers
  5. PRATT & PAIN – Royal Otis

Favorite TV shows:

  1. The Lazarus Project (LOST meets Severance meets 24. Cancelled after 2 seasons which means it absolutely flies off the rails and bends your brain 🤣)
  2. Task
  3. The Diplomat
  4. Dept. Q
  5. The Pitt
  6. Severance Season 2
  7. Stranger Things (they landed the plane!)

Favorite Smartphone Apps:

  1. Wikipedia
  2. Perplexity AI Search
  3. Huckleberry
  4. Windy
  5. Merlin Bird ID

Favorite Decision:

  • Throwing a “wedding celebration” with a 2-month old.
    • Friends and family got to meet Sidney.
    • Pics are so cute.
    • Baby + wedding registry combo enabled us to be so prepared with the chaos of being new parents.
    • Received advice and perspectives from people we know and love. (Opposed to mommy blogs)

Favorite Dad advice:

  • From my brother with 2 kids – Trick your attitude every time your kid cries or wakes you up by being excited to help them out; be their hero!
  • Always be on the lowest weight range for diaper sizes 😅
  • Something about the “time bank”… but, not subscribing to this allowed Katy and I to read 3.5 Harry Potter books out-loud, together, to Sid!
  • Stephen Colbert, “Your baby is Joseph Stalin”: https://youtube.com/shorts/OMIMQ5-Z_oc?si=WZ88H9ItlqwEPfcY
  • Perplexity AI search and include “AAP” to get sources from American Association of Pediatrics. Perplexity’s hallucination rate is very very very low, which is very very very important. Friendly reminder to double-check the sources of information (which is also easy, given that every statement has a source.)
  • Freezer meal prep breakfast and dinner! Katy and I devoured frozen breakfast burritos and frozen pasta meals for the first month!
  • New Parenting books, below.

Favorite embarrassing memory:

  1. Softball injury – during a team practice I happened to “catch” an outfield dinger. However, the softball didn’t land in my glove but on my face. 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️ Urgent care; glued wound. Later that week we had a game, I was covering left field, and I caught the ball, this time properly in my glove, accompanied by way too much cheering from my team. Never felt more embarrassed by team spirit. 😅
    • Silver lining, I got to say “you should have seen the other guy” as I walked around with an awesome shiner.
  2. Being so zombie tired at work (during Sid’s first month) that after microwaving my lunch I proceeded to throw my lunch in the trashcan.
    • I can’t tell you how it happened, just that it happened. 🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤣

Favorite 2025 milestones:

  1. Becoming a dad
  2. Throwing a wedding celebration / 1-year anniversary
  3. Being a first-time homebuyer

Favorite weeks of 2025:

(photos via Instagram: Part 1 link and Part 2 link)

  1. Sidney Gruber’s birth – C-section was outrageously well prepared and well performed. Katy did such a good job! I’ll never forget seeing Sid for the first time. Side-note: the UCSD Jacob’s facility was stunning.
  2. Wedding celebration week – itinerary of tasks, wine tasting with parents, building bouquets, welcome event, morning hike, wedding reception, family brunch, Yachats, and horseback riding.
  3. Bachelor party in Kalispell, Montana. Effortless fun.
  4. Receiving keys to our condo and immediately driving to the Stagecoach music festival.
  5. Skiing Snow Summit and playing train themed boardgames all night.
  6. Painting and prepping baby nursery.
  7. Watching playoff baseball and Sid’s first trip to Sedona (which we now refer to as “Sidona”).
  8. Enjoying family bonding time – 8-weeks off for California Paid Family Leave (4-weeks in 2025; 4-weeks in 2026).
  9. Zombie bike riding 75-miles for the Curebound Cancer Challenge (during Sid’s first month).
  10. SD->Philly send off party.
  11. Multiple Thanksgivings/Friendsgivings.
  12. Reminiscing with colleagues.

Favorite Books:

Harry Potter 1-3 – J.K. Rowling

Obviously, these are incredible books, no review needed. But, a few observations upon re-reading as an adult: 

  • The Dursley’s are a terrible family and extremely abusive towards Harry. Forgot just how miserable they are to him!
  • Quidditch is everywhere! The rules are explained in detail multiple times, the storylines of the books are interwoven around the sport, and many character introductions are via Quidditch!
  • The finale sequences in the movies are at most 2-chapters! This doesn’t mean they’re less epic, but bravo to the movies for amplifying the best parts of the books!

Everything is Tuberculosis – John Green

John Green injects such humanity and compassion throughout the fascinating history of Tuberculosis.

I wouldn’t generalize the book as a “fun” read, yet it’s not a “totally pessimistic” read either. It’s simply a book I couldn’t put down. A great balance of world-view and personal stories create such grounded perspectives.

My microbiology background may have intrigued me to pick this up, but the rich storytelling kept me engaged. This book rocks. I’d recommend it to everyone, regardless of science background. I’d describe it as a physical documentary, with stories to share at your next cocktail party and a single thought-provoking question that will stick with me: “how and why do we lose 1,250,000 people a year to a curable illness?” I hope to see this number decrease in my lifetime 🤞

Read Everything is Tuberculosis!

Super Agers – Dr. Eric Topol

I’ve followed Dr. Eric Topol via Twitter and Substack since the COVID pandemic and love his daily summaries of breakthrough papers and research studies. He’s attended Illumina’s campus a few occasions, promoting the use of genomics in patient care, and is a principal investigator (PI) for a major NIH grant that supports a significant part of the All of Us Research Program. Call me a nerd, whatever! When I heard he was writing a book, without any prior understanding of the content, I had reserved it from the library.

Before Sidney was born I’d spend 5-hours a week bike-commuting to work. This time would often be spent consuming deep-dive multi-hour podcasts with resident-experts in nutrition, diet, and fitness. Ever heard of the Rich Roll Podcast? If not, imagine the Joe Rogan Experience but with expert researchers and biohackers as guests.

Each guest I listened to felt like a mini epiphany that would rewire my health perspectives. The experts on the show would share their life’s work and conclude with their daily diet and exercise regimens/protocols: Fasting-mimicking diet, cold plunge, off-label rapamycin consumption, increased protein levels, introducing creatine, NAD+ supplementation, vegan-diet for reduced inflammaging, Pro/Pre biotics, fish oil, monitoring blood-glucose levels…etc. on and on…

Enter this post: https://bsky.app/profile/epidemiologistkat.bsky.social/post/3lnynsmikws23

And to my dismay, I followed a few of these experts to their websites only to discover they’re disguised snake-oil salesmen…shilling supplements…modern day “selling indulgences”.

Why do I bring all this up?! Because Super Agers cuts through all the noise. I see this book as a compendium of Dr. Topol’s Twitter posts. Which, a bit unfortunately, means that this book is for nerds. But, if you’re like me, and want to nerd out about science-based healthspan increasing choices, look no further, and don’t listen to anything else. Spare yourself hours of “expert” ramblings and sales pitches.

Favorite New Parenting Books:

  1. The New Father: A Dad’s Guide to the First Year – Armin Brott
  2. Caring for Your Baby and Young Child – American Association of Pediatrics
  3. Range – David Epstein

Looking forward – 2026 Resolutions:

  1. Bring back Meatless Mondays! And, eat less processed “food”.
  2. Create as much as I consume – insta/linkedin/twitter/blog.
  3. Get back on Twitter (X). Sorry, Bluesky hasn’t taken off. The engagement isn’t there and people I love to follow have not transitioned. I gave it a year. Since being back on Twitter (X) I’ve already accessed more gift article links from NYT and The Atlantic from accounts I follow. Important note: I’ll never go on the “For You” tab or engage with Grok. That’s where the monsters hide in plain sight.
  4. Use all of Illumina’s volunteer time off benefit.
  5. Get back to donating blood with American Red Cross.

Leave a comment