Author: Dan Oshinsky

Sometime in 1999, I went to go see a sports documentary, “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg,” in theaters with my parents. Sandy Koufax is probably the best-known Jewish baseball player of all time, but Hank Greenberg — a member of the baseball Hall of Fame who won two MVPs and hit 331 homers in his career — was one of the first Jewish sports stars.

I remember it was a packed house at the theater. Aside from going to High Holiday services, seeing a documentary about a Jewish baseball player in a theater full of Jews was probably the most Jewish thing I’d done in my life to date.

I was a 12-year-old Jewish kid who loved sports, so even though I didn’t know anything about Greenberg before that night, I loved the documentary. It was insightful and poignant and funny — before that night, I didn’t know a documentary could be funny!

There’s one moment from the film that I still remember well. In 1946, as his baseball career was winding down, Greenberg married Caral Gimbel, whose father ran Gimbels, a department store that, in its day, was a rival to Macy’s.

At that moment, a talking head appeared on screen to discuss their wedding. “For a lot of people,” he said, “marriage was a gamble.” He paused. “But for Hank, it was a Gimble!”

I’ve been to live stand-up shows and seen plenty of funny movies in theaters, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a group of people laugh quite as loud as I heard that theater laugh that night at that joke. It’s a corny line — but for that crowd, it killed.

A few months later, my synagogue announced that they’d be doing a special screening of “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg” for all the kids in my Hebrew school class. I remember enjoying the documentary just as much the second time around. I remember getting to the part of the film that discussed Greenberg’s marriage. I remember waiting for the joke about Gimbles, and for the big laugh.

Except the laugh never came.

It was the same joke in the same documentary. But the first time I heard it, it played to a packed theater of Jews, most of whom were huge fans of Greenberg, many whom were old enough to have seen Greenberg play personally, and all of whom, I’d bet, had shopped at Gimbles at least once in their life.

And the second time, I watched with a group of fellow 12- and 13-year-olds, who were born the year Gimbles closed, and who were only there because attendance was mandatory.

It turns out it was only a great joke to the right audience. The content matters, but the audience you’re bringing it to matters more.

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That’s the statue of Greenberg at Detroit’s Comerica Park. Greenberg played 12 seasons for the Detroit Tigers. The photo was taken by Jeff Dunn, and is reused here thanks to a Creative Commons license.

Dear Ben,

We can’t believe you’re here.

Three weeks ago, you showed up in the world. But your mom and I weren’t sure if we’d ever get the chance to hold you.

It’s a long story, but I’ll start here: A few years ago, your mom and I decided we wanted to have a baby. (You!) So many of our friends decided they wanted to have a baby, too, and 10 or 12 months later, a beautiful baby arrived. We assumed that we’d be like them: We wanted a baby, so we’d have one — probably right away.

But we had no idea how hard having a baby would be.

We had one miscarriage, and then a second. We tracked everything we could possibly track. We had our blood tested (totally normal), peed on sticks (ew), and were forced to ejaculate into cups (double ew). We had so much sex that, by the end of certain weeks, your mom and I had to give each other pep talks before trying again.

We had doctors tell us that nothing was wrong with us — we were just unlucky! Take these giant pills that smell like fish food four times a day, every day, for the next month, then try again! Everything’s fine!

Everything was not fine.

We were told that nothing was wrong with us, but when the outcome you want never happens, it’s tough not to feel like something might be wrong — and it might be you.

We started to have serious conversations: Why did we want to be parents? What would we be willing to do to become parents?

We told ourselves that if we couldn’t have you, it would be OK. The life your mom and I had, before you? It was enough.

But we still wanted you in our lives.

So we talked about our options. Sex wasn’t working, and IUI (as your mother called it: The Turkey Baster method) didn’t either. So then we came to IVF: In vitro fertilization.

We have relatives and friends who conceived via IVF. It’s not cheap, and it’s not easy. We were lucky — beyond lucky — to have the money and time to try.

Deciding to do IVF meant all sorts of changes in our lives. 

IVF meant intense monitoring of your mom’s lab values and ovaries.

IVF meant that I had to learn how to give your mom shots, and not always at home. I gave her shots in hotels, in restaurant bathrooms, and once in a public hallway outside the Eataly at the World Trade Center. (The person who walked by mid-shot simply ignored us — maybe the greatest act of kindness we’ve ever been given.)

IVF meant getting middle-of-the-day voicemails about the quality of my sperm and your mom’s eggs, and it becoming as normal as checking the weather forecast.

IVF meant that friends were sometimes too scared to tell us that they were pregnant, even though we were truly, always happy for them.

IVF meant lots of conversations with other moms and dads who’d gone through IVF. Your mom had it so much harder than me, but there were still questions I had to ask that they don’t teach in Sex Ed. How do you, exactly, masturbate into a tiny cup? Sitting? Standing? What should you watch when producing your half of a child by yourself? Let’s say you’re in the doctor’s office, and the TV seems to be stuck on English-subtitled Chinese stepmom porn. Do you call the nurse for help? The front desk? Just click buttons until you figure out how to change it? (Son, I’m proud to tell you: I clicked, and I figured it out.)

IVF meant waiting — lots and lots of waiting.

IVF meant taking home what will forever be our first photo of you: A collection of tiny cells under a microscope.

IVF meant walking back and forth, sometimes a few times a week, to that doctor’s office on Madison Avenue, sitting in the waiting room with dozens of other men and women who wanted to be parents as badly as we did.

IVF meant walking out of that same doctor’s office one day, having just gotten wonderful news about you, and pretending like we hadn’t, because we knew so many people in the waiting room weren’t getting the news they wanted that day.

IVF meant holding our breath at every appointment, every week, for months, even long after the doctors told us that you were doing great and that things would be OK.

IVF meant discovering that so many other people were going through infertility too, or had gone through IVF. It meant sharing stories — some funny, some angry, some sad — to help others understand that they weren’t alone in their infertility journey.

IVF meant big changes: Turning my office into your nursery. Learning how to install a car seat. Figuring out parental leave and childcare.

IVF meant that one day, in early July, we had the incredible joy to finally watch you come into this world.

And yes, we know that someday, you’re going to ask us where babies will come from. Your friends might ask their parents the same question, and they’ll probably start by saying, “Well, when two parents love each other…”

But not your mom and I. When you ask, we’ll tell you the truth: Babies come from a special doctor’s office on Madison Avenue, across from a Balenciaga. 

You, Ben, like everything at Balenciaga, weren’t cheap! But you are perfect.

We’re so grateful — to the doctors and nurses and techs who made you possible. To the friends and family who supported us along the way. And most of all, Ben, to you, for making us parents.

We love you.

-Dad and Mom

The very talented Abbie Sophia took that photo of the three of us.

I found a notebook full of notes from my earliest BuzzFeed days — I started writing these notes back in 2012. On one page, I outlined a few rules for success for BuzzFeed’s newsletter strategy:

• Be kind, show love, give lots
• Personality resonates.
• When they let you into their inboxes, they’re making you their friend. They want to listen.
• Make sure we give them great stuff
• Make a connection
• Shareability + personality + timeliness + reliability

And those rules still apply to newsletters today.

So there are two possible explanations for this:

1) I was some sort of email genius who accurately predicted the future of the space. (Very unlikely.)

2) The rules haven’t changed much for building great products over the past decade. (Ding ding ding!)

The latter holds true for any product I’ve worked on over the past two decades. The technology changes, the terminology changes — but the basic rules for creating great stuff remain the same.

And I don’t know what the future holds, but I’d bet that in a decade, if I look back on this list, these rules still won’t have changed.

———

That’s the photo from one of my old BuzzFeed notebooks. I found it while cleaning out my apartment earlier this year.

So often, I hear the same excuse for why someone isn’t going to launch a new project: I’m not ready.

And I’ll ask:

Are you ready to ask lots of questions?

Are you ready to try new things?

Are you ready to make mistakes?

Are you ready to put together your team?

Are you ready to learn?

Congratulations. You’ll figure out the rest as you go — but you’re more than ready to start right now.

———

That photo of the starting line on a track comes via Unsplash and photographer Markus Spiske.

I was reading this interview that Judd Apatow did with Mel Brooks for The Atlantic. If you know me, or if you’ve been a longtime reader of this blog, you know I love Mel. (I have written fondly about him many, many times.) The man’s lived an amazing life, so I always make time for a Mel interview or talk show appearance.

This latest interview closed with a fantastic back-and-forth between Mel and Judd:

The closing punchline aside, it’s that line — “we should not future ourselves so much” — that stuck with me. I know I’m guilty of getting ahead of myself and worrying about what might happen in a year or two or five. But I don’t know what will happen in the future, and neither do you.

Stay in the moment. Enjoy the moment.

Now yourself a little more.

———

That’s a photo of Mel with his wife, Anne Bancroft, at the 1997 Emmys. It was taken by Alan Light, and reused here thanks to a Creative Commons license.

Earlier this week, I found a notebook from my BuzzFeed days, and inside, a few pages in, found an idea for a newsletter that I never seriously considered launching.

The idea was for a joke newsletter, one I called “the Apocalypse newsletter.” On the page, I drew the landing page for the newsletter, with a big headline: “When the world ends, you’ll be the first to know!”

The idea first came, maybe a decade ago, during a series of conversations about breaking news alerts. It felt like so many other organizations sent breaking news alerts for the tiniest things. I felt like breaking news should be reserved for stuff that you couldn’t leave your house without knowing. And then I took it a step too far: What if we created a breaking news alert that was only sent if the world was truly ending?

What would we send the rest of the time? An occasional email highlighting stories that proved — jokingly, of course — that the end of the world was near.

This newsletter never went further than the piece of paper I drew it on. I never had a serious conversation about it.

There are a lot of ideas in that notebook. Some were real ideas that turned into really good newsletter products, like our lineup of Courses. Some were silly ideas that we launched and turned out well, like This Week in Cats. Some never got off the ground (an idea for a British TV-focused email). There are far more bad ideas in there than good.

And that’s OK.

Even the bad ideas get your wheels turning. It’s easy to draw a line between that joke idea — One breaking news alert, sent at the end of the world! — and a real conversation, one I’ve had many times over the years, about what really constitutes breaking news. Even the bad ideas still led to deeper thinking.

Let the bad ideas come. Jot them down. Give them consideration.

You never know when that truly bad idea might lead you to something worth pursuing.

———

That’s the sketch of the Apocalypse newsletter landing page. A bad idea, yes, but so are most of my ideas.