It’s Like an Inspirational Relay Race
30:09 Share

This message is brought to you by McDonald's. Did you know only 7.3% of American fashion designers are Black? Well, McDonald's 2024 Change Leaders Program is ready to change the face of fashion. The innovative program awards a monetary grant to five emerging Black American designers and pairs each with an industry professional to help them elevate their brands.

I know specifically and distinctly how McDonald's can support and empower not just black Gen Z, but black people. My first job was McDonald's. I learned a lot there about customer service and how to relate to people. I still love that place and go there very often. Look out for the change of fashion designers and mentors.

at events like the BET Awards and the Essence Festival of Culture. And follow the journey of the 2024 McDonald's Change Leaders on their Instagram page, WeAreGolden.

Here's an HIV pill dilemma for you. Picture the scene. There's a rooftop sunset with fairy lights and you're vibing with friends. You remember you've got to take your HIV pill. Important, yes, but the fun moment is gone. Did you know there's a long-acting treatment option available? So catch the sunset and keep the party going. Visit pillfreehiv.com today to learn more. Brought to you by Veve Healthcare.

Sisters, sisters, never knew how much I missed yous. Ooh, hello. I'm into that. My sisters, my ladies, hello. I'm Sam Sanders. I'm Saeed Jones. And I'm Zach Stafford, and you are listening to Vibe Check, Modern Scriptures.

Modern Scriptures Edition, this special holiday episode, we're going to go back to one of my favorite episode formats. A few months ago, I introduced the idea of modern scriptures to Zach and Saeed, and this idea that there are things that we read now in our current lives that we don't know about.

That are just as big and important and worthwhile and worth holding on to as ancient texts, as sacred texts, as scriptures. So we've had an episode before in which we shared some modern scriptures for our listeners. And we're going to do it again in the holiday spirit for those who missed it the first time.

It's just going to be us sharing some of our nearest and dearest pieces of writing or art or literature that we go back to a lot.

That helps sustain us. In full disclosure, this whole idea was inspired by a profile in the New York Times Magazine by Taffy Brodiser-Akner. She has a 2018 profile of Melissa McCarthy that I revisit every few months because it's so good. It is called This Melissa McCarthy Story Just Might Maybe Possibly Cheer You Up.

With that, we're going to get into our modern scriptures. Zach and Saeed and I love doing this, collecting modern scriptures and sharing them with you all. And I think it's a perfect, wonderful thing to share as we enter the Christmas season. You know, a little holiday spirit and cheer might come to y'all through these modern scriptures that we're going to share with y'all right now. I'm so excited about it. I can't wait. I love what both of y'all pick, but I love watching Saeed's process.

because it's frenzy, frenzy, frenzy, frenzy. Oh my God, so many words, so many books, so many texts, and then you land somewhere and it's beautiful. I'm much more calm this time. I love the modern scriptures episodes. We've kind of made this like kind of like a seasonal or kind of quarter. I love it. So yeah, so what I did this morning was I set a timer. I only had 30 minutes.

I only had 30 minutes and I just had to stick with it. And honestly, just two books, two books. Last time it was like, there was a pile of books around the screen. While Sam and Zach were talking, I was frantically reaching, you know, for the bookcases. But no, I was like, rest in your truth. Rest in your truth. Rest in your truth. Yes.

I love that. Well, so I'm excited. Before we get into the episode, we want to thank all of you who have sent us fan mail and reached out to us on social media. We absolutely love reading your messages. Keep them coming at vibecheckatstitcher.com. And of course, for this episode, what are your modern scriptures? What's art inspiration that you have been turning to to center yourself, maybe to find some clarity, some courage? Let us know at vibecheckatstitcher.com. But for now,

Let us jump in, shall we? Let's do it. Let's do it. For our modern scriptures, we're going to go around the virtual table. Zach, you'll go first. What is your first modern scripture to share with our listeners? I'm so glad I'm going first, actually, because I was worried that what I'm picking, the first one, is something Saeed may pick because we both have talked a lot about it. But it is the book In the Wake on Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe. Phew! Woo!

And the reason why I was worried is because this is a text that has really shaken the Academy since it came out. And it's something that our friend Jenna Wertham at the New York Times did a huge profile of Christina Sharpe recently. That is a really wonderful profile if you want to understand the academic that is Christina Sharpe.

But the book, for me, has been one of the most incredible ways of me understanding what the plight of Blackness and being Black in America is today and how we can think about the very particular experience of being a Black person in America. So the whole thesis of the book really centers on the word wake. And I want Saeed to jump in a second to also give his thoughts on this. But her whole thesis is that when the slave ships came into America, the wake of those ships hasn't stopped. And all of us as Black Americans are living in that wake.

and that the memory of that and the trauma and the institutions that have erupted from that moment in which we crossed the Atlantic Ocean show up every day in our life. And why I loved it so much was because it really helps me better understand

talk about kind of the ancestral trauma i feel and i talked a lot about this with jenna wortham in our one-on-one chat earlier this year but you know there are moments in which you just look at your day and you feel the remnants of things you didn't actually experience but it's part of your community that you've kind of gone through and there's one quote that i really want to pull and she writes in the book

"Living in the Wake" means living the history and present of terror from slavery to the present as the ground of our everyday Black existence.

Living the historically and geographically discontinuous but always present and endlessly reinvigorated brutality in and on our bodies, while even as that terror is visited on our bodies, the realities of that terror are erased. And so for me, that really encapsulates the book. But Saeed, what are your thoughts? Because you also came to this work recently. Oh, Christina Sharpe is a brilliant, brilliant mind. Her work,

More recent book, Ordinary Notes. I like that one. Something she does in the wake that I found so powerful is, I mean, one, as a poet, I love that she pushes language. She pushes and she pushes. So she takes us through all of the different manifestations of the word wake in the English language. So, yeah, it's the wake of the ship.

It's the wake of history. We wake up, which is to say wake, woke, consciousness, a realization. But it's also we have wakes for the dead, she points out at one point. Because there's a lot of grief in this book, in her family that she's processing. And she talks about the point of a wake actually ritually.

is to defend the dead. We used to have wakes to gather around the dead and to kind of to protect them, to protect their bodies as they transition, such a vulnerable point between life and death. And so that's, I mean, beautiful idea, but in the context of what you've already shared, Zach, defend the dead to me means, for example, we need to have a ongoing contemporary rich relationship with history, right?

Because when one of the terrors that are constantly being inflicted upon Black people is the terror of erasure, you know, that did not happen to you. That did not happen to your people. It was not as bad. One of the ways you can work to defend the dead, right, is to remember what happened, to learn about it, so you can confidently speak up with truth.

And, you know, we live in a country in which white supremacists are already trying to make us forget about what happened on January 6th to say nothing of what was happening hundreds of years ago or half a century ago or two decades ago. And so, yeah, I just, I mean, she's a wordsmith. She's a cultural critic of the highest order, but she pushes language and pushes language, but it's not just for the sake of...

oh, look at all these pretty word kind of associations. The ideas are so meaningful. Well, and she does more than push language. I'm reading her other book right now. And on top of pushing language, she's pushing form. There'll be these things that I read in the book where I'm like, is it an essay? Is it a poem? Is it a stanza? Is it part of this other thing? I find it invigorating. Everything about the way she's using words and structuring them is

makes you kind of tingle and buzz with this like sense of discovery i am discovering new forms of language by reading her and i love that i agree i love when i read an academic who feels like a poet or an artist and you know there's even a line which talks about wake work which is you know the act of living in the wake and still finding joy and creating music which is what black people have i mean it's really when you take a second to think of

about Black people in America, how we got here, what we've lived under, and how we are so much a part of the culture that even in the face of brutality, we've made such beautiful things. She locates that ability as wake work, and she writes just an insistence of existence. And I think that just really gave me a hug when I read that. Beautiful. And there's something, even just hearing a phrase from her, it's very accessible. And she talks about how being a Black person

person in the academy is a real struggle because to rigorously follow, you know, the expectations of the academy often means to make your work and your ideas inaccessible. But Christina Sharp writes in such a way that like Sam could share that book with Betty. You could share it with your cousin. You know what I mean? And I think it is beautiful. It is sharp. It's some of the smartest stuff I've ever read, but also everyone can access it. Yeah. Love it.

But check it out, listeners. Zach, you have a second scripture to share. I do. And this one's briefer because the essay itself is briefer, but it's a great companion to In the Wake, if you want to Google something right now. And that is an essay called All the Men Who Left Were White by Josie Duffy Rice.

It came out in 2014, and it's an essay I've come back to so many times over the years. She's a wonderful person. She's a wonderful journalist and academic and all these things. She does What a Day with Crooked. But this essay was at Gawker, and it has now since been taken down because Gawker is closed again. But

You can still find remnants of it. But it's an essay that, for me, was at a time in which I was realizing that, similar to Christina Sharpe, our bodies as Black people do have history tied to them. And she talks a lot about being Black but light-skinned. And that light-skinned identity ties very much back to a history of rape and violence within Black communities. And that all the men who left are actually white people who left.

inflicted damage on Black communities and left them kind of the resources taken, their bodies taken. So it's a really beautiful piece, a very personal piece, and she just is such a great writer. So definitely check that out as a companion to In the Week. And I just searched it, and it looks like it's been republished by a literary journal called Apogee, A-P-O-G-E-E. So you can find that online.

And I just want to give a little piece to this history that she's really weaving through her own personal writing. She writes, Third, in my family, the men who left were white. Let's go back. They had land the size of which a city brain like mine can't fathom. Southern men with pale skin, the kind of men whose job it was to oversee the overseer.

these women my ancestors were the opposite not boss of a solitary fly exhausted from all the work they'd done and the years of work that laid ahead cleaned and cooked and picked squinted and bent over and limping working so hard for so long they must have been sore in places they didn't even know they could be sore their bone marrow their blood nothing to show for it but the injuries not a hint of a thing resembling victory

And then it keeps going. But it's just a really beautiful way of writing about brutality that we just don't talk enough about and how that has woven into so many people's families and just unspoken for so many years. Yeah. Thank you for these picks, Zach. Of course. Two good scriptures. We're going to take a break and then come back with some more good word from Saeed. Stay with us.

This message is brought to you by McDonald's. Did you know only 7.3% of American fashion designers are Black? Well, McDonald's 2024 Change Leaders Program is ready to change the face of fashion. The innovative program awards a monetary grant to five emerging Black American designers and pairs each with an industry professional to help them elevate their brands.

I know specifically and distinctly how McDonald's can support and empower not just black Gen Z, but black people. My first job was McDonald's. I learned a lot there about customer service and how to relate to people. I still love that place and go there very often. Look out for the change of fashion designers and mentors.

at events like the BET Awards and the Essence Festival of Culture. And follow the journey of the 2024 McDonald's Change Leaders on their Instagram page, WeAreGolden.

Here's an HIV pill dilemma for you. Picture the scene. There's a rooftop sunset with fairy lights and you're vibing with friends. You remember you've got to take your HIV pill. Important, yes, but the fun moment is gone. Did you know there's a long-acting treatment option available? So catch the sunset and keep the party going. Visit pillfreehiv.com today to learn more. Brought to you by Veve Healthcare.

All right, we are back, and I now want to throw it to our dear Saeed Jones, who didn't spend all morning picking scriptures. He gave himself a lot of time. Just half an hour. Just half an hour.

by Tracy K. Smith. Tracy K. Smith is a wonderful poet. She was also, for a while, our U.S. Poet Laureate. I believe she's at Harvard University now, just doing really good, good work. And I wanted to read a poem from a book she published a few years ago, actually. It's been a minute, but this poem stays on my mind. The title is Weather in Space. I'll read it and then just kind of explain why it resonates. This is The Weather in Space by Tracy K. Smith.

Is God being or pure force the wind or what commands it? When our lives slow and we can hold all that we love, it sprawls in our laps like a gangly doll. When the storm kicks up and nothing is ours, we go chasing after all we are certain to lose. So alive.

faces radiant with panic. It has been one hell of a year. I think, speaking for myself, speaking for friends, family, 2023 came along to tug at our wigs, didn't she? She has been unrelenting, has really demanded a lot of us. And so I think this poem really embraces the contradiction, that when we are in a time of comfort,

gratitude is kind of difficult to access. It outbounds us like a gangly doll. You can't hold on. It's just like, I don't know. I guess everything's fine. But then when the stakes change, the storm comes, we go chasing after all we're certain to lose, so alive, faces radiant with panic. I'm not going to try to add a silver lining to a thunderstorm, but there's something about

when your life puts you in a situation of maybe loss, of grief, of peril, it becomes really clear what you care about.

You know, who you care about, what matters, what you want to use your time in this lifetime to do. And I love that Tracy K. Smith and just like it's like the poems, maybe 10 lines brings it all together. It's so amazing. I love it. You just said, would you say silver lining to a thunderstorm? That is so Southern of you. Yes. Noah. Yes. Noah's the regional poet. I keep saying he's a poet.

Oh, gosh. And then my second scripture that I wanted to share, and really, I'm amazed that it's taken two go-arounds to come, but it's The Source of Self-Regard, Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations by Toni Morrison.

I think if you listen to this podcast, you're aware of the impact Toni Morrison had on my life and Zach and Sam's, as well as readers. This book is such a treasure, in part because I think, obviously, Toni Morrison's novels, there's so much poetry and wisdom and history. Really think of, actually, Christina Sharpe in the wake. I mean, I think Toni Morrison would have really loved that line of thinking. And in fact, I think Christina Sharpe references her a few times in the book.

But in this, we're getting a different side of Toni Morrison, like the speeches. And what I thought I would read, in 1987, James Baldwin died. And James Baldwin was actually very close with Toni Morrison, and she delivered a eulogy.

at his funeral, which is just really meaningful. And I think for Vibe Check, this podcast, that's not just about news and culture. It's about news and culture through the lens of the three of our friendship. It's really beautiful to kind of hear what she had to say about James Baldwin. So this is just from the end. You can look it up. I mean, it was so significant. Her eulogy to James Baldwin was published in the New York Times at the time. Really significant. Yeah.

I suppose that is why I always was a bit better behaved around you. Smarter, more capable, wanting to be worth the love you lavished. Wanting to be steady enough to witness the pain you had witnessed and tough enough to bear while it broke your heart. Wanting to be generous enough to join in your smile with one of my own and reckless enough to jump on in on that laugh that you laughed because our joy and our laughter were not only right, they were necessary.

You knew, didn't you? How I needed your language and the mind that formed it. How I relied on your fierce courage to tame wildernesses for me. How strengthened I was by the certainty that came from knowing you would never hurt me. You knew, didn't you? How I needed your love. You knew. This, then, is no calamity. No. This is a jubilee.

"'Our crown,' you said, "'has already been bought and paid for. "'And all we have to do,' you said,

is wear it. And we do, Jimmy. You crowned us. So beautiful. It's so good. And I'm so, I just am so happy you shared that side because so many people quote, your crown was bought and paid for, just wear it. And they don't know where it's from. And it's not just related to James Baldwin, but it's to this specific moment of celebrating his life through Toni Morrison. And it's just such a, I even have a tattoo. It's just so amazing. I love it. Oh, look at that.

I love how, and I don't think any other author of our time, at least, can do this, but I find myself with Toni Morrison and

I'm never done discovering her words. I'm never done discovering something she's written that can speak to me. She wrote a bunch of books, but she also sat for a bunch of interviews and gave a lot of speeches and a lot of talks and wrote some letters. And like, you're just never done discovering. Her words are the gift that keeps on giving. I love Toni Morrison. I know a lot about her. I had no idea this thing existed.

So first, thank you, Saeed. But two, thank you, Tony. Yes. So many words. All of the words will never be done with her words. I love that. Yeah. And this is a real gift. The archives, the people who work to preserve, to organize, to defend the dead, as Christina Sharpe said, so that we can, you're right. Amazing. Tony Morrison left us a few years ago and we can still spend the rest of our lives learning from her because of the work of other people and the work she did to protect it. Beautiful.

Yeah. Beautiful. It ain't just Song of Solomon, y'all. It's not. It's a body of work. It's good. It's good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, Sam will share his scriptures.

NetCredit is here to say yes to a personal loan or line of credit when other lenders say no. Apply in minutes and get a decision as soon as the same day. Loans offered by NetCredit are lending partner banks and serviced by NetCredit. Applications subject to review and approval. Learn more at netcredit.com slash partner. NetCredit. Credit to the people.

This message is brought to you by McDonald's. Did you know only 7.3% of American fashion designers are Black? Well, McDonald's 2024 Change Leaders Program is ready to change the face of fashion. The innovative program awards a monetary grant to five emerging Black American designers and pairs each with an industry professional to help them elevate their brands.

I know specifically and distinctly how McDonald's can support and empower not just black Gen Z, but black people. My first job was McDonald's. I learned a lot there about customer service and how to relate to people. I still love that place and go there very often. Look out for the change of fashion designers and mentors.

at events like the BET Awards and the Essence Festival of Culture. And follow the journey of the 2024 McDonald's Change Leaders on their Instagram page, We Are Golden.

All right, we're back. We're doing our modern scriptures and we are so excited to round it out with Sam. Take it away, friend. I have two. My second pick is a more traditional modern scripture, a book that I go back to when I feel like I need it. But my first pick for y'all this episode is a modern scripture that kind of comes at me in the other direction. You know, a lot of the things that we're recommending are, I found this text, it's

It speaks to me. I go back to it. You should too. What I'm recommending first is a kind of text that finds me.

Every few days, I'll explain. I have been following for several months now an Instagram account called Black Liturgies. I'll describe more about where it comes from. But basically, this is an Instagram account where most of the posts are just words, but they are words of affirmation written by a black woman or compilations of other words of affirmation written by black people.

I'm going to share one. It was a five-image post. And the first slide says, Don't rush to escape the dissonance. You can bear witness to pain without being consumed by it. Lament is sacred. Grief is an honoring.

It goes on in another slide to say, quote, aren't your eyelids tired of keeping prisoners? Those tears are precious minerals. Lap them up like a medicine. It's called healing. It goes on to say, inhale. I've known grief. Exhale.

I'm still here. How beautiful is it to be scrolling through Instagram, looking at dancing and animals and foolishness and thirst traps, and then you come across that. It's just great. I follow this account.

And whenever I'm on my phone and it shows up, it's just a moment to breathe and to think. So this is the first modern scripture I've found that comes to me on the regular and not the other way around. The account is called Black Liturgies. It is a project by an author, Cole Arthur Riley.

They've written a book before called This Here Flesh, and Black Liturgies will become a book very soon. It's available for pre-order already. I'm just telling you, when I'm on my phone, this account is always a moment of zen. I like it. Yeah, I've been following it for a month or so, too. Yeah, it's like a breathing space. I don't know, it comes and I'm like, oh. And it's like, here's a few ideas from June Jordan or bell hooks. And I'm like, oh, thank you. It's like a digital refuge.

which we need sometimes. I like that. I like that. So that's my first pick. My second pick is an oldie but goodie. I'm guessing most of y'all have already read this book, but it might be good for you to read it again. I've had a rough year. My mama died.

I had another job that ended. I haven't talked a lot about it at all on this show, but I had a breakup as well. And all of these things happened within the span of three or four months. Literally, we got back from Beyonce in London and then shit fell apart. And, you know, I'm pushing through. I have my community. I have my family, friends, my sisters helping me. But I wanted something to just like pep me up. And a book I always go back to when I want to pep talk about life.

is Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things. It is a miracle of a book.

Cheryl Strayed is an amazing author who for many years had an advice column. And for the advice column, she called herself Dear Sugar. The column was so popular that all of her advice that she gave was compiled into a book called Tiny Beautiful Things that became a bestseller. And then I think a TV show as well. A play as well at one point. And a play too. Yeah. And every one of these advice entries is...

is life-affirming. It's hard to overstate. And the formula is really beautiful. You know, a lot of people give advice and they tell you what to do and that's it. When Cheryl Strait gives advice, she tells you what she's been through that got her to the place where she got through it. She'll tell you what she went through and then say, maybe this might work for you. So she's given you memoir as well. And it's just gorgeous. I want to read one paragraph from one of the advice entries in the book.

She's writing back to a mother who had a stillborn baby and doesn't understand not just why she can't move on, but why no one else is as sad as she is right now, not even her husband. Oh, my gosh. Cheryl wrote to this quite beautifully, and I'm going to read one graph of this right here. Quote, you will never stop loving your daughter. You will never forget her. You will always know her name, but she will always be dead.

Nobody can intervene and make that right, and nobody will. Nobody can take it back with silence or push it away with words. Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away.

It's just there and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal. Therapists and friends and other people who live on planet my baby died can help you along the way. But the healing...

The genuine healing, the actual real deal down on your knees in the mud change is entirely and absolutely up to you. I chose this graph for many reasons. She can write for one. But for two, so much of this book reminds me of a thing I've had to hold on to a lot in these last few months. And it's a very simple fact.

you are not alone in your suffering. People suffer. Someone is suffering right now. Someone else is suffering too. And we're all suffering. And the universal truth of this book is that in spite of this suffering, we aren't alone in it and we can get through it. And it's a reminder. It's just a reminder. Reading this book, it made me think a lot of something, Saeed, that you told to me a few weeks ago. We all were in LA for that Bloomberg conference and

And Zach was a good student, stayed to go to all the panels. And you and me went out for drinks. I was like, I'm out of here. We had a little drink or two. Yeah. And I was just telling Slade, I was like, this has been a shitty year. It's bad. I don't like it. And I'm going to paraphrase it. But basically you said, no one can save your life but you.

Knowing that, though, you have everything you need to save your life, does it? And hearing that, it stuck with me. I say it to myself every day. And this Cheryl Strayed book is that for a few hundred pages. So that's it. It's a really good book.

I love that Cheryl's writing and guidance has been a comfort to you because Cheryl Strayed's memoir, which details how she went through the process of grieving her mother, was published a year after my mom passed away.

And then Tiny Beautiful Things, I think, was published pretty soon after. And so I remember reading them in that first year. And so it's not a coincidence because much of what I've come to understand about grief, the foundation of that was being built a decade ago reading Cheryl Strayed's

work and wow and I'd just like to say I love to share this my dear friend the writer Isaac Fitzgerald was Cheryl's editor for the Dear Sugar column at the Rumpus really? yeah he was editing essays by now iconic famous writers like Cheryl Strayed and Roxanne Gay well before they were household names and so there's a lot of love stitched into that wisdom so it really made me smile to hear that that was the book you wanted to share yeah well and you know

It's true. Reading this book, it reminds me so much of the wonderful advice you have given me over the course of our friendship. And it's quite simple. It's like, this shit is hard, but yes, we can. Yes, we can. You can do it. You got to. Keep it moving. Love it. That was so good. Oh, I love the Modern Scriptures episodes. Yeah, we did it. Listeners, listeners, listeners, thank y'all for bearing with us.

What are your modern scriptures? Share them with us at vibecheckatstitcher.com. Because there's something else that's really fun about the modern scriptures. It's like you're finding out about new books or sources of inspiration, but then you're kind of passing it on and it becomes this, I don't know, inspirational relay race that I really enjoy. Yeah. Yeah.

Listeners, thank you so much for checking out this week's episode of Vibe Check. If you love the show, want to support us, please make sure to follow this show on your favorite podcast listening platform. Also, like it, subscribe to it, review it, and tell a friend in real life. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Snatch their phone and subscribe to us on their phone too. Why not? If you got a man, like play it when he's sleeping, you know, like Inception. Yes, yes. Just like play it at a very low volume.

And then he'll just wake up one day and be like, hey. If you ain't got a man, go find a strange man and play it while he's sleeping. Yeah, he'll be like, hey, ladies? You know, he's like, hey, ladies. Fair maidens? Fair maidens? He says, like, Chantel, leave it in in the middle of sex. Okay, I'm sorry. We gotta go. We gotta go. We gotta go. Well, speaking of Chantel, huge thank you to her, our producer.

That is such a filthy joke. Oh my God. It's the end of the year. Also, thank you to our engineer, Sam Kiefer, and Marcus Holm for our theme music and sound design. Also, special thanks to our executive producers, Nora Ritchie at Stitcher, and Brandon Sharp from Agenda Management and Production. All right. And of course, listeners, we love hearing from you. You can email us at vibecheck at stitcher.com and keep in touch with us on Instagram at theverocity.com.

at Zach Staff, and at Sam Sanders. We are off next week for the holidays, but we will be back the following Wednesday, December 27th, with a new episode. Stay safe out there. And failing that, stay cute. Stay cats. Stitcher.

NetCredit is here to say yes. Because you're more than a credit score. Apply in minutes and get a decision as soon as the same day. Loans offered by NetCredit are lending partner banks and serviced by NetCredit. Applications subject to review and approval. Learn more at netcredit.com slash partners. NetCredit. Credit to the people. At Amica Insurance, we know it's more than just a car. It's the two-door coupe that was there for your first drive. The hatchback that took you cross-country and back. And the minivan that tackles the weekly carpool.

For the cars you couldn't live without, trust Amica Auto Insurance. Amica. Empathy is our best policy.