Gratitude 2024

It is Thanksgiving Week. Here is my idiosyncratic gratitude list for 2024.

The holidays are finally here. While I would prefer Christmas celebrations to begin in earnest the minute after Halloween, I recognize that this is a minority view even within the Conti-Brown household. Indeed, only my 13-year-old joins me in this preference; we have to listen to Christmas music in secret during the month of November like we are reading Master and Margarita in Brezhnev’s Soviet Union.

But this is not the week for contraband Christmas music. It is the week of Thanksgiving and it is a great week indeed. The Conti-Browns are headed to Boston for our annual week with the Contis and are already in a festive mood. Our 15-year-old is hosting his first Friendsgiving and already navigated the tragic over- and under-cooking of his first turkey (RIP x2, since it could not be safely consumed), followed by his perfectly cooked second (the trick is to flip the bird breast side down).

I’ll be blogging less this week given the holiday, to kick back into rhythm for two weeks in December.

So, without further ado, my idiosyncratic and highly specific list of 15 things I am grateful for in 2024, with brief explanations.

1.      Joe’s Pizza in New York. I took our 8-year-old to NYC this past weekend for a 1:1 trip. It was marvelous. Joe’s Pizza was his favorite and mine, with affectionate and nostalgic apologies to Pinocchio’s, the Cambridge, MA classic where I first wooed one Nikki Conti.

2.      Ludwig Wittgenstein. He must have been one of the oddest people of the 20^th century, but no thinker has shaped my thinking about sense, probability, ideology, reason, and epistemology more than him.

3.      Theragun. I use this thing every day of my life. It is correlated with my best stretch—now measured in years—without a back injury despite heavy lifting.

4.      Weightlifting barefoot. I have deadlifted barefoot for many years, but recently became convinced that I should try squatting barefoot. I love it. I’ll never go back.

5.      Sean Vanatta, my co-author on Private Finance, Public Power: A History of Bank Supervision in America, which will reach your bookshelves in a few short months. Sean is probably the best political historian of our generation, a first-rate intellectual and scholar. He is also hilarious, patient, thoughtful, and generous. I don’t tell him this enough, mostly because we are bickering 60% of the time that we speak about how we should tackle some picayune question of banking history that no one cares about but us. But he has been a marvelous partner in what is one of the most important projects I have ever tackled and is a great friend besides.

6.      Finishing that marvelous, monstrous, magisterial, menacing book. It almost killed me. You all better buy many copies.

7.      My research assistants, past and present. I have a team of MBAs, law students, and undergrads working with me on my next projects, the political history of the Federal Reserve and a book about the structure of anti-money laundering. They are such a delight. I don’t get to spend enough time with my students, given the nature of a Wharton professorship (which is 95% research). How fortunate I am to spend that time with them.

8.      The Philadelphia Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For those unfamiliar with the nomenclature, a “stake” is the administrative and ecclesiastical unit of the Church, a collection of the congregations in an area. The rough Catholic equivalent might be a “diocese,” although Latter-day Saint stakes are much smaller. Ours, for example, includes 9 congregations throughout Philadelphia. For the last four years, I have volunteered in the “stake presidency” where I help lead the church in Philadelphia. It is a joy to do. These great people of this great city have taught me more about life and its purpose than just about anyone. As deeply introverted as I am, it can sometimes be difficult for me to express what they mean to me.

9.      Asturias (Leyenda) by Isaac Albeniz (here performed by the genius Ana Vidovic). Learning this song on classical guitar is my white whale. I am halfway through it. 2025 is my year to master it. Mark my words. It has evaded me for so long and I am tired of seeing each year roll by without it. But I love it so much. It is my desert island track.

10.  Sous vide wand by Anova. The best steak I have ever prepared was, of all things, a London Broil. I marinated it for 24 hours, seared it, then placed it sous vide for 12 at 130 degrees. Then seared it again in butter, oil, and aromatics. It had the flavor profile of a ribeye, the tenderness of a filet, and the macros almost of chicken.

11.  America. Seriously. Our democracy is not nearly so brittle as so many of its critics have supposed. I don’t know whether her best days are ahead or behind, but I know there will be many challenges and many triumphs still to come.

12.  This blog. I have enjoyed the discipline of putting fingers to keyboard and digging into some of my thinking about banking, business ethics, central banking, financial history, weightlifting, and my own conceptions of the good, the just, and the true.

13.  Specialized Roubaix SL8 Comp. This is my road bike. It moves with a buttery propulsion that makes me forget that I am riding a bike. Next to skydiving, it is the closest thing to flying I have experienced. Just in time, too: I am going to need this smooth ride in two weeks when I attempt a century with my brother in southern Utah. Stay tuned, I will probably live to tell the tale.

14.  Gibson Les Paul Standard 60s. My third Les Paul and easily my favorite. It is the guitar for all seasons. Playing it feels like a conversation about every emotion with an intimate friend.  

15.  And, of course, nothing compares to one Nikki Marie Conti-Brown and the four boys we created together. Fatherhood and marriage are my highest expression of purpose and meaning, but I needed to be taught what both meant. I did not have successful in-home models of fatherhood or marriage. Nikki and I met at age 18, dated at 21, and married at 24. We have been teaching each other for twenty years strong. The Conti-Browns are my center; I am so grateful that I get to be one.

Happy Thanksgiving to all—see you next week.