➺ November 26, 2025

What we’re drinking about while talking. (Thanksgiving Ed.)

➽ You, Turkey
Why is America’s second-favorite bird so hard to root for?
In the 1930s, America’s wild turkey population had dropped to around 30,000—not technically extinct, but close enough that wildlife agencies panicked. Their solution was a nationwide trap-and-transfer operation. Flannel-wearing hunter-types netted the remaining birds and relocated them into the emerging postwar suburbs, which had everything a galliform could want: patchy woods, lush lawns, tipped-over birdfeeders, and no predators. Today, the healthiest wild turkey populations thrive in the least wild places (Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey), while deep-woods populations struggle. Like so many, Meleagris gallopavo has become a smug, well-fed suburbanite living a few towns over from the pheasantry.

➽ Buckled Down
Why could a pilgrim take the vig?
Sven Beckert’s new opus, Capitalism: A Global History, opens with a tart little spoonful of relish: In 1639, Robert Keayne, a Boston shopkeeper, was nearly excommunicated for marking up nails, an act Puritans condemned as “oppression.” His sin was taking profit above a “just price.”  Beckert’s point: People fail to see the degree to which capitalism has, in a relatively short time, becoming an all-consuming, supra-national operating system because they struggle to imagine alternatives. The books is (like this newsletter in many ways) an effort to describe water to fish. At 1000+ pages, it’s a very detailed description.

➽ Richter Scales
Is Chloé Zhao making a coded appeal to movie reviewers?
After gave it a cameo in Arrival, Max Richter’s 2004 string piece “On the Nature of Daylight” – written to protest the Iraq War – became Hollywood’s go-to grief needle drop. The song now features in Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, the Shakespeare in Grief adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel. Zhao credits star Jessie Buckley for turning her on to the song, but there may be more to it than that. Richter’s music is beloved by writers and editors because its perfect “working music” – long and lyrical, but without actual lyrics. Dropping OTNOD may flatter the taste of the many critics who work in small apartments (or open-plan offices) with headphones on.

➽ The Not-So-Fantastic Mr. Fox
Are kids learning about social structures from talking animals?
The new film Zootopia 2 isn’t just smut for furries, it is – like many animated films – a class primer for kiddos. Linguists in Ukraine have “discovered” that the names in the Zootopia-verse and similar movies follow a pattern that reinforces social strata. Elites get royal or occupational titles (King Triton, Mayor Lionheart) or legacy-sounding surnames (Bellwether); working-class characters get job-descriptive names (Fix-It Felix, Chuck the Truck), and main characters – often Upper Middle-coded – get human names (Nick Wilde) or mononyms (Nemo, Dory). These naming cues help children learn about relationships while implicitly teaching them who gets to break rules without consequences. (Spoiler: It’s the fox.) 

➽ Recurrent Affairs
Is the endgame of low-margin businesses killing gift giving?
Spotify will hike prices in 2026 — its third increase in three years. This is new territory and also… not. In 1904, King Gillette patented the disposable razor and got rich selling handles cheap and blade refills forever. HP followed suit in the 1990s with disposable printer cartridges. Streaming is just that model without the original purchase. That’s good for shareholders – stock prices bounce on hikes – but bad for gift givers because the “blades” model makes it hard to give a present without also giving a recurring bill. It’s why your sister won’t get you what you want.

➽ Also… We stopped printing pennies so kids are definitely gonna put them in their loafers again. ➺ Goop for dogs was inevitable. Dogs love goop. ➺ Josh is right: The ciders are finally worth drinking. ➺ It’s not just you, this time of year is tough.

The “WATCHING WATCHES SURVEY” is an attempt to understand what watches mean and who wears what type. Full results will be shared with Upper Middle Research members and those that complete the survey.

We’re thankful to those who let us be us.

Upper Middle’s “Thankful People Survey” looked at who members of the Oat Milk Elite feel thankful for having in their lives. Results suggest that though thankfulness is usually framed as a fuzzy sentiment, it’s most sharply felt (by people with their basic needs met) toward those we require to affirm and support our self-narratives.. As Charles Taylor put it: “One is a self only among other selves.”

Interestingly, a hierarchy of thankfulness persists across income, wealth, geography, and profession. That stability reflects that gratitude follows sources of real meaning.

Family

With a mean score of 2.77, children sit atop the thankfulness distribution. Most parents (82%) are “Super Thankful.” The number barely moves across income (±0.03) or geography (<0.05). Parental gratitude, by contrast, sits at 2.19, below partners (2.61) and grandparents (2.24).

The explanation is simple: relationships that shaped the early self inspire less thankfulness than those sustaining the present one. As Eva Illouz wrote: “In the family of origin, emotions are embedded in long-term dependencies and expectations, which makes them uniquely ambivalent.” Parents are ambient – premises rather than presences – while children, who arrive later and represent narrative rupture, deliver meaning by the diaper load.

This shows up in the class gradient. High earners (>$500k) are less grateful for their parents (mean 2.11) than those earning under $150k (2.26). High-autonomy professionals (finance, tech, R&D) score lower (2.12) than care-oriented ones (2.27). Those with measurable achievements display more ambivalence toward the people who first measured them.

Close Friends

Respondents were more thankful for close friends than for parents, but only when those friends provided consistent emotional or social support.

Emotional-support friends are the most valued with friends who listen (2.56) at the top followed by friends who tell the truth (2.54), make respondents laugh (2.53), and check in (2.49). Correlations (0.43–0.66) suggest respondents often imagined the same person across prompts. This explains “make me laugh” appearing in what is essentially an intimacy cluster.

Social-support friends come next. That means friends who get respondents out of the house (2.36), plan (2.21), and host (2.22). (The planner–host correlation (0.69) indicates these roles almost always overlap.) As Illouz notes, “Emotional life depends on the social arrangements that create the occasions, settings, and scripts through which feelings are shaped.” These friends maintain the calendar and, by extension, the self.

Lower on the hierarchy are friends with good taste (2.15), good takes (2.01), and those who create drama (1.34). These are semi-detached “weak tie” friends—people relied on for novelty and perspective. As Mark Granovetter wrote: “Those to whom we are weakly tied are more likely to move in circles different from our own and thus have access to information different from that which we receive.” They destabilize the self in productive ways, which is necessary. For a story to be a story, there needs to be change.

Work Friends

Workplace thankfulness correlates tightly with income and wealth. Gratitude for direct reports rises with income (mean 1.79 at <$150k → 2.20 at >$500k), as does gratitude for assistants (2.12 → 2.43). Gratitude for bosses and leaders rises more modestly (+0.21).

Respondents earning >$500k are 14% less likely to be “Very” or “Super” thankful for clients than those earning under $150k. As people gain economic autonomy, their personal narratives shift inward (“I’m a good manager”) rather than outward (“I’m good at generating leads”). These relationships feel less emotionally or narratively significant.

Thankfulness generally flows downward in organizations. On average, respondents are only somewhat grateful to bosses (~2.0) and leaders (~1.63). Variations across fields suggest gratitude is predicated on autonomy: Workers value managers who allow them to maintain a narrative of self-determination inside a hierarchy.

Conclusion

We reserve our thankfulness for those who help sustain coherent self-narratives—participants in adult identity projects. Gratitude is an index of dependency, not affection. People who have everything they need to survive and thrive are thankful for those who make their lives make sense.

As Taylor writes: “To know who you are is to be oriented in a certain way, to know what is significant. Horizons of significance are constituted by the people and practices within which we find our bearings.”

Thanksgiving is one such practice. It celebrates not just good fortune but coherent selfhood. That’s the warm feeling—one we experience and, with any luck, one we generate.

HOW TO BE UPPER MIDDLE: Always say “Thank you” if you mean it and “Thanks” if you don’t. It forces you to think about whether or not you’re actually thankful, which will make you more thoughtful toward people who have been thoughtful for you. It’s also a verbal way to leave a bad tip – always a nasty little thrill.