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🗣️ Midnight Is Optional

🗣️ Midnight Is Optional

🕰️ A quick wrap-up before 2026.

Alex Y
December 31, 2025

Hi, Alex here,

This is SpeakEasy, turning small talk into smart talk.

My brother's over visiting Japan this week, which means less screen time, more food, and a slightly shorter issue than usual — you're welcome 😉.

So instead of the usual deep dive, let's close out the year with:

a quick thank-you
a look back
a few favourites
and your honest answer…

Then we can all go and try to stay awake until midnight (probability for me: low)

THANKS!

🎯 Why I Started SpeakEasy

I started SpeakEasy for one simple reason:

Plenty of capable people struggle with communication — and nobody talks about it properly.

Most advice online is either:

Painfully obvious but useless ("Just be confident!" Cool, thanks.)
Weirdly aggressive ("Dominate the room." Practice not blinking.)
Or just plain ridiculous ("Hack your conversational matrix and WIN LIFE in 30 days...")

SpeakEasy is my attempt to do something different.

Not to "fix" anyone.

Just to help you connect better when you open your mouth, using real language, culture, humour, and curiosity.
Practical ideas you can use the same day.

If it helps you avoid an awkward silence anywhere or say something better than "Err…" — it's doing its job.

Thank You (genuinely). 🙏

So, honestly — thank you for being here.

For opening the emails.
For clicking, replying, voting in polls, and occasionally telling me, "That was weirdly useful."

For sticking around even when I went long, got dark, or wandered into AI bots, biscuits, or why Christmas has gone feral.

SpeakEasy only works because it's a two-way thing.
(Just like communication.)

I write it — you shape it.

So thank you for reading and for giving it your time in a year when everyone's attention is pulled in 12 directions at once.

It really does mean a lot.

SPEAKEASY 2025

Option 1: Descriptive (accessible) "Purple upward-trending arrow graph on grid background with text 'STAT ATTACK' in bold yellow letters

📊 SpeakEasy 2025 — by the numbers

Because everyone secretly loves stats (as long as they’re quick):

51 issues
Once a week. Every week (even vertigo couldn’t stop me)
~65,000 words
Or roughly one short novel about awkward conversations.
2 → 154 subscribers
Slow. Organic. Real humans (I checked).
74% open rate
That puts SpeakEasy in the top 10% globally (out of 75,000 newsletters).
36% click-through rate
Top 5% globally (you're a clicky bunch — and if you happen to click an ad or two in 2026, I won't complain 😉).

Thanks again for reading, opening, and actually engaging.

On that…

SpeakEasy Self-Assessment

🗳️ How often did you actually use something from SpeakEasy this year

2025 FAVES

✅ The Inevitable List!

The end of the year is all about lists!

Here’s mine:

Favourite film: Weapons
Horror at its best. Even my wife watched it.
Worst film: F1
Fast cars. Zero soul. And Brad Pitt is an a-hole in this, right?
Favourite TV show: Paradise
No spoilers here…
Worst TV show: Selling Sunset
Still happening. Still shouting.
Most clicked SpeakEasy issue: Comrade Trump
Guess people really wanted to know if he was a Russian spy.
Least clicked: Designer Babies, Inc
Be honest – what did I do wrong here?

💬 YOUR TURN: What were your faves of the year? Hit reply and let me know!

LAST WEEK

🗳️ POLL: Which topic are you MOST sick of hearing about in 2025?

A) 🍊 Trump (three more years of this?!) — 38%
B) 🤖 AI (yes, it's taking all our jobs. We know.) — 23%
C) 🎤 Taylor Swift (just wait for the wedding…) — 15%
D) 🚀 Tech billionaires (Musk's latest… anything) — 8%
E) 💬 Other (leave a comment!) — 15%

💬 Your Two Cents

B.A: “Everyone complains about AI (me included), but then continuously sends AI slop in social media chats (not me). Drives me mad. Go outside and look at birds. At least those are guaranteed real.”
M.M: “SO SICK OF ALL OF THOSE TOPICS!!!”
S.Y: “Nothing more to say, is there?”