Tom's Top 3: July 7, 2026
HOTD, Hangouts, and Haaland
Hi everyone! Welcome to this week’s installment of Tom’s Top 3 Tuesdays, where I highlight three pieces of content (Podcasts/Shows/Movies/Articles/etc.) that I found interesting or noteworthy from the prior week.
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[Podcast] Scriptnotes - Thinking on Your Feet with Ryan Condal
Many are saying that Sunday’s House of the Dragon episode was the best episode to date. I was a huge fan myself, which is why I was excited to see today’s Scriptnotes episode with its showrunner, Ryan Condal.
Condal had an interesting path to HBO, starting off his career in marketing and writing spec scripts at night. Condal and Maizin, both seasoned HBO showrunners, talked some inside baseball on what it is like constructing and operating in a writers room.
[YouTube] Variety - Peter Dinklage & Kit Harington | Actors on Actors
Rejuvenated from this season of HOTD, I just recently started rewatching Game of Thrones. It’s perfectly timed with my finding of this Actors on Actors piece, with two of my favorite actors from the show.
I thought this was an interesting conversation, structured more like a couple of friends catching up after a while apart. They touch on topics ranging from getting their starts as actors (Dinklage had a much tougher time), theater, Harington’s rehab, and fatherhood. Harington, now 39, is right about the age of Dinklage when he first started on Game of Thrones, which made for an interesting dynamic.
With Norway’s exciting success in the FIFA World Cup, I found this post to be particularly thought provoking.
Stulberg lays out a number of things the US could learn from Norway’s philosophy on youth athletics. It seems like the Norwegian approach centers on inclusivity and prioritizing fun, rather than the focus on competition and specialization that leads to 70% of American kids dropping out of sports by age 13.
Looking back on my own athletics journey, I regret specializing as early as I did. I wish I played multiple sports throughout high school.
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