The news of the unexpected death of our own Michael Brooks has gutted us all at Jacobin. Brooks, who (among many other things) cohosted the Majority Report and his own The Michael Brooks Show, also contributed to the magazine and cohosted our Weekends show with Ana Kasparian on YouTube.

He meant so much to so many of us in left media — not just because his politics were good, or because of his deep commitment to true internationalism, but also because he was a genuinely wonderful person. Michael was incredibly sweet, caring, and hilarious, a genuine joy to speak to and be around. He was one of the best human beings I’ve ever met, and I still can’t think about the world without him without tears coming to my eyes.

Even people who had never met Michael felt this same sense of how tremendous a person as well as a thinker he was. I put out a call for viewers’ and listeners’ remembrances of Michael and reflections on how much he meant to them, and I received a flood of emails. We reproduce a few of them here.