Adventures in Carbondale ... and Canada [#137]
After watching more than six dozen TED Talks, my brain is expanded but also a mushy vat of Cheez Whiz.
Hello from LA!
Back home after back-to-back trips. The solar eclipse was especially memorable and felt quite spiritual. We flew from Texas to Carbondale, Illinois, on the morning of eclipse day to experience the wonder. While Texas was in the path of totality, widespread cloud cover prevented many Texans from the fullest total eclipse experience. I later learned that astrophysicist Nour Raouafi, who heads the Parker Solar Probe mission, was also in Carbondale of all places that day, on an invite from NASA. I interviewed him at TED last week and let me just say, that man is more excited about the sun than anyone I’ve ever met. It reminded me of that one much memed scene of The Office:
Sorry. I’ll shut up about the sun.
Reading
The Paste Magazine evisceration of the new Taylor Swift album, which went out without a byline for fear of the rage of Swifties. Dating apps are on the decline. More teens are trying choking during sex, to some worrying effects. Brie and Camenbert cheeses might disappear?! I am fretting.
And a shout out to journalist and author
who is leading the body liberation reporting beat. I join her in that space in much of my more recent work. Flawless is ostensibly a book about Korean beauty culture but I also see it as a book about consent — how much we’re actually consenting when we regiment our bodies toward standards of smoothness, firmness, youth, and especially … thinness. This NYT profile of Virginia draws a link between the familiar quest for thinness, and heterosexual marriage, as markers of success. She talks about how seeking (or maintaining) those often fails the women who aren’t finding either very fulfilling:“We would all do a lot better to be less afraid of divorce, just as we would do a lot better to be less afraid of being fat,” she said. “What if you just let go?”
I relate! While everyone’s situation is different, I consider it a privilege that I was financially secure enough to go through the expenses of divorce and shapeshifting a family. Plus, it’s been nothing but expansive on the other side.
Werk Werk Werk
Spent last week in Vancouver at the “big TED,” seeing 76 TED talks in total, ranging from the great improviser Reggie Watts, to couples therapists John and Julie Gottman, to a much-hyped but ultimately milquetoast Bill Ackman. Here’s a look at the amusements besides watching people give speeches…
The interviews I conducted will come out with the release of the fresh talks from the conference, which drip out over the course of months. But the standout conversations were with illustrator Amy Kurzweil, from the New Yorker, and another artist, the playwright David Finnigan. His brain at 8am was more 10x more agile than mine, so I could barely keep up. Can’t wait for you to hear it.
Following Up From Last Time
Thank you for indulging my change of format in the last newsletter, as I wanted to go longer about a couple wider debates going on in my filter bubble — the one about social media and kids, and the one about my former editor at NPR. That editor, Uri Berliner, resigned last week when no one wanted to work with him anymore.
To put a period on that drama, The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple actually went through the Berliner complaints and ended his column with this summation:
“NPR, as it turns out, is an analogue to nothing — a sui generis outlet driven by old-fashioned journo-principles, an aversion to offending anyone and a steady propensity to annoy listeners. Surely, it has many things to apologize for, though an on-air campaign to oust a president isn’t among them.”
And on the social media and teens front, more scientists and news stories have challenged Jonathan Haidt’s proposals to age-gate social media. The Daily Beast put it this way:
“Haidt argues that we should keep kids away from social media [because] even if he’s wrong, the “cost” is minimal. The scariest part is that the cost of being wrong is not minimal. Indeed, it appears to be extremely high. If he’s wrong, it means parents, politicians, teachers, and more do not tackle the real root causes of teenage mental health issues.”
Watch and/or Listen
Via
, this video of a Rube Goldberg machine, assembled as a tribute to the thousand ad and design agencies that as of today have foresworn using their talents on behalf of fossil fuels.
Really want to see Civil War, not for its message on politics, but for what it says about journalism. Curious. Have you seen it? What do you think?
As always, I welcome comments, quips, memes, links and the like.
More next time,
E
A bit of a tangent, but I recently ran across the following video by a South Korean dance school. I found it downright inspiring that, about a minute in, a woman who does not conform to the usual "Flawless" standards is shown giving a dance performance as graceful and beautiful as any: https://youtu.be/hFRqeON6UxU?si=1v5RxkD_n5pH1hL5
RE: the chyron, thank you I so needed that!
I have seen Civil War and posted that it's 'tomorrow's news today' on Instagram . Sadly, with the Supreme Court preparing the coronation of 45 I'm afraid we're approaching a man bites dog moment.