As the crisp chill begins to grip us and out nights lengthen, I feel compelled to reflect for the third time this year on what I’ve been consuming - with my mind that is. I hope others find these recaps interesting and, perhaps, useful for guiding their own reading selections. Regardless, I will continue them as they help me order my thoughts and remember what I’ve tried to stuff into my head. What follows will include a lot of lists of links.
Here’s the link to my half-year update (ICYMI):
Reading and Listening (Books)
As of September 30th, I have completed 67 books for the year, including 21 over the last three months. Most of these I consumed as audiobooks, though I have several advanced reader copies of ebooks/print books that I am well into, and I’m trying to wrap up that reading and assemble my thoughts in order to get reviews out. I’ve detailed the rough order that I plan to get to these in a recent Substack Note. It’s been a busy month of September (foreshadowing some of the later content of this post), which has put me behind some with reading.
Of the books from the last quarter, there were a lot of excellent reads. If I had to recommend just one from the list, it would have to be David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed. It is a magnificent work of cultural history on the settlement and founding of America. It is absolutely illuminating about a great deal of the peculiar aspects of American identity and our sociopolitical milieu. Fischer’s tracing of the durable effects of the founding folkways from peoples who now represent an increasingly small portion of the country’s population makes for an intoxicating read.
Book Reviews:
Another way I try and stay on top of my reading is to turn out reviews! Here’s a chronological look (by reading completion date) at the one’s I’ve reviewed this quarter (on Substack or Goodreads).
The Modern Scholar by Harold Bloom (lecturers)
The Western Literary Canon in Context by John M. Bowers (lectures)
How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement by Fredrik deBoer
As mentioned above, I have a number of other book reviews in the works, including several titles that have just become available or will be published soon. I am especially exciting about A Theory of Everyone by Michael Muthukrishna, which is in part an extension of the Cultural Brain Hypothesis (CBH) and other ideas from the study of gene-culture coevolution, and Free Agents by Kevin J. Mitchell, which is a scientific defense of human agency against the popular deterministic model. Mitchell’s book shares several similarities just Substacker Erik Hoel’s recent book The World Behind the World but it focused on how brain evolution and our neurobiology enables (free) will. Interestingly, both have or are being released in a similar timeframe as Robert Sapolsky’s Determined, which obviously makes the determinist’s case.
Cancer Genomes:
In this past quarter, I initiated a series on cancer genomics that I aim to make accessible to an educated lay audience. I started this as an effort to do more science writing here on Substack. The first part of the series is focused on hereditary cancer syndromes. Here’s a look at the series up to this point:
Podcasts (Listening)
On the podcast front, I recently received some bad news. Google is shutting down its Google Podcast app, which is what I typically use for listening and curating my podcast subscriptions. I should have been prepared for this as Google kills a lot of its products, especially those that aren’t a part of its main business. Based on that news, I’ve started to transition more of my listening to Spotify. I haven’t introduced that many new podcasts in the last quarter, but there are a few new shows I’d like to highlight:
What Really Matters with Walter Russell Mead
Starring Walter Russell Mead, a historian, pundit, and popular author, and hosted by Jeremy Stern, the deputy editor of Tablet magazine, this show is primarily commentary on recent events in geopolitics and current affairs. Each episode is about 30-40 minutes long and is released weekly. Some of the recent episodes include discussions of Chinese real estate, the Sino-Russia alliance, the God wars in Africa, and America's Blue Model society.
Econ 102 with Noah Smith and Erik Torenberg
This show covers the economic aspects of various topics in the news, technology, and business. It features Noah Smith, an economist and Substack writer, and Erik Torenberg, an investor and co-founder of Village Global. The podcast episodes are about 60 minutes long and are released weekly. Some of the recent episodes include discussions on why the next age of globalization will be awesome, why Vivek Ramaswamy is the wrong candidate, insights on why the US economy is doing great, and why China is primed for economic trouble.
The Studies Show from Tom Chivers and Stuart Ritchie
This show features two science writers, Tom and Stuart, who discuss controversial scientific issue in a data-forward way. The podcast aims to help listeners critically evaluate the scientific claims made in popular media and journal publications. Given Stuart’s background in criticizing methods lacking rigor, the content can often be described as metascience. The podcast episodes are about 60 minutes long and are released weekly. Some of the recent episodes include discussions on why nuclear power has a bad reputation, why the AI apocalypse debate is so polarized, why GLP-1 agonists are safe and effective for weight loss, and why IQ tests are a useful tool that is not racist or sexist.
In addition to these recommendations, I’d like to call attention to a few other specific episodes of various podcasts/audio essays that are worth listening to:
Book Review: The Educated Mind from the Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Book Review: The WEIRDest People in the World from the Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Analysis and commentary of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy from the Very Bad Wizards podcast part 1 and part 2
Director Continetti on The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg
Why Americans are Losing Faith in College on Plain English with Derek Thompson
Family Vacation
I had the good fortune of taking a family vacation to Europe earlier this month. We spent a week in Mallorca and then a week in Budapest. It was a wonderful, sometimes challenging, adventure for the family before the fall birthdays and winter holidays. Circumnavigating Budapest made me wonder if its planning would have been something Jane Jacobs appreciated. There are definitely certain elements she would have cherished (the large side-walks and density) and others that would have bothered her (the top-down uniformity of building on the Danube).
Please enjoy some pictures from the trip:
Thank you for reading Holodoxa!