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Returns To Scale In Broken Windows

Alvaro de Menard | Fantastic Anachronism | 25th May 2021

Bastiat's "broken window fallacy" holds that breaking and then replacing a window might seem to generate economic activity, but sums to a net loss when opportunity cost is taken into account. But what if destruction shows positive returns to scale? Wars and natural disasters enable the rethinking and redesign of cities, systems and institutions. Might such events yield net gains in the long term? (2,900 words)

Merlin’s Owl

Lewis H. Lapham | Lapham's Quarterly | 18th May 2021

Text of a commencement speech delivered in 2003, advising perpetual curiosity. "The future turns out to be something that you make instead of find. It isn’t waiting for your arrival, either with an arrest warrant or a band, nor is it any further away than the next sentence, the next best guess, the next sketch for the painting of a life portrait that might become a masterpiece" (3,673 words)

Objects Of Fire

Tessa Love | The Believer | 1st June 2021

Collection of oral histories about treasured objects lost in the Californian wildfires. Some are substantial, such as the barn housing 12 horses set loose to take their chance when the flames swept in. Others are small and easily left behind, like a set of cutlery or a single photograph of a long dead relative. All are regretted for what they represented and for the memories they held (4,722 words)

Audio of the Week: Origin Story

Episode: "The Curious Curator Of Culinary History" | Podcast: Proof | 35m 03s

Ever wondered what Roman soldiers ate? Ask Lynn Olver, founder of the Food Timeline, a food-history website that has attracted 35 million readers and answered 25,000 questions since launch in 1999, leading with a timeline that shows when particular foods first appeared for consumption, ranging from almonds in 10,000 BCE to Kool-Aid pickles in 2007 (35m 03s)

Book of the Week: When We Cease To Understand The World

by Benjamin Labatut | Courtesy of Five Books

A series of linked pieces, part essay, part story, and part biography, about great thinkers of the 20th century on the verge of collapsing into madness as they unlock the secrets of the universe. The book offers a perspective on mathematics and physics as symbolic systems. Expressive though they may be, they are incapable of truly containing the strangeness of reality (192 pages)

Afterthought:
"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else"
— Emily Dickinson

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Is God A Liberal?

Richard Oxenberg | Philpapers | 16th May 2021 | PDF

If God exists, then God is an old-fashioned liberal — because God lets Her subjects choose how to live and what to believe. Many humans throughout history have called for divine rule, but God has never accepted the invitation. "We can assume that if God wishes to rule, God will find a way to do so. The fact that God does not rule can only be taken to signify that God does not choose to" (1,550 words)

Bird Architecture

Etienne Guyonne et al | MIT Press | 26th February 2021

How birds build their nests. Thrushes lay twigs which they cover with moss and mud. Penguins pile up pebbles. Swallows are "expert masons" who "aggregate mudballs". Malay swiftlets use their own hardened saliva to make nests which often end up in bird's nest soup. Cuckoos steal nests from other birds. Ostriches don't need nests at all, because they bury their eggs in the ground (1,100 words)

The Spectre Of Mannetjies Roux

Robina Marks | Africa Is A Country | 14th May 2021

Flying across Africa, an ambassador reflects on the roaming population of white South African men who, despite everything, still benefit from the residue of colonial influence. "They are not a likeable bunch, but then again, they are not trying to be liked. They seem caught in a time warp in this new Africa, where the old rules around race and power no longer work in their favour" (1,502 words)

Audio of the Week: Inner Voice

Episode: "Shipworm" | Podcast: Shipworm | 115m 57s

Experiment with the podcast form that claims to be the "first of its kind feature-length audio movie". The result is a long form audio drama with cinematic sound design that stars Broadway actors. It follows the fortunes of protagonist Wallace, who awakes to find that he has been fitted with an invisible earpiece. This acts as a conduit for a mysterious voice that now controls his life (115m 57s)

Book of the Week: Nothing To Envy

by Barbara Demick | Courtesy of Five Books

A masterwork of narrative nonfiction on life in North Korea, built from the harrowing stories of defectors who lived through famine, brainwashing, and desperate attempts to escape. Of particular interest is the final section, where Demick pulls back the curtain to reflect on the limitations of getting access only through defectors, and to discuss how life in South Korea has affected them (316 pages)

Afterthought:
"The trouble with psychology is that it doesn't take human nature into account"
— Ruth Rendell

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Care And Keeping Of Mythological Apparitions

Sean Flynn | Literary Hub | 13th May 2021

A farmer discovers the pleasures of acquiring a peacock. It "patrols the yard like a sentry in dress uniform, high-stepping through the irises", throwing up a "fabulous spray of feathers" every now and again, seemingly with no thought other than to show that such events are possible — "inevitable, and yet a surprise every time". A peacock is "not a bird that one possesses, so much as experiences" (1,900 words)

New York’s King Of Russian Hair

Vijai Maheshwari | Narratively | 13th May 2021

Confessions of a hair-based hustler. A writer, laid off from a Ukrainian magazine in a recession, becomes a supplier of Russian hair to New York wigmakers. This hair is "very blond and displayed in glass vitrines, like cold cuts at a deli". The men who deal in it love to stroke it. Briefly, he corners the market, before a revolution takes the hair export business mainstream and leaves him behind (5,167 words)

Construction, Efficiency, And Production

Brian Potter | Construction Physics | 4th May 2021

Why construction projects are intrinsically inefficient, at least when measured against Adam Smith's platonic pin factory. Throughput is "extremely low", cycle time is "incredibly high", work-in-process is "enormous", and any construction site is "rife with variability". Work rarely if ever follows a "well-defined plan", but consists of constant accommodations, shifts, and improvisations (2,500 words)

Audio of the Week: Field Kitchen

Episode: "In Search Of Mycotopia" | Podcast: Roots And All | 32m 00s

Interview with mushroom obsessive Doug Bierend, who says fungi are too often viewed merely as a curiosities and commodities for human consumption, rather than as an ecosystem in their own right. He doesn't quite propose that humans should "live like fungus", but he does think we could learn much of value from the ways that fungi manage to coexist humbly with the rest of nature (32m 00s)

Book of the Week: The Next 500 Years

by Christopher Mason | Courtesy of Five Books

The case for space travel beyond our solar system as a categorical imperative. The author, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medicine who studies the effect of space on the body, goes through exactly what the plan for the next 500 years should be. “Life cannot remain on Earth, because the sun will eventually over-heat the Earth, likely engulf the Earth, shrivel into a White Dwarf, and die. Earth is the only home we have ever known, and if it remains that way, it will also be our grave” (256 pages)

Afterthought:
"Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them"
— Dion Boucicault

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The Inexplicable World Of Dowsing

Dan Schwartz | Outside | 3rd May 2021

Is the ancient practice of dowsing for water a science, a kind of magic, or a charlatan's trick? This writer investigates, and ends up dowsing successfully himself. "The rods begin to close... They close like strong hands have grabbed them and are twisting them in. They close like rain must fall and wind must blow, like it’s their natural course, like they always have and always will" (5,152 words)

The Biggest Churches In The World

James Cameron | Stained Glass Attitudes | 7th May 2021

Succinct and illustrated account of how the Norman conquest of England in 1066 produced an extraordinary programme of cathedral building, resulting in "a string of churches of often dizzying scale and increasing complexity". As well as laying the architectural foundations for future Gothic additions, these structures expressed an imperial might that harked back to the Roman Empire (962 words)

The Origin Of Covid

Nicholas Wade | Bulletin Of Atomic Scientists | 5th May 2021

Wade, who knows his stuff, weighs evidence that the Covid virus originated in the wild, perhaps among Chinese bats, against evidence that the virus was leaked unintentionally from a Wuhan laboratory that was conducting research financed by the US government. Wade warns against drawing final conclusions, but the preponderance of evidence in favour of a lab leak is overwhelming (11,100 words)

Audio of the Week: Song Wars

Episode: "Adam Buxton" | Podcast: Tape Notes | 122m 54s

Long but worth every minute. This nerdy show about music production welcomes cult British radio favourite Adam Buxton, now best known for his eponymous podcast. Over two hours, Buxton takes listeners through his personal archive of jingles and comic songs. An absolute goldmine of behind the scenes detail for fans, but very enjoyable even if Buxton is entirely new to you (122m 54s)

Book of the Week: Conflicted

by Ian Leslise | Courtesy of Five Books

A British journalist who sets out to reduce personal conflict discovers, in the course of his research, that it’s essential to our well-being. Arguments, it turns out, make us closer to our loved ones and and more creative at work. Passive aggression, however, serves no useful purpose, merely conveying that "we are hacked off but are too anxious at the prospect of confrontation to be upfront about it” (257 pages)

Afterthought:
"Truth springs from argument amongst friends"
— David Hume

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A Grawlix

Keith Houston | Shady Characters | 29th April 2021

Brief lexicon of comic-book art. Brif­fits are "little clouds that show where a fast-mov­ing ob­ject (such as a fist) star­ted its arc". Hites, dites and vites are "lines show­ing the dir­ec­tion (ho­ri­zontal, di­ag­onal or ver­tical) in which an ob­ject moved". Squeans are star­bursts around a person's head signalling intoxication. A grawlix is a "pile of non-al­pha­nu­meric char­ac­ters rep­res­enting a pro­fan­ity" (950 words)

Can Single Cells Learn?

Catherine Offord | The Scientist | 1st May 2021

In the 1960s, psychologist Beatrice Gelber conducted experiments that seemed to show single celled microorganisms like protozoa forming associations after training, or "learning" to expect rewards from certain scenarios. Her findings were highly controversial and largely buried, but are now being revisited as scientific interest in artificial intelligence expands the concept of memory (3,774 words)

The Dangers Of Consistency

Charles Moore | Claremont Review Of Books | 27th April 2021

Critique of a biography of Adolf Hitler. This review offers great insight into the chronicler's art. Repellant as the exercise may be in this case, it is necessary to sympathise with one's subject. "Without such sympathy, there can be no full understanding. The biographer must enter his subject’s mind — the darker, the harder — and try to travel with him on his life’s journey" (2,209 words)

Audio of the Week: Heir Apparent

Episode: "Part One" | Podcast: Little Boots | 50m 37s

Drama set in 37 CE, in the dying days of the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius. This first episode is concerned with the murky succession of 24 year old Gaius, better known to history as Caligula. This podcast has been written and recorded much like a play, with minimal sound effects, so listening gives the pleasing sensation of being in the audience at the theatre (50m 37s)

Book of the Week: Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue

by Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod | Courtesy of Five Books

The seemingly impossible has been achieved: a book about taxes that’s funny. The authors are economists (one in academia, one at the IMF) who truly delight in fiscal history. “The intellectual case for using carbon taxes to save the planet from climate risk," they say, "is much the same as that for the tax on beards introduced in Russia by Peter the Great in order to save Russia from the boyars” (398 pages)

Afterthought:
"A man is what he thinks about all day long"
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Human-Monkey Chimeras

Julian Savulescu & Julian Koplin | Practical Ethics | 20th April 2021

Scientists report promising results from experiments to combine human stem-cells with monkey embryos. The immediate aim is to grow organs in animals suitable for transplanting into humans. But the ultimate product could be a living chimera, part-human and part-monkey. Horrific in a way, but also salutary if this forces us to recognise that humans are on a continuum with other animals (1,200 words)

A Kind Of Packaged Ageing Process

Jan Morris | Paris Review | 23rd April 2021

Short postcard from the late writer Jan Morris about a Mediterranean cruise that she took for "convalescent reasons". Initially sceptical about the pressure on the elderly passengers to "face up to decay", she is ultimately won over. "The sprightly enthusiasm of it all had seduced me: the fertile mix of Carnival and Palm Court, and the determination to make the most of everything" (977 words)

The Failure Of Nuclear Power

Jason Crawford | Roots Of Progress | 16th April 2021

Nuclear power could substitute fully and more cheaply for fossil fuels, but it has been priced out of America's energy market by a piling-on of misconceived health and safety regulations treating any risk of radiation as dangerous. We know enough now to design disaster-proof reactors; but the taboos are too strong. Bolder, and probably poorer, countries will have to lead the way (4,600 words)

Audio of the Week: Dawn Chorus

Episode: "Beautiful Swamp" | Podcast: Science Talk | 36m 01s

Combination of a soundscape and a nature walk. The host, an ecologist and field recordist, sets out to capture the sound of wildlife at dawn in a nature reserve in northeastern Louisiana, USA. The habitat includes flooded forest and is home to grey tree frogs, crickets and many species of bird. Their calls are enhanced by the inclusion of gentle explanatory interjections from the expert (36m 01s)

Book of the Week: Malevolent Republic

by K.S. Komireddi | Courtesy of Five Books

An Indian essayist embarks on a scathing history of his country since independence, explaining the various forces and personalities that got India to its current point, as "a brutally exclusionary Hindu-supremacist state" being "run by bigots dedicated to destroying all that made it." Modi’s path to power seems almost incidental given the missteps of the preceding prime ministers—from Indira Gandhi, a ruthless leader “devoured by the ogre she fostered”, to Manmohan Singh, politically “the least qualified candidate for the job” (210 pages)

Afterthought:
"Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience"
— Georges-Louis Leclerc

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Signs That Make A City

Owen Hatherley | Tribune | 15th April 2021

Lovingly created signage makes a city look lovely and creative. Cheap and nasty signage makes a city look cheap and nasty. The medium is the message. Berlin sends all the right messages, with well-turned fonts and neons; East Berlin copied West Berlin's aesthetics, so the reunified city is surprisingly cohesive. Pre-war London signs were gorgeous; post-war London signs are tawdry  (1,300 words)

Building A Chinese WWE

Kenrick Davis | Sixth Tone | 19th April 2021

China’s tiny professional wrestling scene is attracting a fanbase by putting a local twist on western tropes. "The villain, Steve the English as a Second Language Teacher, cements his bad guy status by bringing textbooks for the IELTS — an English exam loathed by Chinese students — into the ring. He battles heroes such as Bamboo Crusher, a fighter with painted panda eye marks" (3,058 words)

Getting Sick For Medical Research

Hannah Thomasy | Undark | 7th April 2021

Horribly gripping. What it's like to be a volunteer in a "challenge trial". Your body is "challenged", by being infected with germs, or parasites, so that your reactions, and the effects of unproven drugs, can be monitored. "Bernot couldn’t see the larvae, but he could soon feel them: a tingling, itchy sensation as the worm larvae wriggled through his skin and into his bloodstream" (2,700 words)

Audio of the Week: Dairy Free

Episode: "California Milk Processor Board 'Got Milk?'" | Podcast: Tagline | 65m 09s

Detailed dissection of a 1990s American advertising campaign. The "got milk?" slogan and accompanying TV adverts — the most famous of which was directed by an early career Michael Bay — became ubiquitous in pop culture. This show zooms in on the craft and conflicts involved in creating such a campaign, and asks whether it was actually effective in getting more people to drink milk (65m 09s)

Book of the Week: War and Peace

by Leo Tolstoy | Courtesy of Five Books

A Tolstoy biographer (and translator of Anna Karenina) gives her view on the best translation of War and Peace. When recent revisions by an American scholar are taken into account, the 1922 translation by the husband and wife team Louise and Aylmer Maude comes top, and deserving of the title 'definitive'. "The Maudes both spent long years living in Moscow and spoke flawless Russian. Although neither came from a literary background, they knew Tolstoy well"  (1392 pages)

Editor's Note: The conversation between Robert Cottrell and Stephen Dubner on all things Freakonomics is now available to watch online.

Afterthought:
"It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting"
— Tom Stoppard

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Deconstructing Disney

Jeanna Kadlec | Longreads | 13th April 2021

Dissection of how pop culture communicates power, as shown by Disney's use of queer stereotypes to separate villains from heroes. The antagonist is the character who will not assimilate into the happily ever after. "In Pocahontas, Disney pulls off the magic trick of telling a story about colonisation and genocide where the only thing that’s actually punished is the 'wrong' kind of masculinity" (2,999 words)

Hummingbirds And The Ecstatic Moment

Jeff VanderMeer | Orion | 7th April 2021

As a sickly child, this novelist was dragged around the world by warring parents engaged in a "ten year divorce". Bedridden in Cuzco, Peru, he had a sudden vision of two hummingbirds at the window, a pair of "iridescent flames, feathered in red and gold and black and emerald, hovering there". Rare, direct writing about craft and a writer's perpetual attempt to verify an unreliable memory (3,108 words)

The Real Book

Mikel McCavana | 99% Invisible | 6th April 2021

Unveiling the "bootleg bible of jazz", an anthology of sheet music for "hundreds of common jazz tunes" compiled by two students at Berklee and known to all jazz musicians since the 1970s as The Real Book. It was photocopied and passed from hand to hand because it was illegal, a "totally unlicensed publication", created "without permission from music publishers or songwriters" (2,270 words)

Audio of the Week: Locked Out

Episode: "Meet The Stranded Australians" | Podcast: The Signal | 17m 40s

Elsewhere, the way that Australia has handled the pandemic is much admired — a draconian quarantine system and swift local lockdown measures have meant many aspects of life in person can resume. But for some Australian expats stuck abroad, this regime has effectively locked them out of their own country. This is the moving personal story of one couple trapped in the Covid bureaucracy (17m 40s)

Book of the Week: Breaking the Social Media Prism

by Chris Bail | Courtesy of Five Books

A sociologist who runs a ‘polarisation lab’ takes issue with some of the common social media narratives we now take for granted. Echo chambers, foreign interference, microtargeting, all-knowing algorithms: little of it is backed up by any evidence. “Our focus upon Silicon Valley obscures a much more unsettling truth: the root source of political tribalism on social media lies deep inside ourselves” (132 pages)

Afterthought:
"The correct lesson to learn from surprises is that the world is surprising"
— Morgan Housel

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The Case Against Shakespeare

Allan Stratton | The Walrus | 31st March 2021

Playwright argues that diminishing the role of Shakespeare in literary education would increase the chance of school students developing a love of literature. The Bard's plays have "too much baggage". His sonnets can stay, though. "We should focus on the books most likely to spur kids’ love of the written word. Shakespeare may be our finest writer, but what schools do in his name is a crime" (1,328 words)

Unwanted Corkpull

Kelly Pendergrast | Real Life | 1st April 2021

Arguably the best article I have ever read about the moral economy of corkscrews (or corkpulls, as they are called here). They are skinny and they break, or they are swole and they clutter up the kitchen drawer. Worst-case scenario, it's a big one, it's a gift, and you can never throw it away. Rivalled in its rivalrousness only by old extension power cords and Container Store paper-towel holders (3,500 words)

Tales From The Election

Vitalik Buterin | 18th February 2021

The inventor of Ethereum tries his hand at betting on politics, and wonders why he won so easily. "The game is very lopsided in favor of those who are trying to push the probability away from the extreme value. And this explains not just Trump; it's also the reason why all sorts of popular-among-a-niche candidates with no real chance of victory frequently get winning probabilities as high as 5%" (5,200 words)

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Audio of the Week: Yes Chef

Episode: "Fronds With Benefits (With Jason Mantzoukas)" | Podcast: Home Cooking | 50m32s

This show about home cookery was one of the only good things to happen in 2020. It isn't publishing new regularly episodes anymore — although it's worth subscribing in the hope that a surprise special will drop one day — but relistening to Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway chat about what they like to cook and eat is still a delight. This episode with universal podcast guest Jason Mantzoukas is a particular highlight, as he brings his novice questions to the hosts, but you can also select one from the feed at random and still enjoy it (50m32s)

Book of the Week: Piranesi

by Susanna Clarke | Courtesy of Five Books

A lone amnesiac wanders the infinite, ruined halls of an unknown world, sharing detailed notes on ‘The House’ and what can be found there with ‘The Other’ – his only company, unless you include the thirteen skeletons secreted between the statues of the halls and vestibules. “Since the World began it is certain that there have existed fifteen people," he writes. “Possibly there have been more; but I am a scientist and must proceed according to the evidence” (272 pages)

Afterthought:
"A ship is safe in harbour, but that's not what ships are for"
— John Shedd

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Fighting Russia, Arming Ukraine

Anatole Lieven | Responsible Statecraft | 23rd March 2021

The new Cold War, updated. "A tacit agreement has been reached between NATO and Russia: NATO will not defend any non-NATO country that Russia might actually attack, and Russia will not attack any country that NATO might actually defend". But rivalrous flashpoints remain, such as Transdniestr. If Moldova and Ukraine try to blockade Transdniestr, Russia will go to war, and win (1,120 words)

The Dao Of Daos

Packy McCormick | Not Boring | 22nd March 2021

If you passed up a chance to buy Bitcoin when it was thirty cents, and only heard about NFTs after the $69 million sale at Christie's, you may now be wondering what comes next. The answer may well be DAOs, and here is an accessible guide for the general reader. In brief: A DAO is "a group organized around a mission that coordinates through a shared set of rules enforced on a blockchain" (6,500 words)

Why Bumblebees Love Cats

Stefan Mancuso | Longreads | 23rd March 2021

Just-so tales from the world of evolution. "Mice are among the principal enemies of bumblebees. They eat their larvae and destroy their nests. On the other hand, as everyone knows, mice are the favorite prey of cats. One consequence of this is that, in proximity to those villages with the most cats, one finds fewer mice and more bumblebees. So far so clear? Good, let’s go on" (3,300 words)

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Audio Of The Week: On Stage

Episode: "Hamlet's 'Advice To The Players' With Randall Duk Kim And Annie Occhiogrosso" | Podcast: The Working Actor's Journey | 22m08s

Practical advice podcast in which experienced actors share their wisdom with the next generation in their industry. This is a short episode, extracted from a longer conversation elsewhere on the feed. It focuses in on a particular text: the monologue from Hamlet in which the hero gives advice to the actors he has hired. "Let your own discretion be your tutor," he says, and the experts here speak to the necessity for actors to hone their own sense of discretion — an instinct and judgement to what each moment of a play needs (22m08s)

Book Of The Week: On the Ho Chi Minh Trail

by Sherry Buchanan | Courtesy of Five Books

Stories from the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the legendary 10,000 mile network used by the North Vietnamese to supply the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. Sixty thousand ‘Youth Volunteers’, many of them teenage girls and young women, defused bombs, repaired roads and tunnels, and were critical to victory despite “the mass message that the conflict was primarily a man’s war, pumped-up, vulgar, a telegenic dystopia accompanied by raucous rock ’n’ roll.” (252 pages)

Afterthought:
"The worse the villain, the better the film"
— Alfred Hitchcock

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