Top Of The Week: Freud, Order, Landfill, Neck, Vienna
Is Curiosity Good For Us?
Adam Phillips | London Review Of Books | 1st November 2026 | B
“Curiosity is not merely the antidote to certainty or absolute truth, or to passion or conviction, but also the antidote to modesty, humility, self-doubt and knowing what you want; the antidote, that is to say, to any kind of knowingness. This is why the psychoanalytic phrase for curiosity is free association. What Freud, like everyone else, cannot promise is that our curiosity is always good for us” (3,400 words)
Through The Nazi Lens
Katya Hoyer & Madeleine Johnson | Zeitgeist | 1st November 2026 | U
Documentaries about the Nazi era use images from the Nazis’ own propaganda material, of endless rows of soldiers marching in formation, shiny youth in uniform, order and discipline. Amateur snapshots discovered by chance of the 1934 Nuremberg rally show portly men, unruly families, and litter in the arena. “By looking at the Nazi regime through its own lens, are we perpetuating its propaganda?” (1,400 words)
The Land And The Landfill
Russell Jacobs | Urban Omnibus | 5th November 2026 | U
Naturalist checks in on NYC's former landfill sites. "The huge hill was bursting across its slopes with swathes of bright purple and yellow, the asters and goldenrods blooming together in magnificent bands. If One World Trade Center hadn’t been poking up above the hillside, this might have been Montana or Wyoming. It felt like a wholly novel landscape, a sort of urban prairie seated over an estuary" (1,600 words)
The Self-Making World
Jessica Riskin | Aeon | 2nd November 2026 | U
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is most remembered for being wrong about the giraffe. He suggested that giraffes had elongated their necks by stretching to reach leaves in high branches, small changes through each successive generation culminating in their long necks. This was seen as a joke at the turn of the 20C. His radical idea that organisms actively remake themselves is being more seriously considered today (4,600 words)
Tour Of An Old City
Ingeborg Bachmann | Granta | 4th November 2026 | U
Austrian poet takes a tour of Vienna with a bus load of American tourists. Horrors ensue. "‘Here you can see the hearts of all the Habsburgian emperors and empresses, archdukes and archduchesses.’ A drunk American starts to laugh, the petite Miss drops the Beethoven mask and exclaims ‘Gosh!’ All of us want to get out of the crypts, the older American, who still liked the Merry Widow, has to throw up" (1,700 words)
Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.
Podcast: The Rise Of Peter The Great | History Hit. Engaging episode about the Russian giant and his eccentric methods of statecraft (47m 15s)
Video: The Song That Never Was | YouTube | Deutsche Grammophon | 4m 35s
Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir performs a song from her new album ‘This Will Be Us’.
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