[book post] Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller

First off: the production values of the dead-tree version are fantastic. The cover is so glittery! The illustrations are so pretty! The paper feels so nice!

As to the contents: this book is both an account of the life of David Starr Jordan, an obsessive late-1800s early-1900s ichthyologist, and an account of the author's own experiences with loss and depression-of-the-existentially-paralytic-variety, woven together.

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harm to children

Related to some observations from the last spate of book posts: wow, uh, the way we treated kids as recently as a century ago seems incredibly fucked?

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podcast rec: You're Wrong About

I spent a lot of the last month sitting in cars, buses, and/or feeling ill, which is generally when my peak podcast consumption happens—and I found a pretty fun new one!

You're Wrong About features a dynamic duo of reporters who dig up some big news story/headline/controversy from a while back (generally in the 1980s-2000s range), pick apart the facts, and hone in on what the popular imagination misremembers, distorted, or just got plain wrong.

The two of them have pleasant chemistry, a laid-back, good-humored, and left-leaning style, and their ratio of banter-versus-fact-spewing really works for me. And the time period they cover is especially interesting to me, personally—it's usually stuff I'm old enough to have some memory of, but was also too young to really remember very much, beyond whatever vague impression I got from the adults around me or from Time magazine or whatever. So I always learn a lot!

Here's a few of my favorite episodes I've listened to, for a preview, if you're into this sort of thing:

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