I don’t normally share much personal stuff on this blog because… well the internet is a gross place and an airgap feels healthy. But we became parents around two months ago, so that’s pretty important context for what’s been going on here. I left my job at Translucent, am enjoying (slash surviving) a few months of paternity leave, and starting a new job (more on that another time) in November.
Not too surprisingly, I’ve read very few books recently. It probably takes 30 uninterrupted minutes to to get into a (decent) book, and those just don’t exist right now. Well they do, but I use them to get outside and do exercise. The only novel-length thing I’ve read is Bill Bryson’s The Road to Little Dribbling, which was easily the worst book of his that I’ve read.
This book-shaped void has been filled by two things. The first is an absolute mountain of… books. Books of the “how to make your baby sleep well and be happy” variety. Most of these are pretty terrible. Some (like Emily Oster) make an effort to stick to things that are supported by evidence. Others (Brain Rules for Baby, Wonder Weeks) pretend to do that, but then just say whatever they want and cite widely refuted studies. Still others (Weissbluth, Gina Ford, Suzy Giordano) are more vibes-based, but will get you kicked out of certain social groups for even admitting you’ve read them. Finally there are a few (Harvey Karp, Your Baby Week by Week) which seem just about sane and relatively socially acceptable. I must have learned something going through all of these, but I can’t say what it is exactly.
The second thing is listening to podcasts.
I somehow never got into podcasts. But now I spend a lot of time walking slowly and jiggling a baby, so I’ve suddenly got on board. I’ve also been thinking about what I do and don’t enjoy about the podcast format. Because it occurred to me that I love talk radio. When I lived in the US, my favourite thing on road trips was to tune into various local AM radio stations and hear about the crazy stuff bothering small-town America. Even in the UK I’ve often enjoyed the super parochial stuff on offer: should the military be allowed to have horses; does using cash make it easier to budget.
Part of it is the same reason Netflix sucks: the curse of choice. You turn on the radio, and listen a bit, change channels, do your chores, listen a bit more. On the podcasts app, I must first choose from hostile-looking list of channels, then try to judge from the title whether I want to listen to that thing for 1-3 hours. Stressful. Part of it is also just the format: with written words (like these ones) you can effortlessly pause, skim (what you’re doing now, probably), re-read. Slow down. Speed up. Anyway, I got some recommendations so at least that part was resolved.
First I accidentally listened to The Ancients: Moses and the Exodus, which was short and interesting. I’ve read most of the Bible and recently watched The Prince of Egypt, so I feel like I know my stuff here. I’ve generally taken the Wikipedia-approved view that the Exodus probably never happened, but I enjoyed how the podcast looked quite deeply into figuring out what did happen to inspire the story, and to whom. No clear answer, but definitely enjoyed this. Pretty short, I know the topic well so it was easy to follow. 3 stars.
What I was actually looking for was Fall of Civilizations: The Assyrians. Partially my brain isn’t running on full steam right now. But it’s a three hour slog through some pretty detailed stories. And even though I’ve read quite a bit about these people and this time period, I just struggle to keep track of what the hell is going on. With a book, I’d pause; re-read that paragraph; flip back to the map or timeline; quickly Google something for a reference. Basically, repeatedly zoom in and out to contextualise and situate. With the podcast… if the voice in my ear doesn’t do this for me, and I suddenly can’t remember why I must care about Esarhaddon, then I’m at a bit of a loss. But I think maybe I just need to lower my expectations: treat it more like entertainment, like a chat with Ezra Klein or whoever, and just enjoy the story. I haven’t finished it yet, so, no stars (yet).
Then I picked up a nice theme around children with a recommendation for Ezra Klein: On Children, Meaning, Media and Psychedelics. The psychedelics were just a marketing ploy, they hardly discussed that. Ever since I read How to Change Your Mind I’ve been fascinated by the idea that babies are basically on a permanent, slowly decaying psychedelic trip. It gives me a lot more empathy for them. They mostly talked about hyper-attention-sucking YouTube shows designed for young kids. This is several years in the future for us, but I really enjoyed the distinction between pleasurable (even in a purely hedonistic way) and attention-demanding. Scrolling Twitter is the latter, but rarely the former. I also really liked that they discussed this without reference to whether or not watching YouTube shows was bad for your kid’s outcomes. Just, like, is it actually as pleasurable as playing with a stick or whatever? Ditto adults: what is it exactly that makes you feel wholesome after reading a book, or a magazine, or whatever it is for you, which you don’t get from scrolling. 4 stars (out of 5).
Next up was Conversations with Coleman and I spotted an episode called Is Therapy Bad for You, which seemed to mostly focus on childrent. I think Coleman’s schtick is being centrist and not afraid to ask the big questions etc. This is fine, but it really raises my expectations of rigour. I enjoyed their discussion, which discussed the risks of too much therapy in children, even though it was mostly them patting each other on the back about how right they are. They mentioned the over-pathologising of mental conditions, but instead of looking into the cultural taxonomy of mental disorders, they just happily agreed that the ones they thought were dumb were fake, while the important scary ones are real. If their vibe wasn’t so self-serious I’d forgive it, but it isn’t so I won’t. 2/5.
To round it out I listened to Conversations with Tyler: Paul Bloom on the Psychology of Children, which was much better! Tyler Cowen’s interviewing style is absolutely bizarre, like a gatling gun firing questions from a random sentence generator. But it seems to work and Paul Bloom (and presumably his other guests) was either smart enough or prepped enough to respond well. Unlike Coleman Hughes, the conversation was more focussed on the guest and what he thought, and less on being “right”. So it doesn’t invite nitpicking in the same way and you can just enjoy the conversation. I can’t remember anything, but I enjoyed it a lot, and I guess that’s the point. 4/5!
This is totally unrelated, but whenever I listen to Tyler Cowen, in my head I’m picturing Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) from The Princess Bride.
I think I’m figuring out podcasts. Let’s see what next month brings.
I also read some things online. The Substack website is terrible (at least on iOS Safari), so I finally caved and downloaded their app. It’s not much better: the number of times it completely forgets what I was reading 5 minutes ago and provides no obvious way to find it again (EDIT: I found the swipe-left thing to see history!). But it does do some social-media-esque stuff which makes it easy to find other things in your network of interests.
Mostly I’ve been slowly reading through Foundations by Ben Southwood and co, because it seems like required reading this month. It’s full of depressing stats like this one:
The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
I liked David Hugh-Jones’ brief commentary. Also some interesting pushback on the energy aspects from James Murray. Waiting for Tom Forth to weigh in. This discussion has me curious about the political make up of the UK, where I’ve lived for four years now. Labour ostensibly supports increasing investment in housing, energy and transport. But the paper in general is probably further to the right than Labour. The Tories have demonstrated that they’re not interested in sensible policy, the Greens are against building things, and I’m not sure the Lib Dems have any policy positions just yet.
I’m still learning about this country, clearly, especially when it comes to small-L labour and how the unions are getting on. In that vein, I read an interesting US-focused piece arguing that unions are not the way to help workers. I don’t have a good enough grasp of the history and current situation to weigh in, but I’m enjoying some of the discussion around this.
It’s also a bit topical suddenly, as US east-coast dockworkers are currently threatening one of the biggest dock strikes in US history. The same guy who (maybe?) helped solve the Los Angeles port gridlock in 2021 has an interesting thread about the potential impacts of an east-coast strike. The best bit is this video from the president of the International Longshoremen’s Association.
Most interesting to me was the list of demands (2 minutes into the video) in the screenshot above. I had a naive idea that the rejection of automation was either an historical thing, or somehow less explicit of a demand. When people claim that unions hold back investment and productivity (what everyone seems to agree the UK needs), I thought this was based on something more nuanced than… it’s the union’s core demand.
Of course, in the UK, the most publicised union action is nurses, doctors, teachers, rail workers. From the little I know, their demands have little to do with automation and lots to do with reasonable wages and working conditions. Something which I think most people in the UK have a lot of sympathy for.