Countries visited: Guatemala, Belize
LOCAL MEDIA
The Art of Political Murder by Francisco Goldman (Guatemala nonfiction): Confession: Try as I might, I only got through 74% of this book, which investigates the political murder of Bishop Gerardi, who headed up the human rights organization that published Nunca Más, a catalogue of the abuses and genocide committed against the Mayan people in the Civil War. Bishop Gerardi was murdered in 1998, but this book was only published in 2007, providing enough time to consider what the murder signified about Guatemala's budding democracy and whether things have changed since. Goldman, a half-Guatemalan writer/journalist, however, chooses to mostly focus on the minutiae of the case, turning it into a very long, beleaguered, non-page-turner true crime novel. I wish it had told the bigger story.
Cuentos, fábulas y lo demás es silencio by Augusto Monterroso // English: Complete Works and Other Stories (Guatemala fiction): I had never heard of him before, but apparently, in Latin America, Monterroso is known for his "micro-cuentos" (micro short stories) and political satire, and he is often grouped with other magical realist authors from Latin America. I found Monterroso's stories to be more wide-ranging in their tone/voice than Borges/Marquez/Llosa. That meant that I loved some of the stories (e.g. "Míster Taylor" is absolute perfection), but I found others to be odd and unsatisfying. In fact, "Diógenes También" was so baffling in Spanish that I ended up reading the English translation too, just in case; turns out, it's just a strange read in any language.
”J.. vs. Estados Unidos” (Radio Ambulante) (Guatemala nonfiction podcast): A story of the relative impunity of US Border Control agents.
Three Kings of Belize: A documentary on 3 Garifuna musicians. The Garifuna were descendants of would-be slaves whose boats ran ashore near Guatemala/Belize, and so remained free but in these foreign lands. They retain a Garifuna language, culture, and a style of Afro-Carribbean music.
ALL THE FEELS
"Inside the first Afghan women's ascent of Mount Noshaq" (Outside): An incredibly moving piece about Afghan woman mountaineers — It's a good reminder that empowerment doesn't just have to be about "soft" skills like literacy (although, of course, not knocking reading!); empowerment can come from giving people literal, physical power too. And that's precisely the story of this mountaineering non-profit: training women to be physically stronger, against all kinds of sometimes-violent obstacles.
Two recent and excellent Without Fail episodes feature people who are basically professionals at saying sorry to people: "The tragedy expert" compensates family members after catastrophes like terrorist attacks or school shootings, while Patty McCord (of Netflix HR fame) schools host Alex on "How to fire people"
ASSIGNING BLAME
Poverty: "The American Work Ethic" (Longreads): PREACH. On why we insist that the poor work hard for their benefits, while we have no problem with the idle rich living off interest from their trust funds. This is excellently argued and written.
Sexism: "The end of empathy" (Invisibilia) - Two different reporters (one empathetic, the other not) take the same tape of an interview, to create 2 very different radio stories about a former Incel's treatment of women.
Racism: "A very offensive rom-com" (Invisibilia) - I'm loving this season's Invisibilia, which is taking massive risks in producing stories like this one, about a young Asian woman's attempts at self-correcting her attraction to certain races over others.
Obesity: Three pieces have got me thinking about how we (society and especially physically fit people) treat overweight and obese people. We say the shame we impose is because we care about their health, as well as the cost that obesity imposes on government (via higher healthcare costs). And yet, very little is discussed about the toll this shaming takes on their mental health. And perhaps fatness is not a choice or personal failure, in the same way poverty is not really a choice. This of course is all worsened by contradictory, and perhaps totally unscientific information about how to lose weight-- e.g. maybe even calorie counting is founded on a myth.
"Everything you know about obesity is wrong" (Huffington Post): I read this when it came out in Sept 2018, and it’s stuck with me. After the above TAL episode aired, I revisited it, and it’s just as challenging of a read.
"Death of the calorie" (1843 Magazine / The Economist): On why calories are not as scientific as you think, how much product calorie information might vary from the truth, and ultimately why counting calories doesn't lead to weight loss.
THE AFTERMATH OF BAD PUBLIC POLICY
Gentrification: "Berlin's radical housing activists aren't afraid of expropriations" (The Nation): Berliners might be voting on a referendum to expropriate 200,000 apartments from 10 of the biggest real estate companies, in a move to battle gentrification. It's an amazing testament to the power of mass organizing — and a vote of this nature might spawn copycat movements in other cities plagued by parasitic real estate (looking at you, New York).
School segregation: "San Francisco had an ambitious plan to tackle school segregation. It made it worse" (NY Times): The fascinating attempt (and failure?) to desegregate San Francisco schools - a lesson in public policy humility. Facts that stood out to me: (1) Across major US cities, neighborhoods are getting more integrated (gentrification?) but public schools more segregated (private school?); and (2) A whopping 25% of SF students and 20% of NYC students attend private school. [Full disclosure: I’m a proud public school kid.]
Public debt: "The McKinsey way to save an island" (NY Magazine): All these pieces about economic public policy and US colonialism in Puerto Rico are so upsetting. And everyone is a bad actor in this story. First, Congress lets old incentives expire for companies to be in PR, so they pull out, and the economy suffers. (These incentives should have either never existed, been gradually phased out, or not been removed.) Despite the lower tax revenues, the PR government continues spending as usual and issuing bonds to fund such spending. (Ugh.) The US federal law also gives financial incentives for investors to buy PR bonds, driving demand. (Ugh.) PR can’t make good on those bonds, so issues junk bonds. Hedge funds snap those up, knowing PR can’t legally declare bankruptcy because it’s a US territory not a state. (Ugh sharks & Ugh colonialism.) Hurricane Maria hits. (Ugh climate change.) Obama & Congress allow PR to renegotiate its debts but requires it to have an “oversight committee” and consultants to get the country's budgets and public policy in order. McKinsey and co step in, charging $1.5b for the project and requesting austerity measures that, at least in the short term, lead to 250 school closing, police officers quitting, and violent crime rising. Meanwhile, US investors will get back 93% of their promised returns, while PR citizens holding their own country’s debt will likely get 50% of its promised value. WHY IS EVERY PART OF THIS STORY SO HORRIBLE?!
TECH & POLICY
"How technology could revolutionize refugee resettlement" (The Atlantic): Machine learning might help decide where refugees are sent, based on where they are likeliest to find gainful employment and report greatest satisfaction. This sounds generally great, and I'm digging some of the data-driven government experiments of such systems (the Swiss are running an experiment with 1000 refugees placed algorithmically vs. 1000 placed normally). But I also always wonder what the negative side effects of tech-driven policies might be, for instance: Will this lead to refugees being settled on fewer, more multicultural places? Will this grow the gap between places, as some become whiter while others become more immigrant? If so, should we be optimizing for society or for the refugees themselves? Algorithms don't help answer the hard ethical issues.
"How Grindr became a national security issue" (The Verge): This seems incredibly obvious once someone points it out, but of course the US government would be wary of foreign governments owning Grindr, with its incrediby sensitive, blackmail-able data. And course, a Chinese government owning it would be particularly problematic. But also, as in some of the Huawei coverage, I think the American media (and public) are starting to show hints of xenophobia.
MISCELLANEOUS
"Why facts don't change our minds" (New Yorker): An interesting set of psychology research on why many irrational biases (e.g. anchoring, confirmation bias) were evolutionarily designed to enable greater social cohesion. This piece is full of interesting studies, including the pair at the end, which indicate one possible way to make us less politically polarized.
"The Roman Mars Mazda Virus" (Reply All): Just an honestly joyous episode for any lover of podcasts. So many surprise guests! And as a literary nerd, the parenthetical part just SLAYS me.
30 Animals That Made Us Smarter (BBC): A delightful albeit slightly too earnest podcast on biomimicry - how scientific developments are inspired by different animals' traits. IMHO, the strongest episode so far is the first one, on the kingfisher and the Japanese bullet train.
"The underground railroad of North Korea" (GQ): On the ethically murky system bringing North Koreans through China or Southeast Asia, to South Korea, where they automatically get refugee citizenship. (They need to take this crazily circuitous path because the actual North/South border is too actively paroled.) The journalist's frustrating attempts to get at the truth help paint some picture of how impossible it is for anyone (non-profits or the North Koreans themselves) to know whom to trust.
The NYT’s data journalism section, The Upshot, just published its list of its best articles from the last 5 years. This is a bit of a cop-out as I’m not choosing a specific article, but the articles are often short pieces full of interactive graphs, so I’m recommending in general to poke around.