It’s been four years (!!) since I last posted. So here’s a big catch-up… the articles are all from the last few months, but the books sample from the last few (missing) years.
On lobbying, profiteering, and regulatory capture
Coming from a northern hemisphere country with relatively intact institutions, for a long time, I believed that government regulatory bodies generally made the right safety/health decisions the vast majority of the time. Of course, I knew that firms would lobby regulators, and there were problems of (rotating doors, regulatory capture, etc etc), but I assumed these led to small issues. But in the last decade, as the US’ institutions get tested (and fail those tests), I’ve begun to realize just how much regulatory institutions have been failing all along.
“The Insulin Empire” (The Baffler )[article] - A sweeping overview of how insulin gets made, why it matters, and how capitalistic structures led it from being manufactured solely by nonprofit entities (The University of Toronto), to it turning into an “insulin cartel” run by “The Big 3” pharma companies. Through it, I also learned about more generic pharma practices: “evergreening” to extend IP and block competition, the privatization of AMPs, and the debate over what constitutes a “biosimilar” generic.
[Book] Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future by Oliver Franklin-Wallis - This was such a depressing read that I had to divvy it up into sections, reading full fiction novels in between. But it’s also important and fascinating, walking through all the kinds of waste–landfill, food/agriculture, plastics, recycling, fashion (fabric/leather), human excrement, chemical, mining, energy/nuclear, etc.-- and the ways waste cycles across the world. Written by a British journalist, I also found it interesting to see in particular how waste gets treated in (theoretically more environmentally-friendly) Europe.
“How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe” (Propublica) - This one was a doozy, with 3M playing an almost cartoonishly villain role: Gaslighting a young female scientist (if you’re finding PFOAs in everyone and in animals, then clearly you’re doing the science wrong), blatantly ignoring and not disclosing health risk information, adding known risky substances to all kinds of food-adjacent materials (not just Teflon but also takeaway containers etc), paying paltry fines for their decades-long poor behavior, and then simply replacing one known carcinogenic “forever chemical” PFOA with a less-studied chemical in the same class. The last one is kind of on us though, right? We want non-stick; they gave us another version. It’s difficult not to become alarmist after reading this.
On bodily fluids & conception
I (quite vocally) don’t want to have children, but as a woman in her 30s, I’m surrounded by friends who are having children, already had children, or are battling to have children. And so the subject of parenthood has become at least somewhat interesting to me.
“Rags to Riches” (Mother Jones) - The idea is simple: We spend loads of money trying to monitor health and draw blood, but half of the population (aged ~13-50) emit blood once a month, and we do nothing to study it. This article goes through a bunch of scientific research projects looking to upend that. There are period pads that can be submitted for monthly testing (to track health vitals). There’s promise to solving endometriosis, which, despite afflicting 5-10% of period-age women, still receives next to no research attention. And there are scientists looking to better understand the uterus, which, as a perpetually self-healing organ (filled with stem cells), might hold promise for fixing infertility or other diseases.
Sperm wails - Within weeks of each other, I was recommended two twin articles on how difficult it is for single mothers or lesbian couples to get sperm for artificial insemination. They both read like fertility horror stories:
“You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to buy sperm” (The Guardian)
“Why would anyone look for a sperm donor on Facebook?” (The Cut)
[Video / Spoken word poem] “Trying” - I’m a big fan of Harry Baker, and this meandering, funny and poignant piece is emblematic of why. No spoilers beyond that.
On what constitutes “sport” AKA does this really count?
“Spreadsheet Superstars” (Verge) - Such a fun (and well-designed!) piece on the nerddom that is Excel spreadsheet contests, including–as in many sports–how to correctly assess who is really the “best.” (It weirdly reminded me of the debates on rock climbing to the Olympics – e.g. speed, endurance, complexity). I also loved the writer’s description of the poor audience experience: “the most problematic thing about competitive Excel becomes blindingly obvious to me once again: it is damn near impossible to figure out what’s going on. All eight players are moving so fast and doing so many things with keyboard shortcuts and formulas that there’s practically no way to see what they’re doing until it’s already done.”
“Inside the Savage, Surreal, Booming World of Professional Slap Fighting” (Esquire) - One of my most stereotypical female traits is that I can’t handle violence: I have no interest in watching any sort of boxing, MMA, or ultimate fighting; I find the extreme bloodshed in Tarantino movies or the John Wick series to be grotesque; etc etc. And yet I find the fact of humanity’s interest in violence to be fascinating. So this piece into the subculture of slap fighting was as fascinating as it was disturbing. Part of the fascination was the psychology, and another was the actual biology/physics: Did you know you could pass out, and even die, from a single slap across the face?
On the interwebs
“Age, Sex, Location” (Longreads) - On growing up online, anonymity, and mediated profiles
[Book] Do You Remember Being Born? By Sean Michaels - The plot sounds perhaps a too of-this-moment (an aging poet is tasked by a Google-ish company to co-write a poem with a poem-writing AI bot) and maybe a bit gimmicky (some passages of the book, all marked in italics, were actually written by ChatGPT). But it was also surprisingly funny and beautifully poetic and… well, human. By the time I had gotten to the (lackluster) ending, I had so thoroughly enjoyed the ride that I began recommending this to several people.
[Podcast] Bonus companion: I listened to Episode 832, Act 2 of This American Life around the same time, and it was about a comic working with an early version of ChatGPT (from before it was told to not be creepy/rude) to write jokes and poems. Let’s just say that version was a lot funnier, and a lot creepier (reflecting its sci-fi data inputs in which we humans believe AIs are out to get us).
On animals
[Book] The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson - Yes, this is a whole book on eels, and even more niche, mostly the European eel. And yet, it didn’t seem long. Part memoir, part history, and part science journalism, it’s a great look into one of marine biology’s great lingering questions (we’ve never witnessed an eel giving birth), as well as a wild dive (pun intended!) into animal classification. (There’s a sizable group of scientists who believe we’ve totally misclassified marine life, grouping everything into a category “fish” when they evolutionarily are completely dissimilar. It would be, as the author notes, like lumping all mountain-dwelling species, from eagles to bears, into a “mountain-ish” or “mish” classification.)
[Podcast] “Towers of Science” (99% Invisible) - Zoroastrians have been practicing sacred sky burials for centuries, and in India, they have left bodies in these “Towers of Silence” for vultures to consume. But what happens when the vultures disappear? And why have they disappeared? A really excellent story linking religion, economics, public policy, and ecology (but, I suppose, those are always interlinked.)
On death and longevity
“Grief Guides” (n+1) - On death doulas and their work in guiding people, emotionally and practically, towards the end of life. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this piece in particular, but I had never heard of the idea and loved the concept of this new (to me) role.
“The secret to living to 120? Nano robots” (Wired) - The headline is a bit kooky, but somehow I had missed all the buzz and medical visioning around nano robots – a not-yet-here-but-still-very-fathomable future. Couched in the techno bro dreamscape of longevity/immortality research, it seems cringe, but one can easily imagine the rewriting of this to instead focus on this technology’s implications for cancer or for reversing birth defects (to enable healthier, fuller lives from the onset).
On magic and female escapism
Since I last posted, a pandemic lingered, my startup got acquired, I got burnt out, I quit my job (two years after that acquisition), and I bought (and renovated) an apartment. All this to say, life has been a bit crazy, and for a long stretch, my media consumption took a sharp turn away from literary, thought-provoking reads, into pure escapism. Fast-paced, plot-driven narratives; magical powers; strong female protagonists; and epic love stories– these were the balms to my anxious, stressed heart. Within this category, here were some memorable reads:
[Book] The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller - From the writer of Circe, a fascinating retelling of a classic Greek tale, turned into an epic friendship/ (gay) love story about the hero/semi-god of war. (This, from a girl who hates war books/movies.)
[Book] Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng - A dystopic “what if” YA book, extrapolating from the current white nationalist / extreme right movements : What if the anti-China rhetoric turned US society against all Asian Americans?
[Book] Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter - An uneven but thought-provoking collection of interlinked short stories. Leichter uses magical realism to surface questions about the mundane: How does the physical architecture of our spaces affect us? Upon what are friendships or relationships based on? How do we check or double-down on our fears or basest instincts?
[Book] The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki - A very weird book that I perhaps enjoyed less than I found fascinating as an experiment in literary form. (Yes, how meta.)
Romance - I’ve always loved rom com movies, but over the last few years, I fell headfirst into the large, sprawling genre of romance books. Most are awfully written or trite, but those that get it right, get it so right— and make wading through the murk worth it. Here are some (first 3 recs) that build beautiful characters full of warmth and humanity and capture the beauty/pain/banter of relationships; and a couple others (last 2 recs) that were so much fun that I don’t care if they’re kind of bad.
Travel reads
Wow, it’s been so long since I read these that I have little to say about them besides a general lingering feeling of whether I liked them or not.
Three Daughters of Eve by Elif Shafak (Turkey) - I actually started with the critically-acclaimed “Snow” by Orhan Pamuk (a Nobel Prize winner) and, ⅓ of the way in, bailed because I couldn’t care enough. This book is by Turkey’s most popular female author, and I remember liking (but not loving) it.
Catch the Rabbit by Lana Bastasic (Bosnia) - I remember really disliking the characters and this book.
The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne (Ireland) - I remember quite liking this one, which also came recommended by a British friend (h/t Will).
The Promise by Damon Galgut (South Africa) - The 2021 Booker Prize winner. I really liked it, though I know some other Saffer friends found it wanting.
I skipped Madagascar – but there doesn’t seem to be any Malagasy-translated work available as an ebook, so instead I watched the David Attenborough mini-series on Madagascar.
I also skipped Hungary, but will rectify that (plan: The Door by Magda Szabo).