Books
Finished the excellent and entertaining American Caliph by Shahan Mufti (full review here), started Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity of by my longevity guru Peter Attia (excellent so far), also started the new book by one of the top dogs of dad lit, David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. The Beast continues to be a beast, but we’re now over 600 pages in. Only 300 or so to go. We’ll make it. Soon.
Articles
As I said last week, NYT may not be the best place to go for news, but it’s certainly the best place to go for bougie culture elite content, and buddy this article on “new European baking” delivers. I mean:
Perrault is a paysan-boulanger, or farmer-baker, which means he controls everything about his bread, beginning with the soil in which his grains grow. He uses heritage seeds — such as Timilia, an ancient hard wheat grain from Sicily, and old varieties of rye from Finland and Brittany — collected by the Réseau Semmence Paysannes, a farmer-run seed network that promotes biodiversity. Then he harvests and processes the plants himself, turning them into flour with a small mill on his property.
So good.
Contrast that with the FT that has a massive article this week on the finances and personal life of the founder of the mercenary organization the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Podcasts and Videos
Either podcasting is dying, I’m loosing my interest, or I just don’t know the interesting new shows. Whichever it is, I find myself listening to less and less of them. However! If you want to understand the enduring appeal of the Joe Rogan Experience I recommend listening to his recent interview with naturalist writer Dan Flores on the history of human interaction with nature in the Americas. Lots of talk about coyotes, no talk of Covid.
If you’ve got young kids can I’d like to recommend the Outdoor Boy youtube channel network where the world’s nicest Moron takes his three kids on various outdoor adventures. Watching this has become a weekly thing in our family and it doing a great job of getting my kids excited for a summer outside.
In the Netherlands, there's a baker on almost every corner. And many of the windmills are still used to grind wheat, spelt etc that you can buy in obscenely large quantities to make your own bread.
Incredible. Obviously NYC has some great bakeries but I don’t think there’s anywhere to buy freshly ground flour.