As 2025 winds down, I’ve been revisiting all my Friday Inspiration newsletters from the year and picking out my favorite links from each of them. I was going to do one “best of 2025” post at the end of the year, but there was a lot of good stuff, so this week’s Friday Inspiration is a collection of my favorites from the first half of the year, January through June 2025.

First things first, though: I convinced newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration to put together a sample pack of my favorites from them, tried and true for me over the past year and a half. This link will give you 15% off the sample pack, which includes a box of 10 packets of PH 1000 electrolyte drink mix, 3 PF 90 gels, 3 PF 30 caffeine gels, and 4 PF 30 chews.

Onto the best of the first half of 2025 then:

—

This is not exactly new, but WOW, building a scale model of the timeline of the history of the universe in the Mojave Desert—in a day. (video)

From a short but brilliant essay titled, “You might just have to be bored,” subtitled, “Or: How to fix an attention span”: “Not being bored is why you always feel busy, why you keep “not having time” to take a package to the post office or work on your novel. You do have time—you just spend it on your phone. By refusing to ever let your brain rest, you are choosing to watch other people’s lives through a screen at the expense of your own.” (January)

I have been thinking a lot about nostalgia lately, after reading about a study that showed we all basically think the best everything happened when we were approximately 10 years old. So of course I clicked on this piece, “Your brain is lying to you about ‘the good old days,’” and the science behind why we think things were better in the past. And it applies to how we think about progress, and improving society, but I think also, specifically this passage, how we remember things like mountaineering, endurance events, and all things “Type 2 Fun”: “Thanks to ‘selective memory,’ humans have a tendency to forget negative events from the past and reinforce positive memories. It’s one reason why our feelings and memories about the past can be so inaccurate — we literally forget the bad things and give the good things a nice, pleasant glow. The further back the memory goes, the stronger that tendency can be.” (January)

I found Robin Wilding’s Substack this week through her post about putting her senior dog down (which was wonderful but maybe not what everyone needs to read this week), and I clicked around a bit and found this gem she wrote last September, The 11 Traits of Utterly Unfuckwithable People. My favorite might be #5, They Treat Servers Nice. (February)

I assume that you, like me, have had no less than one thousand instances in your life in which you had a weird or awkward conversation/confrontation with someone, walked away, and spent the next few minutes/several hours thinking, “you know what I should have said to that asshole?” If my assumption is correct, I think you will find Michael Estrin’s latest quick story very satisfying (and also hilarious). (February)

I have been trying to put my finger on why algorithms just don’t work that well to introduce me to new music/books/videos/shows/whatever, and I think lots of people are having the same feeling. This Atlantic piece about the new book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, dives into a bit of it, but also captures what I think many of us have been feeling: “Like so many other products influenced by machine learning, Spotify’s playlists can’t generate something new—say, a wholly fresh and unheard sound—for its users. They instead offer the flash of recognition, rather than the mind-scrambling revelation that comes only when you hear something you’d never expected.” [GIFT LINK] (February)

I don’t know how I stumbled on Mike Monteiro’s (non-Substack) newsletter, in which he answers one question every issue. But this one, answering the question, “How do you decide which donut to get?” begins thusly: “First off, congratulations on your donut. Donuts are fucking amazing and everyone should have a donut. Some of you might be thinking about donuts and attaching the word “deserve” to it. Fuck that. Deserve has nothing to do with donuts. You want a donut. You should have a donut.” (March)

David Epstein’s book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World is one of my favorite reads of the past five years, maybe because it validates my tendency to try lots of things instead of just one, or maybe because it encourages us to go ahead and be real human beings with multiple interests—like he does in this recent piece, “Why Hobbies Are An Advantage, Not a Distraction.” (March)

I think there’s a pretty easy response you could have to people who say things like “empathy is a weakness,” and certainly there were probably many, but the phrasing of this one was my favorite. (April)

This is a Substack post about paper (and really, using paper and writing utensils to think), from a writer I’ve never read before encountering this piece, and it just made my week. Because, I don’t know, I love paper too? And wish I used it more than I use my laptop and iPad. The author writes in the intro, “Also, the world needs way more mundane blogging,” but I don’t think this is mundane, and it also reminds me of the best advice I give myself when I’m stuck trying to come up with something to write about: Go smaller. Stop trying to solve the world’s problems and just write about something small. (April)

Love this display at a college library: Is it Kendrick Lamar or Shakespeare? (Subtext here: Is Kendrick the Shakespeare of our time? Was Shakespeare the Kendrick of his time? If they met, would they get along?)(April)

If you have a) ever tried to move a photo within a Microsoft Word document and b) somehow not seen this yet, I believe you will feel quite validated, and probably also laugh at this seven-second masterpiece. (May)

I love finding good writing, and I think I kind of suck at describing why it’s good—like this essay by Niko Stratis, whose work I’ve mentioned before in this newsletter. Her essays are always fascinating, weaving together music, culture, and scenes from growing up in the Yukon and becoming a journeyman glazier, and discovering her gender identity. Anyway, her new book, The Dad Rock That Made Me A Woman, came out on Tuesday, and this week’s essay is one of my favorites I’ve read of hers, maybe partly because I also put songs on repeat for an hour sometimes. (May)

Trust me: Take 60 seconds, or 90 seconds (OK, maybe more like three to four minutes) and scroll through the photos created by the winners of the Milky Way Photographer of the Year Awards (via Kottke.org). (May)

I have mentioned before in this newsletter that I have been enjoying the live DJ mixes I often find on YouTube, but I think the production of this one might be my favorite yet: camcorder footage, a few different angles, a little bit of video editing, and a bunch of R&B tracks (and some live drumming). Plus the title is “the homies mixing R&B and chilling with a pineapple.” (May)

Years ago, I was climbing a multi-pitch route with a French friend who was pretty fluent in English, and we paused at a belay to eat a snack and drink some water. Simon pulled a small stuff sack from his pack and from the stuff sack a few food items, including the most battered energy bar I had ever seen. He held it up and said to me, “Theese ees my friend. He goes weeth me everywhere.” I of course understood exactly what he meant, as I, like every one, had the one bar that I kept bringing on hikes and climbs, but never eating, because I had better options. It was like an emergency ration that I kind of knew I would never eat unless I was on the verge of starvation. If you know what I mean, you will love artist Cy Whitling’s latest comic, “The Eternal Granola Bar.” (May)

I was clicking through Substack yesterday, wanting to find someone who wrote an actual story, a narrative of something that happened in real life. It wouldn’t have to be anything spectacular, just a story. And I found it. It was titled “I Agreed to Help Pick Up a Couch and Ended Up Participating in a Street Performance” and it made my day. If you read it, I am betting you will say to yourself, “Yes, I know or have met someone like Moonbeam.” (May)

Look, I am not saying everyone should drink five or more cups of coffee per day, but I’m also not saying people shouldn’t. Anne Kadet, whose Substack is a treasure, interviewed a handful people who drink prodigious amounts of coffee, and it made me feel both happy, less weird, and less alone. And also validated in my choice to make a 9-cup moka pot yesterday afternoon. (June)

I don’t know how I found the Why Cheap Art Manifesto this week, but something about the typeface and the style and the very simple message of it really hit home for me, and perhaps it will hit home for you too. If you are really into it, there’s a link at the bottom where you can purchase a print of it, which, at $20, I guess is technically cheap art, which is very meta, to support artists by buying a print of a manifesto about cheap art. But of course you can just read and enjoy it for free, too. (June)

If you have ever seen Christoph Niemann’s art and design work, you will probably not be surprised at how interesting and accessible this interactive piece he put together about artists and AI for the New York Times is—the first time I read it, I scrolled through it on my phone, which honestly worked just as well as viewing it on my laptop. It really covers some ground. Here’s a gift link to see it. (thanks, Fitz)(June)

—

If my Friday Inspiration newsletters made your 2025 a tiny bit better, please consider keeping it going in 2026 by supporting my work through Patreon here.

As 2025 winds down, I’ve been revisiting all my Friday Inspiration newsletters from the year and picking out my favorite links from each of them. I was going to do one “best of 2025” post at the end of the year, but there was a lot of good stuff, so this week’s Friday Inspiration is a collection of my favorites from the second half of the year, July through December 2025.

—

I wrote a whole newsletter about Listers the day after I watched it this past fall, and the gist is, “I didn’t care about birding before this film, but I could not stop watching this 2-hour film about two brothers who decide to get very into birding for an entire year.” (video)

I started laughing my ass off at the 00:09 mark of this video, and then thought, “this video is 63 seconds long, what else could happen in the next 50 seconds to make it better?” and I gotta tell you, I did not expect this lady to walk up to this guy, and get the reaction she got from him, which made me laugh even harder, and also sort of restore my faith in humans. (July)

This one-minute video was simply titled “Researchers react to first-ever photos” on the youseeingthisshit subreddit, and I watched it three or four times before I poked around to try to find more info on why these guys were so excited about this bird. The video is from 2022, shot on Fergusson Island, off the east coast of Papua New Guinea, and the bird is a Black-naped Pheasant Pigeon, which is a bird species that hadn’t been documented by scientists since it was first described in 1882—it was one of 20 “lost” birds that hadn’t been documented for more than 100 years. The guy with the camera is Cornell researcher Jordan Boersma, and he’s showing the video of the bird to local biologist Doka Nason. More info in this Audubon article, but the video itself is just a moment of joy. Like I am not what I would call a big “bird person” but I loooooove this video. (July)

This is a brand anthem video for HOKA, which I guess is essentially a sort of ad, but I gotta say, it’s fucking great. Made me think I actually do love running, partly because of exactly what they depict in the video: community. Anyway, it’s two minutes, and I’ve watched it three times this week. (July)

My friend Ed sent me this short blog from Seth Godin, Scarcity and Abundance, and it partly captures something I have been thinking about often, which is a mindset of scarcity vs. a mindset of abundance, and how much more I gravitate toward other people who believe they can “win” without other people having to “lose”—and of course, vice versa, how I’d rather just avoid people who think the only way they can be happy is if they somehow “beat” other people. And how we should all think about that sort of thing more (especially when driving automobiles?). (August)

Great headline on this short piece from Steve Magness and Brad Stulberg’s newsletter: “The Most Underrated Performance Enhancer: Having Fun,” which is in the same vein of something I’ve told a lot of people when they mention the idea of starting writing a newsletter: have fun with it, or you’ll find yourself abandoning it because it feels like work. I believe Steve and Brad are writing more about success/winning, but I think we’re on the same wavelength (isn’t fun its own kind of success?). (August)

I am sure there is more to this story of the late musician and Harvard mathematician Tom Lehrer writing a letter to representatives for 2 Chainz in reply to their request for his permission to sample his song “The Old Dope Peddler,” but I think the writing itself is just *chef’s kiss*. (August)

I love artist/designer Mike Monteiro’s newsletter—in every post, he answers a question from a reader, in an essay, and I don’t read every post, but for whatever reason last week, the subject line “How to Stay Hopeful” grabbed me. And I was delighted to find that his answer had a lot to do with walking, bikes, neighbors, and cities. (August)

These shots are incredible, but I think made even better when you know a bit of the story of how long these photographers waited/planned/did math so they could get the shot. It would be really interesting to hear what they said about how they felt when they finally got these shots, and how they dealt with finally getting something they obsessed over for years. (September)

Do you need to look at a huge map of the entire Star Wars galaxy? Sure you do. Why am I not surprised (but still awed) that they created this? I love humans. (via Kottke) (September)

I don’t read every single email I get from the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day, but I try, and occasionally I read one that’s just perfect for that day, like this one Ada Limón wrote about a small moment she witnessed on a subway platform: While Everything Else Was Falling Apart (September)

I think Keith Haring’s art is still relevant, and if you don’t believe me, how about this bit that Jillian Hess dug up from Keith Haring’s Journals? “Money is the opposite of magic. Art is magic. The worlds of art and money are constantly intermingling. To survive this mixture the magic in art has to be applied in new ways. Magic must always triumph.” (September)

My friend Ben Polley wrote this piece on who lives and who dies after getting lost in the backcountry, and there’s a bunch of fascinating stuff in it, including this bit from the chief of county search and rescue here in Missoula: “there are two main categories of outdoor emergencies: those that involve meeting a schedule and those that involve pleasing another person.” (October)

I am not usually interested in videos with titles like “Shocking police brutality in Ireland,” but this was posted on the ContagiousLaughter subreddt, so I figured I could chance watching all 30 seconds of it, and I’ll tell you, it delivers, and does not need a trigger warning. (I mean, I guess it is technically a “dirty joke,” as far as that goes.) (October)

I’m not interested in using AI for the stuff I create, but I’m also not that interested in spending my time shit-talking it or people who use it. That said, when artists I respect comment on the whole moment we’re in with all of it, I am interested in what they have to say. So I read this piece/cartoon by Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal) when it landed in my inbox, and I definitely agree with a lot of what he says here—not so much the insults directed at people who evangelize about it, more the “talent vs. skill” stuff. (October)

This Blackbird Spyplane piece Hilary sent me yesterday echoes something I have quoted my friend Forest as saying to me once, a piece of advice that lives rent-free in my head—You don’t look cool looking at your phone. My favorite part: “This is the real cure for “phone addiction” that no one has considered. Forget lightphones, forget apps that lock you out of other apps. Humans are a deeply image-conscious species. Just think about how dumb you look when you’re on your phone, and how you would never willingly look that dumb by any other means.” (October)

Maybe you’re paying attention to the World Series this year, or maybe not. Maybe you did or didn’t know that Game 3 went to 18 innings. Either way, here is a wonderful essay about staying up too late to watch the conclusion of that game, and I don’t think it’s spoiling it to say that the essay includes a mention of (and the trailer for) Invasion U.S.A., a Chuck Norris movie with a 22 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. (October)

This is a great story about making time to write, and sometimes making desks to write on, and also about stealing—well, maybe not stealing if it’s during down time at the job—time to work on creative stuff, even if it’s not paying your bills, or paying at all. (thanks, Mario) (November)

This Korean guy became a Detroit Pistons fan basically completely randomly, but then fell in love with the team and gradually became a die-hard fan, and then he saved up a bunch of money to make a trip to Detroit, and then a second trip to Detroit, and I’ll tell you what, Detroit loved this guy right back, and it’s a great story. (November)

I used to read Dave Barry’s column when it was printed on newspaper that was delivered to my parents’ house in the 1980s and 90s, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, and I saw that he started a Substack a while back but I intentionally didn’t click on it because I wanted to preserve the Dave Barry of my childhood as he was. So: Thanks to Emily for sending me this Dave Barry piece about the exploding whale of Florence, Oregon, in 1970, which, as I learned in this story, will soon be the subject of a short documentary, and even though it’s been 55 years, I think it will be quite relevant to our current times. (November)

This article about the people who are still studying to be black cab drivers in London in the age of Uber is inspiring in the fact that passing the exam called “the Knowledge” is ridiculously hard, but it also gave me this strange sort of hopeful feeling, that maybe not everything we do as human beings is going to be replaced by tech that we think is great but ends up becoming, as Cory Doctorow termed it, enshittified. Like yeah, you could just use an app, but instead you’re taking on this nearly superhuman feat to memorize 25,000 streets in London and imprint the city map on your brain. Incredible. I’m rooting for this guy Besart to pass the test when he takes it. [GIFT LINK] (November)

Any interview with Ethan Hawke is pretty much clickbait for me, but even if you’re not a huge fan of his work, I highly recommend listening to the two minutes starting at 10:39, where the conversation turns to why movies about regular people are important (this link will start the video at exactly 10:39). (December)

I have not read that much Charles Bukowski, but damn, this is a really interesting piece about the most inspiring thing he ever said—which was in response to a journalist asking him what he thought about a library in Finland banning one of his books because someone complained that it was vulgar. (December)

This is probably more for people who have read a book to an infant or toddler in the recent past, but I was laughing out loud at Jae Towle Vieira’s writing in this Defector piece, “Here Is What Reading To My Child Has Done To My Brain,” commenting on the slight and not-so-slight absurdities in children’s books. Such as: “Before I had a kid, I questioned the need for the abundance of Wheels on the Bus variations. Now I understand that there is no upper limit to the ideal amount of things that could happen in threes on buses. All day long, all through the town—a la Speed, it doesn’t matter what we’re doing as long as the bus keeps going.” [GIFT LINK] (December)

—

If my Friday Inspiration newsletters made your 2025 a tiny bit better, please consider keeping it going in 2026 by supporting my work through Patreon here.

This is a fun idea, and as someone pointed out in the comments, probably one of the safer things Red Bull has sponsored (thanks, Hilary) (video)

I don’t know what it is but something in these Illustrations from “The House Of The Future” scratched a nostalgic itch for me, probably involving photos of humans using jetpacks and flying cars in a school textbook when I was in third or fourth grade.

Gabe Bullard moved to Switzerland and found himself suddenly caring very much about the snails he saw everywhere. My favorite few lines from this piece: “I asked Estée Bochud [who manages the Natural History Museum’s malacology collection] if moving snails like I was doing might cause them stress. She said it seemed fine, since snails can start on an adventure and not realize what they’ve gotten themselves into until it’s too late. I understood the feeling.” [GIFT LINK]

Someone linked to this piece, Thin Desires Are Eating Your Life, somewhere, and I apologize, but I forgot where and can’t track it down, so apologies to that person. I can say that I am now thinking of things as Thick Desires vs. Thin Desires: “The business model of most consumer technology is to identify some thick desire, find the part of it that produces a neurological reward, and then deliver that reward without the rest of the package.” (via Kottke)

I imagine this [satire] headline will resonate with you if you have ever done laundry in your life: Study Finds Missing Sock Will Only Appear Once Matching Sock Has Been Executed

This appears to be a tweet from 2022 but I am laughing at it and considering doing it myself.

I read this story that Hanif Abdurraqib wrote on Instagram sometime just after Christmas, and I am pretty sure the reason I’ve read four of his books is because I assume Hanif Abdurraqib moves through the world like this all the time, and probably tells stories like this all the time too. But don’t take it from me, take it from the 17,000+ other people who clicked the heart icon on this post.

I am still cranking out episodes of my new podcast, My Favorite Things, and the latest episode is an interview with my friend, writer and running coach Mario Fraioli, who snuck in a couple extra favorite things into our chat, which was fine by me (also, Mario would like it noted that his audio settings were off and he sounds “like a chipmunk”).

—

QUICK ANNOUNCEMENT: Next Tuesday morning (January 13), we are opening registration for my 2026 “Running to Stand Still” Freeflow Institute writing + trail running workshop. It’s June 7-12 on Homestake Pass in Montana (10 miles from Butte, a couple miles from the Continental Divide Trail). We run every day (as a group, so not fast), we do two workshop/discussion sessions each day, and we eat lots of good food. This workshop sells out every year, so if you’re interested, send your email address to me at brendan@semi-rad.com (or you can just reply to this email) and I’ll send you an email when registration opens on Tuesday.

—

I really appreciate that in the sea of “I DID X EXTREME THING” titles on YouTube, I got served this 13-minute film of this guy snorkeling in a river in Alabama in December, freezing his hands and feet (in a wetsuit) to create a very chill video of some nature, including this line of commentary: “It was pretty sweet to watch this colorful crustacean just straight up vibing in his natural habitat in the creek.” (video)

I figured this T Magazine photo feature titled “Our Favorite Home Libraries” would showcase a bunch of fancy, uncluttered Dwell Magazine-approved beautiful spaces, and sure, a lot of these are really pretty, but a few of them look like the books are doing a hostile takeover of a living space, and I appreciate that. [GIFT LINK]

I mentioned this once before the end of 2025, but newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration has put together a sample pack of all of my favorite products so you can try the gels, chews, and electrolyte drink I use. I mean, I didn’t win any high-profile ultramarathon races last year—or any races for that matter—but I did run 1500+ miles and cranked out 300,000 feet of elevation gain, without getting a single cramp(!). (I believe this link will give you 15% off the pack, but if not you might have to manually enter SEMIRAD26 in the discount code spot when you check out)

This is a really vulnerable piece of writing about body image and breast explant surgery, by writer and runner Sarah Lavender Smith: I Need To Get Something Off My Chest

I was never a massive Star Trek fan aside from watching reruns of the original series as a kid in the 80s, but damn if I didn’t love clicking and dragging around these 360-degree panoramas of the interiors of some of the ships of Star Trek. (via Kottke)

The r/ContagiousLaughter subreddit always delivers for me: Seeing how many capes I can put on my client before she notices

This list of every U.S. state’s “loneliest road” was fun for a couple reasons—the methodology, the fact that I saw my pal James Q. Martin’s name in it (as the person they asked to “judge” the 10 most scenic routes out of the list of 50), and the photography (although I’m pretty sure one of the photos is of Interstate 90 through Utah, which is not very lonely at all, in my experience). And also that the loneliest road in Iowa goes right through my parents’ hometown of Emmetsburg, where I spent many days as a kid.

The Ringer has put together a 64-member “Ultimate Traitor Bracket,” including traitors from movies, books, and real life, and they’re already onto the Final Four, but I thought I’d link to the Sweet 16 post here, because it’s just fun to see who they put in it: LeBron James, Prince Hans from Frozen, Fredo Corleone, Cypher from The Matrix, Scar from The Lion King, Iago from Othello, the list goes on.

A heads-up: Registration opened for my Running To Stand Still writing + trail running course on Tuesday, and we have a $300 Early Registration discount if you sign up by midnight MST on Saturday January 17 (that’s tomorrow). If you like the sound of six days of mellow trail running, talking about writing and creativity with a group of fun people, and hanging out in the mountains of Montana, here’s the link for more info.

—

This [professional enduro mountain biker] guy waited for McDonald’s to close to see if he could ride his bike for 24 hours straight in the drive-thru, an endeavor I respect immensely. (video) (thanks, Devin)

From the “key takeaways” at the top of this article: 1) Scientists have identified a stone wall nearly 400 feet long, lying 30 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. 2) It was built by hunter-gatherers more than 7,000 years ago, though its purpose remains uncertain. (via Kottke)

In 1983, artist David Hammons made a bunch of very round snowballs and sold them for $1 alongside other street vendors in Cooper Square in New York, and now I have to watch the documentary about him because the trailer at the end of this piece about his “Blizz-aard Ball Sale” looks fantastic.

My friend Nick Triolo mentioned this to me at least three times (twice in person and once in his Substack) before I finally got my act together and started listening to it: Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, by Jad Abumrad, who you may be familiar with from his fantastic Dolly Parton’s America podcast from 2019 or his other, also quite successful podcast that he did up until 2022, Radiolab.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

As I understand this (from reading about it on WebCurios), this is basically a live visualization of plane traffic for every airport in the world, made possible by three different websites and a bunch of computer magic my brain is too small to understand but WOW is it fun to click around a little bit. Kind of fun to type in your local/favorite airport and see what’s going on right now.

I follow the r/FoundPaper subreddit, and there’s often some interesting/mysterious stuff in there. This is less mysterious, but kind of a window into a nightclub’s operating instructions for when Carrie Underwood made an appearance there.

I met Evan Ward on our 2022 Freeflow Institute writing workshop (when we sea kayaked around the San Juan Islands in pre-season temperatures and semi-dicey weather), and I’m not saying the writing course necessarily had anything to do with this piece Evan wrote about volunteering to help people fix bicycles, but I loved it, both for the narrative and the reminder that sometimes doing simple things for people can make the world feel a little less crazy.

I forgot to mention this last week and we’re now halfway through the first month of the year, but if you’re a Strava user, I started this club a few years ago called “100 Grand,” and it’s basically for people who track how much they go uphill. If you get to 100,000 vertical feet (in one sport, or all sports) in a year, I send you a sticker. If you want one. And if you get 400,000 vertical feet, I will send you four stickers. I like the metric of vertical feet (or meters) because it has nothing to do with performance—just reminding yourself to go uphill every once in a while. Anyway, here’s the link to the club if you’d like to partake for the next 349 days.

Finally: I recorded this My Favorite Things podcast interview with Andy Pearson, ultrarunner, podcast host, and VP of creative at Liquid Death, in May 2024, and I finally published it. We talk about Back to the Future Part II, Calvin and Hobbes, Andrew WK, On the Road, and The Hold Steady’s Boys and Girls in America. There’s some crazy stuff in this episode, but the craziest thing to me was when Andy mentioned that he once had a co-worker who “didn’t like music” (!?!?!?!)

I didn’t know that much about Tara Dower before watching this film, but I particularly like how she would rather introduce herself as “trail folk” instead of “ultrarunner,” and that one of her biggest talents seems to be inspiring an entire squad of friends to help her achieve her insane goals (and they all seem to be having so much fun doing it)(video)

Apparently a huge swath of the northern United States could see the northern lights this past week. I missed them, and maybe you did too, but this commercial airline pilot sure saw them from the cockpit of a Boeing 787 flying from Calgary to London and WOW did he get some wild photos of them.

I got really excited when I saw this video pop up on YouTube, listened to it like ten times, and announced to Hilary, “Hey, new José González album dropping soon,” and then realized that the album is not coming until March 27th. So, “Hey, new José González song available now” if you’re into that sort of thing, and if you’re not, let me just say that I have asked my music industry friend if José González is indeed the very nice guy he seems to be, and have received confirmation. He’s just one of those musicians who could keep writing music that’s 70-90% the same as his old stuff for the next 20 years and I’d keep eating it up.

I have feelings of great validation whenever I hear that someone smarter/more successful/faster than me espouses some sort of trick I’ve been doing for a long time without knowing that it’s actually a thing. Like when I read that author David Epstein sleeps in his workout clothes to eliminate that small bit of friction when he needs to get out and exercise the next morning. Or when sports scientist and CEO of newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration Andy Blow says to spend two minutes the night before thinking about what training you’re going to do the next day as one of his tips of How to motivate yourself to train this winter. (<—This link will give you 15% off your first 2026 order on the PFH website, but you might also have to enter the code SEMIRAD26 when you check out)

This is the second time in two weeks that I’ve shared a link from the r/FoundPaper subreddit but I particularly enjoy this definition of art, and the photo of the room in the school basement where it was found.

This poem, “Occasional Poem,” by Jacqueline Woodson, simultaneously feels so effortless and so powerful, which is probably why she’s written more than 30 books and won a whole bunch of awards.

This photo gallery of the “snow monsters” that appear during winter conditions at Japan’s Mount Zao ski resort is so cool. I don’t know what else to say but it’s worth scrolling through on a screen, probably the bigger the better. [GIFT LINK]

I loved this short piece on Geographic Geoff’s substack, which answers a question that, like me, maybe you’ve asked before but maybe just in your own head, and maybe you, like me, were not in a place to google it, and then forgot about it, but now, please enjoy the answer to that question, “Lots of countries end with ’-stan’ but why?”

On our most recent Trailhead podcast episode, Zoë and I interviewed our mutual friend Doug Mayer, who started the tour company Run The Alps, and who has also run the 330-kilometer Tor des Geants not once, but three times, and wrote a graphic novel about the race. I probably say this a lot because I try to have fun in most things I do, but this episode was really fun to record, and I hope if you listen to it, you laugh as much as we did.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

If you get partway through watching this 9-minute video about “The Owl Man of Logan Airport” and you think, “OK, I get it,” please let me advise you to stick around to hear Norman Smith tell the Starling vs. Peregrine Falcon vs. Snowy Owl story (video)

This post has a handful of the captivating photos that Martin Roemers took of people around the world posing with (or in) their vehicles, and if you want to see a few dozen more, click through the links to his website (I wondered why the background was white in all the photos but one of the first photos on his website is a behind-the-scenes shot where you can see a vehicle parked on a huge white fabric backdrop). The book, Homo Mobilis, looks pretty great.

If you click on one thing in this week’s newsletter, let it be this wonderful story Anne Kadet wrote about The Trumpet Player in a Tux at Grand Central Station—and do yourself another favor and press play on the video so you can listen to the music while you read about this guy’s amazing life story and perspective.

Sometimes I think really good satire is just basically holding up a mirror to the things we do, without much exaggeration, and forcing the audience to admit that yeah, humans are pretty ridiculous. Like this McSweeney’s piece, Let Us Walk You Through Our Very Reasonable Baby Registry.

“The algorithm” gets a lot of well-deserved flak nowadays, and I think rightly so, but every once in a while it delivers me something like this 30-minute live set from this super-chill Ethiopian jazz duo Zena, from this Addis Ababa-based YouTube channel that has barely 1,000 followers, and it redeems itself a little bit. (I am aware that it’s not just one algorithm, of course).

Who among us has not at least once in their life been left hanging when trying to high-five/fist bump someone? This video of “left hanging moments” from NBA games was heartening for me, as I got to watch Very Cool NBA Legends like LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant get left hanging many, many times, and do the same thing we all do: self-clap. Like don’t feel bad, it happens to everyone, including the greatest shooter of all time.

I was going to try to write something original about this 17-second video of this guy getting served food, and by the fourth time I watched it, cackling every time at the end, I can do no better than the most upvoted comment, “Oh the look of betrayal on that man’s face”

AND: a quick favor to ask: I’m coming up on one year as co-host of UltraSignup’s The Trailhead podcast. If you’ve been listening, and could take 60 seconds and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, I’d be grateful. And if you write a review, send your mailing address to me at brendan@semi-rad.com, and I’ll drop one of my “Put in the miles so you can put in the miles” stickers in the mail to you. Thanks!

—

For a good chunk of this video, I thought, “maybe this is a little too heavy to put in my newsletter,” and then I remembered the director is Irish, and it couldn’t stay heavy the entire time, which is probably why it got nominated for an Oscar (video)

I started following Dedra Smith/Pikitsuaki Designs on Instagram a few weeks ago because one of her wonderfully clever western designs made into my feed and I thought “well, this looks interesting” (I think it was this one or maybe this one? ) and they’re too good to not share here too. (here’s her website if you’re not on Instagram)

I don’t know how many people who read this newsletter will perk up at the mention of “a collection of 40-plus essays, short stories, comics, poems, illustrations and other works by trans creators, exploring the deeper meanings of the Fast & Furious franchise,” but I’m just going to say that I finished reading 2 Trans 2 Furious: An Extremely Serious Journal of Transgender Street Racing Studies this past week and it was one of my favorite books I’ve read in the past few months. Probably one of those books/fanzines that will sell 1,000 copies but I’m really glad to say that a bunch of people made it. (It does say it features “erotica” but I think there were only one or two stories in the whole thing that were, ahem, racy.)

This is a story about my friend Syd’s friend Brian, written by their friend John, who happens to work for the New York Times. It’s about Brian’s nearly three-year battle with prostate cancer (after his oncologist told him he had three to five years to live in March 2023). It’s called “A Role Model for How to Die,” and is of course about a tough subject, but in the limited time I’ve spent with Brian, his spirit and personality definitely shine through the story. [GIFT LINK]

We interviewed author Brad Stulberg this past week for The Trailhead about his new book The Way of Excellence and it was a great time. I found myself highlighting lots of passages in the book, and my first question for him during the interview was basically “So your new book is about excellence. What’s something you’re you terrible at?” And he was a good sport about answering that (as well as our other questions).

I saw this Ringer headline, “How will we remember the Luka trade 100 years later?” And thought, “This HAS to be a joke, because, you know, American professional basketball leagues aren’t even 100 years old (“Go Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons!”), and a hundred years is a long, long time to remember anything, let alone a trade between two (OK, three) basketball teams. I am please to report that it is, indeed, a joke, and honestly a good bit, since I am barely aware of what’s going on in the NBA and I couldn’t escape coverage of the one-year anniversary of the Luka trade this past week.

Here’s a fun project coming up from some friends of friends: the World Climate Relay, a challenge week (June 5-12, 2026) involving (hopefully) 10,000-plus people from more than 50 countries, to raise more that $100,000 for high-impact climate charities via the Giving Green Fund. (It’s the same dates of my Freeflow Institute writing + trail running workshop so I wasn’t going to participate—but maybe we’ll do it as part of the workshop?). More information here if you’re interested/need something to get you motivated to get out there in June.

And finally: This mug was the best-selling item in my DFTBA shop last month (and so far this month):

NEXT WEEK: On Thursday, February 19, at 6:00 p.m. MST, I will be doing a YouTube livestream + Q&A session about this year’s Freeflow Institute Running to Stand Still trail running and writing workshop in June. Sign up here via this link and I’ll send you an email the morning of the webinar containing the link to the livestream and a discount code good for $250 off your course registration. Hope to see you there!

—

I love that Flea (yes, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers) is still making music, is playing both the bass and the trumpet (his original childhood instrument) on said music, is putting out these funky videos on YouTube, and seems to be doing it in a very DIY style (he has less than 50,000 subscribers right now?), and that he just put out a song like this. (video)

It’s probably partly because I haven’t read that much of Charles Darwin’s actual writing, but also partly that he is such a revered titan of science, that I found these snippets from his letters so funny, including the one quoted in the title of this post, “Oh my God how I do hate species & varieties.”

Yesterday an algorithm served me a video titled something like “how to train like [Denver Nuggets star] Aaron Gordon, and I thought, “How dare you think I, a middle-aged dad, would compare myself to a 30-year-old full-time athlete who is paid millions of dollars each year to be good at basketball.” I did not click on the video, but I did click on this link in an email from newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration because it was titled “How to balance your training with work, family and life,” and I was not disappointed to see coach Dougal Allan pretty much say, “be reasonable,” and also to think of time commitments to work/family/fitness as investments, instead of the other way around, in which you would think of the “sacrifices” you make when choosing how to spend your time. [clicking on the link to the article will apply a 15% discount to any purchase you make from the PFH website]

I was a little uncomfortable in the first few seconds of this video of this guy who starts out very aggressively wanting justice for the theft of his bike (because that’s usually how videos on social media go), but was quite relieved to see how the situation resolved. (thanks, Joe)

Hilary wrote a Substack essay about riding the bus with our little guy, Jay, and everything she says in the piece is true. She and Jay have also converted me into a fan who is now incorporating it into many bus-there-run-home or run-there-bus-home preschool dropoff/pickup plans. But the essay is of course about bigger things.

This is a 15-second video but a very powerful take on the saying (which is also the title of the video), “Everyone’s living a life you know nothing about. Be kind” (via Kottke)

This feels like a long time ago (even though it was just last summer) but Mountain Outlaw magazine published a profile of me with photos by my friend Bobby Jahrig, and words by journalist Maggie Doherty, who was great to chat with.

My first thoughts when reading this story were 1) “I would never do that to my mom and dad” and 2) “I hope my kid never does that to me,” but thought #3 was “WOW, that’s what I call commitment. Or insanity? Or both.” (thanks, Justin)

And finally, here are some new t-shirts I designed from an idea by Patreon supporter, ultrarunner, and all-around swell guy Ned Abbott (we’re donating 50% of the profits to a nonprofit recommended by Ned):

—

This film is about the Manhattan loft artist Jay Ells has lived in since 1967 (starting rent was $110 a month!), and he says some interesting stuff at the beginning (no hot water in the apartment for the first 35 years), but it gets even more fascinating later on. Also: That view. (video)

At first I wasn’t going to include this, because I don’t know if it will resonate with anyone who doesn’t have nostalgia for the computers of the 1980s and early 1990s, but then I clicked on the post and read in the description that its made out of “LEGO-compatible bricks,” which is pretty mind-blowing and I think maybe more universally relevant.

We interviewed journalist and athlete Christie Aschwanden on The Trailhead podcast last week, and asked her a bunch of questions about recovery. She had some interesting takes on cold plunges, sleep trackers, HRV, and the beer mile, but the thing I really wanted to ask her about was a very simple quote of hers, “stress is stress,” which gets into why sitting at a desk all day answering emails and doing work isn’t “rest,” even though it’s definitely easier than, say, working as a carpenter.

I learned some very interesting (and heartening) facts from this story from newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration: Detraining: Will I lose fitness by not training for a few weeks? Including how much fitness you lose by taking time off, but more importantly, how much you retain even if you have a week in which you don’t get to do very much of what feels like “training” (like when you catch a gastrointestinal bug or respiratory virus from a three-year-old). [Reminder that clicking on the link to the story will give you 15% off your first 2026 order from PFH, if you choose to buy anything]

I read this piece twice, about this guy spending 4.5 months in federal prison and how it expanded his social circle, and I am still thinking about many things in it, including but not limited to how most of us would do anything to not go to prison because it’s awful but how, paradoxically, this guy seems to be surprised at the quality of the friendships he made in his time there, so what does that say about us in the 21st century? [GIFT LINK] (via Kottke)

I’ve been listening to Japanese chillhop musician Brockbeats since 2017 or 2018, and I have never been able to find out anything about them—no real bio, no photos, nothing besides some videos of human hands tapping buttons on music equipment to make beats. But, they have a new album out this week, and it is just as pleasant as always.

I feel like Megan Amram probably started writing this piece while having a conversation with a friend about how “protein is in EVERYTHING nowadays!” And one of them said, “Wait, it’s not in everything, right?” And then she just took that idea and ran with it as far as she could.

Alex Hutton’s paintings of roller coasters are wonderful to look at, and the type of thing I’d hang on a wall if I had more walls and way more money, but maybe the most interesting thing about them is that he does not actually ride roller coasters.

I follow the r/oddlysatisfying subreddit because, true to its name, it provides images of oddly satisfying things, as well as just plain satisfying, not oddly at all, things. Such as the way snow fell and settled on this person’s pergola, which they then photographed and shared with the rest of us.

I mentioned this new shirt design a few weeks ago, and the [bestselling] coffee mug design below it as well, and I was thinking they’re both quite simply worded, but kind of have a similar ethos: We’re doing OK.

You’re Doing Great shirt

This F—ing Sucks mug

—

My friend Ed, whose excellent Mountain & Prairie podcast you’re probably aware of if you’ve been following this newsletter for more than a few weeks, and who is also tapped into some Red Hot Chili Peppers content pipeline probably because of our shared love of Flea’s memoir, Acid for the Children, sent me this video this week, and it was a breath of fresh air. (video)

If you missed yesterday’s email, I wrote a piece about getting some time back from my phone, using a very simple idea/metric, and how it’s been going.

This is super-interesting but also extremely technical: A story about calculating the longest line of sight possible on Earth. As the author states at the end of the piece, visiting the actual spot to confirm the calculation would involve some significant mountaineering—but also at the end, in the footnotes, he says that the inspiration for the idea came from a 2012 forum thread on SummitPost, which warmed my crusty old mountaineering heart. (via Kottke)

I love the Poem of the Day emails, but I love them even more when they give me a poem I can read in less than 60 seconds and then think about for days afterward, like this one, which stuck the line “when you’re broke, everything you touch is artificial” in my head, where it will live for a long time.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has come up a bunch of times in conversations I’ve had in the past few weeks (including podcast interviews with Brad Stulberg on The Trailhead and the episode with my friend Kurt Wikel on My Favorite Things), so when I saw this piece by Ted Gioia, “The Real Story Behind ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’” I of course read the whole thing and learned a lot of the backstory of a book I read/loved when I was 21.

Michelle J’s newsletter isn’t huge, but I read it every time I see a new post pop up. I have technically made a living as an adventure writer, and when I teach writing, that’s kind of where I come from, but I really want to teach people how to do what she does, which is make funny, thoughtful stories out of normal things like, well, this one, The Hidden Power Dynamics of the Office Potluck.

I saw some photos of Kyoto University’s graduation ceremony on a Reddit post saying it was “an art school graduation” in which the school lets students wear whatever they want, but as far as my research has found (someone please correct me if I’m wrong), it’s just the university’s graduation ceremony. Anyway, this article is the most detailed piece I found on it, the costumes are fantastic and I think more higher learning institutions should adopt this idea.

I linked to this article on the Precision Fuel & Hydration website a few months ago, “How to start strength training for endurance,” and I am not trying to be an evangelist, but would like to say that I have been doing the exact two workouts mentioned in that article during my two gym sessions per week since Thanksgiving, and I can’t believe I didn’t start doing it sooner. (Also, if you click that link to read the article, you’ll get 15% off your first purchase of PFH stuff from the website, including this package of my favorite PFH fuel)

I have probably spent 1000 times as many minutes reading about AI than I have using actual AI tools, but it’s always refreshing to read something calm and thoughtful about this whole *gestures at everything* era we seem to be in now. There were a bunch of bangers in this essay by Charles Yu (which was apparently adapted from a lecture he gave at Davidson College), including this paragraph: “But the achievement of a degree does not cover, does not even purport to touch, emotional intelligence. What is a Ph.D. in reading the room? In teaching your kid to ride a bike? In crying because you were moved by a piece of music? We consider elephants intelligent because they mourn their dead. What is a Ph.D. in grief, awe, wonder, curiosity?” [GIFT LINK]

We announced this on social media last week: An alumnus of my Running to Stand Still writing + trail running workshop has offered to provide a full-ride scholarship to this year’s workshop (June 7-12, Homestake Pass, Montana). The deadline is March 28, 2026, and the details and application are here.

And if you’re wondering what it’s like to attend the workshop, this video I made with my friend and Freeflow Institute founder Chandra Brown should give you an idea of our general vibe:

I did not expect to get choked up watching this video about basketball player Audi Crooks and her family, but I am also not surprised. (video)

I was not the biggest Star Trek fan but damn do I love a good set of “fictional spaceship cut in half” images, in this case the USS Enterprise D.

I am once again doing what some people call “training” (for a big goal this fall) and really enjoying my time on the trails here in Missoula, which are ranging these past few weeks anywhere from dry to muddy to covered in snow and/or ice. To keep my toes from getting jacked up no matter how badly I treat them, I have been wearing and loving the Ultra Run Crew from Injinji, who is not only sponsoring this month’s newsletter, but also giving you all 20 percent off toesocks with the code SEMIRADMAR26 for one week only—here’s a link for newsletter subscribers.

You’re probably familiar with the term enshittification  (if not, it’s in the dictionary now), which is kind of not in the purview of this newsletter, which is called “Friday Inspiration,” which is almost entirely made up of positive and inspiring content, because enshittification is kind of depressing. BUT, this video by the Norwegian Consumer Council is inspiring for its originality and tone, as is their quest to fight enshittification.

My Freeflow Institute Grand Canyon 2025 co-instructor Dr. Len Necefer wrote this great piece, A Letter to Those Younger Than Me, and instead of trying to sum it up in a couple sentences here, I’ll just quote my favorite part and recommend you read it:  “There is a difference between earned grief and cheap cynicism. Earned grief comes from engagement. It comes from having tried, from having been in the room or on the ground or in the water, from having put something on the line and watched it not be enough. That grief is honest and I respect it and I carry a lot of it. Cheap cynicism comes from never having tried. It comes from the sideline, from the comment section, from the safe distance of someone who decided early that nothing would work and then arranged their life to prove themselves right. One is a wound. The other is a wall. Learn to tell the difference. Build your life on the wound side.”

The title of this poem, Now You Are Like a God, is perfect, and the poem itself should be required reading, as a sort of palate cleanser, for anyone who has watched TV news coverage that makes them feel that every block of every single city is a crime-ridden hellscape.

John Craigie’s new album I Swam Here popped up on my radar a month ago, and something about it just feels like an antidote to Everything Going On right now—calm, chill, a bit of reverb in the vocals. I’ve been listening to it a lot lately, as well as some of his older albums (enough to where I think Hilary is getting a little tired of it). But if that sounds good to you, here’s the new album (recommendation: start it on the second track, Fire Season).

I forget where I saw a mention of this podcast episode on The Atlantic, How To Age Up On A Warming Planet, but as someone more than a little prone to climate anxiety, last week was perfect timing (even though the episode originally published in May 2025) to hear what Sarah Ray, professor and chair of environmental studies at Cal Poly Humboldt, had to say about staying sane in an uncertain world. To paraphrase (but you should really listen to her say it in more detail): make sure you’re getting together with your community/neighbors, and redirect your attention to the things (and people) you love. [GIFT LINK]

Also: I got to interview my Trailhead co-host, journalist (and standup comedian) Zoë Rom on My Favorite Things this week, and we talked about Nathaniel Russel’s art and flyers, as well as Blalock’s Indie Rock Playlist, John D’Agata’s book About a Mountain, the Ways of Hearing podcast, and Lady Bird:

—

A big thanks to Hilary for sending me this 9-minute skateboard video that’s more of a visual love letter to Paris with some skating by Andy Anderson, the most joyful part of which I believe might be the credits, among many joyful parts (video)

Mike Sowden, whose Everything Is Amazing  newsletter I have mentioned here many times, sent me a link to this website with the simple message “Top 100,000 Wikipedia articles of the year….as if they’re skyscrapers in a city.” I see no need to further elaborate on his words, and if that kind of data visualization sounds fun to you, here’s the link to check out WikiCity. (OK, sorry, I would in fact like to further elaborate, or just ask: Why is the Wikipedia page for the number 4 the 1,100th most popular Wikipedia page?!?!?)

Anne Kadet walked around New York for three days in order to ask 200 New Yorkers to name their worst enemy and collect their responses, which are relatable, touching, funny, quite diverse, and worth reading.

Thanks to Hannah sending me this link, I now know what a nudibranch is, and I am also very happy that artist Arina Borevich seems to have created her own lane in the art world by making felt interpretations of the colorful marine sea slugs, which seem to sell out very quickly on her website.

Reuters spent a ton of time and resources figuring out the identity of Banksy, and if you want to read a super-long piece about how they did it (and who Banksy is), it was published online this week and has MULTIPLE CHAPTERS. I was a bit conflicted about whether or not I wanted to find out, and if you don’t want to know, don’t click the link (although you might have already seen it somewhere else).

This is good advice for (as stated) “if you’re feeling overwhelmed,” and also if you would like a little chuckle.

What happens in this story titled “Sucker: My year as a degenerate gambler” is probably not inspirational in a positive sense, but I thought the writing and research were honestly quite bold: McKay Coppins, staff writer at The Atlantic, practicing Mormon, and married father, takes $10,000 of The Atlantic’s money to gamble with for the 2025-26 NFL season (he OKed it with his bishop since it was a journalistic exercise). I got hooked and read this entire piece in chunks over the past week (if you listen to it, it’s almost 74 minutes), and wow. What happens is maybe not surprising, but illuminating nonetheless. [GIFT LINK]

One more thing: Thanks to a very generous alumnus of my Running to Stand Still running + writing workshop, we are able to offer one full scholarship for this year’s workshop in Montana. So if you’ve thought about joining us but need some help, check out the application here. The deadline to apply is March 28.

Related to that: I took a series of screenshots from Ethan Hawke’s interview on Subway Takes to try to explain why I teach writing workshops (including, of course, this year’s workshop, which has a few spots left):

If you watch this video, be warned that a) there are a couple verbal mentions of male anatomy and also an animation of male anatomy, b) that it won Best Nonfiction Short Film at Sundance in 2024, and c) you might cry a little bit. (video)

If you had “Read a brief but wonderful poem about holding an iguana like a baby and feel a tiny bit better about everything” on your to-do list for today, go ahead and cross that off after you click here.

Since I 1) am running a lot right now and 2) have a preschooler who has had a runny nose and a bit of a cough earlier this week, I was interested to read this article on newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration’s website: Does exercise weaken your immune system? The answer is: It can, but. [Reminder that clicking the above link will give you 15% off your first 2026 purchase of Precision stuff)

I appreciated this lovely exploration of Robert Redford’s identity through the lens of the movie Jeremiah Johnson, and also appreciated the deftness with which writer David Gessner addresses the fact that yeah, the movie/screenplay/history of the American West is a bit problematic, as is the origin of the character of Jeremiah Johnson. (PS: I only know about this article because of my friend Ed’s Good News from the American West newsletter, which you would probably enjoy too)

I don’t know how much I need to set this up, but this guy got his photo on the front page of the local Lewiston, Idaho, newspaper twice on the same day! But in one of the photos he was committing a crime, so … (via Kottke)

So I co-host a podcast for UltraSignup, which is a trail and ultrarunning company, so you might think our podcast would focus on people who run ultramarathons. But you’d be mistaken! We focus on interesting people who we believe will say things that are relevant to ultrarunning, or at least endurance. And we got a lot of that out of our interview with University of Utah philosophy professor C. Thi Nguyen, who sort of backed his way into studying games (which include, for him, rock climbing and fly fishing). Zoë and I had a blast picking his brain, and at one point in the interview I did compare fantasy football to Dungeons & Dragons, which seemed to go over OK.

Niko Stratis, in this essay, masterfully uses The New Radicals’ 1998 hit “You Get What You Give” to contemplate shitty jobs: “I don’t believe it’s important for your first job to be good, as if there might be some perfect kind of charming labor that teaches valuable life lessons while building sturdy character. I would argue it’s more significant that whatever your first job is, it should be some Pantone code of total shit. It should wear you down a smidge, weigh heavy on the spirit in benign and harmless ways to inspire rebellion against the monotony of life’s tedious little battles. As an introductory course to the lessons of the world, a good and terrible first job is an ideal opportunity to see just how much weight the branches of your sturdy frame can hold before they break.”

Apparently Mexico City’s Biblioteca Vasconsuelos is super-famous, and heavily photographed, and super-famous for being heavily photographed, but I had not heard of it until someone posted photos of it on the r/cassettefuturism subreddit last week. I found a website with way more photos here just in case you, like me, get a special warm human feeling from an absolutely beautiful library.

Finally: March 31 is the final day to sign up for my Running to Stand Still running + writing workshop in June (and tomorrow, March 28, is the final day to apply for scholarships). I have been trying lots of different ways to get the word out, and someone’s Instagram comment inspired this short video I titled “What’s a ‘Real Writer’?”

I think I know probably a dozen people who will be VERY excited reading the words “Hey, there’s a documentary about Mary Oliver coming out soon,” and I hope I am the one to deliver this news to them (video)

As I understand it, this guy was replacing the stairs in his multi-floor townhouse, took out the spiral staircase, and then realized that his passport was on the top floor, which was bad because he was leaving the next weekend for a cruise. So he put an ad on Craigslist in search of a couple rock climbers to retrieve it for him (with a very detailed ad that makes me think he’s done some climbing himself). Which seems like one of those “only in New York” things, but also enjoyable for everyone. (Thanks, Beth!)

I share a lot of links to the r/cassettefuturism subreddit in this newsletter because it’s a thing I like—which I have always assumed is because of a sort of nostalgia for the time when computers seemed to hold a lot of promise and potential, but before I hated the fact that “checking my phone” was near the top of my list of “Things I Do Right Away After I Wake Up.” So when someone writes a piece titled “A love letter to cassette futurism,” I of course click on it hoping to understand why, and this one delivered for me. Basically, if you’ve noticed the aesthetic in movies like Blade Runner, Alien, the original Star Wars, or Andor, you might enjoy reading more about it. (Also if you think a 6-minute YouTube video titled “Alien but just the tech” sounds fun, that’s in the article too)

Blake Boles has one of the most unique lives of anyone I know, bouncing around the globe doing cool stuff while pursuing his passion for educating kids in non-classroom environments. Also, I have to admit that the title of his new book, “Dirtbag Rich,” is one of those “I wish I’d thought of that” titles. Anyway, it came out last week, and it’s a really thoughtful read on different ways of looking at the idea of being “rich.” I know this because I read the whole thing a few months ago when Blake asked me to create a handful of illustrations for it. Here’s a link to check it out on Bookshop, or if you prefer audiobooks, on Audible.

I know nothing about this website, but it makes me happy that someone compiled a list titled “A list of chain restaurants whose names contain unusual structures, presented in decreasing order of how appealing it would be to eat in such a structure” (via Kottke)

Last week, if I can believe the statistics, the My Favorite Things podcast passed 10,000 downloads. I have no idea if that’s impressive or not but I am psyched that some people are listening to it. For the most recent episode, I chatted with my friend Jonathan Ellsworth, who you might recognize as the founder of Blister Review, which, among other things, puts together insanely detailed reviews of skis and other gear. Jonathan also has a Ph.D in philosophy, and is always an interesting conversation, so I was excited to see what he had on his list of favorite creative works (which included Pulp Fiction, Old Man and the Sea, Picasso’s Don Quixote, a later-era Bob Dylan song, and a philosophy book that retails at $58).

I resisted buying a Defector subscription until I found out I could use gift links to send people to Defector articles, and I’m so happy I did, not necessarily because I read a lot of stories about sports, but because of stories like this one, titled “We Asked The Mayor Of Ottawa Why He Keeps Posting Such Grim Photos,” which you can enjoy without any prior knowledge of Ottawa, Ottawa’s mayor, or the grim photos referenced in the headline. [GIFT LINK]

If you want to geek out about music production for a few minutes, specifically how small but noticeable recording mistakes made it into final versions of songs (such as the phone ringing during the Beatles “A Day in the Life,” or Bill Withers repeating “I know” 26 times during “Ain’t No Sunshine,” or the fake crowd noise in Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets,” etc.), this video is a fun watch/listen.

Finally: Last weekend I wrote + illustrated a piece breaking down where my “creative income” comes from with a detailed pie chart, because a) I thought it might be interesting for folks to see the mix of stuff I juggle to make it work each year and b) it’s tax season in the U.S., so I had the spreadsheets handy anyway. If you’re a Patreon supporter you can see it here, and if you’re a paid Substack subscriber you can see it here. (and if you’re not a paid supporter and would like to change that, you can do so via either of those links)

—