Better Strangers

Hey all! Today I discussed the history of the Situationist International, and their impact on modern culture in the form of graffiti, punk rock, and modern protest. I mentioned having a list of books on Psychogeography, you can find that here . Otherwise, here are the books I mentioned: I also mentioned Higgs’ book The KLF: Chaos, Magic, Music, and the Band that Burned A Million Pounds. I don’t ha...

The story I’m about to tell you is true. You can look it up — the CIA’s “Acoustic Kitty” project. If you have 5 minutes, though, I highly recommend listening to this story on Nate DiMeo’s The Memory Palace podcast: In the 1960’s, the CIA wanted to better spy on the Russian embassy in Washington, DC. But the Soviets knew that their offices were thoroughly bugged, so if they needed to have a convers...

In last week’s column about how misanthropy is a choice, I mentioned the existence of a subreddit page called “Thanos Did Nothing Wrong,” in which hundreds of thousands of people joined and enthusiastically agreed with the genocidal villain from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It occurred to me that Thanos vs. The Avengers actually nicely illustrate the two most popular — and most castrophic — appr...

Happy Friday, guys! This week’s podcast is a deep dive into John Michael Greer’s 2008 book The Long Descent. I did a text-only version of this a while back, so if you prefer reading to listening, find that here: Better Strangers is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you would like to di...

This is going to sound bad: My wife works in politics, and occasionally, I tag along with her to fancy events where local politicians are gladhanding with donors and constituents. I sometimes go to activist events where fairly powerful people show up to speak and listen to what we have to say. And there’s one thing that always crosses my mind: I got in here and NO ONE patted me down… It’s crazy th...

I was going to publish something different today, but then my video last week about disaster utopias on TikTok got a quarter of a million views in 24 hours, sooo… welcome new followers! For older followers, here’s the video: That was a short video! I feel like delving into the book it was based on would be helpful for fleshing out some of the questions people had in the comments. So without furthe...

There is a single person on the internet whom you do not want to negatively engage with your content, and that is Greta Thunberg. If Greta Thunberg owns you, you will literally go to jail. That story, if you missed it, came at the end of 2022, when “Manosphere” personality and general all-around douchebag Andrew Tate attempted to troll Thunberg by bragging about his car emissions. Thunberg respond...

Juan is a medium. He can see ghosts and he can summon an eldritch entity known only as “the Darkness” from other dimensions to ours. Because of this ability, Juan has been forced into becoming the unwilling servant of an occult coven of brutal, wealthy dark art practitioners who collude with the right-wing Argentine military junta of the late 1970’s to throw “disappeared” victims as a sacrifice to...

I am not in any sort of marginalized group, but I try to be an ally. I don’t really have the ability to speak for trans people or people in the LGBTQ+ community, but I can speak to my own struggles with both toxic masculinity and trying to develop something better. So that’s what today’s podcast is about. Consider donating to the Trevor Project , which supports LGBTQ young people. I’d love to hear...

One of the things that irritated me most when I worked as a librarian was that if there was an outcry about a book, it invariably had something to do with sex or just the existence of certain bodies — usually trans or queer. The books people objected to were often comics, as text-based books have to be read in order to object to them, whereas comics require only a glance. This irritated me because...

This is the first installment in a new column I’m writing called Psycho Geography! It’s an every-other-week on Monday thing, alternating with Book Rex. Reminder that if you only enjoy some of my columns, you can pick and choose which you receive here . Modern travel is a nightmare. Tourism is responsible for roughly 8% of all global carbon emissions, mass tourism is regularly eroding and destroyin...

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with dystopias. I watched every zombie movie I could, I read every book about every bleak wasteland, I obsessed over Cormac McCarthy’s The Road , I got into impassioned debates about The Dawn of the Dead slow zombies vs. 28 Days Later fast zombies, and as a game with my friends, I’d strategize about what I’d do during a zombie apocalypse. Around th...

In (slightly belated) honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I wanted to offer an Irish-themed Book Rex. My ancestry is that of an American mutt — if you looked at my DNA breakdown, you’d notice that my ancestors seemed particularly indiscriminate about what sort of white person they coupled with, and you’d maybe mutter to yourself, “well, at least they were indiscriminate about something .” But the stronges...

Your dog knows way more about your intimate business than you’d be comfortable with. Today’s episode is about the scientific concept of the umwelt , which is the perspective that different animals have on the world, and how this is influenced by different sensory abilities. I think imagining animals realities is a fun and humbling way of understanding just how limited our perception of reality rea...

Consider this possibility for a second: Watching the news every day is making you less informed about the world. This is not to say you don’t understand what’s going on in Ukraine. It’s not to say you aren’t up to date with which basic democratic right the Worst Supreme Court in History™ is dismantling at this very moment. It’s not to say you don’t know the names of most of the major world leaders...

Hey guys! This week’s podcast is a fairly personal one about restarting a writing career while dealing with lingering mental health issues. My main note is this: if you’re going through something, please seek help! It does not have to be professional help, although that is a very good option. I first got help years ago after a friend opened up to me about his mental health struggles, so I’m very p...

A version of this appeared on my website for the 100th anniversary. I’ve developed different conclusions since then! 106 years ago today was the start of the February Revolution in Russia. It was, quite possibly, the most important single event of the 20th century. Without the October Revolution, there is no Stalin. With no Stalin, it's possible that many western powers would not have seen Hitler...

In the latter half of the 20th century, a group of people called the Discordians discovered something magical: the Number 23. They came to call this esoteric bit of wizardry the “23 Enigma,” and pointed out that, once you start looking for it, there are all of these strange recurrences of the number 23 in the world. A small sampler: LeBron James and Michael Jordan, the two greatest basketball play...

Given that the entire planet is conspiring to destroy our ability to pay attention, it’s not a surprise that sometimes we can’t commit to or focus on a novel. If this is you, I have a suggestion: don’t even try! Instead, get back into the reading habit by reading short fiction. This was not a medium I held in particularly high regard until the pandemic, when I realized I needed a short palette cle...

Hey everyone! I am dragging a bit! Pandemic mental health stuff caught up to me, so instead of original content today, I am providing an audio version of my favorite ever column, which was originally titled “Against Forgiveness” and was then changed to “Forgiveness and Time” on Better Strangers. Then, at the end of the recording, is Dylan Thomas’s reading of W.H. Auden’s “As I walked out one eveni...

In 2014, just before I got engaged to my wife, we watched the first season of the show True Detective , and I was completely taken by Matthew McConaughey’s character Rustin Cohle. Cohle is a pessimist — not a half-assed Eeyore pessimist who just looks at the glass half empty, but a philosophical pessimist, someone who thinks the existence of humanity is a mistake. He gives a particularly miserable...

Note: As always, these books are affiliate linked to Bookshop.org, which means that if you buy through the link, I get a small kickback. This does not have any effect on the books I choose. I never affiliate link to Amazon. If you, like me, come from a certain demographic group (white, male, etc.) you were likely raised to feel misty warm feelings at the sight of the American flag or the sound of...

Having a hard time with the winter? Read an obnoxiously long book! This has been my strategy for getting through Seasonal Affective Disorder for a few years now, and it’s been one of the main things I’ve begun to look forward to in the winter time. Here are the first two books I mentioned: And these are the hard books: As always, all books are affiliate linked to Bookshop — if you buy through here...

This article was originally published on my personal website in 2021. No one “got” the late 20th century like Kurt Vonnegut, the science fiction writer and humorist best known for his 1969 World War II book, Slaughterhouse-Five. He saw the dangers of late capitalism, of religious fanaticism, of climate change, and of technological change with such clear eyes that it would be too difficult to read...

Note: As always, these books are affiliate linked to Bookshop.org, which means that if you buy through the link, I get a small kickback. This does not have any effect on the books I choose. I never affiliate link to Amazon. In my previous job as a librarian, I had the job of buying new comics for the local library. It was maybe my favorite part of the job — in the past, not much had been set aside...