kenny

What have I read, watched, listened to, and considered this week? Here's a selection:

Books:

• Stephen King's 11/22/63. After a spurt of progress last week, I've been holding off on this one (book club).

• Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction by Samir Okasha. No progress this week.

• Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon. I started this one last week in anticipation of a weekend trip to Chicago. The book isn't a traditional urban history, but instead an environmental history of the symbiotic relationship between Chicago and the American West. After covering the historical preliminaries, Cronon goes on to argue that the development of railroads fundamentally altered the grain trade. To maximize efficiency, grain from different farmers was mixed together in freight cars for transport to Chicago's elevators. This was a marked change from the usual method employed during water transport, where sacks from individual farmers were kept separate for the entirety of their journey to eastern warehouses and markets. This may seem like a minor change, Cronon argues, but it was the first step in distancing the grain trade away from the physical the actual commodity and toward increasingly abstract tools such as receipts and futures contracts. The book has excellent notes througout. I plan to do further research on the development of futures markets and the history of "corners." So far, highly recommended.

Podcasts:

• Tyler Cowen on Rick Rubin's Tetragrammaton podcast. At first I was put off by Rubin's seeming ignorance, but I actually started to enjoy his honest questions--markedly different from a typical Tyler Cowen podcast. I also enjoyed the bonus episode with Tyler creating a playlist with Rick.

• Tadzio Dlugolecki on Luke Haverty's At the Table podcast. I regularly read Tadzio's Substack Joy Arbitrage. My one word summary of Tadzio: verve.

Other:

• The Tournament by Master MZ and The Rapidity of Sleep by Yves Tanguy, both from the Art Institute of Chicago. I could've spent days in this museum; these were two of my favorites.