Five recommendations

---

1. Book

I’m a huge Ian McEwan fan. I don’t love everything he writes—I found Sweet Tooth too boring to finish—but he has a higher hit rate than any author I know, and some of his books, like the hilarious and underrated Solar, are among my very favorite novels.

He is 77 years old, and his newest, What We Can Know, is maybe his best. I recommend reading it cold, without advance summaries of the plot, because there’s a joy in the surprises it offers.

2. TV

Do you like The West Wing? Would you like it more if it were set in London, revolved around a troubled marriage, had a lot more sex, and starred Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell? If this is catnip for you—and it sure as hell is for me—I strongly recommend The Diplomat.

3. Movie

I’m not a baseball guy, but sometimes when I’m sad, I watch Moneyball, and it cheers me right up. It’s an affable and intelligent movie, and it’s very pro-rationality. I like it so much that I just read the book by Michael Lewis that it’s based on, and was surprised to hear how little of the movie is true. There is a person named Billy Beane who was the general manager of the Oakland A’s who pushed for a statistics-oriented approach, but most everything else is made-up. (The Jonah Hill character you see below — he didn’t exist!)

Still, fantastic movie.

4. Podcast

In an earlier post, I raved about Ross Douthat’s book Believe; here I am raving about his podcast Interesting Times. Douthat gets great guests—Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance, Hasan Piker, Steve Bannon—and he has an engaging, curious, almost teasing interviewing style.

Douthat isn’t shy about expressing his own views as a religious conservative, and this often leads to some surprising interactions. One of these was in his discussion with Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, where Murphy goes on and on about how church attendance is valuable because it has all sorts of social benefits. This annoys Douthat, who thinks one should go to church because one chooses to worship God. At one point, Murphy says that he hasn’t been attending church as much as he would like, and you get this somewhat testy exchange.

Douthat: Do you think that God is disappointed in you?

Murphy: [Chuckles.] I guess I don’t ask that question very often.

Douthat is good at getting people to say interesting things. This interaction with Peter Thiel (about the antichrist!) was quite revealing about Thiel’s mindset.

Douthat Do you think people are raising money by pretending that we’re going to build a machine god? Is it hype? Is it delusion? Is it something you worry about?

Thiel: Um, yeah.

Douthat: I think you would prefer the human race to endure, right?

Thiel: Uh ——

Douthat: You’re hesitating.

Thiel: Well, I don’t know. I would — I would ——

Douthat: This is a long hesitation!

Thiel: There are so many questions implicit in this.

Douthat: Should the human race survive?

Thiel: Yes.

Douthat: OK.

Douthat also has the best voice in podcasting.

5. Substack

I don’t have many paid Substack subscriptions—my current number is six. But I’ve recently added one called Cartoons Hate Her. This isn’t a niche taste; she is #1 in Humor on the Substack leaderboard. But I just discovered it, and love it. CHH is funny, sharp, and humane. Check out her most recent—on whether men should work harder at Halloween costumes. An excerpt:

It’s Halloween, and Halloween is scary. Here’s the scariest part of all: there are no safe options if you want to be 100% certain nobody will think you’re cringe. I get that women are also not immune from being mocked for their unoriginal angel/devil best friend costume, but the costumes feel like much more of a minefield for men. And ultimately, you will just never be safe. Even playing it safe by doing nothing is not actually safe.

However, I’m not going to just shrug and say “it all depends.” I’m not going to do the Substack article version of House of Dynamite. I’m going to make a verdict about men’s Halloween costumes, and my verdict is that if you are afraid of looking like you’re trying too hard, and it’s too late to actually put together a cool costume, you should try to be as funny as possible. While I know it can be unappealing to shout “look at me” with your costume, nothing is less appealing than being afraid to have fun.

I will add one caveat: those gigantic inflatable dinosaur costumes will make conversation very difficult. We recently went to a Halloween party where a guy tried to talk to my husband while wearing one of those, and my husband couldn’t tell where his face was supposed to be, nor could he really hear anything he was saying.

Just say no.

---