Your outie is a good person who loves podcasts
A great podcast about Severance, and other podcasts and links that will make you think.
Welcome to Hurt Your Brain, the place to get podcasts and links that will make you think.
After months of deliberation, I finally made the move from Mailchimp + Wordpress to Substack only. Nothing like waiting to the last minute and figuring everything out in the hours leading up to the moment your Wordpress page shuts off (and I didn’t want to renew for a whole year).
I was tired of Mailchimp + Wordpress for many reasons, and so far I’m happy with the move. I would have went to Revue, but they are owned by Twitter, and of course they are now shutting down the service (glad I never bothered). My entire archive is available on my Substack page, and I’ll tweak the settings and formatting a little bit moving forward, but everything is there.
So nothing has really changed. Except a few things:
Now that I’m on Substack, feel free to comment or hit the like button if you enjoyed the newsletter.
If you have a Substack, I would be honored if you select Hurt Your Brain as one of your recommended newsletters so that other people can find this easier.
Also, I think I’ll stop putting the issue number in the subject line. It’s time to sunset that.
I no longer have access to my previous email erik@hurtyourbrain.com. If you have sent me something in the past several weeks, I have not seen it and I apologize. Just reach out on Twitter for now if you wanted to pitch a show or say hello.
I also started writing on Medium again. I hope to publish once a week.
Ok on with regular programming!
PODCAST RECOMMENDATIONS
Very Bad Wizards: Your Outie Is Skilled at Lovemaking (With Paul Bloom)
The Big Idea: A philosophy podcast discussing one of my favorite and definitely most brain-hurting shows of last year (Severance). If you haven’t seen it, c’mon, it’s so good.
This podcast discussion delivers everything you could hope for around teasing apart the different philosophical ramifications addressed in the show.
Jump right to 47:15 for where the discussion starts. Everything before is about an unrelated philosophy paper.
For those who haven’t watched, the title of this podcast and this newsletter edition are both references to the show.
Song Exploder: Son Lux - This is a Life (from ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’)
The Big Idea: A fascinating breakdown of the end credits song for one of the best movies last year. If you like getting inspired by the creative process, this episode will be your jam.
Immediately one of my favorite Song Exploder episodes.
The Disappearing Spoon: The Debaucherous Legacy of Johnny Appleseed
The Big Idea: Perhaps unsurprisingly, the whole story we were fed around Johnny Appleseed as kids is complete BS. Well, most of it is anyway. He really did wear a pot on his head because he was a bit of a weirdo.
The real Johnny Appleseed story is only one interesting part of this episode. The other is a schooling around how genetically strange apples are and why all apples within a variety are clones.
Outside/In: What is the Most Successful Species on Earth?
The Big Idea: Some thought provoking conversation about what success in nature means, with an answer to the title question that I had never heard of.
Before listening, think about what your answer would be. I immediately went to ants, which sadly weren’t mentioned at all.
PODCAST LINKS
Podstack. There’s a new podcast recommendations newsletter on the scene. Show it some love and sign up here for more podcast goodness.
Never Use Stock Photos in Podcasting (or anything else) Again. My first article in over a year. I’m trying to get back into the writing habit and this one is all about the why and how in using AI to create images for your needs. I made a bunch that are free to use!
VISUALS
See was that so hard Mailchimp? Mailchimp could not embed tweets and it drove me crazy.
More visuals:
OTHERS LINKS
Inside the Proton, the ‘Most Complicated Thing You Could Possibly Imagine’. I mean, do we even understand anything? Why not start the year with something that will really make your brain hurt.
Why Tom Cruise’s Run Matters. As an alternate to the above, something more fun to start the year!
For fun: This is definitely going on the fridge. I discovered this comic when I impulse checked out this new book from the library. The whole thing is great.
Alright folks, thanks for making it to the bottom! I’ll figure out a real footer soon, but please say hello by replying, liking this post, or saying hi on Twitter.
Severance was so damn good; can't wait to listen to that episode! (Also, congrats on making the move to Substack!)