Well, it’s been awhile, but ya know, life happens. At the end of each month, I take stock of the best things that I have been reading and watching, and I examine what’s been occupying my thoughts. When the end of the year comes around, I look back through those monthly entries to reflect on how and on what I spent most of my time, efforts, and thoughts. As I’ve said before, it’s hard to know where you want to go if you don’t know where you’ve been.
Here’s the best things I read, watched, etc. in 2024:
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Every now and then a book hits you over the head like a ton of bricks. It’s easy to identify with characters who remind you of yourself. You often float along, knowing that you’d make the same heroic choices as the protagonist. The true talent of a writer, however, is the ability to connect a reader to characters with whom they share nothing in common: evoking empathy and understanding is a singular gift. Jesmyn Ward has that gift, and I now count Barbara Kingsolver in that company.
Demon Copperhead is a truly meaningful story that brings forth the battle between hope and despair that we all visit from time to time and at varying degrees. For myself, I’ve always felt that I’ve understood addiction and its related ills from a logical, high-level standpoint, but Kingsolver drops the reader right down into the trenches. As I followed “Demon’s” journey to the edges beyond redemption, I felt that I was making the same choices for the same reasons. Because they make sense, even though you know they’re wrong.
And that’s what sets this book apart. With most fiction, you’re yelling at the protagonist to make the wise and heroic choice. With Demon, you know what’s right, but you feel the despair and the truth of his experiences. You find yourself nodding along in agreement as he turns his back on the world.
And in the end, that’s what fiction is about: empathy. A storyteller narrates character’s choices. But, a true storyteller puts you in someone else’s shoes. They grab your hand, and you jump off the cliff together. It’s a leap of faith. It’s magic. And Kingsolver is a magician.
Antifragile by Nassim Taleb
Taleb is one of the great thinkers of my lifetime. In Antifragile, Taleb explores his neologism of “antifragility,” which describes systems, individuals, or things that not only withstand stress and volatility but actually thrive and grow stronger from it. He contrasts this with fragility, where things break or deteriorate under pressure, and robustness, where things are neither harmed by stress nor benefit from it. Taleb argues that many aspects of life—such as markets, biological systems, and even human character—are antifragile, and that embracing uncertainty, disorder, and randomness can lead to resilience and long-term success. He also critiques over-reliance on predictive models and centralized control, advocating instead for decentralized, adaptive approaches to decision-making. The book challenges readers to reconsider how they approach risk, failure, and complexity.
We live in a messy world of randomness and uncertainty, and yet the world (ahem, often charlatans) would have one believe that subjects such as finance and business can be predicted and modeled with ease. In fact, we humans are terrible at predictions and probabilities. Just watch a CNBC talking heads clip from a year ago (or even a week ago) to see how confidently we humans make predictions that turn out to be wildly inaccurate. And yet, we seduce ourselves with illusions of certainty. We trust our maps because “they’re better than having no maps at all.” As Taleb points out, however, this is the strangest of errors:
I know few people who would board a plane heading for La Guardia airport … with a pilot who was using a map of Atlanta’s airport “because there is nothing else.” People with a functioning brain would rather drive, take the train, or stay home. Yet once they get involved in economics, they all prefer professionally to use in [practical reality] the measures made for [theoretical academia], on the ground that “we have nothing else.” This idea, well accepted by grandmothers, that one should pick a destination for which one has a good map, not travel and then find “the best map” if foreign to PhDs in social science.
Taleb presents such a logical, practical view of the world, but at times, one can feel somewhat adrift in the shakiness of beliefs in things on which one was previously certain (or nearly such). This does not mean that one loses all agency in life; rather, one must focus on things within one’s control:
The idea that in order to make a decision you need to focus on the consequences (which you can know) rather than the probability (which you can’t know) is the central idea of uncertainty…. The lesson for the small is: be human! Do not try to always withhold judgment – opinions are the stuff of life. Do not try to avoid predicting – yes, after this diatribe about prediction I am not urging you to stop being a fool. Just be a fool in the right places.
Once one learns what is and what isn’t within one’s control and realm of certainty, life becomes a much easier world.
When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein
In his book Antifragile (and elsewhere) Nassim Taleb derisively mentions Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) as a bastion of individuals who were majorly wrong, but never in doubt. Or as Taleb’s “Fat Tony” might say, “they were too big for their britches.”
While reading the book, I was reminded of a story from Warren Buffett discussing many of his detractors in the world of academia (e.g., efficient market theorists), who advocate that his success must be caused by luck and not skill. In response, Buffett parodies their argument as “Well, of course Buffett’s approach works in practice, but it would never work in theory.” LTCM, in contrast, made the practical yet unsurprising discovery that works in theory does not always work in practice. And in the course of learning this painful lesson, they lost lots and lots of (other people’s) money.
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson
After hearing so many people talk about it, I finally got around to reading this, and I’m so glad I did. Franklin was one of those people who comes around once in a century and leaves a legacy far beyond his immediate impact. His practical experiments/inventions are what may easily be called to mind, but it’s his curiosity, learning attitude, and ability to adapt to the world and people around him that will stick with me the most. Not many people have such a continuous influence on the world for hundreds of years after their death. Just look at the recurring pro-Franklin/anti-Franklin sentiments that cycle through the discourse every few decades.
At the same time, it was a bit disappointing to learn of Franklin’s personal life. It’s hard to say that it detracts from his legacy, but at the same time it makes one wonder (at least for one to whom family is important) whether his achievements came at the expense of his family life, or if family simply was not important. In other words, was it more of a correlation than a causation? It’s hard to tell, but it’s something worth considering as one learns from and implements the lessons from the book.
The Franchise
One of the most original comedy shows I’ve seen in a long time: like if the show Silicon Valley took place on a movie set. The acting was great, the writing was hilarious, and the end-of-season cliffhanger left me begging for more. But unfortunately, the show was cancelled (I can’t believe it!) I never saw any marketing for the show (I heard about it through word of mouth), so I guess it’s not surprsing that it didn’t reach the necessary viewership. Hopefully another streaming service will pick it up.
Scrubs
Bill Lawrence (creator of Scrubs, Ted Lasso, Shrinking) just knows how to write people. Scrubs has been one of my favorite shows since it premiered on NBC 20+ years ago, and the humor and humanity still ring true. I’m now rewatching it for the third time (now as an “adult” with children), and I’m still amazed how Lawrence is able to weave together the absurdist comedy with such poignant truths, just as he’s done since then with shows like Ted Lasso. And I know I’m in good company because one of my favorite writers, Shea Serrano, published his own collection of essays on how much he loves Scrubs too: Where Do You Think We Are – 10 Illustrated Essays About Scrubs.
“Rest of My Life” by Nickel Creek
It’s funny how some songs bring you back to certain places in your life. I’ve been listening to Nickel Creek for 25 years now and seen them countless times in concert. It’s almost as if they’re an old friend that’s been alongside for so many parts of my life. This song, in particular, takes me back to my time living in Los Angeles, where I was able to see the band play their first reunion show after being broken-up for a decade. Shortly thereafter, they released their first new album, and I distinctly remember sitting in the back corner seat of an LA Transit bus, watching the downtown skyscrapers slip by out the window as I listened to this song. It’s now been another decade since then, but the memory is just as vivid. Art is funny like that.
EcoFlow Delta Pro Portable Power Station
Someone loaned me one of these during a natural disaster last year when we lost power for several days. This thing was amazing. We were able to run our deep freeze for almost a full day to keep food from spoilage. And I could take it to a charging spot in town, and completely recharge it in about an hour. Needless to say, I immediately bought one once the world returned to normal.
