December Links

A monthly collection of the books and articles I’m reading, plus the podcasts I’m listening to.

What I’m Reading:

• Will Storr: The Unpersuadables (2013): A book I would have enjoyed much more in 2013 than in 2025: a reporter spends time with a bunch of people who believe crazy things about the world. His willingness to indulge them feels horribly naive now. But also, the chapters that are not specifically about that are the usual parade of social psychology studies in every pop psychology book with zero acknowledgement of the replication crisis.

• José Saramago: Blindness (1995): Another novel by another major foreign author that I know nothing about. Saramago’s style is extremely idiosyncratic, at least as it’s been translated here. It’s been a long time since I read a fiction author who writes in a difficult way.

• Blaise Agüera y Arcas: Who Are We Now? (2023): I missed this, it was apparently a big deal when it came out. I am reading it online, slowly.

• “The Goon Squad” [NSFW]: I found this both fascinating and frustrating. Yes, the internet is changing the way men and women interact with each other and, in some ways, it’s bad. But some of this isn’t new and I am continually frustrated by the lack of context in these “Kids Today” pieces. Men not knowing how to make women happy or not knowing whether or not women enjoy sex is not new and and is a failure of sex education, it is not the fault of the internet. (If anything, the internet makes it easier to figure out what it looks like when a woman is enjoying herself, if only the man is willing to do the research.)

• “Our Overfitted Century”: A new theory in the cultural stagnation debate.

• “The Rules of Grief”: We all know this is true. What I wish would happen is for the mainstream media in the US to grow some kind of backbone and make this same point: you cannot take what these people say in good faith and you need to stop doing so before you destroy your country. If the mainstream media continues to have one standard of conduct for The Right and another for The Left, in a few years there isn’t going to be a mainstream media any more.

• “How many wins does Giannis have left?”: Apologies for the basketball nerd content but this suggests that Giannis has already peaked as a player. Now that doesn’t mean he can’t contribute to another team winning but it does somewhat suggest he cannot be that team’s best player.

• “Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras”: I think this is just the way things will be from now on - everything we do is monitored by some private company that does not have any accountability and they do a shit job on security. Great. I love that.

• “So you wanna de-bog yourself”: This is old but you should read it if you’re doing a New Year’s Resolution.

• “How to Fix the Market for Event Tickets” [slideshow]: This is just a slideshow of a proposal to the FTC. But there are real proposed solutions inside.

• “Medical breakthroughs in 2025”: In terms of medical science, it’s the best time to be alive, ever. And yet it feels like there is so little coverage of that.

What I’m Listening to:

• Behind the Bastards:

  • “The Ballad of Bill Gates”: I didn’t know the ‘70s part of the story, especially.

  • “The Well Hung Warlord Who Tried to Conquer China”: This is hosted by my least favourite guest, the host’s protege. He is less annoying this time - he is improving as a guest host! - and I learned a lot. I will say the first episode is on topic and educational if not entertaining. The second half gets derailed by the guest host’s desire to tell a different story that he shoehorned into the main story. (They are related but it’s clear he wanted to tell the strike story more than the warlord story. But this is Behind the Bastards so…)

  • “How the Dulles Brothers Created the CIA and Destroyed Everything Else”: There are few Behind the Bastards episodes that are as informative. (It’s less funny because the guest is very into the topic.)

• Canadaland:

  • “Who Drugged James Cameron? A Titanic Mystery”: Let me spoil this for you by saying that, if you really want to know, you’re not going to find out.

  • Commons: “The Police”:

    • “Portapique”: This is on me. I know it was early in the pandemic, and life was upside down. But I should have paid more attention. Instead, I was probably listening to a podcast about wrongfully imprisoned Americans than learning about the disaster that was the RCMP’s response to this mass shooting. I started to read the public inquiry report until I learned it was 4000 pages.

    • “Northern Patrol”: The rare (somewhat) optimistic episode. (There’s still tragedy, of course.)

• Darknet Diaries:

  • “Maxie”: This is is an interesting one in part because of what a varied life this woman has had but also because of what she ended up doing. Stay with it to the end, where she helps invent something.

• In the Dark: Season 3 still. It’s pretty hard to listen to. Especially knowing that nothing has changed. In some ways, things are worse. (Though obviously in some ways things are better.)

• The Zach Lowe Show [nee The Lowe Post]: My usual basketball podcast. He’s still recording through the holidays for some reason.

• Reply All:

  • "Louder": I’d say I had a pretty good idea of how YouTube went from being a great video platform to a pathway to extremism but this gives more detail as to exactly how that happened.

  • "Dark Pattern": Sometimes I learn things about the US and it makes me feel like they’re almost a failed state. But they’re something different. They’re a very successful state that actively pursues policies that harm the voters, and yet the voters still just keep voting for it. (This about TurboTax.)

  • "Permanent Record": People call in to talk about embarrassing stuff on the internet. One of these is pretty rough.

• The Ringer NBA Show: Group Chat: “NBA Festivus”: I listened to part of this to hear some complaints about the NBA on Jenn’s recommendation.

• Science Vs.:

  • “The Carnivore Diet: Can We Live on Meat Alone?”: Probably not.

  • “Creatine: How to get Jacked?”: As someone who had a roommate who was utterly obsessed with this stuff in 2001, I found this very interesting.

  • “Dire Wolves! They’re Back?”: They’re not.

What I’m Watching

• Isaac Brown: “Gen-Z Music Producer Reacts to a Beatles Album”: He’s made it through Revolver. Again, the thing I will give Isaac is he is actually critical here and there. So many “reactions” videos are people just doing fan service for old boomer fans of the artists. But his level of knowledge of the era is quite hilariously low. (I will say, though, he clearly knows his shit in terms of production. The things he gets right are quite impressive.)

• Andy G.: “What can we learn from NYC’s weirdest subway station?”: A deep-dive into an NYC station. Very dry but kind of interesting.

• Last Week Tonight:

  • “Air Bud Part III”: The saga continues.

  • “Public Media”: It’s under threat in the US.

• Soft Power: “The Death of USAID: How Donald Trump and Elon Musk Made the World Poorer, Sicker, and Less Safe”: I watched this mostly because I want to support Justin Ling.

• Thinking Basketball: “The NBA is letting offenses do whatever they want”: I love the current NBA generally but there are things about it I hate. This video makes some good points.

• “What can we learn from NYC’s weirdest subway station?”: A deep-dive into an NYC station. Very dry but kind of interesting.

Bonus: My Best Of Lists of 2025:

Here are links to my lists of the movies I watched and the music I consumed in 2025. I managed to see a few more new movies in 2025 than most years post-pandemic. But music wise it was a very different story, I barely listened to any new albums and went to more concerts than I listened to newly released albums.

• Riley’s list of the, um, “best” movies of 2025 (14 movies so far)

• Riley’s list of the music he listened to in 2025, which cannot be called a “best of list” because there’s so little music on it