The Curious About Everything Newsletter #48
The many interesting things I read in February 2025
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Welcome back to the Curious About Everything Newsletter. CAE 47, last month’s newsletter, is here, if you missed it. The most popular link from last month was the very disturbing piece about Neil Gaiman and sexual abuse.
My updates
In February, I wrote about the how and why of thundersnow on Patreon, an eerie, rare winter phenomenon.
I’ve gotten a lot of messages on social media asking for proof of life as I’ve been quiet for many weeks. I’ve been running on fumes since we are in the middle of searching for a new executive director for the Spinal CSF Leak Foundation, and in my role as president of the Board of Directors (which is unpaid — I mention as many people ask!) it’s my role to put the hiring process together and be on all interviews. With an active spinal CSF leak, all of it takes a lot out of me and my brain. After interviews, I used any remaining brain juice to write CAE. Thank you for the concern! ♥️
Featured art for CAE 48
This month’s featured artist is Mike Rigney, a close friend of mine who I met back in 2011, when he was working as a naval engineer. In the years since, he’s quit that job, become a USCG certified captain, and now works as a marine engineer aboard a NatGeo expedition ship. He’s also honed his photography skills to blow us away. His photo of two dolphins leaping in the air together was taken in Baja California. You can follow him on IG, or see his work on his website.
The most interesting things I read this month
These links are once again formatted into hyperlinks thanks to the help of my friend Mike.
Start here:
Start here for my faves, then fill up your browser tabs with the pieces below.
🌍 The Long Flight to Teach an Endangered Ibis Species to Migrate. (Archive link.) This piece has all the elements I love: a narrative woven with beautiful and entertaining words, a stubborn bird, and science. It tells the labour of love story behind trying to teach the northern bald ibis, an almost-extinct species in Europe, how to migrate. Raised in captivity, the birds no longer know that they are meant to get moving; every year, a small group of scientists do their best to get them to follow a microlight plane from Austria to Spain so that they’ll learn the migratory path of their ancestors. And often, the birds are not having it — nor are some other personalities in the mix. “While attempting to cross the Pyrenees, the helicopter pilot had requested permission over the radio from French air-traffic controllers,” writes Nick Paumgarten. The controllers replied, 'Fuck off with your ducks.’ It’s wonderfully-written, engaging, and funny — and I really enjoyed it. New Yorker
✈️ 50 Years Of Travel Tips. Kevin Kelly’s tips after decades of travel. While many people travel to retreat, to “escape the routines of work, to recharge, relax, reinvigorate, and replenish themselves”, Kelly travels to engage and experience, “to lean into an adventure whose outcome is not certain, to meet otherness.” I relate, and my many years of travel began because of that sense of adventure. I continued for a decade fuelled by a desire to learn from places and people and foods I wouldn’t find at home. A very delightful list of lessons learned over his many years of intentional wandering. The Technium
🇯🇵 My Quest to Find the Owner of a Mysterious WWII Japanese Sword. A fascinating read tracing the story of a WWII American soldier and the author of this piece, his grandson, who works tirelessly to return a 500 year-old katana sword to its original family of owners. Since WWII, when the author’s grandfather found the sword on a beach in Okinawa and mailed it back to the USA (2025 could never), it’s been in the States as a souvenir and trophy of war. The author’s starting point: an inscription with a name and town, and a plea to send the sword home if found. From there, modern internet sleuthing, bureaucracy, and eventually a trip to Japan. Outside
🧠 Alzheimer’s Biomarker Test May Detect Disease Years before Tau Tangles Appear. The good news: researchers say that this new CSF biomarker test correlates with the severity of cognitive decline, independent of other factors, including brain amyloid deposition, and could enable early-stage disease diagnosis and intervention. The bad news, specific to me as the author of this newsletter: accessing CSF requires a lumbar puncture — and we know how that worked out for me, and many others. LPs are classified as ‘routine procedures’ of low risk, but if my advocacy work has taught me anything in the last 7.5 years, it’s that chronic puncture leaks are under-diagnosed. I’m all for science advancing in this way, but truly hope that these studies are using smaller gauge, atraumatic needles with CT or other guidance, to minimize the risk of spinal CSF leak. Even less invasive: a new blood test that may eventually supersede using lumbar punctures for diagnosis. Yes please. Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News
🐚 My Final Days on the Maine Coast. Diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, writer Joseph Monninger meditates on life, death, and beauty from his small seaside cottage down east. “I have chosen to live this way, to live near the sea without running water, to surround myself with simple beauty”, he writes. “The middles of days are hardest to fill. The world is at work during those hours, while I am released of that burden.” Beautiful, moving, and evocative. DownEast
🇲🇽 Lasers reveal 15th-Century fortified Zapotec city in Mexico. LIDAR lasers shot from an aircraft have revealed a 600-year-old Zapotec city in Oaxaca State (243 km southeast of Oaxaca city) with over 1,100 buildings, 4 km of walls, and a network of urban roads, temples and spaces that housed 5,000. Wow! To learn more about the 15th-century city known as Guiengola, a team led by Pedro Guillermo Ramón Celis, a post-doctoral fellow at McGill University used LIDAR to map out the site in December 2022. A cross-over of multiple interests for me, LIDER, my alma mater university, and an ancient city in the Mexican state I used to call home. LiveScience
⚖️ Elite lawyers sell out the rule of law. Sullivan and Cromwell, a prestigious law firm that — when I was working in Biglaw in NYC at least, many years ago — was known to work its associates to the bone and pay extra well for the privilege, is the subject of this piece. “It’s a sad spectacle to see a reputable law firm render itself into an instrument for lawlessness. It’s also a cautionary tale of how lawyers should not conduct themselves as Trump proceeds with an effort to replace the justice system with one governed by cronyism and corruption,” admonishes David R. Lurie. He also wonders if people will even bother spending money on lawyers at all if eventually the justice system is replaced by a system where “power and cronyism make adherence to laws optional”. I’m sure many lawyers working at S&C aren’t happy about this management decision, but it isn’t their choice. Also: Trump suspended the security clearances of lawyers at Covington & Burling over their pro bono work for special counsel Jack Smith. Basic authoritarianism at its finest, with the government punishing a law firm for defending a client. Isn’t that the kind of tyranny the US fought a revolution against? Public Notice
🇮🇳 BBC undercover filming exposes Indian pharma firm fuelling opioid crisis. In North America we’re familiar with Purdue and their impact and influence in the opioid crisis here. There is another opioid crisis, in Africa, where an Indian pharmaceutical company is manufacturing unlicensed, highly-addictive opioids and exporting them illegally to West Africa where they are driving a public health crisis in countries that include Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote D'Ivoire. BBC News
🔡 The hardest working font in Manhattan. “The first time I realized the font even existed was some time in 2017, when I was researching for my book about the history of typing”, writes Marcin Wichery. Every stroke of the font — called Gorton — is exactly the same thickness, making it a monoline font. And it turns out that monoline fonts are not highly-respected, because “every type designer will tell you: This is not how you design a font.” And yet, it’s everywhere in NYC! A fabulous deep dive, with lots of images to accompany it. Aresluna
🚘 The Fascinating History of Women Drivers. A very interesting discussion about the often-overlooked history of women drivers, including surprising (to me at least!) contributions by women to early automotive culture. Dorothy Levitt set speed records and authored a handbook for female motorists, Luella Bates was one of the first licensed female truck drivers in the United States, and others, all helped set the stage for more acceptance around women behind the wheel. Despite loving driving — it’s one of the things I miss most that my spinal CSF leak took away — it’s a topic I haven’t looked into before, and I’m grateful that Ann Helen did this deep dive so I could learn about it. Culture Study
😎 How the Capybara Won My Heart - and Almost Everyone Else’s. (Archive link.) A second animal longread from The New Yorker this month, this one as entertaining as the first. I first saw a capybara in 2002, when I was living in South America and spending time in Los Esteros del Iberá in Brazil. I’ve never forgotten the awe of seeing one of these enormous rodents in person. I’d never even heard of capybara before then, but now thanks to social media they’ve become a dearly beloved subject of reels and shorts. This piece goes into the animal from the perspective of its author, Gary Shteyngart, who fell for them right around when I did. He rightfully muses that their “remarkable calmness” and maximum chill around other species is something we humans could do to learn from. New Yorker
☠️ An L.L. Bean Heiress Suspected Neighbors of Poisoning Her Trees. What Happened Next Roiled Camden, Maine. Hooooboy. Treelaw! Neighbour feuds! Mystery! When Lisa Gorman noticed that a grove of her majestic oaks had died, she turned her suspicions to seasonal neighbours who claimed they wanted a better view of the harbour. The fight that ensued became a town drama — one that rages on to this day. Vanity Fair
🤖 This Therapist Is Not Who She Seems to Be. An interesting read about AI generating realistic content and people, and how that can become a larger issue, especially where reporting is concerned. I recently had a tangentially related problem where someone copied my celiac cards that go through two sets of translations and not only duplicated my copy from my sales pages, but screenshotted my own customers’ reviews on their product pages — and then slapped on a “10,000 cards sold” from an account that started that week. The about page for the seller was vague with no outbound links confirming a real person; the Facebook profile that shared the product page too was created that week and full of AI-generated art. It’s frustrating to see someone have no qualms throwing a bunch of immoral spaghetti against the wall at once for ulterior aims, be it a fake therapist or copied products. Such is the world we’re in these days, I know. But it doesn’t make it less frustrating. Allure
The rest of the most interesting things I read this month:
👔 Seth Rogen is the Boss Now. Seth Rogan is known for comedies and his love of weed. This profile of the 42-year-old actor and producer features some great writing, and sheds a light on his personality and humanity. He’s got a lot more integrity than many in showbiz, notes the piece, and a big heart to go with it. “He was the fun, crazy, party guy of the mid-2000s,” says recent costar Ike Barinholtz, “[n]ow he’s aged into a perfect example of how you can be a massively successful man and not be a huge prick.” Esquire
📸 Some roundups of beautiful, award-winning photography:
🤑 FAFOnomics: How Chaos Became America’s Economic Strategy. A piece by Kyla Scanlon that attempts to cut through noise on tariffs, trade agreements, unipolar vs multipolar, DOGE, the market reaction, and America’s role in the world. It's from early February and more unraveling and threats have happened since then. “The goal isn't good governance,” she writes, “it's capturing attention at any cost.” That, and I would argue, a purposeful dismantling of treaties and relationships with historical allies. (Here in Canada, we’re feeling the chaos and the threats lobbied at us, including challenges to our sovereignty — this link is an 11 minute video interview with 🇨🇦’s Foreign Affairs minister about the current situation). Kyla's Newsletter
🍹 Why is my drink so damn weird? “Somehow we went from bartenders playing reanimator with forgotten cocktails, to bartenders reimagining themselves as Michelin-starred chefs.” When every cocktail is an experiment in novelty, ordering feels like a gamble. If history teaches us anything, it’s that this era of ‘out there’ drinks won’t last forever. Punch Drink
🏈 This Was a Super Bowl for the Haters, and the Eagles Were the Perfect Antagonists. “The lesson of this Eagles Super Bowl championship is that nothing, and no one, is inevitable.” The Super Bowl feels like forever ago, but this is an engaging analysis not only for the football fans, but for those curious about mindset around competitive games where a lot is on the line, including how to manage an opponent that everyone says is invincible. The Ringer
🌀 The Secret Pattern. “The soft morning light flits through the tender leaves, and I can’t believe I am here, in China, in Shanghai, in this very park of my childhood, after so many years, feeling as though nothing has changed.” A touching essay about family, patterns, food, and how they all connect in a nostalgic web. Granta
💸 Trump Order Shifts the Financial Burden of Climate Change Onto Individuals A proposed change that would “obliterate an obscure but critically important calculation the government uses to gauge the real-world costs” by getting rid of the social cost of carbon measure would also upend energy and environmental regulations meant to address climate change, and effectively transfer financial responsibility from companies like oil drillers and auto manufacturers onto to Americans individuals themselves. ProPublica
😥 Sorry Not Sorry. On the art of saying nothing in apology statements aka the corporate apology. “When you have too many communications professionals, every crisis looks like a communications crisis”, notes the piece. Everyone is falling all over themselves to do and say what they deem the “correct” thing, especially if it excuses them from actually taking action at all. The Walrus
🗣 Huh? The valuable role of interjections. Utterances like um, wow and mm-hmm aren’t garbage — they keep conversations flowing, writes Bob Holmes. I’ve spent many years trying to banish some of them from any public speaking, but it turns out some of them aren’t so terrible after all. Knowable Magazine
🍽 From the gut. Billed as a literary history of indigestion, this is an entertaining albeit sometimes wince-worthy roundup about the “gastrointestinal agonies” of writers, which — it turns out — can pretty much be its own genre, dating back to when the West started digging into how our digestive tract worked. VQR (via Longreads)
🇺🇦 The Reality of Ukraine. Timothy Snyder on the sadism of present-day actions and the larger meaning of the war in Ukraine. The divide in politics today is between unreality and reality, Snyder warns, noting that Russia’s invasion of was “a pioneering act of unreality politics” because the Russians targeted the vulnerabilities of westerners with messages that would resonate — all ways to say that Ukraine and its culture, language, and history weren’t “real” and that Ukrainians “are just Russians who do not know it”. This is still happening today against the backdrop of war, except America is now promulgating and amplifying those lies. Thinking About
💪 If You Ever Stacked Cups In Gym Class, Blame My Dad. “The first thing you need to know about Bob Fox is that he used to be a clown ... The second thing you need to know about my dad is that he was a really, really good clown.” I did not ever stack cups in gym class, but I did find this piece entertaining. Defector
🎫 High and Dry. (Archive link.) I attended Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, held in Tennessee, back in 2002. It was a long, long drive down from Montreal, which we did in two cars of friends, a ton of prepped food, and two tents with comfy air mattresses. We were sober throughout too, not out of mission but mostly out of practicality; less need to pee, more music to remember. In this piece Barrett Swanson builds a snapshot of his sober Bonnaroo experience, the desperate escapism attendees look for, and a look at the history of communal gatherings to boot. Harper's
📱 Digital Drugs Have Us Hooked. (Archive link.) Interview with the author of ‘Dopamine Nation’, Anna Lembke. “I think we’re essentially struggling with endemic narcissism, where our culture is demanding that we focus on ourselves so much that what it’s creating is this deep need to escape ourselves. And I think that is what is driving much of our pursuit of intoxicants as a way to just not have to think about ourselves for a blessed, you know, hour or two.” Ultimately, she thinks people are unhappier than they’d like to be, and can’t figure out why. Oof. New York Times
🏠 Why Gen Z Will Never Leave Home. “Many families are unprepared for the financial obligations of parenting adult children”, writes Claire Gagné, in a piece about Canadian families. Still, American friends echo similar findings: that many people don’t have enough for retirement, even without kids at home. A recent survey notes that 44% of still-working Canadians aged 44 to 55 have less than $5,000 CAD in savings. But housing prices have soared in Canada — the benchmark price of a home has ballooned from around $163,000 to $700,000 CAD over the last 25 years — while the median household income during that time period has increased by only $15,000 CAD. It’s a stark picture, though the piece isn’t all bleak. It also shares the stories of multigenerational living where it works out for all parties, and the interdependence is a boon, not a burden. Maclean's
🎧 Are noise-cancelling headphones to blame for young people's hearing problems? Dangers of noise canceling headphones— some audiologists believes the overuse of noise-cancelling headphones could have a part to play in how many teens are developing audio processing disorders, though the article doesn’t also mention the impact of Covid on hearing, especially in young people, nor go deep into research. Still, this piece made the rounds this month, because of how many people use subtitles and are struggling with audio, and it’s an interesting theory. BBC News
☣️ Low concentration chemicals spur toxicological debate. Does the dose still make the poison in today’s day and age? Environmental-health scientist Laura Vandenberg is among the researchers challenging that traditional adage and asserting that there may be long-term effects of even tiny amounts of endocrine-disrupting ‘forever chemicals’, especially with babies. Chemistry World
🔍 Murder in the Blue Mountains. Ashley and James Schwalm had what seemed like a fairy tale life: 2 wonderful children, fulfilling careers, and a gorgeous home close to the private ski club where they’d fallen in love. Then Ashley’s remains turned up in a burned-out car at the bottom of a ditch, and all signs pointed to her husband. This murder-mystery piece by Luc Rinaldi traces the couple’s story, and provides a stark reminder of the harrowing statistics that accompany it: if a homicide victim is a woman in Canada, there’s a 44% chance she was murdered by her spouse or romantic partner. Toronto Life
🕵 A ‘True Crime’ Documentary Series Has Millions of Views. And speaking of murder, this piece is an interview with the creator of viral “true crime” series where the murders were all created by AI. 404 Media
🪱 She thought she had jet lag. Doctors found parasitic worms in her brain. (Archive link.) Headline tells you all that you need to know. Also, new fear unlocked. Washington Post
🔗 Quick links
Single-purpose site of the month: owls in towels.
What did Hubble see on your birthday? NASA will generate the image for you.
A woman in Colorado donated her kidney to save her prom date’s life — 35 years after they went to prom together.
Cuttlefish ink can help keep sharks away from humans. Go bioluminescent cephalopods, go!
World’s smallest otter makes a comeback in Nepal after 185 years.
David Lindon has set a new Guinness World Record for building the world’s wee-est structure, a red Lego piece measuring 0.02517 mm by 0.02184 mm.
Vagus nerve stimulation may tame autoimmune diseases.
Scientists glue two proteins together, driving cancer cells to self-destruct.
Hope to see you next month!
-Jodi
Hate to be a nudge, but I think that subhead should be "The many interesting things I read in February 2025." I'm a first time visitor to your substack and that typo made me think you were not updating this anymore.
So many good links! I'm a language nerd so the ones about auditory processing and "filler" words were particularly interesting to me. Also, owls in towels!