ENG 102 2026: Resources Archive #10

"Informative doc that tackles AI from a lot of different angles—its connective tissue to eugenics and techno-fascism, the techbro quest for the whole grail artificial general intelligence, its incredible increasing drain on public resources, and issues that may come to fruition in the future." - Kevflix and Chill
Official description: "The AI origin story. The untold origins of artificial intelligence lie not in machines but in power, revealing the fantasies behind the hype that got us here and where we go next."

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Leonor Carrington, the great Surrealist artist and writer:


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"Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress the truth." - Wole Soyinka, The Man Died (1972) Excerpt published in the journal Transitions (1997)

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Bessler, John and Carol Steiker. "We The People: Cruel and Unusual Punishment." Throughline (January 23, 2025) ["The Eighth Amendment. What is cruel and unusual punishment? Who gets to define and decide its boundaries? And how did the Constitution's authors imagine it might change? Today on Throughline's We the People: the Eighth Amendment, the death penalty, and what cruel and unusual really means. John Bessler, law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, and adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. Author of The Death Penalty's Denial of Fundamental Human Rights.
Carol Steiker, law professor at Harvard Law School and author of Courting Death: the Supreme Court and Capital Punishment."]

Bessner, Daniel. "Imperialist Realism." This is Hell! (August 5, 2026) ["Historian and foreign policy analysis Daniel Bessner joins us to discuss his new book, Imperialist Realism: Politics and Culture at the End of the American Century: "Imperialist Realism explores how Americans have come to accept their global empire not because they believe in its righteousness but because they believe no alternative to U.S. hegemony is possible. Imperialist Realism is a collection of essays elucidating the titular concept, which centers on a single question: What does it feel like to live in a moment in which it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of the U.S. Empire? By analyzing the theory and practice of U.S. foreign policy, Imperialist Realism provides theoretical and empirical accounts of modern empire, liberalism, and global affairs. It combines pieces that explore everything from the ideas of individuals such as Barack Obama, George Soros, and Samantha Power to topics such as first-person shooters to issues such as left-wing foreign policy. In this way, Imperialist Realism examines the past, present, and future of U.S. foreign relations while drawing broader conclusions about the nature of empire in both its domestic and its international contexts."]

Castro, Collette de. "Consent Puzzles in the Oslo Stories Trilogy by Dag Johan Haugerud." Sense of Cinema #118 (July 2026) ["In France, Dreams, Sex and Love came out over three weeks in the summer of 2025. I was like a restless teenager in my discovery of these intricate, sustainable and secret worlds – breathlessly waiting until the next instalment for another revelation. To me, the triptych of films constitutes a utopian portrayal of consent in an ideal world, one in which consent is not based on power dynamics or gender and heterosexual norms but rather on desire and love. ... Perhaps this is why watching these films gave me the feeling I was a teenager again. The lack of film education about consent I was given back then was being remedied week after week watching these Norwegian films in which women had agency over their bodies and minds. I’m not saying they portray some kind of ideal consent model – the characters in them are flawed, human and struggling just as much as anyone. But the whole point is that there is never one answer. Consent is just a constant negotiation between actors in this play we call the world. The people in these films talk, and they talk – a lot – about what consent means to them, how they negotiate it in their own minds, and how other people’s limits can surprise them. In each film of the trilogy, a character is warned or questioned about crossing an invisible line. This comes up in a relationship between an employer and an employee; a student and a teacher; and a nurse and a patient. The characters all work out their consent puzzles on their own, without resorting to violence or institutional intervention. The careful consideration, exposure and eventual resolution of these consent puzzles is part of what makes these films so moving. They ask, how can one go into the dark woods of one’s desires without infringing on another’s freedom?"]

Carrasco, Salvador. "The Eternal Return: The Battle of Algiers at 60." Senses of Cinema #118 (July 2026) ["True to content-driven form, The Battle of Algiers has a nonlinear, circular structure that supports the metaphor of the eternal return applicable to colonialism, the resistance to it, and the consequences thereof. The film starts near the end of its chronological Act Three, in 1957 Algiers, the capital of a nation colonised by the French since 1830. The first spoken dialogue is a loaded question – “Couldn’t you have talked sooner?” – asked by a French soldier to an Algerian prisoner whom he and his army buddies have been torturing with a blowtorch, judging from the scorching scar on his chest. The question foreshadows the journey on which we’re about to embark. The Battle of Algiers is as much of a wakeup call as a film can be, as relevant now as when it first came out 60 years ago; as when it reemerged during the so-called War on Terror to help us realise that “terrorists” do not just happen overnight; and as in our present day, when the US and Israel have engaged in yet another unwinnable war, this time with Iran. As soon as it talks to us, The Battle of Algiers forces us to reassess our preconceptions of civilisation, morality, and freedom."]

Downes-Angus, John. "Time-Wasting, Truth-Wasting Exercises: Samuel Cohen’s anthology on book banning diagnoses a recent swell in censorship that’s problematic for more reasons than you’d think." Los Angeles Review of Books (March 9, 2026) ["On a citywide Zoom call with organizers in the United Federation of Teachers (the New York City teachers’ union), a chapter leader shared an organizing success story from her middle school. Her colleagues wanted to teach Lois Lowry’s The Giver (1993) to their seventh graders. The book is about a boy named Jonas who is chosen to inherit the pain, joy, and color of others, these memories kept from his society for the sake of maintaining stability. When realizing the injustice of this situation, Jonas saves them from their ignorance by returning the memories to them. It is a kid-friendly send-up of fascism, and the principal refused to allow teachers to teach Lowry’s book. Apparently, this book has been banned in the past because of its political commentary, its violence, its occasional sexual references, and its depiction of euthanasia. The principal took issue with none of these things. Instead, she objected to the fact that it is a book. The school had adopted a reading curriculum—HMH’s Into Reading—that excluded books in favor of test-aligned excerpts, so the principal argued that teachers could not teach any books at all. In past years, students had loved The Giver. And the teachers wanted to give the kids the experience of reading a novel like Lowry’s, so the chapter leader spearheaded collective action: they wore “Freedom to Read” shirts and other shirts associated with book bans, raised the issue up to the superintendent—and ultimately won. The kids read the book and loved it. I do not think this is what people think of when they think about book banning in the United States. But given the imperiled state of books and reading today, a more inclusive definition is desperately needed. People inclined to learn more about book banning should read University of Missouri English professor Samuel Cohen’s new edited volume Banning Books in America: Not a How-To. Cohen has put together a range of texts—essays, for the most part, but also an interview, an excerpt from a novel, and Cohen’s own syllabus for his course on banned books—that capture the titular subject in its many forms."]

Giordano, Sara. "Scientific objectivity is a myth – cultural values and beliefs always influence science and the people who do it." The Conversation (September 4, 2025) ["If removing all bias is impossible, then, how do people create knowledge that can be trusted? The understanding that all knowledge is created through cultural processes does allow for two or more differing truths to coexist. You see this reality in action around many of today’s most controversial subjects. However, this does not mean you must believe all truths equally – that’s called total cultural relativism. This perspective ignores the need for people to come to decisions together about truth and reality. Instead, critical scholars offer democratic processes for people to determine which values are important and for what purposes knowledge should be developed."]

Goldin, Hana Lee. "Google Has a Secret Reference Desk. Here's How to Use It." Card Catalog (February 24, 2026) ["40 Google features to find exactly what you need, the alternative search engines that do things Google won't, and the reference desk framework underneath all of it."]

---. "The Hierarchy of Sources: A Cheat Sheet - A guide to evaluating information sources in the AI age." Card Catalog (February 19, 2026) ["Why This Matters Now: The information environment you navigate today bears little resemblance to the one that existed a few decades ago. In the 1990s, getting your ideas in front of a large audience usually required convincing a publisher, a newspaper editor, a television producer, or some other institutional gatekeeper that your content was worth distributing. Those gatekeepers had biases and blind spots, and plenty of valuable perspectives were excluded from mainstream channels. But the friction involved in publishing meant that most widely circulated information had passed through at least one filter, however imperfect. That friction is gone. Anyone with an internet connection can now publish anything, to a potential audience of billions, at essentially zero cost. A teenager in their bedroom can create a website that looks as professional as a major news organization. A coordinated network can flood social media with fabricated stories faster than fact-checkers can respond. AI tools can generate plausible-sounding text, realistic images, and convincing audio and video at a scale that would have seemed like science fiction a decade ago. Meanwhile, the platforms that distribute this information have built their business models around engagement, which means their algorithms actively promote content that generates strong emotional reactions regardless of whether that content is accurate. Research has shown that false news stories tend to spread faster and reach more people than accurate ones, in part because fabricated content is often designed to provoke outrage or surprise. The economic incentives of the attention economy are misaligned with the goal of keeping people well-informed."]

---. "What a Librarian is Reading in Times of Moral Nausea and Psychological Despair." Card Catalog (February 17, 2026)  ["What do you do when the problem isn’t misinformation, but accurate information that shatters everything you thought possible? When you have to expand your conception of what humans are capable of doing to each other, what systems are capable of enabling, what societies are capable of tolerating? When the facts themselves demand that you build a larger, darker, more complex model of how power operates and who it serves? These books don’t answer that question; they can’t. But they do offer ways to live inside the question without being consumed by it. They model how others have metabolized unbearable knowledge and continued. They provide practices for days when continuing feels impossible. They remind us that we’re not the first people to discover the world is not what we thought, and we won’t be the last. They model what becomes possible when you stop asking “how do I unknow this” and start asking “who do I want to be now that I know.” Some things change us permanently. These books are companions for that transformation. They’re maps drawn by those who traveled this territory before us and discovered that continuing mattered more than understanding, that staying present had value even without resolution. They’re proof that others have stood where you’re standing and found ways forward, too."]

Haskell, David George. "Flowers and the Revolutionary Power of Beauty." Wonder Cabinet (March 28, 2026) ["What can flowers teach us about survival? Celebrated biologist and writer David George Haskell reframes flowers as agents of transformation—creatures that turned conflict into collaboration and remade the living world. For thousands of years, flowers have threaded themselves through human life—into our rituals, our art, our language, even our names. We decorate our homes and altars with them, distill their scents, celebrate them in poetry and song. But what if we’ve misunderstood them entirely? In How Flowers Made the World, biologist and writer David George Haskell invites us to see flowers not as delicate embellishments, but as one of the most powerful forces in Earth’s history. When flowering plants emerged more than 200 million years ago, they didn’t just adapt to the world—they transformed it. Through strategies of beauty, attraction, and reciprocity, they turned rivals into partners, reshaping ecosystems and making possible the rich diversity of life we know today. In a lyrical, science-rich conversation, we explore:
— Why Haskell calls flowers “nature’s revolutionaries”
— How beauty, pleasure, and desire function as evolutionary strategies
— The deep interdependence between flowers, animals, and humans
— What flowers can teach us about resilience in a time of ecological crisis
— How re-centering flowers might change the story we tell about life on Earth
We live on a floral planet, Haskell says—and more than that, we are a floral species, utterly dependent on flowering plants for food, habitat, and survival. The lessons flowers offer—about creativity, cooperation, and transformation—may be exactly what we need to navigate a rapidly changing world. What would it mean to tell the story of life not through predators and conquest, but through seduction, partnership and bloom?"]

Holt, Jim."Mathematics on Ice." The London Review of Books 31.16 (August 2009) ["A surprising number of mathematicians, even quite prominent ones, believe in a realm of perfect mathematical entities hovering over the empirical world – a sort of Platonic heaven. Alain Connes of the Collège de France once declared that ‘there exists, independently of the human mind, a raw and immutable mathematical reality,’ one that is ‘far more permanent than the physical reality that surrounds us’. Roger Penrose, another unabashed Platonist, holds that the natural world is only a ‘shadow’ of a realm of eternal mathematical forms."]

Horgan, John. "Why Does Jim Holt Exist?" Scientific American (July 2, 2018) ["A connoisseur of science, math and philosophy takes on the really big questions."]

Hyde, David. "Thoreau Meets Ice." Open Source (April 2, 2026) ["In 1854, when the escaped slave Anthony Burns was captured in Boston and returned in chains to slave-owners in Virginia, despite riotous resistance on the dock in Boston, Henry David Thoreau himself was shattered. “At last it occurred to me,” he wrote, “that what I had lost was a country.” The question becomes: what would Thoreau say today if he learned that hard workers and taxpayers of long standing in this country and his state were being locked up and deported for want of immigration papers? Our guest Lewis Hyde says Thoreau would blame us, citizens, for the failure of our country and our Commonwealth to keep all its residents safe and secure in their adopted communities, regardless of their immigration status. Lewis Hyde’s essay, “ICE and our Immigrants: Lessons from the Abolitionists,” is forthcoming in the summer issue of Liberties quarterly. Thoreau’s essay, “Slavery in Massachusetts,” can be found in Hyde’s edited edition of The Essays of Henry David Thoreau (Milkweed Editions)."]

Johnson, David. "Not Yet: The Philosophy of Ernst Bloch." The Observing #143 (March 17, 2026) ["Not yet. Ernst Bloch was born in a factory town on the Rhine in 1885 and spent the next ninety-two years refusing to accept that the present tense was the final word on anything. He built an entire philosophy out of the gap between what is and what should be. He called it the not-yet. The Nazis called it incompatible. The East Germans called it a deviation. The students of 1968 called it exactly what they were looking for. This episode is about what happens when a man bets everything on a future he can’t prove, gets exiled, fired, suppressed, and walled out for doing it, and keeps betting anyway. It’s about hope as a philosophical structure rather than a feeling. It’s about the Vor-Schein, the pre-appearance, the light that the future casts backward into the present before it arrives. And it’s about the knock you hear at 3am when the rest of your brain has the good sense to be quiet, and what Bloch would tell you to do with it."]

Lukacs, Peter. "Can You Rewire Your Brain?'  Aeon (February 3, 2026)  ["Examples of neuroplasticity abound. During my neurology residency, one of my teachers, a highly specialised neuro-ophthalmologist, demonstrated the adaptability of the brain in a dramatic way. He recreated an informal experiment on himself by wearing glasses that flipped his visual field upside down. At first, he was disoriented. But within weeks, his brain recalibrated, and he was able to function normally in his environment. Even more remarkable was the re-adaptation that occurred when he removed the glasses; his world once again appeared inverted, and it took additional time for his perception to return to baseline. He later recreated another experiment by repeating the process with another set of glasses that reversed left and right, and he reported that this lateral inversion was far more difficult for the brain to compensate for than the vertical one. The experiment demonstrates how the brain adapts by recalibration rather than by restoring an original state, treating the altered input as normal over time. The ability to alter speech is another testament to the plasticity of the brain. One fascinating distinction in neuroscience is that speech and singing use different neural pathways. For example, some well-known singers stutter when speaking but not when singing. Elvis Presley famously had a stutter that disappeared when he sang. Ed Sheeran also stuttered as a child and tried many techniques to overcome it. Nothing worked, until, at age nine, he began rapping along to an Eminem album. Through repetition, his fluency improved. Similarly, the country singer Mel Tillis spoke with a stutter but sang fluidly. In each case, fluency emerges not through repair but through recruitment of alternative circuits."]

Maqiaque, Erin. "Their Own Private Genesis." The New York Review of Books (June 25, 2026) ["Too often we think of theology as some desiccated thing. For better or worse we now have other ways of understanding the complexity of human desire: neuroscience, psychology, pornography. We forget that for centuries, theological writing was our most sophisticated literature on sexuality—on desire, shame, pleasure, on why we want what we want and what all that wanting can mean."]

Marvin, Carolyn and David W. Ingle. Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag. Cambridge University Press, 1999. [excerpt, first ten pages: Description - "This compelling book argues that American patriotism is a civil religion of blood sacrifice, which periodically kills its children to keep the group together. The flag is the sacred object of this religion; its sacrificial imperative is a secret which the group keeps from itself to survive. Expanding Durkheim's theory of the totem taboo as the organizing principle of enduring groups, Carolyn Marvin uncovers the system of sacrifice and regeneration which constitutes American nationalism, shows why historical instances of these rituals succeed or fail in unifying the group, and explains how mass media are essential to the process. American culture is depicted as ritually structured by a fertile center and sacrificial borders of death. Violence plays a key part in its identity. In essence, nationalism is neither quaint historical residue nor atavistic extremism, but a living tradition which defines American life."]

McClellan, Daniel. "The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues." New Books in Christian Studies (March 18, 2026) ["The Bible is arguably the world’s most influential book, but do we really know what it says? Every day across social media and in homes, businesses, and public spaces, people try to cut debate short by claiming that "the Bible says so!" However, they commonly disagree about what it actually does and doesn't say, particularly when it comes to socially significant issues. For instance, does the Bible say we should be on the lookout for an antichrist associated with the number 666? Does it say women shouldn’t wear revealing clothing? Does it say it’s okay to hit your kids? In The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues (St. Martin's Essentials, 2025), Dan McClellan leverages his popular "data over dogma" approach, and his years of experience in the academy and on social media, to lay out in clear and accessible ways what the data indicate the Bible does and doesn't say about issues ranging from homosexuality, abortion, and slavery to monotheism, inspiration, and even God's wife. The Bible Says So is an invaluable resource for our fractious times. Interviewees: Dan McClellan is an award-winning public scholar of the Bible. He has over one million followers on social media and is a host on the Data Over Dogma Podcast. Dan received his PhD from the University of Exeter and is currently an honorary fellow at Birmingham University's Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion."]

Nestle, Marion. "On Food Choices and Food Politics." Against the Grain (August 4, 2026) ["Food affects all of us — but while it’s a necessity for our survival, it’s also a vast, sprawling industry spanning the globe, which generates enormous profits as well as significant damage to public health and the environment. Nutritionist and molecular biologist Marion Nestle sheds light on the choices we all must navigate when we enter the grocery store." Marion Nestle, What to Eat Now: The Indispensable Guide to Good Food, How to Find It, and Why It Matters North Point Press, 2025."]

Reynolds, Jason. "On Hopelessness, the Virtue of Stamina, and Showing Grace to Ourselves." On Being (March 19, 2026) ["I was longing for a deep dive on the radiant and common-sense hope that Jason Reynolds embodies after I interviewed him at a Georgetown event last year. I got my chance at the 2025 Aspen Ideas Festival. Jason’s perspective is so urgent for the world we’ve now walked into: on giving ourselves grace to be hopeless, the virtue of stamina, and the hope that stays strong in him from his life in relationship with the very young in our midst — “the arbiters and purveyors of the future” — as well as an occasional stranger in a bar. Jason himself is preternaturally wise as well as talented and kind and humble. He’s become a friend across the years and is one of my favorite people in the world. Jason Reynolds is a New York Times bestselling author of over 20 books for children and young adults. From 2020–2022, he served as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Among many honors, he has received the Newbery, Printz, and Coretta Scott King Awards, and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2024. He is on the faculty at Lesley University for the Writing for Young People M.F.A. Program."]

Reynolds, Jason and Kessley Janvier. "On Being Young in America." On Being (May 8, 2025) ["A heavy complexity is on the shoulders of the young of our species in these years — humans growing up in this time. At the same time, from the digital revolution and AI to the ecology and society, they have wisdom and instincts in their bones that will be essential if we are all to flourish and not merely survive this century. In November 2024, the Georgetown University Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues brought Krista together with esteemed children’s and young adult writer Jason Reynolds and Georgetown student Kessley Janvier. The encounter between the three of them spans generations from the 20s to the 40s to the 60s and extended out to a room of people of all ages and walks of life. The wisdom that unfolded is as much about who we will be and how we will be as what we have before us to do, each in our own lives."]

Robertson, Derek. "Democracy Dies in the Techno-Dump." Liberties (January 2025) ["Thirty-five years ago, a Canadian named Ursula Franklin offered a dark prophecy. She predicted that unfettered technological development could strip us of the capacity to honor our fellow citizens’ very humanity. In such a world, she taught, democracy will become increasingly untenable — because liberal humanism is impossible to cultivate in a society dominated by atomizing, market-serving technologies. In January, 2025 America bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the dark world she foresaw. (She called that world an “unlivable techno-dump”). And yet, given the extent to which digital technology shapes our lives — our politics, our pocketbooks, our schools, our sex — Americans care astonishingly little about it."]

Robinson, Nathan. "Turn the Lights Back On." Current Affairs (March 22, 2026) ["It has been tragic and depressing watching the effects of the blockade. This is already a poor country. People didn’t have much to start with. But now they can’t take buses, they can’t afford to run their cars (I have been told gas costs anywhere between 10 dollars a gallon and 40 dollars a gallon, if you can find it—this in a country where a nice meal will cost you about $20). Food in restaurants is starting to run out. Garbage is accumulating in the streets. I had to sprint to get through a city block where the flies were so thick it was a struggle to breathe without ingesting one. The entire supply chain appears to be breaking down. Tourism is drying up—few want to come and experience shortages and sanitation crises. Taxi drivers can’t drive their taxis. With the evaporation of tourists comes greater despair, since so many depend on this influx of foreign money. Everyone in Cuba is warm and friendly, but you can tell they’re desperate. At the large San Jose art market, sellers had booths overflowing with souvenirs, and hardly anyone was there to buy. The merchants were outcompeting each other on pushiness—it was obvious many of them would not make a single sale all day. I cannot believe how cruel what my country is doing is. To take bread from the mouths of the poor, to destroy livelihoods, to turn old people into beggars, to kill sick people. I knew we were capable of this—the history of U.S. foreign policy since World War II, from dropping napalm Vietnamese peasants to Tomahawk cruise missiles on Iranian schoolchildren, has been a history of unbelievable cruelty and violence. But as I look off the hotel rooftop at a blacked-out city, and realize that we could turn the lights on, if we wanted to, I feel such deep rage that the wealthiest country in the world would inflict this totally needless misery on its poor, tiny neighbor. A billionaire president is taking these destitute people’s last means of eking out a living—and for what?"]

Schuster, Aaron. "Kafka's Misdiagnosis." The Paris Review (March 20, 2026) ["The ways in which Kafka twists traditional forms according to his own disturbance are what introduce a new universal dimension for the Freudian age, the dimension of neurosis. Kafka invented a mythology for the twentieth century by neuroticizing the ancient myths: my own private Greece, my own private Judaism, even (given Kafka’s returns to Don Quixote) my own private literary modernism. The Abraham who can’t recognize himself in God’s call, or is just too busy to answer; the tardy messiah who arrives only the day after he’s needed; the not-so-great Alexander who cannot cross the Hellespont, arrested by the mere weight of his body (his warhorse, Bucephalus, makes more progress—studying hard, he becomes a lawyer in an age when there are no more Alexanders, when the reign of the master has been eclipsed by anonymous administration); the Sirens who don’t sing but rather silently gawk at an ear-plugged Odysseus; the office-comedy Poseidon turned into the harried supervisor of the seas, having exchanged cruising on the waves and his trident for paperwork and a pen—this is how Kafka revivifies the old myths, makes them speak to us again."]

Wilkins, Joe. "The Diarrhea Lettuce Company Has Been Linked to Forced Labor." Futurism (August 1, 2026) ["When the United States ratified the 13th amendment in 1865, federal lawmakers very nearly outlawed slavery for good — but not entirely. Tucked within arguably the most important corner of the US constitution is a massive caveat: “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States” (emphasis added.) In the 160-some years since that amendment, a quieter type of forced servitude has lived on in the US: prison labor. From the debt peonage of the post-Civil War reconstruction era to the privatized contracting of the 21st century, prison labor is a massive money maker, generating $11 billion worth of revenue in 2022 alone."]

Almond-Date Smoothie w/ variations

1 1/2 cups of unsweetened almond milk (or other nut milk)
1/2 cups whole pitted dates
1 banana
2 tbsp almond butter (or other unsweetened nut butter)
1 tbsp honey
1 cup ice
2 tbsp chia seeds (or hemp, or something similar)
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

[This list of ingredients is perfect as is, but also I like playing with this by using an extra ingredient on hand that I should use up: blueberries, hi-quality cacao, dragon fruit, papaya, guava ...] 

Preparation note: mix the almond milk and dates in a sealable bowl and put in the fridge over night to soften the dates]

Marion Nestle: Biology/Food Studies/Nutrition/Public Health (Azimuths)

Marion Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor, of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University, which she chaired from 1988-2003 and from which she officially retired in September 2017. She is also Visiting Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell. She earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology and an M.P.H. in public health nutrition from the University of California, Berkeley, and has been awarded honorary degrees from Transylvania University in Kentucky (2012) and from the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College (2016). In 2023, she was awarded The Edinburgh Medal (for science and society). - source

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Nestle, Marion. "A Food Expert’s Case That The Cyclospora Outbreak Was A System Failure." Where the Food Comes From (July 29, 2026) ["I am outraged by the Cyclospora outbreak. It has sickened thousands of people so far (>16,000?), and made some of them very sick. Cyclospora is different from other foodborne pathogens. It comes from human waste and cannot be removed by washing (although that helps some) or killed by chlorine. It can only be removed by microfiltration or killed by heat or, maybe, ultra-violet radiation. It needs to be prevented from getting into irrigation water. Lettuce producers have known about the Cyclospora hazard for more than a decade. They have not acted, and neither has the government."]

---.  How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. University of California Press, 2013. ["We all witness, in advertising and on supermarket shelves, the fierce competition for our food dollars. In this engrossing exposé, Marion Nestle goes behind the scenes to reveal how the competition really works and how it affects our health. The abundance of food in the United States--enough calories to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child twice over--has a downside. Our over-efficient food industry must do everything possible to persuade people to eat more--more food, more often, and in larger portions--no matter what it does to waistlines or well-being. Like manufacturing cigarettes or building weapons, making food is big business. Food companies in 2000 generated nearly $900 billion in sales. They have stakeholders to please, shareholders to satisfy, and government regulations to deal with. It is nevertheless shocking to learn precisely how food companies lobby officials, co-opt experts, and expand sales by marketing to children, members of minority groups, and people in developing countries. We learn that the food industry plays politics as well as or better than other industries, not least because so much of its activity takes place outside the public view. Editor of the 1988 Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health, Nestle is uniquely qualified to lead us through the maze of food industry interests and influences. She vividly illustrates food politics in action: watered-down government dietary advice, schools pushing soft drinks, diet supplements promoted as if they were First Amendment rights. When it comes to the mass production and consumption of food, strategic decisions are driven by economics--not science, not common sense, and certainly not health. No wonder most of us are thoroughly confused about what to eat to stay healthy. An accessible and balanced account, Food Politics will forever change the way we respond to food industry marketing practices. By explaining how much the food industry influences government nutrition policies and how cleverly it links its interests to those of nutrition experts, this path-breaking book helps us understand more clearly than ever before what we eat and why."]

---. "The Hyper-Marketing of Protein (Continued)." Food Politics (August 6, 2026) ["Most people who eat enough calories get more than enough of the protein they need, so the current protein craze—putting pea, whey, and tofu into everything—doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It does sell products though."]

---. "The Money Behind Ultra-Processed Food." Capitalisn't (May 23, 2024) ["Critics of the food industry allege that it relentlessly pursues profits at the expense of public health. They claim that food companies "ultra-process" products with salt, sugar, fats, and artificial additives, employ advanced marketing tactics to manipulate and hook consumers, and are ultimately responsible for a global epidemic of health ailments. Companies are also launching entirely new lines and categories of food products catering to diabetes or weight management drugs such as Ozempic. Marion Nestle, a leading public health advocate, nutritionist, award-winning author, and Professor Emerita at New York University, first warned in her 2002 book "Food Politics" that Big Food deliberately designs unhealthy, addictive products to drive sales, often backed by industry-funded research that misleads consumers. This week on Capitalisn't, Nestle joins Bethany and Luigi to explore the ultra-processed food industry through the interplay of four lenses: the underlying science, business motives, influencing consumer perceptions, and public policy."]

---. "On Food Choices and Food Politics." Against the Grain (August 4, 2026) ["Food affects all of us — but while it’s a necessity for our survival, it’s also a vast, sprawling industry spanning the globe, which generates enormous profits as well as significant damage to public health and the environment. Nutritionist and molecular biologist Marion Nestle sheds light on the choices we all must navigate when we enter the grocery store." Marion Nestle, What to Eat Now: The Indispensable Guide to Good Food, How to Find It, and Why It Matters North Point Press, 2025."]

---. "The Politics of Food Choices." Food, Ethics, and Society. ed. Anne Barnhill, Mark Budolfson, and Tyler Doggett. Oxford University Press, 2016: 596 - 601.

---. What to Eat Now: The Indispensable Guide to Good Food, How to Find It, and Why It Matters. Macmillan, 2025. ["What to Eat Now is a clear-eyed, no-nonsense guide to the most important food questions on our plate today. How do we make informed dietary choices for ourselves, our families, and our communities? In the twenty years since Marion Nestle’s groundbreaking What to Eat first came out, food has undergone a radical change. The emergence of techno foods, the growth of corporate organics, and a surge of interest in food-delivery services reignited by the pandemic are just a few of the things that have altered how we think about how we eat. The typical American supermarket carries more than thirty thousand products. How do you choose? Misinformation, disinformation, and corporate misdirection play a crucial and hard-to-see role in how the average shopper thinks about and chooses food. In an aisle-by-aisle guide, Nestle, America’s preeminent nutritionist and a founding figure in American food studies, takes us through the American supermarket. With persistence, wit, and common sense, she establishes the basics of good nutrition, food safety, and ethical and sustainable eating, and gives readers a close-up look at the web of interests—from supermarket slotting policies to multinational food corporations to lobbying groups—that food has to navigate before it gets to your shopping basket. Above all else, What to Eat Now is a defense of real food and of the value of eating deliciously, mindfully, and responsibly."]

Nestle, Marion. "Writing the Food Studies Movement." Food Politics (March 6, 2010)

Nestle, Marion, et al. "Let's Ask Marion: What You Need to Know about the Politics of Food, Nutrition, and Health (University of California Press, 2020)." New Books in Food (January 13, 2021) ["Marion Nestle describes her new book as “a small, quick and dirty reader for the general audience” summarizing some of her biggest and most influential works. Let’s Ask Marion: What You Need to Know About the Politics of Food, Nutrition, and Health published September 2020 by University of California Press, was written in conversation with Kerry Trueman, a blogger and friend. Trueman’s questions served as prompts to organize Nestle’s 800-1000 word summaries in approachable and engaging prose. Readers familiar with Nestle’s groundbreaking Food Politics will recognize many of the ideas and information, but this new pocket-sized and affordable volume serves as an introduction for undergraduate students or readers new to Food Studies. However, Nestle does cover some new material in her explanation of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, especially the campaign for Zero Hunger. Nestle also summarizes how nutrition advice has changed in the last few years by thinking about food in categories ranging from unprocessed (corn on the cob) to ultraprocessed (Nacho Cheese tortilla chips). This reevaluation makes it easier to identify foods that are acceptable to eat without excessive focus on micronutrients. In the conversation, Nestle addresses the ethics of marketing food to children, food as a human right and access in the Covid era, the possibility of a National Food Policy Agency, the politics of food banks, and the promise of regenerative agricultural practices. Nestle concludes by talking about the pleasures of food and eating and how to establish a “loving relationship” with food that doesn’t include fear, guilt, or anxiety about nutrition. Marion Nestle is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University, and the author of books about food politics, most recently Unsavory Truth."]

Stewart, Jon. "A Conversation with Marion Nestle: Straight Talk About Obesity, Nutrition, and Food Policy." Permanente Journal (Fall 2006): 62-65. ["Marion Nestle, PhD, MPH, does not lack for opinion about the role of the food industry in the etiology of America's obesity crisis. She freely expresses her point of view as one of the most outspoken and influential voices in the national debate on public health nutrition and food policy. Dr Nestle has devoted much of her professional life to the nutrition issues that individuals, institutions, and policymakers are struggling with today: how to make better choices about what we eat."]

White, Dan. "A candid conversation with Marion Nestle: How corporations and politicians decide what you eat." UC Santa Cruz Campus News (February 18, 2026) ["A few hours before delivering the Peggy Downes Baskin Ethics Lecture, the longtime nutrition scholar and tireless consumer advocate Marion Nestle gave a far-ranging, informal interview at The Humanities Institute (THI.) Nestle discussed the political structure of the American food system, arguing that corporate influence—from agricultural subsidies to supermarket slotting fees—shapes what people eat far more than personal choice does."]

Mundis Imaginalis - Music Mix #56

 Die Spitz; Wombo; The Kilans; Cardinals; Dad Bod; Wilbere; Nadezhda; Freak Slug; Black Sabbath; The Brothers Johnson; villagerrr; Merce Lemon; Feeble Little Horse; Tame Impala; Gorillaz; De La Soul; Neneh Cherry; The Call; Bob Marley and the Wailers; Ziggy Marley; Sex Pistols; The Clash; Siouxsie and the Banshees; Joy Division; Soft Cell; Nirvana; David Bowie; bar Italia; Elias Ronnefelt; Iceage; The Last Dinner Party; The Lovely Eggs; Sonic Youth; The Dream Syndicate; The Mountain Goats; Anathema; The Presidents of the United States of America; Hot Chip; 4 Non Blondes; Folk Bitch Trio; Stevie Wonder

Mundis Imaginalis - Music Mix #56

Non Satis Scire - Music Mix #55

 Yasmin Hamdan; Orange 9mm; The Hello Crows; Princess Nokia; Andrew Bird; Lucius; Rage Against the Machine; Disappeared Completely; The Strokes; No So; Weakened Friends; Not for Radio; Wilby; Jessie Baylin; Badlands; Guitar; The xx; Turnstile; Hayley Williams; Modes Mouse; Magdalena Bay; The Last Dinner Party; Briston Maroney; American Football; Branden Yates; Grandaddy; Between Friends; The Moss; Blackwater Holylight; Alabama 3; Wizard; Kevin Morby; Erin Rae; Melody' Echo Chamber; Ben Kweller; Waxahatchee; Dehd; Dry Cleaning; Smerz; Kenny Hoopla; Hannah Cohen; New Dad; Chanel Beads; Freak Slug; TOPS; Automatic; feeble little horse

  Non Satis Scire - Music Mix #55

Kilby Block Party 2026 (Salt Lake City, UT)

 Kilby Block Party 2026 (Salt Lake City, UT)

3 favorites of this year's festival:

Wombo (Louisville, KY)
Freak Slug (Manchester, UK)
Die Spitz (Austin, TX)

Band we will see:

XX  
Turnstile 
Hayley Williams 
Modest Mouse

Father John Misty

Magdalena Bay 

The Last Dinner Party 

Grandaddy 
The Moss
Kevin Morby 
Melody's Echo Chamber 
Ben Kweller
Dehd
Smerz

KennyHoopla

 Hannah Cohen 

NewDad 
Chanel Beads

Freak Slug 
TOPS 
Automatic
Feeble Little Horse
Die Spitz
Wombo

Cardinals

Dad Bod

Wilbere

Nadezhda

Wonder Cabinet: Science/Humanities/Philosophy/Religion (Azimuths)

Wonder Cabinet homepage ["Intimate conversations about the mysteries of the cosmos and life on a sentient planet with writers, philosophers and scientists who are dazzled by it all."]

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Blackie, Sharon. "Why We Need Fairy Tales Now." Wonder Cabinet (May 9, 2026) ["“Stories are spells,” Sharon Blackie says. “They change things.” Maybe that’s why fairy tales — old, new, fractured and retold — are having a resurgence. As uncertainty rises and old ways disintegrate, fairy tales offer a roadmap to cultural transformation and re-enchantment. Sharon Blackie is one of our foremost fairy tale interpreters. In her new book, “Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now,” she reclaims the subversive fairy tale heroines of the past. Not passive, well-behaved princesses — think Tatterhood instead of Cinderella, the Fox Wife instead of Sleeping Beauty — figures from centuries-old European folk tales that were whispered over hearths and spinning wheels, and handed down from one generation of women to the next, not as children’s entertainment but a blueprint for survival, maps for soul retrieval and cultural regeneration. The brave, smart heroines and wise old women in these tales offer us an alternative, “post-heroic” model of psychological development, Blackie says. A code of ethics based on kinship with the more-than-human world of animals and plants, and a celebration of old-fashioned virtues like compassion, kindness and reciprocity. Fairy tale heroines, Blackie says, don’t slay dragons — they make them part of the team. Fairy tales are part of our collective unconscious, a storehouse of archetypes and images that predate the modern world. There's a bridge back to the enchanted landscapes and animist sensibilities of our ancestors — a gateway to wonder. In this conversation, Blackie shows us how to unlock their power and find our way back the imaginal world."]

Burnett, Graham. "Rewilding Attention." Wonder Cabinet (May 23, 2026) ["We all know our attention is being competed for — but historian of science D. Graham Burnett calls it something more alarming: a "civilizational biohack." In this episode, we talk with Burnett, a Princeton historian of science and co-founder of "The Friends of Attention," about the movement to liberate our minds from the 17-trillion-dollar attention economy. He draws on surprising sources — the German Romantics, St. Augustine, Simone Weil, Henry James — to argue that we've lost touch with older, richer forms of attention. And he makes the case that reclaiming it will require more than screentime apps or digital detox – it’ll take collective resistance. Plus: why your Pilates class, your evening needlework, or your walk with the dog might already be forms of radical attention — and how reframing everyday activities can make ordinary life feel richer, more mysterious and more full of wonder.“Book: Attensity: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement.”]

Chungyalpa, Dekila. "On the Sacred Feminine and the Living Earth." Wonder Cabinet (April 11, 2026) ["Imagine growing up believing that at the heart of existence is a Primordial Mother—and that She is the Earth. For Dekila Chungyalpa, that idea is not metaphor. It’s inheritance. In Tibetan Buddhism, the feminine divine appears as Prajnaparamita, or Yum Chenmo—the “Mother of All Buddhas.” As the daughter and granddaughter of nuns, Dekila was raised in a world where spiritual teaching and healing was often female, and where land itself—especially the sacred Himalayan landscape of Sikkim—was alive with presence, meaning, and obligation. Today, she is a global conservationist and founding director of the Loka Initiative, building unlikely partnerships between climate scientists and religious leaders across traditions—from Buddhist monastics to Catholic clergy, Indigenous elders to Muslim clerics and Evangelical pastors. Her work suggests that the climate crisis is not only scientific or political—but spiritual."]

Haskell, David George. "Flowers and the Revolutionary Power of Beauty." Wonder Cabinet (March 28, 2026) ["What can flowers teach us about survival? Celebrated biologist and writer David George Haskell reframes flowers as agents of transformation—creatures that turned conflict into collaboration and remade the living world. For thousands of years, flowers have threaded themselves through human life—into our rituals, our art, our language, even our names. We decorate our homes and altars with them, distill their scents, celebrate them in poetry and song. But what if we’ve misunderstood them entirely? In How Flowers Made the World, biologist and writer David George Haskell invites us to see flowers not as delicate embellishments, but as one of the most powerful forces in Earth’s history. When flowering plants emerged more than 200 million years ago, they didn’t just adapt to the world—they transformed it. Through strategies of beauty, attraction, and reciprocity, they turned rivals into partners, reshaping ecosystems and making possible the rich diversity of life we know today. In a lyrical, science-rich conversation, we explore:
— Why Haskell calls flowers “nature’s revolutionaries”
— How beauty, pleasure, and desire function as evolutionary strategies
— The deep interdependence between flowers, animals, and humans
— What flowers can teach us about resilience in a time of ecological crisis
— How re-centering flowers might change the story we tell about life on Earth.
We live on a floral planet, Haskell says—and more than that, we are a floral species, utterly dependent on flowering plants for food, habitat, and survival. The lessons flowers offer—about creativity, cooperation, and transformation—may be exactly what we need to navigate a rapidly changing world. What would it mean to tell the story of life not through predators and conquest, but through seduction, partnership and bloom?"] 

Henderson, Rebecca. "Can Capitalism Save the World It’s Destroying?" Wonder Cabinet (May 2, 2026) ["Can capitalism save the world it's destroying? Rebecca Henderson thinks so. An economist at Harvard Business School and author of Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire, she has advised some of the world's biggest corporations and argues that capitalism itself — and what drives corporations — urgently needs to change. She's clear-eyed about capitalism's failures — the inequality, the exploitation, the environmental destruction — which is precisely what drives her passion for reforming it from within. And as a climate activist, she's haunted by the consequences if we fail to act. But this conversation goes deeper than economics. Henderson opens up about hitting a personal wall in her climate work — and the unexpected turn that brought wonder back into her life."]

Rovelli, Carlo. "Cosmic Mysteries and the Politic of Wonder." Wonder Cabinet (February 7, 2026) ["Carlo Rovelli’s quest to understand the nature of reality began not in a physics lab, but in youthful experiments with consciousness, political protest and a restless hunger for meaning—years before he “fell madly in love with physics.” Today, Rovelli is famous for his bestselling books, including "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics" and "Reality Is Not What It Seems," and his pioneering work on some of the biggest mysteries in physics, including black holes and quantum gravity. In a wide-ranging conversation, Steve Paulson talks with Rovelli about his early, profound experiences with LSD; his discovery of the "spectacular" beauty of general relativity and quantum mechanics; his lifelong search for purpose in both the cosmos and his own life; and why scientists need to be politically engaged. Carlo also tells us about the big idea that he’d put in our own wonder cabinet. This interview was recorded at the Island of Knowledge think tank in Tuscany, a project supported by Dartmouth College and the John Templeton Foundation. We also play a short excerpt from Anne Strainchamps’ earlier interview with Rovelli that originally aired on Wisconsin Public Radio’s To The Best Of Our Knowledge."]

Singh, Manvir. "Was Shamanism the First Religion?" Wonder Cabinet (April 4, 2026) ["Shamanism may be humanity’s oldest religion – a tradition found across cultures, where healers slip into unseen realms, speak with spirits, and bring back knowledge from beyond the visible world. But in a modern, scientific age, these practices can seem like little more than superstition. But what if they reveal something deeper in human experience? Anthropologist Manvir Singh set out in search of answers. On a remote island in Indonesia, he lived with the Mentawai people, watching as their shamans — the sikerie — drummed, danced and entered trance, their tattooed bodies painted in turmeric. In these altered states, they appeared to move between worlds. How does an empirically-minded scientist make sense of such experiences? Singh combines immersive fieldwork with cross-cultural research into shamanic traditions, past and present. He calls shamanism a “timeless religion,” one that may go back to our earliest ancestors — and still lives on in the world’s major religions. Along the way, he asks a provocative question: Was Jesus a shaman?"]

Solnit, Rebecca. "Hope After the End." Wonder Cabinet (February 14, 2026) ["How do you deal with the emotional toll of living in a time of dissolution? Social scientists use the term "polycrisis" to describe the kind of cascading, overlapping failures that can lead to systemic collapse, and it’s hard not to see the symptoms of a dying world order in events unfolding around us. But maybe what we’re witnessing is actually grounds for hope. In a forthcoming book "The Beginning Comes After the End," writer and activist Rebecca Solnit makes the case that something is dying, all right — because something better is being born. A rising worldview that embraces antiracism, feminism, environmental thinking, Indigenous and non-Western ideas, and a vision of a more interconnected, compassionate world. Solnit is an engaged writer and intellectual in the tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich, Susan Sontag and George Orwell. Her new book picks up where her earlier bestseller “Hope in the Dark” left off — with an argument against despair and historical amnesia. In this conversation, we explore the extraordinary scale of progressive social, political, scientific and cultural change over the past century, the roots of Solnit’s stance of “pragmatic, embodied hope,” her thoughts on “moral wonder, “ and her years in San Francisco’s underground punk rock scene. She also tells us what she’d put in our own wonder cabinet: an AIDS Memorial Quilt square sewn by Rosa Parks."]

Strand, Sophie. "Ecological Storytelling and Mythic Imagination." Wonder Cabinet (January 31, 2026) ["Writer and ecologist Sophie Strand thinks at a scale that can feel dizzying—in the best way. In a single conversation, she can move from the chemical structure of cells to mushroom spores, from ancient weather gods to mycorrhizal fungi, from Bronze Age collapse to the slow intelligence of soil. In this episode of Wonder Cabinet, we talk with Strand about wonder that doesn’t float upward but roots downward—into bodies, ecosystems, decay, and deep time. We begin with her essay “Your Body Is an Ancestor,” published shortly before Halloween and the Day of the Dead, and follow her imagery into our shared prehistoric past.
The conversation also explores how Strand’s experience of chronic illness reshaped her understanding of nature, selfhood, and health. Rather than seeing the sick body as broken, she turns to ecological metaphors: spider webs, soil structures, caterpillars dissolving inside cocoons. What might it mean to understand ourselves not as machines that fail, but as landscapes that change? Along the way, we talk about fantasy and “romantasy,” Tolkien, Harry Potter, Dramione fan fiction and communal storytelling rituals. This is a conversation about wonder with dirt under its fingernails: embodied, mythic, ecological, and deeply alive to the cycles of death and regeneration that bind us all."]

Winterer, Caroline. "Dinosaurs, Deep Time and the American Soul." Wonder Cabinet (April 25, 2026) ["T-Rex. Brontosaurus. Diplodocus. Just the names conjure something enormous — a sense of scale that dwarfs human history. Standing before dinosaur tracks in the Utah desert, or gazing up at a towering skeleton in a natural history museum, you feel it: the vertigo of deep time. Millions of years of life and death, compressed into bone and stone. Two hundred years ago, Americans began unearthing mysterious fossils and giant bones they didn't even have names for yet. Almost overnight, something remarkable happened: the New World became old. The United States went from infant start-up nation to the blueprint for all of creation.
Stanford historian Caroline Winterer traces this deep time revolution in her book How the New World Became Old — and she shows us how profoundly it shaped American identity. We still think of dinosaurs as fun, as children's toys and museum spectacles. Few of us realize how deeply they underwrote a national mythology — one that fueled American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, Christian nationalism and genocide. This is a story about wonder and awe. And it teaches us that those emotions are neither simple nor neutral.Caroline’s book How the New World Became Old: The Deep Time Revolution in America."]

Que sais-je? - Music Mix #54

Wilco; King Missile; Angine de Poitrine; Stereolab; AC/DC; The Cure; Wendy Eisenberg; Marcus King; Sammy Rae & The Friends; Earthgang; Little Dragon; Sudan Archives; Patrick Wilson; Shiner; Sloan; Sons; The Cords; The Macks; Trestles; Dodie; Bush; Kate Bush; Prewn; Taylor Swift; Smashing Pumpkins; Scorpions; Cream; Wet Leg; Fever Ray; Miles Caton; DC6 Singers Collective; Don Tolliver & Ludwig Goransson; Cedric Burnside; Sharde-Thomas Malloy; Nikki Lane; Oasis; Stone Temple Pilots; Ava Luna; Cal in Red; Cheap Perfume; Rush; Creative Writing; HAERTS; Hammy Down; Caroline Rose; Idlewild; Arthur Buck; Lovejoy; Parent Teacher; Pigeons Playing Ping Pong; Genevieve Artadi; Real Bad Man; TOBi

 Que sais-je? - Music Mix #54