To Have the Courage to See
12 things I found this month.
Every last Wednesday of the month, I’ve been sharing a dozen of the best things I found out there. Writing. Music. Podcasts. Films. Gear. Recipes. The intent: to keep this a punchy-simple countertactic against the algorithms, and to amplify the beautiful work of others. Here’s a link to previous lists so far.
12 Things I Found in June…
POWER. I know I’ve plugged The Emerald here before, but host Josh Schrei is nailing episodes with increasing deft these days. This latest one gets into mythic expressions of power, its tidal chart flows between center and circumference, demystifying the use of power in popular culture around hyperindividualized wellness “empowerment.” (This episode touches a lot of what I think I explored in my Emergence piece, “Small King.”)
BREAKFAST. Something about Michelle Zauner’s voice and sentiment is to be trusted. (Also, Crying at the H Mart.) After her recent conversation on my favorite interview podcast—and becoming a fan of Japanese Breakfast’s record, Jubilee (2021)—I was curious about her new album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women), which holds notes of inspiration from all over the place, including Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain (“Magic Mountain”), and perhaps my other favorite track, Honey Water.
ANCESTORS. Don’t sleep on the best literary podcast out there, Between the Covers, especially this in-depth drop-in with the great adrienne maree brown, about her Grievers Trilogy. In the conversation she said something that struck me, that many of us are in this process of “breaking down society inside of us.” I haven’t yet read her fiction but was moved by Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism. (Related: I had the pleasure of being in conversation with the great Robert Macfarlane a few weeks ago in Minneapolis, and he’d just finished recording an upcoming Between the Covers episode. Stay tuned!)
SONG. I rarely trust anything that crushes my social feeds with ads (so much these days, I know), but for some reason this new film, “Eternal Song,” sponsored by SAND, was persistently surfacing online—but it delivered. With a stand-out lineup of thinkers and doers, as well as a bunch of extra conversations and resources, the film delivers on many levels as it explores in a kaleidoscopic weave the topography of ancestral wisdom in collective healing for our times. Bayo Akomolafe, Joe Williams, Iya Affo, Pat McCabe, Patricia June Vickers, and many others.
SPRINGSTEEN. This trailer’s been making the rounds, and, full disclosure, I’m not a Springsteen scholar, but I do adore his work and life and politics. Anyone who knows me also knows I’m a fan of Jeremy Allen White (The Bear, obviously, swoon), so this is bound to be a knockout. Unrelated to Springsteen but related to wildly exciting trailers: my dear friend
sent me the trailer for The Long Walk, a film adapted from Richard Bachman’s (Stephen King) 1979 story of the same name, and it gave me goosebumps.
ETHIOPIA. Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou was an Ethiopian pianist and nun who lived to nearly 100 years old, and I’ve been falling in and out of her entrancing music for the past few years. This week I found myself haunted by a recently added posthumous album, Church of Kidane Mehret. (Her piano solo album is also crazy good, if you’re wondering where to start.)
UNDAM. As managing editor for Magic Canoe, I recently syndicated this long form reporting story by Underscore Native News on the undamming of the Klamath River, which was an unbelievably long and complicated road to eventual dam removal. That’s why this New York Times story of young Indigenous kayakers sending the rewilded river brought such joy, amid such wholesale devastation everywhere else in the news these days.
NUYARN. This spring I joined a few close friends for some extended off-trail walking in the Utah desert, and I wore a performance wool sun hoodie that brought both respite from the heat and somehow adapted to keeping me warm during the cool evenings. I’ve since been testing out some fabrics made with Nuyarn (specifically this one), and they are next level wonderful. Hypersoft, never smells, easy to wash, and natural materials. Performance wool = love language. Black Diamond also incorporate Nuyarn into several of their offerings.
DOUBT. New Yorker staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert has been a hero of mine, albeit a bringer of bummer news, for over a decade, and her newest piece, “Do We Need Another Green Revolution?” sheds daunting light on the scramble to feed a growing population. (10 billion by 2050?!) Though no definitive solution is delivered by the end of it, it seems as though we’re in a pickle here.
VERVE. My older, smarter, shorter brother Ryan just turned 45 and I gifted him some of the best coffee I know, Verve. I got him a subscription, which is an incredibly easy gift for someone you adore who adores top-tier coffee. Easy to rig up, plus, what’s better than receiving a free bag of drugs? (Other winners in the drug department this month include Spyhouse, in Minneapolis, MN, and Revolution Roasters, in Oceanside, CA.)
GILEAD. For the summer solstice, I spent time revisiting one of my all-time favorite books, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead (I call these “burning house” books, books I’d grab if my house were burning and I could only save a few.) Here’s the quote that felt most appropriate, that of the dying priest protagonist who said that perhaps the Lord breathes on this “poor ember of Creation and it turns to radiance.” But that’s not fully it, he says, that whatever God is to you is “more constant and far extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?”
NONVIOLENCE. This article on data trends of nonviolent uprising in the U.S. I found to be compelling. "Overall, 2017’s numbers pale in comparison to the scale and scope of mobilization in 2025 — a fact often unnoticed in the public discourse about the response to Trump’s actions." Especially with this ping-pong back-and-forth with the Reconciliation Bill and public land sellout, this is encouraging to me, to speak nothing of genocide and twinging fascism.
Quick PSA:
I’m going on a west coast tour starting with the book launch July 8, in Missoula, Montana. Ten stops. Vancouver to San Francisco. Come say hi! (Pre-orders are welcome.)
I’ll be pairing up to rap out with all-stars like Death Cab for Cutie frontman and close friend Ben Gibbard—who I’ll be pacing this weekend at Western States 100—fly fishing poet and educator, Chris Dombrowski, Top Chef star and three-time James Beard Award-winning chef Gregory Gourdet, photographer-activist-artist Josh Jackson, and the great bookstore owner, Stephen Sparks.
Amid bunker-busting bombs and heat waves and Gaza being systematically leveled, I hope this book will be in active conversation with our ecological and political moment, and that it’ll also bring a bit of joy and possibility, too.
Oh, and speaking of joy: this conversation with friend and genius
got me thinking about process, ritual, and…stalking. Take a look and subscribe to her work.