Hi Friends,
Greetings from Brooklyn!
Welcome to this latest edition of the Practical Polymath. Every two weeks, I tell myself that next time I’ll start writing this newsletter early, perhaps even write a full piece for it! And invariably, on the Friday it comes out, I open my laptop to a blank Google Doc at 8.30pm. But every time I press “publish”, it’s like bottling a tribute to the fortnight that was. Time is a flavorless dish. We ought to season it well, even if only with a sprinkle of salt.
See you in two weeks,
Florian
Weekly Wisdom
🔥 Eternal Fire: Atash Bahram fires are a thousand-year-old tradition in Zoroastrian religion. The oldest one has allegedly been burning uninterrupted for the past 1,500 years. Several times a day, year after year, generation after generation, priests tend to the flames. Rituals like these, the author argues, help us become more “long-minded” and promote a sense of maintenance and stewardship. I love how he defines rituals as “a human behavior by which ideas can travel across decades and centuries”.
🫘 Cool Beans: No one would think of beans as an exciting option for a Friday night dinner. And yet, they are an excellent source of protein, incredibly cheap and much more sustainable than meat. They are reviled by consumers however and this piece outlines the challenges we need to overcome to make them attractive. I love cooking beans (pasta e fagioli anyone?) and I’m a devout follower of the company that’s slowly making them the hottest pantry item in town.
📚 Book of the Week: I just finished reading “The Extended Mind: the Power of Thinking Outside the Brain” by Annie Murphy Paul. The book takes aim at the traditional way we’ve conceived of thinking: a process that largely happens within the confines of the brain. Instead, thinking is inextricably linked to the rest of our body, our movements, our physical surroundings and the people we interact with. My biggest takeaway from this book is to shift from “think harder” to “extend your mind” when confronting a mental challenge. That could mean doing 10 minutes of Yoga, going for a stroll in nature, using physical materials to represent abstract ideas or bouncing ideas with a friend or colleague. I enjoyed part 1 (“Thinking with our bodies”) and 2 (“Thinking with our surroundings”) but I dozed off in part 3 when the author started carpet-bombing the reader with a seemingly endless list of studies and experiments.
Lateral Thought
When a child asks an endless string of “Why?” questions, the smartest reply is “I don’t know, what do you think?”.
Kevin Kelly
Flo, this is the second year in a row I'm getting my husband a Christmas gift based off your recommendation. First it was the bird book, now it's beans. Maybe you should do a gift-giving guide. :)