Episode 21: Pickup Basketball, Assigned Reading, Expert Testimony: Urban Planning, Unchained Melodies, and Those Winter Sundays
This week Dave and Steel are joined by their friend Spencer. Together the trio discusses Steel and Spencer’s pickup basketball escapades, give reports on their recent reading (books by Thomas Pynchon, Dan Simmons, and Sabine Heinlein) and give each other new reading assignments (books by Frank Herbert, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Ignazio Silone, Brandon Sanderson, Daniel Kahneman, and Alexander Dolgun), Dave & Steel ask Spencer all their burning questions about urban planning and transportation issues, share great music by Dawn Landes, Saintseneca, Christopher Paul Stelling, Strand of Oaks, Adult Mom, and Konono No. 1, and drop a beautiful poetic tribute to fathers from the twentieth-century American poet Robert Hayden.
Links
Assigned Reading
For Dave:
- Brandon Sanderson’s fantasy epic Warbreaker [from Steel]
- Ignazio Silone’s classic Italian novel Bread and Wine [from Spencer]
For Spencer:
- Israeli-American psychologist and behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow [from Steel]
- Alexander Dulgan’s harrowing tale of Soviet imprisonment, An American in the Gulag [from Dave]
For Steel:
- Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic Dune.
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile
Expert Testimony
Portland’s spending on bike infrastructure relative to the cost of 1 mile of urban freeway, as checked by Polifact.
Unchained Melodies
Dawn Landes — Straight Lines
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njPFQXVXTx4
Saintseneca — Or or No
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq1v8M92Ows
Christopher Paul Stelling — Every Last Extremist
Strand of Oaks — Kill Dragon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEeWvIU\_9nQ
Adult Mom — Survival
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snLFcGSneFA
Konono No. 1 — Lufuala Ndongo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Los0qjV9Ecg
Book Wisdom
This week’s passage of Book Wisdom was Robert Hayden’s moving tribute to his father, the poem “Those Winter Sundays.” Fathers everywhere, we thank you.