Good Seedlets #28

Watch to nurture…….

• Reality is colonial: epistemic violence, naming the world, and the coloniality of knowledge: This video essay by Mumbi is one of those watches that fundamentally shifts how you see the world; specifically, how Western ways of knowing have been imposed as the only "real" or legitimate ways of knowing, and how that erasure is its own form of violence. Dense but accessible, it makes you rethink what you think you know.

• How To Flirt Franscesa Hogi: This TED talk reframes flirting as something far simpler and more joyful than we've made it;  less performance, more presence. A warm, refreshing watch that makes modern dating feel a little less impossible.

• Speak Freely: bell hooks: This interview is a treasure!  hooks at her sharpest, talking about free speech, feminism, and the courage it takes to speak truth. She is as electric and urgent, and if you've never encountered her work before, this is a beautiful place to start! 

• Tiny Desk Concert: Eve: This one took me straight back to childhood in the 90’s/2000s — the music, the energy, all of it. But what struck me watching this is just what an extraordinary performer she is. Oh my goodness! She ran through a full set of classics and never let up for a single second. 

Follow to grow………….

• Katina, Creative Scientist: Katina is a Creative Health Scientist — yes, that's a real thing, and she's basically making the case that creativity isn't a talent reserved for artists, it's a dimension of our wellbeing that most of us have been starved out of. Her weekly essays are research-backed but warm and personal, and her recent TED Talk on the science of play is worth seeking out, too. A genuinely nourishing follow.

• The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz: John is a longtime pastor and writer whose Substack is one of the most fiercely compassionate corners of the internet right now. He writes about faith, humanity, and the moral urgency of this particular moment in history, with clarity, grief, and a stubborn insistence on love as a call to action, not just a feeling. If your spiritual life and your politics are deeply intertwined, this one will meet you there.

 Read to root……. 

• The End of Reading Is Here by Rose Horowitch: This long-form piece from The Atlantic argues that we may be living through the end of the age of reading: not just a dip, but a fundamental cultural shift back toward the oral, visual world that existed before widespread literacy. It's a big, uncomfortable thesis, and is something I have been chewing on a lot these past two years. It is especially worth reading if you're someone who loves books and wonders why the world seems to be moving away from them ( like me- a former English teacher!) 

• Whistler by Anne Patchett: Patchett wrote this novel in grief, imagining a different version of a friendship she lost, and you can feel that love on every page. A woman in her fifties encounters her long-lost former stepfather at the Met, and what unfolds is a quiet, luminous story about memory, bravery, and the small moments that shape an entire life. I really loved this book!

• This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews: A woman wakes up in the world of her favorite unfinished fantasy series;  naked, penniless, and armed with nothing but her encyclopedic knowledge of the plot. It sounds delightfully unhinged, and it is, but it's also compulsively readable and surprisingly emotional. I couldn’t put it down- read it in one sitting! 

• The Amalfi Curse by Sarah Penner: A nautical archaeologist arrives on the Amalfi Coast to investigate mysterious shipwrecks and stumbles into centuries-old magic, forbidden love, and a curse she has to unravel before it's too late.  It is pure transportive escapism;  best read somewhere with sunlight and a cold drink.

• The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett: Don't let the 640 pages intimidate you — you'll fly through this one because you simply won't want to leave these women. Stockett has always had a gift for characters that feel completely real, and this is her at her very best. Set in Depression-era Mississippi, it's the kind of book where you find yourself genuinely worried about people who don't exist and a little heartbroken when it ends.

• What if we aren't Actually Worried about Ariana Grande? By Liz Plank: This essay goes somewhere most takes on the Ariana Grande discourse don't: past the "concern" and into the fear underneath it. Plank argues that what many women are really feeling when they look at those images isn't just worry for a celebrity, but a reckoning with their own relationship to their bodies and the cultural forces that shape it. It’s one of the most honest pieces of writing I've come across in a while.

Listen to expand……

• Herbs with Rosealee: Yarrow: Yarrow is one of those plants that feels almost too generous;  wound healer, fever reducer, boundary setter, spirit protector. In this episode, herbalist Carolyn Jones goes well beyond the physical uses and into yarrow's emotional and spiritual gifts, and it's the kind of conversation that makes you want to go outside and find some immediately. Please do. 

• The Great Simplification: Hospicing  Modernity and Rehabilitating Humanity: Vanessa Andreotti is an educator and indigenous researcher who uses the concept of "hospicing modernity" to describe what it means to grieve the systems we've built while finding the inner strength to imagine something new. Rooted in indigenous knowledge and relationality, this conversation is one of the more grounding and hopeful things I've listened to about the state of the world — which is saying something.

• Fck The Patriarchy with Jane Evans: Jane Evans is a UK advertising legend and founder of the Uninvisibility Project, which fights the cultural erasure of women over 50 — and she is absolutely hilarious and completely furious in the best possible way. This conversation covers her decades in a male-dominated industry, the moment she was told her career was over, and why she decided to fight back instead. 

• Ada Palmer: Machiavelli is the most misunderstood thinker of all time (Dwarkesh Podcast): Ada Palmer is a Renaissance historian and novelist, and this conversation is one of those listens that makes you feel genuinely smarter by the end. She untangles everything we think we know about Machiavelli;  who he actually was, why The Prince reads so differently when you understand the context, and why the man behind the word "Machiavellian" wasn't Machiavellian at all.

Support if you can…. 

• NPR Music: If you've ever discovered an artist through a Tiny Desk Concert, heard a song on the radio that stopped you in your tracks, or found yourself deep in an NPR Music playlist at midnight — this one's for you. They've been doing the work of introducing people to music that matters for decades, and that work isn't free. If you can, support them.