What I've been reading:
Not a recent recommendation, but I'm reading Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse for the first time (how I missed it before, I don't know, but I'm glad to catch up on it now).
I'm also reading Dune for the first time, and enjoying that.
Article-wise, these are two articles that I read a little while ago (one earlier this week, one a few weeks ago), but I can't shake them.
The first one is an Atlantic article by Kaitlyn Tiffany called "The Women Making Conspiracy Theories Beautiful", and it is wild. It explains so much of what is happening on some of my friends' Instagram feeds--it explains more of who and what some of them are re-posting (in a nutshell, innocuous-looking, aesthetically-pleasing squares of "Today is What You Make of It" or some kind of similar phrase, but with hashtags that link to dangerous conspiracy theories, and which, in turn, shape their algorithm). If you want to get an understanding of what's happening on Instagram, and how influencers, beauty, politics, and conspiracy theories meet in an unholy combination, I highly recommend this article. [Also, I try not to post articles too often which have pay walls, but since it is only the second day of September, and all of these articles I am posting to have at least 3 free articles per month, you should be able to read this one!]
And this next one, which is by Masha Gessen, who is an American-Russian journalist (she left Putin's Russia for political and personal reasons), and who has written extensively on autocracy, authoritarianism, and Putin's Russia. I've come to really respect her journalism and her monographs--she writes with precision and incision. This article is from The New Yorker about the spectacle of the RNC. And it has haunted me. (And, for a bonus round, and if you want to use up 2 of your free Atlantic articles for this month, I've also been thinking a lot about this article entitled "Laura Ingraham's Descent into Despair" by Anne Applebaum--who is another person who studies and writes about authoritarianism, although in the slightly-more-distant past of the Soviet Union and its satellite states.)
Moving onto . . .
What I've Been Listening To:
Recently, I've been listening to a lot of the Maxwell Institute Podcast, especially their "Short Theological Introductions to the Book of Mormon" series. Essentially, they have different authors write a book called "Briefly 1st Nephi," "Briefly 2nd Nephi," "Briefly Jacob," etc. I haven't read the books, but the podcasts are great overviews of the authors' insights. (My personal favorite so-far is "Briefly Jacob.")
I listened to the "Briefly Helaman" with Kimberly Matheson Berkey. (You can listen to it here.) It's perfect for finishing up the Book of Helaman's "Come, Follow Me" readings for this week. I liked the entire episode, but some highlights were:
1) Kimberly Matheson Berkey's response to people (from every political persuasion) asking her opinion about "secret combinations," and if the Book of Helaman provides clues as to who/what those groups are. Her response was that that is the wrong question to ask. If we are really concerned with secret combinations, then that shows we also are concerned with power and how to get at that power. We're looking in the wrong places and fixating on the wrong things.
2) Her summation of what the Book of Helaman teaches us. "Whatever you think, you are wrong."
Food for thought.
And, speaking about food, I highly recommend buying local, fresh peaches if you can. Also tomatoes. Homegrown tomatoes are the way to go. I've also (re?)-discovered that I like gummi candies.