As we near the end of 2021 and the paradise that second semester promises to be on this side of New Year’s Day, I wanted to reflect on some of the books that I read this year. These tidbits are by no means critical viewpoints, summaries, or book reviews; mostly, they are just a conglomerate of the feelings and thoughts that come to mind when I think of each book. (Inspired by reading all of our wonderful blogs this semester, I’m going to try to start another one about the books, movies, TV shows, and podcasts in my life during winter break; hopefully, these next few blogs can serve as a jumping off place for the former!) Here are the first ten books on my list, in no particular order of preference: 

Charles Yu: Interior Chinatown
This recent novel, written in the format of a movie script, offers stinging satire about Asian American stereotypes found in media, such as “Background Oriental Male” and “Delivery Guy.” It called up memories of well-meant comments from childhood that nonetheless felt like a slap in the face – “Well I know you got an A, you’re Asian”, “Wait, you don’t do kung fu?”, “Oh, you’re good at math, right?”… – scattered throughout my childhood. It is the sort of book which offers no consolation or way out (indeed, part of what makes the book so compelling for me is the cyclical, pointless nature of the main character’s role), but rather presents the grim, irrational situation simply as it is. 

Niccolo Machiavelli: The Prince
With my fascination with everyday politics, different political systems, and the people who live under them, this book was a must-read for me the moment I heard that Machiavelli was the “father of modern political philosophy.” A deceptively short treatise on politics from the 16th century, The Prince, and the diplomat who wrote it, attracted worship and censure from rulers scattered throughout Western Europe and throughout the centuries. Knowing this, I couldn’t help but read this book – with provocative sentences such as, “If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.” – imagining that I was King Henry VIII, Catherine de Medici, or even Daenerys Targaryen, wrangling with political crises that had infinitely many moving parts.

Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
A depiction of 17th century puritan society from a 19th century perspective, this book was bursting with details and subtleties, and as with almost all texts written more than fifty years ago, it seemed shrouded in mystery. I picked apart words, stories, and anecdotes, wondering why Hawthorne had made certain literary choices. What did this description say about Hawthorne’s society, and Puritan society? Why did Hawthorne choose this adjective, and what might that say about what Hawthorne’s society thought about Puritan society, or about Hawthorne’s own upbringing? This book turned its reputation of a dusty, archaic bore among high school English classes on its head; in fact, I felt that its overarching themes of sin, man versus society, and guilt could not be more relevant even today, one and a half centuries later, as universal parts of the human condition.

Mario Livio: The Golden Ratio
A number is worth a thousand words. Or, in Mario Livio’s case, about ninety thousand. This particular number, dubbed “nature’s code,” is a solution to the equation x2–x–1=0. In his book, Livio uses it to visit spiral galaxies, modern financial markets, Renaissance paintings, and musical instruments. In a subject like math that is sometimes seen as irrelevant and abstract, Livio’s exploration of this ratio was a simple but compelling example of how we can use numbers to see the world anew, reminding me of and affirming the beauty of the subject I love.

Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Frankenstein gripped my imagination with its depiction of a genius who builds the creature that is to be his downfall. I read Shelley’s novel as a warning against going too far in any pursuit and pushing the boundaries of our capabilities to the point of ambitiously running headfirst into self-destruction. For these themes, it feels like a modern publication, instead of one from the 19th century, and I often had to remind myself that Frankenstein came more than a century before the first robot, and the better part of a century before even cars. And yet, the plots of the abundance of modern sci-fi movies and novels that feature AI-dominated dystopias seem to come straight from its pages. 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Americanah
After a few months of being friends with me, I’ve almost definitely recommended this book to you, along with the author’s Ted Talk. I believe that her message of equal humanity is essential to solving the problems of division and othering that societies have always faced and I try to advocate and live by those ideals that she stood for. In Americanah, Ngozi tells a story of staying true to oneself. As the main character, Ifemulu, leaves her home in Nigeria to study, one of the many barriers that confuses her is the fact that she is treated like a black American, despite being African; further, she finds that many of her African American relatives distance themselves from black Americans because black Americans are the lowest in the American racial hierarchy. Ifemulu realizes how the American fixation upon race combines groups that don’t necessarily understand each other; for example, though she is appalled by the violence and discrimination that black Americans face, she will never be able to identify with that struggle. Recommended to me by Mrs. Parato, whom I love discussing books with, Americanah was a compelling window into another corner of the world that was different from my own. 

Jhumpa Lahiri: The Namesake
There were so many memorable lines from this book, so many moments and sentiments that reflected my own experiences as a child of immigrants, that I found myself underlining a quote every other page. Gogol’s unique relationship with his parents felt like a mirror into my own childhood frustration with Chinese customs: the insistence that every dish be shared, the uptight greetings. Yet, like Gogol, as I ventured into the world and put jumbled Chinese characters and hongbaos behind me, I found myself coming back home time and time again, slowly understanding what these traditions meant to my family, and now, to me: love, compassion, and shared experiences. The Namesake was yet another reminder of the power of language to express and move, to transcend time and space and penetrate the soul. 

Jordan B. Peterson: 12 Rules for Life
About every ten pages throughout this book, I had the urge to throw it down and shout, “Goodness, really?!” A recommendation from a friend, this book espoused many viewpoints that for me, ranged from agreeable to questionable to nearly intolerable. It was a difficult read, but infinitely worth it. I softened my viewpoints on some issues, and while I maintained others, I believe I understood a little better the feelings and rationale of those who disagreed with me, and I think that’s a step in the right direction. 

John F. Kennedy: Profiles In Courage
Kennedy was the namesake for my middle school; I can still picture the plaques hung on the walls of my school, each inscribed with one of his quotes. Before he became president, he was a Senator from Massachusetts. During his tenure, he wrote Profiles in Courage about eight senators throughout US history who risked their political careers for their values, using their vote and their voice, sometimes standing against their entire party, to do what they thought was right. I got to see how different it looked on the other side of the barrier that separates a politician and their constituents. His tributes to each politician revealed the conflict between a politician’s personal idealistic values and the realities of Congress, and how the best senators balanced the two with a sense of pragmatism. The speeches and essays of Kennedy and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, who served as his Attorney General during Kennedy’s presidency, was what first got me interested in politics and current events. 

Howard Zinn: A People’s History of the United States (currently listening to on Audible)
Philip Roth once said that “Everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable.” This idea – that each of us are living history, reading a book whose parallels and themes can only be understood backwards – embodies what made me first fall in love with history. However, as I delved deeper into the lessons in my US History class at school, I realized that every telling of history is inherently ideological, that history is not a straightforward story held between two covers at all, but rather a library, a swelling chorus of voices. Two seemingly opposing ideas, held by two different people on the shelves of history, can hold true at the same time. This realization drove me to listen to Zinn’s telling of American history, as a first small step towards listening to other tellings of our history that I had never encountered before.

In 2020, Spotify told me I spent about 127,000 minutes streaming music. That is nearly six hours a day, a number that made me realize that I was (and still am) addicted to music. In fact, I have been listening to music the entire time I’ve been writing this blog, which is about 90 minutes. I guess 127,000 isn’t such a reach. 

Anyway, I made one of my New Year’s resolutions to stop reaching for my earbuds at every reasonable opportunity and instead, to appreciate the sounds of the world around me. I shall discover the extent of my success at the end of this year with Spotify Wrapped; nevertheless, through playing piano, picking apart vocal harmonies, listening to any and every random song that Spotify suggests, and writing some of my own tunes, music remains irrevocably intertwined with my identity and my everyday life. Here are eight (PG) soundtracks to my life, each for varying reasons. 

8. Adele: Set Fire To The Rain (2011)

“Set Fire To The Rain” was the first song whose lyrics I memorized, at seven years old. At the time, my world of music consisted of the songs my dad had bought for $0.99 each on Apple Music, and I was soon familiar with his entire collection. My dad used to ice skate with me at Seven Bridges public skate, and we would blast this song on the way home, singing along. The chords of this song are thus always tied to images of landmarks on the road – the Cinemark at Seven Bridges, Cold Stone, Benedictine University, Steeple Run – whisking by, and to the glare of streetlights reflected on a rainy street. The lyrics confounded me back then, as I interpreted everything literally, but as I grew older, I came to appreciate Adele’s songwriting genius. (Anyway, the queen of soul is back! If you haven’t heard her new song, “Easy on Me” (10/14), give it a listen ;D.)

7. Ludwig van Beethoven: Moonlight Sonata (Mvmt. 1) (1801)

Far from Beethoven’s most technically difficult piece, it only took me a week to master playing the notes of this song, but to this day, I haven’t quite managed to capture, to my satisfaction, the essence of this masterpiece. It is Beethoven’s most well-known piece and instantly recognizable to any student of classical music, yet each time I hear it, I still feel like it’s underrated. Aside from the genius behind the notes and chords, the first movement of Moonlight Sonata evokes feelings of longing, mourning, and solemnity. And you can count on me to rush to Spotify to put it on repeat any moment I see the moon outside on a clear night sky. 

6. Billy Joel: Piano Man (1973)

I love driving, and most of my hours driving are spent alone. If I don’t have the mental energy for a podcast, I play music, and “Piano Man” somehow established itself as my go-to. It’s not so much the amazing lyrics or the instrumentals or even the tune – it’s the vibe of all three when put together: a mix of the loneliness and dreams and memories of people from all walks of life whose paths cross in a bar. The effect is often best when it’s dark outside; at 5:30 in the morning or 11 at night, one of my favorite things to do is to roll down the windows in the car and blast Billy Joel’s voice for anyone who’d like to join in. (Yes, I am that one annoying driver ;D)

And the waitress is practicing politics
As the businessmen slowly get stoned
Yes, they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it’s better than drinkin’ alone

5. Chevy: Morning Coffee (feat. Nalba) (2020)

“Morning Coffee” opens with the sound of a wake-up alarm; the voices sound cajoling yet sympathetic, as if they just got out of bed; and the instrumentals are minimalist acoustic. I used to drink coffee every day until I realized that it was no longer working and painfully weaned myself off of it; now, I’m careful to drink it only when I need it, like on Monday afternoons when I need to drive a long distance. Still, I remember the countless mornings of groggily waiting for my coffee to be ready, a feeling that is encapsulated perfectly by this song.

I just need some coffee in the morning; no sugar or tea
‘Cause I can feel my eyelids falling; they’re trying to sleep
But if I take a sip of caffeine, then surely I’ll be
Awake until the evening, until we go back to sleep

4. Alessia Cara: Seventeen (2015)

Surprise! I am seventeen. However, when I first heard this song, I was eleven, and around that time, I had a habit of reading Seventeen magazines at my tutor’s house and wondering how the heck I was supposed to look like that when I was seventeen. (It wasn’t until much later that I would discover that 1) most Seventeen models aren’t seventeen, and 2) most people never look like that at any age.) The magazine effused a sense of magic and romance around the age of seventeen in my mind, an idea that turned out to be somewhat true, but in ways much messier than I had thought. To me, Cara’s lyrics perfectly invoke that feeling of youthful impatience. 

I was too young to understand what it means
I couldn’t wait til I could be seventeen
I thought she lied when she said take my time and breathe
Now I wish I could freeze the time at seventeen

3. One Direction: Right Now (2013)

After my freshman year music theory teacher gave a lecture on sight singing, I went home feeling inspired and wrote down the first notes of what would become a full transcription of “Right Now” onto piano. After nailing down the vocal line, I chipped away at the instrumentals and the percussion in the following days and finally produced a very flawed, very monotonous-sounding rendering. I can no longer find the original sheet music despite sifting through my looming stack atop the piano for twenty minutes, but there is a good chance that it would be illegible anyway. Anyhow, this first experience of transcribing a pop song onto piano ensured that every discernible note, ad lib, syncopation, and beat of this song is forever etched into my mind. 

2. Taylor Swift: Long Live (2010)

Swift herself said that “Long Live” was a love song she wrote to her team, her band, her producers, and her fans, about the past two years of her career. For me, this song always brings chills and a hint of nostalgia about people with whom I got to know really well and went through so much with. Although we’re no longer in touch, this song still makes me think about all we did together, of being very young and feeling like we had the world at our feet. It’s a way of saying “long live” to the memories we share.

Long, long live the walls we crashed through
All the kingdom lights shined just for me and you
I was screaming, long live all the magic we made
And bring on all the pretenders
I’m not afraid

1. Jessie J: Masterpiece (2014)

“Masterpiece” tops my Hype playlist on Spotify. Paired with Jessie’s unbelievable vocals and heavy synthesized beats, the lyrics make even failures and letdowns feel like a part of something greater: the masterpiece of someone’s life. As a bit of a control freak who compulsively schedules something to do during every waking hour, “Masterpiece” is a much-needed reminder that it’s okay not to be in control, and it’s okay when things don’t go exactly as planned. Many other songs that exude confidence do so because the main character is/will be better than everyone else, but “Masterpiece” isn’t like that; its self-assurance comes from the protagonist’s drive to work hard and try new things – and to be unafraid to fail spectacularly. 

I still fall on my face sometimes
And I can’t color inside the lines
I’m perfectly incomplete
I’m still working on my masterpiece

Recently, my friend who is in college nonchalantly told me that “October is when it gets brutal,” because the common Early Action deadline of November 1st suddenly feels a lot closer on this side of September 30th. Yep. Thanks. It’s not like I wasn’t already painfully aware of the ginormous fire-breathing dragon of college applications crouching at the gateway to the rest of my life.

Looking around me, I realized almost all of my friends who were applying to undergraduate college had that same feeling of anxiety about the process – the queasiness, the crack of doom on the horizon. But perhaps, there’s another way to look at this application process. Here are four ideas that I hope might help you defeat the mirage of the dragon:

1. Rankings, cost inflation… obsession?
“I think U.S. News and World Report will go down as one of the most destructive things that ever happened to higher education.” –Adam Weinberg, President of Denison University.

I first visited the U.S. News website for ranking colleges in 8th grade, when I was selecting my classes for high school. Yet, last week, when I quoted Weinberg during my senior conference, my counselor nodded enthusiastically at his criticism. The truth is, the method that U.S. News uses to rank colleges biases strongly towards rich colleges with rich students. Graduation rates, which are closely correlated to family income, are weighted 35%; institutions that emphasize access, social mobility, and provide a more cross-sectional portion of society for incoming students, lose out big time on this metric. “Expert opinion,” a multiple choice survey of top academics and high school counselors that is wildly subjective and often left unanswered by administrators who cannot be expected to be familiar with all the colleges on the list, is weighted 20%. 

And yet, year after year, U.S. News, with its tidy lists that squeeze out all sense of nuance and appeal to our tendency to oversimplify, maintains its stranglehold on the admissions process. There is a conviction that an education from a school ranked No. 5 instead of No. 20, or a school rated 4.7 instead of 4.5, must somehow be better, more enviable, more valuable. Or that anything below No. 25 is just not worth looking at. It’s ridiculous, and to John Tierney, these rankings give us the same frenzy, the same adrenaline rush, that “Cheetos, soft drinks, lotteries, or articles about the Kardashians” do. These rankings, along with the steeply rising cost of college* in recent decades, can make college feel like some kind of elite commodity. But colleges and their diverse students, professors, and opportunities are not products; they cannot be flattened into numbers, any more than students can be. 

2. Trust in your story…
“When I went to college thirty of forty years ago, I said to my dad, ‘What’s the Ivy League?’ And he said, ‘That’s just a bunch of snooty girls, you don’t want to go there.’ Today he would say, ‘We absolutely must visit the Ivy League.’ It’s become a whole different thing.” –Jennifer Delahunty, former dean of admissions at Kenyon College.

“Interviews don’t matter at all. They just want to make sure you’re not crazy.”

“Melina’s essay about her national gymnastics team got her into seven schools.”

“You have to have a focus. Look at Jalisa, she has, like, nine science awards and activities. What did you do during high school again?”

“Don’t write about sports, for goodness sake. It’s too cliche.”

“Noah’s interview got him into his dream school. He just made such a strong impression.”

“Colleges like well-rounded kids. Don’t lean into any one discipline too much.”

It’s so loud! It seems there is always someone smarter, stronger, with a better resume, or someone with advice about what worked for another student, a technique you should also try to weasel your way into a college. This rising chorus of advice often contradicts itself. Worse, it can create a gaping hole of self-doubt and anxiety. All of a sudden, it seems like everyone else is just so prepared. Wait, should I have joined that club? Should I have volunteered more hours? Should I have spent more afternoons studying and planning for this moment? Am I supposed to know what I’m doing?!!

Probably not. Instead, try to be proud. Be proud of everything you did do in high school, instead of anxious about what everyone else seems to have done. Trust in the strength of your story, and trust yourself to display it through essays, interviews, or activities in such a way that the right college for you will see that strength. Also know that college admissions depend heavily on what you did between the ages of 15-17. Give yourself enough credit to realize that this will be but a small part of your life, yet still a part that is too precious and nuanced to be flattened into a thousand words and a resume. 

3. … and know that this is only one page.
“Does a prestigious college make you successful in life? Or do you do that for yourself?” –Peter Osterlund, University of Chicago.

My mother, who works in software engineering, recently hired someone to her team. In the car, she told me about the skills they would bring to their table, and what everyone on her team had said about them. And then, since it’s always on my mind these days, I asked her, “Which college did they go to?” She paused and responded, “I’m not sure. I’m sure I read it at some point; I just don’t remember.” 

When you are thirty, you will be as far from graduating undergraduate college as you are now from being a 4th grader. It is not an exaggeration to say that employers will not care about which undergraduate college you attended a decade ago. And the irrelevance doesn’t just begin there. After almost every semester in college, you can consider transferring and applying to a different one. After undergraduate college, there are a thousand ways to get to the graduate program you want, where the quality and quantity of opportunities from campus to campus will differ much more than in undergraduate school. Or, if you start your own enterprise, if you take a gap year, if you take care of yourself, if you find your passion, if you become a teacher, astronaut, chemist, poet, athlete, technician, landscape designer, musician, actuary, actor… The opportunities are endless. Undergraduate college is only the first opportunity, and the determination to take advantage of that opportunity is much more important than where you end up doing it.

• In Frank Bruni’s Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, he cites a study from Stacy Dale, an analyst with Mathematica Policy Research that found that:
  “Graduates of more selective colleges could expect earnings 7% greater than graduates of less selective colleges… [However,] someone with a given SAT score who had gone to Penn state but had also applied to the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school with a much lower acceptance rate, generally made the same amount of money later on as someone with an equivalent SAT score who was an alumnus of UPenn.” (Is it the school, or the upbringing and drive to get there, that results in success?)
• In May 2014, Purdue and Gallup released an annual report based on thirty thousand college graduates. The first paragraph reads,
  “There is no difference in workplace engagement or a college graduate’s well-being if they attended a public or private not-for-profit institution, a highly selective institution, or a top-100 ranked school in U.S. News & World Report.”

This is your story. You can write one so full of friends and family and happiness as well as opportunities and risks and successes, that which college you attend will be nothing more than a footnote. 

4. It’s college!
“Despite all the challenges facing higher education in America, from mounting student debt to grade inflation and erratic standards, our system is rightly the world’s envy… We have a plenitude and a variety of settings for learning that are unrivaled.” –Frank Bruni, author of Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be

Despite the pressure, college admissions should be a time of hope and anticipation for the rest of our lives. Strip away the US News rankings, the overbearing parents, the peers whose resumes seem to never end, and what we’re really doing is choosing where we would like to spend the next four years of our youth. And they are all good options. Should we choose to make them so, they are all great options. 

Through previous grades, I have observed enough emotional roller coasters of college admissions for a lifetime. I know people who ended up at their seventh or eighth choice college, but when they got to that college, they had fun, they explored the possibilities, they tried new things, they made friends. And now, it barely matters, because they’re incredibly lucky and grateful, and they are amazing young people who will help build our future. They are exactly where they need to be. 

Recommended Reading/Watching in the name of Perspective, Deep Breaths, and Lower Blood Pressure:

1. Frank Bruni: Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania** (2015) (212 pages; at the time of this writing, available at Nichol’s Library!)
   1. Or, if you’re just looking for the gist, an opinion piece from the same author on the New York Times.
2. American Scholar: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)
3. Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal (2019) (100 minutes)
4. The Dangers of Getting Personal Statement Feedback From Too Many People (2 minutes)

*Over the past three decades, the greatest change in the college application landscape is the cost. From 1989 to 2016, the cost of college grew 8 times faster than wages. There are a host of reasons for this inflation and several possible solutions, but it is also a reminder that the ability to be obsessed with universities that are perceived as elite is “far more privilege than curse.” The obsession means we have a choice; it means that we not only get to go to college, but we get to choose which one; and that in this choice, we get to consider our own preferred fields of study and campus locations as well as financial and family considerations; it’s an amazing privilege. 

**Inspiration for the title of this article!

Coming 11/5, since I’m realizing how long this blog has become:

“It’s a jungle gym, not a ladder.” An exploration of the most prestigious circles in the world – from Fortune 500 to American Presidents – and which undergraduate college their members hail from.
“My fear is that these kids are always going to be evaluating their self-worth in terms of whether they hit the next rung society has placed in front of them at exactly the time that society has placed it. And that’s dangerous, because you’re going to slip and fall in your life.” –Former governor of New York, Chris Christie. 

Each week, between driving to and from school and my rink, I spend almost 200 miles on the road. Add that to the time commuting between classes here at North and walking on the track during my PE class, and I’ve got about nine hours of transportation time to kill every week. To fill the empty spaces and keep me grounded, I put in my earbuds or connect to my car speakers and hit play on a slew of podcasts that pour current events, entertainment, and other people’s stories into my life. Here are a few of my favorites. 

1. The Daily
Sponsor: The New York Times
Host: Michael Barbaro
Release Schedule: 6 days a week, 20-30 minute episodes
Favorite Episode: Too many! Most recently however, ‘The United States vs. Elizabeth Holmes” (9/16/2021). A dive into a scandal in Silicon Valley. 

In 2020, The Daily was the most popular news podcast in the US for both Spotify and Apple listeners. More than 2 million people download each episode, making it a monster hit and a significant source of revenue for The New York Times. This show also brought its host, Michael Barbaro, celebrity status, complete with TV appearances and a dedicated fanbase. In 2017, People magazine even named Barbaro one of the 15 sexiest newsmen.

However, for me, when Mr. Platt assigned us this podcast in US History in the midst of the pandemic, Barbaro was constantly heard, and never seen. (I still can’t believe his voice matches his face, but I digress.) Every day, Barbaro invites a guest onto his show who has expertise in the big story of the day. For ‘Germany and Europe, After Merkel’ (9/24), he invited the Berlin Bureau Chief for the NYT; for ‘A “Righteous Strike”’ (9/21), he invited a journalist for the NYT based in Afghanistan; and for ‘Our Family’s Fight Against the Dixie Fire’ (9/20), he invited a NYT reporter whose family chose to defend their home in Northern California instead of evacuating. Barbaro walks the fine line between lending structure to the conversation and not being too overbearing; in my mind, he is stunningly adept at asking the right questions. I listen to every weekday podcast, and I have rarely been disappointed by the choice of story or the way in which it is told.

2. The Argument
Sponsor: The New York Times
Host: Jane Coaston (Frequent guests: Michelle Goldberg, Ross Douthat)
Release Schedule: Every Wednesday, 25-40 minute episodes
Favorite Episode: ‘Does Teaching America It’s Racist Make It Less Racist?’ (5/19/2021). A short history and debate on the merits and shortcomings of critical race theory. 

The Argument originally launched in 2018 to provide an ideal model of civil disagreement and to answer the question: “How could anyone possibly think that?” This podcast provides a wide palette of perspectives on subjects ranging from football safety to the death penalty to contacting aliens to workplace diversity programs. I listen to around half of the episodes that are released. 

Of this list of podcasts, I find The Argument to be the most mentally stimulating. While listening, my brain is always buzzing with activity, analyzing and backtracking and retracing. It reminds me of how argument and discourse with those who disagree with me can make me consider why anyone believes what they believe, and how the answer to that question can help us create mutual understanding and respect. 

3. Throughline
Sponsor: NPR
Host: Ramtin Arablouei, Rund Abdelfatah
Release Schedule: Every Wednesday, 50-70 minute episodes
Favorite Episode: ‘Afghanistan: The Center of the World’ (9/9/2021). Afghanistan, not from the perspective of those who invaded it, but from the perspective of those who lived there long before. 

A podcast whose tagline reads, ‘The past is never past,’ Througline covers both well-known and largely forgotten stories of history. I love the voices of the hosts; Rund Abdelfatah’s in particular is wonderful for storytelling, with pregnant pauses and soothing inflection. Throughline not only tells the “what,” it also tells the “why” and the “how” that is so often pushed out of the spotlight in textbooks, offering a bigger picture of trends and nuances that makes its episodes memorable and enjoyable. 

I’ve listened to some of the earliest episodes on this show, and whether or not I’ve listened to any recent episodes depends on how much time I’ve had on my hands. So, scrolling through their list of episodes, I see cycles of sudden bursts of activity that last several weeks, followed by a slew of unfamiliar titles. Recently, with so much downtime in the car, I’m grateful that I’ve been able to listen to almost every recent episode. 

Honorable Mentions

4. Hope, Through History
Sponsor: C13Originals
Host: Jon Meacham
Release Schedule: 10 episodes total (2 seasons), 20-40 minute episodes
Favorite Episode: ‘Episode 4 | JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis’ (5/9/2020). How JFK averted nuclear war. (I’ve listened to this episode seven times, probably because JFK and RFK were my political idols growing up.) 

Stories of leaders who were confronted with a challenge that threatened their people and perhaps even their world, and rose to the occasion. (Shoutout again to Mr. Platt, who assigned ‘Episode 1 | FDR and the Great Depression’ and totally got me hooked.) Meacham is also an amazing storyteller who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of President Andrew Jackson.

5. FiveThirtyEight Politics
Sponsor: FiveThirtyEight
Host: Galen Druke, Nate Silver
Release Schedule: Varies; usually 1-2 times a week, 20-60 minute episodes
Favorite Episode: ‘The Great Inflation Debate’ (7/22). What are the political consequences of a surge in inflation? 

The latest coverage on the game of pure politics and political leverage – a game in which the only thing predictable is unpredictability – complete with analysis of politicians, parties, polls, and the drama between them. 

—

Through the places and mindspaces my podcasts take me, I laugh, cry, wonder, analyze, rethink, and sometimes, stare into space with my jaw hanging open in shock. Podcasts help me begin to wrap my head around the joy, suffering, and challenges of people who feel far removed from my small corner of the world. After writing this blog, I’m looking forward to opening my sketchbook and tuning into the next one on my list: HISTORY This Week’s ‘Shaving Russia’ (8/30). Listen with me, and I promise it’ll open your eyes to something new!

My parents

My mother was an avid reader, my father a patient teacher. Together, they invested time and energy into nurturing my literary skills, instilling in me a love for reading and writing that persists today. 

Beginning when I was six years old, my mother drove me to our local library every Saturday and set me loose among its shelves. I flitted between rows and rows of books of all different sizes, colors, and thickness that stretched to the ceiling and in either direction – books that beckoned to me softly from their lofty shelves, whispering, “Take your time… we’re in no hurry.” 

Inhaling the sweet, musky smell of wood that lingered in the aisles, I quite literally discovered the world. After an hour, I emerged from the shelves, breathless, my arms straining under the weight of a stack of books pinned down by my chin. When it came to books, I knew no moderation. I loved their comforting weight in my backpack at school, a reminder that I was carrying around a whole world that I could step into whenever I wanted. I loved the unique, sharp smell of the pages and the way colors, sounds, and feeling came bursting vividly from lines of text. 

With my mother’s passionate support, reading and listening to books became a near addiction. My father once quipped that he felt like he was having dinner with Jane Eyre or Frankenstein instead of his daughter, for that was all he could see from across the dinner table. But my mother, who had read anything she could get her hands on in China as a means of travelling beyond the hometown she didn’t leave until she went to college, was the mainstay of my early foray into literature. She made me book lists based on everything from our local library’s summer reading challenges to Bill Gates’ reading blog, handing me more and more difficult books because she was confident that I could read them. She encouraged me to write down words and their definitions that I didn’t know in “Words Books,” and well-written quotes in “Quotes Books,” black-and-white composition notebooks I still have. 

When I listened to Jim Dale’s rendering of Harry Potter so much that one day I found that I could recite the final chapter of The Sorcerer’s Stone from memory, she listened patiently as I did so on the car, smiling at my low rumble for Dumbledore, my high-pitched squeal for Neville. When I reread books like Gone With the Wind so much that I practically lived within their pages for months and we ran out of renewals at the library, she bought that same book at Barnes and Nobles instead of telling me to move on to new ones, giving space to my imagination and my curiosity. Even when she was busy working long hours, she never failed to bring me to the library on Saturday, never disappointed me by removing what she knew to be the highlight of my week. As a child, I took her support for granted, but now I realize how world-changing a parent’s encouragement can be, even and especially when it is ubiquitous yet unannounced, persistent yet flexible.

If my mother was the cornerstone of my early love for reading, my father placed the tools in my hand to write, in the form of an iPad mini and a wireless Apple keyboard for Christmas when I was ten years old. A hard-working but easygoing man who never picked a fight if he could help it, he had a seemingly bottomless reserve of patience, especially when it came to his children. Through long hours of petulant resistance on my part, he tore down my habits of typing with my thumb and index finger (a strategy I stubbornly adhered to despite suffering through typing classes at school) and taught me to type with all ten fingers. 

After about two weeks, I finally conceded my old typing habits and began to learn. (For months afterwards, however, I caught him stealing glances at my keyboard, surreptitiously making sure I was typing correctly.) Through the QWERTY keyboard, I discovered that I, too, could take the world I lived in and put it on the page. The incessant clicking of the keyboard became a staple sound of my existence. Perched on boxes of cereal in our pantry, a location I chose for the fact that no one ever thought to enter it and I could let my ideas flow freely, I wrote tens of short stories (almost all of which went unfinished) and kept a diary every single day, trying to imitate the dialogue and the magic of the stories I read, drawing on my small corner of the world, telling a story that was garbled and unintelligible, but thoroughly my own. My father bought me my own flash drive, backed up all my writing on his Windows computer, and told me my first poems were awesome (they weren’t). Against the backbone of his support, my love for writing grew. 

Marina Keegan

Soon after I learned to type, my grandpa bought me Marina Keegan’s The Opposite of Loneliness. Keegan’s essays and short stories, which she wrote in college, were my kryptonite; her words were like darts, flying off the page to steal my breath away. A line from one of her poems reads, “Do you wanna leave soon? No, I want enough time to be in love with everything… And I cry because everything is so beautiful and so short.” Keegan was so young, so full of unconditional hope and belief in the potential of herself and her generation. She was also certain that nothing was certain and that was okay, because she believed that we had time. I felt connected to her like I had never felt connected to any author before. She inspired many of my fictional stories, which, like hers, often had a female protagonist both flawed and fiercely ambitious, whom I could relate to. 

A few years later, I met my eighth grade language teacher, Mrs. Kulik. Teaching was her second job after journalism, and with a blonde pixie cut and a sharp yet soothing reading voice, she was full of wisdom and character. Throughout the year, she invested herself into each of her students’ literary futures; in one instance, she read each of our literary analysis essays three times at separate stages of drafting, commenting, encouraging, and criticizing, before handing us a grade. Yet the most powerful lesson I took away from her classroom was that writing matters; that even as 13- and 14-year-olds, our words were tools and weapons that must be chosen carefully. This simple but invaluable belief stayed with me throughout high school, as Mrs. Skopec helped me overcome some performance anxiety and express my ideas verbally, Mrs. Rauen and Mrs. Mazzaferro lended structure and a clear line of reasoning to the word vomit I often handed in, and Mr. Smith showed me the careful deliberation that must go into a single sentence. Finally, in a life-changing semester-long journey that transcended literacy and merits an essay of its own, Mrs. Parato helped me find my voice and discover the understanding and equal humanity that can arise from listening to others.

I still go to the library every three weeks, although now I drive myself. I still stand still amid the shelves every now and then, inhaling that sweet, musky smell of wood which brings a rush of emotions and memories to the forefront of my mind. Although I come with a book list, I often can’t help extending my index finger to the top of the spine of an unfamiliar book, giving it a little nudge forward and feeling the weight of another unfamiliar story, another eye-opening adventure, fall into my hand. At home, there is a perpetual stack of books on my working desk – The Splendid and the Vile, If Beale Street Could Talk, Dead Man Walking – and on my computer, I still keep documents with curious book quotes. On the notes app on my phone, I write lists of interesting things in my life, lists of people’s names that I’ve met and things they’ve said to me that I want to remember, lists of conversations I want to have with people and questions I want to ask them but haven’t gotten the chance to yet, poems and lyrics and story ideas, my thumbs skittering across the narrow keyboard on my phone. And I know that the tools of literacy, which my parents gave me, the authors I encountered broadened, and my teachers steadily sharpened, will stay with me for a lifetime.