For about $1,200, you can install a whole house fan instead of air conditioning. It can be even cheaper than that if you do the installation yourself (we did, and it was pretty easy). The whole house fan does a great job of pulling cooler outside air into the house and venting out hot air. We use it a lot of the time…

My presentation tips (as a teacher who presents frequently at academic conferences):

“With his every attempt at a career, I grow a little more grateful to my parents for informing me that no, I could not be a pop sensation or a professional basketball player.”

I find his energy when he’s mellow to be very soothing, and I find his enthusiasm when he’s a bit more amped up to be genuine and delightful. I don’t feel that way about many celebs (or really any people). He seems like he would be a genuinely great person to have in your life. 

The best St. Patrick’s Day cocktail is the Nutty Irishman, which has just one more ingredient than just shaken Baileys. But that one additional ingredient really makes the drink better.

“I can’t stop thinking about how, out of a bench of 17 players, these were the best responses the team could come up with.”

I love Barbara Lee’s politics. I just wish she were 10-15 years younger. 

I mean, a lot of people have flows that heavy. Like, a lot. It’s not always a cause for concern. Some people just have that. 

The struggle is real. I fought this same battle some 15 years ago now, when I was the assistant varsity volleyball coach at a high school. In my first year of coaching, I was surprised to see that one set of the spandex uniform shorts were yellow. Not as bad as white, mind you, but still light enough to cause a…

Yeah, this one surprised me. Hook is magical. It’s not aiming to be high cinema, and it doesn’t achieve that. But it is a wonderful kids’ movie that is not physically painful for adults to sit through. If you were young when it came out, you most likely loved it and still have a lot of nostalgic warmth for it. And…

We’re in total agreement that the questionnaire is filler. It undoubtedly is. But that doesn’t mean it has to be as bad as it consistently is, and that’s why I suggested it needs to be better defined. Doing that wouldn’t be labor intensive, and it would at least make the output better, I think. A subtle shift in the…

I generally think Colbert is a mediocre at best interviewer. If the subject of the interview is a politician or a member of the intelligentsia, he does better. In that setting, he links questions, responds with thoughtfulness, and gives the subject time to talk. But Colbert has no poker face when he’s not interested…

Station Eleven (the novel and the series) is SO GOOD. HBO keeps suggesting I watch it after each episode of The Last of Us, and I’m always like, “You should already know, HBO Algorithm, that I’ve watched it twice!” The series makes such smart choices about how to adapt the source material, in particular with regard to…

One and two are still the biggies for me, and I suspect they are for most people. I’m probably going to buy a new car next year. I would love to get an EV, but I’ll probably go for a hybrid this next time around, mostly because I don’t have a garage where I can install a Level 2 charger. And I still do a couple of…

Trent mentions something in S2 about wanting to do deeper work. I’m guessing he pitches writing a book with/about Ted.

Oh that’s inarguable. There’s no one who writes spies like le Carre. There’s no comparison between le Carre and Fleming, in part because le Carre’s work reacts to and pushes back against the excesses of Fleming’s. If Fleming delights in the perceived glamour of the spy trade, le Carre insists on focusing on the…

Can confirm: ‘Tis rare to see Fleming’s work on a college syllabus, unless you’re taking/teaching a class specifically on spy fiction. It definitely won’t be on a high school curriculum. I have taught spy fiction in pop culture classes in the past, and I’ve put Bond novels on that syllabus without much concern. But…

Copying this from a friend who reposted this on their FB page, because I think it helps contextualize what this whole thing was actually about for the publishers (read: Money and flogging a dying/outdated franchise back to life):

“...playing “Memory” from the musical Cats, surrounded by friends and fans.”

Right?! Those are the two must-haves for my next car purchase. I’ve never had a car with either. It drives me nuts every time I take my car in for an oil change and inevitably the mechanic has changed some mysterious seat setting and I can never seem to get it back to the place where it was before. I would love to be…